and more

Jasper stepped back from the edge, pulling the faded leather duster from his shoulders and dropping it to the ground. He flexed his shoulder muscles and twisted his neck from side to side, grimacing slightly at the grinding and popping sounds the motion caused. His hands moved with practiced ease to the twin machetes he wore strapped tightly to each thigh and undid the stays that held them tight in their sheaths. That done, he reached to the small of his back with his left hand to unstrap the modified Beretta 9-mil he kept in a simple roto-belt holder. It wasn’t fancy, but it kept the weapon secure while he moved, and released with just a slight pressure on a thumb slide when he needed it quickly. It also kept a low relief so folks didn’t always notice he was packing, which had saved his life more times than he cared to remember. Slowly, Jasper cupped both hands in front of his mouth and breathed a long, slow, hot breath of power into them before quickly moving them down so that each hand cupped the pommel of a machete. The polished white stones beneath his cupped palms began to glow with a light so bright he could see the veins and muscles in his hands like they were lit up from within. From within the chasm came a distant sound like the crashing of stones, followed a few moments later by deep rooted trembling beneath the soles of his boots and Jasper gave a humorless smile. Seemed that his message had arrived and been received with just about the amount of happiness he’d expected. Now came the fun part.

Continuing on . . .

He’d be lying if he said the thought didn’t appeal to him on some level but in the end he just brushed the hair out of his eyes with one hand and leapt the thirty or so feet across the chasm with ease, landing without a sound on the rust colored shale. Below, the mists thickened and swirled, their thick whiteness taking on an angry orange tint about the edges, as if they sensed and resented his casual dismissal of their invitation to death. Good, he wanted them pissed off. Anger makes your enemies sloppy. Sloppy enemies are much easier to convert into uncaring corpses. Jasper crouched down on one knee, picking up a golf ball sized piece of milky white quartz that lay beside his left boot. He examined it closely for a moment, looking deeply at the crystalline weave of the stone’s molecular structure. It was shit of course, no one left good augurstone lying about, but it would do for his immediate need. He brought the stone close to his lips and breathed softly into it, pushing fey into the stone’s depths. The white quartz began to pulse softly with a pale yellow light and it warmed slightly in his hand. Jasper nodded in satisfaction as he stood, bouncing the glowing quartz in his palm. The augur wouldn’t hold for long, the weak stone would shatter quickly beneath the strain, but it would hold long enough for what he needed. He brought the stone close to his lips once more but this time he didn’t breathe; he spoke. He pushed his voice within the lattice of the augurstone energies, letting his message become part of the stone’s fabric. It would hold his words until the stone broke, then they would release, delivering his message just as he spoke the words now:


“I’m here. Come out of your hole and die, asshole.”

Not very poetic, he thought with a grin as he leaned forward and dropped the augur into the chasm, but it would do the job. When the stone hit bottom and shattered, those simple words would be all that was required to shake all hell free from its bonds.

He hoped.

and hmmmm . . . .

Life is like that, he thought. The overwhelming is buried in the minutiae of the ordinary. When things are too much for the simple human brain to comprehend, it focuses instead on the trivial and the silly. Why worry about the cold of the mist when the bone-snapping, brain-flattening, stop at the end of the fall was where the mind should be focusing? There it was though: the simplicity of the mind. What can’t be fathomed or controlled, can be ignored in favor of the comfortable ordinary. Was that what had happened between he and Kailey? Had he been so unable to see the miraculous that he’d tried to force her into a role she was incapable of living? Maybe. It wouldn’t matter soon though, the wind pressed once more at the small of his back, a lover’s caress urging his unwilling body forward. The breeze tickled against his neck, it’s formless voice whispering in his ear. Forward . . . forward . . .

Hmmm . . .

Jasper stood on the edge of a drop so deep that he couldn’t see the bottom. Winds, cold and brittle, pushed at his back, swirling the thick strands of his auburn hair in front of his eyes. He brushed weakly at the strands, squinting as he tried to see the bottom of the chasm before him but its finality was lost in darkness and early morning mist. Was it cold in there, he wondered? If he fell, would he have time to note the rise of goose flesh on his arms before he reached the inevitable jarring stop at the end of his free-fall journey?