24: Redemption

December 1st, 2008

Since I no longer own a television set (blasphemy, I know) I missed the November 24th premiere of 24: Redemption, the two-hour lead-in to the seventh season of Fox TV’s ‘24′. However, thanks to the folks at fox.com I was able to watch this over the weekend from the comfort of my own computer.

As I loaded the episode on Fox’s shiny new streaming player thingamabob, I realised that this, despite all advertisements claiming the contrary, was not a ‘two-hour’ event. It was, in fact, only one hour and 27 minutes worth of Jack Bauer-y goodness. It was a brief but pointed reminder of exactly why I don’t miss owning a television set. Yet, knowing that commercials make television possible, I was relieved to see the episode liberally peppered with blatant product placement.

Surprisingly, these are the only real complaints I have about ‘Redemption’. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed Jack until I saw him again, like an old boyfriend I’d convinced myself I’d gotten over. Now I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t remember exactly how season six ended, but from what I understood at the beginning of ‘Redemption’, he was on the run from the US Government which doesn’t surprise me at all. He’d found himself a niche at a school in Africa with an old special forces buddy who was again inexplicably British (technically Scottish, if you must know). Times like these I wonder if Jack wasn’t actually in the Royal Army. Jack and Carl had amazing chemistry together, and I’ve been so spoiled in recent months by the BBC that for a brief moment I actually thought they would openly admit to being a couple.

Lack of admission has never stopped me before, so for the rest of the episode I took their relationship as TRUFAX, which of course made the last few scenes of the episode all that more heartbreaking. Jack loses everyone he loves, and yet somehow he finds the strength to keep fighting. What is it that’s driving him at this point? In the first few seasons we see Jack as a loyal CTU agent, willing to do what it takes to protect his country and his family. As the years went on, however, this loyalty was usually repaid unkindly. His wife died, his daughter left him, his government failed him and he ended up in a Chinese prison. And yet he still continued to fight, even when he’d tried to give up.

This time, it’s come close to home again. His fight is no longer to protect the govermnent which screwed him over more than once. The children he’s gotten to know at the school were being threatened by guerrillas in their country. Ultimately, the choice came between their lives and his freedom. For the rest of the day, Jack will have to live with the consequences of that choice.

Memorable scenes from ‘Redemption’ include the prologue, in which a group of African boys are being trained to kill by Colonel Dubaku (Hakeem Kae-Kazim). In another scene, the ill-fated desk jockey who stumbles upon some evidence vital to the plot runs into Jon Voight, our villain du jour, and almost blurts out, ‘Hey, your daughter’s really hot!’ But nothing beats the tension and heartbreak of Jack and Carl’s farewell. I’m man enough to admit I cried.

My hopes for the rest of the season are not as high as they might have been in years past. I know not to ask too much of this show at this point, but I’m still excited to see what’s next. What will President Taylor make of Jack? Will it really make me miss David Palmer? Will Chloe be running CTU? Will somebody write me some Jack/Carl fanfiction?

Only time will tell.

tv

Mornings in San Gaetano

November 27th, 2008
Sunset Over San Gaetano (2006)

Sunset Over San Gaetano (2006)

If Rome was the center of the world, Jasper Saavedra lived on the very outskirts of existence. The town of San Gaetano lay in the middle of the vast desert that encompassed most of the American Province. It was as small as it was remote, tied to the rest of the world by the southern road that led to the large cities of the eastern coast, and to the frontier towns at the foot of the Rockies to the west. San Gaetano was merely a stop along the way, forgotten. In the vast Roman Catholic Empire, San Gaetano was barely even an afterthought. It was an afterthought of an afterthought.

It was nowhere, as much a non-place as the space above the sky. To Jasper, it felt like an airless bubble, trapping him, suffocating him. He rubbed his chest, glancing toward the east-facing window, squinting as the sun began to rise. There was something about those rays reflecting on the white roofs of one-story houses and the glass windows of two- and three-story office buildings that made him shudder, as if reminding him of something he wasn’t meant to remember and couldn’t guess. He felt the bubble constrict around him, pushing the air out of his lungs.

He dropped the pencil he’d been holding in his left hand and stood up, facing the window. He had the nagging feeling that he should be somewhere else, that he should be doing something but had entirely forgotten what it was. After a sleepless night he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

He’d never been good at remembering things. His past had become a jumble of fragments, as individual one from another as the sketches that adorned the walls of his drawing room. Above his desk were landscapes, black and white reflections of the flatness that surrounded him, horizons dotted with the occasional distant mountain. In one of them the sun was a black circle, radiating black rays on a barren landscape. With gaze unfocused, the drawing looked as if the sun were sucking the light out of the world, pulling all the energy back into itself.

Another sketch showed a beach, something that Jaz had only ever seen on television. The waves crashed upon the sand, foam spraying every which way. The few bits of color he’d added came from the water and the sun; this time the harmony was complete: the sun warmed the water and the water carried that warmth to the shore, moving the energy in an endless cycle.

Jaz wanted to see the ocean, even if he didn’t intend to cross it. The Old World was a foreboding place, a symbol of the power that held Jasper frozen in place, with no sanctuary but those four walls and that one window.

There were sketches of angels: angels in Heaven, angels among mortals, guardian angels, angels in battle. There were angels from Biblical passages and angels from fancy. They all had the same face, a severe oval with inhuman eyes, and long hair either blond or colorless, carried by the wind and given a life of its own. The same sexless body was hidden by all the white robes. They stood in organized choirs or floated alone above a vanquished enemy. They all glowed with the same pale light, blinding those around them.

Maria had once mentioned that their faces looked like Jaz’s own visage, but he’d denied the comparison. He only painted angels as he imagined them to be, not based on himself. That would be hubris. Maria was there, next to the angels, sketched in charcoal more often than not, her olive skin left colorless, her hair blacked in with severe strokes, her eyes rubbed in with his finger. There were portraits of her he barely remembered making, captured moments from years past, before they’d been married. Jaz no longer knew why he kept them, taped to the wall with all the others. She smiled in those, or showed a faint mischievous gleam in her eyes. The recent portraits, however, showed no emotion. In Jaz’s mind, they were two different entities. So much so that he no longer associated the older portraits with her name. They represented someone else, a dead girl from his past.

On the western wall, just as the sun shone the morning’s first ray on them, he could see the portraits he’d done of Skyler. The three-year-old boy seldom managed to sit still long enough to pose for his father, but that never stopped Jaz from finishing a likeness. One time he’d caught the little boy asleep, lovingly capturing the peace in the boy’s countenance, the dark blond hair falling over the face, the lips on the verge of a smile.

There were drawings he didn’t trust to the walls. The frenzied expressions of forbidden desires he tossed in the empty lard can by the desk and set on fire, sacrificing them to whatever Saint out there looked after those who suffered from his particular brand of sin. The manifestations of hidden fears he knew no one would understand.

Breathless, he sat back down and held his latest creation in both hands. It had begun as an angel–it was supposed to have been an angel. But the face had not taken the customary oval, instead defining a manly jaw and a small, upturned nose. The lips had a kind of rakish half-smile, and the eyes were dark, large and vaguely almond-shaped. The hair was short and messy, and almost as dark as Maria’s. It had taken Jaz all night.

When he looked at the finished product he felt his chest tighten again. The boy lay naked on the outlines of what could be a bed, in a pose that anyone with a shred of decency would call obscene. Jaz could only guess at the body; aside from his own, the closest he’d gotten to male nudity was the figure of Christ on the cross.

But Jaz had no trouble defining the outlines of his coworker’s body. He could imagine what lay under the white shirts Luc usually wore; they were usually a child’s size large, just big enough to fit Luc’s narrow frame, but not much bigger. The arms were thin, and while the muscles were not large they were strong and well-defined. He could see them coil and relax with each movement. The arm muscles would tug on the back muscles as well, and on the chest. Jaz could see all of that clear in his memory.

He sighed and forced himself to crumple up the page. Were it discovered, it would raise serious questions that could threaten his very life. He couldn’t let himself forget that, no matter how much he wanted to.

He tossed the ball of paper in the can and lit a match, putting it to the paper and waiting for the flame to catch. He watched the flames consume the drawing and tried to let the deadly lust be consumed along with it. He’d like nothing more than to be rid of it if he could. He’d give almost anything to be just one more happy member of the mindless horde.

Knowing he was eternally damned kept him from being the father and husband he wanted to be. Somehow it was all his fault, but he hadn’t figured out how. Or perhaps it wasn’t his fault at all, perhaps God had chosen him as a victim, to torment him like he had Job. Perhaps he should just stop obsessing and enjoy the ride. Might as well, being already damned.

He gripped the charcoal pencil in his left hand. He knew he was only supposed to use the right, just like everyone else, but he’d given up that fight. In the safety of his drawing room, he drew as he pleased. Gone were the school days of his childhood, the nuns with their ropes and hard rulers ready to smack the offending left hand if it dared to hold the pencil, or tie it to the back of the chair in an attempt to neutralize it. He put the tip of the pencil to a fresh page and let it flow, drawing line after line as the directions came to his mind, not knowing where he was going or what he would create.

The plant grew out of nothing, a short, fat stem holding up an enormous flower, two bulbous petals with claw-like cilia which closed over a mass of faces, hands reaching out like the damned reaching up from Hell. Faces with pain twisted around dead eyes, and above them the church’s bell tower, crumbling into misshapen bricks, the cross at its peak bent and broken under the force of the flytrap’s jaws.

Venus flytrap, he thought to himself as he studied the finished product. “It swallows you up. Nobody leaves,” he whispered.

He glanced at the window and the rest of San Gaetano, a trap in the middle of the desert, the heat beginning to rise in waves that Jaz could almost see as the sun continued its ascent. He was late.

legacy of olympus

Time

November 27th, 2008

“What I wouldn’t give for some take-out right now,” Patrick panted, stepping over another passing herd of creeping ivy. “Something Gaulish.” The rubber sole on his left boot landed carelessly on one of the twisting vines and the entire collective shuddered in fear.

“I didn’t know you liked Gaulish food,” Raeith said over his shoulder. He was a good five paces ahead of Patrick, five Raeith-sized paces which were about a third longer than Patrick’s. It almost seemed as if the foliage parted for him then compensated by making Patrick’s progress harder. Like fucking Moses and the Red Sea. Fuckin’ figures I’m the Pharaoh.

“It’s the cheese,” Patrick replied, reaching out for an overhanging limb and pushing it out of his way. It only retaliated by slapping him on the back of the head. “And the wine.” He stopped to catch his breath as Raeith easily hopped over another small verdant colony. He glared at the god’s progress. It was fucking unnatural. “We’ve been together twenty years and you’re just now realising I like Gaulish food?”

“It’s not your favourite,” Raeith said, leaning against the trunk of a tree with arms folded. Waiting for Patrick. Because Patrick always lagged behind. “You always order Sicilian when we dine out. And you absolutely hate anything cooked by the Britons and Gaels. Your own people, at that.”

“So you know my favourite and my least favourite. That still doesn’t excuse your ignorance about the cheese. And the wine.” Patrick was no longer walking either, watching his lover across an eight-foot divide.

“I know you like cheese and wine, I just didn’t know you liked Gaulish food that much.”

Patrick threw up his hands and resumed his stunted trek. “What-thefuck-ever. It’s bad enough we’re here. I don’t need to get fixated on cheese.” Raeith had moved on as well, and Patrick wondered if he was aware that he wasn’t helping matters by ‘clearing the way’ because the way went back to being very much not cleared by the time Patrick got to it. “Freak Show,” Patrick said, reverting to the old nickname because he was feeling very much in the sort of mood conducent to it, “why the fuck are we here? Refresh my memory, will ya? We’ve been walking in this godforsaken–” He paused, sucked in a breath of pure annoyance. “Formerly godforsaken jungle for how long?”

Raeith stopped and turned to face Patrick. He took out his golden pocket watch (a present from Diana–it contrasted with Raeith’s travel-worn denim and linen clothing but was so very typically him) and opened it, stared into its flawless face. “It’s only been seven hours.” The watch returned to its pocket and Raeith turned to keep walking.

“Wait!” Patrick was teetering on the border between Annoyedburg and Angrytown now, and it was enough to fuel his steps and close the distance between him and Raeith. “You know it’s not exactly fair to flaunt it like this. A seven hour trudge through the jungle might be child’s play for you but I’m not exactly immortal here!” He finally got close enough to grab Raeith’s arm and turn him around, and for a moment he was giddy with relief that he’d been able to nudge him at all but he hid it with a well-placed and practiced glare. “Why. Are we. Here?”

Raeith’s blue eyes were wide, but his eyebrows came together into a confused half-frown. Patrick had been looking at that face for twenty years, and part of him kept hoping he would get bored of it, the way it never changed. He’d memorized every expression ten times over, and had figured out what they all meant by now, like one of the long Classical Latin vocabulary lists he’d never bothered with in school. This expression meant Raeith had gotten so caught up in what he’d Seen and what he’d planned that he’d completely forgotten to inform Patrick of the key elements, and how could that have happened? And Patrick wanted to be bored by that easy knowledge, because then he’d have an excuse to hate him.

“There is another,” Raeith said, tilting his head. And the sunlight that filtered through the tall forest canopy chose that moment to catch the golden threads on his head and Patrick wanted to rip it all out by the roots and set it on fire because his first instinct had been to hold it close and stroke it gently. Instead, he forced his fingers to tighten around Raeith’s bicep.

“Another what?” Patrick asked, because it always took forever to get coherent information out of Raeith.

“Another immortal.” Raeith didn’t use the word ‘god’, hadn’t even in jest for a long time. He was unlike Rikki and Diana in that respect. It was the reason the Alliance had been strained as of late. It was probably the reason Raeith had dragged him all the way into the unexplored South in search of another. But bringing another immortal into the equation? The thought gave Patrick an unpleasant shiver, which he chose to ignore in favour of more pressing concerns.

“And we couldn’t have brought the Chariot? It’s not like we have to walk everywhere anymore,” he complained. The helicopter, a new invention Patrick only trusted when Raeith was at the controls and he could explain flight away as more magic, had been another gift from Diana. Patrick really kind of hated that little red-eyed bitch most of the time.

“There’s nowhere to land.”

Patrick sighed, because this was going to be a long argument and he was fresh out of energy, and he’d been too stupid to begin the argument back before they left the Jeep behind. But Raeith’s expression went from ‘I can’t understand why you don’t understand’ to ‘even though you’re a pathetic human, I love you and will be patient with you’, which was different from ‘I love you, you gorgeous hunk of man’ and slightly to the left of just plain ‘I love you, you sad pathetic mortal creature’. And he stroked the side of Patrick’s face with a hand that was altogether too soft for the kind of physical labour Raeith was capable of doing and often did, but it was so warm, the kind of warmth that is welcome even in the sweltering jungle. Patrick began to feel stronger, no doubt with Raeith’s help, and he licked his lips in anticipation of a kiss that never came.

Because Raeith gave Patrick’s cheek a soft pat and with a smile said, “Walking will do you good.” And then he turned and resumed the journey.

Patrick blinked fast a few times, until Raeith’s retreating ass looked like something under the strobes in Diana’s formerly-underground nightclub. “You just called me fat, didn’t you?” And he followed Raeith with renewed vigor, stomping on the carpet of wildlife.

“I did not,” Raeith replied.

Somehow Patrick caught up to him, which satisfied him to no end because it meant he was very much not fat, and even if he were there were very important reasons for it. “Running an entire governing body isn’t exactly like running a marathon, no, but it is just as difficult and just as important if not more. And it’s not my fault you couldn’t uninvent deskwork.”

“I’ve been thinking of reinventing the Olympic Games. You have to compete naked in those.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Like you’ve ever objected to my nakedness before.” And that sounded like a good line of thought so he continued along it. “You’re actually quite fond of my nakedness. In fact, my nakedness is a rather powerful thing that makes a hot sun god even hotter, and harder, than he already was.”

Patrick’s haughty smirk didn’t last long because apparently the thought of nakedness was as powerful as the nakedness itself, and in a split second he found himself with his back against a tree and his front against a god that was indeed very hot and very hard and every bit as lecherous as the myths made him out to be and Patrick wondered how he could ever have hoped to get bored of this because there was no way in any version of Hell that this could ever get old. And he no longer gave a fuck about the Jeep or the helicopter or this mysterious jungle immortal and the damned Alliance could go piss off.

legacy of olympus

Merry Giftmas

November 27th, 2008

“Okay, run this by me again because I think you lost me somewhere along the line the first time,” Patrick said, holding up a finger which at one point had intended to make a point but now merely stood there feeling rather perplexed. “This… is a Christmas present,” he said slowly, as the finger finally made up its mind what it wanted to do and leaned towards the new contraption sitting prettily on the kitchen table. “From Diana…”

Raeith nodded, unfolding the contraption so half of it stood at a near 90 degree angle from the table. Patrick was sure that Raeith could figure out what it was and what it did and how to work it in less time than it took Patrick to ask, but somehow he still hadn’t been inclined to care what the thing was. It was just another one of the strange gadgets they’d seen since taking up temporary residence at Wednesday Technologies.

“Christmas present,” Patrick repeated, emphasising the first word until it was almost a question in itself.

“Yep,” Raeith replied, and pressed a button on the doohickey. A screen on the upright flat panel blinked and flickered to life. Behind it, the table was littered with red and green ribbon and themed wrapping paper, complete with angels and cartoon Baby Jesuses. Patrick reached for a torn piece and held it up. “You do know who this is supposed to be, right? Not exactly your best buddy celebrating his birthday.”

Raeith shrugged. “You know better than that, Patrick,” he said in a bored tone and started moving his fingers over the keyboard, making it go clack clack clack artlessly. Patrick was pretty sure it wasn’t a noisemaker. It was definitely not a musical instrument.

Patrick rolled his eyes and dropped the piece of paper. Instead he turned to the refrigerator standing at the corner of their large kitchen and took out a bottle of beer. “This is strange,” he mused, uncapping the bottle. He took a sip and leaned against the counter. The kitchen itself was designed in tones of white and grey, boxy and modern and completely uncomfortable. “Just walking to the fridge and getting a cold one. I’d almost forgotten what that was like.”

Clack clack clackety clack went Raeith’s new toy.

Patrick watched him for what felt like a long time. “Okay so why Christmas? Why not Yule or whatever you celebrated back in your glory days?”

It took a while for Raeith to answer. Patrick had almost asked the question again. “Diana is very into bloodlines, particularly her own.”

“Well I know that she’s a vampire. That doesn’t mean she has to celebrate Christmas. Besides, I thought she was one of your people anyway.”

“One, she doesn’t have to celebrate anything. She wants to. Two, you do know ‘my people’ have a soul which transcends the body. Ergo, the body can be whatever we want it to be.” And the clackety clack continued.

Patrick took another sip of beer, held the liquid in his mouth for a few moments before swallowing. “I’m still not sure I buy this whole ‘immortal soul’ business, you know. Not the way you tell it, anyway.”

Raeith shrugged.

“And how come I didn’t get one of those?” Patrick asked, pointing with the bottle at the machine.

“You didn’t want one.”

Maybe he didn’t. Truthfully, he didn’t see the point of most of Diana’s doohickeys. The portable telephones could come in handy, he supposed, if he and Raeith ever needed such a mundane mode of communication. The other thingie that she’d showed him that had something to do with using satellites to find yourself also seemed woefully inadequate when compared to Raeith’s clairvoyance. But maybe he would’ve wanted one anyway, you know, because Christmas is for getting shit you don’t really want from well-meaning clueless relatives. Except he no longer celebrated Christmas. Well, he hadn’t since he was a little kid, because back then he didn’t know better.

Clackety clack clack clack…

Patrick rolled his eyes and put the bottle down. Trying not to think about what he was going to do because he knew Raeith was like to pick up on it, he made a grab for the machine, managed to snatch it from under the god’s hands, and tossed it out the open window above the sink. A few seconds later he heard it crash on the pavement 15 stories below them. Then he turned to look at Raeith.

His companion was sitting at an angle on the chair, elbow rested on the table. He was looking at Patrick with a bland expression, accentuated only by the slight twitch of an eyebrow. “Do you feel better now, Patrick?”

“You saw that coming, didn’t you?” Patrick asked.

Raeith shrugged and pointed a finger at the window. A few seconds later the computer, whole once more, came flying in and gracefully landed on the table. Clackety clack clack clack…

“I hate you,” Patrick grumbled.

legacy of olympus

Hot, Orbit, Click

November 27th, 2008

“Why the fuck is it so hot?” Patrick demanded, fanning himself with a stolen church programme. “Can’t you do something?”

Raeith sat beside him, watching the street beyond their hideout. “It’s summer,” he said placidly. “And the Earth’s orbit around the Sun makes it so that–“ He didn’t get any further than that, interrupted by Patrick’s laughter. He turned his head and arched a brow questioningly.

“The Earth doesn’t move, it’s the sun that spins around it,” Patrick explained, snickering.

It was Raeith’s turn to laugh, though there was a pitying quality to it. “Think of who you’re arguing this with, love.”

Patrick had the good sense to shut up, but didn’t manage to quite hide the fact that he was blushing. Raeith smiled to himself and turned his attention to the window once more. “He should be returning home shortly.”

Patrick lifted his head and peered out through the grimy window of the abandoned house they’d commandeered for their current mission. Across the street was the home of the youth group leader they were surveilling. Rumour had it he would be willing to join the rebels, and with him came his whole group. It was an opportunity Raeith and Patrick could not ignore.

It had been a stroke of luck, or perhaps divine inspiration, that had led them to this abandoned house. By the looks of it, nobody had been inside it in years, much less actually lived in it. “We can’t approach him directly, though,” Raeith said. “We can’t risk blowing his cover.”

Patrick wasn’t so convinced. “What does it matter, though? If he’s joining us he’s leaving the city anyway.”

“Or he could stay here and help get even more young people out in secret,” Raeith replied.

Patrick once again felt silly, and lowered his head. He reminded himself he should know by now to just follow Raeith’s lead. Raeith was the god, after all, and Patrick what? Merely a lost boy following a god around like a lovesick puppy. Though he did feel a smidge of satisfaction at being the first one to spot the abandoned house. Nobody would even think of looking for them here.

He watched Raeith for a moment as the god stared tirelessly through the window. Doesn’t he ever get tired or bored? Patrick wondered.

He didn’t say anything out loud, allowing the silence to settle over them like a dense fog. When the fog was broken, it wasn’t by either of them. From the front door of the abandoned house came a sharply audible click.

legacy of olympus

Wine and Spirits

November 26th, 2008

Jacobian Peredhil eyed his companion across the fire. The flames licked the darkness and danced around the elf’s face, a perfect oval with large green eyes in flawless symmetry. Jack felt almost obliged to resent the elf’s beauty, but found himself lacking the desire to spend his energy so.

Jack himself was only half-elf, and even worse, both his parents had been half-breeds. His ears pointed only slightly, but enough to betray his heritage. He was athletic, but lacked the weightless grace of his companion. Yet he never saw himself as lesser than, or in any way flawed. He never really resented or disliked elves any more than he resented humans.

He was both in equal quantities, after all.

But he still felt as if he should resent Tahlyn on general principle, simply because he was Too Perfect. And this had nothing to do with the fact that the elf was garnering the most attention at the gathering. A waifish little faerie danced her way towards Tahlyn and giggled. She leaned towards him, the ribbons of her dress brushing his arm. He reached up to touch her face, smiling. He spoke to her in elvish, a language that was as familiar to Jack as the common tongue. Read more…

brez

The Last Stand

November 26th, 2008

For centuries Lugh watched over the Gaels, leading them in the fight against the Romans. As he’d predicted, the Imperial war machine was relentless. Wave after wave of Christian soldiers crashed upon the shores of Eire, growing with each defeat. Each victory was becoming harder for Lugh’s people.

“They breed like rabbits,” said Cathán. The young man stood by Lugh on the battlefield on the east of Ulaid, watching another retreat by the Romans. Lugh himself was exhausted. It had taken all his power to drive them off this time. There were few druids left alive who could help him. He felt the weariness like any mortal man, his skin sweating, his chest heaving for gasped breaths.

“They don’t have to,” he replied. “You’ve noticed they don’t all look Roman anymore. People who should fight on our side have joined theirs.”

Cathán growled and threw his shield on the ground, turning away from the coast. “How can they give up their freedom like that? They are mad!”

Lugh shook his head sadly. “They are not mad. They are dead. That is all their dead god gives them, living death.”

“They have only one god, and he’s dead? Yes, they are mad,” Cathán replied. “It makes no sense that they would be so mighty.” The young man had always been outspoken and defiant–it was one of the qualities Lugh loved best about him.

But the god became thoughtful. “I saw their god die. They killed him themselves. Nailed him up to a piece of wood and watched him die. He made no move to stop them,” he said with a bitter chuckle. “He just hung there looking pathetic. And now they love him for it.” Read more…

legacy of olympus

The Allegory of the City

November 26th, 2008

Gabriel Laurent often forgot how lucky he was to be who he was. While Holy War raged on the American mainland, he watched it from atop his tropical castle on the island of San Baptiste, his television screen filtering the flow of bloody images. The coloured reflections danced on the darkened marble floor of his living room, and the light show it created when combined with the lights of the city below entranced the young man. He stood, watching as people died for a faith he’d never believed in. He couldn’t quite understand what could drive people to such extremes.

Gabriel understood greed, and how it could drive intelligent men to madness, and wondered if greed wasn’t truly at the centre of it all. He knew as much as anybody how the media walked the line to preserve the delicate balance between truth and propaganda. He could hear it now, the lies mingling with reality in the reporter’s voice, the controlled modulation to show false compassion and grief tempered by professional detachment.

He was lucky indeed, born to the most powerful family in the Caribbean, heir to power and money beyond compare in the West. And he was about to throw it all away. He turned his gaze away from the screen, looked at the floor with its polished stone, then closed his eyes as he felt the movement behind him. It was a near-imperceptible change in the air, Dominic’s silent stride forcing invisible particles aside. It was something Gabriel shouldn’t be able to detect, but somehow he did, and he waited in silence.

He shivered as cold fingers touched his bare shoulder and slid smoothly up his neck. “Can’t sleep?” Dominic’s voice sent a shiver down Gabriel’s spine, more so than the frigid touch. He couldn’t find the words to explain to the vampire the simple fact that it was too late to sleep, that dawn threatened beyond the city and Gabriel had missed his chance for slumber. Life in San Baptiste waited for no one, much less for one of the Laurents. He felt he should pull away from Dominic, tell the vampire to go home as soon as it was safe and forget it ever happened, but he couldn’t make his body obey the thought.

“I must see my sister,” was all he said, and it seemed Dominic understood by the prompt way he withdrew his hand. How long had Diana loved Dominic without response? Gabriel could not think of the answer. She had to be told, warned about Dominic’s true nature, made to understand he was not for her.

And then Gabriel would stand back and watch his city fall around him.

legacy of olympus

When Patrick met Rikki

November 26th, 2008

The midafternoon sun caught Patrick’s eyes and made them water. The intense heat on his face reminded him of his mother, opening the oven to reveal something delicious baking inside. She’d been dead nearly two years, but the memories had not yet even begun to fade.

It had been a long, trying day for Patrick. Another fight, not of his making, had broken out, and as usual, he’d been the one blamed. ‘Disrespect for authority’, his last report card said.

“They can all blow me,” he muttered.

At barely 13, his build was easily described with one word: scrawny. Pre-adolescence had gifted him with a few more inches in height, pushing him up to a none-too-impressive five feet, five inches, and had added nothing in weight. If anything, he’d lost a few pounds. The last two years had not been good to him.

Needless to say, he’d lost the fight, and now sported an impressive bruise by his right eye. He’d also scored a detention, which would earn him another bruise, this time from his father. Read more…

legacy of olympus

Elysian Fields

November 26th, 2008

Kevin Lizardi was doing his best to try to block his mother’s voice; her anger was directed at him like an arrow poised to fly. “My friend says she saw you holding hands with a boy at the plaza!” she screamed. The concrete walls shook.

Kevin rolled his eyes. “What business is it of your friend what I do at the plaza?” His efforts to ignore her tirade weren’t working. She was blocking his way to his bedroom and screaming loud enough for the seismologists to start wondering if this was indeed The Big One the Caribbean’s been expecting for over 100 years.

“When you do something in public, it’s everyone’s business,” his mother replied, shaking her finger at him.

“Mother, will you let me through? I have to get to my room.”

She grabbed the front of his t-shirt and tried to shake him. At a skinny 5’9” he was a couple of inches taller than her, and while she far exceeded his girth he had her beat in muscle. All she managed to accomplish was to stretch the fabric. “You’re going to listen to me, desgracia’o! I will not have a faggot in this family!”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you brought a faggot into the world,” he snapped, tearing his t-shirt free of her grasp.

She smacked him across the face. “I did not make you a faggot! Satan made you a faggot!”

Kevin sucked on the blood from a cut inner cheek and glared at his mother. The face he had loved as a child, the body he’d sought comfort and safety from, was no longer staring back at him. The mother he had loved was gone.

“How dare you! How dare you!” she screamed at him. “How dare you do this to me!” She was like a broken record playing on a big, bloated phonograph. “After all I’ve done for you!”

Kevin didn’t honour that with a response. He took a step back, keeping his eyes trained on the bulbous eyes straining to pop out of her head.

“Don’t you walk away from me!” she shouted.

“Go to hell, mother.” He wasn’t afraid of her. He turned his back and retraced his steps to the front door. He left the house, her screams blending into an unintelligible cacophony of hatred fading behind him.

The summer was officially beginning, though in the tropics one can say the summer never ends. The sky was cloudless, the night warm. Kevin sighed and started walking along the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

He wasn’t going back to that house. “It’s not as if the fat bitch will miss me,” he muttered. But he wasn’t satisfied with merely running away, aside from the fact that he hadn’t even packed for his exodus. He needed to leave his mother a parting gift of some sort.

But he didn’t know what.

Maybe he just needed time to think about it. Determined, he walked the two blocks to Johan’s house. Why had he gone home in the first place? He should have just accepted Johan’s invitation to his place. He could have been getting laid right now.

Less than five minutes later, he knocked at the door of Johan’s flat.

There was no immediate answer. Kevin leaned forward, straining to listen, and knocked again.

“Oh… Johan…” said a voice– no, moaned was more like it. Other sounds joined the voice in the song of sex.

Kevin’s teeth ground together, his chest going at once hot and cold, his skin tingling with suppressed rage and shock. Surprisingly for himself, the whole of his anger was directed not at the interloper, but at Johan. He banged on the door. “Johan you bastard!” he called.

The sounds stopped. He could almost see through the door, beyond that through the living room wall, and the bastard in bed with his illicit conquest. The vision was tinged with red, like ink splattered on a black and white photograph.

His limbs shook as he listened to footsteps shuffle along on the carpet, the doorknob turning. “Kevin, sweetheart, I thought you were tired…”

The light in the living room was on. Framed within it, Kevin could see nothing of Johan’s dark brown face and bare torso but his pale green eyes and white teeth. “Fuck you. Who do you have in there?” Kevin demanded.

Johan had the courtesy to try to look confused. “In here? Nobody, baby.”

“Then what was all that moaning and groaning?”

Johan blinked in surprise, and it took him a beat to find a likely excuse. “Oh, that.” He chuckled. “I was looking at porn on the TV. You left me all dressed up with nowhere to go, baby.”

Kevin wanted to throttle Johan, but he held his fists tight at his sides. He knew he’d heard someone say Johan’s name. That had been no porn movie. “Fuck you, Johan. Fuck you and the boat you sailed in on.” His hands still held in white-knuckled fists, he walked fast down the hallway, wanting to get as far away from Johan as possible.

“Kevin!” Johan called after him. “Wait!”

Kevin stopped and turned around. Johan was standing in front of the open doorway, but from where he stood, Kevin couldn’t see inside. He didn’t need to. He gritted his teeth, chest heaving with frenzied energy struggling to burst out of him.

It needed an outlet.

“Fuck you!” he screamed.

Immediately something burst in the apartment. Johan stumbled away from the doorway as flames began to erupt within. Kevin turned and ran away.

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tales from elysium