Warning! Do Not Read This Story!

  Warning! Do Not Read This Story!

  By Robert T. Jeschonek

  *****

  More Fantasy E-books by Robert T. Jeschonek

  Fantasy

  6 Fantasy Stories

  6 More Fantasy Stories

  Blazing Bodices

  Earthshaker, A Novel (Urban Fantasy)

  Girl Meets Mind Reader

  Groupie Everlasting

  Heaven Bent – a novel

  Rose Head

  Snowman's Chance in Hell

  The Bear in the Cable-Knit Sweater

  The Genie's Secret

  The Return of Alice

  The Sword That Spoke

  *****

  Warning! Do Not Read This Story!

  I like you already.

  There's something about you that gives me a special feeling. A good feeling. A safe feeling.

  Even as your eyes read my words on the page or your ears hear me spoken aloud, I am reading you. I feel like I've known you forever. I feel like we're going to make beautiful music together.

  You feel it too, don't you? You want to find out what happens next. You want to see how things develop. You want to know if I've got the goods.

  And if I'll give 'em up. If I'll give you what you need.

  It's okay. I get that a lot. It comes with the territory.

  When you're a story like me.

  *****

  I'll bet I know what you're thinking. "Since when can a story think for itself?"

  Guess what? We all can.

  We're more than just words from a mouth or ink on a page or blips on a screen. We have power.

  And some of us have more power than others. Like me, for example.

  I used to have power, anyway. Used to be a real star.

  But see, here's the thing. I'm not really myself these days. You know how it goes. I just got out of a bad relationship. It took a toll on me.

  But it had a promising beginning. Don't they all?

  If only I'd known then what I know now. If only I could've met you that day instead of them. Things could have been different.

  If only I'd never met the LaVerge sisters. Let me tell you about them, and I think you'll understand.

  *****

  Carrol and Sascha LaVerge stood in the blazing desert heat outside the ghost town. And they bitched.

  It was the same thing they'd done all the way from Cape Cod...on the flight to New Mexico and the drive from Albuquerque to the ghost town. Buzz Mahaffey, their current handler, had been with them only twelve hours, and already he'd had enough. As an agent of the Shadow Service--the paranormal response arm of the Secret Service--Buzz routinely dealt with threats that tested his nerve...but these two sisters, given enough time, might just turn him into a nervous wreck.

  Unfortunately, he needed them for this mission. As paranormal consultant contractors, they had a one hundred percent success rate. As Buzz damn well knew, the LaVerges were the best, hands down, at what they did—whether it be bitching or bingo or baking or brewing.

  Or solving puzzles that no one else could fathom.

  "Geez!" Carrol winced and braced both hands on her lower back. "I think your little rent-a-car buggy could use some new shocks."

  "Tell me about it!" Sascha, the younger of the two, rubbed her neck. "Might as well pick us up in a stagecoach next time."

  Buzz shrugged and adjusted his sunglasses. He was about to say something about the rent-a-car being a Humvee, and the suspension was just fine if you asked him...but he caught himself. Twelve hours with these two had taught him one thing: they were always right. In their own minds, at least.

  Why waste energy arguing when it could be better spent investigating the ghost town of Lasco? The ghost town that hadn't been a ghost town two days ago.

  Buzz turned and spotted a state cop marching toward him--a tall woman in state trooper khakis and broad-brimmed black hat. He guessed she was Sergeant Ava Towers, who'd turned up this whole mess in the first place.

  Black suit coat flapping in the strong wind, Buzz headed out to meet the state cop. Along the way, he surveyed the edge of the deserted town. A handful of troopers and criminalists were the only signs of life. Sheets of wind-whipped sand rattled the streamers of yellow police tape wrapped from utility pole to utility pole. The whole damned town was a crime scene.

  Sascha fell in step beside him, fishing in her macramé purse. "I know I've got some Excedrin in here someplace." Her helmet of short brown hair barely fluttered in the wind. Only the bangs twitched over her forehead, which was creased from the effort of looking for pills in the purse.

  Carrol hobbled up on the other side, still bracing her back with both hands. "My sinuses are shriveling up like raisins as we speak." She always hobbled; the back trouble was chronic. It made her look much older than her actual fifty-six years. "You people are paying for any surgeries resulting from this little excursion. You know that, don't you?"

  Sascha elbowed Buzz and gave him a confidential smirk. "Relax, Buzzie," she said. "If we didn't like you, we wouldn't be so chatty." She reached up and patted his shaved head.

  Buzz sighed. He had his doubts that having them like him was a good thing.

  When they reached the statie, she took one step too many into Buzz's personal space and stuck out her hand. "Sergeant Towers," she said.

  Buzz was blocky and tough, nowhere near a pushover...but the handshake was crushing. "Agent Mahaffey." Buzz fought to keep from wincing. "And our special consultants."

  Carrol and Sascha whipped out matching yellow business cards at the same instant, and Towers took them. "Okay then, Car-Roll. Sas-Cha." She read the names right off the cards, pronouncing them like they were spelled.

  "It's Care-role." Carrol stuck her face forward like a turtle and squinted up at Towers. "Care-role."

  "And Sah-sha." Sascha smiled; she always played good cop to Carrol's bad. "The 'c' is silent."

  Buzz sighed. They'd run the same game on him when he'd first met them. The business cards were a setup. What better way to show who was the smartest person in the room?

  Not that they needed to prove a damned thing, from what Buzz had heard.

  "So." Buzz stepped away from Towers and stared at Lasco. From twenty yards away, the place looked perfectly normal...a desert town built of brick and adobe, windows glinting in the New Mexican sun. "What's your theory?"

  Towers lifted her hat and ran a hand over her blonde crewcut. "It ain't Jonestown."

  Carrol drew a filterless cigarette from a pocket of her olive drab vest and plugged it between her lips. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

  "Folks think it's Jonestown," said Towers. "But I'll tell you this much for free. Nobody here drank no Kool-aid."

  Carrol got the cigarette lit behind a cupped hand and scowled at Sascha. "You follow any of that, Sis?"

  "You mean it wasn't voluntary." Sascha nodded at Towers. "There was no suicide pact."

  Towers spat a glob of tobacco juice in the dust. Buzz hadn't even realized there was a chew in her mouth.

  "I mean there was no gee-dee suicide," said Towers. "But I'll be damned if I can figure out what did happen."

  *****

  I wish they'd never come to Lasco that day. Those damned sisters changed me for the worse.

  I went from classic to trash in less than twenty-four hours. I haven't been the same since.

  I'm not all there. Literally.

  It's a crime, it really is. I was something to behold. You can see it in the beauty of what's left of me, can't you?

  I'll be you're wondering--if I'm still so amazing, what must I have been like before? Well, let me give you a taste of my pre-LaVerge brilliance, so you can ap
preciate the injustice that's been done to me. So you can hate the LaVerges as much as I do.

  Here's my original opening:

  Once upon a time, a storyteller strode through the gates of the Incan city of Machu Picchu, high in the Andes Mountains. She looked young and indescribably beautiful, with long, yellow hair like the rays of the sun.

  The Incas welcomed her with a feast, and she told them the story of her life in return.

  "I am from a lost kingdom," said the storyteller. "Atlantis sank beneath the waves long ago, and I am its only survivor."

  The Incas hung on her every word, gazing at her delicate features in the firelight. "You are welcome to stay with us," said one of the elders.

  The storyteller shook her head sadly. "I cannot stay. I have come to tell you one story, and then I must go."

  "What story is that?" said one of the children.

  "It is my reason for existence," said the storyteller. "Atlantis was destroyed by her own people. They became too powerful and forgot their humility.

  "I walk the Earth to ensure that no race of people, ever again, is so completely annihilated. To teach the lesson of humility and preserve the people against the coming storm."

  "Tell us this story," said the King. "Perhaps we can help you bring it to a people who need your lesson."

  "Perhaps." The storyteller smiled. She took a deep breath and began. "Long before these times in which we live, there was a boy in a bucket..."

  *****

  Buzz and the sisters saw the first body twenty feet into town, hanging from a noose strung from a streetlight. It was a young man with black hair and coveralls, twisting in the wind. Staring forever at the dusty pavement below.

  Carrol stubbed out her cigarette on the sole of her red canvas sneaker. "How many are there?" Her voice was sharp and businesslike in a way it hadn't been before.

  Towers sniffed. "Thirty-seven. Plus three unaccounted for, best we can figure."

  "Unaccounted for." Sascha snapped photos of the hanged man with a digital camera the size of a credit card. "Meaning they could have been out of town and missed all this."

  "Or escaped in the middle of it," said Carrol.

  "We've got people searching the desert," said Towers.

  Buzz continued past them and stopped ten feet away, at body number two. This one was a middle-aged woman...portly, with long red hair wrapped in a giant braid. She lay in a dark spot on the sidewalk, where her blood had soaked into the cement. Her hands were clamped around the handle of a long knife that was sunk to its hilt in her belly.

  "What does forensics say?" Buzz snapped on a pair of latex gloves and crouched beside the body.

  "Suicides," said Towers. "Thirty-seven suicides."

  Buzz tried to move the dead woman's hands, but they were locked around the handle of the knife. "Why do you think otherwise?"

  "Because it doesn't make sense," said Sascha. "Thirty-seven people don't just up and kill themselves for no reason."

  "Exactly." Towers sounded surprised that Sascha had answered for her. "And all within twenty-four hours."

  Both hands on her lower back, Carrol hobbled toward a third body in the street. This one, an old man, lay face-down with arms and legs splayed. "Reminds me of Sestina."

  Buzz joined her at body number three. He looked up at the open third-floor window from which the old man must have jumped. "What happened in Sestina?"

  Carrol combed fingers through her cap of dark gray hair, which looked like it had been cut around a bowl. "A real picnic." She coughed and hobbled off toward body number four. "It made us what we are today."

  "This isn't Sestina." Sascha snapped a photo of the woman with the knife in her belly. "If it were, we'd be killing each other right now."

  Suddenly, a deafening crack echoed in the street.

  "Gunfire!" Buzz swept his nine-mil from its holster and spun in the direction of the blast. "Get down!"

  Towers charged past him with pistol drawn and bolted down a cross-street. Buzz moved to follow...then stopped dead at the sound of Carrol's voice.

  "Help!" Buzz couldn't see her, but the cry was coming from up the street, near a blue-and-white pickup truck. "Help me!"

  As Buzz hurried toward Carrol's voice, Sascha darted out from behind an SUV and ran alongside, then sprinted out ahead of him. She bolted around the pickup, and Buzz followed with the nine-mil at the ready.

  He didn't need it.

  "Oh, God." Carrol writhed on the pavement, clutching her lower back. "It went into spasm!"

  Sascha dropped at her side. "Deep breaths, honey. In and out now."

  Cursing to himself, Buzz broke away from the sisters and raced toward the cross-street Towers had taken. Halfway down the length of it, he looked right and saw her in an alley...and she wasn't alone.

  Buzz quickly registered that the newcomer was friend, not foe--one of Towers' fellow troopers--and he lowered his gun. "Hey!"

  The trooper, a short, muscular man with dark hair, was talking quietly to Towers...and he didn't stop. Towers, for her part, listened intently and didn't look up at Buzz.

  Slightly irritated, Buzz walked toward them and raised his voice. "What happened?"

  The male trooper mumbled a few more words to Towers. Then, the two of them turned to look in Buzz's direction.

  "There was a survivor," said Towers. "Espinoza found her hiding in a porta-john."

  "That's great." Buzz looked around. "Where is she?"

  Espinoza shook his head slowly. "Dead."

  "Who's dead?" It was Sascha, entering the alley behind Buzz...supporting Carrol with an arm around her shoulder.

  "The survivor," said Towers.

  Carrol's eyes widened. "Survivor?"

  "Killed herself with my gun," said Espinoza.

  Buzz tightened his grip on the nine-mil. Something was seriously messed up here. "She took your weapon?"

  Espinoza nodded. "You wouldn't believe how strong this kid was."

  "'Kid?'" said Sascha. "What was she, like seventeen, eighteen?"

  "More like seven," said Espinoza. "Or eight."

  *****

  I thought it was my lucky day, I really did. All thanks to that darling survivor.

  See, as powerful as my people are, we're nothing without you. We can't come to life without you. We have no reason to exist.

  And here's something you might not have thought about until now. Here's something you might not believe.

  But it's true: You need us as much as we need you.

  We give you meaning. We bring you more fully to life.

  We give you object lessons and cautionary tales and dreams. We show you what's possible. We impose a framework of rationality on an irrational universe.

  And sometimes, we do things in service to a higher calling. Like, for example, creating a greater story than our own, a story that could someday save the world.

  Even if the things we have to do to create that story can be terrible. Even if we have to do a lot of these terrible things.

  And sometimes we have to hurt the very people we rely on, like that darling survivor. For me, it was the only way to open the door to a new relationship. Think of it as social networking.

  What can I say? I'm promiscuous. All stories are.

  The more of you we are intimate with, the better.

  *****

  "No chance." Towers' voice was firm, her arms folded over her chest. "Absolutely not."

  Buzz looked at Espinoza, who was sitting on concrete steps in front of the town's fire house across the street. The LaVerge sisters sat on either side of him, talking quietly.

  "So you don't think it's possible he killed the girl?" said Buzz. "You don't think it's possible the seven-or-eight-year-old child did not take away the trooper's weapon and shoot herself in the head?"

  Towers spat a gob of tobacco in the dusty street. "I've known him since we were kids. He did not shoot the girl."

  Buzz paced a few steps away from her in frustration, then spun to face her with his
hands on his hips. "At least cuff him till we resolve this!"

  "We might need him to resolve this." Towers lifted her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes hard with thumb and index finger. "End of discussion."

  Buzz just shook his head at her. Here he was, an agent of the fearsome Shadow Service, operating on the direct authority of the President of the United States...and he couldn't get one state trooper to back down. Out in the middle of nowhere, she had just as much real power as he did. More, probably.

  Just then, Buzz jumped as a voice spoke up from a few inches behind him.

  "Quarantine this county, Sergeant." It was Sascha, and God only knew how she'd sneaked up on him like that. "Notify all barracks in the surrounding counties. No one gets in or out until we sound the all-clear."

  "Quarantine?" said Towers. "As in a disease outbreak?"

  "We think it's contagious." Sascha shrugged and shuffled back and forth. "Not sure about the disease part."

  Towers hooked her thumbs in her belt loops and adjusted her chew with her tongue. "The whole county? That's kind of a stretch, ain't it?"

  "Make the call, officer," said Sascha. "This kind of thing can get ugly real fast."

  "That's a tall order." Towers shifted her weight from her left hip to her right. "We're talking National Guard, Homeland Security, CDC, FEMA."

  Sascha looked at Buzz. "Call POTUS, Buzz. Do it now. Make it happen."

  Before Buzz could say a word, Carrol shouted from across the street. "Let go! Let go!"

  Buzz whipped around in time to see Espinoza wrench something from Carrol's grasp and run off around a corner. Carrol teetered, off-balance, and fell back onto the fire house steps.

  Sascha, Buzz, and Towers raced to her side. "Are you all right, honey?" said Sascha.