Author: Tower Curator

002.002

Posted on by Tower Curator

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A Whole New World

Exploration

Alyssa walked a full circle around her house. Everywhere she went, she walked across fresh green grass. Really fresh. It smelled like the grass had just been mowed even though almost all of it brushed by her knees. Behind the house, a small lake bordered a forest filled with high trees. Maybe redwoods—Alyssa wasn’t sure, her brother had been the Wilderness Ranger of the family. With the sun not too hot and the breeze just light enough to be pleasant against her skin, she might have enjoyed relaxing with a nice book and deepening her already modest tan at the same time—though the moon and rings might be a bit eerie. Or maybe going for the swim in the lake. Their house hadn’t really had a backyard, let alone a swimming pool. The house itself occupied almost the entire lot. The pool at the local recreation center… well, crystal clear water of this lake looked a whole lot more appealing than the sickly green of the rec center.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t enjoy anything about the situation. She kept waiting for someone to jump out saying that everything had been a big joke. Except things had progressed far too much for a simple prank. Even ignoring the bodies, someone would have had to construct a replica of her home out in the middle of nowhere, hook it up to utilities—the inside still had running water and electricity—and then fix her phone to not work the way it should. No. It was too elaborate.

Which meant everything was real.

With a sigh, she made her way back to the front of the house and collected the things she had gathered. First, she double-checked the compass she had dug out of her brother’s closet. When she had first found it, the needle had been spinning erratically. On a hunch, she had brought it outside. The little red line pointed directly towards her house. The red line remained aimed at her house as she took a quick jog around.

She would have to keep an eye on it to ensure it stayed pointing that way once she put some distance between her and the house.

Having already changed out of her comfortable exercise clothes and into some proper long legged pants, boots, and a long sleeve jacket, she slipped on a backpack filled with some granola bars and water bottles. She had filled it with a few other camping supplies as well: a first aid kit, lighters and matches, her brother’s hatchet and one of his knives, a flashlight, and a few extra magazines.

Not the paper kind.

Fully loaded magazines. Alyssa didn’t know what she was going to find out over the hills. To that end, she had equipped two holsters. One under her arm and one at her hip. She stared at the two guns sitting on the edge of the porch. Even bringing them out here had been… uncomfortable. They felt heavier than they had last night. But still, she had reloaded the one she had used and loaded a second. If afterlives were real and she had ended up in one, maybe she wouldn’t need one. Otherwise, she didn’t fancy being eaten by a bear ten steps away from the house. She picked the two pistols up and slotted them into their holsters after ensuring that their safeties were switched on.

Unable to think of anything else she might need on short notice, Alyssa headed off with the compass in her hand. Her front porch had a perfect view of the nearest hilltop. Perhaps from the top, she might be able to see some sign of civilization. A road or a power line. Maybe even actual people she could get help from. People who could contact her family. The heartbreak her mother and father must be going through… she could imagine it easily. It had only been the night before when she had heard a man losing all composure over his deceased son.

Alyssa forced herself to focus on the natural beauty around her and shook the morbid thoughts from her mind.

Ka-caw.

A raven’s caw off in the distance sent pins and needles down Alyssa’s spine. Ancient Greeks viewed the crow as a symbol of good luck. They were pretty much the only ones with a positive opinion of the bird. Spotting it on the branches of a full tree just gave Alyssa an ominous feeling. It didn’t help matters that it watched her with an unblinking eye as she walked to the top of the hill.

However, the feeling vanished in an instant as she looked down on the lands below.

Snowcapped mountains stood tall in the far distance. From there, a river cut a swath through the rolling hills of the valley until it disappeared somewhere on the horizon. A thick layer of fluffy white clouds hung in the otherwise blue sky, their shadow over a portion of the valley not detracting from the overall feel in the slightest. Trees lined one side of the river while relatively flat plains lay on the opposite side.

Her heart jumped as she noticed a golden field amongst the mostly green landscape. Wheat. Probably. And with the squared edges of the plot, it had to be man made. There! Not far from the golden fields of wheat, a large stone structure had been built near the river. Tiny almost tent-like things dotted the area around it. Their size was probably just the distance. But civilization definitely existed down there. One of the buildings looked somewhat like a cross between an European cathedral and the Luxor, Las Vegas version, all black and shiny. It was the only building that she could really see any definition to at this distance.

Grabbing the straps of her backpack and hiking it up higher on her shoulders, Alyssa set off towards the city.

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002.001

Posted on by Tower Curator

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A Whole New World

Stranger in a Strange Land

Alyssa woke with a jolt. As if someone had stuck her with sharp prongs attached to a car battery; her heart pounded in her chest as sweat trickled down her brow. Somewhere in the background, the harsh repetitive tones of an alarm clock buzzed without pause. She couldn’t see anything but a hazy white light. Worst of all, her breath felt too hot and too moist in front of her face, as if she were breathing the same air over and over again.

Which she was.

With a heavy groan, Alyssa moved a hand up to her face and pulled the piece of paper off her head. She let out a slight squeak of pain as a bit of tape tugged at her hairline before it finally came loose. A slight hiss escaped her lips as the light flooded in. Without the paper’s meager protection, she had to pinch her eyes shut once again.

Morning had come. Seven thirty in the morning, if that alarm beeping in the background was her cell phone. Work started in an hour. They were supposed to be getting a new shipment of lumber in. Lumber she would end up hauling around for the majority of the day. Better than dealing with customers who didn’t know what they wanted, but she would come home too exhausted to do much of anything.

Confusion settled in. For the life of her, Alyssa couldn’t figure out why she would have fallen asleep on the floor. She didn’t drink. At least not on work nights. And—finally squeezing her eyes open—why in her parents’ bedroom?

Alyssa stayed lying on the floor, staring up at the unmoving ceiling fan with a blank mind. Her mind didn’t stay empty for long. Another jolt ran through her body, shocking her to full wakefulness as she recalled everything that had happened the night before. Clutching a hand over her mouth, she sprinted out of her parents’ room and into the hallway bathroom. She threw up the toilet seat and voided what little her empty stomach held. Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t been able to eat much the night before.

Finished with the toilet, she stood on shaking legs and staggered to the sink to wash her face. Hot water took too long in her house so she made do with freezing cold. Alyssa eyed the shower. She needed one without a doubt, but perhaps later. Besides, cold water had the added benefit of further waking her up. While at the sink, she took the time to brush her teeth. The toothpaste helped to get rid of the foul taste in the back of her throat.

Alyssa sighed as she stared at herself in the mirror. The deep bags under her eyes told of how little rest she actually got during her sleep. That she had slept at all was a surprise. The police hadn’t woken her. Neither had her mother. Even if all the occurrences of the previous evening had been nothing more than delusion, she had definitely woken up in her parents’ bedroom. Her mother would have woken her for that alone.

Shaking her head, Alyssa shambled away from the bathroom. She stopped and closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she built up the courage to look down the hall.

Dirty footprints led from the entryway all the way up to her brother’s room. There, a set of legs stuck out of the doorway.

The night’s events had definitely not been a fabrication.

Alyssa walked past the pistol lying on the floor and leaned around the entrance of the closet. Sure enough, a body still sat slumped against the wall beneath her mother’s dresses. She didn’t actually enter the closet. She just stared long enough to ensure that she wasn’t hallucinating.

Too long. A sick sensation welled up again. She turned away before she felt the need to rush off and dry heave over the toilet again.

The distant cell phone finally ceased its noise, pulling Alyssa’s attention back to the fact that it was clearly morning and no one had woken her or shown up to look over the bodies. No police, no parents, not even a concerned neighbor. Had that break-in at the bank occupied her mother for the entire night? What about the gunshots? The angel had said that neighbors heard them and called the police.

Of course there was no sign of the angel. She hadn’t been real. Which meant that her knowledge hadn’t been real either. The idea that the neighbors had called the police was simply that, an idea that her subconscious had cooked up. After the adrenaline had worn off, she must have fainted. All that light show at the end had merely been spots in her eyes as she passed out. Nothing more.

On her way to find her cell phone to get some real help, a piece of paper crinkled underneath her foot. The paper that had been stuck to her face had fallen next to her discarded pistol. She hesitated with a fear gnawing at her heart of what she might find written on it. Yet, at the same time, a curiosity struck her. Someone had found her. Alyssa wouldn’t have taped a note to her own face. And they had left her in a home with two dead bodies.

Her hand snatched the paper and flipped it over before she could reconsider. An elegant script covered the entire page. She couldn’t even call it handwriting; the lettering looked like something out of her medieval art history textbooks. Hard to read, but Alyssa managed with only a little trouble.

Alyssa Meadows.

You great fool. Last night was supposed to have been a jolly time of feasting on souls. Thanks to you, I have such a mess to clean up. You stay put. Once I finish, we shall decide what to do about you.

Love, Tene

Alyssa crushed the paper in her hand, clenching her fist tightly in an attempt to keep her hand from shaking.

That angel had called herself Tenebrael. The same name as on the note, if a longer form. She had been real. Alyssa didn’t want to believe it, but there was only so much she could wave away before she had to start accepting reality. Even if that reality was stranger than fiction. With an actual physical message, that point had been reached. Between the extremely precise nature of the handwriting and the style of the lettering, Alyssa couldn’t delude herself into believing that her hand had written the message. Doctors had better handwriting than Alyssa did.

But if Tenebrael had been real, that light show must have meant something. All those glowing lines and the angel shouting about claiming her. Was she dead? Clearly not as dead as the two other bodies in the house.

No. She couldn’t be dead. The note said that Tenebrael would be back to deal with her, whatever that meant.

Alyssa sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

She stalked down the hall and carefully averted her eyes from the corpse as she retrieved her cell phone from the couch. Returning to the hall, she stepped back over the legs and made her way toward her parents’ bedroom. She didn’t dare look around until reaching the door just before. Her room. There, she shut the door and sat down on her bed, looking over her phone.

No text messages. No missed calls. Just the notification that she had missed an alarm.

To start with, Alyssa dialed her mother’s cell number and held the phone up to her ear.

“We’re sorry; we are unable to complete your call as dialed. Please check the number and dial again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.”

Alyssa blinked, staring at her phone. She had used her speed dial. There shouldn’t have been any chance for an error. Just in case, she tried manually dialing.

“We’re sorry; we are unable to complete your call as dialed. Plea—”

Fine, she thought as she scrolled down to her father’s number.

“We’re sorry; we are unab—”

Grinding her teeth together, Alyssa dialed out nine-one-one. She had never called the emergency services line before. No situation had ever required it. But if two corpses wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t know what was. Pressing the phone against her ear again, Alyssa just about let out a scream.

“We’re sorr—”

Listless hands dropped to her lap as Alyssa flopped back on her fairly spartan bed. Her foam pillow caught her head. “What is going on?” she mumbled. Holding her phone above her, she accessed the web browser. Not that she expected it to work.

To her great surprise, it did. The pages loaded. Images displayed. Everything worked. Sitting back up, she quickly ran a search on her address and clicked on the first link—an article from the local news station.

“Two dead in robbery gone wrong?” she read the header. “Police responded to reports of gunfire late Tuesday evening, finding Alyssa Meadows dead within her own home from multiple stab wounds!” Alyssa patted down her chest, finding nothing but her unbroken sports bra. The ridges of her bare stomach had a slight sheen of sweat, but no cuts or scrapes.

She kept reading, finding out that the body in the closet had apparently survived his excursion into her home while she and his son had perished, exactly as Tenebrael had said the evening should go. The only difference had been that she died in her parents’ room, instead of elsewhere. Neither her mother nor her father had been available for comment. Down in the comments section, people complained about the level of crime and safety in the city, expressed condolences, and a few even claimed that they knew her. She didn’t recognize any of the user names of the latter group. Maybe people she went to high school with. Maybe coworkers from the warehouse she worked at.

The more Alyssa read, the sicker she got. To the point where it was a good thing she had already thrown up. Everyone was acting as if she had actually died. Tapping on the comment box to correct them just made an error message pop up saying that her browser had been blocked from responding.

Because of course.

Alyssa sprung to her feet. Renewed vigor filled her as she kicked herself for feeling down. If everyone thought she was dead, she could simply walk out and show them otherwise. The house had doors. Windows too.

She turned and…

And…

Sweeping her eyes past her knick-knack covered dresser to look out the window killed off her sudden elation.

The neighbor’s house wasn’t there. Neither was the fence. Or any of the other neighbors’ houses. She couldn’t see the streets either.

A grassy field stretched out until it crested a slight hill not far away. A tree here and there broke up the grass. And yet, despite the absurdity of not having neighbors anymore, Alyssa found her eyes drawn upwards into the bright blue sky. A sand-colored ring sliced the sky in two. Just like she had seen in science textbooks around Saturn. A dark streak broke the flat plane of sand, giving it a little depth. And behind the rings, half a moon peaked out. Despite the bright daylight, the moon looked almost sickly. A gray similar in tone to that angel’s skin. Unlike the moon she had seen nearly every day of her life, this moon lacked the dark craters. The flat and unshaded disk looked fake against the blue sky.

“Maybe…” Alyssa said as she staggered back to sitting on her bed. “Maybe I did die after all.”

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001.004

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Near Death Experiences

Balancing the Scales

“He was supposed to kill three more people over the next two months before hanging himself,” the angel said, still freaking out about Alyssa defending herself. Like it wasn’t the natural thing to do.

Alyssa kept the angel in the corner of her eye as she stole a glance into the closet. Since the man hadn’t moved in about five minutes, she assumed that the angel was correct in that he was dead. Peeking around the corner didn’t reveal anything contradictory.

He had his back against the wall, slumped over uncomfortably on a pile of her mother’s shoes. Hanging dresses hid his head from view, but the rest of him wasn’t moving. One hand held his stomach with a little blood trickling out between his fingers. The other was palm up with a silver pistol just barely touching his fingertips.

Keeping her pistol trained on his body, Alyssa slowly moved into the room. As soon as she closed the distance enough, she used her bare foot to slide the gun out of his grip and across to the other side of the closet. His fingers didn’t even twitch. Even still, she did not stay near him for long and she did not aim her gun anywhere other than him. Not even as the angel walked into the room, still staring at her book.

“Do you even realize what you’ve done? He was supposed to go around, interacting with people and impacting their lives.”

“Well sorry for not lying down and letting him stab me forty times.”

“It was only thirty-seven! Your apology is most certainly not accepted,” she said, snapping her book shut and shaking it in Alyssa’s face. “Oh, what am I going to do?” Shoving the dresses over to one side, the angel stared down at the body.

Once again, queasy feelings welled up in Alyssa’s stomach. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to suppress a retch. It was worse, looking down at this man. His son had been lying face down with a mask over his head. This man stared up at her with glassy eyes, accusing her. Salt trails still lined his face and clear slime dripped from his nostrils over his stubble and down into his slack mouth.

“Maybe if I put your soul into his body, you can go around pretending to be him?”

Alyssa snapped out of her ill feelings to stare at the pale gray skin of the angel’s face. “I prefer my soul in my body,” she said, wondering exactly what was up with the strange being now that she wasn’t in immediate mortal peril. The longer she stared, the less she believed the so-called angel existed. Her personal beliefs didn’t include angels. Or anything, for that matter. That didn’t mean that she hadn’t been proved wrong about things she didn’t believe in the past, but an angel was a bit much.

She considered reaching out to see if she could physically touch the angel when those dark wings spread wide.

As before, the tips brushed against the corpse and flooded the closet with ankle-high fog. The chilly air turned to binding coils as it twisted up and around the angel in search of her mouth. In seconds, she had consumed every scrap. A bit of drool ran down the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t even notice. Her writhing and slight moans overpowered all sense of self.

“That was a good one though,” she said, licking her lips. Only then did she notice the trail of slime running down her chin. She wiped it away with a thumb, not drawing any further attention to it. “That anguish over his son. The pure dolor, fermented by shedding tears with his son in his arms.” A shiver ran from her hips to to the base of her neck.

Alyssa watched on, hoping beyond hope that the woman was an actual angel and not anything else. If her sneaking suspicion that the angel was a product of her guilt ended up being true, she might be in real trouble. “I’m going to need to see a therapist,” she mumbled to herself.

All traces of ecstasy vanished from the angel’s face. “You most certainly do not need to see a therapist! Do you not understand? You’re supposed to be dead! You’re not supposed to interact with anyone except as a corpse.” She pulled out her book again, looking over the runic symbols a few pages past the bookmark. “I wonder, maybe you could go kill the people he was supposed to kill. Would that be enough to set everything back on trac—”

“Just shut up,” Alyssa said. Realizing she was waving around a loaded weapon, she dropped her arms to the side while flicking on the safety. “Be gone, or however I get rid of you. I don’t need some guardian angel hanging over my shoulder. Neither do I need illusions manifesting themselves from my guilt over killing that boy. I shouldn’t even feel guilty! He broke into my house! Now you just disappear.” Alyssa waved her empty hand off to the side before bringing it back around to point to herself. “I’m going to call the police. Then I’m going to call my parents. Then I’m going to sign up for therapy or medication or whatever is required to make sure I get rid of whatever hallucination you are.”

The angel just blinked at the outburst.

For just a moment, the two simply stared at each other.

“You don’t need to call the cops,” the angel said, voice calm. “A neighbor already called them, reporting gunshots. They’re on their way… to find your corpse.” Her voice started to grow in volume. “Which isn’t here. Because you didn’t have the good sense to die!” She clutched at her head and ran her fingers through her long hair. “Iosefael is going to be furious.” Pausing her tugging at her hair for just a moment, the angel looked up between the strands of her bangs. “She is pretty adorable when she gets upset,” she said as an aside. “But what if she reports me to the Astral Authority? What if they notice anyway? I’m not ready yet.”

Alyssa didn’t answer. She turned and walked back into the bedroom. Indulging in her delusions couldn’t be healthy.

“Wait!” the angel called after her. “You can’t meet anyone.” Her tone shifted from panic to contemplative as she repeated herself. “You can’t meet anyone. That’s it!”

A bright light flared behind Alyssa. She spun to find herself face to face with the grinning angel.

The angel thrust a finger above her head. From the tip of her finger, four circles spread out. A line of text—the same lettering that the angel’s book contained—scrolled between each pair of circles, connecting the three outer circles into the shape of a triangle with the center circle connecting to each of the outer circles. Within the very center circle, a twelve-spoked star slowly rotated with four of its tips elongated into a cross. Each of the radial circles had their own elaborate symbols. A star, a crescent moon, and a large sun.

“Alyssa Meadows,” the angel shouted, still holding one finger overhead, “I claim thee in mine holy name. Commissioned by the Concord of Angels, empowered by the souls of the damned, thou art welcomed by the open arms of I, Dominion Tenebrael. Target: Alyssa Meadows. Stochastic evasion calculations… are a pain! Local space-world tether severed. Confirming existence of multiple universes. Nod confirmed. Beginning wide area Nod transference across Divine vector three-five-nine. Prepare thine self, Alyssa, for this world is not long for thee.”

The moment the words left the angel’s lips, Alyssa felt her strength give out. She fell to the ground, knees hitting first before gravity took hold of the rest of her. She toppled forwards and landed flat on the floor.

Unconsciousness settled in before her head hit the carpet.

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001.003

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Near Death Experiences

Off the Books

“I’d tell you that it will be painless, just a few pricks and then an eternity of happiness and pleasure, but angels are forbidden from lying. I’ve been trying to get around that little annoyance for—”

“Shut up,” Alyssa hissed to the overly chipper thing. Though she didn’t know why she bothered. The angel wasn’t even trying to be quiet.

Which actually lent credit to her claims of being supernatural. Standing right in the doorway out of Alyssa’s parents’ room and talking, the angel avoided all illusions of subtlety. With the third intruder of the evening being just down the hall, he either would have seen the angel or heard her. Alyssa hadn’t totally discounted the idea that everything was a prank. The angel’s light-show back in Clark’s room could have been nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

For the moment, Alyssa was leaning towards believing the angel’s outlandish claims. Pranks tended to go south once one of the people died. Or so she would expect.

Alyssa found the father’s anguished cries too real to fake. Movies just didn’t quite get anguish right. The noises he made were unnerving on a level that Alyssa had never experienced before.

He started out berating his son, Gilbert, for laziness. That stopped the moment that he had seen his son’s legs sticking out of the bedroom—presumably; Alyssa had still been in the closet at the time. In her flight from her brother’s bedroom, she hadn’t shut off the lights. It would have been attention grabbing and obvious to anyone who moved from the entryway to the hall.

From then on, he let out a few confused whispers of “Gilbert?” and “Boy?” as he made his way down the hall.

“No, no, no!” he had cried just as Alyssa worked up the nerve to peek out of the closet and toward him.

He sat at the bedroom’s threshold, sobbing while cradling his son’s body and rocking back and forth.

It honestly had Alyssa feeling sick to be watching and listening to him while knowing that she had killed his son. Had the kid even been armed? She hadn’t checked. Neither had she noticed any weapons falling to the floor, though he could easily have landed on them before she had turned on the lights.

A part of her wanted to say that they deserved it for breaking into her home. At the same time, listening grew harder and harder the longer she heard the grown man crying.

She kept one eye around the edge of the door frame, watching him anyway. Watching made her slightly nervous for reasons entirely unrelated to her having killed Gilbert. At any moment, he could notice her leaning around the corner. At the moment, he had his back to her. So long as he kept it that way, she should be mildly safe.

“Ugh, he should have shot you by now. Right in the knee so you can’t run away. You’re going to miss your deadline. Heh. Deadline,” she said with a chuckle. “I crack myself up.”

Alyssa, entirely unamused, did not bother humoring the thing by responding. Instead, she peeked around the side of the door frame again, making sure that the man was still down the hall. If she hadn’t been so foolish as to leave her cell phone, she could have called for help. They had long since gotten rid of landlines in the house. For now, she was just hoping that the angel was right, strange as that might seem.

In some potential future that the angel believed in, that man killed her inside Clark’s bedroom. He probably found her right after finding his son and, in a rage, murdered her. With her hiding away on the opposite end of the house, he might have a moment to calm down and rationalize his actions.

“I have other souls to collect, you know? Maybe it’s time for some Divine Inspiration!”

Alyssa tore her eyes from the hall and met the glowing eyes of the angel.

Arms crossed over her chest, the angel put on a smug smirk as she snapped her fingers. The moment she did, a footstep echoed up the hall.

“You!” Another step resounded through the house.

At the sound, Alyssa couldn’t help herself. She peeked around the door frame again.

“You did this to ma boy?” He had moved too far out of the light to see his face as anything but shadows and gray wisps of hair almost glowing against the background light. Tear streaks glistened on his face despite the poor light. “I’ll kill you. Ya ain’t getting away.”

His shaking arm snapped up to point at Alyssa. A metallic glint at the end of his arm caught the faint light.

Alyssa dove to the side. The deafening crack of a gunshot rang through the house an instant after. She couldn’t tell where it hit, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Crawling on her hands and knees as another two gunshots fired off from somewhere down the hall, Alyssa made it to the far side of the bed.

All the while, the angel stood in the open with a grin on her face.

This time, Alyssa did not peek over the top of the bed when the footsteps shifted from the hardwood hall to the soft carpeted bedroom. She kept her head down, her hands on the pistol, and her finger on the trigger.

“It’s over girl,” he said, flicking on the lights.

Pain stung her eyes from the sudden brightness. Sheer adrenaline and force of will kept her eyes open despite the constricting of her pupils. Despite her eyes’ issues, her ears worked without error.

The footsteps continued into the room. Not towards Alyssa, but to the open door of the walk-in closet on the opposite side of the room.

He hadn’t seen her crouched behind the bed!

She didn’t have much time. Sooner or later, he would realize that she wasn’t in the closet. For the moment, he had his back to her once again.

Dishonorable? Maybe. But what good was honor when she was dead?

Alyssa popped out of her hiding spot gun first, resting her elbows on the top of the bed to help steady her trembling arms. The man flicked on the closet lights as he moved over to one side, knocking back a set of suit jackets to look behind them. With the lights on, Alyssa had a perfect view. She waited for a few seconds, just long enough for the man to move away from the side of the closet and back into full view.

Her finger pulled back on the trigger. Not just once. Alyssa squeezed down three times, sending three supersonic slugs slinging down into the narrow closet. Just like shooting down a shooting range.

Except she didn’t have ear protection on.

In fiction, fights could end in a single shot. They often did. Accidents often ended with a single shot in real life as well. But there were always stories about people who got shot ten times only to kill their assailant and make it to a hospital in time to live. That was a chance that Alyssa did not want to take.

Gritting her teeth, Alyssa fired two more times. She couldn’t tell if all of her bullets had hit. Some had. Blood trickled from three holes in his back, running down his denim jacket.

The man moved to one side of the closet, out of sight. Alyssa couldn’t tell if he had slumped over because she had hit something critical or if he was moving for better cover. Either way, she ducked back down and moved from being near the wall to the end of the bed. It wasn’t a far movement, but might just save her life if the man had caught a glimpse of her.

There she waited with her head down, straining her ears to hear any sign of movement from the closet.

“You—You killed him!”

Alyssa jumped, just about shooting herself in the thigh. Carefully removing her quaking finger from the trigger of the warm gun, she shot the angel nothing more than a glare. She didn’t know where the angel had gone after shouting about divine inspiration. Unless the angel represented some figment of Alyssa’s guilty conscience, a being of that power should have been able to knock away her gun just like the machete. Alyssa would have been entirely at the mercy of the intruder.

Yet the angel had just stood in the corner, watching with her dazzling eyes.

“You can’t just kill him,” she shrieked. All of her earlier chipper glee vanished. In its place, her voice carried a tone of fear.

Peeking around the side of the bed, Alyssa watched as the angel pulled out her black book again. Black nailed fingers flipped past the page marked with the ribbon that she had shown Alyssa earlier. The angel stopped at and stared at another page, slowly opening her mouth in abject horror.

“Oh no…”

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001.002

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Near Death Experiences

Tenebrael Appears

A queasy sensation welled up in the pit of Alyssa’s stomach as she stared down at the obviously broken neck.

Alyssa turned away, fumbling around in her pocket for her cell phone. It wasn’t there. Right. Back on the couch. She stumbled, shaking knees failing to support her. Letting herself sit on the floor for only a moment in an attempt to quell her nerves, she couldn’t help but let out a slight laugh as adrenaline flooded out of her body. Using the abandoned bed as a handhold to get up, Alyssa paused as her fingers brushed over a raven black feather. It wasn’t the only one around. When Alyssa looked up, the air was filled with them. She only got a moment to stare. A ghastly wind picked up, forcing her to close her eyes and shield her face with her arm.

As quick as it had come, the wind died down.

The flurry of feathers vanished. Not a single one remained, save for the one her fingers had pinned to the bed.

“Oh good! I made it in time. Stopping for that accident was a risk, but it paid off in the end.”

Alyssa spun, turning to find the overly chipper voice with her hand brushing over the hilt of the dagger she had grabbed. She didn’t actually draw it, freezing instead as she gaped at the scene before her, struck dumb by the sight.

A girl—A woman stood over the unmoving body of the intruder. That alone would have been surprising enough considering the lack of footsteps in the hall. With the size of the heels on the woman’s boots, she would never have been able to walk up a wood floor without making some noise. Even her dress that poofed out at the hips but was nearly skin-tight from the waist up with a heart-shaped cutout over her cleavage—a fantastical kind of thing that one might see in a cartoon—wasn’t that shocking. Her city was host to a costume convention once a year; people frequently came to her department store to buy supplies. The pasty gray skin with tattooed designs around her luminescent white eyes stood out a little more, but Alyssa found her eyes drawn to the woman’s wings.

Fluffy feathers spread out behind the woman, massive yet somehow still fitting within the relatively narrow door frame.

At first, Alyssa figured that it must be a costume. The rest rest of her appearance certainly didn’t detract from that theory. Some skin paint and glow-in-the-dark contact lenses could have been responsible for the odder features. The wings moved. And they didn’t move in a rigid manner that might have been the case had they been made from piping and wires. The little twitches, the graceful flow; these wings felt alive.

The woman’s eyes didn’t even flick towards Alyssa. Her attention honed in on the body between her legs and never left. It wasn’t the attentions of an anguished relative looking upon a deceased family member. Her eyes held a stare singularly unique to a child discovering a new toy.

As she stared, the tips of her wings brushed against the man. White mist flooded into the room from the body. A fog so thick that it may as well have been liquid. It lapped at Alyssa’s ankles, sending an unnatural chill through her legs.

For the woman, it didn’t just stop at her ankles. It rushed up, swirling around her legs and waist until it reached her dark lips. She opened her mouth and drank.

The fog receded, rushing across the floor in haste to reach the woman. In the near silence of the room, the rush almost sounded like faint shouts of a man in agony. Faint shapes appeared in the mist. Ghostly fingers grasped at Alyssa’s foot, but the ethereal fingers passed right through her without stopping.

It took a mere few seconds before the room was once again still and silent. Except for the woman. She writhed, squirmed in her high-heeled boots while wrapping her arms around herself in a tight hug.

“Ah, that’s it,” she said, more breath in her melodious voice than actual words. “Confusion and pain followed by more pain and just a bit of suffering until…” A long sigh escaped her lips as she pulled a little black book out from behind her back. She flipped open to a spot held by black bookmark and dragged a finger across the page.

Alyssa shook her head, finally dragging herself out of her stupor. “W-Who are you?” she said, unable to keep the tremble from her voice.

At first, the woman didn’t even look up. Then she blinked. She turned around to face out into the hallway and leaned to peer out, wings folding up behind her as she moved. Somehow, the mass of feathers fit into a space no wider than her slim profile. Apparently finding nothing, she turned back to Alyssa, quirking her head to one side while pointing a finger at herself through the heart-shaped cutout in her dress. “Me?” she asked, taking a step over the body towards Alyssa.

“Yes you!” Alyssa shouted. She couldn’t help herself. Backing away from the woman as she took another step forwards, Alyssa grabbed the machete from her brother’s desk and held it out in front of her. “Just stay back!”

“Aww, that is adorable,” the woman said, each word coming out like a church hymn. She pointed a finger at Alyssa and gave just the slightest tapping motion. An obsidian beam of light shot out from her black fingernail, crossed the short distance between them, hit the sharp edge of the machete, and knocked it out of Alyssa’s hands. It spun end over end until it embedded its blade into the drywall behind Alyssa. “But how can you see me?”

Alyssa, still standing with a shaking arm out as if she were holding onto the machete, couldn’t do anything as the woman took another step closer.

“You really shouldn’t be able to see me unless you’re dead. And you are not dead,” she said, holding out the open page of the black notebook.

Blocky symbols filled the entire page. Some strange language made up of squares overlaid on triangles, over circles. Nothing that Alyssa could read. Before she could try for more than a second, the woman flipped the book over to read for herself.

“See,” the woman continued, “it says so right here. You die in roughly a half-hour. After this guy’s dad comes in wondering what is taking so long with the robbery. He shoots you twice, stabs you thirty-seven times, then leaves you to bleed out.” The more she spoke, the wider her smile got, a faint glaze spread over her luminous eyes, and she started hugging herself again. Running a finger just under her lips to catch a thin trail of drool, she cleared her throat. “Ah, I’m getting excited just thinking about it. This man was just an appetizer compared to you,” she said, irreverently nudging the body with the heel of her boot.

“Wha-What are you?”

“Can’t you tell? I’m an angel.” As she spoke, she clasped her hands together as if in prayer and spread her wings behind her. “I even have a—” The woman cut herself off as she felt around above her head. Snapping her fingers, a bright golden ring appeared, nearly blinding Alyssa—she had to squint and avert her eyes—yet doing nothing to actually illuminate the woman’s dark hair or the rest of the room. “Doesn’t really suit me, does it?” she asked, vanishing it with another snap of her fingers.

Alyssa didn’t respond. She didn’t know what to say.

“Anyway, I’ll just wait right here,” she said, spinning around and sitting down on Clark’s bed. She crossed one leg tightly over the other in the same smooth motion. “You carry on with your panicking over killing someone. I don’t mind.”

At her words, Alyssa glanced back to the dead body. Then back to the self-professed angel, who had become intensely fascinated with her own fingernails. She only hesitated for a moment before taking off running over the dead body and down the hall.

“Where are you going?” the angel called after her. “You’re supposed to die in this room!”

In that case, sticking around definitely sounded like the wrong choice.

She ran past her own room and the bathroom, reaching her parents’ room at the end of the hall. The far end had a large walk-in closet. At the end of that, a safe as tall as Alyssa had been pressed against the wall. The front had a panel with a series of numbers.

Numbers Alyssa frantically pressed.

“One… Six… Four… One.”

Surprisingly enough, it hadn’t taken her more than one attempt despite her shaking fingers. The light turned green and Alyssa spun the three pronged wheel. With the door swung open, Alyssa had a series of guns in front of her; a variety of rifles, shotguns, pistols, and even several canisters of pepper spray. Most of the weapons in the safe were unloaded. But not all of them.

Alyssa slid a thin can of pepper spray into each of her pants pockets, glad she had never been one to wear tight-fitting clothing even at the gym. She did hesitate for just a moment before taking hold of the emergency gun. Though she had fired it a few times, she wasn’t sure of the make, model, or even what size of bullets it took. It was the only weapon that was kept loaded. For anything else, she would have to fumble around with cartridges in the dark.

But if she got through this alive, she promised to thank her mother the moment she saw her and to never complain about being dragged off to the shooting range again.

Clasping the pistol in both hands, Alyssa flicked off the safety.

“You can’t hide, you know.”

Alyssa screamed. She might have pulled the trigger had she not kept her finger along the trigger guard. Cutting her cry short with a hand over her mouth, she stared at the… the thing between her and the closet’s exit.

“Now, now, let’s head back to your brother’s room, why don’t we?”

“You’re going to kill me,” Alyssa spat. Her grip tightened around the gun, but she didn’t point it at the woman. If it got knocked out of her hands like the machete had been, she wouldn’t have anything left to defend herself with besides the pepper spray. For some reason, she had a niggling feeling that the spray wouldn’t do much to the woman.

But the angel didn’t advance. Her hands balled up into fists and pressed against her hips. The grin that had thus far been unwavering slipped. “What? No. I’m… That’s just… Well I am just offended that you would think one of His angels would slaughter a human. It is quite literally impossible.” Her hands clasped together again half-way through speaking as she turned her gaze towards the ceiling. “Besides,” she said, snapping her eyes back to Alyssa, “didn’t I tell you? Your—”

“Gilbert?” A voice shouted from outside the closet. “I swear, boy, if you’re eating all their food instead of grabbin’ shit, I’ll give you a whoopin’ when we get back.”

“Besides,” the so-called angel said again as Alyssa held her breath, “your executioner has arrived.”

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001.001

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Near Death Experiences

Alyssa Meadows

Alyssa dropped her keys off, letting them fall to the counter top with a clatter. The house was hot. Too hot. Especially after spending an hour at the gym. She was tired. She needed a shower, desperately. Most importantly, she needed some food. Pulling open the pantry door, she started scanning the shelves. Her eyes stared over the instant noodles, cereal, oatmeal, canned soups, potato chips, bread, and everything else inside. Finding absolutely nothing to eat, she moved on to the refrigerator. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but she stuck around with her head in the chilled air for a few minutes without even looking at the food. It felt nice against the lingering sweat. Eventually, she focused on food. After moving between the pantry and the fridge several times, she eventually settled for a frozen burrito.

Only to open up the box and find it completely empty.

“Mom!” she called out. “Dad ate all the burritos and left the box in the freezer again.”

Sighing, Alyssa returned to rummaging through the stores of food in search of anything edible. By the time she decided to simply order some Chinese takeout, she had spent nearly a half-hour looking for food. A half-hour during which she had never received a response from her mother. She was just about to call out again when she noticed the paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet.

“Called in to work,” Alyssa mumbled, reading from the paper. “Someone tried to break into the vault?” Expecting more details, she flipped the paper over to find nothing but blank space. “That seems more like a job for the police than a security guard, mom,” Alyssa said to no one in particular. Though being called in did explain why all the lights were out. Her mother couldn’t stand sitting around in the dark and always had at least one in the kitchen and one in the adjoining family room turned on. With her father off to his high school reunion, she had the house all to herself.

If only she had someone to invite over.

Shaking her head, Alyssa pulled out her cell phone to dig up some news on the attempted robbery. She tossed a frozen pizza into the microwave at the same time.

Earlier in the evening, roughly an hour before Alyssa got off work at the department store, two men stole and drove a school bus through the brick wall of the bank. According to the news article, they actually made it into the vault. No word on how. The bank closed at six, almost three hours before the robbery. The vault should have been long since closed for the day. One security guard had been killed—not her mother, but one of her coworkers—along with the bank manager when the bus rammed through the wall. A claims associate had also been on site, finishing out the day, but had been far enough away from the wall that nothing had hit her. Silent alarms had summoned the police, but the two robbers had escaped with a bag of cash.

Which was good news. Not the deaths, which were terrible and tragic even if Alyssa didn’t know the people. The good news was that no thieves were still around. Her mother would likely be standing around guarding an open door to whatever money had been left behind and probably didn’t have much possibility of encountering any more criminals.

Satisfied that nothing about the situation was going to immediately affect her, Alyssa turned her attention to the beeping microwave and pulled out her pizza. She had only just kicked back and sat down on the comfortable leather couch to eat when she heard a tapping. Nothing loud. Just a gentle rapping at the front door.

“’Tis some visitor,” she muttered, glancing at her cell phone, “tapping at the front door. At 11:30 in the evening.” Or perhaps not a simple visitor, she thought. The three people she still talked to from high school either worked this late—fast food, ugh—or lived on the opposite end of the city. Regardless of their situation, they would at least call before knocking on the door.

Another possibility sent chills up her spine. What if mom did get hurt? Her mother could be lying in a hospital bed bleeding out while Alyssa sat around eating pizza.

Pizza forgotten on the coffee table, Alyssa shot to her feet. She made her way to the door as calmly as possible while trying to still her rapidly beating heart.

Alyssa didn’t quite make it. The sound of shattering glass locked her in place before she even reached the hallway leading to the front door.

A fresh set of chills ran down her spine; she had a drastically different idea of just who might be at the front door. Someone with far less noble intentions than a police officer stopping by to talk about her mother. Unless that had been an accident. A definite possibility, but not a chance Alyssa was willing to take. Their neighborhood was not a prim and proper kind of place. It wasn’t a trailer park either, but their home likely had more to steal than a smaller residence.

Alyssa considered running to their gun safe. To do so, she would have had to run through the entry hall to the opposite side of the house to her parents’ room. Instead, she darted across the hall straight into her brother’s room. With Clark off to college, his room hadn’t seen much use. Luckily, he hadn’t been able to take most of his stuff with him. Especially his collection.

Feeling around in the dark wasn’t the best way to search. Turning on a light might be worse. She hadn’t heard anybody enter yet, but she didn’t want to turn on the light and signal where she was.

Her hands brushed over the dresser, feeling out an array of weapons. Some hatchet, a flintlock pistol—which was only a model and even if it wasn’t, Alyssa doubted it would be loaded—a wide variety of daggers, and something that felt like a wooden stick with a rock on the end. She grabbed the dagger with a spiked finger-guard and slipped it into her belt. Her boxing experience might help use what was effectively brass knuckles, but it wasn’t what she wanted. None of the weapons on the dresser had any reach to them. And they all seemed too lethal. She didn’t want to kill anyone.

Moving towards the closet, Alyssa just about tripped over exactly what she had been looking for. A hard metal bat.

Alyssa curled her fingers around the rubber grip as she heard the front door creak open. Holding her breath, she pressed her back up against the wall to the side of the bedroom door. She kept the bat at the ready just in case anyone came in. If no one came in, she was perfectly content to let them steal whatever they wanted. A missing television or laptop was far better than getting killed during a burglary gone wrong. She wished she could call the police. Unfortunately for that, her phone was back by the couch. All she could do was hope and pray.

Footsteps crept down the hall towards Alyssa. He hadn’t chosen to head towards Alyssa’s or her parents’ room, which was all that was in that side of the house. He moved towards the side with the kitchen, living room, dining room, her brother’s room, and a small office room.

The steps came slow and soft, but not soft enough. Maybe if the guy had taken off his shoes. Even then, each step sent a soft creaking of the wood through the old house.

Alyssa stayed where she was, entirely unmoving. Her brother’s room was first on the intruder’s path, straight across from the kitchen area. One on the left and the other right. Even as she tightened her grip on the bat, she prayed that he would pick the left and completely ignore the right.

Her prayers went unanswered.

A leather gloved hand pressed against the partially opened door, slowly nudging it open.

Alyssa didn’t hesitate. The moment he took a step into the room, she swung her bat at his stomach.

He doubled over with a groan, trying to gasp for the breath that she had knocked out of him. But Alyssa wasn’t done. If her mother had taught her anything, it was that an assailant was never out of the fight until he was either bound or dead. Killing him was a bit much, but knocking him out so she could tie him up would work. She brought the bat high over her head and swung it straight down on the hunched-over man.

With a sickening crack, he collapsed on the ground without trying to catch himself.

Alyssa, suddenly breathing heavily, didn’t move. She listened. There had only been one set of footsteps, but that didn’t mean that a second person couldn’t come. After a moment of waiting, she let out a sigh and flicked on the room lights.

“Oh damn it.” She dropped the bat, backing away from the prone body as it landed on the carpeted floor with barely a thump. He had a balaclava over his face, but nothing on his neck. Purple and black blemishes already covered the visible skin. A protrusion right at the base of his head stuck out like a sore thumb. Or a broken neck.

She hadn’t meant to kill him. Give him a concussion, maybe. Nothing more.

Yet there he lay, unmoving with his neck snapped.

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000.001

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Prologue

Tenebrael

“You can’t do this!”

Tenebrael stared down at the angelic figure before her with a bright smile on her face.

Poor Iosefael. Tiny crystalline teardrops formed at the corners of her eyes. It really detracted from her defiant stare. With how much her arms trembled, Tenebrael doubted anyone would take her seriously. If she would just be a little more selfish and a little more confident, she might actually make something of herself.

For now, Tenebrael brushed her black fingernails over Iosefael’s golden armor.

The angel flew back from the touch, crashing into the wall of the sepulcher. A rain of dust fell and clung to the otherwise pristine golden armor while cobwebs tangled into her blond hair. One of the stone slabs bearing the name of the humans interred within the mausoleum came loose from the wall. It crashed to the ground with a resounding thud, cracking in two.

Iosefael let out a slight moan from the back of her throat as she saw the slab. Entirely unconcerned with having been thrown back across a room or the unkempt state of her appearance, she knelt and brushed the fingers of her single golden gauntlet over the slate. A mystic circle containing a diamond, a square, and a second circle appeared where she touched the stone for just a brief moment. The spiral of gold armor running from her gauntlet up to her elbow started glowing. In a flash of light, the stone was whole again. With all the reverence of a pallbearer, she used both hands to lift the stone and replace it in its slot.

Only then did she turn her glare back to Tenebrael. “Why are you here? You’re not even supposed to be on this world. Go back to your own!”

Tenebrael, who had been watching the angel’s nonsensical actions with her arms crossed over the stomach cutout of her dark dress, simply shrugged. “Nod just isn’t as exciting as the other worlds. I know too much about it. Every little thing that happens goes according to my designs.”

“Your designs? You’re supposed to guide your world with a gentle hand,” Iosefael said, smoothly moving her bare hand through the air. “People aren’t supposed to dance to your whims.” She punctuated her statement with a confident fist to her hips.

Tenebrael chuckled. She couldn’t help it. Iosefael could be so innocent at times. “And just what would you know about Dominions? You obviously don’t have one of your own,” she said, flaring her four wings behind her. Midnight black feathers drifted to the floor with all the serenity of a calm mountain creek. “Besides. My designs always align with the book. No matter how much I try to change events.”

The feathers of Iosefael’s two wings twitched as she drew them around her. Though obscured, her shoulders definitely slumped. It only lasted for a moment. With renewed vigor, the crossed pupils of her luminescent green eyes locked onto Tenebrael. “I don’t know why you’re being so mean, but I’ve got work to do. If you’ll excuse me, Tene.” She started to walk forward. The soles of her metal shoes only clicked against the marble floor twice before she froze.

Black concentric rings appeared before Tenebrael’s outstretched hand. They weren’t quite full rings. Two half-moons, one broken facing upward and the other downward, held between them a five-point star. Runes and insignias filled in the empty spaces as Tenebrael spoke.

“Principality Iosefael! By the power vested in me by… well, myself,” Tenebrael said, pausing a moment to stifle a laugh. “Target: Principality Iosefael. Base core restraint projection. Reinforcing composite materials. Reinforcement grade: Divine. Calculating anchor points. Reinforcing anchor points. Reinforcement grade: Divine. Target spatial coordinates locked; stochastic evasion routes calculated and nullified. Hereby and henceforth, I bind thee for a period lasting no longer and no less than twelve hours.”

Iron manacles clasped down around Iosefael’s arms and legs while a thick chain connected her to the wall of the sepulcher. Were they ordinary iron, a being of Iosefael’s power would have been able to escape instantaneously. Yet her struggles did nothing but clank the chains together. Even as her face turned red from exertion, she failed to break the divinely reinforced bindings.

“You—You can’t chain me!”

“I think you’ll find that I can.”

Iosefael struggled, testing again the strength of the impervious manacles. Another mystic circle appeared around her hand. The moment it touched the iron, it shattered into nothing more than confetti. “How?” she asked, no longer glaring. Her eyes held a touch a fear.

“I have my ways. Perhaps one day I’ll show you. For now, you’re bound. Twelve hours. Then you can go free. Consider this… a vacation. A day of rest. You don’t get many of those, do you?”

“I can’t rest!” Iosefael shouted. “There are people out there that need salvation.”

“Ah yes,” Tenebrael said as she sauntered up to the bound angel. Reaching back into the fluff of golden feathers, she withdrew a thin black book. One with a little golden ribbon marking a place. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll take care of those you’re responsible for tonight.”

“T-Tene,” the angel said as Tenebrael started walking away. “You’re just leaving me here?”

“Twelve hours. Then you may come find me.” Reaching the doors to the sepulcher, Tenebrael turned around with a grin. “I’ll hand your book back without complaint.”

The poor angel didn’t get a chance to respond. Grasping both doors, Tenebrael pressed them together. Moonlight shrank into a thin sliver on the floor as the gap narrowed. Sliding shut, the doors cut off all light to the room.

With a grin, Tenebrael turned from the stone crypt and all but danced through the graveyard. She tossed the little black book up into the air, let it spin a few times, and caught it right as it was opening to the bookmarked page.

“Let’s see what we have here,” she said as her black fingernail traced down the list of names. “Hmm… Some old man. Blech. Pass. A teenage auto accident? Tempting.” But her finger passed it by. An entry a few lines down had her licking her lips in anticipation. “Ah. Two murders. Perfect.”

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