Lei broke from a dream about having hot dogs on the beach and rose to the smell of actual hot dogs coming from Val’s kitchen area. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. It was a bright day, the windows were all uncovered and the skylights were dazzling. Outside, everything looked white. It had been snowing for a while now, so that didn’t come as much of a surprise. Not much about this situation was surprising, at least, not anymore. The television was on, showing the stock tickers and humming some classical music at a very low volume. Over on the armchair, Ravel was still asleep, with his feet resting on the ottoman propped up by her yoga mat. Ravel always slept late, even though he slept early and did virtually nothing all day, at least he hadn’t recently. As usual, Val and Patches were nowhere to be seen.

The hot dogs though, they were a surprise and a welcome one, which cannot be said for all surprises. She rolled off the couch and slumped over to the corner of the room occupied by the stove. There were a few well-oiled hot dogs sizzling in a black frying pan. Was it a good idea to let them just sit like that? The place had never caught fire before, but it was better not to take chances. Lei turned the stove off.

The sizzling stopped, but the smell still remained. Lei went back to the long sofa and lay back down and stared at the ceiling. As a cloud floated overhead, the room dimmed a little, and rainbow bulbs flashed in the corners of her vision before she dozed off again.

—

A few things had changed over the past week, few but somewhat important.

The first thing was that Lei and Ravel had started spending nights away from home, on Val’s many couches. They hadn’t done much investigation, but Val had them over often just to listen to him rave about whatever was on his mind and, Lei suspected, bring him food. It was no skin off her back to pick up some bread from the grocery she passed every day, considering the massive reward they had received for capture of the Daily Pants group. In addition, the nights had grown cold, more often than not below freezing by the usual time Lei would have left. So one night after a hard day of arguing with Val over whether or not he needed to clean his fridge, Lei fell asleep on the couch and woke up the next morning having not gone home or washed up at all, and since neither of them thought much of it, so it happened again and again.

And it was not like she had anything to do at home. In fact, the lack of things to do at home seemed that much heavier considering it was the holiday season.

If his equally constant involvement was any indicator, Ravel felt the same. Lei was aware that he had been to her house, and felt the need for some information on him in return. But when asked if he should ‘Call his mom,’ he just said sadly, ‘She won’t worry about me.’

Val had pressed on until Patches gave him a hard shove into the wall. Patches was just as muted as when Lei had met him, but she was starting to believe it was not out of fear of any kind. He did not seem particularly interested in bringing judgment his visitors either, and out of courtesy, Lei gave him little thought. Some of Val’s behavior around him was a little strange, but Lei decided she wasn’t going to bother him any further about that – Val keeping his laundry from festering was not something to complain about.

Another thing that had changed was that Val’s house gained several new additions. These additions were five large pine trees that appeared out of nowhere one morning, standing at each corner of the main room, with one at the center. Lei had walked into the house to see Patches moving the dining table and Val and Ravel propping up the tree in a little plastic stand that did not look like it was going to be able to stand much longer. Ravel was holding the stand steady, located dangerously under the tree.

‘What is going on?’ Lei had asked, setting down a bunch of sandwiches and croissants on the table.

‘Christmas trees,’ Val grunted through a face full of pine needles.

Lei looked around the room. ‘Why do you have five of them?’

‘It balances out the house,’ Patches said, sitting down at the relocated dining table with a cup of coffee and making no move to help. ‘Whenever we have one, the room makes it look tiny, so we always have more than one.’ Lei went and sat down at the table too. Patches watched Val blankly and sipped away. The tree made a threatening tilt to the right, over Ravel’s head. ‘Don’t worry,’ Patches assured Lei, ‘He set up the other four, this one will get done. Eventually.’

‘Yeah, four of them were done before I came in,’ Ravel said, probably wishing he had come in just a little later than he had.

‘Okay. I guess I shouldn’t ask how long the others took.’ Lei started to eat a sandwich until she was showered with pine needles. The tree was now looming menacingly over the table. She set down her breakfast and got up to set the tree straight herself. Somehow completely undisturbed, Patches continued drinking his undoubtedly needle filled coffee.

‘This thing is pretty big for a Christmas tree,’ Lei said, grabbing a few branches to hold the thing steady. It was heavy, too. ‘Where did you get it? Or should I say, them?’

‘A special stash. A private place.’ Val tugged at the top of the tree unhelpfully and Lei struggled to get the tree back up against Val’s flailing and frowned in Patches’ direction.

‘Don’t look at him’ Val chuckled, peeking out from between needles and branches. ‘Not even he knows. I cut these things myself. There’s no better way to start the holiday season than cutting your own Christmas trees! Oh, look, a pine cone. Want to save it?’ Without getting a response, Val dropped the cone from up above. It bounced off Lei’s head and plopped into Patches’ coffee. She was too busy to tell if this made him put it down.

‘How did you get all of these trees here?’ Lei asked.

‘Through the door.’

‘No, I mean… did you get your friend to help you transport them or something? No offense, but I can’t imagine you carrying five trees even down a few blocks by hand.’

‘Friend?’ Val asked suspiciously, as though he had never heard of such a thing.

‘Like… the bike gang. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen them recently, but it had been pretty cold…’

‘Oh, no! No, nope. They’re back with their families for the winter, I suspect,’ Val laughed quickly. ‘No. The answer is simpler than you think. I just put them into a van and drove them back.’

‘I didn’t know you could drive,’ Ravel mumbled from under the tree.

‘Everybody can drive,’ Val said.

The Christmas trees were a big thing for Lei. They weren’t common in town, the only pine forest was relatively far out, on the hills surrounding the house of the Architect. She genuinely did wonder how Val had gotten at them, but that wasn’t all. She also wondered how Val had really transported them back to his house, since she couldn’t imagine Val driving five trees out of the hills on his own and surviving, let along making it back and setting it all up without injury. There was no van to be seen. It was just too unbelievable. But then, Val hadn’t been himself recently.

Something else had happened, and it was something that seemed to upset him a lot. Every day he woke up, earlier as the days went by, and checked the papers, checked the news, checked his long-disused computer on the desk in the corner, and strode around the house and went for long, silent walks as if waiting for something. It took few days and one fit of cleaning before Lei realized what was bothering him

The cake killer had disappeared.

The giveaway was when Val began cleaning his fridge. He lifted the many fuzz-crusted, moldy cakes off the shelves and set them out on the kitchen counter. Lei was unfortunate enough to be in the room at the time. The smell was awful, like the corpses these cakes had replaced. No doubt some of them were looking even worse, but Lei wasn’t about to put her face against them. Val did just that.

‘You haven’t seen any bodies between here and home, have you?’

‘No,’ was all Lei had to say. She was leafing through a book of Val’s that looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time. It was a guidebook to the outer city.

‘Any cakes?’

‘No.’

‘This doesn’t make sense. There should always be at least one or the other.’

‘Maybe all the killers are on vacation. It’s almost Christmas.’

It was half a joke. This of course meant that Val took it completely seriously. ‘But killers don’t usually have family and friends to spend time with, do they?’

‘I don’t know if that’s true. Plenty of killers have families. Well, and the cake killer isn’t really killer. I think a pastry distributor might actually get kind of busy around the holiday season. Making cakes for Christmas parties and New Year’s and stuff. If that’s the case, there wouldn’t be time to go chasing around bodies.’

Val started unwrapping a decrepit black cake that may not have been black originally. ‘Alright. That’s fair. But answer me this: would the cakes be for their own families or for others?’

Lei shook her head, but not as an answer. She got off the sofa and headed for the refrigerator.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Where else could I be going?’

‘Oh.’ Val returned to his cake, sweeping off the plastic wrap like a tablecloth. The cake’s edges were gelled firmly to the insiders of its wrapping, and in removing it he tore its skin off almost entirely. Black crumbs (or mold) flew to the floor. Lei tried not to look as she opened the middle refrigerator door and stepped in. Val started to open up another cake. ‘I turned the heating on in the back room this morning, like you asked.’

From inside the fridge, Lei muttered, ‘Thanks,’ before closing the door behind her.

The half-bathroom half-lounge room behind Val’s house was paneled with glass, so on cold mornings it became the one reason why Lei wished she’d returned home rather than slept over. She swore it was colder back there than in the refrigerators themselves. She and Ravel constantly had to remind Val to turn on the heating in the back or the toilet water would freeze over. That wasn’t the only problem, but it was the most alarming.

Warm and lit up, though, the room was even more impressive than Val’s front room. The room was bathed in shades of lavender from the glass, and gold of the lights within, with frosted glass that made the world outside just look like a sunset-colored blur. The outside view as hopefully just as obscure, it was a bathroom, after all – but with winter’s arrival, the glass had grown even frostier, making it the perfect place to rest if Val remembered to turn on the heating.

Lei didn’t really have to use the bathroom. She just liked looking around in peace and sitting on the raised platform at the top of the winding staircase, and she had a guide book that she was interested in reading today. Patches had let her take the dusty beanbag off his reading area/dictionary collection in the front room and bring it in the back so she could sit in a room away from Val’s disturbances and read or nap in peace until Ravel arrived and decided he needed to use the bathroom.

Ravel and Lei only used the back bathroom. Patches and Val seemed to use one behind the side door, where Lei guessed the bedrooms had to be, since there wasn’t anywhere else left in the house that he hadn’t seen but that side room. The heating controls were also apparently back there, as well as washing machines and a whole host of other supplies, because Val and Patches always went back there if something was needed – lightbulbs, soap, wires, anything.

Lei was only vaguely interested in the side room anymore. She and Ravel never mentioned it, and to Val’s credit, he never gave them a reason to go in. It just served as a sort of magical closet where their hosts got changed, went to the bathroom, turned the heating on, or went to sleep. Lei didn’t feel much of a need to observe any of these things, so she let the matter rest.

Even more restful for her was the fact that Val was most definitely not at rest. He didn’t have much to talk about, no grand stories or theories because there was nothing to theorize. Val seemed to be the kind of person who couldn’t come up with a solution unless the problem was practically bowling him over. He looked for these disasters everywhere, he was out for hours at a time. But he would just come back with some dinner or some detergent or tissues because there was nothing else to be found. He seemed compelled to bring something back whenever he went out, and after the twentieth bulk package of paper towels (the third that day) Patches confined him to the house.

‘It’s also going to snow a lot this week,’ he explained to Val. ‘And it’s freezing, nobody should be out there. I’m afraid you’ll catch something and bring it back in the house.’

‘What, like a live animal?’ Ravel asked.

‘Since when does Val bring anything live home?’ Lei muttered, ‘I think he means the flu. Or maybe another shipment of bleach.’

‘Either way,’ Patches said slowly, rubbing hands, which were just shedding their scabs from the restaurant incident, ‘Do you think you could work from indoors for a while?’

Although Val gave Patches a practically inhuman stare down at the time of discussion, he tried to do as advised. He got about as much done indoors as out, which is to say he got no work (as he would have defined it) done at all. What he did get done, was a lot of everyday tasks that he probably should have been doing anyway, but generally did not.

He washed the dishes and clothes. He remembered to turn the heating on every day, and turn all the lights off at night. He filed away his papers (which as suspected were mostly full of doodles) into cabinets and even discarded a few. He calibrated the lights of all the Christmas trees to flash one second later than lights of the tree to the left of it, causing it to look like a blob of lights were circling the room. He swept away the fallen pine needles. He prepared specialty dishes for the cats, personalized for each cat, with their favorite cereal and chopped cold cuts and bagel pieces and microwaved to lukewarm. He sat on the armchair with the black cat on the armrest and his orange cat on his lap with the television on. He didn’t always watch the stock channels or the new either, sometimes it was one of the entertainment channels, sometimes even cartoons.

It all sounded quite normal when spelled out, but it really wasn’t normal at all. Val sitting very still in front of cartoons, or a computer or book, covered in cats, wearing a shirt that wasn’t a complete eyesore, surrounded by Christmas tree lights flickering around him in a circle – it was even more disconcerting than how he usually was. He was not content or discontent but the most uncomfortable space in between.

Lei didn’t even feel like taking cracks at him when he was like that. There was nothing to get out of it.

—

Another time, another day. As the snow piled up against the walls of the brick block in which the company was staying, Lei entered the back room.

They had eaten the hot dogs for lunch. Val’s shelves were loaded with every kind of condiment so they had made a pretty impressive meal. Well, hers had been impressive. Patches only used ketchup, Val only used mustard and something that vaguely resembled relish that had been left in the meat compartment of the fridge, and Ravel didn’t want anything and thus ended up with the least impressive looking hot dog. Too bad for them, they didn’t know how good barbecue sauce, onions and hummus tasted alongside the classic sauces. The cats agreed, although they had tried to sample some of everybody’s plates.

It had been hard to tell from concrete walls in the front room, but there was a blizzard whipping up outside, and Lei could not see anything beyond the glass panels but what looked like white static, as if they were all small purple televisions that were all not working. The ceiling was entirely blanked out by the heavy snowfall. How many layers were piled up there? It had snowed nonstop since the day before and Lei and Ravel had spent the night at Val’s once again. The snow was still so thick that the plows hadn’t been through, and it was just getting worse. The roof seemed to be creaking. Lei stood still and listened. It was more like a faint tapping. Was the snow really falling that hard? Could it be hailing? Heading over to the sink, Lei sighed. She probably wasn’t heading home anytime soon.

She had not brought her own toothbrush. Two days ago the weather had looked just fine. It had snowed for maybe an hour or two, but lightly, nothing more than slush, but suddenly there was all this. Thankfully, Val had bought a bumper pack of ten toothbrushes (and five tubes of toothpaste) as well as a host of other grooming products that he had no intention of using himself, so she and Ravel had been well supplied.

Lei turned on the tap and let the water warm up a little. She pulled out her toothbrush and toothpaste out from the cabinet behind the overhanging mirror. Over the spray of running water, she could still faintly hear the wind outside. She increased the tap’s flow. The room with all of its violet glass panes began to steam up.  Lei pulled a towel off a metal ring hanging to her left and wet it, splashed her face.

There was a heavy thump from somewhere on the roof.

Flinging the towel down, Lei frowned. She looked upward, but of course, even though the roof was made of glass, there wasn’t much she could see. Just snow and steam, and purple tinted squares of glass. There was nothing to hear but the spray of water from the tap. Slowly, Lei returned back to her towel.

There was another thump.

Was it the snow? Lei set the towel down again and turned off the tap. It sounded too solid, too heavy; there was a difference between dropping a brick and dropping a pillow. Was Val up to something in the other room? Before she could head over to the fridge and make and accusations, the sound came again.

Thump.

-Accompanied by something dark and hard distinctly landing on the roof. A shadowy clump appeared at the edge of the rooftop, dipped in the snow so its bottom tip could be seen in the window. Lei squinted at it. It was still for a while, then began to move. It dragged itself through the coating of snow, pulling a line through the whiteness of the roof. Lei watched it slog slowly from one side to the other, against the raging wind and sleet, approaching the other side of the house, the roof over the main room, out of sight. Out of sight leaving nothing but the cleared-away trail scratched through the snow. The trail was even beginning to cover up again-as if nothing had even happened. But when she held her breath, Lei could still hear the scraping, outside, up top, but too close for comfort.

She toweled her face off quickly and barged through the refrigerator back into the living room, and almost tripped over a bowl of cereal that had been lying right in the middle of the kitchen area.

‘Dammit Val, I just showered too!’ she yelled, forgetting all else in that moment and bending to pick rainbow colored crumbs off her feet as the cats around her scattered.

‘And I just put those bowls out,’ Val whined, slumped in a chair in front of the television. The usual and much-missed stock ticker was floating across the screen, but Lei noticed a second marquee of text running across the bottom of the screen that was not usually there. Snow Warning. Citizens advised to stay indoors.

‘Roads and public institutions closed for the day. Storm expected to pass in the night.’

‘Guess we’re stuck here again today,’ Ravel mumbled, unseen on the long couch next to the dining table. Lei caught sight of his arm rising up momentarily to rub his forehead. ‘Man. I haven’t haven’t had a headache this bad in a while. Do you guys keep any aspirin?’

‘Ask Patches,’ Val responded unhelpfully.

‘Where is he?’

‘Lei, go ask him if we have aspirin,’ Val said, slumping further into his chair.

‘No.’ Lei blinked the frustration from her mind and remembered the task at hand. ‘Look, I need to ask you something. On your roof I just saw-‘

‘I’m up here,’ Patches said from atop of the metal platform where his books were kept. He had several of them lying around him, although Lei could not imagine them needing re-sorting. Those massive reference books always looked in perfect order. ‘What were you asking about?’

‘Aspirin,’ Ravel said without getting up.

‘On the roof.’ Lei interrupted.

Patches gave a wary glance at the skylights above his head. They were all sealed tight and completely covered in snow. Looking back down at the masses he said, ‘Aspirin is in one of the kitchen cabinets.’

‘Okay,’ Ravel groaned, still flat on his back.

‘I was in the back room,’ Lei protested desperately now, ‘and something – someone, was walking… dragging across the roof. Sounded like something heavy, too.’ Noting their extensive lack of concern, her voice raised. ‘What if it’s someone trying to break in? Those gangsters from last week? At a time like this the police aren’t going to be able to come help us-‘

‘Why wouldn’t they just ring the doorbell then?’ Val asked. ‘Using the roof is such a hassle.’

‘You can say that again,’ Ravel said flatly. ‘Ow, my head…’

‘Oh that’s right, you only make your employees use the roof,’ Lei muttered. ‘Your enemies are free to use the front door. Do you even leave them a key or something?’

‘Employees…?’ Val’s eyes flickered but didn’t leave the television screen.

At that moment, right above their heads, there was a clunk, something heavy against glass- The glass of the skylight, not the one above Patches’ head but the one just to the left of it. Four pairs of eyes turned upward to gaze at it. There was a void in the snow covering on that very window. A small void, but a sign that something had been there. Something small but heavy, and moving, like somebody’s foot, smacking down on the glass and then dragging on through the snow.

The sky through the void was dark.

‘Wow, what time is it?’ Val asked, still slumped so far down in his chair that Lei couldn’t see anything but his mop of black hair. ‘I thought it was morning. Didn’t we just have lunch?’

Ravel sat up. ‘Listen. Do you hear that?’

They were all very quiet. For a good few moments the classical music drifting from the television was all they could hear. That and the wind outside. But then, another thump in the snow.

Patches frowned and stood up, looking at the skylight above his head. Lei and Ravel were also locked on. Lei cautiously approached the staircase. The thing was moving. It was moving to the right, over the raised platform in the middle of the room, and this time they were going to see it, they were determined-

Thump.

‘What is it?’

Halfway up the stairs, Lei squinted at the dark shape that had dropped onto the skylight. It was a thin, webby looking thing, and Patches’ head was largely blocking her view. She inched up a little more.

Thump.

Lei scrambled up the rest of the stairs as another delivery plopped itself onto the window. Patches was still standing there motionless. Overstepping his piles of books, Lei took a closer look at the view through the snow. The thin shape was now piled under a mass of other things, some of similarly slim shapes, some chunky, some bony, but all strange bent sticklike creatures, rolling in the wind… everything but… a head-

A bald and wrinkled human head in a bag, crusted with ice, staring with blank milky eyes down into the room below.

Their forms began to take shape after that, but then there was really only one distinctive form to see other than the head. They were arms (and a few might have been legs, but their feet were out of sight.) Tipped with blooms of swollen or skeletized fingers, dead hands and forearms and elbows in a messy pile fallen through the snow. Right on top of a window. Someone wanted the people inside to see this.

‘What is it?’ Ravel asked.

‘Come up here if you’re really interested, although I don’t think you are,’ Lei said, feeling vaguely ill and vaguely reminiscent of something awful they had seen not long ago. Something that she didn’t remember being entirely dangerous but-

But she wouldn’t have reacted as Patches did.

‘Wait, are you really going to open that?’ she choked in horror, almost tripping over the piles of books lying around. There was an especially high pile of Russian Dictionaries that nailed her right in the shins. ‘Someone dumps a mountain of body parts on your roof and you want to let them in?’

‘Body parts?’ Ravel squeaked.

‘Body parts?’ For the first time in the last few hours, Val perked up and tilted his head away from the television.

Patches has stopped his course of action because it looked like Lei was going to throttle him and if she did he had to defend himself. She also looked like she might leap down and throttle Val and Ravel and that would be a bad time to have the window open. He looked curiously at Val for a verdict.

‘All those things are going to fall into the house!’ Lei said, gesturing purposefully at Patches’ collection of books that were lying around their feet. She noticed that a good number of them had papers sticking out the edges. How many of them were letters like the one she had seen? Now that he was back she really wouldn’t have time to inspect any further.

Val was now sitting up in his chair, alert as ever.

Patches looked from Val to the roof, eye to eye with the (possibly) dismembered head, as if asking it to wait a little longer for the privileged judges indoors to make up their minds.

‘What kind of stuff is it?’ Ravel asked unwisely.

‘Hands, mostly.’

‘Hands?’

‘Yeah, hands. Why would you want to let in somebody who dumped that stuff on your roof?’

‘Nobody should be outside on a day like today,’ Patches explained slowly, watching as Val got out of his seat and walked towards the bedroom door.

‘Nobody should have body parts dumped on their roof, but look at where we are now,’ Lei said.

Val had exited into the side room and closed the door behind him without any further instruction.

Patches looked back at the window, perplexed.

‘At least they dusted the snow away.’

‘Yeah, to make room for that.’

Patches took a few steps away from the window. Lei breathed a sigh of relief as quietly as she could, but the sigh broke off when she saw he was still looking up at the window, and nudging books to the sides of the platform with his feet.

‘Might want to step back,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

Sheepishly, he continued to shuffle the books. ‘I forgot. It’s a good thing you stopped me from pulling it open. Would have broken the connectors – those are controlled from another room.’

At that, the window creaked once in warning, then flipped open. Wind roared in. And of course, with it came the snow and ice and parts of people, rattling down the glass and landing with an unceremonious flapping noise right under Lei and Patches’ noses. The head dropped to the bottom of the pile as twenty or so bluish white disembodied hands came raining down. The ice had taken its toll, and a few cracked and chipped with the impact with the black metal balcony. One rolled down the edge of the platform and onto the floor of the dining room, shattering against the tiles and sending Ravel and the two cats diving for cover behind the counter. One of the frozen hands was thrown from the pile and landed against Lei’s pant leg, and she fumbled to get rid of it without actually touching it. This too went spiraling down into the kitchen area.

Finally, though this wind was still tearing at their ears and eyes, the last figure dropped down from the rooftop. A heavy cloud of blackness at first, but as the wind unraveled his massive coat and black scarf, a face came into a view. A stern frostbitten face, yelling something at them in ferocious competition with the wind blowing right at his back. Patches twisted a frown at him and gestured confusion. The newcomer also gesticulated wildly, mouth flapping the entire time, dark eyes wild. Their faces were eerily similar, Lei thought of the two fumbling figures. Patches and the newcomer did indeed look quite alike.

The man who might have been Patches’ brother scowled and reached into his coat. Instinctively, Lei prepared to make a run for it, although with all the snow streaming in running down these metal steps seemed risky.

The man pulled out what appeared to be a black stick from his overcoat. About the length of a walking stick, but smooth and slightly curved. He twirled it in his hand and with a quick, jab, sent the window frame grating back to its original position, clicking it shut. The stream of snow stopped just a suddenly as it has started.

Lei’s ears were still ringing as the man came to realize he had landed with his feet right in his pile of loose body parts. His heavy black boots (no doubt the source of the earlier thumping) had squashed clean through a particularly well preserved hand, turning it to a gooey mess. He fumbled a little and almost collided with a stack of encyclopedias. Jumping away at just the right moment, he landed on another severed hand. This one, well frozen, broke with a crunch.

She regained full hearing just as he began to curse violently.

—

Upon falling into the house and swearing horribly, the visitor had gotten to his feet and leapt down to the bottom floor, bringing only his strange looking black stick and the dismembered head in a clear plastic bag with him. He raised the stick up against the dining table and slammed himself down onto one of the chairs, arms crossed expectantly. The snow had immediately begun to melt off his person and his hair and long black scarf were now dripping into a puddle on the floor.

Patches sidestepped the pile of parts he had left sitting on the metal platform and went down the stairs slowly to meet him. Lei waited a while before following, but maintained a good distance from this angry stranger.

Up close, his face did not resemble Patches as much as she had expected, although from the back they still could have been essentially the same person. Of course his face was not obscured by any gauzy eye patch. He also seemed to be contorted into a permanent snarl that made Lei scowl at the sight of it. When the architect’s black cat came to sniff his grime and frost coated boots, he gave a hearty kick in its direction. She scowled even further.

Supporting her theory that they may be relatives, Patches seemed completely unwilling to speak to him, and the sentiment was returned. He filled a glass of hot water and halfheartedly placed it down at the table, where it steamed into the visitor’s face but went untouched.  Patches shrugged and went and crashed down on the couch in front of the television. As he reached to turn the volume up, the guest coughed and rasped through a scratched throat, ‘When’s he coming out?’

Val poked his head out from the side room door.

‘You!’ the guest roared, leaping from his seat and throwing one filthy boot onto the tabletop. One hand shot out and grabbed his stick, and he proceeded to pull it in half – at least, that’s what it looked like until he was done.

‘He has a knife!’ Ravel moaned, and tried to hide himself behind the couch he had been sitting on.

‘It’s more like a sword…’ Lei backed up a step and searched around for something to defend herself with and settled on the metal coat rack. Would that work?

‘Mine’s bigger,’ Val commented.

Lei had never really seen a sword in action before and she doubted that the movies she had seen were a good indication of their properties. The man’s sword didn’t look like any sword she had ever seen, though, other than having a blade and being large enough to be dangerous when swung. The blade was rounded on one side, and the handle, which was as long as the blade, was made of some cheap black plastic. In addition, the sheath now lying on the table looked like it was wrapped in paper mache.

‘Put that away,’ Val said.

‘You couldn’t have opened up a little sooner?’ the stranger complained. ‘Are you going deaf, or what?’

‘It’s pretty windy today. Chill out,’ Val said.

‘Augh!’ screamed the stranger who was not a fan of puns, and he waved his ‘sword’ wildly, sending Ravel diving further away with the black cat at his heels. Lei groaned and it looked like Val was in no rush to do anything that would calm this person down. The sword made an unpleasant metal jingling as it went flying. After a few swipes Lei realized that there was a bell tied to the hilt end.

Unfortunately, Val noticed it around the same time. ‘Is that new?’ he asked, ‘It’s very festive!’ He took a step closer for a better look, and the man with his eyes bulging lowered the blade for better aim. ‘Or is it to let people know you’re coming? Soldier’s honor or something? Hard hearing it over all the-‘

‘Keep it civil,’ Patches murmured, looking over only somewhat concerned. He was cracking the knuckles of a fist as he spoke.

The festive samurai bubbled over with rage, and grabbed the plastic bag off the table and leapt over to Val. He skidded to a slippery halt and thrust the bag with the head into Val’s chest. ‘Here! Take it and I’ll go! It was a mistake to even try to come to you for help!’

‘What’s this?’

‘What does it look like? It’s a head! Think of it as… a going away present! I’m going away!’

‘Going away? But you just got here…’ Val looked up at the skylight. ‘And the weather is terrible.’ The stranger finally looked ready to cause property or bodily damage at this point but Val turned to him brightly. ‘Oh, you haven’t introduced yourself, have you? Hey everybody. This is Ritz. Ritz, you’ve met Patches.’

‘I know,’ was all Ritz said. Patches did not even have any input.

‘And these are my new assistants, Lei and Ravel.’ The two assistants raised their hands limply as Ritz turned his bloodshot glare to them. Lei tried to glare back, but this man had a hell of a glare. He must have been incredibly angry, but then having been a longtime associate of Val’s in this manner it wasn’t a surprise.

‘Seems like they don’t know me,’ Ritz muttered.

‘I guess they don’t. But they should. He’s a very important man, you know,’ Val said gravely to his assistants. ‘Think very hard, who do you think he-‘

Ritz swiveled onto him. ‘What kind of game are you playing with them? You took them into my house but they don’t even know my name! What the hell are you people even doing?’

‘We’ve been in his house?’ Lei asked.

‘Yes, don’t you remember?’ Val said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

‘But you just said we don’t know him!’

‘See!’ Ritz said triumphantly. ‘At least your assistant has half a brain!’

‘We’ve been in maybe three or four houses since we started working here,’ Ravel put in helpfully, although it wasn’t clear who he was trying to prove himself to. Growing more uncomfortable with Ritz’s glare, he pushed on. ‘With all the… body parts he brought in I’d guess it’s the greenhouse.’

‘We might have a full brain now!’ Ritz howled.

‘Why did you come all the way here in the storm?’ Val asked.

‘Why? Why?? Just a few seconds ago, you couldn’t care less! You bring all kinds of people into my house when I’m not there are you think you have the right to ask why? Why? I’ll tell you why! My house has been broken! Not just broken into, broken! Smashed, ripped apart! While I was out somebody broke in and today all my beautiful flowers are covered in snow!’

‘Oh, you’re that guy,’ Lei said under her breath.

Ritz continued with gusto. ‘And you know what else! My parts were gone! All the parts I’d collected and still needed their owners found! So many murders – I assume they were murders, who can live without their legs! All my work! All I have been working on, all that I have been allowed to work on since you came to me! Gone! All that was left were these around the building… and…’ he suddenly looked conservative. ‘And it all looked like your fridge. All that goddamn cake, the small ones in paper. I hate cake!’

Val observed Ritz bubbling down to a feverish calmness after his outburst, and gradually rose to a frenzy himself. It was all quite surreal. Ritz sighed and slung himself into a couch conclusively, and Val leaped for the coat rack. His toe met the plastic bag of pieces sprawled onto the ground and he soon joined them. Lei sighed and Ritz sank deeper into the couch as though trying to hide himself.

‘Ravel, put these away for me, please,’ Val said with his face in the carpet.

Ravel was the furthest away from the bag, and as everyone’s vacant gazes turned to him he pulled away even further. ‘Aren’t you going to… you know, have a look at them first?’

‘No!’ Ritz roared, rising from the folds of the couch, ‘They’re not for him, they’re mine!’ He swiveled towards each of them in turn with an accusatory jingle. ‘They were all I could find from my collection. My fridges got ruined. Whoever broke in knocked a bunch of them over, and threw one off the building. Brought to pieces. All my pieces, lying in the snow! No. I brought them here to put into your fridge. That’s all.’

‘You’re not putting that head in my fridge,’ Val muttered soothingly.

‘Why the hell not? It can’t be worse than what you always put in it.’

‘I just cleaned it out.’

For the first time in the half hour since he’d turned up, Ritz’s rage staggered to a halt. ‘You threw out your cakes? I thought you needed them.’

‘I do. I did. But they were beginning to mold.’

‘A little more than that,’ Lei added.

‘Are you okay?’ Ritz asked cautiously, and Lei noticed his hands closing around the weird plastic loop of his sword grip.

‘You should have brought me the cakes you were given so I can restart the collection,’ Val said, in a way that was presented like a joke but almost definitely was not.

Once again, the trigger was hit. Ritz flew at him, Val ducked, and the back of the armchair facing the television split in a messy burst of red cotton. Val laughed, fumbled briefly on his hands and knees and finally succeeded in grabbing his coat off the coat rack. As Ritz perched on the kitchen counter menacingly, Patches finally decided discipline him by grabbing the back of his damp jacket and throwing him to the floor, where he landed and somersaulted away like a loose tire tread back to his pile of body parts, which released a pool of thick sludge as he landed on it. Val made for the door.

‘A coward!’ Ritz declared, pointing what now was clearly half a pair of hedge clippers at Val’s back.

‘Val, I don’t think this is a good time-‘ Patches began.

‘What the hell is wrong with all of you? Lei cried.

‘I could ask the same question. I’m just off to do my job. Yo, fantasy samurai.’ He nodded at Ritz. ‘You didn’t want this to happen, you should have just left town like the others.’ He frowned, apparently making a few complex mental calculations. ‘You know, it might not be too late.’

‘I just wanted to help, but if this is how I am paid…’

‘Hey, I’m following the lead you brought me. Actually, why don’t you come with?’

Ritz frowned. Lei, backed to against the metal stairway with Ravel after the last outburst of activity, did not quite catch his expression. He might have been looking at the two wary assistants. Maybe he was looking at the obsidian faces make by the metal bars behind them. Or maybe he was looking at Val’s bizarrely tidy office area, that even when ordered, went entirely unused. Lei recalled the desk in the greenhouse, a similar looking area, where this guy must have stacked his papers so nicely only to have Val and company break in and rip pieces to scribble on, and send into complete disarray by pulling down his tarp.

One thing or another, it led to this: ‘I don’t think we should… No. Don’t go outside.’

There were a number of reactions that didn’t make much sense to anybody but themselves. Ravel stood up looking calmer than Lei had ever known him to look, although maybe he the final shreds keeping his brain together had finally popped. Patches look more prepared than Lei had ever seen him look in their short time of acquaintance. Val readied to open the door to the worst storm in five years.

‘That’s a strange way of putting the catchphrase,’ Val said, and ripped the door wide open.

The massive snowdrift that piled its way in was the first sign that this was a bad idea. With an explosive howl the storm rushed straight in, bombarding the ears and eyes and skin of anybody within ear, eye or skinshot. The heat that had previously filled the house disappeared entirely. Sounds of inevitable groaning or protest that usually arose in times like these were also lost to the wind. In fact it seemed like there was little space for anything other than the angry waves of snow. There was nothing to do but wait it out, unless you thought enough of yourself to close the door, and/or assault whoever was insisting on holding it open.

Only vaguely sure of where she was, Lei made her way through the room, treading carefully. She would have liked to look down and make sure she wasn’t stepping on the bag Ritz had brought in, or walking into the man himself, but there wasn’t much to do in the way of caution. Her frostbitten outstretched fingers met something jutting out where she thought the door probably was, so she gave it a hard shove, the kind of shove she wanted to give Val for opening it in the first place.

The object caved, swung backward. Blocked the wind flow directly in front of her face. Slowly, the incoming storm thinned as its passageway grew slimmer. As her vision cleared up bit by foggy bit, Lei noticed a hand helping her, pulling the door closed from the outside. At its other end was Patches, being all but shredded by the wind. Behind him, a coat he must have grabbed upon leaving was flying out almost horizontally spiked in the wind.

‘Seriously?’ was all Lei choked up.

As if hearing someone calling him, he turned and stared out into the barrage. He stared out for a good few moments then turned back, and like clockwork Lei reeled back a little. His bandage was coming off and it apparently hadn’t been changed in a while.

‘We all have our jobs to do,’ he seemed to say.

‘What?’

He shook his head, too frustrated to offer more. ‘Stay safe,’ he may or may not have mouthed, and tugged the door’s edge further closed before leaving the rest to Lei.

Lei caught it before it could fly open again and gave it a final grand slam. The tiny piece of metal clicked into place, the thing from opening up the maw of the ninth circle. Finally, leaning against the rattling doorknob, she breathed. She looked over the room to gather her thoughts together again. The sofa would have been nice, but it was soaked through with snow now that the heat was kicking in again. There was also an unpleasant pile of body parts in the middle of the sitting area. The last bit of the room to be freed from barrage was the corner occupied by the television and one of the five Christmas trees. A lot of the ornaments and pines had blown off and were sticking to the wall behind it, but it still somehow maintained the feeling of impending Christmas with its new layer of snow. The television also had a new festive coat.

Looking much less festive sitting on the black iron stairway, Ravel was rubbing his eyes like he’d seen something bright when nothing could have been father from the dull, stupid truth.

The shivering cats surface behind him, staring at him and Lei with their bright, beady eyes. Lei stared right back at them.

 

—

A bad night for a trip. Miles down the interstate the snow was not as hard, the storm’s center had passed and things were quieting down and taking some time to be re-righted. Unfortunately for the holiday travelers, quite a few heavy things have been taken down. Under the navy blue sky, dusted with flakes and weak stars, a flaming, crackling, leaking, heaving behemoth of a container truck was laying on the road in exactly such a way that it blocked any lane from passing. Judging by the number of passenger cars lying prone around it, some had tried to pass either during or after the accident and failed. A few of those cars were on fire too, forming what looked from the rest stop to be a bonfire surrounded by smaller bonfires. How lovely a sight for the coming holiday.

Uriel was in the crowded gas station diner with a mashed container of pizza, listening to a large man preach about gas tank explosions. He was also trying to hide from a few of his bike owning friends, who had followed him that far from the city when they really had no reason to. He believed he would be able to throw them off his trail eventually, but the giant blazing roadblock on the freeway had put a damper on those plans.

Besides, it was sort of nice knowing that someone was around looking for you, for even the smallest non-antagonistic reason, even if they were just there because they hadn’t realized they were also being disposed of.

He reached for his cup of coffee and realized that someone had knocked it over with a broad sweep of an arm. The place was really too crowded, but even if he wanted to wait outside at this point, it would take too long to wade through the bodies to the exit.

At one point, Uriel would have been gritting his teeth, letting his greasy fringe hang over his face and sullenly contemplating that he really could, if he wanted to, drive a car through all these people and end them for good. That’s what he would have done, five or six years ago.

He would have done more that contemplate and let his hair droop.

What he did now was sink very low down into the plastic foam of the bench, pulled his fraying, restitched collar up and closed his eyes.

I drove by this car once on the highway, it was knocked over, lying on its side you know, and windows were broken and the tires were melting.

Someone opened the door of the diner, letting in the chill for a just a moment, triggering a wave of complaints from the people at the other end of the dinner. Listening to the talk diffuse, Uriel once again felt the twitch of some little monster in his head that had been hibernating hint that he would have once cursing right along with them. Maybe even louder and more threateningly.

He smiled a little inwardly at that. It was like looking at a baby picture. Something that you can smile at with a kind of scorn that you are comfortable with because nobody is hurt by it but yourself, in a form that no longer exists. A baby doing stupid, dangerous things because he didn’t understand what ‘people’ really were. He didn’t quite believe he was a person himself. Something, thankfully, gone for good.

Then his infant self reminded him of Val, and he immediately purged that train of through from his mind. He tried, anyhow. The problem was, unlike Uriel’s image of his baby self, Val was hard to dismiss, to not take seriously, as much of a cartoon he tended to be.

People really hated rebuilding, and Val’s wrecking power tended to make an impact.

It was kind of a challenge the first time to hear him out, but when lives were lost it wasn’t the kind of mistake anyone would make again. To be fair, Uriel told himself, there had been no logical sign of danger the first time they had met. A few threats thrown around, but that wasn’t anything special! Val had not even gone through with his threats. Things had been a little worse.

Just… a little.

I felt the heat, even though I was on the other side of the barrier and everything. I was totally sure it was gonna explode just as I passed by… haha.

The one reason why Uriel was really grateful he was no longer a violent child was that it enabled him to live through the utter disaster that led to meeting Val, having his favorite coat destroyed, needing crutches and a couple thousands of dollars worth of surgery, and having to live through Val all those times to come.

And unlike a kid, Val didn’t seem en route to maturity or development towards something safe and pleasant or an attempt at normal which Uriel liked to believe himself to be, at the very least. He was willing to admit that at one point he did want to be abnormal. But did that really warrant what happened? To back away from safety and consider yourself at a better perspective was just find until your rear smacked into the beast waiting at the other end of the spectrum.

Val wasn’t the only one there, either. Uriel had met, gained and then lost far more than he ever would have wanted to for the sake of appearing a little out of place.

They might be with him now.

This contemplation stirred Uriel enough to shift as much as he could in his seat, unsealing some flatulence from his neighbor which had previously been kept between the seat and row of bodies shoved together. Pulling as far away as he could (a few centimeters) he set his pizza on the table.

Were Val’s friends with him now? If they could be called friends. Who knew if they were trustworthy?

Although in times of extreme danger there was really no safer place to right between the lunatics themselves. Uriel couldn’t imagine anything that could beat the old team.

Although he had found a hard time being one of them, it was a hell of a lot better than opposing them. He had been lucky enough not to face them before the group had more than a single member, but he had seen the results close as he ever would.

Uriel was quite pleased that he had managed to eventually pull himself from their influence, they did not rely on him as much, and he certainly did not have to rely on them. He assumed that was so. It was because of Val that Uriel knew anything about the other guys. They were fucked as hell. Some of them had massive problems that Uriel was quite pleased to say he had a hand in fixing. But they never attempted to reach out to each other, unless Val told them to.

Of course, that meant Val reached out to them a lot. It was always something tedious like calling the next guy and telling him something, get some wine and dry cleaning and adapter cables, what should I use to panel my windows and so on. It was never anything serious.

Val didn’t really rely on them for anything serious.

But then, his priorities weren’t quite straight. Maybe window panels eclipsed the alternative. What a nice world it must be to see things like that. Forcing a longtime business partner to leave town suddenly, in a shootout, yeah, that would be nothing.

It had been awfully sudden, though.

And come to think of it…

I couldn’t even tell what color the car was supposed to be. The cops were crazy to get in that close.

Where had the architect been? Uriel had not seen hide nor hair of him in months, when previously he had been down to the city every weekend. He had almost forgotten, having not seen the guy very often nor spoken to him much, but Val had suddenly stopped requesting lobster dinners or caviar or something like that delivered to his doorstep. The architect had expensive taste. Hell, maybe he was out South on some tropical vacation. People like him didn’t have to deal with snowstorms and fallen trucks.

What about the crazy rooftop ninja? He had become oddly isolated as well. Thinking about it, Uriel was hardly sure he had come with them to the town. Racking his brain, Uriel tried to remember, did the ninja stay back now that his vendetta was over, or was he just living in the unfinished public buildings?

Ah… the last one must have been it. He had made a ridiculous bet with Val over building plans and had opted for some completely insane setup on the 18th or 20th floor on one of those eternally condemned death traps. Yeah, that must have been it. And because his house had been such a pain to build, the architect said his own house, that allegedly ‘classical gothic’ tower, would take until February…

Time wasn’t quite adding up.

But there wasn’t even anything left to save in that wreck. The guy, the driver, he was…

Patches was with Val, wasn’t he? As suddenly as anything, he had come back. The two of them left little for Uriel to worry about, or even want to think about for long.

Somebody opened the door at the other side of the diner, and this time the influx of chilly air didn’t raise as much whining as before. Uriel tried to tilt an ear upward.

There was excited talk and a few people slowly began to unstick themselves and their baggage from the sweaty plastic seats. The road must have been cleared. But there was still quite a bit of smoke in the air. Uriel guessed that it was a lane or too, at best, at this point. He would sit a few more minutes before clearing out. There wasn’t a whole lot of a rush.

As the pressure of the bodies from both sides started to alleviate, he used to opportunity to take a few deep breaths. Once the seats to his left and right were clear, he raised his head again and frowned. He threw a few shifty glances at each corner, looking for his fellow bikers, but they seemed to be gone.

So he was really alone in this now.

Val and the others were done with him.

Thank goodness.

Enough was enough. Uriel got to his feet, picked up his duffel bag and headed for the door. He left behind his pizza, and glanced unsurely at the table for a moment before heading out. What he had been looking at what a steaming cup of coffee sitting on the table, right next to where he had been sitting. And on the floor, where his cup had been spilled, there was nothing.

He had to chuckle a little at that.

As he made his way over, the story seemed to be finishing too.

Hear he was somebody’s dad, or grandpa, yeah. Off to visit family for the holidays. Or maybe leaving. Heard it on the news, one thing or the other. Either way, speeding. Heh, that’s how it goes, right? Just when you think you’re getting away…

“Careful, careful!” came the call of the black-coated policemen from their rumbling cars surrounding the (now doused) wreckage. From the other side of the upturned truck, Uriel heard the familiar warning beeping and grinding of an extra large tow truck.

Uriel rolled up, steadying his bag on the back of his seat as he merged into the bottleneck lane where the truck had been shifted out of. He gave the charred mess a once over and waved at the wary police. They were wearing mufflers so large and caps so low and glasses so dark he could not make out a single face.

‘Anyone find out what happened to the driver?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ one said simply.

‘A mess,’ said another.

They eyed each other curiously.

Uriel nodded understandingly. ‘You’ve all been working a while now. How long are they keeping you all out here?’

‘The third decided to take initiative this time. ‘A couple more hours.’

‘Hm. Need me to get you three anything?’

The men looked at each other, obscuring their faces further. ‘No, nothing. We’re good.’

Uriel nodded and pulled his jacket and helmet over his own face. ‘Hm.’

‘Move along now.’

‘Thanks for your hard work.’

Feeling a bit more comfortable, one of them muttered a low, ‘Happy holidays, man.’

‘Yeah, you too.’ Uriel tapped the gas lightly and rolled by the window of the truck, vertical and looming like a black hole. ‘I’m out of here.’

‘Sounds good.’

Silence. Then, ‘Don’t look back.’

Who said that? And to whom? It could have been to the car behind him at that point, but Uriel knew it was for him. Who else would it be for? But who were they? How did they know? His eyes flickered underneath the dark visor of his lowered helmet.

At the same time, he patted his jacket down, reached inside. As the snowflakes were loosed, the damp fingers of his gloves and felt the reassuring curve metal and something a little extra hidden in his chest pocket. Maybe he wasn’t quite in the clear just yet. No, it was a little much to wish for. He sighed and cursed Val inwardly. It was an instinct, but he also acknowledged that it was one that tended to be accurate; he couldn’t get away from that idiot.

There was a sudden roar of cars behind him. He tightened his fingers around the trigger of his concealed weapon, gritting his teeth. One more night of playing around Val-style. If it didn’t kill him, that would be the last. It would be time to grow up for good.

He cursed again.

—

After leaving the house, Ritz felt like he was grasped by a giant hand and tossed down the street. His feet fumbled through the seemingly infinite layers of snow and he was unable to stop until he hit the house at the end of the road.

Presumably, Val would not have been any more surefooted that him, but he didn’t see Val anywhere. He didn’t see much of anything but white fuzz and shadows. His swearing was lost to the wind. He wasn’t sure if he was still in possession of his voice anyway, that giant invisible hand was still pulling at his scarf and his throat was starting to chafe.

Ritz steadied himself onto his feet and was hit by another gust coming from the other direction. He grasped onto something that was either a lamp post or stop sign half encased in snow and trudged stubbornly against it.

Shouldn’t have bothered. Shouldn’t have trusted that asshole.  Should have brought the bag with me. The bag had certainly stopped him from getting blown away on the way there. Should have just left through the roof, he thought, and left them to their rancid dinner. Somehow, he felt a lot safer on the roofs, even with their ice slicks and twenty foot drops.

He couldn’t explain why the place felt so dangerous, but it had hit him upon arriving, on the overcrowded bus that stank of a public urinal. Why had he taken than when everyone else had driven? He wasn’t sure anymore.

The place was too quiet, too dim, clear, and generally unsafe. It wasn’t just nerves or new people; Ritz had long gotten over that kind of anxiety. It was old news. This was something new. And unlike the other monsters, this one was all Val’s. Uriel and Magnus had been so upset by the move that he hadn’t had the time to say that maybe, he thought, Val had come for something important. Val had seemed pretty upset that Patches hadn’t come immediately, so there was no speaking to him either.

Whatever it was, Val did not get to it for a while, though, and so Ritz left him to it and attempted to distance himself from the problem as best he could. The furthest away he could get was strange burnt, abandoned buildings that everyone told him were full of disease and rotten support. A death trap.

But it had been his first house. And nothing that happened to it had ever been the fault of the building; as usual it had been nothing but people.

He thought he saw a mass of shadows shift somewhere down the street.

Ritz hated the fuck out of people. Mostly their heads. In pieces they were nothing. That was why he felt sorry for them, he supposed. It used to be his job, but it had become a habit. Another habit. Like he needed more.

Why had he followed them there?

Ritz pulled himself in the enclave between two large housing rows, alongside the trash cans and a fallen chain link fence, apparently recently fallen as the snow did not cover it yet. The walls of brick on both sides blocked the gales just slightly, and he thought he heard the howling of a machine, louder and sharper than the wind.

At a funeral in the city, the only funeral he had ever visited, Patches was being sanctimonious as expected and was telling Ritz about the deceased. ‘He was a terrible person. He beat his wife and children and wasted money. He transparently blamed it all on others. He died on a combination of alcohol and heroin in front of his mistress. But look how many people are here mourning him. They talk about what a good man he was. He was a ‘father,’ and  ‘husband.’ Or a ‘comrade.’ Just because he is gone. Like dying was something he did willfully, for others. What a joke.’

Silence. Neither of them were particularly full of jokes.

‘ Do you ever think you’ll end up like that?’

This was the first time he had met Patches and had resolved to avoid talking to him whenever possible. Having fully disgraced the funeral, he hoped that the contract would work both ways.

Ritz looked back out at the shadows. Well, he thought, maybe I should have just said yes or no instead of spitting at the cross and running through a window, because maybe then I would have been able to continue speaking to him and gotten an idea of what I should be feeling in this situation.

The shadows grew closer. The mechanical howling cut through so loudly his vision blurred. The air was freezing. But the shadows didn’t slow down. He saw the beginnings of hands and feet. Who knew when it would be time for the screaming machine to make its appearance? Ritz swore violently. He’s really had enough of that thing. In fact, he’d had enough of this whole ridiculous ordeal. He may as well exit the way he’d always intended to.

He reached for his knives, and realized that one of them was missing.

—

A fine evening down south. In spite of the season, the weather was sweet enough to spend the night outdoors, which was a good thing as the walls were not finished yet. Outside the lines of wood and concrete scaffolding of the building he could see the fringe of the city on one side, on the other, a sandy beach. Magnus let the sound of the sea swirl around him as he enjoyed another glass of sparkling water. The bottle had gotten warm, but that was fine, he didn’t want to catch a chill or give himself a headache. He liked to keep a clear head before an important meeting. For that same reason, he had chosen to forgo any alcohol for now, although there was a nicely aged bottle of wine waiting for him in the fridge.

‘Can I get you some water?’ he asked his guest.

There would be time enough for a real drink later and he wouldn’t have to share.

When his guest didn’t respond, or at least, respond positively, Magnus simply shrugged. ‘Ah, don’t want to need the bathroom anytime soon. I understand. Yeah, it is cold tonight. I’d say we have it pretty good though. I have a friend…’

No doubt it was snowing hard and hellish up in that godforsaken little town Val had tried to hole them up in. Magnus was entirely too glad he had been allowed, even encouraged, to leave. As far as he was concerned, the only good things about the place had been good wine and cheap real estate. Slightly wistfully he wondered how the half-finished castle in the hills was holding up. Someone in charge had drained all water from the reservoir, thankfully, the freezing and melting over winter would wreak havoc on the white tile. But there was still all that flooding the basement. And it really wasn’t a fantastic place for so much glass, with all that wind and wood.

‘It adds space, light, and something else, you know, that special thing. It’s my signature, they used to say, before I took a break. Sight, openness… the impression of openness.’ He looked out towards the wall where he was planning to install more windows. It looked very bare as it was now. ‘Right there. Maybe a few colored panels. What do you think, red, violet, yellow? I’m thinking something warm. Although I tried purple colors once, and that didn’t go too well. I’m still liking red, though. But I’m up for suggestions.’

A breeze wafted through the room. Magnus sneezed. His guest shivered in the cushioned red armchair he had been placed in. Magnus turned his chair, a cheap swivel chair, towards his guest.

‘It’s not that bad, is it?’

There might have been some protests.

‘Hm.’

The protests got louder, the gag started to loosen. Curiously, he didn’t do anything about it, leaning in closely, hoping for something to react to other than crazed eyes under a dark hood, and muffled croaking. He got it.

There was not much more than a few unhelpful syllables released when Magnus grunted and gave the chair a kick. The heavy wooden nubs at the bottom of the armchair grated across the unfinished floor. All movement and talk stopped in anticipation. The chair was only inches from a large, square hole in the flooring. Magnus had left this part unfinished on purpose. The purpose was exactly this.

Then, in the thick of the night, Magnus laughed and jerked the chair straight again. He slowly maneuvered it back to the box he was using as a table and pulled the gag back up. He tweaked the ropes, nice and easy. He was proud of his restraint, but then he had had practice. His career was built on restraint.

‘Come on, that was a joke. I’ve got something a whole lot better for you than that. You know, something more personal. Want to see it?’

He walked over to the side of the room that was cloaked in a white sheet, pinned to nails in the freshly paneled walls of the house. They had yet to be painted, but Magnus had a pretty good idea of what color he’d be picking once the night was over. He pulled the sheet off.

There was a fully paneled wall here as well, and wooden doors with a curled metal handle the shape of a claw, contorted and gripping its own base. This was currently the only completed doorway in the house, and the only completed section overall.

The sea rolled in loudly.

Tapping the doorknob with his own claw, Magnus nodded to himself. ‘You know, my boss never really understood the concept of patience. But it’s gotten worse lately, I’d say. One word about, what was it, cake? And he rushes straight into a pit of vipers.’

The wavering eyes regarded him solemnly.

‘But you know that, I mean, that’s how you guys managed to give him hell.’

‘That’s admirable, to me.’

The sheet, lifted by the wind, swirled around the wooden framework of the incomplete house.

‘I suppose it’s a little much to ask why or how.’

The sheet twirled and spread, sweeping over his face.

‘Piece of shit.’ Magnus struggled, waved the sheet out of the way, wrapping it around one arm and slinging it out of the left-hand wall where it rolled down the side of the house’s framework and landed on the sand below. Dusting himself off, Magnus sighed again. ‘Sorry about that. You won’t end up like a curtain, so don’t worry. But what I was going to say is, this is your last chance.’

The eyes were still locked coldly onto him.

Steepling his fingers over his chest, Magnus gave his guest some consideration. ‘Okay. Well, I knew just asking wouldn’t work. It never does. It doesn’t matter. Alternate preparations were made.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s go then.

Magnus stepped slowly and deliberately around the armchair and stopped somewhere behind it, out of sight of his guest, who as now still as ice, trying not to exist. ‘Hm, I’m not going to push you all the way. I’m not damn servant. But what are we going to do about these ropes, oh… here’s something familiar.’ Excited footsteps scattered off to the wall behind the armchair.

There was a scrape of metal against the ground.

‘A little light, but not too bad. Wish I’d packed a few more.’

A swish, not from the wind, and a light thot, like a cleaver laying into some ripe fruit. There was a stringy tearing coming from behind. The fabric tensed. The ropes loosened. And naturally, the guest began to struggle, unaware of Magnus’s eyes glaring down at the top of their head. The next swish landed with a much louder impact, the sound of tearing entirely too close for comfort, and a flash of light. The guest froze.

‘Keep it together, I’m gonna need you able to talk in there.’ Magnus dislodged the study, thick handled axe from where he had landed it, about an inch from his guest’s ear where it was hidden by the hood. The dark hood now had a small slit in it. If he had cut something, he couldn’t see it since it was too dark and the hood wouldn’t show any signs of bloodstains. Not his problem, so he let those concerns drop.

‘Stand up. Get moving.’ He nudged the tip of the axe at the back of his guest’s head as means of encouragement. The hooded figure very slowly began to rise.

‘I get it that you’re scared, but if you’re trying to put this off, there’s seriously no hope, so we might has well make this quick. Unless you would rather die here?’

A halt. This wasn’t what he had wanted.

‘Come on, you didn’t think Val was the only one, did you? Don’t you know me? Even, like, my face? Ugh, of course I haven’t been able to hit the press as often since Val…’

Magnus thought he knew Val well enough to say that he wanted nobody there because he was afraid. What Val could be afraid of what something that did not manifest very well in his mind, but the thought that something of the kind existed, what existing that very moment, pleased him very much.

He did have to admit though, he had never known enough about that guy to feel safe about anything.

Whoever said that Val sent them away because he was afraid something was going to happen to him? Maybe he was afraid something would happen to them. Something would happen to Magnus, that biker, the lunatic who decided to live on a filthy rooftop…

It made him a little mad.

Maybe he would get something out of this hooded figure though. Maybe something to get back at Val, maybe something to help, and whatever would pay off. After having to leave his house so quickly, he was quite proud that he was able to catch one of the intruders. Sure, maybe the one found hiding up in the tower room wasn’t the highest point of authority, but he had to be able to get something out of this guy. Something helpful, something fun. Anything would be nice. Both his business and personal life hadn’t been going well lately.

Magnus liked to believe that other people changed with they were afraid. He did, but he was slightly less aware of that. The traps are for offense, not defense, he liked to say. It’s not like I have to be afraid of anything.

Then don’t complain when you lose.

Followed with, can you take care of this cat for me?

Hotly, he raised the axe over his head and swung it in a way that he knew would scar the floor, and make a mess. Not too much of a mess, though. He still wanted to try out that bloody hallway. After all that time, the rush to get it finished, he wasn’t going to lose out now. He might have to carry the body there, though.

The guest made a few smallish noises that rose in volume until he felt he couldn’t hear. He stopped at that. Magnus prided himself on his restraint. He had always seemed very well controlled in comparison to his friends.

The guest seemed to be calling him a traitor.

—

As Patches was attempting to wrestle the door closed and give some explanation to Lei, he was distracted by Ritz being sent flying down the street. At first he thought it was just a black trash bag, but it was doing a little more flailing than that. Ritz went hurtling off, dragging through the snow, and disappeared down the street. Patches hoped with mild sincerity that he would be okay, and did not seriously doubt that he would find some way to shelter.

He left the house at slug’s pace, wary of ice and unexpectedly deep snowdrifts. He assumed Val had headed off in the direction Ritz had been coming from, but there was no sure way of knowing, being sure he wasn’t walking into a wall or in circles. He called Val once or twice, although he doubted anyone heard it but him.

It sounded strange even to him.

Slightly embarrassed, he continued down the street which his vague memory told him was the way towards the cluster of convenience stores where Val and Lei usually bought their meals. He kicked into a snow covered fire hydrant and limped around it. Yes, that was on the way.

There did not seem to be a light on in the entire district. He called Val again, a little halfheartedly. Was Val really expecting to get all the way to Ritz’s building in this weather? Who knows, he may have gone in the other direction entirely and decided to go back. That seemed like something Val would do.

He must be walking on the road now. Around him he could sense the foggy gray rectangles that made up the store buildings, white blanketing cut in places where signs were. Half of those signs were unreadable on a good day, and he couldn’t read them any better now. No stores were open, of course, but he had thought people at least lived in some of these houses…

It was hard to make assumptions about this place.

A strange, sick and sweet smell came barreling towards him with the next gust of wind. It was strong and pungent, and he nearly fell over. It took him a while to register what it meant, the smell of sugar, no, cake in a place and time like this. He stumbled and searched around him, then futilely swiveled around in hopes of seeing it, whatever it was, chocolate, lemon, or strawberry or a frozen corpse or what have you, what Val was looking for.

There was nobody to be found.

In the gloom, Patches thought he heard a screech. It may have been more of a scream. Or a cry. Or a power sander.

The noise chilled him more deeply than the wind had all day. It bit into his skin and brought back the mind the time when he had last heard the sound, and the other times that Val wouldn’t let him forget about. All assurances he had given himself dissolved then and there. He threw all the weight of his hope on Ritz being gone and…

The sound tore through the air again.

Patches virtually plowed through the snow in what he thought was the direction of the noise. It was cold, but he was sweating profusely, and his coat was almost soaked through. The noise ripped at his ears again. He panted but chose not to say anything. There wouldn’t be anything to say, and he would have to be ready for a little more than a civil conversation. Leaving the shopping block, He approached a gathering in the middle of the road.

This time, he heard a bell.

Ritz?

There was something oddly fragrant in the wind.

As he approached, five pairs of eyes hidden under black hoods turned to study him. Definitely not Ritz.

The bell attached to the knife rattled as it was thrown into the snow, where it vanished. The screaming filled the air again. Patches felt the wind carry him towards the crowd. He surged forward.

The biggest figure or maybe it just looked that way, tried to hold him off.

His hands may have been shaking again, or maybe they were shivering in the cold. They were called back to awareness when they were tossed against skin, landing with a damp crunch. The feeling of bone and muscle compressing, splitting, falling under his knuckles made them still again.

If there were five hoods before, now there were ten, some near and some far. There could have been an innumerable amount of them that his peripheral vision was mistakenly seeing as snowdrifts but there was no time to keep counting. With a brief pang of fear, feeling vaguely like he’d misinterpreted the mission, his regular thoughts left him and Patches called Val’s name again in a puff of smoke and raced forward to meet the rest of them.

The air smelled like icing. That would surely attract the wrong attention.

Soon enough, somewhere nearby, the grinding, whirring, screaming blade came full into earshot. Patches was still occupied and didn’t stop to look, but then, even in his half consciousness he didn’t want to. Behind him, he heard it looming, balefully rising above their heads. All too soon it was upon them, the screech wiping away the sounds of the cloaked men and women, and warm and hungry, it arrived.

—

A pretty terrible day. It was somebody’s birthday which made it all the more pitiful.

It was a day that was probably in the summer, so as far away from the blackout winter of the year 20__ as could be witnessed in the same town. The town itself had quite a bit of variety, some of it city and some bordering on country, so there was a spread of experiences even within the same season. Some of those experiences were probably pleasant, but this was not one of them, not by the standards of those there at the time. Afterwards, it might have been considered not too bad.

A summer day and an outdoor party went together. That made sense enough if those were the only two constraints. It was a little too hot and muggy. Humidity was at a city high. Even then, that wouldn’t stop everyone, like overzealous parents, overzealous children, or party clowns and their ilk. It dampened the cake a little, but back then the cake wasn’t the big concern.

The sky so blue it hurt to look but hey, there are a lot of scars that last longer than retinal damage through broken contact lenses. Most children don’t get contact lenses until after elementary school. He should have been grateful. Although, it barely mattered later, the damage was done and there are nobody around to care about the maintenance of those things.

Somewhere not too far away some insect, but no doubt a chubby, hard, shining creature you wouldn’t want in your icing (but the kind that fell out of the tree and into it anyway), or maybe several, chirped loudly. The chirping sounded a lot like buzzing machinery, a painfully constant, high pitched screech. Bu then, the machinery sounded a lot like insects, so it was a fair trade in the eyes of the maker. That wasn’t the only thing people were taking from nature that day.

As far as things went, it was an innocent attack, far more innocent than what resulted, by accident. The first culprit only wanted what was needed – as pure as the undercoat of snow on that night, cold but far.

In the early days there was an unspoken alleged honor to the killers, unrealistic, but then there wasn’t much about the whole ordeal that was realistic. What fantasy the rest of the world could truly be grateful for was that they stayed confined that those few towns. For a while, but that’s not the point.

Understanding what these strange people needed was something only known to them, and they barely ever encountered each other with the conscience that they were facing to a familiar. Even if by some chance that did ever happen (it did, but not under normal circumstances) there wasn’t much talk to be done, with human words and syntax. That would be a task even to the Dictionary Killer of the later 1800s. Whoever can explain to you why one would need to take a human life is probably not going to be someone who will allow you to report back. That would require that additional spark, and take them a step beyond. And to who and how would that report go?

Can any manner of reteller retell something that does not make sense by the fundamental logic that order is built on? Language was not constructed for that kind of thing. You must resort to garbage stand-ins like “that thing” or “something like that” and that makes for a bad story. A bad story is hardly worth retelling anyway, and inevitably leads to a confused reader, and therefore wasted time.

A good character and a good story will be all about people and real things. People do things like ‘fall in love,’ ‘make friends’ or ‘be traumatized’ and that’s legitimately interesting to the listener, but how interesting is it to the person themselves? In what world can the meeting of a person and say, their pet or their car or a gas tank be more moving than meeting any particular person? Those aren’t reasons for being, reasons for acting up.

How about a good excuse? Something we see in writing, like the newspapers, which are written for everybody. Drugs drove him to it. Drugs are a little more than a “thing.” He was beat as a child. Child abuse is also very real and many people can envision it with pride even if they are not practitioners of the art themselves. Child abuse can lead to a murderer coming about. Adult abuse comes dangerously, fallaciously close to the act in question. Financial problems. Stress. Head trauma. Chemical imbalance. Failed romance. Failing romance. Arrogance. Violent television.

All of the above seems pretty legitimate in raising an eventual bringer of grief but the question then is how does anybody know how to quantify exactly how much grief needs to be caused? Two grams? Five miles? Twelve years?

How can control be shown when the trademark of the trigger is going out of control?

This was the specialty of the killers of the two cities: the half suburb, money owned, red chalk city and the thickly urban, school and church run metropolis. They knew, innately, only to take a little at a time. A little something. Everyone knew.

To take more than that, according to the Weeping Blade, if you ever asked those who knew him, was greed. The Blade knew greed like none other, so there was little cause to argue. Those that did were, actually, the humblest of them all.

Not so humble were the results of the day. The air stank, but that’s nothing new, something old, and so on. The humid air seeped into the food and the people like a disease, simultaneously soaking their flesh and sapping the freshness. There wasn’t much time for deliberation. The cake was going to go bad.

There was somebody crying about it. Was.

The cake was just asking to be cut into. When it did, the day got just a little brighter. A happy story might not be that great, but anything to make it worth telling once it’s out of control…

—

Crappy, obtuse, and incomprehensible, I thought to myself. Everyone, everything, it’s out of hand now. I haven’t got a grip on it anymore. Things were going well enough before but things have changed. Yeah, this is getting pretty bad, should have let it die like my house plant, and like the house plant it’s just going to get worse over time. Nope. It’s time to pull the plug on it.

But wait, wasn’t there a plan? Maybe if you hadn’t padded it out so long, things wouldn’t have gotten as sickening as they are now. Why the hell did you ruin it and make all the holes that much more obvious? Now what are you going to do about them?

Maybe they’ll leave on their own.

They’re not going to leave. Maybe the others would have, but he’s not going to leave. And he’ll make them stay. This goes beyond our city, you know. And you know how much effort it’s been to bring it back!

True. We’re further than we’ve gotten before… maybe they’ll finish him off out there, right now.

That would be great in theory, but do you know what’s happening down there? And the cake’s getting wrecked. And anyway, what a shitty end that would be for such a…

A what? Whose side are you on?

That’s what I want to ask you. Or are you scared?

Well, the Weeping Blade finally made an appearance.

I’d call it a little more than an appearance.

Aren’t you glad he’s finally here, though? That means the end will be coming soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow. All it should take is one final shot. Just give us the word. By the way, thank you very much for volunteering.

Uh… no problem.

A little confidence, please.

So we’re not stopping here, right? Right, people? We keep going until it’s done. If we’re all in agreement, now all we have to do is figure out what we want them to see once they get back. Who’s still in the house, now? Okay, I can work with that. Just a little more then it’s over.