Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift by Fiction River Page A

out.
    “Oh don’t give me that look. You weren’t putting it to good use anyhow. So you have a choice now.”
    Sam took out his keys and jingled them at the gun on the sidewalk.
    “You can pick that gun up with your other hand, or you can get the hell out of my way.”
    This time the man saw reason and stumbled away.
    Sam looked at his car. Immaculate silver. He had it hosed down after the blood rain and now it shined. As he sat down behind the wheel he realized this was the first car he ever truly loved. Almost made him feel bad for all the Germans he had killed in World War 1.
    “Ok,” he whispered. “On to the most evil place on Earth.”
     
    ***
     
    The tree was magnificent. Between an ex-apartment building (now a half-collapsed crack house) and an ex-department store (now a graffiti-covered crack house with boarded-up windows) stood a black, dead, full-grown tree. Its empty branches probed at—and seemed to become one with—the black patch of sky above it, building a stark, trans-dimensional contrast to the shiny, clear weather in the mundane world. It didn’t root in earth. What seemed like white stones from afar were in fact shiny weather-bleached bones, sucked dry over the decades.
    Papa Whitestaff had planted that tree, almost a century ago. This tree was the reason his father tried to kill him and this tree was the reason why Sam still lived.
    It exuded the finest odors. Fresh-baked cookies at one time. Then money-bills, then crack. Humans were, after all, its primary food source.
    Sam brought his car to a stop and walked up to it. The really interesting part about the tree was the gashing wound in its stem that never, ever healed. Through that you could suck at its resin. The rules were simple enough. Make a sacrifice, as deep-cutting and personal as necessary and suck up the leaking resin as a reward. This way you could make your dreams become reality. The only catch was the diminishing returns. And the fact that few people knew what they really wanted. The tree could grind people to dust, one ill-conceived wish at a time. Evil as a Vegas casino.
    Sam wanted to cut it down decades ago. Now it was his only hope.
    “Hello Samuel,” said the singsong voice behind him.
    Sam had not seen the man until it was too late.
     
    ***
     
    “How did you find me?” said Sam.
    While Sam was human and became something else, this—for lack of a better word—man came from the Inbetween and was now pretending to breathe air and pay taxes.
    He looked like a middle-aged cubicle worker with empty blue eyes, staring into nothingness. They never got the eyes right. Why bother pointing them at things when you could see with your whole body?
    “I have been following you, ever since you left Mr. Falcone’s apartment.”
    So they were tracking flexible minds. Made sense. In this neighborhood a lot of people went over the edge. And when their brains finally saw the truth they brought desperation, poor impulse control and guns to where the Powers That Be didn’t want them. That left a single question.
    “So why am I still breathing?”
    “You have served us well for a considerable time. It would be an inconceivable waste of talent.” They also couldn’t get emotions right, and by extension language. The man accentuated arbitrary syllables, like he had been speaking Cantonese for all his life and only recently learned perfect English. From books.
    Even though it was impossible to read the man, Sam understood the subtext perfectly well. His laugh echoed across the entire street.
    “You haven’t found him, yet!” said Sam.
    “We will in time.”
    He gave him a smile. Like clockwork his body started to dance around, studying his opponent’s reactions.
    “Be faster if I could help though.”
    “Indeed.”
    “Pass.”
    “Pity.”
    Winning a fight.
    Winning a fight of any kind was about two things: speed and precision. The secret was that it wasn’t enough to know what you’re doing, striking out and crushing a