Chapter 1, Part 4, Episode 5

As it turns out, he did. And although Alastair soon found out that while Finn may have indeed been a New Age trippy hippie, he found out much, much quicker that he was also the most sexually rapacious man on the planet. No joke. Thirteen hours later and Alastair, who prided himself on his sexual prowess, finally called a break with a quavering, “Can I please have my dick back?”

Finn looked annoyed. But complied nevertheless.

While Alastair counted how many brain cells he had remaining, Finn, not bothering to dress—the man was all but a compulsive nudist—walked through the other man’s bungalow, occasionally bowing his head to clear door jams. “Nice place,” he called out, prudently ignoring it was an epitomal bachelor pad, complete with clothes thrown everywhere and fossilized dust bunnies.

He paused at the photos. And awards. Pictures of Alastair as a child. Pictures of Alastair pre-ink (collectors items, those, since the man got his first tattoo at 13). Pictures of Alastair accepting a surfing award—with the said award next to the photo. In true style, the house was a mess, but this little altar was utterly pristine.

The refrigerator was packed to the gills with pizza boxes and—huh?—champagne. Now there is an interesting combo, Finn thought.

“Yeah,” Alastair called from the bedroom. “I kinda had get my own place after I told my folks to suck my cock.”

Finn snickered. He reappeared before Alastair—who was almost but not quite terrified of what Finn could do to the both of them—with pizza and champagne. And rock hard. “You need to build up your strength. I’m not done.” He sat down in a chair that creaked under his weight, his “two beards” spilling down his chest, which itself was dusted with red-gold fuzz. And yes, it was red all the way down…

The other man laughed. Sort of. More like an apprehensive, high-pitched squeak. As he ate, Finn chugged the champagne from the bottle. “So, Alastair of the San Francisco Abercrombies. What was that like?”

By “that,” of course, Finn was asking what it was like to be a scion of a family right up there with the Gettys when it came to amassed wealth, and amassed notoriety. “Mmm. I’m the black sheep, and 7^th in line for the throne. No pressure’s on me.”

“7^th?”

“Four sisters. Isobel, Jennifer, Clarissa, and Tabitha. Two brothers. Matthew and Duncan.”

“Ever get lost in the shuffle?”

Alastair almost spat out his pizza laughing. “We all did! It’s a high-society gene pool. The children were brought into the parlor around 6 PM. I was raised by a manny.”

“A what?”

“’Male nanny.’”

“Oh.”

“And they wonder why I’m gay.”

Finn looked askance at him. “…You had sex with your manny?” He found the thought utterly delicious.

Alastair smirked. “Ain’t sayin’ one way or the other.”

“Funny,” Finn replied. He took another swallow. At his size – not only was he staggeringly tall, he was staggeringly HUGE at 300 lbs of yoga-made muscle (he couldn’t fit into many gym machines) – he could down the whole bottle and still not get a buzz. The man could stop a charging rhino simply by standing in its way.

Alastair pulled up another slice. “I never knew any other life. And because we were all home-schooled with tutors, I had no idea there was any other kind of life. It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized just how up the scale we were.”

“Sounds airless.”

“Mm. It was. And I probably never could have taken up surfing had I been number 1 or 2.”

“Isobel?”

“Matthew and Isobel, actually. Fraternal twins. And Abercrombies if there ever were.”

“Snobs?”

“Uh…yes,” Alastair said, rocking his head back and forth. “No. Well, let’s just say they are very aware that the crown rests upon their brows. And it’s heavy. Ol’ dad isn’t too keen passing that crown on until they know how heavy.”

“Must have been hard to leave.”

“Eh, with six other kids running around, I doubt they noticed. I didn’t get on the map until I came out. Then they noticed.”

Finn tilted his head to the side. “They were homophobic?”

“Not ‘tie-me-up-to-fence-in-Wyoming-and-pistol-whip-me’ homophobic,” Alastair replied matter-of-factly, “But its enough. But it’s not my siblings’, or even my parents’ call.”

“Huh?”

“It’s my grandmother,” Alastair said, his face lighting up in a mock a-ha! moment. “She’s not an Abercrombie by birth and she knows it, and she’s been overcompensating ever since her wedding. She’s studied up on her Abercrombieology, and rules with a tight grip.”

“And when you came out…”

“Didn’t go over too well. Which was hysterical, considering Pop-pop was at least bi.”

“No…”

“Oh yeah. He and his driver. Not very original, but what can you do. Grandma knew. Everyone did. But you didn’t talk about such things then. Not openly, anyway. But it galled the good Catholic girl she was. She was already an outsider, and Pop-pop’s extracurricular activities probably didn’t put her mind at ease.”

“She was an outsider?”

“Oh. Yeah. Back then, if you were rich, you married a cousin. Kept it in the family. My grandfather bucked the trend—scandal!—when he married her. And she was—gasp!—poor. Well, middle-class. Her father was a shopkeeper who had some business deals with my family. And Pop-pop probably married her because rumors about him and is driver were already going around.”

“She was a beard.”

“And how,” Alastair replied. “So she’s a little bitter, but jeez, he gave her 10 kids so it’s not like she was out in the cold. But, now she can finally vent it. I knew what it would cost me when I came out.” He munched on the pizza. “I knew they would cut me off. Hell, I expected them to disown me! But my manny never raised me to keep my mouth shut, or to kow-tow. I would have loved to seen the look on Grandma’s face when I told ‘em all to suck my dick.”

Finn was quiet. He did not ask, and Alastair noticed, if it hurt.

“It’s called ‘fuck-you money.’”

“What is?”

“When you have enough cash to that you don’t have to put up with anybody else’s crap. When I began pulling down awards and purses, there was at least…patience with my little “hobby.” And then I came out and it all got shot to hell. I’m not Richie Rich anymore, for sure, but I have two houses, two cars, and am set for life. Fuck-you money.”

Throughout the entire conversation, Finn’s penis, full and heavy, never softened. What was he, priapic?

“So,” Alastair continued. “Can you match that drama?”

“Me?”

“I just told you my history. Let’s get a little of yours, Red.” (“Red” would later become Alastair’s pet name for Finn)

Now he became coy. “Nothing like yours.”

“No shit.”

“Grew up in the desert, New Ager commune. Two half-sisters, Nimua and Sybilla. Two-half brothers, Ulysses and Orpheo. All younger.”

“That’s four halves. Wait. Your parents named them ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Orpheo?’”

Finn’s face split in a wide, knowing grin. “As far as the names go, I lucked out with ‘Finnegan.’ Mom and Dad loved James Joyce. ‘Ulysses’ is my middle name, actually. How they met, actually, at a reading. As for all the half-siblings, free love, my friend. Nobody was married to anybody else. And the whole commune raised us kids. I was more-or-less raised by my father’s father. He’s the true hippie.”

Alastair blinked. “Your grandfather followed your dad to a commune?”

Finn smiled again. “Ah, no. Actually, my father was born on the commune. He left.”

“Really.” Alastair was trying to get the facts straight.

“Yep. But instead of running off and joining the circus, he ran off and joined Wall Street. But one too many recessions and he gave up and went back to the farm. He ‘partnered’—ahem—with my mom the day he got back and I showed up nine months later.”

“God, he barely had time to get his hat off.”

“He got something off.”

“OK, not talking about parents’ sex lives.”

“Prude. Did I mention that in summer I never wore clothes?”

“Really?”

“Neither did granddad.”

“What the hell is that place?!”

Finn laughed. “I was an exhibitionist even then. He was a Buddhist, and foreswore clothing as ‘unnatural.’ Did the whole sadhu thing. But it’s a rare guy that has no hang-ups about his body. I learned early on what made a boy and what made a girl, and what my body would look like once the hormones kicked in.”

And what a body, Alastair thought. “Okaaaay, well, no drama, but you’d be fun at parties.”

“I guess. I came out at six and—“

“SIX?”

“Yeah. I told my grandfather ‘I like boys.’ And not another word was said. Never had any sort of judgement passed on me. It was great. You were what you were.”

“I couldn’t count past 29 when I was six! I starting going twenty-ten, twenty-eleven…”

“I didn’t really follow up on that statement, though, until my teens, and when all the parts were working.”

“Six.”

“You’re stuck on that.”

“SIX!” Alastair shook his hands for effect. “Jeez, I didn’t have a clue until I was 10!”

“Some guys take longer.”

“Funny.”

Finn finished off the champagne. “And speaking of ‘taking longer,’ I’d say you’ve recovered enough.” He stood, and lunged at Alastair, still in mid-pizza.

“What? Hey! Eating! I—whoop!”

Chapter 1, Part 4, Episode 4

“I have a tattoo of yours,” Alastair began.

Finn kept on painting. Indeed, he seemed not to know there was anybody there.

Undeterred, Alastair repeated the line again, although more clunkily.

Nothing.

Miffed, the surfer—a world-class one, thank you very much—coughed. Loudly.

Finn blinked, and for a second, looked like he just stepped off the Mother Ship onto a completely alien planet. “Bwah?”

Alastair grinned. “I said, I have a tattoo of yours. See?” He hiked up the legs of his trunks, to show his thighs. Two nude, winged men, one on each leg, their double-handed swords raised, were rushing each other. It was actually two separate paintings. Alastair had to have one scaled up to match. One man was Summer triumphing over Winter, the other was taken from a fight scene taken from Zoroastrian myth.

Finn smiled slightly, in approval. “You didn’t censor them.”

“What?”

“Most people cover up the genitalia.”

“Men look better naked.”

Now it was Finn’s turn to cough. “Ah. Well. Um, I’m sorry?”

“Alastair Abercrombie.”

“The surfing champion?”

“You heard of me?”

“I heard that press conference where you told your parents to ‘suck your big gay cock’ when they cut you off you for being gay.”

The surfer burst out laughing. “You should have seen their faces.”

“I did see their faces. The news cut to an interview with them afterwards.”

“Heh. Nothing can piss off an Abercrombie like telling them to go fuck themselves. We have a ‘thing’ for being important; can’t quite comprehend it when we aren’t.”

Finn smiled again. “I’m—“

“Finnegan Cavanaugh. Painter extraordinaire. I know.” I know a few other things, too.

“I wouldn’t say ‘extraordinaire.”

“You think ink any old thing on me?”

“I guess not,” the painter replied, guffawing. He was the very soul of politeness, in a New Age, trippy sort of way. However, there was one thing he was not.

Ugh. Straight as a board. How do I get out of this?

“So, what are you painting?”

Finn brightened. “This? Oh, it’s a commission for the aquarium down in Monterey.”

“Pretty. What, no mermen or anything?”

“Ha. No. No mermen. Or maids. I had to be realistic this time around. I saw you, by the way.”

“What?”

“Surfing. Nobody else has as many tats as you. You’re easy to spot.”

“You ever surf?”

“Oh, no. Not me.”

“It’s easy. I can teach you.” Why did I say that?

“Let me get the painting done first. I have deadlines,” Finn replied, turning back to his work and finishing off a wave. Before Alastair had time to feel uncomfortable, Finn began again.Finn rinsed his brushes. “It’s good work, by the way.”

“What?”

“Those tats. They’re very well done. It’s a compliment to me that you wanted them on you, and had them done so well.”

“Oh! I know a guy. He’s real good at his work.” Why do I suddenly feel like a moron?

“We’re all artists,” Finn replied, looking over his shoulder with an odd smile. “But tell me something.”

“What?”

“Do you look better naked?”

Chapter 1, Part 4, Episode 3

The beard was the tip-off. Only one man had it. And it was not for painting that Alastair knew him. This was Finnegan Cavanaugh. It must have been, what, 10 years or so, since the news reports streaked across the globe about the man, then only a boy. He was the son of New Age-y hippies living in a commune in Arizona. And he would have been utterly unimportant and left alone for the rest of his life had it not been for the day that a swarm of lights burst up around the kid, smack in the middle of a hippie flea market in downtown Phoenix. He actually managed to set fire to a stall with the lights, although no one knew how, at the time.

Rumors had persisted for years—hell, forever, actually—of people with more than human power, and Finnegan proved them all true in a day. News crews appeared out of nowhere, the police where called, a near riot took place as people rushed away and toward the scene, and the child was inconsolable, more for the attention than the fact he was at the center of a light-storm. His parents and grandfather moved to shield the boy, and the end of it was that Finnegan had to walk all the way out of town to his home in the desert—not only did he set fire to a stall, he fried any electronic device within the field of lights, along with a few hands and arms of those who tried to grab hold of him.

After that, the boy never set foot outside the commune, although the curious constantly checked up on him. The hippies were not welcoming, to say the least, of the idea that one of their own was being treated like a zoo exhibit, and sent reporters and such on wild goose chases across the desert to find the kid. Still, enough were lucky to catch a glimpse of him so that he never left the public eye completely, but other stories soon took greater important, and Finnegan Cavanaugh became something along the lines of, “Hey, remember way back about that light-show kid...?”

And then he suddenly reappeared professionally as “Finn”—one of the most prodigious and acclaimed fantasy artists in the world. Ironically, Finnegan had actually been known for years up until “he came out.” His paintings had been shown all over, but never with the artist. There were calendars, commissions, hell, Alastair had a tattoo lifted off a Finn painting. No one knew who this “Finn” was, and his agent was notoriously coy, playing the media like a harp. The man—woman?—had never been seen. No one ever put the two together, and “Finn” had become something of an art legend, a hermit that forsook the outside world for his art. There was even the idea that “Finn” was actually several people, an alias for other painters who saw fantasy art as not sophisticated enough a métier. So when he showed up, fully grown and filled out, at the San Diego ComicCon, it practically set off another riot.

But of the light-show, there was no sign. He was positively demure about it. The artist deftly handled all the questions, vaguely agreeing with everything but committing to nothing just the same. He was there to promote his work, and considering his fame, his stall—and that’s all it was, a stall—was ridiculously modest. Just a fold-up chair and a fold-up table, plus his paintings.  By then, he had already developed his signature physical look.

And what a look. If people were going into the con to see the Light-Show Boy, they came out wondering how he got clothes to fit…and how to get a hold of his phone number. Among other things.

But as to his life between the time he burst onto the scene to that moment at the ComicCon, he demurred. The man was as mysterious as before, even though he was now in the public eye. Address? Mystery. Personal life? Mystery. Boxers or briefs? Mystery. He was very gracious, if a bit New Age-y Hippie over the whole thing. In fact, the only time he ever seemed annoyed was when people asked him to put on the light show. He responded if he should balance a ball on his nose and clap his flippers, too? 

            “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.”