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A jar of nothing

The ruins loomed at the edge of a sprawling, self-similar suburb. Boxy three-bedrooms painted in the same shades of rust, grey and olive marched endlessly away in all directions from the massive and crumbling edifice of red bricks. Like a factory out of the world wars, the building looked like a cross between a fortress and a red stone steamship. Three majestic smokestacks rose from behind the shabby facade. The roofline was crenellated with age, looking as though the place had been bombed out. The bricks had fallen in large bites to the rubble and debris below over many years. This exposed the bones of the old building, iron girders bracketing fragments of nighttime sky. I slipped between two identical houses through dewy grass and up the embankment behind. There was a sagging chainlink fence haphazardly thrown around the property, but even this token gesture lay flat against the rubble where it sagged too far between bent poles. I stepped over it at one of these places and easily hop
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A panic on campus

A decision needed to be made, now is the time for something to be done. I stood in the center of a wide, circular, concrete plaza. I had the feeling that this was a high-school, but it could have been a junior college of some sort. This pristine expanse of variegated grey was broken only by precisely geometric section lines. From the sky I bet it looked like a compass. Nary a weed or scrap of litter in sight. At the cardinal points of this quad area were the corners of four tallish buldings. Four stories of smooth cement broken only by a single band of tall windows for each floor. These windows were all a surreal blue to gold to white gradient like in a marker renderings or a cheap color manga. The sky was blue, the midday sun white and high. I was just getting to wondering where everyone was when I remembered the Decision. The president was to make a speech today, about this time in fact. The soundbite taken from the last press conference with the guy leapt into my mind "A decisi

Chambers beneath the desert

The high, smooth concrete walls sent our footsteps echoing all the way up to the vaulted ceilings 50 or more feet above our heads. My companion was tall and thin, dark eyed and with curled dark hair that fell between her proud shoulders to the middle of her back. I had never been in this complex, deep beneath the California desert, but my friend wanted a guide with some actual drain time under his belt, and I was the only one she knew. We had been walking an hour or so before the walls opened into this vault. It was huge and well lit by sodium arc lamps on 15-foot squared steel posts. Conduit, steam pipes and industrial hose snaked across the walls and floor in a baffling network of rusty iron and dingy accordians of yellow rubber. This was unlike any storm-drain I had visited before, and I told the girl as much... This story is continued here

The Ranch House Murder

It started as a relatively mundane experience. While I had never been in this house before, it was familiar enough, a classic california ranch style with bright midday sun streaming through the open parallel blinds. The girl wasn't there, and I'd be damned if I could remember who she was, but there was an implicit urgency palpable in the humid air that I protect her. I was armed, I realized. The weight of the small firearm unbalanced my leather, pulling it in an awkward way down my left side. I shifted the coat on my shoulders to enable free movement through the hall. It was then that I realized she had killed him, she was perfectly justified in doing so, he deserved every blow she had bestowed on his skull. He was violent and resentful. I couldn't recall his face, but that was hardly my concern as I had never even seen him before. She would be back soon to ask me what we would do next. I assumed she was disposing of the body, maybe trying to do some shopping in the lull be