Diving was like falling into a raging torrent. Isabelle had once taken a category four whitewater vacation. This was wilder, a thousand times more dizzying. Seconds later, it was over. When her eyes opened, she was standing at a dark intersection, not unlike the one near the street outside her apartment. A dim street light glowed yellow and flickered. Mist curled up from the slick asphalt. A turn to the left and there it was. It was no gem, a squat building in the older part of town. Not very creative as far as virtual start-points went, but it was that was a part of the apartment’s appeal. Single efficiency. Musty elevator. Cheap rent, cheap ticket. No frills, real or otherwise a the start point.

It was just as well, as far as Isabelle was concerned. A beginner could stand to do without the frills. There was nothing wrong with starting small, right? Unlike most users, she hadn’t been diving for a very long time. Even though the past few months had proved to be quite an education, she still managed to get lost or wander into the wrong construct from time to time.

A tree to the left swayed. There was wind but no sound. It was unnerving. A sudden movement to the right had Isabelle doing a quick about face. She eyed her companion drolly. “I dislike it when you do that. Least you could do is show up within my periphery.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” He grinned.

It was scary, that grin because he–at least she figured it was a “he” since he was using a man’s voice–had the visage of a wolf’s head. Oddly, she wondered what would happen if she touched it. She wondered if he’d bite.

“It’s subconscious. It’s not something you can hide.” He leaned in closer. “It was lovely,” he said. “Watching you watch the sunset.”

“I am not nearly interesting enough for that, you know.” She frowned. “Why do you keep turning up everywhere I go, for that matter?”

“But Isabelle,” the wolfen head tilted. “You’d be disappointed if I don’t show up.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“When you dive, you search for me.”

“I do no such–”

He ignored her outrage. “Been seeing your footprints in some… unexpected places lately,” he ventured.

“That’s supposed to be private!” She snapped, thoroughly discomfited.

“I’m just saying you ought to be more careful.” He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “You know, like the way you sleep walk?” He damned well knew that she was unnerved. Seemed to be enjoying it, continued running his mouth cheerfully. “You should take a pill or something before you dive.”

“Are you shadowing me? She demanded. It finally dawned on her that he’d been using her real name, this whole time. For the first time since she’d first encountered this oddball, Isabelle felt truly fearful. It wasn’t as if he could do anything to her. Not in this place… right?

“Who are you?” Just in case, she was already silently scrambling for a fast exit. “Why do you know so much about me?

He froze. Literally. His body went still like a digital picture. She waited, somewhat taken aback by his rude departure. After a moment, there was movement again. He smiled at her apologetically. “Excuse me Isabelle, darling. I have to surface for a while. “

“Wait just a–”

There was a painful electrical screech in her ear. She almost jumped out of her skin. Suddenly, Isabelle was standing at the edge of the roof of the apartment building. Her hands were on the safety railing. Helicopters–a silent army of them–crowded the air above. The traffic up there was getting to be as bad up there as below. It was a dammed shame. A body could barely see the sky anymore.

Why should anyone have to harden their heart in order to survive? I’m dying away inside. My spirit withers away slowly and quietly in the noisy dark, and that frightens me. Sometimes I think only blood that can cure me. The angry kind that splatters all over walls or weeps from the wrist.

I have nothing but love inside me. I have nothing but love inside me, and a quietly festering darkness.

I want to be free of you.

A lone watchman contemplated the receding coastline. His brown, weather beaten face was prickly with a few days’ overgrowth. Red eyed from lack of sleep and the ganja smoke swirling about his fingers and streaming from his nostrils, he blew the occasional smoke ring while grinning wryly at the man in the moon. Every now and then, he hummed tunelessly along with the radio.

Something in the water flopped, something huge. He frowned in puzzlement. Ripples fanned out from ahead, rocking the boat. He gawked in open-mouthed shock. A ghostly beacon sliced through the depths, shooting up into the night sky. His spliff fell out of his mouth and into the churning sea. He looked downward and one gigantic, malevolent eye met his stare.

The old man cried out in terror. His legs gave out. His companion came running from the cramped hold. He looked around and then in puzzlement at the old man, but there was nothing but the night and his friend’s incoherent stammering.

It always began in the weeks approaching Christmas. You could hear them coming from miles away – the primitive, handmade drums and trumpets made out of the horns of bulls. They would burst into sight and consciousness–a prancing, chanting, procession of fierce masked men and women. They were the living avatars of mystical beasts, their significance long lost in the primitive memory of our African ancestry. They were the Jonkanoo.

Among children and even some adults, there was always one of two responses to the arrival of the Jonkanoo to a locale. Some raced breathlessly to the streets or the houses they visited to watch the spectacle. Others quivered in fear and fled. I must admit, that as a child I often succumbed to the urge to run away, heart racing.

I think believed on some level, that in masquerading as the Jonkanoo–these people had truly become something other than human. Beyond the fear I felt I could hear something else. It was perhaps, the faint echo of a heartbreaking cant for lost memories. All descendants of slaves and misplaced societies carry this song in our hearts. To this day, I remain convinced that threaded into the cacophony of horns and drums and song of the Jonkanoo was perhaps, the forgotten truths of all people–past, present and future.

The rumble of thunder was too close for comfort. The hairs at the back of her neck stiffened. She could almost hear the hum of energy crackling all around her. Bolts of blue lightning speared the rolling sea, again and again. Torpid waves crashed against the barriers of the bridge.

Unnerved, Jeannie slammed her foot down on the accelerator and didn’t let up until she reached the exit road to Mercy. The thought did cross her mind, that was some screwed up portent of her homecoming.

“Believe me, I know.” Gill captured Davi’s fingers with his own. He found himself becoming earnest, although he hadn’t been planning to. “Idiotic clients aside, I used to think that the reason we didn’t work out was just a matter of not trying hard enough. Are there really things that some people are just not capable of?”

Her palm was rough, splintered from the wood she liked to work with when she wasn’t busy taking lives. She had skinny fingers but they were so strange, strong and warm. Bursting with vibrancy. There was so much to love there.

“It’s fine to make it my fault,” she shook away from his grasp. “You see, I actually hate men. Never quite been able to perceive your sort as equal–or rather—as being of the same species. Women too. In fact, I hate all humans.”

He chuckled. “That’s not entirely true, is it?”

Davi had long, dramatic eyelashes that swooped sideways like dove’s tails. She never wore makeup, hardly gave a hoot about showing a blotch here, a patch of freckles there. She was going gray. Slivers of silver had started streaking from her widow’s peak since she turned twenty three.

“I’m an old soul and you know it,” she’d once declared with a laugh. “See here, a testament to that fact.”

“I loathe them, but I also love them.” She finished her latte, licking her chocolate stained lips as if trying to dispel the bitterness of that last drop. That one tiny gestured evoked a flash of memories. Smoky midnight affairs. Sex by candlelight. Things to which–as her lover–he’d once presumed that he was entitled.

“I hate myself for being so foolish,” she muttered.

Maybe that bitterness wasn’t ever going to fade away. What exactly could he say at this point? Silence stretched on between them for a few more minutes.

“You intentions are good. It’s just that… I’m not.” She tossed him another careless smile, twiddled with both of their phones a bit before reaching into her pocket for a few bills. She set them on the table, didn’t bother to count. “That ought to do it. My half plus the tip, at least. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to leave a tip too, stingy boy.”

Davi’s soft laughter floated around him. She ruffled his hair–probably didn’t even realize she’d done it, and departed. She glided through the crowded restaurant like a ghost. No one else seemed to notice her presence. He picked up his phone, dialed a number from memory.

“She took the photo.” His listened for a few seconds. “No, that doesn’t mean she’ll take the job. She might. If she feels like it.”

“Yeah, she did.” Gill eyed the cubes of sugar she’d lined up on her napkin in a tidy little row. “Five,” he said. “Five million.”

By the time she reached Cafe Bliss, the rain had stopped. The bell over the door chimed as she shook and folded her umbrella. She caught a whiff of oddly familiar cologne but it registered too late. She was already head to chest with the man stepping out.

“Sorry, I really should–” Her gaze latched onto his.

She didn’t know this man but there was something about the way stood there wordlessly perturbed, head tilted to one side that made it impossible for her to finish her sentence. There was something, right there on the tip of her tongue, but no never-mind. The audacious buffoon hadn’t moved. He still stood there, blocking her path to that well-deserved espresso.

“Do I know you?” She demanded half exasperated, halfway mystified.

He pasted on a tightly careful smile. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

He was gone, around the corner and out of sight before she connected the dots. She suddenly remembered with stark clarity, certain things that she’d once loved. The smell of his breath. The taste of his sweat. The heat emanating from his back. How hearing his voice used to make her feel hollowed out, nothing left inside but longing.

How many years ago was that? She’d already forgotten his name, his face… that this kind of emotion had ever existed inside her.

He’ll incinerate the bodies. He’ll grind those bones; pour the burnt teeth and ashes down into a pretty jar. He’ll plan you a tidy little service, tell your loved ones how nice you’ll look on their mantle. He’ll tell them with a comforting smile. That’s nothing special, just goes with the territory.

Off the clock, his talents come in really handy. He’ll plan you a sweet little service, tell you how nice you’ll look on his mantle. He’ll tell you with a comforting smile, right before he gets down to business. He’ll incinerate your body. He’ll grind your bones; pour your burnt teeth and ashes down into a neat little jar.

This one, he’s not at all like the others. Well, you’ll see.

All fiction posted at 1FlashFicDaily (www.1flashficdaily.wordpress.com) by Tonya R. Moore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

To drink, we gut the passion fruit. We soak their seedy insides in water. We shake the sticky bits loose. We separate liquid from pulp, which we then discard. We sweeten to taste. We savor the juice. It’s a prosaic end to a monstrous beauty.

Really, what does that say about us?

All fiction posted at 1FlashFicDaily (www.1flashficdaily.wordpress.com) by Tonya R. Moore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

She’d remember waking up afterward, the world having tumbled upside down. They were still strapped in by the seat-belts, but the wrong way up. Dirty water was leaking. What air she was managing to squeeze into her shocked lungs was thick with the sickening stench of ripe carcasses, wet soil and spilled fuel. Blood had been shed, so abundantly and so near that she could taste it.

Davie was being unusually quiet. She tried to turn to face him, couldn’t move for some reason. Out of the corner if her eye, she could see that his head had lolled oddly to one side. She suddenly remembered punching him in the arm once, asking if death was what it would take make him shut up and quit nagging. An instant later, strange hands reached in, clumsily probing Davie’s face, peeled back his eyelids. What the hell–exactly–were they eve trying to find? Those fingers pressed against Davie’s neck. The dark body withdrew abruptly. Then, those hands were touching Sylvia. She would later remember an earnest face and a gruff voice, not understanding the man’s frantic words.

Davie…

She would remember laughing like a loon and weeping as unseen hands used their jaws of life to cut her way out of the mangled remains of their car.

All fiction posted at 1FlashFicDaily (www.1flashficdaily.wordpress.com) by Tonya R. Moore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.