World of Darkness - Mysterious places.pdf
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By
Kraig Blackwelder
Rick Chillot
Geoff Grabowski
James Kiley
Matthew Mcfarland
Brett Rebischke-Smith
and Chuck Wendig
1
Someone’s breath tickled
Russ’ cheek. Warm air and a faint
odor of sweat and perfume
nudged him from sleep, his eyes
flickering. He slid an arm across the
tangled sheets, felt a pillow and
searched in the darkness for a
warm body.
He was alone. Russ forced his
eyes open. The room was dim, lit
only by slashes of sunlight that out-
lined the dark shade covering the
window. He glanced at the clock
on the bedside table. Nearly three
o’clock in the afternoon. Just
enough time to shower and get
going.
Russ scanned the neighbor-
hoods of Skyview Acres as he
drove to work. At least a third of the
houses he passed were little more
than skeletons — wood frames
with plastic sheeting that flapped
in the wind like loose skin. Most of
the finished models still had For
Sale and Open House
signs in front
of them. The wife would have
hated this place, he thought. He
pictured Simona tossing buckets of
neon-colored paint at the beige-,
tan- or gray-sided homes. He
came to a stop sign and found
himself staring at a swing set on
somebody’s front lawn. People
with kids must have lived there, un-
less it was a prop to make the
house more enticing to home buy-
ers. He pulled away slowly, watch-
ing the vacant swings sway in the
rearview mirror.
Ex-wife, he corrected himself.
Ex-wife.
Russ checked his watch.
He’d made three wrong turns just
trying to get out of his tangled new
subdivision. He was running late.
Each day’s drive to the university
seemed to take him on a different
route. He remembered the realtor
describing the winding streets and
unpredictable lanes between
blocks as a good thing. “You don’t
get that boxed-in feeling that
comes with a grid system,” she’d
said. Russ had nodded, looked at
the clock on the realtor’s desk, and
wondered if Simona would show
up or if he’d have to look through
the brochures alone again.
Russ passed house after
house, each so similar to the last
that he wondered if he was sim-
ply circling the same block over
and over again. A street ahead was
closed off by construction barriers,
though there was no crew evident.
He turned left, half-sure he was
back where he started in his own
neighborhood. Then he saw the
sign for Route 11 and checked his
watch again.
2
Chapter 2- ATTRIBUTES
Russ wheeled a bucket and
mop into the first classroom on his
route, whistling softly. The fall se-
mester would begin in three
weeks. Then he’d have a crew of
two or three working under him.
He’d have people to talk to, even if
they were minimum-wage clock-
watchers. Assuming, of course, he
hadn’t been fired for his own re-
peated tardiness.
As he moved to the front of
the room, an intricate design drawn
on the blackboard caught his eye.
He flicked the switch for more light,
and saw that a third of the board
was covered by a tangle of differ-
ent-colored curves and lines, some
radiating from a central point, oth-
ers emerging where two or more
chalk lines crossed. At first it
seemed that the image was just a
random drawing, but as Russ
stared, he could tell the strokes had
been marked carefully, deliberately,
with a steady hand. It was as if
someone had tried to illustrate an
explosion or a bursting firecracker.
Russ turned away from the
blackboard just in time to see
someone enter. For a second they
stared at each other, and Russ
thought how odd it was that nei-
ther of them was startled.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you
were cleaning in here,” the woman
said. She was dressed in a gray
sweatshirt bearing the university
logo, and a pair of faded khakis. Her
hair was the color of black tea, cut
straight and short. Looking at her
face made Russ feel as if he’d been
kissed. He wondered what kissing
her would feel like. She dropped a
pile of papers onto a desk and ne-
gotiated them into a tight stack. “I
thought I could use the space. My
office is kind of cramped.”
“It’s okay,” Russ said. “I can
come back later.” At the edge of his
vision, he could see the swoops
and streaks on the blackboard. “I
was just looking at that,” he said,
gesturing toward the image. “It’s
beautiful.” Russ hadn’t realized that
was true until he actually said it.
“It is, isn’t it?” she responded.
Russ could smell floral per-
fume as she walked toward the
blackboard. She traced a finger in
the air, following a red curve that
doubled back on itself.
“What
…
what is it exactly?”
He adjusted the collar of his shirt.
“Oh
…
. ” She seemed to have
forgotten he was there. “It’s a dia-
gram. A collision of subatomic par-
ticles.”
“Yeah?” he said, stepping
closer. “They’re protons, electrons,
that kind of thing? So what makes
them collide?”
She frowned. “Quarks,
positrons, ions
…
. They collide be-
cause we use a huge, expensive
machine to make them collide.”
Russ made a face that sug-
gested he didn’t quite believe her.
“Why do that? Just to see what
happens?”
“Actually, it’s to see what hap-
pened. To see what happened at
the beginning of everything.”
3
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