Broken Wings: Genesis (2 page)

The thought still hurt at odd
times. It’s not like it wasn’t for the best. Pops was a sociopathic drunk––and
did I mention pathological liar? No matter. I was alone in my apartment where
only I could see the vulnerability in the eyes staring back at me from the
mirror. I didn’t have time to wallow. And more and more, I had even less time
to feel.

I turned on the shower and hopped
in while it was still cold, letting it shock me fully awake. The streaming
droplets ran over me. I let them warm as the moments passed, before I started
washing.

The nuns at the orphanage figured
out that there was something different about me—my dreams were not the normal
dreams of a five-year-old child. They were night terrors with a basis in
reality. It terrified them that the things I said I saw and spoke about were
not the “imaginary” musings of a child trying to compensate for loneliness, but
rather the kinds of things they had forgotten how to see. So they turned me over
to the priests.

Not everyone realizes that
religions have more to their concepts of light and darkness than they see. Oh,
yeah, sure. There are the regular teachings of heaven and hell. But those focus
on having faith that heaven exists and is a happy place to go to.

They gloss over the part about the
balance that needs to be maintained between the light and the darkness, and
hell is not only real, but it’s all around us. I’m pretty sure it’s because if
they could see what is really there, they’d drop faith for the future of their
souls and live in the physical reality of the now in order to survive the
onslaught against their minds and bodies.

That was my job.

I finished washing and reached to
turn off the water. Something stopped me. I brought my hands back and held them
under the water, turning them over to see both front and back. They were
crisscrossed with red marks––some raised to welts. My fists clenched in
frustration. Chaz was definitely onto something. I hated dream stalkers. With a
resigned sigh, I turned off the water and went to get dressed. It was time to
get to work.

There’s a lot to be said for
cruising down the freeway on a bright sunny day straddling a shiny, black,
998cc vibrating crotch rocket. Aside from the obvious, it’s a feeling of total
freedom and the closest I’ll ever get to flying like some of the other
things
I encounter. Okay, I have to admit a bit of envy on my part for that ability.
The total freedom of movement, the wind stinging your face and blowing your
hair out behind you like an extra set of wings at your head, no traffic––pure
adrenalin. You can’t be in my line of work and not be addicted to the rush of
adrenalin.

I hit a button at my waist that
piped radio waves to my headset.

“…House announced today that the
president would soon begin his promised promotion of literacy in the schools.
His planned tour will take him…”

Gack. The radio went back off. I
was not up for politics this morning. As far as I was concerned, politics and
religion could be lumped into the same category. They were both necessary
institutions whose sole function was to give the appearance of control to the
masses in a world where control was an illusion for the most part.

Maybe that wasn’t entirely
accurate. Both institutions had control enough to keep the masses from seeing
the truth of what was really going on. The political and religious factions
that drew the most people to their sides were the ones that could put the best
spin in place to make people feel good about themselves and the world they live
in.

They certainly don’t live in the
same world I do. People can’t handle that kind of reality with their coffee in
the morning. Coffee. Damn. That’s what I had forgotten. They might not be able
to handle reality with their coffee––I can’t handle it
without
my
coffee.

The kind of reality I live in
means I can’t turn my back on the world, pretending true evil doesn’t exist.
The world the rest of society lives in has its own breed of monsters––rapists,
murderers, child molesters––and the list goes on. That’s not to say I don’t
feel about these things like everyone else does. They shouldn’t be allowed to
have a place in the world at all. But I know the reality behind the
true
perpetrators of these mundane acts.

The balance between light and darkness
is a delicate one. Flip open any newspaper or turn on any television and it
always seems that darkness is winning. But that’s not true. It only seems that
way. All it takes is one good, selfless act and the balance tips back against a
horde of evil ones. That’s why you hear so much about the darkness of
humankind. Darkness has to exploit its own acts, sensationalize the fear. It is
the only way for them to gain power in the hearts and minds of people.

For the most part, people reject
the thought of evil. Only through constant bombardment can it keep a foothold
in society. The downside to this? Constant inundation tends to create immunity.
The people of today’s world have had their senses numbed to the violence around
them. Believe it or not, my side was winning. Or at least I liked to consider
myself on the side of good. It was going to take something truly spectacular to
shake the world up enough to tip the scales back in the favor of darkness
again. It’s coming. I know it is. And I’m going to do my best to stop it if I
get half a chance.

I took the exit that would lead me
to Chaz, my thoughts wandering in the same direction. He was a good kid. No
matter how hard I tried to dissuade him from the path he was on, he stuck like
glue. It was annoying at times, but I understood his drive. He
needed
to
do this.

Chaz had been one of my “rescue”
victims. He had a nose for dream stalkers. He should. His father had been one.
I was the one to put his father out of commission. Indirectly perhaps, but
permanently.

If you think murderers, rapists or
child molesters are the worst humanity has to offer, you’d be wrong. They’re
bad all right, but at least those types of scum leave a physical trail that
eventually leads to their capture or death if people are bright enough to
figure it out. Dream stalkers, skin walkers and others of their ilk don’t.
Dream stalkers will even perpetrate the same type of crime––abuse, rape,
murder––but they do it in the dreamscape where the only evidence left is what
appears to be the insanity of their victims.

Think about it. That is, if you
can wrap your mind around the thought. Some sick-minded piece of crap goes to a
late night meditation class, a bar, or maybe even spends the night with a group
of his or her “friends”. They settle into a good meditative state, go to sleep,
or pretend to pass out. They put themselves into a seeming state of unconscious
awareness around a group of people who can vouch for their whereabouts. Then
they drop into their victims’ dreams, commit whatever crime gets their twisted
juices flowing and presto––deed done with no physical evidence.

The
really
good ones can
even beat the crap out of their victims and leave marks and bruises that show
up when their victim is awake. What are the cops going to do about it?

“Ma’am, tell us from the
beginning––how did this happen?”

“The man beat me and raped me.”

“These are the bruises?”

“Yes.”

“Can you identify the assailant?”

“Yes.”

“And when did this incident take
place?”

“Last night, I had this dream–”

“A dream.”

“Yes.”

“You are saying this happened to
you in your dream.”

“Yes, but–”

“Okay. Thank you, ma’am. I think
we have enough to go on for now. We’ll contact you if…”

Yeah, right. Case closed. One of
the
hundreds
of women attacked by Chaz’s father was a devout little
Catholic girl who mistook the bruises she woke up with as punishment from the
Almighty for the type of dreams she was having. After all, they were
her
dreams, right? So she must have some kind of “taint” to make her dreams take
that direction in the first place. She went to confession and spilled the
sordid details to a priest.

The priest happened to be Father
David, the one who had taken over my “care” from the nuns. Up to that point,
dream stalkers and skin walkers had been among my primary duties. That was almost
ten years ago. I’ve branched out a bit since then.

Dream stalkers are human. They are
not demons, unless you were to qualify demons by the amount of darkness in the
soul. But they usually appeal for the aid of some demon to get them to the
state of getting their yayas off without getting caught. Chaz’s father was one
of those. He made a pact with a demoness. She wanted a kid that was half human.
He wanted access to the power the dreamscape offered him. It was a match made
in hell.

The way the whole thing had gone
down was also what made him so hard for me to catch. He wasn’t accessing the
dreamscape through his own dreams, he figured out that controlling his kid’s
dreams and using him as a channel gave him a lot more power. By the time I
caught up to him, Chaz was ten years old and almost completely broken.

The man kicked my
ass
––several
times, if you want to get technical about it. For the short term, he managed to
really piss me off. In the long run, he did me a favor. Father David had to
open my world up even further into areas the church officially refuses to
acknowledge exists.

With a new and broader awareness
of what was going on around me, I did the one thing Chaz’s father, and probably
the church, never expected me to do––I tracked down mama. I was hedging my
bets. Most demons will only propagate the species with their own kind. I
figured there had to be something more here, if this demoness had chosen to
bring a half-breed into the world. My bet paid off. Now mama was pissed, too.

I never had to deal with Chaz’s
father again. Chaz’s mother took care of him. She had not been appreciative
that he had tried to break the boy. It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t my problem
any more. I did track the boy down to his physical location, though. That was
my part of the bargain with the demoness. She wanted him out of that place
before the cops were alerted to what was left of Chaz’s father.

I took Chaz to Father David and
let the priest work with the kid. It took years to repair what daddy had done
to him. But Father David was good. I stopped in and checked on Chaz from time
to time over the years. When Chaz turned eighteen and left the orphanage, he
showed up on my doorstep. The kid burned with the desire for stopping crap like
what he had been through.

There was nothing I could’ve said
that would have turned him away from it. Well, there might have been one thing,
but Father David and I had discussed it and had come to a single decision
between us. We never told Chaz about his mother. I’m sure it will come out some
day. I hope it never has to come from me.

Chaz works with me, although I try
to keep him from the worst of it when I can. That’s kind of like trying to hold
back a river with a sieve, since the worst of it is all I seem to deal with any
more. But I keep a close watch on him. Mama didn’t bring him into this world
without a purpose in mind. Just because I didn’t happen to know her reasons, I
wasn’t stupid or naïve enough to believe it was because she wanted to be
saddled with a half-breed kid. It was better to keep him close so that when she
did decide the time had come, I’d step on her clock.

A couple more turns took me into a
strip mall parking lot. I rolled the address Chaz had given me through my head.
It wasn’t a house like I’d been expecting. My face broke into a smile. Chaz had
set up the meeting at a coffee shop. Like I said before––he’s a good kid.

I pulled into a space and set the
bike into park position. My headset was dropped to hang loose around my neck
and I pushed back some of the strands of long, black hair that had pulled loose
from the thick braid that hung to my waist. Before entering the coffee shop, I
stopped to get a peek at my reflection in the outside window.

Dressed in black leather from
boots to chaps to jacket, with my exotic features framed in black hair above it
all, I looked like a pretty tough chick. I guess I was for the most part. Over
half the battle in my line of work was a firm belief in your strength and the
ability to overcome anything. I wasn’t the only one that had to believe in it.
Those I worked to help had to believe in it, too. They had to believe I was
stronger than whatever it was they were dealing with. I had to
make
them
believe it, or the battle was lost before I even started.

I shut down the tiredness in my
eyes that came through sometimes when everything seemed so overwhelming. I
donned my “business” face, specifically designed to mask the loneliness––the
one that also tended to separate me even more from the rest of the world––and I
stepped inside to deal with the next of what I’m sure is a long line of
troubled days to come.

The earthy aroma of ground beans
mingled with the more full-bodied tang of fresh-brewed coffee, flooding my
senses with a taste of pure heaven. I could close my eyes and die a peaceful
death, right here, right now. Some health buffs may argue the dubious
attributes of my caffeinated beverage of choice. They can keep arguing. Coffee
is my nirvana, ambrosia––nectar of the gods. Sacrilegious? Perhaps, but the
attribute is nonetheless fitting in my book.

I spotted Chaz. He was young. Too
young to have seen the things he has in his lifetime. We all have our paths in
life. His blue eyes twinkled with happiness at seeing me, set in a pale face
that probably saw as little sunlight as my own. Cropped, blond hair was gelled
to stand up straight in spiky disarray on top of his head, the tips of those
spikes dyed black to leave an overall impression of short porcupine quills.