Darkened Read online

  Something was wrong. Something potentially terrible. Something beyond the understanding of even the finest scientific minds in the country. A troublesome thing the governments of the world had kept under wraps until now, out of fear of inciting a global panic. But now the issue had to be addressed. The problem was getting worse. It was spreading. Before too much longer, the nature of the problem would be evident to everyone. So now it was imperative that public be made aware of the evolving situation before things got out of hand. It wouldn’t do face a relentless barrage of accusations that the administration did nothing but sit on its hands and fret while the world came unraveled.

  Then again, the president’s gut was telling him concerns of a political nature might not matter much longer. He felt a wave of helpless fear coming over him—a feeling he’d not been much familiar with in his adult life until lately—and reached again for his glass of scotch. He sipped a bit more of the expensive hooch, taking care to strictly limit his intake. It wouldn’t do to be drunk on live national television.

  After, though…

  The president loosened his tie and undid the top two buttons of his heavily starched white shirt. He ran a hand through hair streaked with gray and breathed a sigh so weary it might have sent the stock market tumbling had he made the sound on live television. He straightened the small stack of papers in his hands and again read through the first lines of the most important speech of his life:

  “My fellow Americans, greetings. I have come before you tonight to tell you things you frankly may not believe…”

  * * *

  Nashville, TN

  1:35 p.m.

  Emily gritted her teeth and gripped the edge of the foosball table tightly as Phil Parker pounded into her from behind. The bar’s interior was dimly lit and a shade was drawn over the glass front door. The otherwise empty room was alive with the trace scents of beer and cigarettes, ingrained smells that were marginally nicer than the momentarily more prominent odors of sweat and KY jelly.

  She watched the plastic foosball men jiggle on the metal bars and tried to blank her mind. She didn’t want to have to think about what was happening. Doing it doggy-style had been her idea. At least this way she didn’t have to look at him. But Phil wasn’t making it easy to descend into a state of detachment. His Trojan-sheathed cock pistoned in and out of her with manic intensity. She’d been bent over this goddamned silly game table for maybe five minutes, but it felt more like five hours.

  As per Phil’s instructions, she’d arrived early in order to fulfill her end of their verbal agreement. It was a demeaning, degrading thing she was allowing to happen here, no doubt about it. But she also knew she just wasn’t up to doing all the hard things necessary to significantly change her station in life. So she considered a few minutes of utter humiliation a worthwhile exchange for restoring the status quo.

  One of Phil’s big hands moved from her slim waist to paw at her breasts. A spark of anger made her grunt, a sound Phil of course mistook for genuine sexual excitement. She wanted to knock the groping hand away, but refrained, hoping the miserable bastard’s extra bit of sensual pleasure would hasten his orgasm and thus end this nightmare. But he went on for another torturously long few minutes, grunting, grinding, and groping for all he was worth (not much, in Emily’s informed opinion), until at last he exploded inside her and thrust her forward so hard her grip slipped off the edge of the foosball table and sent her crashing into it.

  Emily shrieked. “Goddammit!”

  Phil laughed. He gave her one last thrust with his still partially engorged penis before pulling the slippery shaft out of her sore vagina. He kissed the back of her neck and gave her a light, open-handed tap on the ass. Emily squirmed away from him and retrieved her folded-up jeans from a nearby bar stool. She shook them out and pulled them on, then stepped into her Doc Martens, glaring at Phil all the while.

  But the toothy, shit-eating grin spread across Phil’s face never wavered. Emily wished she could take a chainsaw to it. Phil was a big man, well over six feet tall and more than a few dozen pounds overweight. But despite his slovenliness, Phil wasn’t a bad-looking man. He was even sort of handsome from certain angles, and in favorable lighting. Which was just one of the reasons the aging sleazeball was able to bed the occasional dim coed. There were other reasons, of course, including a not insubstantial net worth and a (somewhat faded) level of fame the two hit country and western singles he’d had in the 70’s still afforded him.

  He dropped the condom in a nearby trash can and winked at Emily. “Gotta say, Emmy, I’ve banged a lot of fine women over the years, but you’re right up there with the best of them.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. She tapped a cigarette out of a fresh pack of Marlboros. “Gee, thanks. You have no idea how proud that makes me.”

  Phil chuckled. “You should be proud.” He eyed her up and down, shaking his head and whistling in admiration. “You are one fine lady. Sure you don’t want to make this more than a one-time thing? I could make it worth your while.”

  Emily lit her cigarette, inhaled, and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Right. I fuck you. You give me money. You go back to your clueless wife at the end of the night. How did you know I’ve always wanted to be a whore?”

  Phil laughed and shook his head again. “You fuck better than any whore I ever knew.”

  “Lovely.” Emily grimaced. “We had a deal, Phil. Please stop this line of talk right now.”

  Phil held up his hands and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not going back on our deal. I’m just letting you know you have options in case you ever…need help with the rent, or whatever.”

  Emily didn’t say anything. She stubbed out her cigarette and picked up her purse. Then she hurried past Phil before he could give her another of those obnoxious taps on the ass, moving quickly through the game room en route to the bathroom. She threw the door shut, turned the lock, and dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. The smell of unflushed urine made her gulp as she felt the first surge of bile at the back of her throat. Then the partially digested remains of her lunch came out in a burning spew that brought tears to her eyes. An ensuing series of painful dry heaves left her a tearful, shaking wreck on the floor. At last she was able to reach for the flush handle and send the foul mixture of piss and vomit swirling away.

  She got to her feet and wobbled over to the sink, where she turned on a tap and splashed water onto her face. She patted her face with a paper towel then peered into the mirror above the sink.

  She made her lips stretch into a falsely cheerful grin. The practiced tip-garnering grin that had just the subtlest hint of come-hither to it. “Smile, Emily,” she told her reflection. “After all, the day can only get better from here.”

  She washed her hands and left the bathroom.

  Her last day of work was about to begin.

  * * *

  A good crowd of regulars and and random walk-in customers had gathered at the Villager Pub by 7 p.m. The Villager wasn’t big, just a bar area and a game room dominated by a row of dart boards. There was a jukebox in the corner, but nobody had put on any tunes yet. The half-dozen or so people sitting at the bar alternately talked boozily to each other and watched the television mounted on the wall behind the bar. One very drunk Vandy girl kept loudly requesting a channel change. She wanted to see The Simpsons. But she was outvoted by regulars who wanted to hear what the president had to say. His speech was set to commence in fifteen or twenty minutes and all the major networks had granted him a block of premium air time.

  Something was up, that was the consensus among the bar’s patrons. Something big. But there was no consensus as to the nature of the ‘something big’. Some had their money on news of a developing international crisis, of imminent war perhaps. Others anticipated word of an enormous medical breakthrough, maybe a cure for AIDS or cancer. The Simpsons girl said the president would be announcing proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. She was joking, but some took her seriously, insisting such a t
hing was entirely within the realm of possibility. This led to the inevitable wild speculation about what the government was really hiding out there at Area 51.

  The talking heads on the television were engaged in speculations of their own, though none of their ideas were as fanciful as anything discussed that night at the Villager Pub. They touched on a number of currently hot geopolitical topics. And each possibility they broached was as far removed from the extraordinary truth as the bizarre theories bandied about by the drunks at the bar.

  Probably more so, in fact, given what we know now.

  * * *

  Aaron Harris entered the Villager Pub at 7:15, five minutes before the president’s speech. He slid onto a bar stool vacated by a drunken patron who’d staggered off in search of the bathroom. The man sitting to his right scowled and looked ready to say something. Probably he was supposed to be saving the seat for the just-departed man. Whatever he’d been about to say remained unsaid, however, when he got a glimpse of Aaron’s intense gaze.

  Aaron grinned and the man turned away, choosing to shift his attention to the dwindling head of his latest beer. People often wilted in just this way the moment they perceived the great potential for violence lurking just beneath the facade of his male model-level good looks. He had great hair, high cheekbones, and a square jaw with a slightly cleft chin. He looked like a hero out of some old pulp tale, and he liked to occasionally sport a five o’clock shadow to enhance the impression.

  Girls liked him. He was one of those fortunate guys who had never had any genuine angst in that department. Throughout his life he’d been able to win over and seduce practically any woman he’d ever desired.

  Emily Sinclair was one of the rare exceptions to the rule. She consistently rejected his repeated advances and it infuriated him. But he never let the frustration she caused him show. That would be too much of a blow to his ego and image. He just kept showing up at the pub, knowing that eventually Emily would succumb to the inevitable and give in the lust she must privately feel for him.

  He knew what the problem was. Emily was too self-consciously “alternative”, an annoying catch-all code term Aaron despised; it meant ‘cool’, ‘hip’, and indicated general tastes in music, movies, and clothes, all non-mainstream of course. Those who embraced the label also had a loathsome tendency toward leftist politics. A girl like Emily just couldn’t allow herself to go for a guy like Aaron. It would blow her image.

  But one day, he knew, she would recognize how silly the trappings of her carefully crafted lifestyle were. That day always came for girls like her. They got tired of being poor and their tastes in men shifted from leather-jacketed bad boys to hotshot businessmen—men like Aaron.

  He just had to be patient.

  He caught her eye and raised a finger. She nodded without smiling and knelt to retrieve a fresh pint glass from the cooler under the bar. She filled the glass with amber-colored beer from the Shiner Bock tap. Shiner had become his usual by default. His real drink of choice was scotch over ice, but the Villager was a beer only joint and he’d settled on Shiner as a marginally acceptable substitute. Emily set the glass on a coaster in front of him, then turned to move back to the other end of the bar.

  “Emily!”

  Emily sighed and faced him. A faint smirk touched a corner of her mouth. Seeing it pissed him off. He was aware of equally intense desires warring within him—an aching need to kiss those lush, pouting red lips of hers, and a newly born wish to drive a fist right into the center of that pretty face. Yeah, he thought, let’s see you smirk when that happens. And it will, bitch, it will.

  She was wearing her usual rocker clothes. A tight black t-shirt with pink fishnet sleeves, black jeans, and a studded dog collar around her neck. Her hair was a shaggy dyed black and there was a ring in an eyebrow and a ring in a nostril. He could see tattoos showing through rips in the fishnets. She looked ridiculous. Except that she was scorchingly hot. Right now, in fact, she seemed like the most imminently fuckable girl in all of Nashville.

  She widened her eyes in an exaggerated way and held up her hands. “What, Aaron? I’ve got drinks to pour.”

  He realized he’d just been staring at her for several moments. He grinned. “Sorry, spaced out there a moment.” He ignored the snickers of those sitting within earshot. “Listen, I heard the Belcourt’s showing a couple of those Jap horror flicks you like next weekend. I thought maybe—”

  “No.”

  And then she was gone, back now behind the row of taps, pouring beers for assholes. His hands curled into tight fists as anger burned within him, an emotion that boiled over a moment later when the man sitting to his right finally found the courage to address him: “Don’t you think it’s time you gave it up, boy? Can’t you see she sees right through you?”

  Aaron shoved the man off his stool. The old bastard fell to the floor with a startled yelp. Aaron resisted an impulse to drop to his knees and use the man’s flushed-red face as a punching bag. He didn’t want to go to jail. That wouldn’t go over well at work, another place he had a carefully crafted image to maintain. Ignoring the angry shouts of the other customers, Aaron dropped a couple of bills on the bar to pay for his untouched beer and hurried out of the Villager.

  He ducked down an alley and ran to his car, where he sat behind the steering wheel for several minutes and replayed in his head the humiliatingly dismissive way Emily had rebuffed his latest invitation.

  That cunt!

  She didn’t know what she was missing, that was for fucking sure. For the first time, it dawned on Aaron that he really might not have a chance with her. And that was just so completely wrong he could hardly comprehend it.

  He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the bones in his hands ache. He imagined Emily walking down this same alley at three in the morning, after the Villager had closed. He saw himself leaping out of the car, seizing her, and dragging her behind a dumpster. He could almost feel his hands closing around her narrow neck, could almost see her eyes bulging out as he squeezed the life out of her.

  Aaron finally began to relax. He rubbed the bulge at his crotch.

  He knew what he had to do now.

  * * *

  Emily poured a free pint of Shiner Bock for Mickey Shepherd. He accepted it with a smile and a wink. Emily returned the smile. Mickey was a good guy. A hardcore alcoholic, but absolutely harmless to anyone but himself. He was sixty-five-years-old and painfully thin, almost frail. That creepy yuppie bastard could have done real damage to him knocking him off his stool that way.

  Sometimes Emily hated being a girl. Every reasonably attractive chick she’d ever known had to deal with obsessive jerks like Aaron Harris at some point. Sociopathic assholes whose good looks gave them a ridiculous sense of entitlement. Some of them were harmless, but others posed a genuine threat. She had a feeling Aaron could well fall into the latter category. She’d have to be careful walking home at night for a while.

  She was in the midst of pouring a Miller Lite when cries went up from several of the patrons to turn the volume on the tv up. She put the beer down and aimed the remote control at the television, holding the button down until the yellow volume bar zoomed past the halfway mark.

  Then she stepped back and listened to the president along with everyone else.

  The presidential seal was shown against a blue background. Then that was gone and the president was shown sitting behind his desk in the oval office. Sitting there in his dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, and straight black tie, the man elected under dubious circumstances had never looked quite so…well, presidential.

  In that last moment before he spoke, Emily realized she’d almost forgotten to breathe. She sensed it too, now. Something was up.

  Something big.

  The president cleared his throat and said, “My fellow Americans, greetings. I have come before you tonight to tell you things you frankly may not believe—”

  The president continued speaking for several more moments, but the meaning
of the words was lost on the Villager’s patrons. Their attention (and that of everyone watching around the world) was captured by an odd sight behind the so-called leader of the free world—a widening black fissure in the wall. The strangest thing about it at this point was that there was no sound of destruction, no crackling rending of drywall and lumber. The dark slash opened so quietly some at first thought what they were seeing was the result of some defect in their television sets—a notion forgotten an instant later when a long, black tentacle emerged from the deeper blackness and wrapped itself around the president’s neck.

  The look of surprised terror on the president’s face was matched by the expressions of countless millions watching the bizarre scene unfold on their television screens. The president grabbed at the tentacle and was yanked out of his chair. The tentacle appeared to flex and then retract, pulling the president backward and slamming him against the wall. Secret Service agents appeared on-camera, rushing to the president’s aid. There was a lot of frantic shouting as the camera pulled backward for a wider shot of what was happening. The Secret Service agents grabbed hold of the president’s arms and legs and tried to pull him free of the tentacle. One agent aimed a gun through the dark fissure and fired several times. The president flinched at the sound of each report, but his expression changed to pure agony as the tentacle began to pull him through the fissure, which was still too narrow to accommodate his size.

  Emily put a hand to her mouth and backed away from the television when she heard a sound like the snapping of a toothpick. “Oh…God…”

  The people around the president were screaming now. His body abruptly folded in at the middle as the dark fissure widened a bit. Then, along with two Secret Service agents still desperately clinging to him, he was pulled backward into the darkness. The remaining agents stood around looking stunned.

  There was a shout from someone off-camera and the screen went blank. The network then went to a shot of a stunned, slack-jawed correspondent, a man who clearly didn’t know what to say. “We seem to have…to have…”