Blue Flame, Book One, Part One

Emptiness.

The feeling of darkness clutching at his skin, crawling underneath, sends shivers throughout his body.
He shouldn’t have gone. He knew it then, and is beginning to understand it now.

Silence, like an unseen hole, swallows him.
It isn’t the issue of death that he worries about. No, it isn’t that. It’s worse fears,
for death would be pleasant: an escape,
a way out.

Redemption.

The tormenting souls come crawling, Clawing, Wishing, Wanting,

To open the lesion

And pour out all the Festering Maggots and puss

To Feed upon the open wound of rot and flesh.

Part One: “The Man in the Hat”

(White breath, calm, and a slow, rhythmic heartbeat)

Bodies shuffle and stagger through aisles, browsing and shopping. Their little, pale fingers sift through the purchasable items. Their colorless eyes look for useful items. This is where Frank said he’d be. Ernest checks his watch. Three forty-five. He is fifteen minutes early. Tiny hands tick the seconds away, traveling around the face of a once- sentimental gift from a now-forgotten lover. He still wears it. He still cherishes it—this watch, with its blue face behind a scratched crystal surface.

Families shop for foods, fish, and jewelry from street vendors. They barter for new shoes, carrying bags, and walk along the sun-dried streets. Hand washed clothes hanging from windowsills dangling high above. A thin white dust floats in the air, kicked up by the many feet. Little shops with awnings and bargain sale signs crowd the plaza with crafts, carvings, antiques and articles from accumulated years.

A child, pale and thin with narrow slit eyes, comes skipping down the lane. A yellow balloon floats above him on a string. He smiles and sings to himself. His mother, far down the street, hasn’t realized he has left her side. She is talking to another woman dressed in the sunshine.

Ernest watches her expression change from a careless laugh to panic as she notices her son is gone. He steps out of his inconspicuous location beside a crumbing brick building. He stands in front of the boy with a wide, toothless grin. His shadow drapes over the kid. The boy stops in his tracks. The yellow balloon floats away as the smile sinks off his face.

“Hello, son,” Ernest says, smiling without hesitation. “Your mother is looking for you.” He points behind the young albino boy to where his mother is frantically searching for him. Their eyes meet, and she begins running towards them.

Everyone in town is of the Kausian race, and every one somehow has become an albino; white skinned, brittle, and bone-thin. Their eyes are narrow and dark with no color to the irises. Some said it was a disease. Others said it was mutation or poison. But none of them knew about the Pit. The first few changes took place as freak surprises, but with thousands of newborns looking the same, it became commonly accepted. Within three generations the entire Kausian race had mutated because, deep under the village, the Pit fed on their life force. It contaminates without being noticed, flowing into the city, causing genetic alterations and feeding off the living. With each new generation born, the Pit grows stronger.

Ernest doesn't look like any of them. He isn’t from this village. His strange, still-human appearance frightens the Kausian folk. The panicked mother quickly scoops up her child, pulling him back and away. She holds him tight to her chest protecting his smooth white head with her bone thin fingers and shrinks away. Ernest, still wearing that same half-grin, tips his hat.

“Still trying to be a good guy, are ya, bud?” says a low, rusty voice. Ernest quickly turns and instinctively reaches for the revolver at his hip.

“Just as jumpy too, I see.” Shadows peel off Frank as he steps from the alleyway, cackling. “Calm down, bud.” He puts up both hands. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” The smile dangles off his face as he slaps Ernest on the shoulder. “I missed you too, buddy. Glad you still care.”

“Don’t do that, man!” shouts Ernest. “Next time you’ll get a bullet in the belly.” Ernest shrugs off Frank’s hand. “I don’t like you touching me, either. And I don’t like this town. It’s full of ghosts. It’s nothing but walkin' skeletons. Why the hell did you want to meet here?”

Frank smiles, revealing a set of nasty teeth. “There’s something I have to tell you, bud. But not here.” He looks around. “Somewhere private.”

Frank leads Ernest down a side alley and away from the market square.

“There’s somebody we’re supposed to meet. I was contacted with specific instructions. He goes by the name Shuffle. I think he’s a Shadow Walker.” Frank explains all this in hand gestures as the wind ruffles the loose ends of his trench coat. “He told me I needed one more person. Someone I could trust.” Frank stops at the end of the alley before stepping into the sunlight. “And I picked you, bud.” He smiles, “I can trust you, right?” Frank pulls out a little black leather pouch and some rolling papers.

His fat fingers dig into the pouch and pinch a wad of tobacco. He rolls a cigarette, puts it to his lips, and lights it. Blue smoke seeps from his nostrils.

“You still smoke, Ern?”

“No, I quit,” Ernest said, “and I hate when you call me that.”

“I know, bud.” Frank’s smile wrinkles the corners of his bloodshot eyes. Deep sagging bags droop beneath them. He takes a long drag. “I got a map.”

“A map to what?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What good is a map if you don’t know what it leads to?”

“I think it’s a map to the Blue Flame.”

“Blue what?”

“Blue Flame.”

“What would I want with a blue flame? I told you, I don’t smoke anymore.”

“How about everlasting life?”

“How do you manage to live forever?” asks Ernest. “And why the hell would you want to?”

Frank bites down on the thin rolled cigarette. The smoke stains his teeth some more. The two men step out of the darkness from between the tall stone buildings. “Look, Ern, every day we keep getting older, and every day is the same old thing, over and over again. We’re pounding the nails into our coffins. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel fulfilled. I want more! I need something more, and I don’t want to die a useless old man with nothing but regrets.”

“Getting older does suck,” says Ernest. “And stop calling me Ern.”

“Right, Ern, of course, sorry about that.”

Ernest gives Frank a long, scornful stare.

“I don’t want to die without feeling like I’ve really done something,” Frank says.

“But we have, man,” says Ernest. “Remember the adventures we had- -living in the prairie, thieving, surviving?”

Frank stops and stands silently for a moment, rubbing his bristled chin. “Yeah, I suppose--the good old days, robbing, raping, riding with Jack, and taking what we wanted. Them some good memories for sure, bud. Wouldn’t give them up for the world.”

“Well?” Ernest says hesitantly with an open palm.

“Well what, bud? You want the good times to be over?” Frank slaps Ernest on the back. “Come on, man, we can stay young and keep living the good life, forever. You don’t want to be old and useless, do ya?”

Ernest stares at a passing cloud. “Reckon not.”

“So let’s go. We’re to meet this ‘Shuffle’ guy soon. He’s expecting us. He’ll explain it all. I promise. He’s even going to pay us hefty sums to retrieve this damn Blue Flame.”

“Why doesn’t he go get it himself?” Asks Ernest. “Why does he need us to do his dirty work?”

“I don’t know, man. Don’t ask stupid questions. He’s paying us. What does it matter?” Frank blows out a long trail of smoke.

The two figures, side by side, stroll down the long corridor of streets.

“You’re always thinking too much, Ern. You always did. And look where it’s got you. Nowhere. What good does thinking do ya, bud? Nothing!” Frank taps his chest with meaty fingertips. “Look at me, bud. I’m a doer, a go-getter. I make things happen. I get things done. Take a lesson from me, Ern--stop asking dumb questions and start doing smart things.”

Ernest continues strolling with his head down, shaded by his hat. “Shut up man. My name is Ernest, not Ern. Quit calling me that. You know I hate it.”

“Right, bud, sorry,” says Frank. “We’re almost there. Come on.”

Frank leads Ernest down a few winding passageways. Small, pale children with large heads on bone-brittle bodies run about the sandy streets, kicking up dust, laughing and yelling, playing shoot-‘em-up in the road. Frank spins an imaginary gun in his hand and points the barrel of his finger at one of the boys, thumbing back the hammer. “Bang, bang, bang.” He shoots all the kids dead with invisible bullets. They run away.

Full-grown women in loose shrouds watch the two foreign travelers cross through town, their eyes calling, wanting with deep instinctive lust. They know their children are not normal, not quite human, and that these two strange men are different. They know that, out there, beyond the walls of the village, the rest of the world is somehow different.
A woman in blue shrouds comes flying out a doorway. She falls to Ernest’s feet, exposes her small, dried breasts, and clings to his leg. She pets at his stomach, moaning.

“Please, please,” she murmurs from her deformed face. Her lips peel back from rotting, black teeth. She licks them with a blistered tongue. “Please,” she begs. Ernest shudders in disgust and attempts to kick himself free.

Frank laughs. “Come on bud, do her, screw her, man. Give it to her.”

“Shut up Frank! And help me get this hag off my leg.” He slaps her with the back of his hand. She lets go and backs away, cringing and shivering. Bright red blood drains from the corner of her eye. Ernest looks at his hand. Some of her flesh is stuck to it. Frantically, he wipes it off on his pant leg.

“Damnit, Frank! I hate this town. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

“First we talk to Shuffle, then we get the goods, and before you know it, we’ll be long gone from this shitty place and rich.”

“There ain’t anything in this town but death. Frank. I can feel it like a cold shiver.”

Written by Charles Denton

Story by Charles Denton and Joe Lipscomb
Illustrations by Blaine Garrett

Cover Art by Joe Lipscomb
Copright 2012 Dim Media