What has me just as concerned is that my viewership has gone down steadily this year. From a peak weekly average of about 11 views per day, down to 3 per day last week. I guess I can say anything I want now because I know no one is going to read it. This is quite frustrating.
I don't know if it will help, but I did promise some fiction and I did write a story. I guess now is as good a time as any to share it.
Gone Daddy Gone
The snow was coming down in buckets; buckets of slush that would taste like oily Slurpee if one were to put a straw to the streets. In less than an hour the nightfall would turn it into freezer-burnt ice cream.
Monica could almost hear the soggy snowflakes smacking the window. She hugged herself as she took a drag from her clove cigarette and thought, "Good, they won't come today."
She had to take them if they came, that was her vow, her vocation, but no one would come on a day like this. Still she had to be ready, standing there letting the power flow through her in a dribble, as little as possible, but ready to open the slue and flood over her.
The dribble tickled, warmed and dulled her. The longer she kept it flowing the worse it would get. She dreaded a useless hangover. If she could just know that it would all be worth it, she could stand it.
Just a quick peek, a glimpse, like downing a shot of tequila, then she could go to bed and sleep it off.
She breathed deeply, closed her eyes and let the visions wash over her.
The day blurred in swirling, darkening gray, a fast forward of the whiteout turning to night. A dark shape exploded into existence, she slowed it until it became a man, stooped and slogging.
He made his way past her yard. When he came level with her gate another figure appeared, taller, more mobile even in the thick white. He came up from behind with a full hand; something glinted in the feeble light.
"No," she reached out, but that was not hers to command. She could not stay the execution simply with her hand. She tried, she drew in the power, drank it deep, felt her head swim, her acuity slipping. She swung the power like an overcharged fire hose.
She slowed it, got herself under control before she lost it. The man took the other and left him slowly staining the snow with his life, then he ran off into the balls of yellow light that struggled to guide him through a dark and white night.
This did not, would not happen for hours she guessed. She had time yet to help him, to stop it.
The thought was a small child lost in the raging tempest of her drunken mind. She slipped and fell to the floor wet in nothing but her tears while she drowned in the power.
"Stupid," she cursed herself. She lay still gathering her thoughts, letting the room spin and concentration not on herself, but on the problem.
Suddenly she retched, jumped up and vomited from her hands and knees. Three full heaves and she steadied herself. It helped, she could stand.
She let the mess stay on the hardwood. She staggered to her desk and retrieved the amulet and let more run out of her, into the device. She walked to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water three times before grabbing her coat from the hall hook and going out to the garden gate.
She went to where he would be, where the act would take place. She stood there shivering, but if she were there it couldn't happen THERE, it had to happen somewhere else and maybe not at all.
Her feet started feeling wet in her thin boots, her coat got wet, the scarf on her head soaked. The shivering crawled its way to her bones. She hugged herself tighter and stamped the slush; always watch from where he would come.
How long? When? She had to know. The cold was just too much. Her mind wasn't fully clear yet, but she couldn't stand there for hours, she'd die of hypothermia.
She grasped the amulet tightly and let some of the power slosh over her weakened levees. It was a careful, calculated measure.
There was the street in the dark storm in a different time, in his time. The man was there, a few feet away looking down, fighting through the storm and whatever pains of his own.
But, the time? She looked around to see how long she would have to wait for him. Something was wrong, suddenly she realized: the street signs were different.
The Chicago street signs had been white on green since she was a child, but before that they were black on yellow, same as the one she now looked up at. She hadn't looked forward, but back.
The man looked up and saw her, just in front of her, their eyes met.
"Monica?"
She stood frozen.
He reached out, in his hand her amulet.
The other man struck. He was on the first, his knife struck as the amulet passed to her hand. The old man fell at her feet.
Just before he turned to run she looked eyes with the killer, "Father?"
"The amulet must pass in blood, I had to, I promised your grandfather. Now you must make the vow."
She drank the power deeply, her grandfather pouring it down her throat, "I swear."
He took a breath and ran off into the night as she returned to the now and collapsed into the unstained slush.
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