Ain't Talkin'

By the time true night had set in the hunter had flicked in and out of the ether and Polkun county three times each. The winds tended to whistle less like hell when the sky was full dark, and Roche could draw on his cigarette without having to hold it in place with a finger lest it blow out of his mouth.

The ruins of the old city lay to the south end of Parmiskus where the peoples dumped their carts full of trash and unmentionable waste. The sand swallowed everything up eventually and as long as it was far enough out of sight it was out of mind enough for any old folk who still lives this close to the ethers edge.

Then again, the only things wretched enough to come crawling and living in these here ruins anymore were those so near death from their sins that they didn’t know no better, and those who were tempting death themselves.

Why a client would be awaiting him in this accused place could only be one thing, he not afraid to die, or what was hunting him was more frightening than death itself.

Roche picked over the husks of old automobiles stained a uniform color of oxidized iron and worn to a pearly luster by eons of blowing sand. Up-ended caskets of ancient buildings hung open like ribcages against the sky, their glassless windows yawning and whistling at the horizon. In an open expanse of slate-gray stone where a fountain had once stood Roche saw the figure of a small, stooped man chugging on a pipe and sipping at a bottle in a paper bag. He weighed enough to have not been swept away by the wind but not much else. A wide-brimmed cap was pulled low over his eyes and a kerchief tugged at his lower eyelids every time he removed it to swig off his bottle.

Roche approached him openly across the avenue and sat down a fair pace from the man down the stone bench, said nothing, and lit a smoke with deft hands against the wind.

Several minutes went by with neither man saying anything, Roche dragging on his cigarette and the client swigging at his bottle and lipping along the titty-end of his pipe through his kerchief.

“You’re the hunter I was looking for?”

“Aye.” Roche barked.

“They say you’re a man who can navigate the white, the ether, the blankness between worlds.”

“They say a lot of things.”

“Is it true?”

“For the right price it is.”

The man fished about in the canvas lining of his coat until he found a tied bundle of paper, tearing back one corner he revealed it to be a tightly bound packaging of many bank notes of a hefty sum.

“It’s all yours if you can get him back to me.”

“Him who?”

“My son. They came for him in the night.”

“Who did?”

“Men in dark jackets. They worked for the Corporation.” The man sipped at his bottle again, taking longer swigs.

“Why’d they come for your boy?”

“He. . .he did some work for them, I bet he found out more than he bargained for, and they took him away for it.”

“What’s so special about him you want him back so bad?”

“He’s all I got, mister. He’s the only son I got.”

“Know which way they went?”

“West into the sun, along the coast towards the Drying Plain, where the ether spills in like rain.”

“I know the place, how long ago they leave?”

“Two night past, now. Will you find him?”

Roche stood and snatched the parcel of bank notes from the mans hand before the man had though to react. The hunter was fast. He slid a calloused fingertip along the edge of the notes, eyeing them from under his hat. “This ought to get me started looking. And twice the amount when I return with him, or I plug both of you and leave to evaporate under the sun and sand until the ether swallows you up.”

“But I can’t-” The man started to argue, and his voice caught in his throat because when he went to grasp at the hunter’s sleeve to negotiate the man was gone. A small cherry ember from the tip of his cigarette winked brightly for half a moment before it died under the churning of the midnight sand, and that was all that was left of the hunter from Polkun County that night.

The man who’s son had gone missing at the hands of the Corporation turned his glass flagon up to the sky to finish off the brown stinking liquid inside but found that all that was left inside the bottle was cool sand and bits pf eroded metal from a world that had been left behind a century ago when the white started bleeding in from the framework of the universe.