Accidents Happen

ACCIDENTS HAPPEN






    The snow fell quietly, wrapping a muffling blanket over the world. Jack Corey’s footsteps made hard, scrunchy noises as walked.
    Even the sound of his footsteps and the harshness of his breath seemed to fade quickly as they railed against the suffocating wall of winter.

    Jack Corey was going to make the biggest mistake of his life in a few hours.

    But for now, all he knew was how cold he was, and how late he was to his lunch meeting. He hurried on down the busy street, passing within inches of people, who seemed like Jack Corey didn’t even exist.


    Jack stirred his soup while the snow melted off his shoulders. He knew he should take off his coat, but he couldn’t shake the cold.
    “Jacky-boy?”
    “Mm? Yeah. I was just thinking.”
    “About…. Margaret?”
    “Yeah.”

      “You really need to give her up, pal,”
      “I know.”
      “You’ll always have Laura. She’ll never leave you.”
    “Not as long as she lives, which…… should be… at least five more years or so.”
    “Right. Always look on the positive side. Now can we look over these figures? I’ve got an appointment after this.”

    “Yeah, sure. I’m sorry.”
    “You’re always sorry.”
    “No, I’m not. It’s just polite, that’s all.”
    “Fine, fine. Look, if these earnings projections are accurate within, say, five percent, this could be big. Then again, if they’re out of whack by say… I dunno, seven points, then we could be looking at a complete reversal of the market trends. Like back in ’06, look what happened to the… Jack, I’m losing you.”
    “Sorry, I drifted out for a sec.”
    “Well, can you drift back in? You’re late, I’m going to be later, and it sucks. Okay?”
    “Yeah, okay. No problem.”
      “Okay. Where was I? Ah. Current market trend dictates that at today’s levels, the combined sustainable output, financially speaking, of our investments is-”
      “What’re you doing after this?”
    “Huh?”
    “After this. Your appointment. Where are you going?”
    “Jack, you’re hopeless, you know that?”
    “Yeah, Richie, you’ve been telling me that since we met.”

    “So, where are you going?”


    “I’m going to play golf.”
    “Golf?”
    “Golf. You know, the game with the little white ball, big shiny clubs, whack! Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, you know…. golf?”
    “In this weather?”
    “No, Jack, not in this weather. Inside.”
    “Sounds boring. Like putt-putt?”
    “No, on a simulator.”
    “How do you simulate golf?”
    “There’s this screen, it shows you the course, and you hit-you know what? Forget it. I’ll have my secretary send this stuff over Monday.”
    “Monday? What about our meeting?”
    “Our meeting is going over like a fart in church. Get your act together, and call me on Monday once you’ve gone over the numbers.”
    “I’m sorry, Richie.”
      “See what I mean?”
      “See what?”

    “I’ll talk to you on Monday. Goodbye, Jack.”


    Jack sat for a long time with his rapidly-cooling soup, thinking about everything and nothing at all. Finally, he paid and left, leaving a puddle of water on the floor beneath his boots.
    He should return to his office, with as much work as he has on his plate. But Jack Corey headed into the snow in the direction of his apartment.

    That was his first mistake. It wasn’t his biggest, but if he’d gone back to work, he wouldn’t have made the big one.
    But then again, if you knew you about the biggest mistake you’d ever make, you probably wouldn’t take the steps to get you to that point, would you?

    Jack Corey walked home.

   

    The floorboards outside of his apartment always squeaked and knocked. The first few months Jack had lived there, he could swear people were always standing outside of his door, perhaps waiting for him to open it and scare him, or hide out of view of his peephole and surprise him, like in those horror movies. ‘
    Eight solid months of living there had cured Jack of that notion. He had gotten used to his downstairs neighbor, a large, flamboyant black man, banging on his ceiling to get Jack to stop making noise.
    The neighbor had filed a complaint, and Jack had to take the landlord, let her in (after cleaning up his place, which looked like a bomb hit it), and have her listen to the floorboards creak and bang. This seemed to settle things, and Jack settled into apartment life, and worked his ass off at his job, which turned up some mixed results.

    Jack walked in and brushed the snow off his coat before hanging it up. He shook his boots off, and undid his tie.

    Something rustled in the dark corner of his bedroom.
    “Laura? Honey, I’m home.”
    The rustling grew louder, and something fell to the floor with a muffled thud.
    Jack shrugged, and went into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and plucked out a beer, the yellow light of the refrigerator casting his apartment in a stark, surreal glow.

    Jack turned around and took a step toward the counter, and something had him by the leg. He went down hard, swearing. A dozen hard needles seemed to punch into his shin and calf muscle.
    He reached down with his free hand and caught a handful of coarse fur.
    “Dammit, Laura, I’m not your personal scratching post! Piss off!”
    He pulled back hard, and suddenly his leg was free. Gasping he stood up and shambled over for the kitchen light. Somehow, he had not managed to loose his beer.

    He flicked on the light, revealing his bare kitchen, and a large, very angry gray cat.
    Jack leaned down and jabbed a finger at the cat.
    “You know you’re not supposed to do that, missy.”
    The cat’s eyes widened, then she stepped forward and licked the tip of Jack’s finger.
    Sighing, Jack began to pet the cat, who emitted a deep, buzzing purr.
    After a while, he stood up and drained his beer. Untucking his shirt, he looked through his fridge for dinner. Laura meowed pitifully behind him.
    “Laura, real people eat first. Then pretend people get to eat.”
    Laura apparently found several flaws in this philosophy. She meowed louder, and butted her head against jack’s legs.
    “Okay, okay. I got it.” Jack closed the fridge and got some dry cat food from the container under the sink, and plopped it into Laura’s bowl.
    The cat leapt over to the food, and began devouring it eagerly.
    “I wish my food tasted that good.”
    Laura answered by devouring her food in a comical series of slurps, gulps, and crunches, then looked up to him as if she wanted more.
    Jack sighed. “Maybe I’ll get a pizza.”
    Laura meowed, and headed for the litterbox.


    Jack was fishing his phone out of his pocket when it rang unexpectedly.  He almost dropped it. 
    “Hello?”
    “Jack, my man, that was fast. You expecting a call there, Mr. popularity?”
    “No, I was just ordering a pizza.  Who is this, Richie?”
    “Do I sound like some stiff prick you work with?  This is Matt, man.  Remember college?  Captain Insano, remember?”
    Jack didn’t really member too much of college.  Most nights he had passed out on someone else’s couch, apocalyptically trashed.  What he remembered about Matt from college was that he had an inhuman tolerance for alcohol, and usually went to sleep in some co-ed’s bed, while Jack got the couch, alone.
    He forced a smile into his voice.  “Oh, sure, buddy, I just didn’t recognize you.”
    On the other end of the line Matt laughed.  “Yeah, right.  You’re drunk already, aren’t you?”  Jack could hear the good-time mirth in his old friend’s voice, as if college wasn’t already a decade in the past and receding fast in the rearview.
 
    “Um, no, I just-” Jack looked down at the beer in his hand.  “I just cracked my first cold one.”
    Matt chuckled.  “Three-thirty on a workday?  You old dog, you haven’t changed!”
    Jack shook his head, aware what a stupid gesture it was.  He had changed, he was early for work most days, and usually gave it one-hundred and ten percent when he was on the job.  It was just, some days…
    “Well, hey buddy, I can’t spend all day on the phone,” Matt was saying.  “But I’m coming over.”
    Jack was shocked.  “What, tonight? Do you even know where I live?”
    “Sure, dummy.  I Googled ya!”
    “Can you do that?”
    “Ummm, yeah.  I just did.  Anyways, I got to do some running around, but I’ll be over at seven or eight.  You order a pizza, and I’ll bring the brew.  We’ll catch up on old times, how’s that sound?”
    “It uh, sounds-”
    “Great, I know!  Look, man, I can’t chitchat all day, I’ll see you tonight, buddy!”  Matt hung up.  Jack stared at his cell phone.

    “Maybe this is just what I need,” he said out loud.  Laura shuffled out of the bathroom and regarded him with large yellow eyes.  Jack had a momentary flashback to a party in his senior year where Matt had ended up dancing across the makeshift bar, downing beers with his pants off.

    He shook his head.  “Or maybe this is the worst idea in the world.”
    Jack Corey had no idea how right he was about that.

    He downed his beer in one gulp and stripped down and got in the shower.  After cleaning up he resolved to go out and get a few frozen pizzas.  They were cheaper, he reasoned, and he could throw them in the oven when Matt got here.  If there were two things Matt was known for, it was his ability to eat and his complete inability to arrive anywhere on time. 



    He waited outside in the snow, the cold and the wet snow piling up on his shoulders bothering him not at all.  The man he had once been had hated the cold, but that man was long gone.
    Now he spent most of his time waiting.  Gone were the reckless hunting days of his rebirth.  They had been replaced by a stalker’s careful instinct.  Although his newfound caution meant that he fed less, it made each meal much more…satisfying.  Each victim was picked with meticulous care, tracked for days, sometimes even weeks or months, depending on the situation.
    And the feeding… it was like a sexual conquest after a particularly long and arduous courtship.  Although he had enough time for amorous adventures aplenty, he preferred his method of satisfaction to the ephemeral fleetness of love, or the base pleasures of sex.

    Not that he was above such things, and when they happened, he quite enjoyed the pleasures of the human world.  The pleasures he would have considered to be the pinnacle of human physical experience, which paled in comparison to his appetites now were still enticing, from time to time.

    Like tonight.  He had stalked the blonde for over two weeks now, and mostly out in the open.  They had shared glances in a few of the trendy local cafés, and he had even bought her a few drinks at the ritzy bar she frequented after work.  Usually he stalked in the dark, but the man he had been had been good-looking and charismatic before he had turned, and now, with all the power and wisdom of his kind, his will was all but unopposeable.

    So he waited in the snow.  When she came home from work, she would see him with his warm smile, and she would remember that they had spent time together in the past.  He would help her remember, of course, with gentle hypnotic suggestions.  She would invite him in, and they would have dinner and wine.  The might even make love. 

    And then he would feed.  It was a pity that he could not take her with him, for if she could be brought to see reason, he believed that she would make a wonderful partner to explore immortality with.

    He sighed, knowing that such thoughts would never become reality.  The world was an evil place, the last thing it needed was more people like him.




    Jack hopped out of the shower and snatched up a towel.  Wrapping it around his skinny waist, he poked his head out of the bathroom door and checked the hallway.
    Stupid.  Stupid.  You know it’s stupid.  Still, Matt had possessed a weird ability to pick locks, and had a habit of sneaking into someone’s room and scaring the bejeezus out of them when they were leaving the bathroom or their bedroom.

    The apartment was empty, except for Laura, who was snoozing in Jack’s easy chair.  He threw on some clothes and headed for the door.
    “Wallet.  Never leave home without it,” he said to himself and returned to the bathroom to fish his wallet out of his crumpled work slacks.  Glancing at his watch, he hastened to the door.  Matt would be here before too long, and if there was a line at the grocery store, Jack would be getting an angry phone call from Matt, as to why the guest has to stand outside and wait for the host to get home.

    Jack locked his apartment door and raced outside.  He disdained the use of his car for short trips, preferring to stretch his legs, even in the cold weather.
    He almost ran over the man outside.  At the last second, Jack jinked to one side and missed the guy who was just standing there. 
    “Watch it,” he hissed as he went by, although he knew inside that he should watch where he was walking.  He turned to look at the guy for a brief second.  Tall, dark and handsome is how his mother would have described him, but the stranger gave jack a case of the willies. 
    Jack was halfway to the store before he realized that the man’s shoulders had been covered with at least three inches of snow.  The guy had to be freezing out there!  Jack shook his head as he walked into the local grocery store.  The guy didn’t look homeless…
    The massive line at the pair of open cash registers pushed such thoughts out of his mind, and Jack Corey sighed as he hurried to get his frozen pizzas and get back home before next Tuesday.

    He had been spotted.  This alone wasn’t that disconcerting, but the fact that the man who had left the apartment building seemed to see him, really see him was.  If the man left on foot, then he wasn’t going too far. Humans never did, their low tolerance for discomfort always brought them scurrying back indoors to their climate-controlled dwellings.

    He supposed he should go inside as well.  He could make himself almost invisible using the simple glamour he had mastered decades ago, but it seemed that once someone had seen him once, they were able to see him more easily, despite his glamour.  Besides, he reasoned, there were more places to hide inside, even in a bare hallway.

    He ascended the cement steps to the apartment complex slowly, giving himself time to vaporize all the snow and water that had accumulated on his body.  If anyone had been looking, they would have seen a man in a long overcoat wreathed in steam climbing the steps to an apartment building.  But that would be silly, he mused with a small smile creasing his lips.  People don’t steam.  Anyone who saw would assume it was just venting from the dryers downstairs steaming up the frosty air.  There was always a reasonable explanation for such things.

    He paused as he reached the door, running his hands over it without touching it.  His kind was cursed with what his old master had called the “gentleman gene,” but this was a public door.  He could sense the essence of numerous repairmen, mailmen, friends of residents, and a small handful of people who were just lost.  He had no need to knock, or ask permission to enter. 
    With a smirk, he pushed open the door and headed upstairs to wait for his prey.

    Jack Corey hurried back.  It had taken forever to get through the line of people, and he had to wait almost ten minutes for an old lady to count out exact change for her groceries.  Jack had wanted to scream.  He realized he was also quite nervous about seeing his old friend from college.
    What if we have nothing to talk about?  What if we’ve grown so far apart that this will just be an awkward waste of time?

    These thoughts dogged Jack Corey all the way home.  He moved as fast as the ice and snow would allow. 
    By the time he made his way into his apartment complex, he had forgotten all about the stranger outside.


      He could feel someone coming.  He closed his eyes and attempted to pick the newcomer’s signature out from those who bustled to and fro in this area of the city.  He got a fleeting glimpse of a tall man hurrying, skidding across the ice-slick pavement.  Some of his kind could see signatures in near-real time, but he couldn’t.  At least not yet.  That meant whoever was coming was closer than he appeared.  He felt a strange tickle in his spine, and he thought he knew just who it was.
    He thought it was the guy who had almost knocked him over earlier.  If that was the case, then he was in trouble.  He could head down the other staircase at the other end of the hallway and cut his losses for today, but his hunger put an end to that notion.  He didn’t feed often or indiscriminately, but when the hunger took hold, it got him by the throat, so to speak.

    If he wasn’t going to leave, then he would do the next best thing.  Making a sign of the glamour, he flipped up to the ceiling as if gravity didn’t exist.  He hung on with long talons, and muttered the last incantations of the glamour.  His body flickered for a second, and then he was the same off-cream color of the ceiling, his clothes and all.

    Moments later, Jack Corey burst through the downstairs door and sprinted upstairs to his level, his frozen pizzas making the plastic bags in his fists crinkle.  He gained the top of the stairs and paused for a moment, catching his breath.  He often spent an extra minute or two outside his apartment, in hopes of exchanging a word or two with the gorgeous blonde that lived next door. 
    He waited for a moment, knocking snow from his boots and shifting his groceries from hand to hand.  It struck him suddenly.  It was like a punch to the kidney.  It was the feeling that he wasn’t alone.

    He hung there, motionless, waiting for Jack Corey to go into his apartment.  So he could get on with his hunt.  He would have no problem with killing this man; in fact he thought he would rather relish his death, after the way the man had talked to him on his way past.
    The problem with that was that nowadays, murders never went unreported, and few times went unsolved.  It would definitely put a damper on his plans for the blonde, maybe even cancel them altogether.
   
    He did not have long to decide.  The man called Jack Corey was turning around in the hallway; he had apparently already felt his presence.  In another moment, Jack might do what humans often did when confronting the unknown that they could not explain; start looking in places that they knew no-one could be.  And that search would lead Jack to him.  He had a moment to think before jack turned his eyes toward the ceiling.  Even though time to him was a mutable thing, he did not have long. 
    Resigning himself to prolonging the game, he closed his eyes and sent himself away.

    Jack cast his eyes around the hallway and saw no one.  Still, he felt that someone was watching him intently, perhaps maliciously.  Slowly, feeling like a fool, he glanced up at the ceiling.  For the barest second he thought he saw the outline of someone in a long overcoat stuck to the ceiling, spread-eagled.  Then the figure was gone, and Jack felt a stab of idiocy lance through him.

    “It’s not like Matt can cling to the walls,” he muttered as he turned to his door and unlocked it.
    Still, he hurried inside and flung his coat on his easy chair, startling Laura, who meowed ungratefully as she hopped off the chair.  She shook her head back and forth briskly, snapping her ears like bullwhips.  She licked a paw as she considered Jack.  He was pale, but her human often came home upset, this was nothing new.

    Jack shook himself as well, and then turned ad went into his tiny kitchen.  He fired up the oven, and took the pizzas out of the bag.  He flipped the boxes over a few times until he found the cooking directions, and adjusted the oven’s temperature control to cook the pizzas to what the boxes proclaimed would produce a crispy crust.
    He couldn’t remember if Matt liked crispy crust, but he certainly did.  And it stopped the center from being all mushy.
      As he fiddled with the oven, Laura trotted over to the door.  She sniffed the doorjamb, raising herself as high as her back legs would take her.  Cats had an intrinsic knowledge of spaces and barriers, and Laura knew the small apartment by heart.  She sniffed busily, her fur rising slightly as she caught trace scents of something unnatural.  Still, whatever it was seemed to be gone, and had not touched the barrier her human used to enter and exit the apartment.
    She rubbed up against the doorjamb in what seemed like a random pattern, sealing the door with the scents and weak magic of her kind, then gave the doorjamb one last appreciative sniff.  Whatever was outside should stay outside, and unless her master was a complete moron and broke the wards she put up, they should have a nice evening in. 
    Her nostrils flared as she trotted back to the living room.  The oven could mean many things, but all of them were tasty.  Her human could usually be counted on for a few tidbits of people food, at the very least he was a messy eater, and tended to drop crumbs that she could hoover up later.  Her human often called her a treat hoover, and she heartily agreed.  She had a nose like a basset hound for food, and a mouth that could suck up even the biggest chunks of food in an instant.
    Content that the night would bring a bounty of food, she folded her legs underneath her and began to doze, one eye occasionally opening a bit to gaze at the door.
    Her master was not stupid, but sometimes he needed looking after.

    His earlier anxiety forgotten, Jack whistled while he cooked.  Had Laura been gifted with precognition, like so few of her kind, she would have bitten into Jack’s hamstring like the neck of a fieldmouse, and shaken it like crazy.  Jack would undoubtedly scold, maybe even beat her, but it would be better than what was to come.
    As it was, she was just a common housecat, and much of the skills of her ancestors had been bred out of her.  She was as oblivious as her human to what would happen soon.
    The oven warmed the small apartment, and despite her watchful instincts, Laura the cat was soon sound asleep.
   
    Ten more minutes and the pizzas would be done.  Jack intended to start without Matt, and maybe have a few beers himself to ease the tongue when his forgotten friend showed up.


    He walked in a land clouded with mist and dotted with dead, denuded trees.  He climbed a small hill, and put his hand on ancient, decayed bark that was as hard as stone.  He didn’t know if his away was the same as the rest of his kind, he only knew that when he left reality, he came here. He had explored this place for what had seemed like days, and he had never seen the end of it.  It was entirely possible that this place had no end, that it was simply a limitless placeholder for him when he switched worlds.  He had heard that some of his kind could use places like this to travel across what he considered the real world, that they could go in at one place and end up somewhere else when they came out. 
    If this was true, he didn’t know.  He had always come out at the same place he had gone in.  But then, some of his kind had lived for thousands of years.  He hadn’t, yet.  The powers he wielded would astound a mortal, was it really so hard to believe that there were secrets to his unlife that he hadn’t unlocked yet?  Ruefully, he shook his head. 

    Just how long had he been in here? Was it safe to come out?  He wasn’t sure.  Time flowed differently here; sometimes minutes were hours, and vice versa, in the real world.  He pulled the essence of this place into himself, trying to divine how long he had been here, and frowned as the mist revealed nothing. 

    When he was younger, he used to spend a great deal of time underwater.  He borrowed his father’s waterproof watch, and used it to time how long he spent underwater.  On hot summer days, he would swim down to the bottom and hold onto the dock support and wait.  After a while, if he stayed down long enough, time would cease to have any meaning to him as his brain starved for oxygen.  He would feel like he could stay down there forever.  And as his brain cut off all unnecessary systems, he could stay down there for minutes on end.  The kind of stuff Navy SEALs did, he could do from the comfort of his dock, at his small crescent-shaped beach.

    That was what it felt like.  Dull, numbing, timeless.  He sucked his cheeks for a moment and made his decision.  He closed his eyes and mind and slipped into his own shadow, an improbable thing in this land of mist.  As he passed between worlds, he reminded himself to hang on to the ceiling.

    The oven buzzed and Jack went to the oven and opened it.  The warm aroma of pizza wafted out and filled the small kitchen.
    Jack grinned and grabbed an oven mitt.  He pulled out both pizzas and set them on the cutting boards he had set on the stove.  He had learned early in life that you don’t cut a fresh pizza right away, you let it sit for a minute, so all the sauce and cheese could have a chance to settle and do their thing.
    He opened his fridge and grabbed a couple of beers.  Popping the top on one of them, he took a hefty swig, eying the pizzas appreciatively.
    Maybe this was just what the doctor ordered, he thought to himself.  A few beers with an old friend and some good pies.  He downed the first beer in one massive guzzle, and reached for the second.

    He was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

    He twisted the top off of the beer and took another great swig.  The beer seemed to taste better than anything he had ever tasted.  It wetly coated his insides, and even though he had only taken a few swigs, it seemed to give him a nice pleasant buzz.  He took another gulp and set the beer on the counter with a small smile creasing his face.  Jack Corey opened one of his kitchen drawers and began fishing for a pizza cutter.

    He dropped from the ceiling without a sound.  He wasn’t sure how long he had been away, but that meddlesome idiot had gone inside, he could sense him, cooking with a smile on his face.  From what he could tell, the man Jack Corey was enjoying some booze.  He envied him, but only for the briefest instants.  If all went well, he would soon be enjoying pleasures that Jack Corey could only dream of.

    He stepped forward and placed his pale hands on the door his prey lived her life behind.  He couldn’t tell if she was home, her scent faint and indistinct.
    With a weary sigh, he slid his hands down the doorjamb and tried the faux brass doorknob.  Even though it seemed like it was open, it wouldn’t budge.

    This was something that he could never seem to get over, no matter how many times he played the game.  It seemed so simple before, in his old life.  Doors opened when you turned the knob, unless they were locked, of course.  Now, with all of his power, he was reduced to this, both hands clenched in a death grip on a cheap metal knob, the blue veins standing out in his pale flesh, his teeth bared in exertion.

    Finally, he gave up and made peace with who and what he was.  No matter what Hollywood had gotten wrong about his kind, they got one thing right.  He could not enter a private dwelling uninvited.
    He took a second to compose himself and resettled his facial features.  He remembered the set of his cheekbones, the cant and color of his eyes, even the shade of his hair when the light hit it.  In one second, he became the image of the man he had presented to the blonde those weeks ago.
    He affixed a small smile to his lips and knocked on the door.

    Jack Corey was on his third beer and about as many smiles.  He cut the pizzas like a surgeon, making neat individual slices.  He set aside the cutter and grabbed another beer.  He popped the top and took another chug.  Grinning at the pizzas, he wondered how he could think this was a bad idea.  His old friend Matt, pizza, beer, maybe a movie or two on Netflix, this was going to be a great night.

    He heard a knock at the door.  Either that or it was somebody banging around on the loose floorboards outside his apartment, either way that meant that Matt was here.

    Dimly, he could hear Laura shake herself awake and thunder across the floor of his small apartment.  She always a sucker for visitors, Jack Corey thought as he took another chug of beer.  Wiping his mouth of suds, he made his mistake.

    “Come in,” he said.


    He paused outside the door for a moment.  In all his time, nothing like this had ever happened.  He pressed his handsome face against the door of his prey, but could discern nothing.  He tried her door again, just to make sure that her boyfriend or someone else hadn’t invited him in.  It was no good; the door remained impassible to him.

    He stepped to the side and placed his pale hands on Jack Carver’s door.  With no effort, he turned the knob and stepped inside Jack’s apartment.

    Laura charged toward the door, but it was too late.  Even if she had been one of the Elders, it was unlikely that she could stop him from entering.  Still, she was what she was, and she stood in front of the intruder with her hackles raised.  He looked down at her as he shut the door casually.  With all the force of her breed, she forced her eyes into his, and saw two black pits that leapt with dark fire.
    With a yeowl, she shot backwards, her gray fur making her a puffy ball of cat as she scooted into reverse into her human’s bedroom.  Whatever was going to happen here, it was far beyond what her tiny powers could stop.
    Her human was just going to have to fend for himself, there was no other way.  Whatever he was posed no threat to her kind on a good day.  If she crossed him now, he would definitely come for her, though.
    As she scooted into Jack’s room, she could hear him greet his new visitor from the kitchen.  It was all so wrong.
    “Matt, you old dog, how are ya?”  Jack asked as he rounded the corner of the kitchen with a beer in his hand.  It was his fourth.  He had a distinct recollection of that.  He also felt that whatever he remembered of this life, it wouldn’t matter much in the next few minutes.

    “I’m not Matt,” the visitor said.  His tone was even, almost pleasant.
    Jack wiped his mouth with his forearm, his beer dangling by his fingers in his left hand.  Looking at the stranger, he remembered the guy he had almost knocked over on his way to the store.
    “Hey, man, I’m sorry I almost hit you earlier,” he began.  Somehow, he knew it was futile.  This was nothing to do with almost running this guy over while in a hurry.  Jack had only to take a look into this guy’s eyes to know that.

    The stranger waved his hands at Jack in a dismissive gesture.  “It’s alright,” he said.  “I’ve never had this happen before,” he said with a slight smile on his face.
    Jack shook his head as if trying to wake himself from a dream.  “You mean almost being run over by an asshole in a hurry?”  What is he even doing in here?
    The stranger shook his head.  He even laughed a little.  “No, Jack,” he said with a sigh, “I’ve never come to a stranger’s house by an accidental invitation before.”
    Jack’s spine stiffened a bit.  Here we go.  Just when this night was going to be great, I have some douchebag in my apartment spouting gibberish!  Jack waved his hand in a dismissive motion.  “Well, now that you have, can you please leave?  I’m expecting company.”
    The stranger seemed to take that in stride.  “No.”
    “What do you mean, no?”  Jack sidled out of the kitchen, moving toward the hallway and his bedroom. 
    The stranger folded his hands in front of him in and smiled in oddly placating gesture.  He seemed to sniff the air, as if looking for something.  Finally, he smiled and nodded, and turned to Jack.
    “Whatever am I going to do with you, Jack Corey?”
    Jack stopped, wide eyed.  “How do you know my name?”
    “There’s quite a bit that I know,” the stranger said, smiling.
    Jack was dumbfounded.  What was this bullshit?
    “I have a gun,” he said.  It was the first thing he could think of.
    The stranger sniffed the air again.  His head canted back and forth on his neck, and his arms rose and waved back and forth as if he was conducting an orchestra. 
    Finally, he shook his head.  “No you don’t.  If you did, I could smell the gun oil.  No, Jack, the most dangerous thing you own is a cat.”  He smiled, and Jack’s blood ran cold.

    It had to get down to this eventually.
    “What do you want?”  Jack asked.  His throat seemed to dry out as he spoke the words.  He surprised himself by taking a swig of his beer.  The cold suds washed down the dry gulch of his throat and landed in the pit of his stomach with a sickening squelch.  It seemed like all of his senses were heightened as he realized that death was possibly very, very near.

    The stranger shook his head again and smiled, the grin making him look suddenly boyish and harmless.
    “You know, I’m not really sure what I want.  I know what I wanted, but she’s not home.”

    “Who? You mean Courtney?”
    The stranger closed his eyes and pictured the blonde.  She was even more delicious now that he had a name to go with the face… and the body.
    “Yes.  Courtney.”
    “You were going to kill her?”
    “After a fashion, yes.”  That smile again.

    Jack felt a small spring of rage well up inside of him.  That anyone should lay a hand on Courtney! Besides, this guy hardly even knew her!

    “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jack said.  He hoped he sounded menacing.
      The stranger sighed, as if this was all a bore.  “Jack, don’t be stupid.  There’s nothing you can do to me.  I think you already know that, though.”
    Jack looked down at the bottle in his hand.  It was half full, the halo of bubbles ringing the inside of the bottle fizzing away happily.

    Jack Corey looked the stranger in the eye. 
    He spoke very slowly.  “I can do this.”

    Jack Corey cocked his arm back as if he was on the pitching mound.  His body was taken back a dozen years to a bright sunlit day, one of the last of his late teens.  His body was in its prime, and he had been one hell of a pitcher.  Bringing forward all the forgotten strength and speed of his youth, Jack threw the bottle in a perfect fastball pitch that would take the stranger’s head off.  As the bottle left Jack’s hand, it was doing better than ninety miles an hour.  Foam and beer shot out of the open mouth of the bottle, making it look like a brown rocket sailing across his living room.

    Jack hadn’t moved that fast in a dozen years, maybe even in his life.  He knew in his heart that he had never thrown a pitch that perfect in his entire life.

    As good as he was, he was still only human.
    The stranger moved so fast he made Jack look like he was standing still.  His reactions were automatic.  No one had lifted a hand to him in over five decades and lived.  He ducked under the bottle and was on Jack before the bottle had even crossed half the room.  With a roar he extended the talons of his right hand and plunged them into Jack Corey’s chest.
    Jack collapsed with the stranger on top of him as the bottle hit the far wall and shattered.  Jack gasped and choked, but couldn’t speak.  The stranger glowered down at him as he pulled his talons from Jack’s gut.

    “You shouldn’t have done that,” the stranger whispered.  He eyed Jack disapprovingly, then licked the blood from his fingertips, which now resembled human fingers. 
    “You might have lived through this, man.  Instead you threw your life away.”  He shook his head sadly as Jack choked on his own blood.
    “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, yeah?”  The stranger leaned close.  “I’m not gonna drink your blood. But give me something.”  Jack choked and wheezed.  He shook his head and coughed, splattering a thin fan of blood across the stranger’s overcoat. “Give me your memories.”  He leaned close to Jack and held Jack’s right eye open.  Squinting his own right eye, he spoke the words his kind used to take what they wanted.  Jack shuddered and coughed, and then lay still as the stranger finished up.

    The stranger wiped absently at the blood and gazed pityingly down at Jack.  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  But hey, accidents happen,” he said with a grin.  Suddenly he looked toward Jack’s room and bared his teeth.  He hissed, and somewhere in the dark, Laura scuttled deeper into the shadows.

    He looked down at Jack.  “Nice cat.”  He held Jack Corey’s stare until the light went out of the man’s eyes.
    The stranger stepped out of the apartment with a sigh.  He closed the door to Jack Corey’s apartment and leaned over to Courtney’s door.  The door was still locked to him, and there was no trace showing that she had came or went in the past few moments.  Sighing, he headed for the stairs.

    Life’s full of little disappointments, he chided himself.  He was almost knocked sprawling by a man sprinting full speed up the stairs.  The man was weighed down with a heavy cardboard case that clanked with the sound of full bottles.

    He rounded on the newcomer with a snarl which made the man stop.  He slowly turned at the top of the stairs and looked apprehensively down at the stranger.

    The stranger wracked his brain and the new memories he had just acquired.

    His face lit up with an inhuman smile as he put the pieces together.
    “Be careful, Matt.  Accidents can happen to anyone.”

    The stranger whirled out the door and into the night, leaving Matt standing, dumbfounded at the top of the stairs to Jack Corey’s apartment.