“Sleep on it. You’re going to drive yourself nuts, babe,” Alastair purred. “You get like that. You hit a wall and then you just stand in front of it, waiting for it to fall over.” He turned his head into Finn’s neck and inhaled. He was crazy for the guy.

            “Mm. You just hit them and make them fall over.”

            “Don’t hate! ‘Sides, half the time, it works.”

            “I’m not going to whack my easel across the room.” Finn then registered Alastair’s tongue on his neck. “You are not making this easy.”

            “I’m horny.”

            “You’re always horny.”

            Alastair’s hand’s slipped down Finn’s torso. “Ah. I’m not the only one.”

            “Would you have killed him?”

            Alastair blinked, freezing, and it got very quiet. “Yes.”

Finn closed his eyes and did not move. He pushed back the layers of his memory, searching the way a blind man would, for something he lost. Something before all this ever happened, when he could run naked and wild through the Arizona desert and guard the clouds and stars.

Alastair did not close his eyes, but his mind did drift. He was one of those rare men whose bite matched the bark—Finn was the mellow one, the one that could bring the most hot-tempered of Alastair’s tirades down with a single, thoughtful response. He thought of the first time he had ever seen Finn. Back when everything was perfect.

Surfing. His passion, pride, and paycheck. He had caught a perfect, late afternoon wave. It was heaven. The whole day had been. Not one wipe out. And now, this, a shimmering sea-green tube, the roar of water. It was like falling through a jewel. Sometimes, he would skim his hand across the surface, peeling back the foam, revealing the rich aquamarine muscle of the wave beneath, and gaze in wonder, even as he zipped past. Ecstasy, pure and simple.

Until he made it back to shore, when the sun was setting.

The man, of course, was easy to spot. He was a towering 6’9’’ tall. Alastair had, in fact, double-taked to make sure the man was really that much of a sky-scraper, really did stand a true “head and shoulders” above everybody around him. But even for his height, or his natural, fire-engine red hair, or his pale, freckled skin, the man stood out more for what he was doing.

Eisel set up, palette in hand, the man was painting. But not just any painting. The canvas was huge. The artist had set up two easels, in fact, to hold it all up. It had to have been three feet high and eight feet across—and because he was so tall, his limbs were like flagpoles, he reached every corner with ease and barely had to move. Talk about an attention-getting device. He had set the canvas low enough so he could see over it, rather than have to walk out from behind it.

He had actually been there the whole day, but Alastair, in one of those “seeing but not looking” moments, hadn’t registered the other man or the satellite dish of a canvas. Come to think of it, the painter had been there even before Alastair hit the waves. As luck would have had it, his car was right next to the painter’s pick-up.

But as he came up to his car, passing the giant—jebas, he was tall—Alastair stopped and stared. From a distance, he has just assumed the man was wearing some sort of red-striped shirt. As he neared however, he saw the man wore no shirt at all. His glorious, freckled chest, dusted with red-gold hair and crowned with nipples the color of port wine, was bare to the sun. The striped shirt Alastair thought he had seen was actually the man’s beard.

Alastair had never seen anything like it. It poured out of either side of his jaw like glowing lava, but his chin was shaven. Two great rivers of red spilled down the man’s chest to his waist, the individual filaments catching the setting sun, adding it’s red to their own. Far from scraggly or coarse, it billowed like strands of silk in the growing evening breeze. His beard, his jaw-dropping hieght, and the fact he was possibly the most muscular painter to walk the planet made him look like he had stepped bodily out of a super hero comic.

And he was completely oblivious Alastair was staring at him.

Make that gaping. 

Chapter 1, Part 3, Episode 1

Finn had the pencil poised over the page, ready and sharp, just waiting for the magic to start, to be used to create something beautiful! Standout!

That it was not made-up added another brick in the wall Finn was running into. This was something he had seen, of course. Who could forget it? And yet, while he, as any artist, drew constantly from models and other, “real,” subjects, he now found the reality of the thing was getting in the way. Fantasy was always so much more easy. You always had total control over it. You were only limited by your own imagination. With fantasy, you could do, oh, anything! And--

“You gonna look up?”

            Finn nearly convulsed. “…bwah?”

            Alastair grinned down at his boyfriend. “Dude, I’ve been standing here for like the past 15 minutes.”

            For about two seconds, Finn was the stupidest man on Earth. Then his brain kicked in. “Oh, jeez! I’m sorry!” He put his hand to his head. “I just got caught up in…this.” Good grief, it was the afternoon already?

            The pro surfer put his board down. “I’ll say. What’re you doing?” Alastair came around to see the work. “It must be pretty…oooooh. That. Wow.”

            “Yeah. This. It’s the face. His face. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where to go after I do begin.”

            Alastair unzipped the back of his suit, exposing his myriad tattoos splayed across his chest and shoulders. “It’s maybe a little early for it, don’t you think? Maybe you oughta think about it for a few more days. Let it sink in.”

            Finn shuddered. “Think that’ll do any good?”

            Alastair put his had out. “Nah. But I made the attempt. C’mon. Let’s let Rachel off the babysitting hook.”

            Finn stared back at his pad. For a moment, his own expression was as ill-defined as the blank space on the page. Damn. What was his face?

            Even after they drove back to the Castro, even after they relieved Rachel of dog-sitting duty, Finn sequestered himself in his studio, surrounded by his completed works, but depressingly deadlocked on the drawing, staring at it for hours on end.

            “You’re still at that?” Alastair admonished, coming into the studio and sliding his arms around Finn’s chest. It was late. The rest of the Castro was either asleep or exhausted.

            The reply came guiltily. “Yes.”

            They were both naked. Finn always painted in the nude, a habit he picked up from staining one too many of his clothes with his paints, Alastair because he just liked being naked all the time. Of course, Alastair was covered in so many tattoos, what was the point of clothing? When it came to ink, Alastair was a walking monument. Even his hair, a Day-Glo yellow (this week) wasn’t the original color; you had to get his pants down to find out that information. Of course, he’d be more than willing to show you. Just ask!

Chapter 1, Part 3

Vagabond

            Whoever it was, the man was still screaming. And it was beginning to become annoying, and not a little worrying. It was far away, oddly muffled, but constant.

            He checked out the window, but there was nothing to see. The screamer was far away, and from the sound of it, in another building. Ugh. Was he hitting the wall? Amid the screams were dull thuds, and the listener could have sworn he felt impacts traveling up the walls and across the floors, like when a car passes with the bass cranked up.

            That aside, it could not have been a better day. It was perfect. Open the dictionary to “perfect,” and there would be this day.

            And it was time to start it.

            Rising, still wobbly at the knees, the man reached over and turned on the water for the shower, relishing the cold shock of the metal knobs as he did. Magically, on command, the water can streaming down, and the man—who had been naked all this time—step-stummbled into the stream.

            Now he screamed.

            Not from rage or anger or endless pain or horror or loss. The water was cold. He had forgotten to turn up the hot water.

The cold droplets took the breath right out of him, and he nearly began heaving again. It was like a thousand needles falling into to him. He had experienced it in so long, his body didn’t know how to reaction. It was almost like an allergy. He had felt anything in so long.

 Noise clamored in his ears. The nausea had not quite receded from his insides, and was looking for an excuse. Quickly fumbling with the knobs, wheezing, gasping, accidentally inhaling water and coughing, he got the hot going. As the cold pulled back, the was another sensation. It was just as alien. He could physically feel his mind flipping through ancient memories imprinted lifetimes ago, searching for a match.

He was not used to this, his body. He had made himself invulnerable in all things. It wrapped him up in a surging, boiling blanket. When it was cold, he snuggled into it, child-like, further, deeper.

And now he threw it off. And the day streamed in.

           

Mirrorball and Bang

            He tapped the pad with his pencil.            

To some artists, a blank canvas, with all its unending nothingness, was terror. For Finn, you couldn’t hold him back.

            It was almost a mania. He had to draw. His studio was practically exploding with scribbles of inspiration. On napkins, newspapers, the backs of business cards. Even Post-Its. And where another may see what looked like a sneeze of ink, Finn saw the embryonic form of art, growing and expanding, out of the ether and into this world. To Finn, a canvas was something not to fear, but holy ground to revel upon, to fill, and ultimately, to thank for letting him change it into something else.

            Most of the time.

            Because now, even as his pencil tapped the notebook, the mania stopped. He had run up against a wall. He had never done so, and he found this new sensation disconcerting, to say the least.

            The drawing was the final in a series, ending in a pieta of two men. One character limp, seemingly lifeless, cradled in the arms of another figure, huge and in mid-stride, made to be walking toward the viewer. But the face… He stopped at the face of the standing figure. Done everything around it, from the ears to the chin to the swoosh of albino-white hair. The hair actually took up most of the scene. In fact, right up until the fact, this was the quickest of the series. As the drawing progressed, he had left it blank, figuring he’d get to it later.

            But now, everything else was done. Everything else was perfect.

            Michelangelo imaged the statues he carved were already in the marble, and he was just bringing them to light.

The rest of the drawing shot out of his pencil faster than any drawing before it. The limp figure’s face was easy: a blissful repose of sleep after an eternally long day (Finn had drawn Alastair sleeping so often it was not even surprising when the man woke up to find himself a model. They were some of the most sensual pictures the art scene had encountered in years) Now there was nothing else left to do, and Finn found himself at war with himself over what kind of emotion the walking figure should being wearing.

Vexed, he turned to a blank page and quickly sketched various emotions. None of them “worked.”

Watchful?

            Sorrowing?

            Ecstatic?

            Condemning?

…Bliss?

No

No

NO

…damn.

Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 11

OhGodOhGodOhGod, Miss Gwen thought. At this stage of the game, she wasn’t even thinking about what ROM had done. In fact, she still couldn’t get her head around it, or that it had even happened. What was she even doing here? How had it gotten to this?

Kit was shocked again. Still the monitor wailed.

Aikins glared at monitor. Then sighed. “Damn. Call it. What’s the time?”

Scepter went white. He was lightheaded, and the waves of thought from the others in the room washed through him like music. ROM suddenly leaned into him. Hard. Silently fumbling with her, he realized, from the impenetrable murk of her mind, she had fainted. Miss Gwen was completely oblivious, her mind unable to comprehend the last few minutes.

Kit was dead. Oh, Lord. He was dead.

*KIT, WAKE UP!*

One of the nurses gazed at the clock. “6:13 PM.”

Forgive me, Kit. Oh, God, I didn’t want this.

Dr. Aikins straightened, putting a hand to her head. “I hate this. Death occurred at 6:13 PM on August 14^th.” Then she remembered something. “Oh. Oh, Dr. Veracruz said is family was flying in.” Some of the other nurses and staff looked at her quietly. “Jesus. Welcome to America, your son is dead.”

NoNoNoNoNoNO

“What did it? Damn it, what did you have that did it?” Dr. Aikins muttered to Kit’s body as he was disconnected from various tubes. “Anybody see Dr. Veracruz or those two women he was with?”

Don’t do this!

“I thought they were still here,” said a nurse. “Guess they left.”

“Not that it matters,” Aikins said. As a doctor, it is the common idea that one would get used to the fact that sometimes the patient dies. You never do. It was simple, of course. At first you were alive. And then you weren’t. Simple really. But for all the simplicity, you still never got used to all the enormous complexity it meant for those that remained behind. Aikins touched Kit’s still-warm hand. “I’m sorry.”

So when he sat up and said, “No, doc, I think you did pretty good,” it can be understood that Dr. Elyse “Iron-hard” Aikins screamed like a little girl and nearly fell over.

Scepter clapped a hand over Miss Gwen’s wide-open mouth, even as ROM began to come to. Unlike the hospital staff, he could see the three figures huddled in the corner perfect well. “Ma—“

*Don’tgiveusaway!* Scepter’s thought-speech screamed into Pitch Black’s mind so loudly, he practically went back into a coma. It shut him up, to be sure.

Scepter and Miss Gwen looked like they were looking at a ghost. ROM looked like she was drunk. There they were, Manny holding ROM up with one hand, his other over Gwen’s mouth, and her own darting over ROM’s, who suddenly snapped into consciousness, took one look at Kit and opened her eyes so wide they could have fallen out.

“Mr. Kitabora?” Dr. Aikins waved her hand in front of his eyes. That he revived was enormously gratifying, but he seemed to be staring into empty corner as if it were the most riveting sight on the planet. “Do you know were you are?”

Turning, and remarkably cognizant for a man who had been dead to the world, and then dead, only moments before, he looked at her and replied. “Reckon I’m in the hospital.”

“Is that your real accent?”

He glared at her. “I’m from Tennessee, babe.”

“Oh. Right. What do you remember before now?”

He turned back to Scepter, ROM, and Miss Gwen, who looked positively ridiculous. “Dunno. Um. But I bet it must be one helluva story.”

Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 10

“No. Tell me I am wrong.”

His rage surged out of him, across the floor, up the walls, squirming, like muscle, bleeding and raw, flexing inside too tight a skin.

Miss Gwen opened her mouth to speak, and as she did, a blaring, computer-like ‘EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’ came out. Only, she didn’t make a sound. She blinked. Actually, they both did.

The heart monitor. It was the heart monitor.

And it was ROM, holding a pillow over Kit’s face.

“ROMEESHA!”

Time slowed then, as if it could not fit all the things that happened then into one second. Miss Gwen lunged at ROM, sending the pillow flying, and Scepter lunged after the both of them, even as the hospital staff burst in, alerted by the monitor that Kit’s heart had stopped.

Yanking—hard—both women into his arms, Scepter himself physically changed, and ROM and Miss Gwen knew instinctively to clap their hands over their ears. The skin of his forehead split, revealing a third, inhuman eye, wild and out of this world. It rolled in it's socket, searching wildly.

For prey.

“ALL OF YOU DO NOT SEE US!”

It was Scepter’s most devastating of attacks. It was no power, nothing he was born with. Rather, something he was taught, up in the lonely and lost canyons of the Himalayas. Perhaps his powers facilitated the affect, but through this learned skill, Scepter could, by the mere power of his voice, force all those within earshot to his will. Even if he victim didn’t want to do it, or if the command was seemingly impossible. But he had to be so careful with it. Anybody who heard it had to obey, and true disaster could result if he wasn’t spectacularly specific.

To those who rushed into to Kit’s room, the three simply weren’t there. Their minds had been commanded to not see them, and, so, they were not seen.

*Make. No. Sound.* Miss Gwen and ROM heard him say in their minds. He had only made them invisible. Any noise or note they made would be heard. To those under his control, their minds would not be able to rationalize a sound coming from an empty room, and the force-suggestion Scepter hand done would come undone. And then things would really get bad.

“What happened?” one of the nurses asked.

“Weren’t there those three in here?” said another. “Starting compressions!”

“Not here now!” Dr. Aikins yelled. “Where’s the damn crash cart?”

“How long has he been down?”

“Only a few seconds!”

Aikins was beautiful to watch, all fluid action and focused intent. The crash cart appeared as if from thin air, and with the bellow of “CLEAR!” she shocked the man’s heart with a loud, electrical snap.

Nothing. The heart monitor still plaintively whined its single, horrific note.

Terms and orders whirled in the air, and then another “CLEAR!”

Kit’s body jerked promisingly, and then, still.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE