The Last Night of Exile

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

EPILOGUE

"If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind

Leave this heart of clay, see you walk…walk away

Into the night and through the rain

Into the half-light and through the flame

If I could, through myself, set your spirit free

I’d lead your heart away

See you break, break away

Into the light and to the day"

- U2, Bad

PROLOGUE

ROSES AND BROKEN HEARTS

In reviewing the previous two books in this Exile Trilogy, it became increasing clear to me that I should make some effort here at the outset to provide a recap of what has already transpired. In the books leading up to this final installment, there have been numerous characters, strange beings, events and places, and an intricate and – hopefully compelling – story. The linkages between Baxter Peanut and Perfect Anger: A Saltwater Sermon, although subtle and perhaps even difficult to identify, guide us as the adventure continues. They are each essential companion pieces to this finale and it seems now is a good time to guide you toward a few ‘hidden’ secrets.

To put things into perspective, I’m not trying to answer the smoldering questions of the world with these books. I mean, all the ‘why are we all really here?’ type questions are suitably addressed in any variety of philosophical tomes, transcendental meanderings and within the walls of churches or other suitable places of worship. What is the point of living day after day only surviving to get by making something for yourself and family? Well, maybe some of those questions are addressed with glimpsing hints of thought and reason. But why do people get put into this world, by no means or process of their own will, only barely alive; maybe only to lie awake at night with empty stomachs or tortured in a cell for their beliefs or living under the rule of a lawless government that dictates how they want you to behave? I’m fairly certain those questions won’t be touched, but they’re nice to keep filed away neatly until you’re depressed enough to begin considering them.

Nope…this book – this trilogy – doesn’t try to dig that deeply into the human condition. Of course, if it manages to relate to the greater scope of why we do, what we do…then all the better I suppose. Maybe it can open a few doors to take a peek into these concerns but then, it’s a bit like living in a gated community where people isolate themselves from their neighbors and the evils that lie just outside those gates. That’s the reason they live there, to buy that sense of isolation – and to a certain extent – personal space and independence. But that just reflects on the true nature of dwelling behind protective walls. Ultimately, living in a gated community is a great way to tell the world you’re afraid of it. If that wasn’t the case, then why so much contemporary reliance on the technical tools that keep us communicating with each other in a contact-free environment? That’s not at all the message I’m trying to send.

I have watched as the best minds of my generation have been diluted and destroyed by twitter, obsessed by updating their Facebook status, and dragged starving, hysterical, and emotionally naked through the cyberspace at dawn, searching angrily for a Wi-Fi connection at Starbucks just to find a quiet place to put their thoughts. I’m pretty sure I fall into this techno-mess somewhere, although my amateurish, inability to overcome my personal challenges with the ‘new world’ of social media is limited.

So for those of you interested in resuming the story and deliciously awaiting how it all ends, I welcome you back with open arms again to join in for our new adventures. The writing that helped kick-start me into hopeless obsession now lies in the past two books and it’s time to reach some kind of finish. You’ll have to find out as you read. My struggle is over – after all, here it is in your hands, completed, finished, tidied up - but I’m glad I get a chance to say ‘hello’ and ‘farewell’ properly. It will make it all the more rewarding to welcome new stories when they enter the mind and flow down to the hands. And if you don’t want to go back and read, or re-read as the case may be, the previous two books in the trilogy, or if you don’t want to buy this book and want to wait for the inevitable boxed-set trilogy package, then you don’t know what you’re missing. Because there’s some really cool stuff to glean from all this writing. They are not just words you know. And don’t wait for the movie because there isn’t likely to be one.

Now that you know what this book is NOT about, I guess I should start focusing on this introduction and begin concluding the story you are here to read. So let’s get everybody up to speed. When last we encountered our colorful cast of characters normality had lost any defining measure in their lives, chaos has ensued, relationships shattered, friendships tested, old friends reunited, old enemies face off and new threats loom more perilously close than can be imagined. What seems to be two incongruent books will be brought together with the kind of satisfying conclusion only found in the very finest cinema…a ‘Hollywood’ ending as it were. OK, you’re not buying that? Fine.

Beginning with a quick and simple summary of characters and reminding you of the extraordinary exploits they found themselves combating; this little review should either refresh your memory or make you slap yourself on the forehead realizing you now have two more books to read before you can even start this one.

OK, well, that’s not exactly accurate. Certainly, it would help if you have read the previous volumes and perhaps, after your first read when you inevitably kicked back with that irrepressible grin slyly disguising the wheels in your head spinning to fully grasp the entirety of it all. In that moment, you’ll realize that everything was there – but underneath – all of it was rumbling. These books take that rumbling and push it to the surface.

Looking back, I can say maybe it should have been easier. But if it had been easier, it wouldn’t have been as hard. And hard is important to the stories. It turns out that these collaborations with the characters find a match. You’ll notice that our two main character’s traits; Baxter Peanut’s steady aloofness and Russell Downey’s erratic passion are combustible. Both can be maniacally compulsive with their projects and desires, but their journeys have harnessed that collective fervor into a story about a similarly obsessive goal. That, of course, is something you’ve got to figure out. After all, I shouldn’t have to explain or spell out in backstory detail everything that happens, why and what it all means every step of the way. The reader has some responsibility to that end. Just remember that you’ll get all the information you need to figure this all out. And maybe have a little fun during this; The Last Night of Exile.

Because most of all, this story is about the coolest guy of them all…and watching his life become desperately frantic picking up problems like he’s a player picking up properties during his first go-round the board in a game of Monopoly. You buy them all as quickly as possible before your resources dry out and you have nothing left to bargain with. By definition, when you’re doing something original and unique, it has risks. But I’d rather bet on someone who’s going to get up on the high dive and miss from time to time, than someone on the tried-and-true safety slide, which often doesn’t work either.

Baxter Peanut is the story of a simple businessman, earnestly living a relatively simple life with his wife Lola and their young son Otto in a nice rural suburb of Savannah. He runs a successful propane, pool and accessory shop with a close group of friends and colleagues who enjoy the pleasant work environment and daily doses of laughter and uplifting work. On the outside, Baxter is an undemanding man who just wants to live a quiet life. He doesn’t ask for much and needs even less, but – like most people keeping secret their hidden desires - that’s not who he really is. Deep inside he’s a fallen artist, a writer who has neglected his craft finding himself far more interested in the ancient roots of mistaken lore that weave tales of love and loss. He also observes and appreciates the frailties in the music of life. It can be a haunted place where broken hearts rarely heal and where restless spirits find little peace.

A lot of Baxter’s socially liberal, worldly personal traits also found him as a certain type of man who’s a throwback to the persona of the ultimate ego-driven, smoothly progressive operator…so effortlessly cool, funny, scary, edgy, and over-the-top; a madman who can go from sensitive romantic to goofball to suave predator in the blink of an eye. He has the ‘smart’, proper moves…pure magnetic intensity and electricity. These qualities, however, never quite seem synched up to form any definition.

The story leads Baxter to a surprisingly supernatural discovery in his backyard garden, the beginnings of a small boy growing up from the soil. This takes our favorite father into a strange series of life events that force him to reassess his place and meaning. He also becomes both the teacher and the student in life’s lessons through his talks with Otto and his conversations with the garden boy, who Baxter named Tommy.

As the story ends, (frankly, a pretty good story at that…some real twists, a lot of interesting ‘insider’ stuff, and a few surprises, most notably the infamous – spoiler alert - ‘you killed Killy’) Tommy is gone and Baxter is left contemplating a new future with a fresh approach to the many challenges remaining at his doorstep.

Perfect Anger – A Saltwater Sermon places you squarely in the quaint Gulf Coast Florida town of Gulf Strand as preparations are underway to brace for hurricane Beulah’s imminent arrival. The large cast of colorful characters who make up the landscape of the town find a number of curious and remarkable ways to navigate the little nuances of the day.

Top Down Russell Downey and his wife Tracy find their lives; well I suppose you could say ‘untidy’, but ‘disorderly’ is clearly a more appropriate description. This might be an appropriate place to use the term ‘dysfunctional’, but that is such an overused and misunderstood characterization. Through their various interactions and a series of phenomenal and surrealistic events that grip the town during the storm, everything ends in wild disarray. (As those of you who have read it, am I right or what? A real WTF moment.) Moreover, I think you’ll find the appearance of an interesting old friend at the end will, or should have, whet your appetite for a satisfying conclusion that takes you on a journey for the answers.

Russ, or T.D., - his radio talk show moniker - can be described as impossibly smart; but in there is his brilliance and also his undoing. He’s a great conversationalist, obviously, and well read to stay on top of all current events, history, the world of the paranormal and conspiracies, as well as possessing an extensive useless wealthy knowledge of bullshit trivia. It keeps him sharp and in command of his job. He’s fun to talk to, but he’s all strained apprehension. He’s not always able to intuit anything real or natural about the human experience, instead numbing a good deal of years with substances that afforded him the ability to pass off otherwise useless worries. The truth is, for a lot of artists and entertainers, there’s a measured degree of Asperser’s and ADD that seem to be at work making life disruptive and more complicated than it has to be. T.D.’s sense of this just seems more acute.

After hurricane Beulah blows through town, the unexplained curiosity of strangely eerie storm occurrences combined with the unusual events during the aftermath, leave us aching for answers to even more complex and intriguing questions.

This brings us to the final stop on our journey. The one where more revelations surface, tighter expositions erupt and the can’t wait to see what happens next-o-meter keeps ticking. The promise to illuminate the dark corners and reveal the big finish is slowly uncovered as each page turns.

So there you have a bit of an idea of what to expect. It’s the notion that all these lives swirl through the ups and downs and find themselves inexplicably creeping into every minute of every day. And when these lives meet in such diversely different and captivating ways, you’ve got yourself a heck of a tale.

Hopefully, you’ll find a certain fondness for our character’s antics and make a place for them in your literary catalog. They share a basic affinity for the conviction of don’t worry about tomorrow, instead focus on the day by day of your life. Also, don’t think that they are fools for believing one thing or another or make hasty judgments. If you are so inclined, then you can say that anyone who doesn’t believe in a certain ideal is also a fool, but what would be the point of saying, much less, believing that? This troupe of appealing personalities either reinforces that belief system or does little to change minds, but they enlighten the arguments on both sides. There’s nothing to hide at this point. There’s nothing to be gained by keeping secrets.

Finally, the catharsis of capturing so many feelings and emotions through the years with the healing and liberating art of writing has been energizing. The passing of time isn’t always therapeutic, in fact, sometimes it can be downright frightening. Not because of the inevitability of it all, but because of how it uses ingenuity to cleverly appear to move slowly while you’re living it and so quickly once it has passed.

Thirty years ago, when I when I first found that writing could be a powerful outlet, the stories that supported those feelings helped to sort out the questions. I lived with simple aspirations, common struggles and tried to avoid the traps along the way. Then I’m home at the end of the day, cooking something for dinner, taking a swim and preparing for the next day’s challenges. Next thing I know I’m sitting down to write this prologue. That’s how quick these thirty something years have gone.

As quick as that.

CHAPTER I

THE LAUGHTER AND THE NOISE

The darkened room’s only light teased across the walls from the reflection dancing off the candle. He sat just off to the side, cross-legged on the floor. Fleshed out smoke rings hung just above eye level shielding the floor, hovering like a protective cloud. The gas mask fit tightly on his head and securely over his face, thick tubing extending from the mask’s mouth to the machine lying in the center of the room. He sat and inhaled deeply, pausing for a few seconds after each breath. His exhaling filled the mask’s already smoky contents. The soft whirling of the machine kept a continuous, fixed hum of background noise.

The rest of the group sat with him, circling around the contraption’s steady heartbeat. He continued his breathing exercises with the machine-fed mask while the others waited their turn. The young man in the heavy duty, military-grade issue gas mask sat silently among the chatty guests in the dorm room focused on his smoking.

OK then, says one of the college students continuing the current topic. What if all these things are ghosts and we’re imagining it all?

We wouldn’t all imagine the same things…exactly seeing the identical stuff, would we? Asks a young co-ed, sharing her thoughts in the conversation.

Yeah, chimes in a third friend, adjusting his butt on the hard surface. Ghosts are manifestations of the demons inside us.

No, argues the first. He arches his back to stretch the tension from sitting on the floor. Ghosts are entities of the dead. Therefore, if the same dead people were haunting everyone, then we’d all probably see the same things. If it’s something that comes from inside us, then we’d each see something different.

What do you think Dutch? The girl asks the room’s resident-owner standing up in the corner, bouncing and excitable from the hits of speed he took a little earlier in the evening.

Nah man, Dutch replied, shaking his thin, straight, dark brown-feathered hair away from its center part. Is Bax gonna Bogart that whole bowl or what?

The group returns its attention to their college friend in the mask. He slightly lifts his head hearing his name referenced, and looks around the room like some greenish alien bulbous life form encircled in a haze of smoke.

Dutch pounces over to Bax. He becomes feral, bursting with dilated white eyes popping like a spinning wheel as he circles Baxter, narrowly avoiding a pile of empty beer cans stacked up in the corner of the room.

If you listen to what the crowd wants, you end up sitting with the crowd. Dutch reaches down and taps on Baxter’s head with his index finger. Bax pulls off the gas mask and a huge plume of smoke escapes into the already confined area.

Even when you pull shit outta your ass to sound interesting, Baxter says to Dutch after passing the mask to the eagerly waiting co-ed sitting to his right, it still isn’t interesting.

She takes the mask and pulls it over her head, adjusting it by pulling the tabs tightly on the sides. Ill ump da boowl, she mutters unintelligibly from under the mask.

Whaaat?

She said ‘fill up the bowl’. It’s out.

Dutch walks over to the desk and picks out another large bright, lime-green bud from the tray. He takes a toothpick, empties out the remnants of the bowl on top of the machine, and replaces it with the fresh bud. The used ashes flutter around the room and float to the floor. He takes out his lighter and fires up the bowl while she begins to inhale.

I never see ghosts, says the first student getting back to the original discussion. But I used to have night terrors. I’d wake up in the middle of the night scared that there was an Indian in my room.

Fear of The Village People…common, the third guy says.

When did they stop? Baxter asks him.

The Village People?

Baxter just looks back unamused.

They haven’t.

Hey, we grow up. Dutch jumps in and adds. Or at least, we’re supposed to. He turns his attention to the young co-ed, currently sucking up the relaxing smoke and allowing the sedating effects to fill her. "Hold it in…how’s that helping your knee?"

She nods.

What’s wrong with her knee?

When we were leaving the REO Speedwagon concert the other night I hit her on the knee with an empty tequila bottle and busted it up pretty good. Dutch uses his right hand to squeeze and massage her neck as she inhales. It’s pretty badly bruised.

Why’d you hit her on the knee with a tequila bottle?

I didn’t do it on purpose.

She begins rapidly shaking her head to Dutch’s claim of innocence. As she motions, she begins coughing from the abundance of smoke filling the mask.

Easy baby, Dutch calms her. Just relax and breathe slowly.

She’s a real traffic stopper. The first guy says to Dutch about their mutual friend as he blows her a kiss. All that big hair and dangerous curves; she’s like a pinball machine cartoon bombshell come to life.

She looks over at him, smoke sipping from the fissures in the mask. She tilts her head and mumbles something incoherently through the device.

She can still hear you with the mask on. Dutch advises.

What did she say?

That you’re disappointingly but reassuringly normal, Dutch begins. This is another example of you trying to make sense of things using your own personal logic, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to begin with. It’s not like you put any thought into your arguments. It’s a choice between shit and shinola.

He looks back at him, stoned and perplexed.

"She said all that?"

Dutch nods.

"Why did you hit her on the knee with a bottle of tequila?" The third guy garbles out the question gradually as he slowly takes a bite from a chocolate éclair. Cream smears from the éclair and onto his mouth and chin.

Dats dithgusting. She mutters through the mask.

He looks right at her and takes another slow, messy bite, accentuating the smearing of the cream filling.

When I was a kid I used to imagine about how cool it would be to be a scuba diver on shipwrecks off the coast and salvage sunken treasure. Baxter says.

Where do you get that stuff from? Dutch asks him shaking his head at Baxter’s comment.

Just something I remembered…don’t know why I thought of it.

Dutch stretches himself and looks over his crew sitting quietly in the dorm room, getting high and partying up the evening. The conversations are meaningless, but engaging.

Damn we’re resilient, he says shaking his ample hair again. Like a bakery that stays in business with bad donuts.

You calling us donuts? The third guy asks.

Dutch listens to the question and pauses. You’re more like a bear claw. He smirks and grumbles. Not many people know this, but underneath all these clothes I’m completely naked.

Where do you get that stuff from? Baxter asks.

I make shit up.

"What’s that mean?" The third guy whispers to himself pondering back to the ‘bear claw’ reference.

During another coughing fit, the young co-ed pulls off the mask in an erupting wave of smoke.

Wow, she exclaims. That was pretty intense.

Fuckin’ aaaayy.

Dutch removes the residue from the bowl and looks at his friends. Who’s up?

The first guy raises his hand and Dutch begins the appropriate preparations for his turn at the contraption. As he helps to fasten on the device, he turns and winks at Baxter. Baxter smiles at the absurdity of it all.

When do you let the future start? He asks Dutch.

Dutch smiles back while lighting the next installment.

It’s always starting.

What’s so special about the future anyway? The young co-ed muses as she waves her hands around her head to shoo the smoke away from her face.

There’s nothing wrong in talking about the future, Dutch replies. It helps avoid us dealing with the past.

While it makes us incapable of living in the present. Baxter adds.

Baxter sat back, exhaled a weighty sigh, and tilted his head up toward the ceiling, pulling his reading glasses away from his eyes. His recollection of an innocent time from over three decades earlier back in the old college dorm room was just fading from his thoughts. The memories of those times just hanging out with your friends, rolled-up towels stuffed under the doorways to keep the smoke in, and sitting for hours listening to great music, getting high and discussing everything that came to mind. He did not know why he had thought back to that moment, but it was nice moment.

Now he was feeling the strain in his forehead, not the strain of a headache per se, more the uncomfortable pressure of how a stuffy, thick, sinus cold compresses on your temples. However, this wasn’t an illness or a headache causing the pressure; he was just tired and feeling the cumulative tension from reading through the hundreds of pages of drafts and notes he was trying to organize. They were lying on the table in front of him, sitting in carefully themed stacks alongside his writing displayed on the laptop computer screen, and as he read and re-read, sorted and shuffled all the papers, cutting and pasting various passages, he started to feel that it was all coming together. After the years he’s spent writing this story, from its innocent conception, through the trudging travels of the characters and their circumstances, to finding these creations, his creations – brilliant people with appeal, personality, motive, good, evil, charming yet loathsome - gambling with another hand life was dealing; it finally felt like there was a finish line in the distance. That the road had found its end, a conclusion was within reach. There was a resolution and it might be attainable after all. Finally, when you get to the end of this road there will be no further turns, no alternate paths to choose, no guidepost with confusing directional signs or a billboard with new instructions or more turmoil.

The book was coming to an end.

These people who inhabited the pages had been through enough and now it was time to let them go home and do whatever it is imaginary creations do once their creator has finished the story and has decided to move on to write a different tale, chronicle a new account with fresh, distinctive, new voices and personalities. All new creations owing to nothing but finding out how they will fare in the adventures they’ll face and determining if it will be of their own doing or from the situations they might find themselves encountering.

This art, the written word used to design and fashion a storytelling experience, comes readily fortified with surprises, both revelatory and cathartic. How you use the words to formulate either a simple tale or a grand epic depends on what you decide to explore in detail and what you leave for imagination’s journey to discover. Words are the single most valuable commodity we have in this world. Each has a uniqueness that can call upon divine realms or earthy trails. The most innocent request from a child can command a power beyond the scope of man’s ability to create indescribably devastating weapons. Simple thoughts, images and ideas are suppressed and worthless to everyone including the originator until they can be transformed by words to communicate their intent.

Now as he reads the pages he’s written, taking a surgeon’s care and precision to compile his ideas, he finds himself at a crossroads of decision. Yes…apparently there are still forks in the road to settle so the end, although still in sight, is further away than he might have originally thought. A little more work, a little more fine tuning yet to be scribed.

He thought about all that time spent away from the keyboard, away from the work. Tortured-writer-syndrome my ass. Don’t believe that pitiful excuse for a second. Ten times out of ten it’s nothing more than a lazy writer. However, when that funk takes a leave and inspiration arrives back – and it always comes back - all the time wondering what will happen next doesn’t feel like such a fruitless and pathetic exercise.

American fiction doesn’t speak often about giving up. It’s about having dreams and the things we are willing or capable of doing in pursuit of realizing those dreams. For anyone who has ever dreamed BIG, life is a series of sideways flashbacks that show us what could have or should have been. As philosophers of the written word have been trying to teach us from the beginning, if you’re a force in this world it means you’ve got the audacity, the toughness, the courage – the balls - to look up at the universe and shout I exist!. It doesn’t matter what the universe yells back. Courage is funny that way. You can talk about it and write about it all you want, but when the moment happens you need to find it and use it. You need to grim up and look the other guy in the face and say, that’s enough and back off or I will deliver consequence. Regardless of your moral fiber, your constitution or your situation in life, always be an explosion of expression with all the energy at your disposal.

When we were young we weren’t given the option, or at least our parents never told us about any options, to nail down the paths we want to explore or find out what it’s like when success isn’t always so easily obtained. We get caught up in everybody else’s expectations and wake up one day realizing we lived someone else’s life. Then you look at yourself one day – and not like you’ve ever looked at yourself before – and say ‘you got what you and everyone else wanted for you. Now what?’. You start looking back and wondering whether or not you made the right moves. But those choices were made and it’s done. And now you’re not so sure it brought you all the happiness you expected in return. What are you chasing now? The frightened indifference looking back at you from the mirror doesn’t offer any answers.

This is what the writer in him was trying to express. He always tried to bring an emotional nakedness and spirit to the work. Ballsy enough to make an impression and tasty in a fight. And now as he looks through his writings, he feels like somewhere in the disarray lies the finish…’The End’…although finding out exactly how the story will meet this ‘fin’ as the French would say, is still something of a mystery. This is the exciting part for the author. Remembering the writer is every bit as excited about how the story will end as the reader, this climatic moment brings about the same ecstatic sensation for both, each participants in a very different way. Both the writer and the reader have invested a lot of time and emotion in what’s been happening on the pages so the payoff is just as important to each party.

He was able to keep up the enthusiasm to write by imagining that somewhere there is someone who is reading this for the very first time and maybe – just maybe – somewhere there’s someone re-reading it again…for the last time. Those are his two audiences. Both lost in his dystopian world, one faction eager to turn the page to discover what is next, and the other trying to find clues, answers or clarity that they may have missed previous times.

As he was re-reading the work, he thought the premise was promising enough. Maybe it was a little weak on narrative, but strong atmospherically. Or maybe just the exact opposite. After all, that’s what author and editorial reviews and rewrites were for. Character and dialogue-driven?…check…Nothing more than enhanced Jabberwocky?…not so fast. Messy as it may be at times, there are just too many great moments to write it off as an unimportant work or without merit and message. On repeated readings, and understanding that the ultimate compilation is a trilogy, it becomes easier to appreciate the hallucinatory madness of it all. At times subtle and accommodating; it can quickly and unapologetically transform into the vile and wicked incarnations that unfold in spectacular phantasmagoric vistas with a looming specter of fantastic, unconquered landscapes.

Plain and simple it’s just a story. And it’s strange how the course of a single story and the promise it holds can change with such a small tap or nudge of encouragement. Just when you start to believe you know what direction it’s heading…it veers off and takes you down a different street. Sometimes welcoming and brilliantly landscaped. Occasionally rough hewn and a little scary. Words and life are like that.

He’s a writer, not a novelist. And that’s a seductive promise.

CHAPTER II

EXCUSE THE WITNESS

The soft breezes were vigorous enough to brush the thin tree branches against the window. Early morning sunlight played hide and seek with the flowing leaves to sporadically illuminate the bedroom floor. This gentle Georgian-style, brick and wood home nestled comfortably next to a large nature reserve, sat nobly on the slope of a mild berm. The automatic lawn sprinkler system kicked into its early morning rotation.

Inside, a young woman is lying in bed on her stomach. Her head is on the pillow, her left cheek down. From the view above the bed she appears all right as she slowly starts to wake from her sleep. As she begins to move, blood is noticeably stained from under her left cheek where it is resting under the pillow. She grimaces slightly, raises herself to a sitting position and touches the left side of her face. She looks at her hand and begins choking and gasping. She moves quickly from the bed and hurries down the hall into her bathroom. She looks nervously into the mirror. She sees blood pouring from her nose. Panicked, she frantically feels around her face and head until she touches upon a spot behind her left ear. As she probes gently, she pauses, and then screams in disbelief and fear.

The scene inside the dark, quiet interior living room showcased a nice, well furnished, and well-cared for home. Slowly, the sculpted figure of a man appears and steps into the room. He is looking around methodically, holding a small penlight flashlight as he searches around the room.

Down the hallway from the living room a couple dozen feet is the door to the master bedroom. There is a couple lying together in bed. The young woman and her husband lie still, but their actions tell the story of anxiety and concern. He looks over and nods to his wife after she whispers something softly, then reaches over to the side drawer by the bed and removes a .38 caliber revolver. He carefully slides out of the bed and slinks to the floor, crawling on his hands and knees slowly across the floor of the bedroom to the doorway.

Please be careful, she whispers to her husband.

He turns and nods, then continues crawling through the bedroom door and into the hallway. He makes his way down the hall and pauses as he reaches the doorway that leads into the living room. He sits up, leaning his back against the door frame clutching the revolver to his chest. After pausing a moment, he turns to look out from around the doorway, then freezes. The small, laser thin beam from the penlight is fixed on his forehead. He looks up slowly as the man stands over him, flashlight steady in his left hand and a 9mm handgun fixed at the husband’s head in his right hand. His stare is coldly lethal.

You can set that down now, the man says quietly as he motions towards the husband’s weapon and gestures to the floor. He slowly sets the revolver down beside him. The man slides it over with his foot, returns his own 9mm weapon inside his jacket holster and picks up the revolver from the floor.

Let’s go.

He motions for the husband to follow him back down the hallway. As he begins to rise, the man shakes his head and repeatedly points the gun to the floor gesturing to keep him down.

You know…if you’re shot and killed in your own home there’s the highest probability that it’ll be with your own weapon. The intimidating man pauses. That’s an FBI stat.

He leans over so he can clearly address his shaken subject.

Where is he? He asks the husband, cowering confused and shaking with fear.

The man hesitates for a moment, pulls his head down staying quiet.

Well, he offers him another chance to answer but again the man remains silent.

He quickly lifts the revolver and fires a shot into the man’s wife’s chest. She slumps over across the bed, lifeless and bleeding. The husband screams and tries to jump up from the floor. The man spins around and kicks his legs out from under him forcing the husband back down.

Bad decision.

The husband drops his head down, facing the floor and begins to sob. The man stands over him, emotionless. He slowly lowers himself to get close to the sobbing man, pulling near the side of his head so he can speak to him in long, drawn, deliberate sentences.

You’ve got to want to change, he begins. You’ve got to want it more than anything. There’s programs out there to help you, he motions toward the window, but I’ve seen it a million times when you guys get out. You go to counseling and laugh it off cuz it’s so uncool. Your friends on the outside all think tryin’ to go straight is for losers. All the cool dudes are hangin’ out on the streets thinking they own the world.

He straightens up his back, still leaning over the cringing husband. He shakes his head in disgust at the revolting sight shaking next to him.

Well look around, he menaced. Seems to me all the uncool people are on the outside looking in on shit like you. He pauses and stands slowly. And you’re here

He brushes off his jacket and sighs.

Who’s cool now?

He then calmly fires three shots into the husband’s back as he collapses to the floor. He slowly raises the revolver, examines it briefly, and then tosses it onto the bed next to the wife where it lands next to her head.

Bobby Lashbrook didn’t regret the things he found himself doing. Any action, however wicked or insensitive, could easily be justified in the name of what he had to do. The two people he left for dead were only discarded puzzle pieces in his search. He now only used his position as an investigator for Gulf Strand Security Associates as a means to enable the tools and resources available to follow his own investigative, selfishly motivated pursuits. His brief time of abduction and torture certainly opened his eyes to the razor’s edge of frailty. Stranger still were the circumstances that facilitated his release from an otherwise inescapable situation.

Lashbrook couldn’t stop replaying that final scene over and over in his head. As he so vividly remembered the large brutal man called Navy, aching for answers, demanding satisfaction and positively insane with frustration and perfect anger. Suddenly in the midst of an impossible reality, the unreal entered their encounter and altered the course of events through some seemingly supernatural appearance of machine and light. Lashbrook would still attribute what he saw glowing and then disappearing outside that storefront building window during the hurricane, as a trick of the light and circumstances. But whatever the reason, that phenomenon provided the opportunity for Lashbrook to remove himself from his cryptic captor.

Now in his search for answers, he is wholly consumed by the journey to find out just what the hell happened that night, why it occurred and what was the meaning behind the entire episode. In his search, Lashbrook knew he’d have to recalibrate his moral compass. As a man raised on integrity and fair play, this concept was anathema to him. So the people who had to be dispatched, the couple in their home and the woman, who he now disturbingly discovered survived her wounds, were simply preliminary tests on his way to the finals. He was setting the stage to confront and take down Cryptic, Navy’s designated moniker. He was ready to settle the score and find out what the hell was really happening in Gulf Strand.

Lashbrook