Lollipop

            Ana was relaxing on the beach. None of her dreams took her by surprise anymore, it seemed. Still, despite her realization that it was all in her imagination, she found the chair very comfortable. The waves came in gently, and the brilliant red sunset was not too bright. Despite the fact that she knew Karin was, in real life, sleeping mere inches from her, Ana felt totally alone.

            It was a nice feeling.

            The waves were coming in, closer and closer, but she knew, somehow, that the water was no danger to her.

            The faceless man was standing there now. Hilariously, he was now wearing a pair of bathing trunks. She had half a mind to smear some zinc sun-block on the spot in the middle of his non-existent face where his nose should have been.

            “Are you sure you don’t want to come back to the cabana? The waves are getting larger.” The faceless man had a soft, yet masculine voice. It made her feel very comfortable because it sounded exactly like her brother Arthur, who she still missed.

            “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve drowned before. The trick is you’ve got to know the right people. A lot of people come out into the ocean thinking it’s about your skills or your dedication. But no, it’s all about connections.”

            The faceless man shrugged. He ran back, away from the ocean. Ana remained. She wondered if her two-piece bathing suit was too revealing, but then reminded herself that the man had no eyes with which to see her.

            There was rain now. Hard, sizzling rain that pricked like needles when it fell on her, and had a revolting smell of rot and old coffee. She knew that it had this smell, yet she was somehow able to separate the sensation from the understanding of it.

            She then became aware of the fact that she was not, as it happened, alone at the beach. Several chairs were lined up, one after another, each with an umbrella that somehow still didn’t manage to catch the acid rain pouring from the sky. On each chair, there was a draugr, desiccated and emaciated, each with his own drink in a hollowed-out coconut.

            One of them, the nearest on her right, turned to look at her – a jerky, pained movement – and raised his cup to her health.

            The sea began to boil. There was no sunset anymore, just the eldritch glow of the Aurora. There was something in the icy water that had now begun to lap up around her chair. The waves seemed to reach out, grabbing at her legs.

            The waves are filled with draugar.

            The massive thing in the water was coming nearer, and the water swelled above it as it surfaced. Ana scrambled backward, attempting to get away from the abomination that was coming for her, but beyond her tiny island of a beach chair, there was only black, grasping water.

            Finally, the water flowed away, and she saw what had emerged.

            He was a short man, probably in his late forties. He was bald on the top of his head, but had messy tufts of dark hair on either side above the ears. He had glossy glasses and puffed out red cheeks that made it look as if he were always laughing too hard.

            He stepped toward her and held out a lollipop.

            “You’ve been a very brave little girl, Ana.”

            She woke suddenly. It was still dark, and Karin had rolled over, wrapping her arm around Ana’s shoulder. Ana considered attempting to go back to sleep, but her sleepiness had broken for now. She carefully slipped out of her girlfriend’s embrace and went downstairs to read, either until she could fall asleep again or it was time to go to work.

            It was still practically night when she went into work. The stars were still visible up above, and every breeze was like a knife in the lungs. The lights were on in the office, though, and she knew there was at least some activity going on.

            She entered and went to open the door to the bullpen, only to have it slam into her hand.

            “Fuck!” she yelled, pulling back her hand in pain.

            Sydow was on the other side. “Sweeney, shit, sorry. Can’t talk.”

            She watched as Sydow, Balgar, and Monhansen filed out, all of them dark and serious. “Where are you going?”

            “Riverbend. Yalton’s calling for reinforcements.”

            “I’m coming,” said Ana.

            They ran out. Balgar hopped into the driver’s seat of one of the electric squadcarts and the rest of them piled in. The drive only took about two minutes. They remained silent, and all that could be heard was the wail of the cart’s sirens. Ana could smell Monhansen’s morning glass of mead on her breath. Ana had always found Monhansen’s habit charmingly traditional, but now she worried that it would impair her abilities.

            It was not hard to figure out where to go. There was a steady drumbeat of gunfire coming from the west, out in Riverbend, the neighborhood closest to the forest.

            “How long since…?” she asked.

            “Ten minutes at the outside,” said Sydow. He checked his gun, pulled out the clip, then put it back, satisfied.

            When they arrived, they could see the house was on fire. It was a fairly normal house – two floors, a little front yard. Yalton was slouched up against the fence. She wasn’t moving.

            There were little high-pitched pings as the bullets started to strike the cart. The four enforcers got out and took cover behind it.

            “Shit! God damn shit!” cried Sydow as he stooped down as low as he could. “How many are there?”

            Monhansen took a deep breath and then said a silent prayer and peeked around the corner, ducking back when the gunfire began again. “I only saw one gunman, but no guarantees.

            “How’s Yalton?”

            “No idea. Couldn’t get a good look.”

            One of the bullets hit the cart’s tire, and it sunk suddenly to one corner.

            Ana could hear a groaning sound coming from the other side of the cart. “Yalton? You still with us?”

            The response was just another pained groan. “We need to get her out of the line of fire.”

            Sydow shook his head. “No, that’s crazy. We need…”

            Balgar was already on it. He had his radio out and was making the call. “This is Port O’James enforcement calling the Colonial Militia. Request assistance. Over.”

            Ana heard Yalton again. “…help…. Please…”

            “That’s her. She’s wounded. Give me some cover.”

            Sydow snapped around, only realizing what Ana was going to do as she was doing it. “Ashtor’s Blood, damn this fucking…” he turned around and fired several shots up at the house.

            Ana crawled over, attempting to remain obscured by the fence as best as possible. When she got there, she could see that Yalton had been hit. There was a wound down in her stomach. She’d had the presence of mind to clamp her hand down on the wound, but she was growing pale. They would need to resolve things here quickly.

            The front door of the house crashed open. Another man was standing there with a pistol on his hand. Unlike the man up on the second floor who was shooting out the window, this one seemed to take no precautions at all to protect himself. He fired at the car. Ana pulled her own gun out and ducked out from behind the fencepost to fire at this new threat just as he let loose a veritable barrage, emptying his pistol’s clip in a single arc.

            She fired once, just as the man was attempting to reload his pistol, and struck him in the head. The man dropped, lifeless.

            The fire had clearly been burning inside for a while, because in a sudden belching crash, the roof caved in, and the windows of the second floor exploded outward.

            That seemed to be the climax. The shooting stopped, and whoever had been on the top floor shooting at them seemed to have been crushed. The ambulance was on its way, and after they had done a sweep around the house, they were finally satisfied that the threat had ended.

            Balgar looked up at the house. “Anyone call the fire department yet?”

            The enforcers all looked at each other.

            Balgar shrugged. “Guess I ought to do that.”

            The ambulance was there shockingly soon, and they were already loading Yalton up when Ana finally decided to take a look at the man she had shot. She approached him slowly. Truthfully, she knew that she had been fully justified in her use of force. It would mean paperwork, true, but somehow, the feeling of remorse she would have expected from shooting a man dead seemed hesitant to arrive.

            When she found him, she realized this was a fully appropriate reaction. This was no man, but a draugr. His skin had grown tight and waxy, and even some of his bones were beginning to protrude out of his skin. She had seen draugar before, back on the Ostrich, and had no trouble identifying him as such.

            Yet there was something different about this one. His eyes were not icy blue, but inky black. And there was some kind of black liquid coming from the wound in his head, as well as an older gash on the forehead.

            The wind slowed, and she caught a whiff.

            It’s the faceless man’s coffee, from the dreams.

            She bent down, looking at the substance dripping from the draugr’s head. Immediately she got a headache from the scent. She stood back up as Sydow approached.

            “Put him down with one shot. Well done. I’ve heard of draugar taking whole clips without so much as a stumble.” He looked down at the corpse. “Holy shit.” Sydow clapped his hand to his forehead.  “I know this guy. He’s… uh… Vymer. That’s his name. Something Vymer. He’s one of the militia patrollers who went missing. Holy crap.”

            “He was raised by them?” she asked.

            “Hey Balgar!” yelled Sydow. “Get on the horn to Ranger-Captain Lisenrush. We’ve got something for her.”

            Ana looked down at Vymer. He’d seemed like such a monster, spraying bullets everywhere, coming out of the burning house like a demon emerging from the bowels of the earth. Yet now, despite the horror of his condition, she saw the human being he had once been.

            He was dead long before you shot him. She thought. It was still a disturbing notion – that she had pulled a trigger, and something that was once a man stopped moving forever.

            And that was when she looked up and saw the faceless man.

            He was standing nearly two blocks away, where the road ended and the forest began. From that distance, he seemed small, yet she was very clearly aware that he was not meant to be there. The faceless man was not supposed to exist outside of her dreams. Yet here he was.

            “Sydow, look…”

            “Sweeney, how are you feeling?” There was a chilly calm in his voice as he spoke, the opposite of his usual excitable bluster. She turned to look back at him and found that his eyes were wide with shock.

            “I’m fine. Do you see that…” she turned back to the faceless man, but he had gone.

            “Are you sure you’re fine?” Sydow took a step backward. His knees were bent, and his arms were slightly raised, as if he expected to need to use them soon.

            “Yes, I’m fine. What is it?”

            Sydow gestured for her to look down. She did.

            There was a bullet hole in her chest.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2012)