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Hi everyone Issue 4 of my ongoing Comic script series Giga is out now. Hope you all enjoy

Hi everyone Issue 4 of my ongoing Comic script series Giga is out now. Hope you all enjoy

This is a novel about a woman who wakes up to a fantasy dream world, it has scifi and romance aspects as well. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if there are any errors!

This is a novel about a woman who wakes up to a fantasy dream world, it has scifi and romance aspects as well. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if there are any errors!

This is a novel about a woman who wakes up to a fantasy dream world, it has scifi and romance aspects as well. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if there are any errors!

My first novel, it's about a woman named Gabrielle who wakes up in a fantasy world called Elega after someone puts markings on her finger. Hope you enjoy it!

It's my first novel about a woman who wakes up in a the fantasy world of Elega, hope you enjoy it!

Just came in and posted my writing, hope people enjoy it!

I just posted my stuff, hope it's not too bad, it's my first novel so it might be a bit iffy.

In the middle of writing my first novel, kinda in a crossroads because I'll be switching the POV in the 13th chapter and it may freak some readers out, what do you think?

I've only been writing seriously for the past couple months, hope you like my work! Sorry if it's a bit sub-par since it's my first work that is being made for a bigger audience other than close friends.

Hi. I would love some feedback on my poem I've started. I've never written anything before so feeling a bit vulnerable!

Watching my father die. The beginnings of a poem. I would love some feedback on initial ideas. This is my first time and feeling nervous!

Morgan sat at her dressing room table. Overhead, the red light turned off, signaling in the dimness that her camera had finally run out of film. She brushed her black hair back, staring into her own eyes. She was searching for something, anything, to tell her that this evening’s efforts had been worth it, that it had offered some of the healing that she craved. She found her reflection as unforgiving as her conscience. No matter what she did, not matter how she had changed or how much money she made, she still felt the fear that Ava Hansard had left in her heart. As she brushed her lace-trimmed robe slithered off her shoulder, revealing scars that, although old, still seemed freshly carved out of her skin. I should be lucky, most traitors don’t get to keep most of their hides, she thought to herself, her mind’s wanderings getting even darker as she sat. Her eyes moistened, not quite crying, as she thought about how much her disloyalty had cost her friends. And all of this for greed. This, at least, managed to snap Morgan out of her melancholy; money always did. She leaned forward to dab at her eyes, worrying over her mascara. As she did so, red streaks skidded from her blood soaked hands to under her eyes. “Damn!” she swore, having not paid attention enough to wash her hands after her misadventure. From the bed behind her, an arm twitched. Morgan snapped around in her chair, looking at the man’s body with a sudden tenseness not there before. She approached it, her eyes blood-rimmed and wild once again, but as she looked over the bare corpses of both the man and the woman in the pool of blood next to him, she knew it was only a death twitch. With a sigh she relaxed, leaning to sit next to them on the black satin sheets. She looked back at the reflections in the dressing table mirror, hers and the man’s and woman’s, and knew in her heart that the next time would be better. Next time the fear would be conquered, and she would be able to be close to someone without having flashbacks that left them in pieces. If these two deaths, added to all the others she had taken, could finally do that then it would all be worth it. She would burn the world down for a little peace from the Hell that raged on in a repeat like one of her film reels. For now, Morgan got up, finished pinning up her hair, and went to the adjacent room to clean herself up. Afterwards, she dressed, collected the film canisters for the night, and exited her room, locking the door behind her. --- Outside the door, the club was beginning to pick up pace as the night roared on. “Miz Black, how good to see you again, and just the dame I’ve been meaning to see!” Tommy DeLucio, the owner of the club, was a short, scheming man, but not without his sense of tact. He eyeballed the door behind her, but only let his gaze stay for a second before looking back at her with a cheesy smile. “I have some clients who are looking for some primo product, and a few wannabe actors that might be interested in your, ahem, enterprise.” He patted Morgan’s arm with a wink, but quickly removed it at the sight of a raised eyebrow. Instead he brushed at his mustache in an attempt to look nonchalant as Morgan took out her wallet. “I hope when you say ‘product’ you mean my liquor brand, because you are certainly not my distributor in the other case. Tell them they will have to be at the club, just like everybody else. As for the latter, do you think you could arrange to have them sent to the room tomorrow, after it is prepared of course?” As she spoke, she took out some cash, which the man quickly accepted. “For you, Miz Morgan, anything is possible.” He replied, his gap-toothed smile not quite hiding his discomfort. Tommy rued being chided, but as always he knew that he was paid lucratively to clean up and shut up. In his time, he had done cleaning for countless gangsters, and Morgan not only paid him the best, but frightened him the most. “Thank you. Oh, and DeLucio, I am not one of your molls, try not to call me a dame.” He stuttered his apologies as Morgan turned heel and entered the light of the main dancefloor.   Morgan was at this club for one reason and one reason only- it was the most secure place in all of the Drowning City, and that meant a lot. While most of polite society had left the city after the coastline had started crumbling into the ocean, it was still held in the control of some major crime lords, a control that Morgan meant to take for herself. But this place, Les Ombres Mordents, had remained untouched since she, or any of her predecessors, had ever come around, and was likely to stay that way. While Tommy DeLucio appeared spineless, he had a wicked nose for business sense, and was powerfully good at keeping a low profile and a happy customer. This made him a friend of Morgan’s, for now at least. Morgan scanned the dark corners of the club, looking for customers. Booths lined the walls in plush, curving ovals, allowing anyone to look through to the dancefloor, and anyone on the dancefloor to look back. Morgan spied many hungry faces searching for her, even if they didn’t know it was her. She took stock of all of them- there was definitely more than last night, which meant more people were either sharing or talking. Morgan smiled. Each customer was another dollar in her pocket, and another stab at Ava. Morgan made her way to the bar, slipping into the barstool with ease as the bartender ignored the rest of his customers to come check on her. “Same as always, Madame Black?” He asked, although he was already mixing her drink as he did so. “Yes, thank you Harry.” She replied. Eyes stared at her from the other sides of the bar as the bartender poured her drink and slid it to her on a cocktail napkin. Business would be good tonight, she thought, as she looked through the bar mirror into the crowd behind her. “Madame Black, you have a client waiting in the back room when you get a moment.” “I told Tommy that all my business is done out here.” Morgan snapped. She was preoccupied with sales, not meetings. “It’s not that kind of business.” Harry murmured, his voice low. Morgan sighed. “He’ll have to wait.” She turned on her stool and grabbed her drink to leave, but the bartender took a gentle grip on her hand. “It’s a ‘she’ waiting. Be careful, Madame.” He gave her a solid stare for a moment, his warning clear in his eyes, before he suddenly regained his charisma and started smiling at another customer. His warning unsettled Morgan, but money took over her mind as she looked back over the crowd. She took her leave with her drink in hand, and started her business. The first booth held a gaggle of girls, each of them squirming in their seats to get Morgan to notice. Notice she did. She slid next to them with ease, giving the first girl a kiss on the cheek that left her blushing. “Hey there, Sweetness,” she cooed, “I heard you were looking for me.” “Do-do you know what we’re looking for?” the girl asked shyly. Morgan sipped her drink through a knowing grin. “Only if you’re looking for dreams.” Out of her pocket Morgan slipped out a small canister, pill-like and about the size of a large vitamin. The girl’s eyes went wide, and went to touch it before Morgan snapped her palm closed. “Unlike other dealers, my dear, I do not give out the first try free. I think its reputation speaks for itself.” The girl looked a little stunned, but nodded with Morgan in agreement. “We’ll take a dozen.” The girl said quickly, rushing to pull money out of her purse. “You’ll take twenty.” Morgan countered. The girls all looked at each other, and nodded again, collecting money amongst themselves. Morgan smiled. This was really all too easy. “Thank you for your business.” She smirked, stowed her profits inside her blouse, and moved languidly onto the next booth. As was to be expected, some of the booths held repeat customers. Morgan was happy to serve, her cunning smile dually charming and unsettling her clients. A few of them held the shallow, dull look, however, that made her smile dim, if only for a second. “All drugs have consequences, and all dreams have nightmares,” she would chide at them, and double their doses. If she felt any guilt for their rising addictions, she didn’t show it. They all lined her pockets the same, at least she gave them a warning. Morgan’s gaze flitted to a booth close to the door to the back room. She dreaded going back there, she had guessed who was in it and did not want the headache that was coming. But the booth before it- it held a solitary man with wolfish eyes and a pose that seemed inviting enough to Morgan. He appeared to be waiting for her in the booth, his arms carelessly draped over the back. Morgan gave him the up and down, a small grin spreading to her lips as she took him in- he was definitely movie material. With a physique like that, she might even keep him around for a few days. Sauntering up to the table, she felt him giving her the same approving looks.  "I hope you were waiting for me." She purred, slipping a business card out of her purse and laying it on the table. Looking down from her thick eyelashes, she slithered onto the seat next to him, sliding down enough to reveal a peek of cleavage. "Even if you weren't, I'm in need of help in the back room..." Her hand grazed unseen under the table to the top of his thigh, slowly teasing its way up towards his hips, "...and I could use you." Slightly to her surprise, he chuckled. "I have a few questions for you first, Morgan." He replied, his hand covering hers, sliding it up just a bit farther up his leg. What a cocky b*****d, she thought, humored. She squeezed slightly, aware of the blood flow rising under her fingers. With another grin, she pulled away, satisfied at the sigh already on his lips. It was at this moment that Tommy DeLucio made another appearance, this time with a bar tray full of drinks on hand. “Miz Morgan, I see you met that actor I told you about earlier.” He said, a chortle in his tone. “Did I say anything about being an actor?” the man said coyly, looking between Tommy and Morgan with what looked to be amusement. “Either way, I think he would definitely be a good addition to my talented little collection.” She looked at him, raising her glass to give him another look. “But now I hear he has questions for me. Do you think I should answer them, Tommy?” “If it makes Miz Morgan happy, I should say so.” He answered jovially, but his suspicious look gave him away. His eyes darted to the stranger, then back to Morgan. "If you want those questions answered, you better join me, then.” She said, looking into the stranger’s eyes. For a moment, she thought she saw a hint of the same crazed look she had spied in her own dressing room, but it passed in an instant. He gave another cocky look, and Morgan had made her mind up. “Please give him my info, Tommy, if you would.” She swapped her now empty glass for a new one, and made her exit. As she walked away from the table and into the back room, she felt his eyes capture her stride before finding the time and place Tommy had scribbled on the card in front of him. She knew he would come, in time. She didn’t know he’d come to try and kill her. But Morgan had other fish to fry.  ---     Every night you visit me. Sometimes in dreams. Others, in nightmares. That was the first time I saw you, wasn’t it? You were a pretty distraction, and me so unaware of how much you would change my life. I didn’t even ask for your name. We burned down that club together, didn’t we, maybe five years after? It seems like a century ago. But things have certainly changed. The club is gone, the drugs have fallen completely out of my hands, and you… well, you’re dead. And the only way to see you again is to dream, one way or another… When did I start talking to you like you’re still here? Was it when I realized that, artificial dreams or no, I always saw you when I closed my eyes? Uh, maybe not, I was never that romantic. It just always feels like you like you never left, like you still see me when I load my gun, when I change out of my blood-soaked clothes, when I search the dark quietness for that monster that ended you… With every dream, I hope to tell you that I will kill him soon, that I will put him down forever if only to have the satisfaction that it was me that did it, but all I ever seem to dream about is when I had you… It will go away when I kill him. It has to, or I will go mad. I have to remember the facts. I am Morgan. The monster I wish to kill is named Darkholme. Darkholme killed you, and I have spent every waking moment since then hunting him. I have one assistant in this goal, and his name is Eric C. Julian. He is the one that patches me up, although he doesn’t quite understand how or why I heal the way I do. I have you to thank for that. I can’t make myself tell him about you; I can’t let him in that close. I have tracked Darkholme everywhere he could think to hide, twenty years’ worth of hiding, and now we are back in the same dreadful place we started, the drowning city we once called home. It’s gotten uglier since last you saw it. You would love it. The daylight shows it for what it is- a stinking, damp collection of overdosing hutches, but at night? The city comes alive just like it used to. Neon signs dance on the water, music pumps out of dingy radios to mix into the cacophony of screaming and euphoria, and the newest generation passes out their drugs like candy as if it’s never been done before. Some of it’s even our old formula, albeit a little twisted. No one cares anymore if they get dreams or nightmares, as long as it’s a well-deserved break from reality. It makes me miss my old life a bit, but then I remember what I have to do. I have a body stealer to hunt. Eric is chipper today. He finally restocked all the medical supplies, gotten that weird gunk from Germany out of that mess of straw he calls hair, and has started going through our house for what he calls “useful things”. I don’t know how he considers old things from our selling days useful, but I’d rather keep him happy and out of my own hair. The house looks almost exactly as we left it- there’s dust all over your favorite chair, the chesterfield missing the buttons from the parlor. The Klimt painting you stole for me is still hanging in the bedroom, although something has eaten a corner of the frame. My old sea trunk is now being used as a coffee table, of all things, and Eric has doctored the dining room into a proper operating theater. I moved the chaise lounge away from the living room and towards the window- I don’t want to explain to Eric what that suspicious stain on the end of it is, although he never asks those kinds of stupid questions. The house is full of memories that, if I could only sleep a dreamless sleep, I would have otherwise forgotten. Speaking of which, I collected all the remaining canisters and locked them in the end table in the bedroom. I’m holding one in my hand now. Its metal is shocking and cold in my palm, and feels much heavier than it used to. Maybe it’s not just me, and all dreams are heavier now. I thought about letting go for the night, of cracking open the Pandora’s Box in my hand and forgetting all about the realness of life- but instead Eric rapped on my door. “Someone’s here to see you.” He says quietly, through the door. He wouldn’t disturb me unless it was important. “I’ll be right out.” I reply, not moving to open the barrier between us. I hear the shushing sound of his socks as he moves away from my room. I stare at the canister for another moment before giving up and going back to the living room.   I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised to see the old woman in front of me. She had changed so much that I shouldn’t have been able to recognize her, but I could- hers was a face I would never ever forget. Her skin was wrinkled, her once razor-sharp eyes clouded with cataracts, the brown hair turned grey and pulled tightly on top of her head, but I knew her. “Ava.” I breathe. “I’m addressed as City Manager Hansard now, but I appreciate the greeting all the same.” The old witch is making a show of supporting herself by a cane, but I suspect it is smoke and mirrors. She keeps that same proud, stock-straight posture she’s always had. “It wasn’t a greeting. Why are you here?” My reply makes Eric scrunch his eyebrows together like a contorted caterpillar, and he looks from me to the old pile of bones and back again as if to put together a puzzle he has no pieces for. “Don’t you worry, I won’t be here long. I thought you went and made a career of taking out that… thing that killed Lucas.” “I didn’t think you cared very much to be honest, Ava.” My words are sticking in my throat. I don’t want to talk to her. “It’s true, I didn’t. Being rid of Lucas was one more person off my list, and you being out of town… well, let’s say no tears were shed. But now you, and It, are back in my city.” Her knobbed hands wrench around that cane, over and over, in a way that makes me wonder if it is compulsion or if she wishes to weather the wood. “To be honest back, I had hoped one of you would kill the other and be done with it.” “I am sorry to disappoint you.” I turn away from the spinster in my doorway and start a search for the bottle of scotch. I find it nuzzled between a blanket and a box of ammunition. The glasses are on the desk holding a batch of needles. “That is actually why I am here,” she continues, unrelenting. “It is my duty as City Manager to overlook the finer details of the city, and- I’ll take a glass of that, dear- having that monster in my district just cannot come to pass. Too many people died last time.” Eric goes to empty one of the glasses. I take the opportunity to drink directly from the decanter, my eyes spitefully meeting hers. She shakes her head at Eric, who looks confused and puts the glass back down. “You see, that’s where we differ. You see it as too many dead in Your city, while I see it as too many of Mine dead in this city.” I take a few more steps back to where she has held her ground in the foyer. “All the more reason to let me help you.” Her hands continue going over and over the head of the cane. “I remember the last time we worked together,” I say, tapping my shoulder. Ava smiles, and suddenly she looks exactly as she did twenty years ago, as if all the trappings of her age were simply a ruse. Cruel. “So do I. I think I came out most triumphant in that arrangement.” “An arrangement that I would be stupid to repeat.” I take a step oblique to her, opening the door without showing her my back. I wouldn’t trust her that much even at her age, even with Eric in the room. She looks past me, to Eric. “You have my card. Call me when this one gets too stuck in her stubbornness to move. She always does.” Eric doesn’t nod but looks at her with understanding. She then turns to leave, hobbling along with her back straight and her nose high. I slam the door behind her, hoping it hits her where it hurts. After I can no longer hear her small steps on the landing I put my back against the door, close my eyes, and count to ten. It is not enough to make the anger, or even more annoying, the fear go away. My eyes are still closed but I hear Eric sigh, take a cautious step or two towards me. “We could use the help, you know.” He says gently, then slowly takes the bottle from me. “I’d rather accept help from the devil. It’s safer and he’d treat us kinder.” I open my eyes just in time to see him pour a splash into each of the newly cleaned out glasses.   He takes a step back to hand me the glass, then raises his own. “To deals with the devil,” he toasts. “And to all the good help we can get,” I toast back, and drain the glass. I am very grateful for Eric, especially now. I hope he never sees me use those canisters in the end table. --- 2.  Morgan’s plans for her mysterious stranger vanished as soon as the door opened. The back room had the advantage of muting all the noise of the dancefloor, but at this moment Morgan would have welcomed the distraction. The plush ovals of the main room were swapped for a conference table, around which were seated several somber looking men in business suits. It was who was seated at the head of the table that took Morgan back, even though she had guessed who it was. “Morgan, dear, you kept us waiting quite a long time.” Ava Hansard was a beautiful woman, even as her middle age approached its latter years, with quick, all knowing eyes, a sharp mouth, and velveteen brown hair that wreathed her face in what Morgan would describe of anyone else as a halo. But Morgan could not place a halo on this particular woman. She was the one who haunted her day and night, whose influence touched her to this day. It had not been very long since Morgan had been at her very mercy, almost at the cost of her life. She still bore the scars of that meeting. “Ms. Hansard, good to see you again.” Morgan’s words bounced off the walls of the room, there implied confidence sounding tinny in comparison to Ava’s assured tone. A few of the men looked amongst themselves, which satisfied Morgan enough. “Yes, I… relished our last acquaintance. The Chemist Scandal. Those poor men.” Ava’s mouth spread into a line somewhat resembling a smile, but alike more to a barracuda’s snare. Morgan found the likeness fitting. Those were MY men, Morgan thought, trying not to let her anger take its place on her face. “It was a terrible affair, I’ll admit, but worth it. It was too bad about your brother.” As soon as she said the words Morgan knew she had hit the mark. Ava’s daggered smile fell away, and the man closest to her whispered in her ear. She waved him away with annoyance. “He knew what was coming, there is a price to pay for disloyalty. You know that. But that’s not why we’re here.” “Why are we here, Ms. Hansard? We’re both very busy women.” Morgan blinked through her words, trying her best to look neutral. In truth, not knowing why she was here terrified her almost as much as knowing what she had done before. It kept her frozen in place, standing at the end of the table, her drink still held in her bent grasp. “Of course. The last time we had our… discussion, I had asked you about a certain person. The chemist Dr. Stuart, to be exact.” Ava tapped her fingers on the conference table, a small tell, but one Morgan would read. “So this is about the Chemist Scandal. I hold to my previous word, as the truth, Dr. Stuart died when you killed my men.” No sooner had Morgan said the words than one of the larger men banged his hand on the table. Morgan jumped despite herself. “Tsktsktsk, Morgan, you know that I did not kill your men. In fact, it was you yourself who did the deed, was it not?” That Barracuda smile was back. “If I killed my men, then you should be doubly sure that the doctor went down with the ship that day.” Morgan seethed through her teeth. “And yet I keep hearing of some wonderful new drug on trade that the good Doctor was experimenting with at the time of his death. One that conjures the user’s dreams as if in real life, lets them relive memories if they so choose? Side effects including chronic nightmares and memory deficiency. Surely you’ve heard of this.” Ava had that look in her eye, a cold, dead look that Morgan had seen before. She looked ready for the kill. Morgan cleared her throat, took a sip of her drink. “News to me.” “You are a very good saleswoman, Morgan, no one will deny you that. But you are a sloppy distributor, and a worse liar.” “What exactly did you come here for, Ava?” Morgan asked. Immediately the large man at the end of the table rose up, and began reaching for Morgan before Ava waved him off. “No, no, Hector, not yet. I am so glad you asked. I desire the immediate handing over of Dr. Stuart, seventy-five percent of your profits, and the basic respect of you always addressing me as Ms. Hansard as you’ve already been generously instructed.” She had stayed her hand, but Hector did not look happy to do the same. Morgan didn’t care. “I told you, Ava, I already killed Dr. Stuart, so I see no reason to give you a penny.” Her stare was defiant, and it was meant to be. Ava shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Ah. You can lead a horse to water, isn’t that right, boys? I see I really have no choice but to finish what I started.” Ava leaned back in her chair, resigned to her decision. “You, or Hector?” Morgan challenged, nodding to the brute ready to pounce next to her. “I don’t need to get my hands dirty, Morgan. If you were a better businesswoman you’d see the sense in that. No, I’ve already set that plan in motion. Hector is only here to ruin your night.” Ava stood up, and the men around the table did the same. Most of them filtered out of the room through the exit in the back of the room, however a handful stayed alongside Ava in a brooding flock. It was Hector alone that approached Morgan. She knew she could take him, but it was going to hurt. ---   It’s the day after Ava visited the house, and I can still feel her presence glooming up the place. Eric has been far from his normal cheery self, and I can tell that all he wants to do is ask me about her. I don’t have the energy to waste on this, and him knowing about the ghosts of tortures past won’t do either of us any good. But I suppose I can’t avoid him forever. We have a breakfast of Irish coffee and eggs, and to be honest I’m not too fond of the eggs. “If we start the scan tomorrow, we can probably find him before he kills anyone.” I say, looking over my cup at him. He nods agreement, but he’s still preoccupied. “I’ll be gone for maybe a day and a half, you know the drill, just be ready in case we run into any-” “Who’s Lucas?” Eric asks. “-problems.” That was not the question I was expecting. “Ava –Ms. Hansard?” he starts. “Ava.” I affirm, downing the rest of my coffee in a gulp. “Ava- she mentioned Darkholme killing Lucas. She said him specifically, like she was trying to get a rise out of you.” “Who knows what that woman was thinking.” I say, and try to leave the table. Eric follows me, refusing to let it go. “Morgan, it worked. You couldn’t look her in the eye and immediately hunted down a drink.” “I’ve been known to hunt down a drink.” I am suddenly occupied with the dishes. “Not like this. Is he- Is this his house?” The way he says it, it’s almost like he already knows. I stop my attempt at the sink and look at him. “What gave you- this is my house.” I give him a cross look, but he sees it in my eyes. “Yeah. This was his house. Once.” I return to my dishes, taking my anger out on the scrubbing. “She said when she came in. ‘

Morgan sat at her dressing room table. Overhead, the red light turned off, signaling in the dimness that her camera had finally run out of film. She brushed her black hair back, staring into her own eyes. She was searching for something, anything, to tell her that this evening’s efforts had been worth it, that it had offered some of the healing that she craved. She found her reflection as unforgiving as her conscience. No matter what she did, not matter how she had changed or how much money she made, she still felt the fear that Ava Hansard had left in her heart. As she brushed her lace-trimmed robe slithered off her shoulder, revealing scars that, although old, still seemed freshly carved out of her skin. I should be lucky, most traitors don’t get to keep most of their hides, she thought to herself, her mind’s wanderings getting even darker as she sat. Her eyes moistened, not quite crying, as she thought about how much her disloyalty had cost her friends. And all of this for greed. This, at least, managed to snap Morgan out of her melancholy; money always did. She leaned forward to dab at her eyes, worrying over her mascara. As she did so, red streaks skidded from her blood soaked hands to under her eyes. “Damn!” she swore, having not paid attention enough to wash her hands after her misadventure. From the bed behind her, an arm twitched. Morgan snapped around in her chair, looking at the man’s body with a sudden tenseness not there before. She approached it, her eyes blood-rimmed and wild once again, but as she looked over the bare corpses of both the man and the woman in the pool of blood next to him, she knew it was only a death twitch. With a sigh she relaxed, leaning to sit next to them on the black satin sheets. She looked back at the reflections in the dressing table mirror, hers and the man’s and woman’s, and knew in her heart that the next time would be better. Next time the fear would be conquered, and she would be able to be close to someone without having flashbacks that left them in pieces. If these two deaths, added to all the others she had taken, could finally do that then it would all be worth it. She would burn the world down for a little peace from the Hell that raged on in a repeat like one of her film reels. For now, Morgan got up, finished pinning up her hair, and went to the adjacent room to clean herself up. Afterwards, she dressed, collected the film canisters for the night, and exited her room, locking the door behind her. --- Outside the door, the club was beginning to pick up pace as the night roared on. “Miz Black, how good to see you again, and just the dame I’ve been meaning to see!” Tommy DeLucio, the owner of the club, was a short, scheming man, but not without his sense of tact. He eyeballed the door behind her, but only let his gaze stay for a second before looking back at her with a cheesy smile. “I have some clients who are looking for some primo product, and a few wannabe actors that might be interested in your, ahem, enterprise.” He patted Morgan’s arm with a wink, but quickly removed it at the sight of a raised eyebrow. Instead he brushed at his mustache in an attempt to look nonchalant as Morgan took out her wallet. “I hope when you say ‘product’ you mean my liquor brand, because you are certainly not my distributor in the other case. Tell them they will have to be at the club, just like everybody else. As for the latter, do you think you could arrange to have them sent to the room tomorrow, after it is prepared of course?” As she spoke, she took out some cash, which the man quickly accepted. “For you, Miz Morgan, anything is possible.” He replied, his gap-toothed smile not quite hiding his discomfort. Tommy rued being chided, but as always he knew that he was paid lucratively to clean up and shut up. In his time, he had done cleaning for countless gangsters, and Morgan not only paid him the best, but frightened him the most. “Thank you. Oh, and DeLucio, I am not one of your molls, try not to call me a dame.” He stuttered his apologies as Morgan turned heel and entered the light of the main dancefloor.   Morgan was at this club for one reason and one reason only- it was the most secure place in all of the Drowning City, and that meant a lot. While most of polite society had left the city after the coastline had started crumbling into the ocean, it was still held in the control of some major crime lords, a control that Morgan meant to take for herself. But this place, Les Ombres Mordents, had remained untouched since she, or any of her predecessors, had ever come around, and was likely to stay that way. While Tommy DeLucio appeared spineless, he had a wicked nose for business sense, and was powerfully good at keeping a low profile and a happy customer. This made him a friend of Morgan’s, for now at least. Morgan scanned the dark corners of the club, looking for customers. Booths lined the walls in plush, curving ovals, allowing anyone to look through to the dancefloor, and anyone on the dancefloor to look back. Morgan spied many hungry faces searching for her, even if they didn’t know it was her. She took stock of all of them- there was definitely more than last night, which meant more people were either sharing or talking. Morgan smiled. Each customer was another dollar in her pocket, and another stab at Ava. Morgan made her way to the bar, slipping into the barstool with ease as the bartender ignored the rest of his customers to come check on her. “Same as always, Madame Black?” He asked, although he was already mixing her drink as he did so. “Yes, thank you Harry.” She replied. Eyes stared at her from the other sides of the bar as the bartender poured her drink and slid it to her on a cocktail napkin. Business would be good tonight, she thought, as she looked through the bar mirror into the crowd behind her. “Madame Black, you have a client waiting in the back room when you get a moment.” “I told Tommy that all my business is done out here.” Morgan snapped. She was preoccupied with sales, not meetings. “It’s not that kind of business.” Harry murmured, his voice low. Morgan sighed. “He’ll have to wait.” She turned on her stool and grabbed her drink to leave, but the bartender took a gentle grip on her hand. “It’s a ‘she’ waiting. Be careful, Madame.” He gave her a solid stare for a moment, his warning clear in his eyes, before he suddenly regained his charisma and started smiling at another customer. His warning unsettled Morgan, but money took over her mind as she looked back over the crowd. She took her leave with her drink in hand, and started her business. The first booth held a gaggle of girls, each of them squirming in their seats to get Morgan to notice. Notice she did. She slid next to them with ease, giving the first girl a kiss on the cheek that left her blushing. “Hey there, Sweetness,” she cooed, “I heard you were looking for me.” “Do-do you know what we’re looking for?” the girl asked shyly. Morgan sipped her drink through a knowing grin. “Only if you’re looking for dreams.” Out of her pocket Morgan slipped out a small canister, pill-like and about the size of a large vitamin. The girl’s eyes went wide, and went to touch it before Morgan snapped her palm closed. “Unlike other dealers, my dear, I do not give out the first try free. I think its reputation speaks for itself.” The girl looked a little stunned, but nodded with Morgan in agreement. “We’ll take a dozen.” The girl said quickly, rushing to pull money out of her purse. “You’ll take twenty.” Morgan countered. The girls all looked at each other, and nodded again, collecting money amongst themselves. Morgan smiled. This was really all too easy. “Thank you for your business.” She smirked, stowed her profits inside her blouse, and moved languidly onto the next booth. As was to be expected, some of the booths held repeat customers. Morgan was happy to serve, her cunning smile dually charming and unsettling her clients. A few of them held the shallow, dull look, however, that made her smile dim, if only for a second. “All drugs have consequences, and all dreams have nightmares,” she would chide at them, and double their doses. If she felt any guilt for their rising addictions, she didn’t show it. They all lined her pockets the same, at least she gave them a warning. Morgan’s gaze flitted to a booth close to the door to the back room. She dreaded going back there, she had guessed who was in it and did not want the headache that was coming. But the booth before it- it held a solitary man with wolfish eyes and a pose that seemed inviting enough to Morgan. He appeared to be waiting for her in the booth, his arms carelessly draped over the back. Morgan gave him the up and down, a small grin spreading to her lips as she took him in- he was definitely movie material. With a physique like that, she might even keep him around for a few days. Sauntering up to the table, she felt him giving her the same approving looks.  "I hope you were waiting for me." She purred, slipping a business card out of her purse and laying it on the table. Looking down from her thick eyelashes, she slithered onto the seat next to him, sliding down enough to reveal a peek of cleavage. "Even if you weren't, I'm in need of help in the back room..." Her hand grazed unseen under the table to the top of his thigh, slowly teasing its way up towards his hips, "...and I could use you." Slightly to her surprise, he chuckled. "I have a few questions for you first, Morgan." He replied, his hand covering hers, sliding it up just a bit farther up his leg. What a cocky b*****d, she thought, humored. She squeezed slightly, aware of the blood flow rising under her fingers. With another grin, she pulled away, satisfied at the sigh already on his lips. It was at this moment that Tommy DeLucio made another appearance, this time with a bar tray full of drinks on hand. “Miz Morgan, I see you met that actor I told you about earlier.” He said, a chortle in his tone. “Did I say anything about being an actor?” the man said coyly, looking between Tommy and Morgan with what looked to be amusement. “Either way, I think he would definitely be a good addition to my talented little collection.” She looked at him, raising her glass to give him another look. “But now I hear he has questions for me. Do you think I should answer them, Tommy?” “If it makes Miz Morgan happy, I should say so.” He answered jovially, but his suspicious look gave him away. His eyes darted to the stranger, then back to Morgan. "If you want those questions answered, you better join me, then.” She said, looking into the stranger’s eyes. For a moment, she thought she saw a hint of the same crazed look she had spied in her own dressing room, but it passed in an instant. He gave another cocky look, and Morgan had made her mind up. “Please give him my info, Tommy, if you would.” She swapped her now empty glass for a new one, and made her exit. As she walked away from the table and into the back room, she felt his eyes capture her stride before finding the time and place Tommy had scribbled on the card in front of him. She knew he would come, in time. She didn’t know he’d come to try and kill her. But Morgan had other fish to fry. ---    Every night you visit me. Sometimes in dreams. Others, in nightmares. That was the first time I saw you, wasn’t it? You were a pretty distraction, and me so unaware of how much you would change my life. I didn’t even ask for your name. We burned down that club together, didn’t we, maybe five years after? It seems like a century ago. But things have certainly changed. The club is gone, the drugs have fallen completely out of my hands, and you… well, you’re dead. And the only way to see you again is to dream, one way or another… When did I start talking to you like you’re still here? Was it when I realized that, artificial dreams or no, I always saw you when I closed my eyes? Uh, maybe not, I was never that romantic. It just always feels like you like you never left, like you still see me when I load my gun, when I change out of my blood-soaked clothes, when I search the dark quietness for that monster that ended you… With every dream, I hope to tell you that I will kill him soon, that I will put him down forever if only to have the satisfaction that it was me that did it, but all I ever seem to dream about is when I had you… It will go away when I kill him. It has to, or I will go mad. I have to remember the facts. I am Morgan. The monster I wish to kill is named Darkholme. Darkholme killed you, and I have spent every waking moment since then hunting him. I have one assistant in this goal, and his name is Eric C. Julian. He is the one that patches me up, although he doesn’t quite understand how or why I heal the way I do. I have you to thank for that. I can’t make myself tell him about you; I can’t let him in that close. I have tracked Darkholme everywhere he could think to hide, twenty years’ worth of hiding, and now we are back in the same dreadful place we started, the drowning city we once called home. It’s gotten uglier since last you saw it. You would love it. The daylight shows it for what it is- a stinking, damp collection of overdosing hutches, but at night? The city comes alive just like it used to. Neon signs dance on the water, music pumps out of dingy radios to mix into the cacophony of screaming and euphoria, and the newest generation passes out their drugs like candy as if it’s never been done before. Some of it’s even our old formula, albeit a little twisted. No one cares anymore if they get dreams or nightmares, as long as it’s a well-deserved break from reality. It makes me miss my old life a bit, but then I remember what I have to do. I have a body stealer to hunt. Eric is chipper today. He finally restocked all the medical supplies, gotten that weird gunk from Germany out of that mess of straw he calls hair, and has started going through our house for what he calls “useful things”. I don’t know how he considers old things from our selling days useful, but I’d rather keep him happy and out of my own hair. The house looks almost exactly as we left it- there’s dust all over your favorite chair, the chesterfield missing the buttons from the parlor. The Klimt painting you stole for me is still hanging in the bedroom, although something has eaten a corner of the frame. My old sea trunk is now being used as a coffee table, of all things, and Eric has doctored the dining room into a proper operating theater. I moved the chaise lounge away from the living room and towards the window- I don’t want to explain to Eric what that suspicious stain on the end of it is, although he never asks those kinds of stupid questions. The house is full of memories that, if I could only sleep a dreamless sleep, I would have otherwise forgotten. Speaking of which, I collected all the remaining canisters and locked them in the end table in the bedroom. I’m holding one in my hand now. Its metal is shocking and cold in my palm, and feels much heavier than it used to. Maybe it’s not just me, and all dreams are heavier now. I thought about letting go for the night, of cracking open the Pandora’s Box in my hand and forgetting all about the realness of life- but instead Eric rapped on my door. “Someone’s here to see you.” He says quietly, through the door. He wouldn’t disturb me unless it was important. “I’ll be right out.” I reply, not moving to open the barrier between us. I hear the shushing sound of his socks as he moves away from my room. I stare at the canister for another moment before giving up and going back to the living room.   I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised to see the old woman in front of me. She had changed so much that I shouldn’t have been able to recognize her, but I could- hers was a face I would never ever forget. Her skin was wrinkled, her once razor-sharp eyes clouded with cataracts, the brown hair turned grey and pulled tightly on top of her head, but I knew her. “Ava.” I breathe. “I’m addressed as City Manager Hansard now, but I appreciate the greeting all the same.” The old witch is making a show of supporting herself by a cane, but I suspect it is smoke and mirrors. She keeps that same proud, stock-straight posture she’s always had. “It wasn’t a greeting. Why are you here?” My reply makes Eric scrunch his eyebrows together like a contorted caterpillar, and he looks from me to the old pile of bones and back again as if to put together a puzzle he has no pieces for. “Don’t you worry, I won’t be here long. I thought you went and made a career of taking out that… thing that killed Lucas.” “I didn’t think you cared very much to be honest, Ava.” My words are sticking in my throat. I don’t want to talk to her. “It’s true, I didn’t. Being rid of Lucas was one more person off my list, and you being out of town… well, let’s say no tears were shed. But now you, and It, are back in my city.” Her knobbed hands wrench around that cane, over and over, in a way that makes me wonder if it is compulsion or if she wishes to weather the wood. “To be honest back, I had hoped one of you would kill the other and be done with it.” “I am sorry to disappoint you.” I turn away from the spinster in my doorway and start a search for the bottle of scotch. I find it nuzzled between a blanket and a box of ammunition. The glasses are on the desk holding a batch of needles. “That is actually why I am here,” she continues, unrelenting. “It is my duty as City Manager to overlook the finer details of the city, and- I’ll take a glass of that, dear- having that monster in my district just cannot come to pass. Too many people died last time.” Eric goes to empty one of the glasses. I take the opportunity to drink directly from the decanter, my eyes spitefully meeting hers. She shakes her head at Eric, who looks confused and puts the glass back down. “You see, that’s where we differ. You see it as too many dead in Your city, while I see it as too many of Mine dead in this city.” I take a few more steps back to where she has held her ground in the foyer. “All the more reason to let me help you.” Her hands continue going over and over the head of the cane. “I remember the last time we worked together,” I say, tapping my shoulder. Ava smiles, and suddenly she looks exactly as she did twenty years ago, as if all the trappings of her age were simply a ruse. Cruel. “So do I. I think I came out most triumphant in that arrangement.” “An arrangement that I would be stupid to repeat.” I take a step oblique to her, opening the door without showing her my back. I wouldn’t trust her that much even at her age, even with Eric in the room. She looks past me, to Eric. “You have my card. Call me when this one gets too stuck in her stubbornness to move. She always does.” Eric doesn’t nod but looks at her with understanding. She then turns to leave, hobbling along with her back straight and her nose high. I slam the door behind her, hoping it hits her where it hurts. After I can no longer hear her small steps on the landing I put my back against the door, close my eyes, and count to ten. It is not enough to make the anger, or even more annoying, the fear go away. My eyes are still closed but I hear Eric sigh, take a cautious step or two towards me. “We could use the help, you know.” He says gently, then slowly takes the bottle from me. “I’d rather accept help from the devil. It’s safer and he’d treat us kinder.” I open my eyes just in time to see him pour a splash into each of the newly cleaned out glasses.   He takes a step back to hand me the glass, then raises his own. “To deals with the devil,” he toasts. “And to all the good help we can get,” I toast back, and drain the glass. I am very grateful for Eric, especially now. I hope he never sees me use those canisters in the end table. --- 2.  Morgan’s plans for her mysterious stranger vanished as soon as the door opened. The back room had the advantage of muting all the noise of the dancefloor, but at this moment Morgan would have welcomed the distraction. The plush ovals of the main room were swapped for a conference table, around which were seated several somber looking men in business suits. It was who was seated at the head of the table that took Morgan back, even though she had guessed who it was. “Morgan, dear, you kept us waiting quite a long time.” Ava Hansard was a beautiful woman, even as her middle age approached its latter years, with quick, all knowing eyes, a sharp mouth, and velveteen brown hair that wreathed her face in what Morgan would describe of anyone else as a halo. But Morgan could not place a halo on this particular woman. She was the one who haunted her day and night, whose influence touched her to this day. It had not been very long since Morgan had been at her very mercy, almost at the cost of her life. She still bore the scars of that meeting. “Ms. Hansard, good to see you again.” Morgan’s words bounced off the walls of the room, there implied confidence sounding tinny in comparison to Ava’s assured tone. A few of the men looked amongst themselves, which satisfied Morgan enough. “Yes, I… relished our last acquaintance. The Chemist Scandal. Those poor men.” Ava’s mouth spread into a line somewhat resembling a smile, but alike more to a barracuda’s snare. Morgan found the likeness fitting. Those were MY men, Morgan thought, trying not to let her anger take its place on her face. “It was a terrible affair, I’ll admit, but worth it. It was too bad about your brother.” As soon as she said the words Morgan knew she had hit the mark. Ava’s daggered smile fell away, and the man closest to her whispered in her ear. She waved him away with annoyance. “He knew what was coming, there is a price to pay for disloyalty. You know that. But that’s not why we’re here.” “Why are we here, Ms. Hansard? We’re both very busy women.” Morgan blinked through her words, trying her best to look neutral. In truth, not knowing why she was here terrified her almost as much as knowing what she had done before. It kept her frozen in place, standing at the end of the table, her drink still held in her bent grasp. “Of course. The last time we had our… discussion, I had asked you about a certain person. The chemist Dr. Stuart, to be exact.” Ava tapped her fingers on the conference table, a small tell, but one Morgan would read. “So this is about the Chemist Scandal. I hold to my previous word, as the truth, Dr. Stuart died when you killed my men.” No sooner had Morgan said the words than one of the larger men banged his hand on the table. Morgan jumped despite herself. “Tsktsktsk, Morgan, you know that I did not kill your men. In fact, it was you yourself who did the deed, was it not?” That Barracuda smile was back. “If I killed my men, then you should be doubly sure that the doctor went down with the ship that day.” Morgan seethed through her teeth. “And yet I keep hearing of some wonderful new drug on trade that the good Doctor was experimenting with at the time of his death. One that conjures the user’s dreams as if in real life, lets them relive memories if they so choose? Side effects including chronic nightmares and memory deficiency. Surely you’ve heard of this.” Ava had that look in her eye, a cold, dead look that Morgan had seen before. She looked ready for the kill. Morgan cleared her throat, took a sip of her drink. “News to me.” “You are a very good saleswoman, Morgan, no one will deny you that. But you are a sloppy distributor, and a worse liar.” “What exactly did you come here for, Ava?” Morgan asked. Immediately the large man at the end of the table rose up, and began reaching for Morgan before Ava waved him off. “No, no, Hector, not yet. I am so glad you asked. I desire the immediate handing over of Dr. Stuart, seventy-five percent of your profits, and the basic respect of you always addressing me as Ms. Hansard as you’ve already been generously instructed.” She had stayed her hand, but Hector did not look happy to do the same. Morgan didn’t care. “I told you, Ava, I already killed Dr. Stuart, so I see no reason to give you a penny.” Her stare was defiant, and it was meant to be. Ava shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Ah. You can lead a horse to water, isn’t that right, boys? I see I really have no choice but to finish what I started.” Ava leaned back in her chair, resigned to her decision. “You, or Hector?” Morgan challenged, nodding to the brute ready to pounce next to her. “I don’t need to get my hands dirty, Morgan. If you were a better businesswoman you’d see the sense in that. No, I’ve already set that plan in motion. Hector is only here to ruin your night.” Ava stood up, and the men around the table did the same. Most of them filtered out of the room through the exit in the back of the room, however a handful stayed alongside Ava in a brooding flock. It was Hector alone that approached Morgan. She knew she could take him, but it was going to hurt. ---   It’s the day after Ava visited the house, and I can still feel her presence glooming up the place. Eric has been far from his normal cheery self, and I can tell that all he wants to do is ask me about her. I don’t have the energy to waste on this, and him knowing about the ghosts of tortures past won’t do either of us any good. But I suppose I can’t avoid him forever. We have a breakfast of Irish coffee and eggs, and to be honest I’m not too fond of the eggs. “If we start the scan tomorrow, we can probably find him before he kills anyone.” I say, looking over my cup at him. He nods agreement, but he’s still preoccupied. “I’ll be gone for maybe a day and a half, you know the drill, just be ready in case we run into any-” “Who’s Lucas?” Eric asks. “-problems.” That was not the question I was expecting. “Ava –Ms. Hansard?” he starts. “Ava.” I affirm, downing the rest of my coffee in a gulp. “Ava- she mentioned Darkholme killing Lucas. She said him specifically, like she was trying to get a rise out of you.” “Who knows what that woman was thinking.” I say, and try to leave the table. Eric follows me, refusing to let it go. “Morgan, it worked. You couldn’t look her in the eye and immediately hunted down a drink.” “I’ve been known to hunt down a drink.” I am suddenly occupied with the dishes. “Not like this. Is he- Is this his house?” The way he says it, it’s almost like he already knows. I stop my attempt at the sink and look at him. “What gave you- this is my house.” I give him a cross look, but he sees it in my eyes. “Yeah. This was his house. Once.” I return to my dishes, taking my anger out on the scrubbing. “She said when she came in. ‘Last time I was here he was repairing the place for a family. Now look at it.'" Eric is staring at my back. That’s all he’s going to see for a few seconds. “I don’t have to tell you how long families last in this city.” I say to him. It isn’t long before he leaves. 

“The Hymn of The Vampire of Angel City”   She was a song when she did it             Their lives dripping from her fingers             Their words a steady hum in her throat,                         As she replayed her own suffering in the cameras of their eyes And every time she thought she healed.   And no one wondered why she smiled,                                  (or if she was coming for them) but it should be asked  how such an ugly thing could come out of such a beautiful nightmare                         a deft, writhing masterpiece             that she committed any time her mind          felt the itch  
  1. Morgan sat at her dressing room table. Overhead, the red light turned off, signaling in the dimness that her camera had finally run out of film. She brushed her black hair back, staring into her own eyes. She was searching for something, anything, to tell her that this evening’s efforts had been worth it, that it had offered some of the healing that she craved. She found her reflection as unforgiving as her conscience. No matter what she did, not matter how she had changed or how much money she made, she still felt the fear that Ava Hansard had left in her heart. As she brushed her lace-trimmed robe slithered off her shoulder, revealing scars that, although old, still seemed freshly carved out of her skin. I should be lucky, most traitors don’t get to keep most of their hides, she thought to herself, her mind’s wanderings getting even darker as she sat. Her eyes moistened, not quite crying, as she thought about how much her disloyalty had cost her friends. And all of this for greed. This, at least, managed to snap Morgan out of her melancholy; money always did. She leaned forward to dab at her eyes, worrying over her mascara. As she did so, red streaks skidded from her blood soaked hands to under her eyes. “Damn!” she swore, having not paid attention enough to wash her hands after her misadventure. From the bed behind her, an arm twitched. Morgan snapped around in her chair, looking at the man’s body with a sudden tenseness not there before. She approached it, her eyes blood-rimmed and wild once again, but as she looked over the bare corpses of both the man and the woman in the pool of blood next to him, she knew it was only a death twitch. With a sigh she relaxed, leaning to sit next to them on the black satin sheets. She looked back at the reflections in the dressing table mirror, hers and the man’s and woman’s, and knew in her heart that the next time would be better. Next time the fear would be conquered, and she would be able to be close to someone without having flashbacks that left them in pieces. If these two deaths, added to all the others she had taken, could finally do that then it would all be worth it. She would burn the world down for a little peace from the Hell that raged on in a repeat like one of her film reels. For now, Morgan got up, finished pinning up her hair, and went to the adjacent room to clean herself up. Afterwards, she dressed, collected the film canisters for the night, and exited her room, locking the door behind her. --- Outside the door, the club was beginning to pick up pace as the night roared on. “Miz Black, how good to see you again, and just the dame I’ve been meaning to see!” Tommy DeLucio, the owner of the club, was a short, scheming man, but not without his sense of tact. He eyeballed the door behind her, but only let his gaze stay for a second before looking back at her with a cheesy smile. “I have some clients who are looking for some primo product, and a few wannabe actors that might be interested in your, ahem, enterprise.” He patted Morgan’s arm with a wink, but quickly removed it at the sight of a raised eyebrow. Instead he brushed at his mustache in an attempt to look nonchalant as Morgan took out her wallet. “I hope when you say ‘product’ you mean my liquor brand, because you are certainly not my distributor in the other case. Tell them they will have to be at the club, just like everybody else. As for the latter, do you think you could arrange to have them sent to the room tomorrow, after it is prepared of course?” As she spoke, she took out some cash, which the man quickly accepted. “For you, Miz Morgan, anything is possible.” He replied, his gap-toothed smile not quite hiding his discomfort. Tommy rued being chided, but as always he knew that he was paid lucratively to clean up and shut up. In his time, he had done cleaning for countless gangsters, and Morgan not only paid him the best, but frightened him the most. “Thank you. Oh, and DeLucio, I am not one of your molls, try not to call me a dame.” He stuttered his apologies as Morgan turned heel and entered the light of the main dancefloor.   Morgan was at this club for one reason and one reason only- it was the most secure place in all of the Drowning City, and that meant a lot. While most of polite society had left the city after the coastline had started crumbling into the ocean, it was still held in the control of some major crime lords, a control that Morgan meant to take for herself. But this place, Les Ombres Mordents, had remained untouched since she, or any of her predecessors, had ever come around, and was likely to stay that way. While Tommy DeLucio appeared spineless, he had a wicked nose for business sense, and was powerfully good at keeping a low profile and a happy customer. This made him a friend of Morgan’s, for now at least. Morgan scanned the dark corners of the club, looking for customers. Booths lined the walls in plush, curving ovals, allowing anyone to look through to the dancefloor, and anyone on the dancefloor to look back. Morgan spied many hungry faces searching for her, even if they didn’t know it was her. She took stock of all of them- there was definitely more than last night, which meant more people were either sharing or talking. Morgan smiled. Each customer was another dollar in her pocket, and another stab at Ava. Morgan made her way to the bar, slipping into the barstool with ease as the bartender ignored the rest of his customers to come check on her. “Same as always, Madame Black?” He asked, although he was already mixing her drink as he did so. “Yes, thank you Harry.” She replied. Eyes stared at her from the other sides of the bar as the bartender poured her drink and slid it to her on a cocktail napkin. Business would be good tonight, she thought, as she looked through the bar mirror into the crowd behind her. “Madame Black, you have a client waiting in the back room when you get a moment.” “I told Tommy that all my business is done out here.” Morgan snapped. She was preoccupied with sales, not meetings. “It’s not that kind of business.” Harry murmured, his voice low. Morgan sighed. “He’ll have to wait.” She turned on her stool and grabbed her drink to leave, but the bartender took a gentle grip on her hand. “It’s a ‘she’ waiting. Be careful, Madame.” He gave her a solid stare for a moment, his warning clear in his eyes, before he suddenly regained his charisma and started smiling at another customer. His warning unsettled Morgan, but money took over her mind as she looked back over the crowd. She took her leave with her drink in hand, and started her business. The first booth held a gaggle of girls, each of them squirming in their seats to get Morgan to notice. Notice she did. She slid next to them with ease, giving the first girl a kiss on the cheek that left her blushing. “Hey there, Sweetness,” she cooed, “I heard you were looking for me.” “Do-do you know what we’re looking for?” the girl asked shyly. Morgan sipped her drink through a knowing grin. “Only if you’re looking for dreams.” Out of her pocket Morgan slipped out a small canister, pill-like and about the size of a large vitamin. The girl’s eyes went wide, and went to touch it before Morgan snapped her palm closed. “Unlike other dealers, my dear, I do not give out the first try free. I think its reputation speaks for itself.” The girl looked a little stunned, but nodded with Morgan in agreement. “We’ll take a dozen.” The girl said quickly, rushing to pull money out of her purse. “You’ll take twenty.” Morgan countered. The girls all looked at each other, and nodded again, collecting money amongst themselves. Morgan smiled. This was really all too easy. “Thank you for your business.” She smirked, stowed her profits inside her blouse, and moved languidly onto the next booth. As was to be expected, some of the booths held repeat customers. Morgan was happy to serve, her cunning smile dually charming and unsettling her clients. A few of them held the shallow, dull look, however, that made her smile dim, if only for a second. “All drugs have consequences, and all dreams have nightmares,” she would chide at them, and double their doses. If she felt any guilt for their rising addictions, she didn’t show it. They all lined her pockets the same, at least she gave them a warning. Morgan’s gaze flitted to a booth close to the door to the back room. She dreaded going back there, she had guessed who was in it and did not want the headache that was coming. But the booth before it- it held a solitary man with wolfish eyes and a pose that seemed inviting enough to Morgan. He appeared to be waiting for her in the booth, his arms carelessly draped over the back. Morgan gave him the up and down, a small grin spreading to her lips as she took him in- he was definitely movie material. With a physique like that, she might even keep him around for a few days. Sauntering up to the table, she felt him giving her the same approving looks.  "I hope you were waiting for me." She purred, slipping a business card out of her purse and laying it on the table. Looking down from her thick eyelashes, she slithered onto the seat next to him, sliding down enough to reveal a peek of cleavage. "Even if you weren't, I'm in need of help in the back room..." Her hand grazed unseen under the table to the top of his thigh, slowly teasing its way up towards his hips, "...and I could use you." Slightly to her surprise, he chuckled. "I have a few questions for you first, Morgan." He replied, his hand covering hers, sliding it up just a bit farther up his leg. What a cocky b*****d, she thought, humored. She squeezed slightly, aware of the blood flow rising under her fingers. With another grin, she pulled away, satisfied at the sigh already on his lips. It was at this moment that Tommy DeLucio made another appearance, this time with a bar tray full of drinks on hand. “Miz Morgan, I see you met that actor I told you about earlier.” He said, a chortle in his tone. “Did I say anything about being an actor?” the man said coyly, looking between Tommy and Morgan with what looked to be amusement. “Either way, I think he would definitely be a good addition to my talented little collection.” She looked at him, raising her glass to give him another look. “But now I hear he has questions for me. Do you think I should answer them, Tommy?” “If it makes Miz Morgan happy, I should say so.” He answered jovially, but his suspicious look gave him away. His eyes darted to the stranger, then back to Morgan. "If you want those questions answered, you better join me, then.” She said, looking into the stranger’s eyes. For a moment, she thought she saw a hint of the same crazed look she had spied in her own dressing room, but it passed in an instant. He gave another cocky look, and Morgan had made her mind up. “Please give him my info, Tommy, if you would.” She swapped her now empty glass for a new one, and made her exit. As she walked away from the table and into the back room, she felt his eyes capture her stride before finding the time and place Tommy had scribbled on the card in front of him. She knew he would come, in time. She didn’t know he’d come to try and kill her. But Morgan had other fish to fry.---
Every night you visit me. Sometimes in dreams. Others, in nightmares.That was the first time I saw you, wasn’t it? You were a pretty distraction, and me so unaware of how much you would change my life. I didn’t even ask for your name. We burned down that club together, didn’t we, maybe five years after? It seems like a century ago. But things have certainly changed. The club is gone, the drugs have fallen completely out of my hands, and you… well, you’re dead. And the only way to see you again is to dream, one way or another…When did I start talking to you like you’re still here? Was it when I realized that, artificial dreams or no, I always saw you when I closed my eyes? Uh, maybe not, I was never that romantic. It just always feels like you like you never left, like you still see me when I load my gun, when I change out of my blood-soaked clothes, when I search the dark quietness for that monster that ended you… With every dream, I hope to tell you that I will kill him soon, that I will put him down forever if only to have the satisfaction that it was me that did it, but all I ever seem to dream about is when I had you… It will go away when I kill him. It has to, or I will go mad.I have to remember the facts. I am Morgan. The monster I wish to kill is named Darkholme. Darkholme killed you, and I have spent every waking moment since then hunting him. I have one assistant in this goal, and his name is Eric C. Julian. He is the one that patches me up, although he doesn’t quite understand how or why I heal the way I do. I have you to thank for that. I can’t make myself tell him about you; I can’t let him in that close. I have tracked Darkholme everywhere he could think to hide, twenty years’ worth of hiding, and now we are back in the same dreadful place we started, the drowning city we once called home. It’s gotten uglier since last you saw it. You would love it. The daylight shows it for what it is- a stinking, damp collection of overdosing hutches, but at night? The city comes alive just like it used to. Neon signs dance on the water, music pumps out of dingy radios to mix into the cacophony of screaming and euphoria, and the newest generation passes out their drugs like candy as if it’s never been done before. Some of it’s even our old formula, albeit a little twisted. No one cares anymore if they get dreams or nightmares, as long as it’s a well-deserved break from reality. It makes me miss my old life a bit, but then I remember what I have to do. I have a body stealer to hunt.Eric is chipper today. He finally restocked all the medical supplies, gotten that weird gunk from Germany out of that mess of straw he calls hair, and has started going through our house for what he calls “useful things”. I don’t know how he considers old things from our selling days useful, but I’d rather keep him happy and out of my own hair. The house looks almost exactly as we left it- there’s dust all over your favorite chair, the chesterfield missing the buttons from the parlor. The Klimt painting you stole for me is still hanging in the bedroom, although something has eaten a corner of the frame. My old sea trunk is now being used as a coffee table, of all things, and Eric has doctored the dining room into a proper operating theater. I moved the chaise lounge away from the living room and towards the window- I don’t want to explain to Eric what that suspicious stain on the end of it is, although he never asks those kinds of stupid questions. The house is full of memories that, if I could only sleep a dreamless sleep, I would have otherwise forgotten. Speaking of which, I collected all the remaining canisters and locked them in the end table in the bedroom. I’m holding one in my hand now. Its metal is shocking and cold in my palm, and feels much heavier than it used to. Maybe it’s not just me, and all dreams are heavier now. I thought about letting go for the night, of cracking open the Pandora’s Box in my hand and forgetting all about the realness of life- but instead Eric rapped on my door.“Someone’s here to see you.” He says quietly, through the door. He wouldn’t disturb me unless it was important.“I’ll be right out.” I reply, not moving to open the barrier between us. I hear the shushing sound of his socks as he moves away from my room. I stare at the canister for another moment before giving up and going back to the living room. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised to see the old woman in front of me. She had changed so much that I shouldn’t have been able to recognize her, but I could- hers was a face I would never ever forget. Her skin was wrinkled, her once razor-sharp eyes clouded with cataracts, the brown hair turned grey and pulled tightly on top of her head, but I knew her.“Ava.” I breathe.“I’m addressed as City Manager Hansard now, but I appreciate the greeting all the same.” The old witch is making a show of supporting herself by a cane, but I suspect it is smoke and mirrors. She keeps that same proud, stock-straight posture she’s always had. “It wasn’t a greeting. Why are you here?” My reply makes Eric scrunch his eyebrows together like a contorted caterpillar, and he looks from me to the old pile of bones and back again as if to put together a puzzle he has no pieces for.“Don’t you worry, I won’t be here long. I thought you went and made a career of taking out that… thing that killed Lucas.”“I didn’t think you cared very much to be honest, Ava.” My words are sticking in my throat. I don’t want to talk to her. “It’s true, I didn’t. Being rid of Lucas was one more person off my list, and you being out of town… well, let’s say no tears were shed. But now you, and It, are back in my city.” Her knobbed hands wrench around that cane, over and over, in a way that makes me wonder if it is compulsion or if she wishes to weather the wood. “To be honest back, I had hoped one of you would kill the other and be done with it.”“I am sorry to disappoint you.” I turn away from the spinster in my doorway and start a search for the bottle of scotch. I find it nuzzled between a blanket and a box of ammunition. The glasses are on the desk holding a batch of needles.“That is actually why I am here,” she continues, unrelenting. “It is my duty as City Manager to overlook the finer details of the city, and- I’ll take a glass of that, dear- having that monster in my district just cannot come to pass. Too many people died last time.”Eric goes to empty one of the glasses. I take the opportunity to drink directly from the decanter, my eyes spitefully meeting hers. She shakes her head at Eric, who looks confused and puts the glass back down. “You see, that’s where we differ. You see it as too many dead in Your city, while I see it as too many of Mine dead in this city.” I take a few more steps back to where she has held her ground in the foyer. “All the more reason to let me help you.” Her hands continue going over and over the head of the cane.“I remember the last time we worked together,” I say, tapping my shoulder.Ava smiles, and suddenly she looks exactly as she did twenty years ago, as if all the trappings of her age were simply a ruse. Cruel. “So do I. I think I came out most triumphant in that arrangement.”“An arrangement that I would be stupid to repeat.” I take a step oblique to her, opening the door without showing her my back. I wouldn’t trust her that much even at her age, even with Eric in the room. She looks past me, to Eric. “You have my card. Call me when this one gets too stuck in her stubbornness to move. She always does.” Eric doesn’t nod but looks at her with understanding. She then turns to leave, hobbling along with her back straight and her nose high. I slam the door behind her, hoping it hits her where it hurts.After I can no longer hear her small steps on the landing I put my back against the door, close my eyes, and count to ten. It is not enough to make the anger, or even more annoying, the fear go away.My eyes are still closed but I hear Eric sigh, take a cautious step or two towards me.“We could use the help, you know.” He says gently, then slowly takes the bottle from me.“I’d rather accept help from the devil. It’s safer and he’d treat us kinder.” I open my eyes just in time to see him pour a splash into each of the newly cleaned out glasses.  He takes a step back to hand me the glass, then raises his own. “To deals with the devil,” he toasts. “And to all the good help we can get,” I toast back, and drain the glass. I am very grateful for Eric, especially now.I hope he never sees me use those canisters in the end table.---2. Morgan’s plans for her mysterious stranger vanished as soon as the door opened. The back room had the advantage of muting all the noise of the dancefloor, but at this moment Morgan would have welcomed the distraction. The plush ovals of the main room were swapped for a conference table, around which were seated several somber looking men in business suits. It was who was seated at the head of the table that took Morgan back, even though she had guessed who it was. “Morgan, dear, you kept us waiting quite a long time.” Ava Hansard was a beautiful woman, even as her middle age approached its latter years, with quick, all knowing eyes, a sharp mouth, and velveteen brown hair that wreathed her face in what Morgan would describe of anyone else as a halo. But Morgan could not place a halo on this particular woman. She was the one who haunted her day and night, whose influence touched her to this day. It had not been very long since Morgan had been at her very mercy, almost at the cost of her life. She still bore the scars of that meeting.“Ms. Hansard, good to see you again.” Morgan’s words bounced off the walls of the room, there implied confidence sounding tinny in comparison to Ava’s assured tone. A few of the men looked amongst themselves, which satisfied Morgan enough. “Yes, I… relished our last acquaintance. The Chemist Scandal. Those poor men.” Ava’s mouth spread into a line somewhat resembling a smile, but alike more to a barracuda’s snare. Morgan found the likeness fitting. Those were MY men, Morgan thought, trying not to let her anger take its place on her face.“It was a terrible affair, I’ll admit, but worth it. It was too bad about your brother.” As soon as she said the words Morgan knew she had hit the mark. Ava’s daggered smile fell away, and the man closest to her whispered in her ear. She waved him away with annoyance. “He knew what was coming, there is a price to pay for disloyalty. You know that. But that’s not why we’re here.” “Why are we here, Ms. Hansard? We’re both very busy women.” Morgan blinked through her words, trying her best to look neutral. In truth, not knowing why she was here terrified her almost as much as knowing what she had done before. It kept her frozen in place, standing at the end of the table, her drink still held in her bent grasp.“Of course. The last time we had our… discussion, I had asked you about a certain person. The chemist Dr. Stuart, to be exact.” Ava tapped her fingers on the conference table, a small tell, but one Morgan would read.“So this is about the Chemist Scandal. I hold to my previous word, as the truth, Dr. Stuart died when you killed my men.” No sooner had Morgan said the words than one of the larger men banged his hand on the table. Morgan jumped despite herself. “Tsktsktsk, Morgan, you know that I did not kill your men. In fact, it was you yourself who did the deed, was it not?” That Barracuda smile was back.“If I killed my men, then you should be doubly sure that the doctor went down with the ship that day.” Morgan seethed through her teeth.“And yet I keep hearing of some wonderful new drug on trade that the good Doctor was experimenting with at the time of his death. One that conjures the user’s dreams as if in real life, lets them relive memories if they so choose? Side effects including chronic nightmares and memory deficiency. Surely you’ve heard of this.” Ava had that look in her eye, a cold, dead look that Morgan had seen before. She looked ready for the kill. Morgan cleared her throat, took a sip of her drink. “News to me.”“You are a very good saleswoman, Morgan, no one will deny you that. But you are a sloppy distributor, and a worse liar.”“What exactly did you come here for, Ava?” Morgan asked. Immediately the large man at the end of the table rose up, and began reaching for Morgan before Ava waved him off.“No, no, Hector, not yet. I am so glad you asked. I desire the immediate handing over of Dr. Stuart, seventy-five percent of your profits, and the basic respect of you always addressing me as Ms. Hansard as you’ve already been generously instructed.” She had stayed her hand, but Hector did not look happy to do the same.Morgan didn’t care. “I told you, Ava, I already killed Dr. Stuart, so I see no reason to give you a penny.” Her stare was defiant, and it was meant to be. Ava shook her head and clucked her tongue.“Ah. You can lead a horse to water, isn’t that right, boys? I see I really have no choice but to finish what I started.” Ava leaned back in her chair, resigned to her decision.“You, or Hector?” Morgan challenged, nodding to the brute ready to pounce next to her. “I don’t need to get my hands dirty, Morgan. If you were a better businesswoman you’d see the sense in that. No, I’ve already set that plan in motion. Hector is only here to ruin your night.” Ava stood up, and the men around the table did the same. Most of them filtered out of the room through the exit in the back of the room, however a handful stayed alongside Ava in a brooding flock. It was Hector alone that approached Morgan. She knew she could take him, but it was going to hurt. --- It’s the day after Ava visited the house, and I can still feel her presence glooming up the place. Eric has been far from his normal cheery self, and I can tell that all he wants to do is ask me about her. I don’t have the energy to waste on this, and him knowing about the ghosts of tortures past won’t do either of us any good. But I suppose I can’t avoid him forever. We have a breakfast of Irish coffee and eggs, and to be honest I’m not too fond of the eggs. “If we start the scan tomorrow, we can probably find him before he kills anyone.” I say, looking over my cup at him. He nods agreement, but he’s still preoccupied. “I’ll be gone for maybe a day and a half, you know the drill, just be ready in case we run into any-”“Who’s Lucas?” Eric asks.“-problems.” That was not the question I was expecting.“Ava –Ms. Hansard?” he starts.“Ava.” I affirm, downing the rest of my coffee in a gulp.“Ava- she mentioned Darkholme killing Lucas. She said him specifically, like she was trying to get a rise out of you.”“Who knows what that woman was thinking.” I say, and try to leave the table. Eric follows me, refusing to let it go. “Morgan, it worked. You couldn’t look her in the eye and immediately hunted down a drink.”“I’ve been known to hunt down a drink.” I am suddenly occupied with the dishes. “Not like this. Is he- Is this his house?” The way he says it, it’s almost like he already knows.I stop my attempt at the sink and look at him. “What gave you- this is my house.” I give him a cross look, but he sees it in my eyes. “Yeah. This was his house. Once.” I return to my dishes, taking my anger out on the scrubbing. “She said when she came in. ‘Last time I was here he was repairing the place for a family. Now look at it.'" Eric is staring at my back. That’s all he’s going to see for a few seconds.“I don’t have to tell you how long families last in this city.” I say to him. It isn’t long before he leaves. 

“The Hymn of The Vampire of Angel City”   She was a song when she did it             Their lives dripping from her fingers             Their words a steady hum in her throat,                         As she replayed her own suffering in the cameras of their eyes And every time she thought she healed.   And no one wondered why she smiled,                                  (or if she was coming for them) but it should be asked  how such an ugly thing could come out of such a beautiful nightmare                         a deft, writhing masterpiece             that she committed any time her mind          felt the itch  
  1. Morgan sat at her dressing room table. Overhead, the red light turned off, signaling in the dimness that her camera had finally run out of film. She brushed her black hair back, staring into her own eyes. She was searching for something, anything, to tell her that this evening’s efforts had been worth it, that it had offered some of the healing that she craved. She found her reflection as unforgiving as her conscience. No matter what she did, not matter how she had changed or how much money she made, she still felt the fear that Ava Hansard had left in her heart. As she brushed her lace-trimmed robe slithered off her shoulder, revealing scars that, although old, still seemed freshly carved out of her skin. I should be lucky, most traitors don’t get to keep most of their hides, she thought to herself, her mind’s wanderings getting even darker as she sat. Her eyes moistened, not quite crying, as she thought about how much her disloyalty had cost her friends. And all of this for greed. This, at least, managed to snap Morgan out of her melancholy; money always did. She leaned forward to dab at her eyes, worrying over her mascara. As she did so, red streaks skidded from her blood soaked hands to under her eyes. “Damn!” she swore, having not paid attention enough to wash her hands after her misadventure. From the bed behind her, an arm twitched. Morgan snapped around in her chair, looking at the man’s body with a sudden tenseness not there before. She approached it, her eyes blood-rimmed and wild once again, but as she looked over the bare corpses of both the man and the woman in the pool of blood next to him, she knew it was only a death twitch. With a sigh she relaxed, leaning to sit next to them on the black satin sheets. She looked back at the reflections in the dressing table mirror, hers and the man’s and woman’s, and knew in her heart that the next time would be better. Next time the fear would be conquered, and she would be able to be close to someone without having flashbacks that left them in pieces. If these two deaths, added to all the others she had taken, could finally do that then it would all be worth it. She would burn the world down for a little peace from the Hell that raged on in a repeat like one of her film reels. For now, Morgan got up, finished pinning up her hair, and went to the adjacent room to clean herself up. Afterwards, she dressed, collected the film canisters for the night, and exited her room, locking the door behind her. --- Outside the door, the club was beginning to pick up pace as the night roared on. “Miz Black, how good to see you again, and just the dame I’ve been meaning to see!” Tommy DeLucio, the owner of the club, was a short, scheming man, but not without his sense of tact. He eyeballed the door behind her, but only let his gaze stay for a second before looking back at her with a cheesy smile. “I have some clients who are looking for some primo product, and a few wannabe actors that might be interested in your, ahem, enterprise.” He patted Morgan’s arm with a wink, but quickly removed it at the sight of a raised eyebrow. Instead he brushed at his mustache in an attempt to look nonchalant as Morgan took out her wallet. “I hope when you say ‘product’ you mean my liquor brand, because you are certainly not my distributor in the other case. Tell them they will have to be at the club, just like everybody else. As for the latter, do you think you could arrange to have them sent to the room tomorrow, after it is prepared of course?” As she spoke, she took out some cash, which the man quickly accepted. “For you, Miz Morgan, anything is possible.” He replied, his gap-toothed smile not quite hiding his discomfort. Tommy rued being chided, but as always he knew that he was paid lucratively to clean up and shut up. In his time, he had done cleaning for countless gangsters, and Morgan not only paid him the best, but frightened him the most. “Thank you. Oh, and DeLucio, I am not one of your molls, try not to call me a dame.” He stuttered his apologies as Morgan turned heel and entered the light of the main dancefloor.   Morgan was at this club for one reason and one reason only- it was the most secure place in all of the Drowning City, and that meant a lot. While most of polite society had left the city after the coastline had started crumbling into the ocean, it was still held in the control of some major crime lords, a control that Morgan meant to take for herself. But this place, Les Ombres Mordents, had remained untouched since she, or any of her predecessors, had ever come around, and was likely to stay that way. While Tommy DeLucio appeared spineless, he had a wicked nose for business sense, and was powerfully good at keeping a low profile and a happy customer. This made him a friend of Morgan’s, for now at least. Morgan scanned the dark corners of the club, looking for customers. Booths lined the walls in plush, curving ovals, allowing anyone to look through to the dancefloor, and anyone on the dancefloor to look back. Morgan spied many hungry faces searching for her, even if they didn’t know it was her. She took stock of all of them- there was definitely more than last night, which meant more people were either sharing or talking. Morgan smiled. Each customer was another dollar in her pocket, and another stab at Ava. Morgan made her way to the bar, slipping into the barstool with ease as the bartender ignored the rest of his customers to come check on her. “Same as always, Madame Black?” He asked, although he was already mixing her drink as he did so. “Yes, thank you Harry.” She replied. Eyes stared at her from the other sides of the bar as the bartender poured her drink and slid it to her on a cocktail napkin. Business would be good tonight, she thought, as she looked through the bar mirror into the crowd behind her. “Madame Black, you have a client waiting in the back room when you get a moment.” “I told Tommy that all my business is done out here.” Morgan snapped. She was preoccupied with sales, not meetings. “It’s not that kind of business.” Harry murmured, his voice low. Morgan sighed. “He’ll have to wait.” She turned on her stool and grabbed her drink to leave, but the bartender took a gentle grip on her hand. “It’s a ‘she’ waiting. Be careful, Madame.” He gave her a solid stare for a moment, his warning clear in his eyes, before he suddenly regained his charisma and started smiling at another customer. His warning unsettled Morgan, but money took over her mind as she looked back over the crowd. She took her leave with her drink in hand, and started her business. The first booth held a gaggle of girls, each of them squirming in their seats to get Morgan to notice. Notice she did. She slid next to them with ease, giving the first girl a kiss on the cheek that left her blushing. “Hey there, Sweetness,” she cooed, “I heard you were looking for me.” “Do-do you know what we’re looking for?” the girl asked shyly. Morgan sipped her drink through a knowing grin. “Only if you’re looking for dreams.” Out of her pocket Morgan slipped out a small canister, pill-like and about the size of a large vitamin. The girl’s eyes went wide, and went to touch it before Morgan snapped her palm closed. “Unlike other dealers, my dear, I do not give out the first try free. I think its reputation speaks for itself.” The girl looked a little stunned, but nodded with Morgan in agreement. “We’ll take a dozen.” The girl said quickly, rushing to pull money out of her purse. “You’ll take twenty.” Morgan countered. The girls all looked at each other, and nodded again, collecting money amongst themselves. Morgan smiled. This was really all too easy. “Thank you for your business.” She smirked, stowed her profits inside her blouse, and moved languidly onto the next booth. As was to be expected, some of the booths held repeat customers. Morgan was happy to serve, her cunning smile dually charming and unsettling her clients. A few of them held the shallow, dull look, however, that made her smile dim, if only for a second. “All drugs have consequences, and all dreams have nightmares,” she would chide at them, and double their doses. If she felt any guilt for their rising addictions, she didn’t show it. They all lined her pockets the same, at least she gave them a warning. Morgan’s gaze flitted to a booth close to the door to the back room. She dreaded going back there, she had guessed who was in it and did not want the headache that was coming. But the booth before it- it held a solitary man with wolfish eyes and a pose that seemed inviting enough to Morgan. He appeared to be waiting for her in the booth, his arms carelessly draped over the back. Morgan gave him the up and down, a small grin spreading to her lips as she took him in- he was definitely movie material. With a physique like that, she might even keep him around for a few days. Sauntering up to the table, she felt him giving her the same approving looks.  "I hope you were waiting for me." She purred, slipping a business card out of her purse and laying it on the table. Looking down from her thick eyelashes, she slithered onto the seat next to him, sliding down enough to reveal a peek of cleavage. "Even if you weren't, I'm in need of help in the back room..." Her hand grazed unseen under the table to the top of his thigh, slowly teasing its way up towards his hips, "...and I could use you." Slightly to her surprise, he chuckled. "I have a few questions for you first, Morgan." He replied, his hand covering hers, sliding it up just a bit farther up his leg. What a cocky b*****d, she thought, humored. She squeezed slightly, aware of the blood flow rising under her fingers. With another grin, she pulled away, satisfied at the sigh already on his lips. It was at this moment that Tommy DeLucio made another appearance, this time with a bar tray full of drinks on hand. “Miz Morgan, I see you met that actor I told you about earlier.” He said, a chortle in his tone. “Did I say anything about being an actor?” the man said coyly, looking between Tommy and Morgan with what looked to be amusement. “Either way, I think he would definitely be a good addition to my talented little collection.” She looked at him, raising her glass to give him another look. “But now I hear he has questions for me. Do you think I should answer them, Tommy?” “If it makes Miz Morgan happy, I should say so.” He answered jovially, but his suspicious look gave him away. His eyes darted to the stranger, then back to Morgan. "If you want those questions answered, you better join me, then.” She said, looking into the stranger’s eyes. For a moment, she thought she saw a hint of the same crazed look she had spied in her own dressing room, but it passed in an instant. He gave another cocky look, and Morgan had made her mind up. “Please give him my info, Tommy, if you would.” She swapped her now empty glass for a new one, and made her exit. As she walked away from the table and into the back room, she felt his eyes capture her stride before finding the time and place Tommy had scribbled on the card in front of him. She knew he would come, in time. She didn’t know he’d come to try and kill her. But Morgan had other fish to fry. ---   Every night you visit me. Sometimes in dreams. Others, in nightmares. That was the first time I saw you, wasn’t it? You were a pretty distraction, and me so unaware of how much you would change my life. I didn’t even ask for your name. We burned down that club together, didn’t we, maybe five years after? It seems like a century ago. But things have certainly changed. The club is gone, the drugs have fallen completely out of my hands, and you… well, you’re dead. And the only way to see you again is to dream, one way or another… When did I start talking to you like you’re still here? Was it when I realized that, artificial dreams or no, I always saw you when I closed my eyes? Uh, maybe not, I was never that romantic. It just always feels like you like you never left, like you still see me when I load my gun, when I change out of my blood-soaked clothes, when I search the dark quietness for that monster that ended you… With every dream, I hope to tell you that I will kill him soon, that I will put him down forever if only to have the satisfaction that it was me that did it, but all I ever seem to dream about is when I had you… It will go away when I kill him. It has to, or I will go mad. I have to remember the facts. I am Morgan. The monster I wish to kill is named Darkholme. Darkholme killed you, and I have spent every waking moment since then hunting him. I have one assistant in this goal, and his name is Eric C. Julian. He is the one that patches me up, although he doesn’t quite understand how or why I heal the way I do. I have you to thank for that. I can’t make myself tell him about you; I can’t let him in that close. I have tracked Darkholme everywhere he could think to hide, twenty years’ worth of hiding, and now we are back in the same dreadful place we started, the drowning city we once called home. It’s gotten uglier since last you saw it. You would love it. The daylight shows it for what it is- a stinking, damp collection of overdosing hutches, but at night? The city comes alive just like it used to. Neon signs dance on the water, music pumps out of dingy radios to mix into the cacophony of screaming and euphoria, and the newest generation passes out their drugs like candy as if it’s never been done before. Some of it’s even our old formula, albeit a little twisted. No one cares anymore if they get dreams or nightmares, as long as it’s a well-deserved break from reality. It makes me miss my old life a bit, but then I remember what I have to do. I have a body stealer to hunt. Eric is chipper today. He finally restocked all the medical supplies, gotten that weird gunk from Germany out of that mess of straw he calls hair, and has started going through our house for what he calls “useful things”. I don’t know how he considers old things from our selling days useful, but I’d rather keep him happy and out of my own hair. The house looks almost exactly as we left it- there’s dust all over your favorite chair, the chesterfield missing the buttons from the parlor. The Klimt painting you stole for me is still hanging in the bedroom, although something has eaten a corner of the frame. My old sea trunk is now being used as a coffee table, of all things, and Eric has doctored the dining room into a proper operating theater. I moved the chaise lounge away from the living room and towards the window- I don’t want to explain to Eric what that suspicious stain on the end of it is, although he never asks those kinds of stupid questions. The house is full of memories that, if I could only sleep a dreamless sleep, I would have otherwise forgotten. Speaking of which, I collected all the remaining canisters and locked them in the end table in the bedroom. I’m holding one in my hand now. Its metal is shocking and cold in my palm, and feels much heavier than it used to. Maybe it’s not just me, and all dreams are heavier now. I thought about letting go for the night, of cracking open the Pandora’s Box in my hand and forgetting all about the realness of life- but instead Eric rapped on my door. “Someone’s here to see you.” He says quietly, through the door. He wouldn’t disturb me unless it was important. “I’ll be right out.” I reply, not moving to open the barrier between us. I hear the shushing sound of his socks as he moves away from my room. I stare at the canister for another moment before giving up and going back to the living room.   I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised to see the old woman in front of me. She had changed so much that I shouldn’t have been able to recognize her, but I could- hers was a face I would never ever forget. Her skin was wrinkled, her once razor-sharp eyes clouded with cataracts, the brown hair turned grey and pulled tightly on top of her head, but I knew her. “Ava.” I breathe. “I’m addressed as City Manager Hansard now, but I appreciate the greeting all the same.” The old witch is making a show of supporting herself by a cane, but I suspect it is smoke and mirrors. She keeps that same proud, stock-straight posture she’s always had. “It wasn’t a greeting. Why are you here?” My reply makes Eric scrunch his eyebrows together like a contorted caterpillar, and he looks from me to the old pile of bones and back again as if to put together a puzzle he has no pieces for. “Don’t you worry, I won’t be here long. I thought you went and made a career of taking out that… thing that killed Lucas.” “I didn’t think you cared very much to be honest, Ava.” My words are sticking in my throat. I don’t want to talk to her. “It’s true, I didn’t. Being rid of Lucas was one more person off my list, and you being out of town… well, let’s say no tears were shed. But now you, and It, are back in my city.” Her knobbed hands wrench around that cane, over and over, in a way that makes me wonder if it is compulsion or if she wishes to weather the wood. “To be honest back, I had hoped one of you would kill the other and be done with it.” “I am sorry to disappoint you.” I turn away from the spinster in my doorway and start a search for the bottle of scotch. I find it nuzzled between a blanket and a box of ammunition. The glasses are on the desk holding a batch of needles. “That is actually why I am here,” she continues, unrelenting. “It is my duty as City Manager to overlook the finer details of the city, and- I’ll take a glass of that, dear- having that monster in my district just cannot come to pass. Too many people died last time.” Eric goes to empty one of the glasses. I take the opportunity to drink directly from the decanter, my eyes spitefully meeting hers. She shakes her head at Eric, who looks confused and puts the glass back down. “You see, that’s where we differ. You see it as too many dead in Your city, while I see it as too many of Mine dead in this city.” I take a few more steps back to where she has held her ground in the foyer. “All the more reason to let me help you.” Her hands continue going over and over the head of the cane. “I remember the last time we worked together,” I say, tapping my shoulder. Ava smiles, and suddenly she looks exactly as she did twenty years ago, as if all the trappings of her age were simply a ruse. Cruel. “So do I. I think I came out most triumphant in that arrangement.” “An arrangement that I would be stupid to repeat.” I take a step oblique to her, opening the door without showing her my back. I wouldn’t trust her that much even at her age, even with Eric in the room. She looks past me, to Eric. “You have my card. Call me when this one gets too stuck in her stubbornness to move. She always does.” Eric doesn’t nod but looks at her with understanding. She then turns to leave, hobbling along with her back straight and her nose high. I slam the door behind her, hoping it hits her where it hurts. After I can no longer hear her small steps on the landing I put my back against the door, close my eyes, and count to ten. It is not enough to make the anger, or even more annoying, the fear go away. My eyes are still closed but I hear Eric sigh, take a cautious step or two towards me. “We could use the help, you know.” He says gently, then slowly takes the bottle from me. “I’d rather accept help from the devil. It’s safer and he’d treat us kinder.” I open my eyes just in time to see him pour a splash into each of the newly cleaned out glasses.   He takes a step back to hand me the glass, then raises his own. “To deals with the devil,” he toasts. “And to all the good help we can get,” I toast back, and drain the glass. I am very grateful for Eric, especially now. I hope he never sees me use those canisters in the end table. --- 2.  Morgan’s plans for her mysterious stranger vanished as soon as the door opened. The back room had the advantage of muting all the noise of the dancefloor, but at this moment Morgan would have welcomed the distraction. The plush ovals of the main room were swapped for a conference table, around which were seated several somber looking men in business suits. It was who was seated at the head of the table that took Morgan back, even though she had guessed who it was. “Morgan, dear, you kept us waiting quite a long time.” Ava Hansard was a beautiful woman, even as her middle age approached its latter years, with quick, all knowing eyes, a sharp mouth, and velveteen brown hair that wreathed her face in what Morgan would describe of anyone else as a halo. But Morgan could not place a halo on this particular woman. She was the one who haunted her day and night, whose influence touched her to this day. It had not been very long since Morgan had been at her very mercy, almost at the cost of her life. She still bore the scars of that meeting. “Ms. Hansard, good to see you again.” Morgan’s words bounced off the walls of the room, there implied confidence sounding tinny in comparison to Ava’s assured tone. A few of the men looked amongst themselves, which satisfied Morgan enough. “Yes, I… relished our last acquaintance. The Chemist Scandal. Those poor men.” Ava’s mouth spread into a line somewhat resembling a smile, but alike more to a barracuda’s snare. Morgan found the likeness fitting. Those were MY men, Morgan thought, trying not to let her anger take its place on her face. “It was a terrible affair, I’ll admit, but worth it. It was too bad about your brother.” As soon as she said the words Morgan knew she had hit the mark. Ava’s daggered smile fell away, and the man closest to her whispered in her ear. She waved him away with annoyance. “He knew what was coming, there is a price to pay for disloyalty. You know that. But that’s not why we’re here.” “Why are we here, Ms. Hansard? We’re both very busy women.” Morgan blinked through her words, trying her best to look neutral. In truth, not knowing why she was here terrified her almost as much as knowing what she had done before. It kept her frozen in place, standing at the end of the table, her drink still held in her bent grasp. “Of course. The last time we had our… discussion, I had asked you about a certain person. The chemist Dr. Stuart, to be exact.” Ava tapped her fingers on the conference table, a small tell, but one Morgan would read. “So this is about the Chemist Scandal. I hold to my previous word, as the truth, Dr. Stuart died when you killed my men.” No sooner had Morgan said the words than one of the larger men banged his hand on the table. Morgan jumped despite herself. “Tsktsktsk, Morgan, you know that I did not kill your men. In fact, it was you yourself who did the deed, was it not?” That Barracuda smile was back. “If I killed my men, then you should be doubly sure that the doctor went down with the ship that day.” Morgan seethed through her teeth. “And yet I keep hearing of some wonderful new drug on trade that the good Doctor was experimenting with at the time of his death. One that conjures the user’s dreams as if in real life, lets them relive memories if they so choose? Side effects including chronic nightmares and memory deficiency. Surely you’ve heard of this.” Ava had that look in her eye, a cold, dead look that Morgan had seen before. She looked ready for the kill. Morgan cleared her throat, took a sip of her drink. “News to me.” “You are a very good saleswoman, Morgan, no one will deny you that. But you are a sloppy distributor, and a worse liar.” “What exactly did you come here for, Ava?” Morgan asked. Immediately the large man at the end of the table rose up, and began reaching for Morgan before Ava waved him off. “No, no, Hector, not yet. I am so glad you asked. I desire the immediate handing over of Dr. Stuart, seventy-five percent of your profits, and the basic respect of you always addressing me as Ms. Hansard as you’ve already been generously instructed.” She had stayed her hand, but Hector did not look happy to do the same. Morgan didn’t care. “I told you, Ava, I already killed Dr. Stuart, so I see no reason to give you a penny.” Her stare was defiant, and it was meant to be. Ava shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Ah. You can lead a horse to water, isn’t that right, boys? I see I really have no choice but to finish what I started.” Ava leaned back in her chair, resigned to her decision. “You, or Hector?” Morgan challenged, nodding to the brute ready to pounce next to her. “I don’t need to get my hands dirty, Morgan. If you were a better businesswoman you’d see the sense in that. No, I’ve already set that plan in motion. Hector is only here to ruin your night.” Ava stood up, and the men around the table did the same. Most of them filtered out of the room through the exit in the back of the room, however a handful stayed alongside Ava in a brooding flock. It was Hector alone that approached Morgan. She knew she could take him, but it was going to hurt. ---   It’s the day after Ava visited the house, and I can still feel her presence glooming up the place. Eric has been far from his normal cheery self, and I can tell that all he wants to do is ask me about her. I don’t have the energy to waste on this, and him knowing about the ghosts of tortures past won’t do either of us any good. But I suppose I can’t avoid him forever. We have a breakfast of Irish coffee and eggs, and to be honest I’m not too fond of the eggs. “If we start the scan tomorrow, we can probably find him before he kills anyone.” I say, looking over my cup at him. He nods agreement, but he’s still preoccupied. “I’ll be gone for maybe a day and a half, you know the drill, just be ready in case we run into any-” “Who’s Lucas?” Eric asks. “-problems.” That was not the question I was expecting. “Ava –Ms. Hansard?” he starts. “Ava.” I affirm, downing the rest of my coffee in a gulp. “Ava- she mentioned Darkholme killing Lucas. She said him specifically, like she was trying to get a rise out of you.” “Who knows what that woman was thinking.” I say, and try to leave the table. Eric follows me, refusing to let it go. “Morgan, it worked. You couldn’t look her in the eye and immediately hunted down a drink.” “I’ve been known to hunt down a drink.” I am suddenly occupied with the dishes. “Not like this. Is he- Is this his house?” The way he says it, it’s almost like he already knows. I stop my attempt at the sink and look at him. “What gave you- this is my house.” I give him a cross look, but he sees it in my eyes. “Yeah. This was his house. Once.” I return to my dishes, taking my anger out on the scrubbing. “She said when she came in. ‘Last time I was here he was repairing the place for a family. Now look at it.'" Eric is staring at my back. That’s all he’s going to see for a few seconds. “I don’t have to tell you how long families last in this city.” I say to him. It isn’t long before he leaves.    

Do check my short story. It's a translation. If you don't like it no problem, I just want perfect it.

Do check my short story. It's a translation. If you don't like it no problem, i just want perfect it.

Tom Waits on the radio, sending static kisses. That broken antennae longs to do the same, but hangs its metal head in shame, shame.
Honey, draw that bath water let sorrows swim – piranhas. Bite the flesh that birthed you, demon. Celebrate candles on your cake colored coffin at the wake, wake.
Pretty little doll, smile as you float. Porcelain promises, cupid bow kisses. Sweet haunt- dahlia girl. Heavy is the crown when you’re dead- tiara tainted trinkets on your head.
But yesterday you were- flipping flapjacks in your bathrobe for anyone who’s listen to those stories, baby. Be your own dream boat- boy crazy.
Float, float down the Nile in your basket, baptize yourself in Gentleman Jack – One shot, two shots, never look back.
Meaghan Rhymer