SHADOWS IN THE GLASS -- Chapter 20 (2)

It had been a busy night. Now all was done but the dreaming and the shaped awakening that unfolded into another dream. Weaving threads of possibility into a tapestry of reality was work best accomplished in the land of dreams. Since Cypher's essence was made of nightmares, it was familiar territory.

The trail of breadcrumbs was in place. Flaws and hints for Lisa to follow back to Cypher when the time was ripe.

Cypher was an insubstantial slip of near-nothingness that could barely claim existence. But Cypher called the steps to their puppet dance. Locked in the grip of death's embrace they danced through nightmares in lockstep, whirling shadows of smoke reflected in glass.

Secrets revealed themselves as Cypher climbed the blood slick stepping stones of knowledge. An escalator of epiphanies lifted Cypher above the lowing masses to the reaping shepherd of the herd. The wolf among sheep.

The world was better off without people. If Cypher somehow managed to cleanse the planet of the human plague and saw itself to be the very last, Cypher would gladly dispatch itself and die, knowing its destiny was fulfilled.

Cypher whistled a flat melody. Slowly dragged out the notes. Mournfully twisted them out of tune.

Earlier, while Cypher's smoke filled his shell, Bob had whistled the same tune as he carried Placida Jimenez up Camelback Mountain.

He walked a trail near the base. Hot work, even at night. It was still 95 degrees at 11:00 PM. Grit stuck to his sweat. Crossing the soft sand his feet sank to his ankles from the extra weight.

Placida was over his shoulder. Naked under the sheet she was wrapped in. Her eye sockets had been hollowed out. She'd been specifically mutilated. Not for thrills, power, control, or cruelty. It was strictly utilitarian. The cost of necessity, turning inside the greater cogs of the plan.

It was Bob's recipe. A profile designed for him and acted out by Cypher's proxy. Cypher felt no remorse, but Cypher felt no thrill either. Cypher did it because it was what Bob was expected to do.

He'd kept her in the warehouse refrigerator, but she was losing her cool. One of her arms slumped out from the sheet.

Bob heard a gasp. He turned. A man on horseback. He was amazed a horse had managed to sneak up on him. Its hooves were nearly soundless in the sand. Quieter than his own struggling steps.

The man was in his late fifties. Straight gray hair past his shoulders, tied back with a strip of leather. Wearing a cowboy hat and tie-dye shirt. Faint smell of burnt hemp. Eyes wide with something stronger than weed.

Hippie said, "What the fuck?"

Hallucinogens. He wasn't sure if Bob was real.

Bob grabbed the horse's bridle. He eased Placida's soulless shell to the sand. Her arm caught on Bob's knee and waved, welcoming the hippie to the land of the dead.

The hippie had surprised Bob. He didn't like surprises but he knew how to deal with them. Cypher enjoyed the slow slurping shuddering death that came with strangulation by garrote. Such a slow and intimate dance. But this wasn't the time for such pleasantries. Cypher was Bob now and that wasn't his thing. Bob liked sharp things.

Bob slipped it from his boot on the way up. The hippie blinked. Licked his lips. Looked at Placida on the ground, wrapped in a sheet.

Bob wondered, Heart or kidney?

With the hippie on horseback the kidney was closer. Bob's weapon was a puncturing tool he'd made himself. The spider tattoo on his thumb curled around it.

Speed and darkness were his allies. The point entered the hippie's abdomen in his right side. Too slow to comprehend or react, the hippie let out a rattling chirp before he crumpled off the horse. Dead, except for the bleeding out on the sand. That would take a few minutes and Bob was in a bit of a hurry, so he stuck the hippie's heart to be done with it.

Humanity was inherently frail. Lives fragile as butterfly wings woven on a gossamer web spun of hopes and fantasies and lies. Time brought a hardened shell to civility. Brittle as glass and just as jagged when broken in your face. Everyone was flawed and sick inside. Human arrogance was an irreducible constant that inevitably led to rampant greed. Human existence had become a plague, a cancer growing out of control. They lied to themselves and the delusion was inherent in their word civilization. There was nothing civil about them.

They flaunted their entitlement. Their manifest destiny. The death of everything. Topping it all with their stubborn belief that God would not be disgusted by their words and behavior and the gulf of hypocrisy that lay between the two.

Eventually death would come for them all. Deaths as inevitable as they were deserved. Cypher just helped them on their way. Bob helped the hippie along and was granted a gift. The horse was a beautiful brown mare. Her freshly brushed coat was glossy black by starlight. Bob threw Placida over the saddle and led the mare up the side of Camelback Mountain.

At the top, Bob disposed of the mare's burden. Then climbed into the saddle to ride back down. On the way he came across hikers. A whole family of them. Parents and two kids. Stumbling up the trail with flashlights. Perhaps some stellar conjunction had coaxed them up out of the smog.

Too many for Bob to control out in the open. Too many variables. Witnesses of a vague starlit figure on horseback was nothing. Now that his sketch was circulating the news, Bob was played out. He would be flushed tomorrow. Cypher just needed to send one email from Bob's phone.

At any rate, Bob wouldn't allow himself to be scrutinized by flashlight. He tilted his hat down and left the trail. He gave the mare a kick. It broke into a trot. He put some desert behind him before he returned her to a walk.

When Bob got back to the van, he discovered the hippie still had boons to grant an hour after he'd gasped his last breath. Bob discovered a zip-lock baggy of mushrooms in the saddlebags. Definitely hallucinogenic. No doubt the cause of the hippie's lackluster danger response.

Mushrooms would aide a transportation that Cypher planned to undertake later. Ingestion aided transformation. Prey asked to be devoured. Wanted to be part of Cypher's increasing magnificence. Wanted inclusion in the solitude of Cypher's irreducible nothingness.

This was the natural progression. As warriors had devoured the heart of enemies and noble prey to imbue them with their strength. Cypher didn't think of itself as a cannibal. It was simply the utilitarian necessity of the transforming agent. Eyes for sight. Heart for courage. Hands for skills. Cypher added to itself. The voracious black hole soul demanded more.

It was simple physics. Cypher was zero. Nothing. The vacuum abhorred by nature. Void that couldn't be filled.

Shapes shifted into temporary shells, like Bob. They were always discarded eventually. Folded up into a box behind the closet like an empty skin. Cypher was the will of the wisp. Smoke in a soap bubble. The stale stink of life reduced to ash encased in a fragile shell of transparent iridescence like oil floating on water. Cypher was soul whipped bare. Flayed open to exposed nerves. Only able to feel pain. Self awareness peeled away. Scrubbed into a blank slate where Cypher could write anything.

Now was time for beginnings. Birth was inevitably painful, but there was reason to hope that Cypher was approaching the last transformation. The perfect fit.

Cypher sat on the reflection of Lisa's bed, slowly chewing the hippie's mushrooms. Peering through the looking glass of the television. Watching Lisa on her bed. Cypher softly muttered and cursed life. Seething thoughts spawned filthy words. An unending blasphemous liturgy poured from its mouth.

Cypher watched as Lisa turned restlessly on the bed.

The dog whined and pawed at the door of the carrier-cage.