The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) by Mark Reynolds Page A

threatening to grind his teeth to splinters. His eyes, one
blue, the other green, blazed beneath a fiercely knit brow, fixing upon the
Writer like barbed hooks. Then Kreiger started forward, long hungry strides
eating up the distance separating them. The Panama hat slipped from his head
and disappeared, smearing the air like a chalk etching brushed away by a
careless hand. The Writer saw it for a moment, a fading image growing long and
thin like smoke lost to the breeze, then gone without a trace.
    Now nothing separated the Writer from
the malefic stare of Kreiger’s different-colored eyes. They were eyes that
understood hatred and loathing and the bitter pain of shattered aspirations
that fed upon the heart like a crawling mass of ooze-blackened maggots; eyes that
obtained some measure of satisfaction, even pleasure, from the pain they
witnessed in others. Caught within his eyes, the Writer stood stricken, feeling
like a small rodent caught in the golden stare of a serpent.
    In his life, the Writer had seen many
things: some things so wondrous as to blind the eye of God, and some so
terrible as to shatter all the devils in hell like so many thin, porcelain
cups. But never before had he known the raw terror he felt now watching the
universe itself try to drag Gusman Kreiger back to the reality from which he
came … and Kreiger able to resist !
    “What have you done, Kreiger?”
Algernon moaned, his voice sounding tired and feeble even to his own ears, the
voice of a very old man. “You’ve become a monster.”
    “My skills have sharpened over time,
Algernon, and now I’m taking my due.” The other smiled, and for a moment only,
the stick he carried flickered with a ghostly image that was taller, more
ornate; the retinal echoes of a staff mystically hidden behind the air. “One
piece at a time.”
    The Writer stood paralyzed, his mind
caught in the grip of demanding claws that sank deep into the soft tissue of
his brain, digging in and holding on with jagged nails. He watched as Kreiger
stepped closer, purposeful strides that would carry him up to the Writer until
the two men were standing nose to nose, and he could do nothing. Then the eyes
would swallow him whole. How had Kreiger become so strong? he wondered. Years
in the Wasteland should have left him weak and mad. Instead, he was transformed,
made into an abomination!
    A burning pain ate through the
Writer’s fingertips, urgent signals of anguish exploding through the spell of
Kreiger’s stare. For one dazed moment, The Writer looked down with
incomprehension, and saw the forgotten drinks in his trembling hands. A napkin
had fallen away and left his bare fingertips exposed to the throbbing heat
penetrating the cardboard cups, the pads of his fingers bright red and
agonizing. But instead of throwing them down and sucking on his burned fingers,
the Writer luxuriated in the pain, focused on the sharp stabbing, the
hard, slow pulses that rocked each digit and throbbed all the way to the base
of his palm like a heartbeat. Turning all of his attention upon the white,
excruciating source, the Writer slowly looked away from Kreiger’s mad eyes, and
deliberately turned aside …
    … nearly colliding with the two
figures standing directly behind him, waiting.
    How long have they been standing
there? the Writer
wondered morosely. How long have you been foolishly entertaining Kreiger,
trading remarks like two bullies in the schoolyard, him putting the pieces in
place all the while.
    The Writer felt very much alone, a
man who has lost his world. And Gusman Kreiger … well, Kreiger made any place
he happened to be his. Two-thousand years ago, in another reality, Kreiger had
turned water into wine then walked upon the sea, if only to inspire a devout
following who would indulge his ego’s every whim and fancy. This plane was not
a barrier to Kreiger. That he could escape the Wasteland at all was a testament
to the extent of his control over reality. That he could bring