Dispossessed

The spike in adrenaline that accompanied every previous eviction, bankruptcy, and foreclosure did not offer the same exhilaration on this occasion. Walter didn't like the feeling of being out of control.

"You can't do this to me. I'm the one who decides."

"You have ten minutes to gather your belongings and vacate the premises. I recommend contacting a lawyer too."

Walter stormed to his desk, fuming at the injustice. He saw the eyes following him and wondered which of his colleagues was behind this betrayal. They were all guilty of the same illegal bookkeeping errors.

He was simply the scapegoat.

The Mirror Code

The Resistance, with patience and guile, communicated only through a secret symbolic code, made unbreakable because of the need to use a mirror to make sense of it. After several decades of quietly accepting the tyrannical rule of the state, this evening would mark the beginning of the revolution.

Their simulators had predicted a zero percent chance of failure. Unfortunately, the Authority were waiting for them. It didn't make sense. The plan had been broken down into small pieces and nobody knew enough to betray them.

It was only later that they learned about the hidden cameras inside the mirrors.

Hyena

The boy, prescient and wise, child of a dove, knew this day was coming, when the neighborhood man would tear into his school and wave his weapon and laugh like a hyena and cut down everything that stood in his path. The man yearned to be young but lived encaged in the zoo of lost innocence, and given arms and a rare safari he had to take lives, lives that betrayed his by existing where he could no longer be. So the boy absented himself on the dreaded day, warned the principal, who wouldn't listen, watched the news, and cried.

From Guest Contributor, Curt Klinghoffer

What Happened To Richard

Selena had little choice but to go back with Stan. She would just tell Richard that she'd gotten scared and didn't want to get caught in the middle of a war. Her leaving had nothing to do with her having betrayed the both of them to a competing crime boss. Why would he ever think that?

Selena slid into the Cadillac and told Stan to drive. "Don't try anything, or Richard will be even angrier than he already is."

"Richard's dead. I shot him myself."

Selena knew that if she didn't get away quickly, she'd be next.

Part Six

A Darkness Of Mind

Drake's fate was determined the day his father was killed.

Ghosts do not often commit murder. They haunt. They instill fear. They might so inhabit a person's psyche as to drive her to suicide. But actual slaughter is rare.

Drake’s father was murdered by a ghost, and on that day Drake became a ghost hunter.

He inhabited the darkness. He learned about betrayal and lonely hearts and the isolation of eternity. He drank in whispers and sang of misfortune.

He became a lost soul. So it was that upon his death, he knew that he himself would become a ghost.