12/28/12 - The Master and Mother!@#$er - pt 4

"People always ask me how much I knew about the frankly weird turn the world took around 1966. And while I always ask if they're talking about that one group of heroes that came of nowhere, The Olympians, it's because I'm hoping they are talking about them. I mean, that's easy to talk about, even with everything that's happened since Ronnie came into office.

"But I really (EXPLETIVE) hate it when people want to talk about the other thing that went weird, right around then. 

"I'm talking about SQUASH, of course. All those (EXPLETIVE) Soviet magicians and the (EXPLETIVE)  they called up to get us. We had monsters crawling all over NATO in those days. Vampires in Brussels, Zombies in Berlin. We had demons in the streets of North Africa and crazy (EXPLETIVE) things walking through the Rocky Mountains over here.

"Of course, we tried to keep it a secret. We said it was all drugs or hippies or Commie mind control. We said it was (EXPLETIVE), trying to get one over on Whitey. We said all kinds of (EXPLETIVE) to explain it away. 

"But the truth is that, for a couple years there, the Soviets had a direct line downstairs, and were able to call up half the (EXPLETIVE) Old Testament to throw at us. And believe me, the irony did not escape us.

"The good news was that it was over before they did any real damage. The bad news? Well, that's still (EXPLETIVE) classified under six piles of (EXPLETIVE) red tape. It's enough to say we lost a lot in those days, and more than you'll ever want to know.

"But if you actually want an explanation? You go find SPYGOD and ask him. Maybe he'll tell you. I know I sure as (EXPLETIVE) won't. 

"Not enough (EXPLETIVE) beer in the whole world to make me talk about that."

- Former President Richard M Nixon (1913-1994)

* * *

Parczew, Poland

October, 1966

It's Midnight in the city square, before the oldest church in town, and the dead will not stop coming.

They come in swarms and waves, these newly-made vampiri. Male and female, young and old, they scramble from the basements and attics and charge at those still living, eager to feast, and then add to the group.

The worst ones are the children -- especially the really young ones, still dressed in their nightclothes, all red-cheeked and smiling, as though waking up from the sweetest of dreams. 

But when they part their pale lips, their mouths are full of jagged, sharp teeth. And when they open their eyes they are red and black things, full of hate and hunger, just like that of their parents.

The dead will not stop coming, and it's all Doctor Krwi can do to keep them at bay.

He fires his twinned pistols, again and again. He shoots off fiery spells until his soul grows tired. He throws incendiary grenades laced with silver and blessed splinters until he has no more, and then makes do with molotov cocktails.

And when all those are gone, all he can do is brandish a blessed sword -- one that's been handed down from hunter to hunter for hundreds of years  -- and pray that tonight isn't the night it finally falls to the enemy.

He screams curses and swings the blade. He shouts the name of Christ and they falter. He coughs up one last spell that incinerates a whole gout of them where they stand.  

But still they come, in swarms and waves, and he realizes that this entire town is lost. Upwards of 8000 souls, all gone to the enemy. One of the last few places where Jew and Gentile still shook hands in postwar Europe, taken away by the darkness.

And there is nothing he can do, now, but call on the thing they insisted on partnering him with. 

"I know you're out there, you beast!" he shouts to be heard above the wave of undead that threatens to engulf him on the steps of the church: "You were right, !@#$ you! This town is lost! Do what you must!"

There's a second where he hears nothing, and wonders if perhaps the English revenant has picked this time to go back on its word, and watch Krwi die at the hands of his eternal foe. It would be something of a fitting end, to be betrayed by the darkness after being pressured to make an ally of it. 

But then he hears a horrific scream -- the ear-shattering sound of a tortured soul being harried through the fires of Hell -- and knows that tonight will not be the end of his journey after all.

The vampires turn from their would-be hunter, eyes wide and uncertain. At the edge of town, there is a grinding roar, as though some hideous engine was struggling to give birth, or eat itself while doing the impossible. A blazing light can be seen, coming up the cobbled streets at an amazing rate.

And Doctor Krwi wisely runs up the stairs and bolts into the church -- slamming and barring the door behind him -- for he does not dare to be out in the open when the Hell Blazer comes to town.

At first, the vampires aren't certain what they're seeing. Is it a black-clad man on a motorcycle? Is it a dark knight riding a fire-breathing monster? Is it one demon astride another? In the oncoming rush of light and sound, fire and screams, it's hard to be certain.

But then the vehicle is upon them, and the fire it brings along with it -- flying beside it, like the outstretched claws of some hell-spawned monster -- burns them so completely that not even their ashes remain. 

The monster riding the monster laughs as its unholy engines feast on the undead. He whips his vehicle this way and that, up and down the streets, and meets each group of beasts head-on without fear. 

It's only after the first few thousand of them are not even dust, anymore, that the others begin to show sense and try to retreat. Unfortunately for them, the Hell Blazer is not here to accept surrender, and he chases them down on his demon machine -- crashing through walls, riding across rooftops, and then throwing massive gouts of hellfire from his hands as he goes.

"Are you out there, you demon whore?" he shouts as he goes, incinerating all that stand against him: "I can smell your rotten !@#$ from here, you poxy !@#$! Come and show yourself! Or are you afraid of what you helped make?"

There's no answer, though. Just the screams of the undead as they receive the rest they deserve, and then the roaring of flame as the town follows its people down into death.

Clearly angry, the revenant pilots his vehicle back to the center of town, where it heard its human ally make the call. Sure enough, the vampire hunter is there, standing weakly before the church, his sword smoking with the blood of the undead.

"She was here, !@#$ it," the Hell Blazer curses, taking his black, cross-boned helmet off: "I can smell her, Krwi. She was here."

"I know, !@#$ you," the vampire hunter says, trying not to weep: "I can see that this is her work. An entire town, turned into a breeding camp for vampiri. Do you think I don't know?"

"I think we got here too late," the revenant says, leaping off his demon-machine and striding up to the weakened man: "I think if we'd left Lublin like I'd wanted to-"

"If we'd left that city when you wanted to then it would be just like this one!" 

"And we'd have caught her and sent her back to Hell!"

"Not at the cost of thousands dead, you beast!"

"Well, what in Satan's name do you call this, then?" the revenant raises its arms and gestures to the town as it burns down around them: "Can you sense them around you? The dead? I can see them, you fool. I can see them as they stumble around, uncertain of their destination. I can hear their cries and their sobbing-"

"Who are you to speak of the dead and the damned? You who willingly joined them-"

"Do you think I don't know that? I made a mistake, Krwi. And now I bear the weight of that mistake for an eternity. But at least I learn from my mistakes! How many more towns must die because you will not do the same?"

"Be quiet, demon!"

"No, you self-righteous fool! We lost here, today. And we lost because you were not willing to sacrifice thousands to end this war, here and now."

The revenant spits at Krwi's shoes. It comes out as black, rotten goo, smoldering as it twists on the ground. 

And suddenly, the vampire hunter's strength returns enough for him to twist his sword around and swing it at his "partner." In turn, the Hell Blazer produces a shield of fire, and expertly parries it. 

The blessed sword and the demonic shield crash off each other, and the two beings are thrown clear away from where they were -- Krwi back up the stairs, the revenant over to his demon machine. 

And as they groan and get back up again, they both hear mocking, feminine laughter coming from up the street.

They turn and leap to their feet -- Krwi raising his sword and readying a spell he didn't know he had in him until just now, and the Hell Blazer pulling out a large, ornately-carved black revolver with an inverted cross hanging from a chain on the butt.

"It's so good to see that you cannot resist hurting each other," Hella hisses as she strides down the street, shadows and flame hiding her nakedness: "It makes it all worthwhile, somehow."

"You !@#$!" the revenant shouts, firing bullet after bullet at her. She dodges each one with contemptuous ease, and then is suddenly right in front of him, and then directly behind.

And then she's reaching through his chest as though there were nothing in him but dust and ashes, and holding what might have been his heart out in her clenched fist.

The Hell Blazer gasps and falls, clutching the hole in his sternum. Hella laughs and then turns to deal with the vampire hunter, but Krwi is ready for her.

The spell he lets go is tiny and quiet, compared to what he's been tossing around this night. But when he holds up his hand, a bright light shines from it. And before long, every window and reflective surface on the street is shining along with it, making the air come alive with a white, pure aura. 

She screams as she burns, her skin breaking out in black pustules. It's all she can do to wreathe herself in wings of flame and take to the skies, dropping pieces of her as she goes. 

And then she's gone, and there's only the burning town, the light, and two people who don't belong side-by-side under any circumstances -- except maybe this one. 

Krwi looks down at his partner, who's writhing just below the haze of white, and then lets it go away. As he does, he falls to his knees, coughing and wheezing. 

And looking just a little older than he did a moment or two ago.

"What did you do?" the Hell Blazer asks, crawling around in search of the black and shriveled thing the Queen of the Dead dropped from her hand. 

"I called the light of God," Krwi whispers, wiping the blood from his mouth: "It is... not a comfortable thing. One may only do it with safety if one is pure. And I am far, far from pure."

"Well, listen to you," the revenant says, finding his heart and shoving it back inside his chest. The moment he does, his black leathers reseal themselves, and he gets back up as if nothing happened.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, it's 'demon' this and 'beast' that, with you, Krwi. You call me a monster. You mock my pain. But then, at the end of the day, when you have to put your own soul on the line? You've got feet of clay, too. Just like everyone."

"I never claimed to be perfect," the vampire hunter hisses, getting to his feet as best he can: "I only claim to be fighting a war that must be fought. And I've done it without losing my soul. Can you say the same?"

"No," the Hell Blazer admits, snapping his fingers and summoning the metal beast-machine to his side: "I can't. I didn't even get into this to fight evil. I wanted to become it. And look what it's gotten me."

"Eternal damnation." 

"Well, that goes without saying. I was really going to say 'stuck here with you.'"

"If you want another fight-" 

"No, I sodding well don't," the revenant says, getting on his bike: "I want to go to sleep and pretend this never happened. I want to get drunk and forget what I've seen. I want to die and slip into nothing, like I was never ever here. 

"But we don't always get what we want, do we?"

"If it's death you want, I can give it to you," Krwi hisses: "Just hold still for a few moments."

"Maybe when we're all done with this secret war," he says, turning around to look at the man as he puts his helmet on: "Maybe I'll let you. Maybe. But in the meantime?"

"What?"

"Learn from this, Krwi," the Hell Blazer says, gesturing to the town: "Remember that I don't take any joy in this. And the next time I say we leave one town to its fate so we can save another? Try to listen?

"Because this? This is on you, you stupid !@#$. All on you."

And then he's gone away on his screaming machine before the Polish vampire hunter can get another word in. 

* * *

Bakersfield, California

March, 1967

The smoke from the joint makes weird trails in the sky. At times they look like clouds, and at times they look like the contrails of a jet.

"!@#$," SPYGOD says, handing it back to Jim Morrison: "That is some powerful !@#$, there, Jim."

"It surely is," the singer says, taking a long puff and then handing it back. When he exhales the sky seems to turn different colors for both of them. 

And maybe it does.

They're lying down on the side of a hill outside of town. All around them is the smoke and acrid remains of the pitched battle they just fought against some nameless, robotic things, summoned up to do who-knows-what to the city beyond.

And they would have, too, if these two men hadn't stood together and fought them off: sword and gun, word and flame.

But that's past, now. Now there's only time for relaxation and recuperation, which is the birthright of anyone who stands against the darkness and lives to see another day, and another fight.

The reefer is, of course, very optional. But SPYGOD is really liking his option.

"Ever !@#$ing tried Martian cocaine, before?" SPYGOD asks after the joint goes back a few more times.

"I didn't know there was such a thing," Morrison says, sitting up a little: "You're saying the Martians actually have cocaine?"

"Well, we call it cocaine. I don't think it's the same !@#$ thing at all. But you snort it and... well, let's just say you have to !@#$ing experience it at least once."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You should see what it did to the !@#$ing President..."

Morrison looks at him, and then falls over giggling: "Man, you never cease to amaze me. I knew we'd be friends, but I had no idea you were so... bent."

"Yeah, well," SPYGOD shrugs, taking a last puff on the joint and then handing back the very last of it to his friend: "You work hard, you play hard. I usually prefer to drink my fun, but every once in a while I need something a little different."

"I know a few people like that," Morrison says, gratefully finishing off, and then putting the last bit down in the grass: "I keep telling them to be careful. Life's a beautiful thing, man. But you go too far to one side or the other and next thing you know, you're overboard."

"You worried about that?" SPYGOD asks.

The musician looks at him and then away, smiling: "I think I should be worried about that, (REDACTED). Every so often, when I look down the road, I think I see some trouble with that up ahead."

"Must be nice to have a warning."

"It's a real party killer, is what it is," the man says, getting up and stretching: "In life, we are in death, and all that. But I really don't need the !@#$ing reminder, you know? It's enough to be doing what we're doing. What I have to do. 

"And then, well, I figure the future'll just take care of itself."

"Sounds !@#$ing fatalistic."

Morrison looks down and smiles, maybe a little sadly: "You don't know what's through the door until you open it up and walk on through, man. 

"I'll drink to that," SPYGOD says, leaping up and clapping the man on the back: "Next time you're in the Big Apple, we'll raid my stash and get !@#$ing ripped. I bet you'll get a whole !@#$ album out of it."

"Hey, that reminds me," Morrison says, looking at the sun: "I was supposed to be playing, tonight."

"Well, better get you to the concert then?" SPYGOD says, laughing: "I'll call up and have someone deal with... that !@#$ back there."

"Must be nice to really have people."

"Don't you?"

"Oh, don't get me started..." the musician says, laughing: "Worst idea in the world, trying to pass us off as a band..."

And the soldier and the hippie walk off into the approaching sunset, ready to deal with whatever comes their way. 

* * *

Tangier, Morocco

July, 1967

 

"So do you think it was a good idea, still?" Doctor Power asks as he zaps something not unlike an octopus on legs with peacock wings from across the blood-soaked, body-strewn bar, and then ducking the smoking, inky attacks of the remaining four.

"Can't say for certain," John says, standing behind the bar and having a scotch: "The marriage of god!@#$ opposites is what this is all about, after all."

"But do we achieve negation of their forces if we're negating our own?" he asks, preparing another spell as the monsters close in,

"I wouldn't call this a !@#$ negation, would you?" the Operator chuckles, finishing the drink and putting the glass down on the bar with a sudden BANG. The moment he does, the remaining octopus-bird-demon-things vanish from the floor.

Doctor Power looks around, and then realizes that the man's hand is still on top of the glass. Below in, in the glass, the now-tiny octopus-demons whirl and struggle, trying to get out of the glass prison, their black, brain-eating ink attacks no longer any use to them.

"Your cut-up magic still surprises me," Doctor Power admits, looking at their pint-size prisoners.

"And that's why it works so !@#$ well," the man in the grey coat laughs, handing the Doctor the bottle of Scotch: "We Operators, we move reality around us. Time and space, forces and matter, it's all shifting and falling and standing the !@#$ back up again. And then back to big !@#$ nothing, again. Square None, you could say."

"I could," the Doctor says, taking a pull from the bottle, wiping his mouth, and then performing one last, explosive bolt of magic upon the glass (as soon as John removes his hand). The glass smokes and breaks under its force, and the demons inside are pulped and burned in one go.

"Demons from the sea, dark angels of the deep," John warbles, taking the bottle back, grabbing a pair of fresh glasses, and pouring them both a drink: 

"Down in the below, as far as you go. 

Eyes at the surface, watching. 

Suckers twitching like rectums, burning. 

We see them when we close our eyes

and then they find us in the watery dark of our dreams. 

These !@#$ wet nightmares sing us to our sleep."

"That's one way to put it," the Doctor says, accepting a glass: "Oneiropi. I never thought I'd see one outside of a dreamscape."

"The enemy is getting desperate," John intones, looking at the nasty carnage these things caused before they got here: "They realize they can't take and hold anything, so now they're resorting to terror tactics. This is gonna get worse before it gets better."

"How do we shield the world from this?" the hero asks, looking at the nearest body -- its head a smoking, inky ruin from where the demon ripped out.

"Well, for starters," the Operator says, pulling out a bottle of Russian Vodka: "We tell our friends to burn a few Russian hooch warehouses..."

Doctor Power looks at the bottle. It's new, and has clearly been drunk from. And on the label is a smiling, nasty face of a long-mustached fellow.

Voland, himself. 

"You have to be kidding me," the magician says, taking the bottle and giving it a whiff, and then -- fighting off gagging -- throwing it into the air so he can shoot thunderbolts at it. 

"Desperate, and !@#$ bolder," John intones, finishing his Scotch as the dream-slaying demon vodka burns in the air: "I have to admit I'm gonna enjoy kicking their !@#$ !@#$es back to Hell when we're done."

* * *

The Beehive, Moscow

November, 1967

"How can these... amateurs be stopping us?" Comrade Bulgakov -- no longer the real leader of SQUASH -- asks, pounding a withered apple of a fist onto the tactical map of the world: "How? How?"

"Well, Voland says-"

"I don't give a !@#$ what Voland says!" Bulgakov shouts, throwing a handful of tactical markers at Colonel Sharik, hoping he ruins his fancy new uniform as he does: "He doesn't even know."

"If he heard you talking like that..." the pale lackey stammers, rushing forward to try and silence his former owner: "He'd... he'd kill you, Colonel. Please just be calm-"

"Oh, so someone still realizes I'm Colonel around here," the man sighs, sinking back into his wheelchair and wheeling himself away from the table: "Here I thought you got all high and above yourself, since you're the one they deal with, now."

"Well, just in name only," Sharik says, leaning down a little: "You're still..."

"Say it," the crippled man insists: "I want to hear you say it, Colonel."

"I'm still... your servant."

"Yes, and let's not forget that, yes?"

"no..."

"Good," Bulgakov says, wheeling himself away: "Now, you tell me something, Colonel. How are our guests doing? I don't see them all that often, now that they only come down to emphasize how important your orders are."

"Not... not very good," the pale man stammers, leaning close so he can whisper: "There's something wrong with them, somehow."

"What do you mean. Give me an example, you fool."

"Well, the grey man? He's hardly ever there, anymore."

"Abaddon never was to begin with. What else?"

"Voland's mustache is drooping. Hella doesn't care to make lascivious comments at me, anymore."

"I wouldn't either, you fool. What else?"

"Well... the cat? Behemot? He's not scary, anymore."

"And how is that important?"

"Well, you know what he was like when he first showed up? Mean and angry all the time. He decapitated people for not moving fast enough, and shot at people's feet. Cruel and evil, that cat."

"Yes, well, he was supposed to be like that."

"Well, that's just it," Sharik says, leaning in even closer: "He's not mean, anymore. He just lies around, sleeping. He drinks vodka and snores. When Voland wants him to hurt someone, well, he used to not even have to say anything? Now he has to yell at Behemot, just to get him to move, and even then he's not really motivated. He just kills people with his gun and then goes right back to sleep."

Bulgakov blinks, and then looks sideways: "You're certain?"

"I've seen it. And the other day... um, well, I know it was a bad idea. But he was just so snuggly and warm, lying there. And I..."

"What did you do?"

"I rubbed his tummy," Sharik admits: "And he didn't kill me. In fact he... he purred."

Bulgakov gasps, just then. He blinks and is quiet.

"What does this mean, Colonel?"

The former Colonel sits there for a few more minutes, and then smiles, very wide: "It means, my dear Comrade Sharik, that we just might regain control of our organization, once more."

And he laughs -- loud, black, and evil -- for what seems the first time in ages.

(SPYGOD is listening to Symphony #4 (Tchaikovsky) and having a Demon Brew)

12/28/12 - The Master and Mother!@#$er - pt 3

 The name is Clem Snide

I am a Private Ass Hole

I will take on any job any identity any body 

I will do anything difficult dangerous 

or downright dirty for a price

William S. Burroughs - "The Soft Machine" (1966)

* * *

Odintsovo, Russia
May 1st, 1966

"You have got to be !@#$ing kidding me," SPYGOD snorts, kicking the air in front of him just to be certain he's not seeing things.

He's standing at the edge of the town, looking down the line at the massive metropolis to his East. When he looks at Moscow from here, he sees red -- quite literally. It's like the sky above the city is bleeding, somehow. 

And darkness is seeping through the wound -- a darkness with a definite shape, however unnameable. 

He's snuck across three countries to get here, going from jetpack to train to truck. He fully expected to come here, see what was going on, shoot its !@#$ full of holes, and then get back to Berlin before anyone realized he was gone.

But this? This is nothing he's seen, before. This is nothing he's had to handle before this time.

And while the Chandra Eye is showing him the true and maddening shape of this mess, that's not helping him figure out a plan to deal with something that large and powerful.

He mulls what to do. Should he call in an air strike? No, that'd just cause World War III. Same with a nuke. But so far as he can tell, that's the only thing that might be able to put a scratch in... whatever that thing is.

"Maybe if one of their own went off...?" he thinks aloud, and the more he thinks about it, the more he likes it. 

He's about to find a phone line to tap into -- the better to call the !@#$ President to tell him he's about to arrange a nuclear accident -- when his front pectoral pocket starts buzzing. For a moment he wonders why his switchblade is vibrating, or if one of those experimental condoms he's been trying out activated prematurely, but then he realizes it's his Freedom Force communicator.

"!@#$ing !@#$," he mutters, tossing everything else out of the pocket in order to find the small little thing: "I told them never to call me. Why does no one !@#$ing listen to what I tell them..."

"Hello, SPYGOD?" it squawks as soon as he gets it in the palm of his hand: "This is Gold Standard-"

"A little !@#$ing busy, here, you tin-plated !@#$," he spits into the tiny speaker: "We got weird!@#$ extraplanar activity going on in Moscow-"

"That's just what I was calling to talk to you about. Doctor Power said he felt something go seriously wrong, over there, a few hours ago. He was wondering if you'd felt it?"

"Felt it? I felt like someone hit me in the !@#$ noggin with a !@#$ing fire hydrant full of moonshine, poured it out into the !@#$ hole, and then made me drink it the !@#$ down along with my !@#$ brain."

"... Is that a yes?"

"Yes, that's a yes. Jesus !@#$ing Christ, Eddie. Did you buy that !@#$ suit or did you make it?"

"And you said you're in Moscow?" Gold Standard asks, ignoring the insult.

"I'm outside of it, looking at it. And it's !@#$ ugly. Does he know what it is?"

"Hold on, let me ask him," Gold Standard says, and then SPYGOD's on hold.

"!@#$," SPYGOD spits: "So much for a !@#$ party line."

"Well, you have to give it some time," Doctor Power says, stepping out of a nearby copse of trees, his cloak up over his head and a smile on his face: "The fact that we have these at all is something of a minor miracle, I'm sure you can agree."

"Were you there all along?" SPYGOD sneers, putting his communicator down on the ground and stepping on it, much to Doctor Power's amusement.

"I just arrived. I figured it would make sense to call first, though. I'm glad I did."

"Tell me about it," SPYGOD says, crossing his arms and looking at the horrible thing over Moscow: "Do you know what the !@#$ that is?"

"I do, yes," Doctor Power sighs: "As you know, for years now, SQUASH has been summoning up otherworldly powers to add to their arsenal. Small things, so far. Deadly things, no doubt, but nothing too earth-shattering, thankfully."

"That I know, Doc," SPYGOD says, pulling out a flask and having a quick snort, and then offering it to the magician: "Tell me something new, here, because that does not !@#$ing look non-earth-shattering to me."

"Mmm. Thank you," the magician says, taking a sip and then regretting it: "There have been... *cough* pardon me, there have been whispers that they've been trying to raise a much larger thing, lately. A demonic clan called the Supreme Six."

"Sounds like a Motown group."

"Well, you won't want to groove to this one. If they get loose in our world, they could bring with them any number of powerful demons and creatures."

"And that's them we're seeing, over there?"

"Well, Walpurgisnacht was eight hours and thirty minutes ago. You couldn't have picked a better night for it."

"First of May, huh?" SPYGOD says: "Night of the Black Pill."

"I beg your pardon?" Doctor Power asks, not certain what he's talking about.

"Nothing," SPYGOD replies, taking his flask back and having another snort: "Jesus, this !@#$'s gone rotten."

"What was that? It tasted like rotten soup-"

"Chateau Adolf," he says, putting it away and getting out yet another flask: "Sometimes I don't get the !@#$ mix right, is all."

Doctor Power grimaces, and then looks down at the larger problem: "The bottom line is that this is not something we are going to fix by dropping nuclear weapons, (REDACTED). All we'd do is give them more souls. And that's the last thing we want to do right now."

"So what do we do? Learn to !@#$ing speak Commie?"

"We don't do anything," the magician says, putting a hand on SPYGOD's shoulder: "You go back to whatever you were doing when you saw this, and you let me and mine handle this."

"You mean Freedom Force?"

"I mean any magicians I can get my hands on. And we'll deal with this."

SPYGOD turns to look at Doctor Power, and it's not a nice thing: "Aren't you forgetting a little thing, there, Eben?"

"What?"

"Don't 'what' me, you third-rate rabbit-!@#$er. I'm the one who tells you what to do, and not the other way around."

"But-"

"And that's because I know, Eben. I know where you got your !@#$ing magic powers from, remember? And I know what you had to !@#$ing do to get them, and what you still have to !@#$ing do to keep them. Right?"

"Right..." Doctor Power says, slowly taking his hand off SPYGOD's shoulder.

"So when you tell me that this !@#$ing demon Motown group is the worst !@#$ing thing to come up the !@#$ pipe from Hell since !@#$ knows when, I have to ask myself... what's in it for you?"

"Nothing is in it for me," the magician insists, taking a step forward and getting in SPYGOD's breathing space: "I swear before all powers and gods, (REDACTED). I want these things off the planet as badly as you do, and I don't have an ulterior motive."

"Well that's good," SPYGOD says, putting the barrel of a very large handgun up under Doctor Power's chin in one fluid motion: "Because I'm going to !@#$ing stick to you like glue, Eben. And if I even get a whiff of any !@#$ing deal going on between you and these Six Supremes-"

"The Supreme Six."

"Whatever. One whiff of a deal, Eben, and I'm going to take your talisman, shove it up your !@#$, and pull it out your throat before I shoot it full of !@#$ing holes. And then we'll see if you can pull a new digestive system out of your !@#$ing hat. Got me?"

"I got you," Eben says, not going anywhere: "I'm sorry you feel you can't trust me-"

"I'm sorry I ever !@#$ing let you hold onto that thing-"

"I'm sorry," someone says from not too far away: "Did I come at a bad time?"

The two men step away from each other and turn to look at whoever's interrupted them. A tall fellow with long, curly brown hair, dressed in a flowing, white shirt and tight, leather pants. And his smile is sharp and infectious.

"Oh, great," SPYGOD spits: "The hippy. Who the !@#$ called you?"

"I did," Jim Morrison says, winking and lighting up: "Well, the Department of Defense did, really. But I knew they were going to call. It's a circular thing."

"Well met, James," Doctor Power says, stepping forward and shake the man's hand: "It's good to see you again."

"Just Jim, Eben," Morrison replies, taking a drag and looking over at SPYGOD: "And we're not on a first name basis yet, are we?"

"Not likely to be at all, longhair," SPYGOD snorts, putting the gun away.

"In the fullness of time, you'll call me friend, and more," Morrison says, smiling: "Anyway, I just came to get you two. the others are in Berlin, already."

"Others?" Doctor Power asks: "Did the Defense Department get involved?"

"Oh no," Morrison says, offering him a cigarette, which he kindly refuses: "They just sent me. Everyone else is here on their own. But then, even when we're on our own, we're never alone."

"I didn't see a !@#$ing aircraft come down," SPYGOD notes, looking around: "How did you get here?"

"Just walked," Morrison says, winking and taking another drag: "Come on, I'll show you the way."

With that he walks off, clearly expecting to be followed. Doctor Power shrugs, looks at SPYGOD, and heads off.

"'Fullness of time' my !@#$," SPYGOD mutters, taking another hit from his flask as he follows after: "Fullness of time I'm going to kick your hippy !@#$ back to !@#$ing California..."

Morrison laughs, up ahead, and sings: "'Yeah we're on our way, and we can't turn back...'"

"!@#$ing hippy."

The three men wander up the road for a time, with Jim Morrison singing as they go. After a time, their whereabouts become sketchier, and less certain. The trees go dark and turn into one large, black shape. The Moon vanishes, the buildings fade away, and then there's just the road, and the stars, and a gentle, warm wind coming at them.

And then they're not where they were, anymore.

* * *

"I am telling you, I will not work with that... thing!" Doctor Krwi shouts, pointing one of his many guns at the strange, black shape sitting on a wooden bench in the corner of the darkened, deserted bar.

"Now don't be a !@#$ fool, Doc," a short-haired, older man in a grey coat that looks like old film crackling says, closing his eyes and putting up his hands: "This is a problem we've got here. A big !@#$ problem. And we're gonna need all hands on deck if we're going to stop this-"

"Who says we should stop it?" the thing says, its black motorcycle leathers creaking as its hideous, dried and withered face comes into the half-light, its accent that of a posh, upper-class British man: "Perhaps this is the way of things. As below, so above, as some would say."

"You see?" the Polish vampire hunter insists: "It isn't even on the same side? There's an enemy in our camp already!"

"There is no enemy, you !@#$ moron," the older man says, his voice warbling in anger: "Dark and light's all the same !@#$ thing once you get out far enough. It's a question of balance. And right now, this world's about to go so !@#$ far our of balance that we might not get it back in your lifetime."

"No enemy?" Krwi spits: "Tell that to the innocent victims, you effete fool. Tell that to the drained children and violated maidens. Tell that to the ones who do it to them, who consider us their food!"

"Innocence is an illusion," the revenant says, leaning back into the shadows: "There are only degrees of guilt. All will be punished to one degree or another, for this life's sins or the one before it."

"Oh, so the stolen babes the vampiri toss back and forth for sport at their esbats all deserve to die screaming and in pain? Is that what you're saying?"

"They must have done something to deserve that, yes."

"I have heard enough!" Krwi hisses, pulling the trigger. The bullet cracks out of the barrel and hurtles towards its target, but then vanishes before it reaches its mark.

"You ain't heard nothing yet," a voice says, lilting from the door. It's Morrison, and he's come with company.

"About !@#$ time you got back, young'n," the older man says, getting up from the bench and heading for the door: "It's all I can do to keep Abbot and Costello over there from fighting or !@#$ing."

"SPYGOD, you must agree with me," Krwi insists, heading in that direction and pointing to the corner: "If we are at war with evil, we cannot afford to have a thing of evil amongst us."

"He's not evil," Doctor Power says, striding over to the corner and looking back at the vampire hunter: "The Hell Blazer and I have worked together, before. He simply walks a darker path than most."

"But," Krwi tries to insist, holding up a hand. The moment he opens it, something falls from it onto the floor -- something warm, metal, and tipped with silver.

"You lost something, I think," the older man chuckles. Morrison walks past the vampire hunter, tossing a cigarette into the nearest corner as he does, and winks quite pointedly.

"Okay, what's the !@#$ing deal, here?" SPYGOD says, heading to Krwi's side: "Is this what we've got to work with against the Motown act from Hell?"

"He means the Supreme Six," Doctor Power sighs.

"Are you...?" Krwi asks, turning quite pale: "Are you certain?"

"Yes, I've seen it," Doctor Power confirms.

"Well, I don't know what the !@#$ I saw, but it was pretty !@#$ bad," SPYGOD admits.

"And I felt the world turn the wrong way 'round just powerful enough for it to be them," the older man says, taking a cigarette from Morrison and lighting up: "Could have always been the other camp, I suppose. Maybe the man Jesus come way too !@#$ early."

"Not yet, no," Morrison says, shrugging: "Not looking forward to that, either."

"And I've felt it," the Hell Blazer says, getting up from his bench: "We have had dealings in the past. I would recognize them anywhere."

"'Dealings,'" Krwi echoes what the black-clad revenant said: "If we're the best the world has, we may as well go confess our sins and say goodbye, now."

"Who's we, anyway?" SPYGOD says, gesturing: "I know both Docs-"

"Please do not call me Doc," Krwi sighs.

"And I know the hippy, here. But you?" he points to the Hell Blazer: "You I don't know. And something about you's making my head hurt like !@#$."

"That'd be the emanations coming outta him like stink off a !@#$," the older man says: "You got a good look at the problem over in Moscow? Well, he's a chip off that block, the Hell Blazer is. But he's on our side in this."

"And how the !@#$ do you know that?" SPYGOD asks.

"He wouldn't be here if he wasn't," the older man shrugs: "This is the way of things, son. Can't get to New York if you don't cross a !@#$ bridge. He's made the cut. I suggest you trust him."

"I trust no one," SPYGOD insists, taking a step forward and looking down at the man: "And I don't know who the !@#$ you are, either. And one thing that really makes me !@#$ing angry is when someone I don't !@#$ing know tells me to trust someone else I don't !@#$ing know. Makes me feel like I'm about to get hit over the !@#$ head and dragged into an alley to get !@#$ed up the !@#$ by some pack of drunk Chinese sailors."

"Too late," the revenant says, which Morrison finds really funny for some reason.

"What the !@#$ is that supposed to !@#$ing mean?"

"It means you already crossed the !@#$ bridge, son," the older man says, poking his finger in SPYGOD's chest: "Welcome to New York City, you handsome fellow."

"I thought we were in Berlin?" Krwi asks, not getting the allusion.

"I think I'm about to kick your little !@#$ in," SPYGOD says, reaching to grab the old man's wrist. But he misses, badly, and trips all over himself, winding up in a heap on the floor.

"Now see, that kind of rash foolishness gets a fella nowhere," the older man says, standing his ground: "You got to learn to just watch and see, there, son. You got the eye for it. Might as well use it."

"And just what the !@#$ do you know about that?" SPYGOD says, slowly getting to his feet and tamping down his urge to see if the old man can dodge a bullet, too: "Who the !@#$ are you?"

"John," the older man replies, finishing his cigarette and putting it down on a table: "Just John. Nothing more than that."

"Oh, I think there's more to it than that," Doctor Power says.

"Maybe we can waggle our !@#$s in front of each other some other time, when we're not trying to shoot each other?" Morrison asks.

"How about we just say I'm a !@#$ Operator, and leave it at that," John says: "Any more and you lose sight of what's important."

"And what is that?' Krwi asks, putting a hand on SPYGOD's shoulder and helping calm him down: "I came here to stop evil, not answer riddles."

"What is evil?" Morrison asks: "Now there's a riddle for you."

"Standing back and doing nothing while the world burns down around us," SPYGOD says: "How about that? Anyone want to argue against that?"

"I won't," Krwi says.

"Neither would I," Doctor Power says, glad no one's threatening each other, now.

"Balance must be kept," Hell Blazer says: "And I have something that must be settled."

"I think we all got something to settle," John says: "But I'm here to maintain balance, too. Call it dharma if you gotta."

"And I'm here because I'm supposed to be, clearly," Morrison admits: "Alright then? So if we all know which way we're playing, how about we talk how we're going to make this band work? Because I don't want to be up there singing while you're all shooting each other. That's no way to fly."

On that note, they all silently agree.

"Alright then," John says, taking another cigarette from Morrison: "We got six against six, and that gets us back to zero. Let's us figure out how we make that happen."

And, over the course of many cigarettes, quite a few drinks, and a few more fights, they do.

(SPYGOD is listening to Piano Concerto #1 (Tchaikovsky) and having a Klinskoye or ten)

12/28/12 - The Master and Mother!@#$er - pt 2

Strange eyes fill strange rooms
Voices will signal their tired end
The hostess is grinning
Her guests sleep from sinning
Hear me talk of sin
And you know this is it 

"Strange Days" -- The Doors (1967)

* * *

Moscow - The Beehive
April 30th, 1966

"Prepare the lectors!" Colonel Bulgakov -- leader of SQUASH -- screams from his wheelchair, parked by the dais in the center of the cavernous, domed room: "Activate the final sequencing! Prime the materials! The Supreme Equation shall have its solution at Midnight!"

As his grating voice echoes around the massive room -- bouncing off the curved wall and rebounding back to where it came from -- his many, dark-suited servants rush to obey.

Functionaries clear away the ladders and stools and make way for a large number of tall, deep-voiced men and women, who walk to equidistant parts of the dome and stand ready. Thaumathematicians run along the walls of prisoners in the human labyrinth and make certain the grey box attached to the back of each victim is active and running. Apprentices ensure that no noise-making machines or objects remain within the Beehive -- nothing that could interfere with the accurate transmission of sound.

Nothing must go wrong, here in this moment, or else there will be worse than Hell to pay.

Bulgakov's pale and simpering lackey, Sharik, stands directly behind the crippled Colonel, holding a special, modified timepiece in each hand. One is a stopwatch, the other a large pocketwatch, neither of which makes so much as the slightest sound as they tick away the seconds. And, as each section within the Beehive is secured, as all extraneous personnel flee through the black door, and as each group leader stands with his hands raised to indicate that they're ready, Sharik prepares to offer them to his master.

At last, all is in readiness, and not a moment too soon. The seconds count down, and then it's thirty to twenty to Midnight.

Colonel Bulgakov gestures to Sharik, who bends down. As he bends down, Doctor Rokk turns on the computer on the dais behind them both, and then stands ready for any last moment adjustments -- an AK-47 in his hands in case something mindless comes through.

The dais silently but quickly rises up, so that its strange, almost-alive apparatus is at the direct center of the chamber, where all sound must converge. The second it gets there, its many lights burn bright, and a blast of white sound floods the Beehive. All noise, no matter how small, is cancelled out. It is as though everyone there has gone deaf for exactly three seconds.

And as soon as that deafness ends, at exactly twenty to Midnight, the equation begins.

The deep-voiced Thaumathematicians begin to sonorously recite the equations written on the walls. They do this in perfect rhythm with one another, so that their words overlap, echo, and enter the computer at the exact same moment. 

As the computer registers their words, it sends signals to the grey boxes affixed to each of the people within the human labyrinth. Small groups of them come out of their drugged lethargy -- just enough to realize their predicament -- and then die in extreme pain and agony as their bodies are flooded with poisons that stop their lungs from working, turn their blood to fire, and liquify their brains.

They claw weakly and writhe, unable to scream, and then are still -- blood and white goo leaking from their eyes and noses. And as more and more of them die, and the voices complete more and more of the equation, the lights on the computer glow brighter, and flash on and off faster and faster.

The minutes count down as the slaughter continues. The equation is half done, then two-thirds. Three quarters. The bodies fall to the floor, the Thaumathematicians drone on, the flashing become a strobe light almost too powerful to bear...

And then, just as the silent timepiece Comrade Sharik holds in his pale and clammy hand strikes Midnight, the sound stops, and the final body strikes the floor -- eyes brimming with melted memories.

And then the computer shivers, and clicks, and its lights begin to explode one by one, up and down the length of the tubes and fronds.

The lights in the dome's sides follow suit, blowing out one after the other. The grey boxes attached to the landscape of fresh corpses fizzle and smoke. The two watches in Sharik's hands stop and crack, and he gasps as he drops them, finding that they are suddenly too hot to handle.

The echoes of that gasp echo around the room, and for a moment Colonel Bulgakov is ready to scream at his lackey for possibly screwing this up, too. But then he realizes that, in spite of all the lights in the room having been destroyed, he can still see everything perfectly.

Doctor Rokk turns around the room and gasps, dropping his clipboard and gun. He follows them to the ground quickly, hitting his knees as his features are illuminated by a flickering, pale-pink light from a point between the dais and the nearest wall.

And as he struggles to regain his composure, and the Colonel's chair is jerked around behind him by his extremely-frightened servant, something begins to come through that point of light.

Six somethings, in fact -- strange and terrible, one and all. They seem a jumble of unfortunate anatomies, their surreal facial features underlined with glowing red. Arms, legs, and other, less-identifiable limbs twisting in the inter-dimensional breeze as they coalesce, taking shapes much less harsh on the eye, and yet somehow... wrong.

The flickering light begins to subside, and in its place stand solid objects. A man in a checkered jacket with a pince-nez and a sly smile. A red-haired, burly fellow with a wall-eye, a bowler hat, and a long, misshapen tooth poking out of his mouth. A tall, thin man in a grey suit with dark glasses who seems to wish he was somewhere else. A lovely, pale woman with red hair and a dress so sheer she almost looks naked in the light and shadow. 

And before them all, a man dressed in a black suit and top hat, his mustache a work of art. He cradles a large, black cat in his arms, and looks upon those gathered there with some measure of amusement, or perhaps contempt.

"You have called us," this one says, his voice a warm and slickery thing: "And so we have come."

"Master," Colonel Bulgakov says, rising from his wheelchair as best he's able: "You're... you are just as I imagined you to be..."

"Indeed we are," he says, putting the cat down on the floor: "You may even call me Voland, if you so desire. If it will aid in the quickness of things...?"

"Of course," Bulgakov says: "I have a list of things we would like to barter for. We can offer you world full of souls, all ready for you to take back. All we ask for-"

Bulgakov stops as the black cat approaches, walking on its hind legs. It walks over to where Dr. Rokk lies prostrate and looks down at the man.

And then, in one swift motion, it snatches up the AK-47 from the ground and shoots the scientist full of bullets, laughing and cursing as it does.

"You may ask what you like," Voland says, smiling as the man who summoned him turns paler than normal: "We may even give it to you. But you must know, Colonel Bulgakov, that your actions here this day are not that of a supplicant, but that of a well-tended mechanism."

"I... I do not understand-"

"You owe your life to me," the woman hisses, her mouth a crazy nest of sharp vampire fangs.

"And I'm the one who told you how to make that !@#$ing thing up there," the man in the bowler hat snorts: "Whispered it in your sleep, I did."

"No, you've been doing as we wanted right from the start," Voland says, gesturing to him to move aside: "So if you don't mind, we'll ask someone else for terms."

And all their eyes turn to Comrade Sharik, who picks that moment to be violently, noisily sick, much to the amusement of the fat, black cat with the gun.

* * *

It's Noon in the deserts east of LA, and the party is going on.

It's a love-in, you could say. Dozens of beautiful people, all out in the sands and the sun. Nothing to do but be, nowhere to go but here. And the best sort of company for such a journey to the beginning.

There's music and wine, love and dancing, Suzy and Mary Jane. Higher thoughts and lower urges. And the profound and the shallow, the high-minded and the profane -- all have come together to make love and music from now until the Moon rises, and then beyond.

One place, one people, living one immortal day.

But then the wind changes direction, just for a second. And when it does, Jim Morrison cocks an ear and looks to the west -- leaving the campfire and its ring of dancers to get a better look.

He's there for quite a while, just staring off at the west. And then he lights up a cigarette, takes an appreciative drag, and grinds his heel in the sand.

"Time to go, Ray," he shouts back to one of his handlers: "We're gonna get the call."

Ray Manzarek (DOD Agent) comes up to him, trying to see what he's seeing: "What's going on?"

"Strange days have tracked us down," Jim answers, offering him a hit off his cigarette: "The war's about to get even weirder. You up for it?"

"Sure," Ray lies, wondering why he didn't just go into film. No one shoots at film people.

* * *

It's 3 in the afternoon in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts, and the streets are lined with tourists, all agog at the living museum they're walking through.

It's a piece of history, this town. Streets 350 years old, houses just as ancient. All around, people dress, work, and act as they once did, centuries ago. And the well-paying public just laps it all up.

There's a few places in town that the visitors don't tend to go, however: areas left off the maps for sound, if secret, reasons. 

Well behind Main Street, and almost on the banks of the nearby river, there's a stone structure no one can see unless they know what they're looking for, and even then only partially. It looks like a tunnel, leading into the Earth, but the angles are all wrong, somehow. Its stairway could be going up or down, and its door could be open or shut.

To see it is to invite madness, and this is why few can really perceive its presence. 

The bells of the village chime Three, and a man steps out of the stairway to anywhere. His beard is full and black, his coat is long and grey, and he carries a wooden cane chased with arcane, silver squiggles that seem to move as he does.

"The idiots have done it," he says, looking off to the East -- far, far away from here. 

And with that pronouncement, and a scowl sharp enough to cut stone, Doctor Power vanishes. 

* * *

 "Bollocks," the drunk in the back of the scummy, dark bar burbles into his ale: "Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks."

"Ah, shut it, Randal," the burly, mustachioed barkeep says, trying to listen to his radio program: "I'll refill your glass when you've paid for the other ones."

"Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks," the drunk keeps repeating, scrawling something into the newspaper from the patron before the patron before: "Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks..."

"I think he's having a !@#$ing stroke or something," an unhelpful fellow at the bar ventures.

"I'll have whatever he's not having," someone else jokes, and there's some laughter.

"Do you want me to spit in your beer, !@#$hole?" the barkeep asks the two of them.

"Knowing you, you already did," the unhelpful fellow says, grinning. 

That's it, then. The barkeep grabs the baseball bat from behind the bar -- the one he bought just this morning "for muggers" -- and smashes the !@#$hole's skull. Pieces of his jaw fly out of his mouth and litter the filthy surface, and when he swings again, from the other direction, the man's head spins around on his neck and he falls down dead.

The other man yelps in surprise and tries to get away, but not soon enough to avoid getting his hand smashed flat. While he's cradling that, the bat speaks again -- on his forehead, this time -- and then he's down with the other dead man on the floor.

Of course, the barkeep's not nearly satisfied with those two. Now that he's blooded, he wants more. So he goes wild and starts smacking everyone he can wrap the bat around -- here there and everywhere. The two at the booth by the door, the three in the back, the one guy who was just going in for a !@#$ in the dangerous bathroom...

Before long the bat's slick with blood and gooey with things that don't belong on the outside of a person, and the wounded and hurt are trying to crawl away, but unable to escape. 

All but poor, brainsmashed British Randal, who started the whole thing. He's just sitting there, scrawling on the newspaper with his fingers, writing in his own blood. And for some reason the barkeep has not seen him since he started seeing red.

Someone else has, though: a man seen yet not seen, there but not, no-one but well known. This human cypher stands right by the poor old fellow, looking down down at the paper. He realizes that whatever the man's writing is in Cyrillic, which he's pretty sure the man never learned.

And he's also sure that while he's saying "Bollocks," he really means "Bolsheviks."

Satisfied, he turns up his coat, grabs an opened bottle from the less-bloody end of the bar, and walks out of the Black Rat of Armagh just as New York's finest are arriving in force. If he hurries, he can just catch the last flight for Frankfurt.

And if he's lucky, he can be behind the Iron Curtain by this time tomorrow. 

 * * *

Puddock Manor lies some distance due North of London -- a sleepy and crumbling edifice, wrapped in a forest no one dares to enter, anymore. 

Its walls are high and protected by ornate, iron spikes, its towers have mostly fallen in or down. Its windows are boarded up, its gardens have run riot. A skeleton lies half-in, half-out of a cracked fountain full of rainwater.

And as the decaying clock in the main hall chimes Eight O' the Clock, something that has not moved in years is stirred to some semblance of wakefulness.

It creaks its joints and stumbles from the chair it's been gathering dust and cobwebs in, all these seasons, and shuffles to the closed, moldy drapes. It casts them aside and looks out its window -- black and hollow eyes scanning the landscape to the south and east.

"At last..." it mutters through lips as dry as parchment: "You are here."

And with that, the revenant in black motorcycle leathers turns and heads for the grand staircase, ready to finally meet its' makers.

* * *

The trick to making silver bullets, as any vampire hunter will tell you, is to forget about a full silver cast. That's time-consuming, expensive, and may attract the wrong kind of attention -- especially here, in the People's Republic of Poland, where one is not generally allowed to walk around with enough guns to fell a rampaging horde of Vampiri. 

(This goes double if the government has an "understanding" with you. Such an understanding can be taken away at any moment, leaving a former ally a current jailor.)

No: the best thing to do is melt silver, and dip only the tip of the bullet into it. The coating will hold, the silver will be introduced deep into the body, and whatever you lose in accuracy -- given that the extra weight throws off its spin -- is more than made up for in extra damage. Besides, one rarely gets a chance to do long-range damage to a vampire.

This kind of fighting has always been up close and personal.

Which is why, right around 9, Dr. Krwi pauses from his lonely, repetitive task and looks out the window, feeling the hairs raise on the back of his neck. His dog is not growling, and the various things he's set up to detect and respond to the presence of his mortal enemy are not screaming or glowing. But he can tell that something has appeared, closeby.

Something truly terrible.

His dog snorts in her sleep, and while Krwi goes back to making silver-tipped ammunition, he does so knowing that he's going to have to change his plans for the night. He's not going to roust the bad parts of town looking for the monsters he's been fighting all his life. 

Instead, he's going to get ready to leave town, tomorrow, provided his contacts in Moscow can confirm what he's hoping is just a bad feeling, but knows too well is anything but. 

* * *

"Gaah!" SPYGOD shouts, holding his head in his hands: "What the !@#$ was that?"

He's all alone on the rooftop of the French embassy in West Berlin, drinking a bottle of the local brew while waiting to see if the costumed moron he was going to ventilate tonight actually does go to his apartment, five blocks away (and well in sight of his new eye), when suddenly every bone in his head feels as though someone's hit it with a hammer.

When the pain subsides, he grits his teeth and looks around, wondering where the !@#$ that came from. The eye feels like its moving inside the socket -- a !@#$ unpleasant feeling, to be sure -- and he lets it position him, if only to be rid of the !@#$ pain for a second.

There. East of here. And he doesn't need a !@#$ map and a compass to know where the !@#$ he's looking, either. At times, if he "squints," he can see the onion domes from here.

"Moscow, huh?" he says, getting another pull off the beer just as a nearby clock starts striking Nine: "Well, guess I better check that out."

And so he does, after he's filled his costumed target full of enough !@#$bullets to kill a herd of rampaging elephants, anyway. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Symphony 5 (Tchaikovsky) and having a Behemoth Blonde Barleywine)

12/28/12 - The Master and Mother!@#$er - pt 1

"Once in 1919 when I was traveling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper, in the hopes that he would publish my story. He told me it was the worst thing he had ever read, so I tore it up before him and left without saying a word. 

"I never tried my hand at it again. I have been too busy with other things, since.

"Many important things."

- Mikhail Bulgakov (Head of SQUASH): 1891-1991

* * *

Moscow: 
April 30th, 1966

"I have to say, Colonel, that I am... uncomfortable with what we are about to do."

The dark-uniformed man pushing Colonel Bulgakov's wheelchair down the long, damp, concrete hallway is white-faced and sweating -- almost stammering. That might be the reason why the twisted and sickly person in the well-padded chair doesn't fix his one good eye on him and give him the Look of Death. 

Or maybe the man they call The Writer (but only ever well-behind his back) is in just too good a mood to be bothered.

"It is a logical extension of our current works, Comrade Sharik," Bulgakov says, his voice a harsh and grating thing: "Our thaumathematicians reach into the realms beyond ours to bring forth etheric weapons for Mother Russia all the time, and with some success-"

"Yes, Colonel Bulgakov, but we only ever get the smallest of creatures in this fashion. Our equations can neither summon nor control anything larger. And yet tonight-"

"Tonight we risk it all, Comrade!" the man in the chair shouts, pounding a withered fist on the side of the chair: "The answer was before us all along! Why should we settle for what small creatures we could nudge our way when we could speak to the head of the zoo, and have the largest cages unlocked? If there are greater formulas and hidden proofs to be had, then this greatest of etheric creatures must have them. And soon we, too, will share in them."

"But at what cost, Colonel?" Sharik asks as they approach the black steel door at the end of the hallway: "Making a deal with... with this? Does it not stand against all that our Soviet Union stands for? How can we say we've thrown off superstition if we're willing to summon up the Devil?"

That's done it, then. The Colonel slowly turns around in his chair, and fixes his stammering lackey with that one, good eye: the one that's as red as blood and so shot through with veins and cataracts that it looks like broken glass. 

"We are not calling up the Devil, Comrade Sharik," the man sneers, his voice like deadly thunder: "We are making contact with a primary ultraterrestrial intelligence. A mathematical intellect of the highest degree. We have scraped the superstition away from one of the oldest sciences Man has ever developed, and used it in service to the state!"

"Of course, Colonel-"

"And you would do well to remember that, should you wish to continue serving in our organization, yes?"

"Yes, Colonel," the man stammers, nodding so enthusiastically his officers' cap almost flops off: "I understand, sir. And I do wish to serve."

"Good, Comrade. Remember where I found you, all those years ago. And remember that I can have you put right back there, too."

"Of course, Colonel," the man stammers some more, bumbling around the chair in his pants-!@#$ting fear and putting his hands on the black door.

The moment he does, it glows, ever so much. Then the light is gone, and with it is the door.

And beyond it lies mathematically-sound horror. 

* * *

So how did this withered and broken fellow, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, become the head of SQUASH, most feared of all the Soviet Union's many spy organizations, you may ask?

Well, there lies a story. It is not a pretty story, but very little in Russia ever is. It is almost as if God insists that anything that happens here must be tainted, just to keep us from ever getting too high above ourselves.

He wipes his !@#$ with us, God does, and then sends down the snow to help us clean ourselves up.

So, the story. Here is a man who has many things going for him. He is born into a well-bred, wealthy, and loving family. There he grows up kind and intelligent, and becomes well-educated. He learns art and literature, goes into medicine, marries well. 

Everything is going fine for him, and there is no reason that it should not. But then there is war. Several wars, really. 

And this is when things must change for Mikhail Afanasyevich.

The first is, of course, the First World War. It has him on the frontlines, tending to the wounded. There he gets a reputation for being quite the lifesaver. Some even call him an angel of mercy in disguise.

But the front lines are always under heavy fire. Mikhail is himself wounded, and quite badly. He may well have died, except that, while he was in the hospital, something happened.

What exactly was this thing? We do not know. It is nowhere in his files, and he has not spoken of it. 

But one night he was on his bed, perhaps dying, perhaps not. And the next morning he was standing at the window, asking when he might leave and get back to work. 

And not so much as a scar upon him! How strange, indeed. 

(Stranger still that, from that time on, he has nothing more to do with his family, with whom he was once quite close...)

So, Mikhail goes back to the front for a time, but he is no longer quite the lifesaving angel he once was. Perhaps his injuries have dulled his skills, or perhaps it is just bad luck. But the men begin to dread seeing him at the front, with them. 

He is no longer their angel of mercy, you see. Now he is perhaps an angel of death, come to take them away.

That war is interrupted by another war. This time it is the Civil War. The Revolution. Call it what you will, it ends with the old Tsarist order swept away and the new, Soviet state standing in its place.

His family is now in Paris, but still he is considered a liability because of their connection to how things were. Under normal circumstances, the Cheka would pick him up, and he would have disappeared, along with all those other people that vanished during those early, feverish years. 

But our Mikhail Afanasyevich? He does not wish to wait for the secret police. No, he goes to them, and, after a time of not being seen, he comes out the other end as one of their interrogators. 

Quite an enthusiastic little worker, they say officially. Unofficially, they say he is the sickest bastard they have ever had to work with. Very inventive. Very effective.

Very disturbed.

Even more disturbing is that, sometimes, the people he puts in the chair to question are later seen around him, as servants and subordinates. He claims they have seen the light of reason and are being rehabilitated. Others say other things, and these are darker things indeed.

Now, you know how things go, my friend. We Russians do love our shell games, where the black ball is shuffled from cup to cup, only to seem to become blacker with each shifting of position. So too does our man Mikhail Afanasyevich get shuffled from group to group, becoming larger as he goes. 

The Cheka becomes the GPU, within the old NKVD. Then they leave it to become a thing unto itself, the OGPU, which remains until the old NKVD is replaced with a new one, and then the OGPU becomes folded back into this new NKVD as the GUGB. All the while, he stays with the ball, getting larger with each new cup.

So it is in the GUGB, working directly under Lavrentiy Beria as his most reliable of truth-getters, that our Mikhail Afanasyevich finally reaches the notice of Stalin. They have a few talks, and something he says must have impressed Stalin, for when the Fascists break their pact with us and invade, he is one of the people that Stalin taps on the shoulder to help create a deterrent against their costumed supermen. Their U-Men.

With the fate of Mother Russia hanging by a mere, burning thread, he helps to rally those darker things to our side. Where the People's Protectors work in the light, he dwells within the shadows. And together, these armies of day and night push the Germans back, all the way to Berlin!

Victory is had, but now our other wartime allies are to become our peacetime enemies. Stalin understands this, and knows that we must not rest. So when it is decided to form a separate organization for superior soviets and People's Protectors, rather than shuffling them back into the ball with our spies and counter-spies, our Mikhail Afanasyevich is given the job. 

So the group is made. SQUASH is its name, as you well know. And it spends many, many years bedeviling the forces of Imperialism, Capitalism, Fascism, and anything else that stands against the goals of the Soviet Union. To do this they use science, but a science so black and perverted -- so arcane -- that it may as well be dark magic for all we know.

But never, ever say that to this man who runs this great and secret show. If you are lucky, you will merely disappear. 

If not? Well, they say this dark science requires sacrifice to achieve its goals. And if there is one thing Mother Russia has been good at doing, it is finding many people to sacrifice. Many, many people.

And, thanks to Stalin and his paranoia, Bulgakov had many, many people to work with. 

One last fact that we know for certain? Joseph Stalin died in 1953, just before the KGB was created. Many things were swept out along with Stalin, himself, and the KGB was quite happy to do the dusting. 

But for all the complaining and whispering about what Bulgakov had gotten up to, down in his dark cellar where he ran SQUASH? Not a single person spoke against him. No one even thought to make him disappear, himself. It is almost as if he had some sort of assurance? 

But, of course, no one will speak of this. And I think by now you know why. 

(Recorded conversation with Boris Yeltsin, circa 1987) 

* * *
 

The massive, light grey concrete room behind the black door is domed, so as to amplify and collect all sound. Even the smallest of shuffles from the other side can be heard with total clarity. And so all the quiet conversations going on within it swirl and congeal into one larger dialogue -- an endless, droning susurus of human insect noise.

And this is why they call it The Uley: the Beehive.

Every inch of its walls is covered in mathematical formulas and equations, so long and sprawling that they can only be described as arcane. Dozens of teams of dark-suited men go from section to section, crawling up ladders and getting down on their hands and knees to manually triple-check the work of the other teams. All this to be absolutely certain that nothing is even slightly amiss.

In its center is a stark, large dais: one designed to rise up to where the sound truly converges. On top of it is what may be a massive computer surrounded by pulsing, live, lit-up cables, or perhaps a strange garden of phosphorescent, exotic plants. Perhaps both.

And on the floor, arranged in a great geometric design, are people. 

There are hundreds of men and women, here, all stripped to their boring Soviet underwear -- bound tight, but not gagged. Each one stares into space as if drugged, and doesn't even care to struggle against their bonds. And each one has a small, grey box strapped to the back of their head, with an aerial raised up to the ceiling.

Comrade Sharik has to carefully navigate this design, pushing Colonel Bulgakov's wheelchair through the labyrinth of flesh. It takes some time to get to the center, where the senior thaumathematician awaits his leader.

"We are close to complete, Colonel," the man says, handing over the final checklist to Sharik, along with a pen: "We estimate being well ahead of schedule. We will solve this equation at Midnight, as specified."

"Excellent, excellent," Bulgakov says, watching with his one good eye as Sharik turns the pages for him -- not too fast, but never daring to go too slow -- "This is to be our biggest solution ever, Comrade Doctor Rokk. With it, we will win the war of ideas with the West. We will take the one thing they cling to and destroy it, giving them no illusions to hide behind any longer."

"What's that, Colonel?" Sharik asks, having not really been told the finer details, yet.

"Hope, Comrade Sharik," Bulgakov sneers, casting a sickly eye over the last page of the checklist: "We will barter with the ultraterrestrials we contact tonight -- the beings known as the Supreme Six. They shall give us what we desire, and then we will use those things to destroy their hope. To shatter their belief that their decadent, imperialist ways can bring them anything but horror and misery.

"And that will bring them to us at last."

With that, the Colonel lapses into a shaking fit of grating, black laughter -- one that echoes all around the Beehive and back again.

(SPYGOD is listening to Little Russian (Tchaikovsky) and having a Hrenovuha, because !@#$ you.