 |
The snow fell softly through the darkness, wafting with elegant grace in the stinging
breeze. Few would call this a storm, but the shortest day of the year had drawn to a
close and the bitter cold had transformed the moisture into tiny, crystalline razors.
The uneven ground still carried its share of packed ice, but the virginal snow of
Christmas was now a fetid mire of grey, partially-melted sludge. It squished damply
around Ethan’s boots, sending gritty globules of slush into the space between the
rubber and his legs.
There was a light up ahead.
Not another car. Enough of those had passed by him on the supposedly lonely road,
spraying him with tainted precipitation. No, up ahead was his destination -- a solitary
diner on the side of the road. It would be described as “quaint” if it weren’t so
ominous. In the shifting miasma of snow, it was hard to make out the fine details.
There was but a single frost-covered car in the parking lot, but the lights in the window
were definitely on. There was a buzzing neon sign that once read “HELLO
TRAVELERS,” but the “O” had long flickered away into perpetual darkness. It sure
wasn’t the Ritz, but after five miles of walking through the frozen wasteland of Route
99, it might as well be. More importantly, it was where he was told to meet. Shifting
his duffle bag from one numb shoulder to the other, Ethan slogged on.
Stepping inside, Ethan savored the greasy warmth of the diner. He must have been a
sight to behold. The sleepy diner rarely got visitors these days, besides the perennial
crop of faded locals. They certainly didn’t get 14 year-old hitchhikers covered in
snow. The waitress gave him a puzzled look. After a moment of hesitation she asked
“Are you lost, hon?”
“No,” replied Ethan as calmly as he could. “I’m meeting someone here.”
The corpulent waitress seemed to ponder this for a moment. Strangers rarely chose
to stop here, let alone use it as a rendezvous. Still, he was a customer and apparently
planned on bringing in another, so she quickly pushed aside her doubts. “I’ll get’cha
coffee,” she mumbled vaguely as the boy took a seat.
Ethan pulled out a beaten-up laptop from the soaked duffle bag. Resting it on the
sticky diner table, he booted it up and started searching through saved web pages,
like he had for the last two weeks. Sixteen archives of Tails Doll stories, and he still
couldn’t ascertain what the “Pure Souls” were for. From what he could gather, they
were very important, and the Doll wanted them for something. Also, nearly everyone
and their mother claimed to be the elusive seventh.
“Ah,” said a voice close to his ear, “but there is a big difference between claiming to
be something and actually being it.”
Shocked, Ethan instinctively slammed his computer shut. There was an attractive
teenage girl standing besides him. She wore her red-streaked raven hair in pigtails,
which perfectly framed her grinning face. Despite the sub-freezing temperatures, she
wore a black tank-top made of light fabric. A red pendant hung around her slender
neck.
“How…?” he stammered.
“I read minds,” she said with a smirk, reaching out and touching him on the top of his
head. “It’s a gift.” She leaned in close, brushing his ear with her soft lips, “And you
know who gave it to me.”
She slid into the booth next to him, getting a little too close for comfort. She glanced
at the laptop and rolled her eyes. “You won’t learn anything from those silly little
websites and forums. That ‘Quacker Duk’ guy and his readers only wish they knew
the truth. Take it from me – I used to post there.”
A shadow loomed over Ethan, but quickly revealed itself to be the hefty form of the
waitress. She studied the young woman for a moment before giving the boy a
conspiratorial wink. “Meeting someone, eh? I’d better leave you two love birds alone.”
“Oh yes,” said the girl in black, putting her arm around Ethan, “we’re soul mates.” The
arm felt shockingly light.
When the waitress had poured the coffee and finally left, Ethan disentangled himself
from the girl. In the last two weeks he had learned not to trust anyone. “Are you
Konoha42?” he demanded with his best attempt at sounding in control. It came out
sounding merely constipated.
The pale girl slumped down in the booth and began drinking his coffee. “Look’n for
someone special, Ethan? People say that everyone is special, but that’s a load of
bollocks. No, very few people are special -- seven in fact.” She sipped the coffee
loudly. “Everyone else is meat.”
Ethan had long since figured out he was in trouble. He came a long way to meet with
a kindred spirit, but this was not the one he had in mind. This was the kind of girl his
parents warned him about or at least would have if they knew anything about the Doll.
“They’re dead, ya’ know,” she added so casually that he barely caught it. “Your
parents. He’ll never let them live. He doesn’t work like that. Oh, some of the Hunters
get nostalgic for compassion and make deals. They’ll leave someone’s loved ones
alive on some silly condition, but the big guy, well, he don’t play fair. You follow? He
knows who you are. He’s seen you in your dreams. Finding you was the hard part –
now he’ll just keep killing everyone that knew you until you give in.”
“It sounds like your master is desperate,” interjected a voice flatly. A scruffy man in
his mid-twenties sat down opposite of them. He wasn’t what you would call nervous-
looking, but he had an inescapably tense air about him. It was the kind of attitude that
can only be achieved by a man who awakens everyday expecting horrors that sane
men could never imagine. He had on a large, puffy coat over an old sweatshirt. The
hood was drawn over his face. “He’s clearly afraid of us. Of the power inside us.”
Despite the man looking like a charismatic stoner, Ethan was glad to see him. The girl
next to him was freaking him out and she knew that. Even now, as she glared at the
intruder, he could feel her somehow probing the most intimate recesses of his mind.
“Are you Konoha42?” Ethan asked the man.
“Yes,” said the man, “and it seems that our little meeting has been interrupted.” He
studied the girl for a moment. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. You’re new,
aren’t you?”
“I replaced the old number 2,” smirked the girl. “By the way, the Master isn’t
desperate. People always assume that we pose a threat to him – that we alone could
defeat him.” She leaned across the table, locking eyes with the new visitor. “Did it
ever occur to you that the Pure Souls make him stronger? That nothing we do could
stop him?”
“Then why can’t he kill us?” Suddenly, Konoha42 lashed out. Her grabbed the girl by
her delicate neck and began choking her. His dirty finger nails dug into the soft white
flesh of her throat. Blue veins budge prominently beneath her frail jaw. Despite her
petite frame, the girl in pigtails put up a fierce fight. She slashed at his grizzled face
with her ebon nails and tried twisting herself out of his grip, spilling hot coffee across
the table.
There were no other customers at this point, but the waitress, witnessing this violent
scene, dove for cover behind the counter. The floor shook under the weight of her
impact.
Konoha42 shot a steely glance at the terrified Ethan. “I can’t do this alone! Help me
kill her,” he shouted. When Ethan hesitated, he added “We will always be seven.
Another will replace her. We need to keep the doll from ---”
*BLAM*
Konoha’s head exploded. The shotgun blast turned his skull into a hailstorm of
calcified shrapnel and brains. Pints of blood sprayed the walls, and coated the
surrounding booths. The man’s body slumped to the floor. In abject horror, Ethan
wiped a piece of grey matter out of his eyes as the trembling waitress approached
them, clutching the smoking shot gun. “Are you kids alright?” she stammered.
The girl on the table slowly sat up, gingerly rubbing her throat. Her hair was now
saturated with congealing blood, and her black lipstick was smudged in garish streaks
across her cheeks. Amid the mess that was her face however, shone a gleaming
white smile. “I knew you would do that,” she giggled at the waitress. In a single
gesture, the girl grabbed one of the dull knives on the table beneath her and hurled it
into the waitress’ left eye. Blood spurted from her eye, and the old broad fell
forward.
*Splutch*
The knife was driven further into her skull. Her body jerked and spasmed wildly.
“Not a bad night,” cooed the girl. “Looks like you aren’t the last Pure Soul anymore,
Ethan. Somewhere out there, there’s a new one emerging.” She pranced over to the
waitress’s increasingly still body and knelt down. She removed her red, crystalline
pendant and held it up against the dying woman’s ample flesh. The crimson stone
began to glow.
*Shluuuuumpy*
Something passed between the body and the jewel and an eerie transformation
began. The body went still, and started to darken. The sallow skin took on an orange
hue and a soft fuzz begin rising up under the blood splatters. Her corpse gradually
began to shrink.
The girl looked up at Ethan. Any trace of flirtation in her eyes was gone now. Nothing
but ineffable darkness lurked behind those pupils. “So what will it be? Are you going
to join the winning team?” she asked, nodding to the newly-formed orange fox doll that
had replaced the waitresses’ earthly remains. “Or are we going to do this the hard
way?” She gestured to the headless husk of man once nicknamed Konoha42.
Ethan looked back at her. His mind and soul were at odds with each other. Should he
do what he knew was right, or should he give into the unknown? His pounding heart
hammered in his chest, but his mind came to a single, resolute answer. No matter
what the future may hold, he would be forever committed to the journey ahead of him.
Reading his mind, the girl laughed. “I see you have made your choice,” she said.
Turning to the Doll hovering next to her, she whispered, “This is going to be fun.”
____________________________________________________________________
It was still snowing outside when Ethan left the diner. He refused to look back. It
wouldn’t do him any good now.
He had a long road ahead of him.
breeze. Few would call this a storm, but the shortest day of the year had drawn to a
close and the bitter cold had transformed the moisture into tiny, crystalline razors.
The uneven ground still carried its share of packed ice, but the virginal snow of
Christmas was now a fetid mire of grey, partially-melted sludge. It squished damply
around Ethan’s boots, sending gritty globules of slush into the space between the
rubber and his legs.
There was a light up ahead.
Not another car. Enough of those had passed by him on the supposedly lonely road,
spraying him with tainted precipitation. No, up ahead was his destination -- a solitary
diner on the side of the road. It would be described as “quaint” if it weren’t so
ominous. In the shifting miasma of snow, it was hard to make out the fine details.
There was but a single frost-covered car in the parking lot, but the lights in the window
were definitely on. There was a buzzing neon sign that once read “HELLO
TRAVELERS,” but the “O” had long flickered away into perpetual darkness. It sure
wasn’t the Ritz, but after five miles of walking through the frozen wasteland of Route
99, it might as well be. More importantly, it was where he was told to meet. Shifting
his duffle bag from one numb shoulder to the other, Ethan slogged on.
Stepping inside, Ethan savored the greasy warmth of the diner. He must have been a
sight to behold. The sleepy diner rarely got visitors these days, besides the perennial
crop of faded locals. They certainly didn’t get 14 year-old hitchhikers covered in
snow. The waitress gave him a puzzled look. After a moment of hesitation she asked
“Are you lost, hon?”
“No,” replied Ethan as calmly as he could. “I’m meeting someone here.”
The corpulent waitress seemed to ponder this for a moment. Strangers rarely chose
to stop here, let alone use it as a rendezvous. Still, he was a customer and apparently
planned on bringing in another, so she quickly pushed aside her doubts. “I’ll get’cha
coffee,” she mumbled vaguely as the boy took a seat.
Ethan pulled out a beaten-up laptop from the soaked duffle bag. Resting it on the
sticky diner table, he booted it up and started searching through saved web pages,
like he had for the last two weeks. Sixteen archives of Tails Doll stories, and he still
couldn’t ascertain what the “Pure Souls” were for. From what he could gather, they
were very important, and the Doll wanted them for something. Also, nearly everyone
and their mother claimed to be the elusive seventh.
“Ah,” said a voice close to his ear, “but there is a big difference between claiming to
be something and actually being it.”
Shocked, Ethan instinctively slammed his computer shut. There was an attractive
teenage girl standing besides him. She wore her red-streaked raven hair in pigtails,
which perfectly framed her grinning face. Despite the sub-freezing temperatures, she
wore a black tank-top made of light fabric. A red pendant hung around her slender
neck.
“How…?” he stammered.
“I read minds,” she said with a smirk, reaching out and touching him on the top of his
head. “It’s a gift.” She leaned in close, brushing his ear with her soft lips, “And you
know who gave it to me.”
She slid into the booth next to him, getting a little too close for comfort. She glanced
at the laptop and rolled her eyes. “You won’t learn anything from those silly little
websites and forums. That ‘Quacker Duk’ guy and his readers only wish they knew
the truth. Take it from me – I used to post there.”
A shadow loomed over Ethan, but quickly revealed itself to be the hefty form of the
waitress. She studied the young woman for a moment before giving the boy a
conspiratorial wink. “Meeting someone, eh? I’d better leave you two love birds alone.”
“Oh yes,” said the girl in black, putting her arm around Ethan, “we’re soul mates.” The
arm felt shockingly light.
When the waitress had poured the coffee and finally left, Ethan disentangled himself
from the girl. In the last two weeks he had learned not to trust anyone. “Are you
Konoha42?” he demanded with his best attempt at sounding in control. It came out
sounding merely constipated.
The pale girl slumped down in the booth and began drinking his coffee. “Look’n for
someone special, Ethan? People say that everyone is special, but that’s a load of
bollocks. No, very few people are special -- seven in fact.” She sipped the coffee
loudly. “Everyone else is meat.”
Ethan had long since figured out he was in trouble. He came a long way to meet with
a kindred spirit, but this was not the one he had in mind. This was the kind of girl his
parents warned him about or at least would have if they knew anything about the Doll.
“They’re dead, ya’ know,” she added so casually that he barely caught it. “Your
parents. He’ll never let them live. He doesn’t work like that. Oh, some of the Hunters
get nostalgic for compassion and make deals. They’ll leave someone’s loved ones
alive on some silly condition, but the big guy, well, he don’t play fair. You follow? He
knows who you are. He’s seen you in your dreams. Finding you was the hard part –
now he’ll just keep killing everyone that knew you until you give in.”
“It sounds like your master is desperate,” interjected a voice flatly. A scruffy man in
his mid-twenties sat down opposite of them. He wasn’t what you would call nervous-
looking, but he had an inescapably tense air about him. It was the kind of attitude that
can only be achieved by a man who awakens everyday expecting horrors that sane
men could never imagine. He had on a large, puffy coat over an old sweatshirt. The
hood was drawn over his face. “He’s clearly afraid of us. Of the power inside us.”
Despite the man looking like a charismatic stoner, Ethan was glad to see him. The girl
next to him was freaking him out and she knew that. Even now, as she glared at the
intruder, he could feel her somehow probing the most intimate recesses of his mind.
“Are you Konoha42?” Ethan asked the man.
“Yes,” said the man, “and it seems that our little meeting has been interrupted.” He
studied the girl for a moment. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. You’re new,
aren’t you?”
“I replaced the old number 2,” smirked the girl. “By the way, the Master isn’t
desperate. People always assume that we pose a threat to him – that we alone could
defeat him.” She leaned across the table, locking eyes with the new visitor. “Did it
ever occur to you that the Pure Souls make him stronger? That nothing we do could
stop him?”
“Then why can’t he kill us?” Suddenly, Konoha42 lashed out. Her grabbed the girl by
her delicate neck and began choking her. His dirty finger nails dug into the soft white
flesh of her throat. Blue veins budge prominently beneath her frail jaw. Despite her
petite frame, the girl in pigtails put up a fierce fight. She slashed at his grizzled face
with her ebon nails and tried twisting herself out of his grip, spilling hot coffee across
the table.
There were no other customers at this point, but the waitress, witnessing this violent
scene, dove for cover behind the counter. The floor shook under the weight of her
impact.
Konoha42 shot a steely glance at the terrified Ethan. “I can’t do this alone! Help me
kill her,” he shouted. When Ethan hesitated, he added “We will always be seven.
Another will replace her. We need to keep the doll from ---”
*BLAM*
Konoha’s head exploded. The shotgun blast turned his skull into a hailstorm of
calcified shrapnel and brains. Pints of blood sprayed the walls, and coated the
surrounding booths. The man’s body slumped to the floor. In abject horror, Ethan
wiped a piece of grey matter out of his eyes as the trembling waitress approached
them, clutching the smoking shot gun. “Are you kids alright?” she stammered.
The girl on the table slowly sat up, gingerly rubbing her throat. Her hair was now
saturated with congealing blood, and her black lipstick was smudged in garish streaks
across her cheeks. Amid the mess that was her face however, shone a gleaming
white smile. “I knew you would do that,” she giggled at the waitress. In a single
gesture, the girl grabbed one of the dull knives on the table beneath her and hurled it
into the waitress’ left eye. Blood spurted from her eye, and the old broad fell
forward.
*Splutch*
The knife was driven further into her skull. Her body jerked and spasmed wildly.
“Not a bad night,” cooed the girl. “Looks like you aren’t the last Pure Soul anymore,
Ethan. Somewhere out there, there’s a new one emerging.” She pranced over to the
waitress’s increasingly still body and knelt down. She removed her red, crystalline
pendant and held it up against the dying woman’s ample flesh. The crimson stone
began to glow.
*Shluuuuumpy*
Something passed between the body and the jewel and an eerie transformation
began. The body went still, and started to darken. The sallow skin took on an orange
hue and a soft fuzz begin rising up under the blood splatters. Her corpse gradually
began to shrink.
The girl looked up at Ethan. Any trace of flirtation in her eyes was gone now. Nothing
but ineffable darkness lurked behind those pupils. “So what will it be? Are you going
to join the winning team?” she asked, nodding to the newly-formed orange fox doll that
had replaced the waitresses’ earthly remains. “Or are we going to do this the hard
way?” She gestured to the headless husk of man once nicknamed Konoha42.
Ethan looked back at her. His mind and soul were at odds with each other. Should he
do what he knew was right, or should he give into the unknown? His pounding heart
hammered in his chest, but his mind came to a single, resolute answer. No matter
what the future may hold, he would be forever committed to the journey ahead of him.
Reading his mind, the girl laughed. “I see you have made your choice,” she said.
Turning to the Doll hovering next to her, she whispered, “This is going to be fun.”
____________________________________________________________________
It was still snowing outside when Ethan left the diner. He refused to look back. It
wouldn’t do him any good now.
He had a long road ahead of him.