Archive for the ‘Jonathan Wood’ Category
A Reliable Man
Friday, January 16th, 2009
I look at the dead man and try to make up my mind. Callie’s still at the entrance to the alleyway telling me to get back there, that it’s too cold a night to play boy scout, that I’m gonna get myself mugged. She stamps her feet and the echoes play down the walls.
I didn’t drink anything tonight. Callie’s pregnant. It’s getting uncomfortable for her to drive and I’m doing the gentlemanly thing. So I’m sober. My eyes aren’t playing tricks.
But the man has… I mean… The man has wings. He’s lying face down, his bloody shirt ripped away from the body. I see where the flesh and muscle bind in his back. I reach down and touch them. Those are real feathers. Those are real wings. Real goddamn wings.
People don’t have wings.
I mean, Jesus, that’s something you can rely on, right? That people don’t have wings. That is a fundamental truth. There’s not much you can say, I am certain of this, one hundred percent, but that’s one: people don’t have wings.
Except this guy.
What if I call Callie to come see? What if I call the press? Even if people see this, even if this is real, they won’t believe me. Because people don’t have wings. Only the crazies, only the guys rejecting their meds and reality will believe me. I’ll be crazy.
I stare at the body and try to make up my mind. Callie is shouting at me. Callie’s pregnant. We’re going to have a little girl.
I keep on staring at the body, ignoring Callie for just a little while. I keep on staring until I can believe the truth again. People don’t have wings. And then I walk away.
The Changing of the Times
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
It used to be all about magical swords. Blessed steel wreathed in flame, all that. Truth be told, I have, in the past, opined of the increasingly mundane nature of the magical armament. So there is at least a small part of me that stands up and cheers when the tattooed bastard reaches to his scabbard and pulls out a shimmering blue blade that crackles with fire.
On the other hand, the larger part of me is tied to a chair and couldn’t stand up to cheer even if it wanted to. Which it doesn’t.
I’d been tracking the trail of bodies for about two weeks. He’d been picking of virgins as he goes-which can’t have been as easy as it was when he first walked the earth. I followed him from London to Paris, across Alps, then into Germany, which is where I’m pretty sure he became aware of me because right now I’m in the back room of a strip club in Berlin, with my hands bound by stockings, which is not half as pleasant as several magazines have led me to believe.
However, despite appearances I do have a few things going in my favor. For starters, apparently stockings were not a prevalent item in twelfth century Egypt, so my tattooed friend, Mahut As-Ghul, is not entirely familiar with their unsuitability as bindings.
I kick back in the chair at about the same time the nylon rips. Mahut lunges. I tuck my body in and roll, but not in time to stop the blade passing through my ankle. The flesh doesn’t break but the pain is agonizing. Mahut’s blade glows brighter. Bastard just chopped off part of my soul.
Which brings me to my other and much more significant advantage. You see the operative word in my opening salvo here was that it used to be all about magical swords.
Ignoring my ankle, I draw my Glock and fire. Nothing unusual about the Glock. Standard issue for my department. But the bullets, ah yes, there’s the rub Mahut, old buddy.
A portal to several rather unpleasant dimensions is abruptly punched into Mahut’s skull. He starts to fold in on it, which really doesn’t look pleasant. Still, I can’t quite resist picking up the sword and finishing off the job the old fashioned way.