May, 21 2011 or December 21, 2012?

Honestly, I've never really thought about the end of the world. Okay, that's a lie. A lot of the video games, movies, video games, comic books, and video games I play, watch, read or otherwise consume deal with the end of the world. Also, quite frequently my stories go through "Doomsday scenarios" (none of which I've finished though). But, I mean, they are never about the end of the world and characters working to prevent it. No, these stories are boring. Of course they need to save the planet and of course the audience will care about a character who is trying to save the very planet they are a part of. Besides, if the planet were to be destroyed, how could I write a sequel and make more money?

I guess what really should matter are the people. Yeah, a strange thing to think about when the whole world's falling down around you, but its true. Fuck the hero and his rag-tag team of flunkies going to stop what should spell humanity's ultimate doom. In all honesty, give me a few friends, a pack of cigarettes (preferably Smooths), a cooler of beer, and "Apples to Apples" for an hour or two while I wait for the apocalypse to arrive in all its glory. And if that means I need to go find those people or, God-forbid, a carton of Marlboro's so be it. At least it'll give me something to do while I wait.


p.s. Don't get me wrong, I still have my ascension bag packed in case I get called up to Heaven. I also have a bag packed in case I get left behind during the rapture.... its actually the same bag. I think it'll work in either situation.

The Final Case for Detective Jones (part 4)

            At night, as he’s done for the past week since the killings started, Master Grim sits at his desk. He examines the notes Jones emailed to him earlier. Like the other cases, none of the spells match with any spell used by the Four Arcana Houses. What seems strangest, he thinks as he stares at the pictures, is the physical harm the spells created. Most, if not all spells leave behind no marking or residue. These must be caused by a very powerful mage, he thinks, one who wishes to wage a war on all four of the Houses simultaneously. Master Grim feels what he thinks is fear for what feels like the first time in a long time but easily dismisses the notion. He is the Head of the House of Grim after all, and one of the four most powerful magi in the city.

            For reasons unknown, Master Grim decides to type Detective Christian Jones into his computer. The first dozen or so pages turn up old cases Jones worked on (all solved, of course): cases protecting his fellow ignorant New Men from attacks involving magic or punishing (i.e. killing) magi for attacking New Men. He skims page after page until he finally finds one that isn’t an assignment.

            It’s an old news article taken from a New Man newspaper. It’s an old article, roughly thirty-five years old. Too long ago for Jones to have been a threat to the magical community. Perhaps another person with the same name, he thinks. Master Grim reads on with curiosity. Witnesses stand around the wreckage of a bus fire. Probably a cover up of the reckless activities committed by another young mage playing god amongst the New Men. Master Grim knows he, back in his younger days, was the same way – thinking himself a deity compared to the abundant New Men. Master Grim sighs as he recalls the days (not too long ago actually) when showing dominance over New Men wasn’t so frowned upon.

            In the article, authorities claimed it was a gas explosion and everyone on board, all two dozen, were killed. In addition to the article is another picture – a little boy whose mother was killed. He skims the article. Diana Jones, survived by her son Christian Jones. “Shit,” Master Grim says as he hears a foreboding knock at the door. Master Grim feels fear he cannot ignore this time. Slowly he reaches for the wand which he keeps hidden under his desk.

            Jones kicks the door in, knocking both of Master Grim’s bodyguards to the ground. Both men reach into their coats for their wands. The first barely lays a finger on his before Jones puts a bullet into his head, splattering the floor with the back of the man’s skull. The second man manages to actually point his wand at Jones. Before he can open his mouth to cast a spell, Jones fires two rounds into his chest (magic is slower than bullet, after all).

            With the two men dead, Jones walks toward Master Grim’s desk, the barrel of his gun pointing squarely at Master Grim’s head. He wears a smile on his face, but no cigarette in his mouth. Jones carries a small red container in his hand. A familiar smell wafts through the room.

            “You know, I almost gave up searching. Then I saw your wand, heard your alliterations. What really gave you away though was your spell signature, that distinctive green light,” says Jones as he takes a seat across from Master Grim. “Before you die, I want to tell you a story, though I’m sure you’ve heard this one before.

            “Thirty-five years ago, a single mother boards a bus to her second job after getting off a graveyard shift just three hours earlier. She waves at her son as she leaves him to wait for his school bus. As she boards the bus, a man approaches the boy. The boy is wary of strangers and so the stranger introduces himself and lets the boy know that they can be friends. He asks if the boy wants to see a magic trick. The boy, curious as all boys are, agrees. The man pulls a stick from his coat and, with a wave, a ridiculous rhyme, and a green flash, the bus he just saw his mother board erupts into flames. The man just laughs. The man who introduced himself as –”

            Master Grim finally seizes his opportunity. He has no intention of dying at the hands of a filthy New Man. Master Grim pulls the wand from under his desk and points it at Jones. “Wrathful, raider, righteous, –”

            “Jonathan Grim.”

            The light at the end of Master Grim’s wand fades as he feels power flow out of his body. For the first time in his life he feels frailty, weakness, powerless, helpless. He feels the approach of Death. Jones holsters his gun and Master Grim sees on his face the smile of bloodlust. Jones’s broad grin consumes his view such that Master Grim doesn’t even see or feel what hits him next. When Master Grim awakens, he finds himself tied to his chair and Jones standing over him with the red container. He hears the sloshing of the liquid moving back and forth.

            “I bet now you wish she hadn’t taken a window seat. I might have just put a bullet in your head and be done with this ordeal.” He opens the container and the smell of the liquid wafts throughout the room. Master Grim tries to struggle free but the rope holds him tight. He calls for help but the walls suppress his voice. He begs and pleads but his captor’s mind is focused on revenge. The gasoline drenches him from head to toe, seeping into his clothes and filling his nostrils.

            The door bursts open and several magi stand in the doorway, wands in hand. They arrive just in time to see Jones drop his cigarette onto Master Grim, his body erupting into a pillar of flames before their eyes.

The Final Case for Detective Jones (part 2)

           It is a good five minutes before Detective Jones can stand again. When he does, Jones kicks a trashcan at the door while muttering a string of profanities. He walks to the car and grabs his bag from the trunk as well as another pack of Marlboros.

            When he reenters the bar, Jones pulls a lantern from the bag and, with a match, lights it and his cigarette before hanging it from the ceiling (the lantern, not the cigarette). It casts an odd glow on the room, or rather a spotlight on only the things worth looking at. Obviously the two bodies are illuminated, their magical wounds glow the brightest. Around the room several other spots on the wall also glow. With a digital camera he photographs the wounds, making sure to capture the blue glow. He jots a line or two into his notebook. Typically Jones would take better notes, but he has no interest in the case before him.

            Instead Jones thinks about spell signatures: that glow on the wand that occurs when a spell is cast. How they are different down to the slightest hue. How they vary from one magician to another. How no two are exactly alike: like snowflakes; like fingerprints; like striations on a bullet.

            Jones jumps into his car and drives down the wet streets of the city. He drives with the radio off. Distractions prevent people from noticing their world, or rather the magic that lies hidden within it. Most people (or New Men as Master Grim calls them) don’t even perceive it exists, but it’s there. They avoid the supernatural, allowing things like The Recession, The War, The Climate Change to consume their thoughts. They flood their senses constantly with devices like their iPods and cell phones so much that they don’t even notice the magic all around them.

            During this drive though, Jones distracts himself with thoughts about spell signatures, bus fires, and Master Grim.

The Final Case for Detective Jones (part 1)

Four men walk into a bar (it sounds like a bad joke, but that’s what happened). The first man, older than his companions, pauses at the door having been there an hour ago. His bodyguards (the next two men) pause with him. The fourth man, middle-aged and lacking the magical abilities the other members possess, pushes through and takes in the scene without breaking his stride. He circles the room twice, once looking only at the two corpses and the second time to examine the rest of the room.

“What am I looking at here?” Jones says after he finishes inspecting the bodies. He lights a cigarette, his only vice besides drinking, gambling, and anything else he can drown his sorrows in. Jones looks at the older man he’s been told to call Master Grim (or else), head of the House of Grim. He’s dealt with magicians and their secretive nature before. So secretive that they forbid giving their real names to those outside their House in fear that they could lose their powers. Jones, unfortunately, has a problem with those who do not introduce themselves properly (along with a customary handshake, of course). Besides, he doesn’t normally team up with magicians, but rather deals with them through the barrel of the .44 magnum he holsters inside his trench coat.

Master Grim looks at the younger man with a sneer. He hates involving himself in such mundane tasks. Honestly, the only thing he hates more is involving New Men in the affairs of The Arcana. New Men, he thought, with their lack of magic and their focus on science. They aren’t even able to perceive the magical world of The Arcana right under their noses anymore.

Master Grim points at the two bodies on the ground. “These two magi are from my House, the House of Grim. As you know someone is murdering the magi of the Four Arcana Houses. Due to the trust issues between the Houses, we have selected you as the neutral party to assist us in this investigation. In three days you will present to the four Houses your findings and thus allow us to deal with the matter. If you fail, it could mean another war between the four Houses,” says Master Grim. He straightens out his tie and jacket as if he’s sullied himself from just speaking with a New Man.

Jones flicks his cigarette at the feet of Master Grim. “I still don’t see why I should help. A mass genocide amongst you magicians sounds perfectly fine to me.”

Master Grim refuses to reason with a New Man. Instead he pulls his wand from under his coat. It’s not as elegant or fancy as one might expect a person named Master Grim, Head of the House of Grim, to own, but it is still effective enough to get Jones to shut his mouth and focus his gaze upon it. “Test me again, boy, and I’ll make certain you don’t live to see another day.”

Jones’s eyes grow wide as if he sees a ghost, or perhaps his life flashing before his eyes. In fact, he sees both. The apparition of his mother smiles at him, unknowing of the fate that lies before it – or rather the fate that it already experienced. It’s the only case Jones has yet to solve, the death of his own mother. Once again, like so many times before, there is a flash of green as flames engulf the illusion. The delusion lets out a soundless scream, a scream which pierces Jones’s soul rather than his eardrums and he vows once more to find her murderer.

Jones awakens from his hallucination and remembers the threat in front of him. He’s never been one to back down from a challenge. Moreover, he will die before he allows a simple magician to prove him a coward. Jones lets his ego do the talking by drawing his own revolver from his coat and he plays with the cylinder, clicking the chamber with every turn. “I’m saying that maybe –”

Master Grim, however, is also a man of action. “Wretched, refusal.” Master Grim’s wand glows green as an equally green aura surrounds Jones. The more he alliterates (he likes the “r” sound, though no one knows the reason), the brighter it glows, the wand as well as the aura. Jones lets out only a slight yelp, but soon enough he falls to his knees, breathing heavy and sweating profusely.

No one in the room sees any change on Jones’s skin – no bruises, no cuts, no broken bones – but everyone knows what’s happening. The brighter the green aura glows, the more pain Jones feels. Like needles, like daggers, like flames. After a minute the aura outshines the fluorescent lighting of the room, blinding everyone including Master Grim. Jones withers on the ground, his gun falling out of reach. He lets out a scream that tears at the eardrums of everyone in the bar. Master Grim stops and puts the wand away.

Jones lifts himself to all-fours, slowly, panting. He sees his gun and tries to crawl toward it. Master Grim delivers a swift kick to his ribs, flipping him onto his back. “I’ll see you in three days, Detective Jones.” Master Grim and his cohorts walk out the door and vanish in the sunlight without a second glance from a passer-by walking down the street, headphones in his ears.