Editor's note: Shade is a mature readers work. It contains some pretty graphic, prehaps disturbing, imagery as well as some harsh language. That said it's also some of the strongest fiction writing I've ever come across, proffesional or no. Just consider this my warning that this is not a kids story, proceed at your own risk/enjoyment.

issue #2 (of 4),
"Fear"
by Gary Dreslinski

"Run you fucking nigger! Run!"
He felt them behind him, getting closer. But he couldn't turn around, he wouldn't... as long as they were behind him, he knew he would be, safe.

He could feel his heart jumping out of his chest with every beat, but he kept pushing. He had to.

When they decided to chase you, you had to run. His ma had always told him that. When they chased you - you ran. His pa had different ideas though. Ideas that involved switches, and standing and taking it like a man no matter what. He thought of the scars on his back for a moment, but heard the voices again, getting closer, and pushed it out of his mind.

He couldn't be distracted, he could't let...

"No son of mine would run away like a little girl" beat into his head.

"But Pa, I'm afraid" he tried to answer, "If they catch me, they'll..."

"What? Beat you? Kill you? No son of mine is afraid of a little killing now and again is he?"

He ran harder, faster, hearing them shouting out his name, hearing them yell about what they were gonna do when they got ahold of "That dumb nigger".

His knuckles hit a tree at full speed, a tree he hadn't seen was in his path until too late. He didn't cry out. He didn't look down at his hands. He knew there was blood on them.

What was a little more?

"There he is!" one of them cried out from behind him.
"Get 'im!" another yelled, coming out from another direction.

"They're trying to corral me..." he muttered to himself, thankful that he was still able to think, but wasn't sure what could be done about it.

When someone wanted to corner you, they could. There was no getting out of it. No going around it. If they wanted to beat you. They were going to do it. He felt the thought race like his pulse, pounding itself into his brain.

He heard his Ma's voice now, telling him to run and never stop. He pushed himself harder, trying not to notice when he hit a branch a little too hard, or something snagged on his clothes. "Why are they doing this?" a little part of his brain asked. Why were they chasing him? Why did they want to hurt him? What did they want?

Where was the One? The Savior? He had promised that everything would be all right. He had promised love. Now... there was only pain.

He tried to push it from his mind, tried to concentrate on running. On surviving. His Pa would laugh at him, he knew it. "No boy of mine runs from a fight. He stands and takes it like a man. Only a sissy boy runs". Then he'd take him like a girl, like an animal. That was how it went, more than that when he'd been drinking. The berating, the beating, then the consequence.
Its what he deserved. The pain. The humilation. Its what he deserved for being a coward in his heart. For not being enough of a man. It stopped hurting after awhile. No, he corrected himself, it wasn't so much that it stopped hurting as he stopped allowing himself to feel the pain. That was what a man did. That was what he had to do.

Where was his Pa? Where was his Ma? Where was the One? The Savior? The one who had brought the love?

Where was he going? Why were they chasing him? Calling him a nigger?

Joey Tucker didn't know anything, anything but the fact that he was running for his life. Anything more than the fact that he was a coward in his heart.

"There he is!" someone shouted from up ahead. They had gotten someone ahead of him to cut off his escape. Perhaps he could still... he pivoted and tried to make off in new direction. Too late. "The trap is sprung". They had him surrounded. There was nothing left to do but make his stand. Nothing left to do but try his best to salvage what was left of making his Pa proud of him.

"Come up nigger. Lets see what you're worth!"

Joey looked at them as they approached. He knew them. Oh god, he knew who they were... he knew why they were chasing him.

"You're... dead."

They had died in the coming of the savior. They had been his friends.
No, that wasn't really true. They had been people to hang out with. He hadn't really liked them all that much. They had been hangers-on for the lack of a better term. They had been people to kill a few hours with. People to put the fear of God in any nigger or faggot that got uppity with. White people. Good people. But they hadn't been his friends. They had lived, they had fought the coming of the savior. They had died. There was no bigger sin than to oppose the will of the second coming. There was no bigger sin than to stand against the true love of ones God manifest.

"You betcha, Pig-Fucker" someone snarled, "And now we're taking you with us you fucking nigger."

Joey felt for the locket that was around his neck. The one that the savior had given to him as a sign of his favor. It felt warm to the touch.

"I ain't no nigger. And there's no way you assholes are going to take me anywhere," Joey managed in a voice that sounded strong. Stronger than he had any right to be. Stronger than anything he felt inside. The weak feared the strong. He knew them to be weak. They would fear him, they would know that he wasn't the same guy he had been. They would know that he had power now.

"You're a nigger in your heart Joey," someone said, "Black to the soul. Its not about skin color. Not on this side, Joey. Its not on the other side either. Just dumb shits like you, and us, that thought it was. Nigger means dumb... it means that no one should care if you live or die. Just another pile of shit piled yea high.... You're a nigger Joey... fancy locket or not. You're just another dumb nigger who's going to get what you have coming to you..."

A fist flashed out from nowhere. One minute it wasn't there, the next it was, connecting with the nose. Hard.

He dropped to the ground, trying to cover his face. Trying not to scream out. And calling out in pain for someone to save him.

No one did. They kept hitting. Over and over again. A blow to the head. A kick to the stomach.

"Hand it over," someone said.

"Wha..." Joey started, and was kicked in the stomach for his questioning.
"Just fucking hand it over"
He reached down to his locket. Did they mean... he felt the brick beneath him.
"Not in forest anymore..." he realized, "what's going on? Why is he hitting me?"
"What do you want?" he heard himself asking.
The black man stood over him, looming against a moonless darkness, lit by only a distant streetlight.
"Your wallet. Just hand it over..."
"I don't..."
The pain in his nose blocked out everything else. The pain in his side flared for a moment as the booted foot connected, but dulled against the other one.
He reached down into his pocket. There was a wallet there. He hadn't had one before... he didn't stop to wonder... he just handed it over... like the coward he was...

"Just stay down man," the black man growled, "Just stay down".

Joey glanced up as the man ran off down the alley. But he just stayed down. Down on the ground with his pain, his blood everywhere. Just glad to still be alive.

He stayed down until he couldn't see the man anymore. Then he got to his feet, slowly, painfully.

"Where am I?" he muttered, wiping the blood away from his eyes, tasting it as it dropped from his lips.

"Someplace else," a voice told him.

Joey flinched, and tried to stumble away. But a hand reached out and held him in place. "You don't have to be afraid you know. We're not going to hurt you."

He turned around. He was back in the forest. They were surrounding him again. They were smiling at him as his fist connected again with that of the boy named Kyle. "Do it again!" someone called.

He felt himself doing it and screamed for someone to stop him. No one did.

"Don't let me do this!" he yelled, hoping someone would notice.

"We're not going to hurt you," he heard someone at his ear whisper. "We're going to kill you..."

He turned into the fist that connected with his nose, breaking it. He screamed out to God... to his mother... to his father... to the savior that had abandoned him in his hour of need...

They came upon him, punching and kicking... hitting him with bats... pieces of scrap iron...

His hand found its way to the locket. "What is going on? Why is this happening to me?" he asked the world in general. If the world heard, it did not respond. It merely left him in the forest, bleeding and dying... and ultimately, alone.

She bit her lip hard, and tried to push the pain out of her mind... attempting to go beyond it.

But it kept creeping back in, crying out in agony. Her pain did not understand love.

Not really. Not truly.

It did not consider that love does not conquer pain, it takes it to it's bossom and allows it to suckle. Love fed pain, invited it in, got to know it, until it no longer was a hinderance but instead one more funny old scar.

Jennie understood love though.

She watched herself, sitting on the bed, in front of the mirror in her bedroom. She watched herself from the otherside of that mirror, watching the love ushering forth from this stranger who couldn't really be her. After all, she had been that "fat girl", that "nobody". She had been nothing. Until she had love.

Until the fires came to surround the town, until the messiah had come to show them love.

She carefully traced the lines on her shelf. She traced them with love, ripping into the raw flesh, into the fat that had once stood in her way of happiness in her teenage angst. The knife point was sharp, but she held her hand steady... seeing through the pain, going beyond it, taking it to her bossom of love. It cut deep, she bit her lip harder.

She couldn't cry out. She couldn't have her mother, her father, or any of her brothers and sisters, see that she had failed in her love. She couldn't have them see her as unworthy of that love... she closed her eyes and felt the pounding from inside her pupils... a pounding that wanted to break free. It beat at the inside of her eyelids as the blood flowed from her stomach.

She fought the pain that told her not to love. That fear that wanted her to fail. The pounding increased, she opened her eyes and fell backwards onto her bed. Her father's pen knife made not a sound as it fell onto the stained carpet. But it roared in her mind. It yelled, it screamed at her, telling her that she would die alone and fat. Fat and alone. Unloved. Unwanted.

It clattered on the edge of her self. She could feel it through the haze that clouded everything in her sight. She could feel it's presence, not far from where she had been standing, not far from where her left leg was dangling.

Her fingers absently traced the aborted pattern on what had been her all too public shame. She thrust her fingers deep into the incomplete work. The pain screamed in her head again. It screamed in her fat.

She leaned over in time to vomit on the side of the bed rather than onto herself. She'd have to clean it up later... the blood would make her mother proud. It would show her that she was no longer a child, that she had passed into womanhood... that she too could know love.

The vomit though, that would be shameful. Inner doubts splattered on the floor, a weakness of the stomach to comprehend the intricate nature of love. Her weakness, her failing... again.

She felt it rise from her throat again. Climbing up from some hidden resource, she spat out the courage, not over the side of the bed, but onto herself, pushing herself up through the pain and back onto her feet.

She bent down, steading herself with one hand firmly on the makeup chair in front of her. The pen knife felt good in her hands again. The warmth that flowed from it, up her arm and into her heart, made her smile.

She stood there, smiling, for what seemed to be forever. She stood, watching herself in the mirror, as if she was someone else, and wondering how someone who had once been nothing, been less than nothing, had found the inner strength that was love...watching herself smile, and feeling those unused muscles actually responding.

She smiled through the pain, and put the knife back to it's task.

When she had finished, she put the pen knife back down on the vanity. Later, she would clean it, and return it to it's proper place. Maybe her father would actually allow her to keep it, not wanting to sully the instrument of his daughter's 'becoming' with the mere tearing of paper. Maybe...

But maybes were for later... Jennie looked down on her self, and lightly traced with her finger what the knife had done far more crudely. She traced the line up, then back around onto itself, then onward. She traced them one at a time. Three letters in all. Three simple letters that had come to her in a dream. Letters that had stuck with her ever sense.

Letters that spelled out LOVE larger than the sky. Even if she was too ignorant to know their significance. They meant love though, she felt it in her heart. she felt it through her dreams.

She traced them again, laughing lightheadly when her fingers dipped further into the massive flow of blood than she had intented.

RAC

She examined her bloody shelf with approval. It looked much better now, she thought, just before her knees buckled beneath her and her head hit the clarity of the floor.

Cassidy stayed near the light. The wonderful blue light that had descended onto the town, that had engulfed it with the coming of the HE WHO WAS. There was something comforting about the light. Something about the way that it kept out the darkness. How it kept out the outside... that which was not... that which had not known the love of HE WHO IS. He pitied them. He feared them. Who knew what such people would do. Without the love, how would one know right from wrong? God knew that they hadn't before. God knew that they were all sinners, before.
The sinners had been in town as well. Before the coming. Some even afterward. Those that doubted. Those that tried to fight the righteousness. They were warned, they were preached to. Some were converted from their evil ways. Others were burned in glorious pyres who's light echoed the light that surrounded them like a pale reflection. Light that kept the darkness away.
Light that kept out sin.
Cassidy had left his home, had abandoned the possessions of his previous life, to live near the edges... to live near the light. HE WHO WAS himself, it was said, lived in the middle of town. Everyone else went there. Except Cassidy. He went to the light. It was the light that kept away the darkness.
HE WHO WAS had brought the love... and the peace in the hearts of everyone he encountered. But the light kept out the unknown, it kept the darkness at bay.

He lived near the light, sitting, watching it for hours on end. Seeing the swirls, the patterns. It was glorious. It was perfect.

He wished that his wife could see the light. Perhaps she could. Maybe when he eventually met her, they would sit around and talk about the light. Maybe she would understand. Maybe she would know what the light meant to him. Maybe she would... he shook his head. She did not matter. The light was there for him, in a way that no woman had ever been. In a way that no woman could ever be there for him. No woman had been able to keep out the darkness before. Only the light did that. Only the light kept out what was out there. No love of a woman could do that. HE WHO IS had understood, when he put his hands on Cassidy's head and told him to seek out the light.

HE had known, instantly, of what was in Cassidy's heart. He had known of the fear that had knotted itself there. The doubt. The horrible pain in his stomach that wouldn't go away no matter what he did. The wretching pain that had been there all his life. The darkness. It was inside him. He had felt it. But not near the light... the light that cast no shadow. The light that allowed him simply to be.

He had sought out the light, as he had been told. He had left everything to be near the light. The light was all that he needed. It had taken away the pain. It had taken away all that was evil inside of him.

He watched the children playing in the street and wondered if they truly appreciated the light. He wondered if they knew what a blessing they had been given to grow up in a world without darkness. He wondered if he should tell them. If he should walk up to them and put his hand on their shoulders, and let them know of the light that had taken the darkness away. Of the light that had saved them all. He wondered what they would do if he did so. Would they understand what the light was? Would they comprehend what he was telling them? Could they? Would he take them into the light, the way he had once done in the darkness... the darkness that had knawed in his stomach for years... the one that had spat out evil... the one that had taken over him for so many years.
He shook his head. That was not the way of the light. That was not what the light had given him.

He stared back at the light, loving the bright blue glory... and screamed as it shifted... becoming blood red...

He fell down to his knees as the light ceased to glorify its creatures, as the sky itself turned its angry eye against them... against him.

Was it a sign? Or had he brought it down upon himself? Was something breaking through the light? Was the darkness returning.

His hands were shaking, he couldn't stop them. Was the darkness returning? Was the light that was love gone? Was it all his fault? Had his thoughts brought back the darkness? Had the light never really been there for him? Had it all just been a cruel jest? Was the blood red energy that now crackled around him a sign? Had he done something wrong? Had he NOT done something he should have?

He glanced over to the children. They were still playing in the street... acting like there was nothing wrong. Acting without fear in the way that only the very young and very stupid can ever truly do. They didn't understand the difference. They didn't appreciate the light? Had THEY chased away the light? Had he?

He felt the darkness at the edges of his stomach, he spat on the ground, rejecting it. He wouldn't go back... not after knowing the light... he could never go back into the darkness... he could never go back into the darkness... he could never... go...

He heard the children laughing, and wondered if he had ever laughed like that. If he had ever been so happy. "I must have been," he told himself, "There had to be a time when I laughed like that, a time where all that mattered was what was in front of me. There had to be a moment..."

He closed his eyes. All he saw was the closet... all he heard was the screaming back and forth. All he felt was the darkness... "Stop it," he muttered under his breath, "why don't they just stop it? Why can't they just stop it?"

There was no response. The darkness that had been in the pit of his stomach had always responded. It had always let him know that it was because of him. They yelled at each other, they hit each other because of him... because he wasn't smart enough... because he wasn't good enough to keep them happy. Because he wasn't good enough to keep out the darkness. Because, in the end, the darkness was all that he had in the world.

He shook his head at the memory, the darkness was a lie. The light had proved that... the light... that was now dark red... like blood splattered across the sky, he told himself. Like blood across the town, he corrected... and heard the children yelling at each other with something other than love. Someone had the toy for too long... or someone had said something they won't understand enough about to regret.

He saw someone walking toward them... someone wearing a locket that marked the Chosen Ones... those that had been touched by HE WHO IS. People who had been changed by HIM to better serve. It was a young woman. Cassidy didn't know her. Was she the one who was going to come to him? Maybe she was the one who knew what had happened to the light. She was saying something to the children. He picked himself off his knees and walked toward her.

The children started crying hysterically, before turning and leaving, returning to their homes.

"Where is the light?" he heard himself ask before he had truly formulated the question in his mind. He had meant to ask what was going on, to ask what she had said to the children to make them go away. He had meant to ask if he had done something wrong. But "Where is the light?" went to the heart of it he knew, it asked the only thing really worth asking.

She turned to him as if seeing him for the first time. "Perhaps she did," he noted. She was pretty. Not conventionally pretty, but there was something in her eyes that suggested that she was pretty when she smiled. She wasn't smiling though, which, for a moment, struck Cassidy as a shame.
"The light is there," she replied, motioning toward sky as if there were nothing wrong... as if there were nothing changed, "Everything is fine."

"What has happened?"
"Everything is fine. Shade has simply gone to attend to other business. He will return soon."
"Shade?"
"Rac... the messiah... the love..."
"HE THAT IS" Cassidy supplied.
"Yes, those and many others. He has left..."
"He has LEFT!" Cassidy interrupted, something gripping the inside of his throat.
She reached out to put her hands on his shoulders. He started to swat her hand away, but checked himself. There was something else in her eyes. Something that said that she was one of the Chosen Ones. Something that said, pretty or not, that she was not someone who would be challenged.
He allowed her hand to rest on his shoulder, "Everything will be fine," she reassured, "He is to be gone but a little time. He has left the Chosen Ones in his place, to teach from his knowledge, to tell of the love that he brings."
"What of the light?"
"What of it?"
"It has... changed..."
"Things often do. He said that it would. He said that it would be of no consequence. Thus - it is of no consequence."
"Why did the children leave crying?"

She looked uncomfortable for a moment, before she readjusted. "They were told to play inside."
"They cried about that?"
"They wanted to stay outside. They wanted to play with their friends in the street."
"Is that no longer safe?"
"Perfectly safe. But the Chosen Ones have asked, for the sake of everyone's peace of mind, that the children be kept inside until HE returns."
"Because of the sky?"
"Because that is what was decreed." She smiled then.
Cassidy realized then that he had been wrong. He had misread the signs. She wasn't pretty at all when she smiled. She was dangerous. There was something about the smile that was dark... something that was powerful... something... that called out to the empty pit in his stomach like an old friend.

He took his leave, not wanting to continue to conversation, not wanting push for anything more. He stared up at the dark red sky and felt a chill. He closed his eyes and smelled the musty coats again... and heard the children crying beneath him.
He shook his head, to dispel the darkness - to embrace if not the light that had been, at least the light that was.

No one called him. He sat in his house, and no one called him. Not that he minded. Most of the time at least. There had been other things before the light... wine, women, song. Except that he didn't drink. Never had much use for it. Except that everytime he got close to a woman he'd find a way to fuck it up. He promise to call, then not do it. Maybe something came up that he had to put off the call. Maybe he was just afraid. Maybe, maybe that was just the way things were. But the longer he put off calling, the harder it was to pick up the phone. The harder it was to pick up the phone, to make the connection, the easier it became to just let it go.
The letters were worse - the ones from women who truly cared for him, ripping themselves to shreds in purple ink streaked across white lined paper. The ones that cried out for a love they didn't know they could never have.
The song was what he had. Yes, it was always the song that he came back to, in the days before the light. He would sit in his room and imagine what he was going to do, what he was going to become. He sat and listened, closing his eyes, and dreaming that he was going to be someone else one day - someone important.

Will sat in the darkness, staring at the red sky outside. The song had left him when the light came, when the one called Shade had come to him and told him that he could be more - that he WAS more. The song had gone the way song always does when something else comes, like an angry whore biting you on the way out the backdoor. Clawing at your eyes one last time. Leaving the dull ache that said that something bigger than life had just left the building.

He stared at the red sky, wishing that he drank. If he could just get drunk, he knew that he could get through it. He knew that he wouldn't care that the phone wasn't ringing. He knew that he would forget all about the box of letters he had in his closet - missed connections every last one of them. Chances to get laid, chances for something meaningful to happen in his life.

Will sat staring out the window, wishing for the wine, wishing for the song. But mostly wishing for the women. Or maybe just the woman. The one that got away - any of them would do really. Just someone to hold his hand. To let him know that everything was going to be all right. Even if it wasn't. ESPECIALLY if it wasn't.

He tried to close his eyes, to slip into the night, to just let the handful of painkillers he had taken grab hold of him. But everytime he tried, the lids would flicker back open. They would force him to stare up at the red sky. They would force him to see.

His stomach hurt. He hadn't counted on his stomach hurting. He'd read where people would just take a handful of sleeping pills and drift off into death. It wasn't like that though. He couldn't stop staring. His body didn't seem to be sleeping, it didn't seem to be heading toward death, but rather relishing what life there was. He tasted bile. It rose up his throat and just hung there for a moment before going back down. Reminding him.

Death wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a peaceful process. It was supposed to be... he wasn't sure. But it wasn't supposed to give you a stomach ache. It was supposed to get rid of the loneliness... the guilt... the awkward silences.

He slumped forward in the chair, falling to his hands and knees. The bile came again, this time covering the floor. Covering his hands. It came and came.

Death wasn't supposed to be like this, he protested. It was supposed to be clean. It was supposed to be some cute pale girl with a neat necklace and a smile that really held your attention.

He wiped his mouth with the bottom of his shirt, wiping away the line of vomit drool.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be somebody.

He whispered a prayer to a God he didn't believe in to just let him die. To let him be in death what he wasn't in life.

Then he threw up again, with a song he thought he remembered playing in the corner of his mind, just out of reach.

The house was as he remembered it. Big. And empty. Shade, Rac, it didn't matter what he called himself, not here... closed his eyes. He remembered her smile. He remembered his own.

They had been happy together. He had turned around to be with her. He had made the decision, one of the few in his life that he had been actually proud of. He had gone to her, committed.

But that was before. The happiness was before.

Before the Madness. Before it all went wrong again. The way it always did.

Before he had to become something bigger. Before he went through... everything. Before he understood.

Kathy would never have understood. Lenny might have thought taking over a town to make them understood was funny. Maybe not. But Kathy wouldn't have.

The old Shade, the space man in the funny red and yellow costume - he wouldn't have either. That sort of thing was for - what? Bad Guys? He'd been in the Suicide Squad. He'd seen bad guys, worked beside them. No, it wasn't the sort of thing that "Bad Guys" did. Even without the end goal, the scope was simply too big for such a label.

It was the sort of thing HE did. Good or bad, or just a thing - it was the sort of thing that you did when you were CHANGED. When you were BETTER. When you wanted others to become BETTER as well.

He gave them love. And they rejoiced in it. Then he had come here, to reflect. To think of what to do next. To give them something different. To take away the love.

That was important. He knew it was important. Love didn't stay, no matter how hard you tried to make it.

Kathy didn't stay. So he got better. Or, did he get better and then she didn't stay?

He shook his head. He didn't remember.

He pictured her smile, he could feel her arms around him.

But he didn't know the order that things had happened.

He didn't... he didn't remember why she had left... was she dead? Was he?

She had gone away. He BECAME. He CHANGED. That had been IMPORTANT. The leaving, and the love... the fear, the hatred, the... he had changed. He had understood.

He looked around the house one last time, wondering what had happened to Kathy. Wondering if she was happy. He hoped so. Whatever else had happened... whatever else was going to happen - he hoped that she was happy.


He closed the door behind him when he left. Closed the door and walked away. Back toward the place, the people, that needed him... more than it, more than they, would ever know.


He walked back, thinking of the way Kathy had smiled at him. Thinking of all they had done... and what they hadn't. He walked back, smiling, and embracing the path before him.

Kari felt them. Even when she closed her eyes, even when she tried to push them away. She felt them. They had come into her house when the light changed. When the town changed. They had come to her house, because it was close to the center of things - close to where HE had set up his base. They had needed somewhere to go, to expand. They had chosen her house because it was close. Because they needed.

She pushed herself further into the corner of the closet. They weren't going to go away. She knew it. They were going to stay, with all of their requests, with all of their "pleases" and "thank yous". They were going to stay. They were going to talk to her.

She didn't want to talk to them. She didn't want them in her house.

All she really wanted was to be alone. Alone in her life, alone in her house. She had tried having a cat once, but it had been too much of an interference. It had needed. Needed food. Needed attention.

When the light had first came, she had seen the LONE ONE. He had smiled at her, knowing her heart in a glance. She had been drawn to that. There was something in his eyes, something that said that he understood. Something that had told her that he knew where the boundaries were. Where her comfort levels were.

These people didn't.

She heard them crying, sobbing with each other. Mourning. The light had changed. They had changed, they had come to her home seeking something... companionship maybe - some glimmer of hope in the red darkness that draped the town. They needed.

She held her knees tightly, balled up in the corner of the closet, shaking. Hoping that no one would find her. Hoping that no one would ask her to come out... to take part... hoping that their need would go away, that THEY would go away... wishing that she could reach out and touch them, just once.

NEXT: "Hate"