16.

16.
    The images he saw were jumbled and contorted, as if he stood in front of a shattered mirror and attempted to make sense of what went on behind him. In the pictures there was fragmentation and overlap -- he saw everything at once, all splayed and broken on a gauzy canvas -- and these images were smeared across his brain like butter. Garrett saw buildings and people burst into flames and wither into ashes, and vast plains swept by coiling black fumes. He saw the naked, sweaty masses covered in grime, swaying and crumbling and dying. Ghosts of the living visited him: here was mother, here was brother Kirill -- and the dead too, he saw those as well: father and Bess and the flat-nosed old woman next door, the barber and the teacher and the priest, his best friend, his brother’s girlfriend, the one who always brought him chocolates, and the elder man with red circles under his eyes whose name he did not know, the boy with steel rebar through his skull,  children he would never meet again, the bodies in the potter’s field and scattered in the gutter and in the grave, and mother and Kirill were screwing on the coffee table and now he was watching Bess die, and now cutting a throat, now the coffee table and children with their bellies slashed open, coffee table, streets and cities brought to ruin, bleached and crumbled beneath his feet, coffee table.
    He awoke gasping for air. A couple children were up playing checkers -- he barked at them to go back to bed. When they gave him tongue he walloped them both and sent them on their way.
    Against a windowsill, Garrett leaned. Tonight, the sky was the color of asphalt. A milky yellow aura radiated from the city. Disgusting. It was impossible to see a single star in a hole like this.
    A chill which had settled in his bones for the past few weeks gripped him. He pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders. There was no real point in going back to sleep now, not with those ugly, jagged images in his head.
    To his left, something stirred in the shadows. Garrett tensed and leapt upon the intruder. From his belt he drew his dagger and pressed it to the shade’s neck.
    “Who’s there?!” he growled.
    “Just me,” a deep, brassy voice  answered. “Your Casper.”
    With a click, a Zippo lighter sparked to life. A face far darker than the blurred night sky with pale, unblinking eyes loomed over him. The face was attached to a wide, squat neck and sweeping, muscular shoulders. Though he was only a few years older than Garrett, Casper already managed to dwarf him.
    Garrett lowered his dagger, but his hands did not cease to shake. It wasn’t that he was displeased to see Casper -- God love the fellow! -- but to be skulking about in the dark… things like that made him wary.
    “You been looking something awful,” said Casper.
    “Scarring the s**t out of me doesn’t help.”
    Casper’s eyes darted to the weapon in his hands. “You be putting that thing ‘way now, Garrett. I don’t like that look of yours -- it’s half-animal. Lately, you been looking like a sick man.”
    “It’s a cold, that’s all. What’re you coming to me for?”
    “The Andrews man been saying you owe him a hit. There be a couple men causing him trouble.”
    Under his breath, Garrett swore. “Now? I don’t have the time to deal with that sorry cripe! Tell him to take care of his own troubles!”
    “He a yellow-belly, Garrett.”
    “S’not my problem, is it? Tell him Garrett’s done being his donkey’s a*s, won’t you, Love?”
    “Then he stop giving you names,” whispered Casper.
    Garrett paused. Against the dagger’s handle, he fingers twitched. How irritable people could be! Here he had a job to do, and there were shady b******s like this Andrews guy trying to make a bang for their buck out of the whole thing. Someday, he thought with a grin, he’d catch the feller in the middle of something ugly and there’d be no stopping him then -- wouldn’t Amphion just love to get his hands on that kind of crook!
    “Fine,” Garret said. “But for God’s sakes, be dignified about it! Tell him he’ll need to work like a dog for me if he wants me moving a finger for him.”
    “I tell him.” Casper turned to leave, but paused first and added, “The wife says hi.”
    With a grunt, Garrett sent him on his way. He had too much, too much to do -- why was everyone trying to get a piece of him now?!