Despite looking like my diet consists of roaches and cardboard-there's a reason I'm called Sandman Slim-, I'm strong. Inhumanly strong, and that's not a figure of speech.
I've punched through concrete and bulletproof glass, snapped necks and ripped parking meters straight out of the ground. Once, I jumped a yards-wide gap while carrying two people.
"Ugh!"
Said strength is being put to the test by the latest of my mentor's retarded tests. I call them pop quizzes, because my bones pop during them.
"Hadleigh! What's the goddamn point of this!?"
Motherfucker's just summoned a fucking metal block straight onto my shoulders, and I'm practically squatting under the thing. Feels like a goddamn SUV, but more compact.
My flesh arm is trembling. The other, the Kissi prosthetic, looking like the Terminator fucked a bug which then shat it out, isn't even strained. It's never been damaged, or even scratched.
After I returned to Hell and lost my arm to a gladiator with a fucking crab pincer, a Kissi named Joseph gave me a new one. Fucking thing creeps the shit out of me, along with everyone else who's seen it. It's why I always wear long sleeves and gloves.
If any of my recently-acquired pals have detected it with their special snowflake senses, none of them have babbled, as far as I know.
And these days, I know far more than I used to.
"Keep calm and soldier on, Stark," Hadleigh drawls lazily, leaning against a wall. "You must learn to work under pressure."
"Was that a fucking pun!?"
I don't see Hadleigh roll his eyes, but I practically hear him. "Just do like we've rehearsed, Stark. But in reverse."
In reverse...ah. Of fucking course.
Ever since I came to the Deep School-the place where they teach you the shit that plagued Lovecraft's nightmares, and so much more-, Hadleigh has taught me many things, none of them having to do with magic. Because he's not just a graduate, he's a fucking instructor.
One of my new tricks is creating matter out of nothing. It's useful, because it means I never run out of cigs and ammo. Still learning to make booze, though.
So...in reverse. I focus my will on the metal block, and stop believing in it. It fades like morning mist, and my back all but moans in relief.
I roll my flesh shoulder, glaring at Hadleigh, who, as always, looks completely relaxed.
We're currently in one of the cathedrals of bone, the Dark Academie's training areas. If the name sounds like a dodgy brothel for necrophiles, it's not that far off from the truth. You come out of here utterly disgusted with yourself, too.
The room doesn't have a ceiling. The sky is black as ink, with an even darker sun that's somehow visible. There's no light, but neither of us needs eyes to see anymore.
"Cute trick, teach. Are you gonna make me write my name three million times on the board next?" I ask, swaggering up to him.
"If you're bored," he replies. "But I think you should take a break from learning, for a while."
"No, really."
"Yes, really." He straightens up, and his eyes are darker than the sun above us." A storm is coming, Stark. A storm of light and darkness, and you are in its eye."
"An oncoming storm, huh?" I say, making a Malediction and lighting it. "You Brits and your Doctor Who...fine. Any tips on how to avoid or stop it? Or is it one of those things that fucks everyone in the ass, but absolutely has to happen?"
"I cannot say," he answers in a final tone.
Well, that's my cue to leave. You can't drag answers out of Hadleight with a crowbar. And when the Detective Inspectre cannot say something, it either means he doesn't know, which is fucking terrifying, or literally cannot speak about it, which is even worse.
"Well, that's swell. I'll scream if you need me. Watch your back, teach." And he should, too. The Detective Inspectre has thwarted the plans of so many monstrous fucktards, it would take a lifetime just to list them. Bastard collects enemies like a dog collects fleas.
I give him a two-finger salute, he nods, and that's that. Neither of us was touchy-feely even before we became the freaks we are, and that's not going to change. Still, I like to think we respect each other. He reminds me of Vidocq, in a way.
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When Hadleigh's parents disappeared into a timeslip only to return decades later, he was left alone. He became Walker, the Authorities' man, for a time, and passed the title to the current Walker, Henry, when the Deep School called to him.
His parents had two other kids, Larry and Tommy, but Hadleigh wasn't there to watch his brothers grow. He dropped in when his duties left him, but he was always more like a distant uncle than an older brother to them.
He wishes it was different, though he's never said it. Hadleigh Oblivion is one of the saddest bastards I've ever met, for all his power, and that's saying something. He makes Kasabian look optimistic.
Just goes to show power does not, cannot, make a man happy.
I leave the Deep School behind, to return to the Nightside. The ascent is only partly physical, as many things are. You just gotta open your eyes first.
Like I have.
There's so much fucking bullshit going on right in front of mankind's eyes, and they don't even see it. Though, maybe, it's a mercy. Most would go mad if they saw the fuckers they share the world with.
I remember when I learned about the Kissi, back in my reality. God's failed angels who lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. They clung to people like parasites, whispering and nudging, encouraging them to indulge their worst impulses.
I burned most of them alive, and the rest died in a clusterfuck charge against Heaven. I'm not sorry. I never met a Kissi who wasn't the worst they could be, which just goes to show how inhuman they were. People aren't that fucking single-minded, ever.
When I was ten, I challenged myself to think of one thing every human agrees with. I'm still thinking.
As I reach the Nightside, my eyes adjust to the meager, false light. If people knew what the moon here really is, they'd carve their eyes out with rusty spoons, so it couldn't stare into them anymore.
People stare and mutter at my eyes and coat, which change color with every moment and movement. It's because they're receptacles for my will, which passes through them like light through a prism, and takes many forms.
I can see demons clinging onto people's eyes and heads, urging them to do their biding. I whisper words of unmaking, and they fall apart like ants under a looking glass. Fuck off. The Nightside might exist to drain suckers dry, but they should choose their damnation, not be fucking pushed into it.
I see the Awful Folk, passing through buildings and people who do not exist, to them. As long as they remain harmless...
I look at the moon, and it doesn't dare look back. I see the things that fly across its face. Birds of a feather...
And, because I'm staring at the sky like a fucking moron, it takes me a second to realize the pillar of light in front of me is coming for a higher reality.
It forms into a white silhouette, because of course the angel has to confront me in the middle of the fucking street. They're the same everywhere...
Well, almost.
The angel points its compensation pigsticker at me, and it's blazing with white fire. It looks like a flaming dildo, and I wonder if it knows that.
"James Butler Hickok Stark," it says, and I wonder if it's gonna start reciting my ancestry, too. "You stand guilty of moving beyond your Creation, and of interfering in the Great Experiment."
James and I grin. So kind of the angel to give me a chance to try out my new skills.