The Dragon Watches*****
Something silver suddenly snaked past her face and the professor was snapped back out of sight. From across the room, Dobsen screamed. Heddy stiffened, her eyes assaulted by segmented silver tentacles that whipped back and forth like cutting blades. Something warm and coppery splashed her cheek, and she fell over backward and hit the floor so hard it knocked the air out of her lungs.
Dobsen was helping her to her feet as he kept repeating, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
A pulsing blue light projected from the laser optics chamber, revealing dark pictographs nearly four feet tall, brushed in dried blood. They hung on the laboratory wall like cave paintings of a tribal kill. Below was a heap of human carnage.
The air thrummed and throbbed with unease. A photovoltaic crystal furnace lay cleaved in two neat halves and partially formed scarlet boulles were scattered across the floor like broken glass.
“I’m going to be sick,” said Heddy. She turned, grabbed a lab coat and pressed it against her face.
“Me too,” said Dobsen.
She couldn’t bear to look at what was left of Professor Lomas. One minute her beloved mentor had been standing in front of her, and in the next instant he had been attacked and cut to shreds. She could not scrub the horrific image from her mind. The alternating pressure waves in the room disoriented her and Heddy felt matching waves of nausea pass through her.
A sound like a giant bug zapper snapped across the room. Heddy looked wide-eyed at Dobsen. He rested a finger upon his lips, warning her to keep quiet. Sweat beaded and rolled from the edge of his tangled black hair. When Heddy made a move to lower the lab coat, he urgently thrust his open hand toward her face like a crossing guard.
“Don’t move,” he mouthed silently. Excerpted from "Force Majeure," by Ferrel Moore
*****
By day a thief is cautious, for it is the night that is his lover. The darkness brings our senses alive, and we breathe in and out to match those of shadows. Have you never known that shadows move and breathe and sense as we do? This is the secret knowledge of we who take what is not ours- that the darkness is as alive as we ourselves.
I have moved to within an arm's length of Scarlett, and her scent suffuses the rich odor of the forest.
No one is as aware as a thief, and so we must always be, for there are three things we fear- discovery, capture and punishment. We take what is not ours, and to stay safe, we must hear every sound, feel every breeze, and see what others do not see. There is something wrong with the taste of this night. It has subtly changed, like the air when a perfumed woman steps into a room.
Lea still sleeps. Scarlett rests, too, but stretches carelessly, exposing her soft white throat to the night. The light is from the near dead fire pit is thin red, like a drop of blood smeared across a watchglass.
I stop to listen. The night is quiet, but from somewhere within its drawn shades I feel something sinuous stirring. There is a noise like a coil of rope being yanked free, and from the corner of my eye, I think I see a tall tree take a step toward us. My skin seems to stretch tight across my face and my jaw clamp together like a man expecting to be hit.
I almost call out to Lea, but she will wake and see me too close to Scarlett and I cannot bear that.
So I lie still, quieting my breath and closing my eyes to free my ears to listen more closely. There is something in these woods that moves with purpose, and I fear to think what it is. What a story this would be if only I were not living it. It occurs to me now that- thief or no- to die without having created is the very definition of tragedy.
Something is out there, I am sure of that. I feel it's presence like a hand pressing against my heart. Like a man waiting his sentence, I huddle fearfully in the prison of my fears.
If these are to be my last moments, what do I want? I glance toward Scarlett and am filled even in my trepidation with an overpowering desire. I look toward Lea and am filled with quiet shame. If the choice were mine, I would choose her, but no pure woman can ever love a thief.
I hear a great exhalation, and a dense rush of steam blankets our ledge. I close my eyes again and wish I were someone else, and that we three were somewhere else.
Scarlett told me that all great stories begin with a crime, and that crimes of the heart produce the greatest tales. If this is true, I think that our predicament must contain the elements of a marvelous story indeed. I am a larcenous man possessed by lust desiring love.
I wait.
Whatever it is that has come so close to our ledge is large enough to eat us all. I think that if only I were not who I was, I would not be here at all. I am afraid and want to cry out in warning , then scramble to my feet and run, but I cannot. What moves the beast will notice, and what gets noticed will undoubtedly be eaten. We came seeking the fourth dragon, and I pray that we may have found her instead of being found by something ravenous.
If only I were someone else.
I open my eyes again and see that we are haunted by ghostly steam appartitions that twist and swirl in vaporous ecstasy. Above the mists I see something that makes my hear beat faster and harder against my chest. There, looking down at us from the heighth of a great tree, Iare two great, luminous eyes transfixed on me and only me. Staring into them is like staring into a blacksmith's furnace.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot turn my head to look at Lea or Scarlett, for I realize I am face to face with the Dragon of Condensed Starlight, and I dare not look away.
