Dark Mondays

PORTRAIT, WITH FLAMES

Shadow saw the fire from the Hollywood Freeway, and realized it must be near her apartment. Her heart beat faster all the way down the exit at Odin Street, and all along Highland Avenue, until she saw that it wasn’t her place after all. One of the apartment complex’s garages had caught, instead.

Leaping flames made the predawn gloom darker. The revolving lights of the fire engines strobed out across Highland and flashed on the windows of the apartments above. She had to park all the way up on Woodland Court, threading her way down the narrow winding steps between bamboo thickets to get to her door. She sniffed the air appreciatively: jungle perfumes of copa de oro and night-blooming jasmine mingled with smoke. It smelled like exotic danger.

Letting herself in, she checked the room with a glance. No intruders in her furnished studio sanctuary. A red light hit her like a splash of blood, flicked away. She went to the window and looked down.

She didn’t know whose garage was on fire, because she knew none of the other tenants. The firemen were mostly standing around watching it burn, playing water on the adjoining garages to keep them from catching too. These were all of clapboard, built in the 1920s and consequently accommodating nothing wider than a Model A. Fifty years on most of the tenants used them for storage, with the exception of one or two who drove Volkswagen Beetles.

Shadow lost interest. She went to her tiny refrigerator, crouched before it, and pulled out a half gallon of lowfat milk. Thirstily she drank from the carton, in long, sensual swallows. When she put it back, she was pleased that she didn’t feel hungrier. She was trying to avoid solid food. Shadow must always be lean.

Prior to reinventing herself as Shadow, her name had been Samantha, and she had lived with her accountant mother in a tiny, courtyard apartment over on Gramercy. Three years ago, when she’d turned eighteen, they had had a terrific fight over—well, everything, really—and parted company for keeps.

She’d dyed her mousy hair black, bought an all-black wardrobe at thrift stores, and lived for a while rent-free over on Franklin Avenue in a basement, in a sort of commune called Mohawk Manor by its members. She’d hung out at Oki Dog, wandered up and down the Strip, and danced at the clubs. But she made it a point never to join any crowd, never to need anyone. People weren’t worth the trouble.

Then one night a couple of large girls and a boy with a spiked collar got very drunk, and broke into her room and tried to get her to form a vampire coven with them. She had excused herself to go to the toilet, where she’d crawled out the bathroom window and run down the hill to the all-night market a block away. There she’d stayed until dawn, flipping through magazines.

And Shadow had given the stockroom clerk there a hand job, and secured for herself a job on the night shift bagging groceries. For a few other favors, he’d loaned her the money for a rental deposit on this place. Now she’d moved on to clerking at a bigger all-night market, much better pay. She’d been able to buy a cavernous old Chevy Impala, painted matte black over primer. It had an eight-track music system and the floor of the passenger’s side was littered with tapes of the Clash, of the Sex Pistols, of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Buzzcocks. Now she owned the night.

Stretching luxuriously, she threw herself down on her bed without getting undressed. The fire must be out; she heard the big engines rumbling away, like dinosaurs honking and bellowing in the dawn.

Shadow woke in the early afternoon. Remembering the fire, she sat up and groped under her bed for her camera. She took pictures, mostly images of building demolition or car wrecks, with the vague intention of becoming a freelance photographer. There were a couple of exposures left on the current roll. She put on sunglasses and slipped out with the camera, through the ivy and down the hill behind the building. She emerged behind the trash cans and stepped out in the glare of winter sunlight, and there before her was the blackened shell of the garage. Someone had already raked out most of the charred contents, and piled them in a heap. The remains of a mattress, a wooden bed frame, a chest of drawers, a bookcase: someone’s old life, all gone to charcoal and ash. She squinted at the pile and walked closer.

The cinders must still be warm. A kitten was perched on top of them, a tiny, orange torn like a live coal, blinking sleepily. Shadow, struck by the juxtaposition, lifted her camera. For a moment she hesitated; photographing a kitten seemed such a Samantha thing to do. She decided the irony inherent in the image made it okay, though, and took a picture.

The click of the shutter startled the kitten; it leaped from its nest and vanished in the weeds at the edge of the parking lot. She thought of following it, but that was definitely a Samantha thing to do. She used up the last exposure, going around to the front of the garage, to frame a shot with burnt beams and dangling wires against the pitiless white sky.

A week later Shadow picked up the developed pictures from the drugstore on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. Sitting in the Impala, she flipped through them. A car wreck, a dead dog with its intestines spread over two lanes of traffic, the bulldozers just closing in on the old Hollywood Motor Hotel… and here was the last shot, the burnt remains of the garage. She didn’t see the shot with the kitten, and went through the envelope again.

Here was the black pile of cinders: How had she missed it?

She frowned at the picture and held it up to the light. She had missed it because there was no sign of the kitten. There was, in approximately the same place in which it had been lying, a baby. No; a baby doll, must be. The kitten must have fled just before the shutter clicked. Yet, how could she have missed an image so wonderfully grim as a charred baby doll?

But there it was, unmistakable, the figure of a baby baked red by its bed of coals. Disturbing on so many levels. Maybe one of the free papers would buy it. She shrugged, putting the envelope in the Impala’s glove box, and drove to work.

The following afternoon, Shadow lost a little of the night.

She had risen early—maybe noon—and gone down to a poster shop in Artisan’s Patio that did enlargements. She dropped off the best pictures and their negatives, including the one with the doll, and ordered a set of eight by ten glossies. Then she drove out to Studio City and bought groceries at the Ralphs market: hair dye, lowfat milk, Flintstones vitamins. As she pulled out of the parking lot onto Ventura Boulevard she noticed the Impala was making a whining noise.

“Shit,” she muttered, and when the light changed she pulled into a 76 station on the other side of the intersection. The whine got louder.

“Sounds like you need transmission fluid,” said a man at the self-serve island. She shrugged, but went inside and bought a bottle.

She got on the freeway and for a while thought the problem was going to go away but the minute she exited at Odin the whine returned. It was worse; it became a groaning scream as she turned onto Highland, and now the Impala refused to change gears. Somehow she swung around the corner onto Camrose, but barely made it thirty feet uphill before the shrieking Impala slowed to a crawl and then lost any forward momentum.

“Shit!” She managed to steer to the curb as she coasted backward, and put on the emergency brake. She got out and walked around the car, bewildered and furious. The Impala was bleeding red syrup. Was that the transmission fluid she’d just added?

“Shit!” She kicked one of the Impala’s tires. The nearest gas station with a mechanic was all the way down on Highland and Franklin.

The mechanic wasn’t interested in helping her. She had to convince him she found him really, really attractive and would do anything, no really anything if he’d tow her car off the street and have a look at it. He made her prove it. She never minded hand jobs so much, because at least she was in control, and it was better than him touching her with his black-rimmed fingernails.

He roared with laughter when he saw the transmission fluid running down, and informed her, without even opening the hood, that she’d need a new transmission. He told Shadow what it would cost, and her heart sank; she hadn’t paid that much for the Impala in the first place. But she went with him when he towed it back to the gas station, and told him she’d be in to talk to him as soon as she’d gotten her groceries out of the back seat.

Hastily she threw her eight-track tapes into the grocery bag, rummaged around under the seats and found a sweater and thirty cents in change; she put the sweater on, pocketed the change, and was out of the car with her bag and over the wall behind the gas station in under a minute.

Fuming, Shadow took an indirect route home, along the alleys behind buildings, along back fences, and crossed over to Camrose behind the American Legion Hall. As she cut across the lot by the garages, she saw a little kid staring at her from the weeds, a boy, red-haired, maybe five or six. Was he lost? She ignored him and scrambled up the hill to her apartment.

Now Shadow had to walk down the hill every evening and catch the 81 bus, which ran to no schedule. If the driver felt like arriving early, he did, and made no effort to wait if Shadow hadn’t reached the bus stop yet. If he ran late, he might blow through the Camrose and Highland stop, leaving Shadow screaming obscenities from the bus bench.

“Doesn’t do any good,” said a man who gave her a ride out to the valley. “Anybody who matters has a car, honey. They figure only losers need the bus to go places, and if they don’t like it, who cares?”

She was worn out, with the long walks to and from the bus stop. She bought a box of Instant Breakfast, thinking it might give her more energy; but she worried about it putting weight on her, once she read its ingredients, and so about one night in three she went into the employees’ restroom at work and made herself puke it up again. Finally she bought a thermos and filled it with black coffee, and took it with her instead. It got her through the last couple of hours of her shift.

The photo enlargements came in and were impressive enough to be encouraging. Shadow bought a portfolio at the art supply store and spent a long day waiting in the outer offices of the art directors of the two local free weeklies. She was told she might want to look into getting a union card; she was told she needed to invest in professional equipment. Everyone agreed, though, that the shot with the baby doll in the ashes was striking.

“Because, you know why? It’s an illusion,” said the art director at the Hollywood Free Voice. She held it up to the light. “There’s no baby there at all, if you look at it closely. It’s just flames, or smoke or something. Really, that’s a hundred-to-one shot.”

But she didn’t offer to buy it.

By the time Shadow got out of the Hollywood Free Voice office, which was all the way down Santa Monica at Western, there seemed little point in going home to sleep for an hour. There was a coffeehouse by the bus stop; she went in and got an espresso, and sat at one of the tables with her portfolio, flipping once more through the pictures.

Was it a baby doll? It was blurred and soft-edged, but you could see the face and the arms, and at least one leg.

“Damn,” said someone, leaning over her. A hand reached down and pulled out the other shot, the one she’d taken of the burned-out garage. “Nice work. You an adjuster too?”

“What?” Shadow looked up at him. He was a little older than she, wore glasses, was smoking a cigarette.

“Are you a claims adjuster?”

“No,” she said.

“So, this is just, like, your hobby?” He sat down at her table uninvited. She sized him up: nice clothes. Long-sleeved shirt, narrow tie. He was coked up. He used the same black hair dye she did; she could smell it, under his aftershave.

“I’m breaking in,” she informed him.

“Good!” He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held out his hand. “Jon Horton. How’s it going?”

“Shadow,” she said, shaking his hand warily. He put both elbows on the table, took his cigarette out again and had a deep drag on it.

“See, I’m an insurance adjuster. I take a lot of shots like that but I can’t use them, isn’t that a bitch?”

“Use them for what?” she asked, wondering if he was gay.

“I’m publishing a magazine,” he said. “Negative Pulse. You’ve heard of it?”

“Maybe, yeah,” she lied.

“Poetry. Stories. Artwork. It’s, like, this necessary corrective for fucking hippie fantasy shit. We want stark images. Bitter truths, okay? We’re reminding the complacent bourgeois assholes out there that this is real life, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

He talked a lot more. He told her all about his life, what a rebel he was, how he’d run his high school paper and how angry he’d made the principal when he’d done an article exposing something—Shadow couldn’t quite tell what—but that was just the way he was, he was driven to challenge authority anywhere.

Eventually he came around to talking about Negative Pulse again, and how great it was going to be when they got an issue out.

“And, see, here’s the thing, Sandra: I think your picture would look great on the cover.” He leaned back, stubbed out his cigarette and raised his eyebrows at her.

“How much?” she said.

“What?”

“How much do you pay?”

“Well, eventually, I mean, we’re just getting started. It’s a communal effort on the part of all the artists involved, see? We’re all investing in Negative Pulse because we believe in it, we believe it’s like this spirit of the times, right? So we’re all making sacrifices to get it up and running.”

“Shit, look at the time,” said Shadow. “Josh, you know, that sounds great and everything but I really have to go catch a bus now, okay? Got a business card? I’ll call you sometime.”

Two nights later, as she walked up the hill from the bus stop, she thought saw the little boy again. He was standing back by the garages, staring at her. No; this must be his older brother. He had the same red hair, but appeared to be about ten. She looked in disbelief at her watch. It was 5 in the morning, and freezing cold. She almost spoke to him, but something in his stare creeped her out.

Shadow kept walking, wondering why he hadn’t figured out about cutting screens and breaking in through back windows; it had always worked for her, when she’d been locked out.

She went up to Woodland Court to avoid cutting past the garages, meaning to come down the front steps. Near the top, a dark figure stepped out of the bamboo.

“We meet again, little one.”

“Shit.” Shadow stopped. It was Julie, the queen of the coven from Mohawk Manor, in her white makeup and vampire cape. She must have gained thirty pounds since Shadow had seen her last. A figure moved out from behind a parked car, off to her left: Darlene, the other vampire girl. Shadow heard footsteps running up the hill behind her and turned to see Todd, the boy with the spiked collar, holding his cape out to either side as he ran.

“Yes; we have our ways of tracking you down. We really feel you ought to reconsider ooof ohjesuschrist!” said Julie, as Shadow hit her in the stomach with a well-placed Doc Marten. Julie collapsed, clutching her fat gut. Shadow whirled around and bashed Todd right between the eyes with her thermos, but didn’t wait to see the result; she dove under his cape and ran down the hill, then skidded around the corner and raced uphill on Camrose. She had to stop for a minute at Hightower to catch her breath, but they didn’t seem to be following her.

It was an old neighborhood, never planned; it had evolved as houses had been built up into the hillside. No streets connected with the upper homes. They were reached only by the elevator in the tower that had given the street its name, or by a series of high, narrow flights of stairs and walkways that zigzagged back and forth across the hill. Shadow had explored it all, when she’d first moved into the neighborhood.

She went to the tower and took its elevator up. At the top she got out and doubled back down toward Woodland Court, walking along in a sort of tunnel formed by bougainvillea branches that overhung the public walk, with white trumpet-vine, plumeria, honeysuckle and jasmine. The night air was like paradise.

She could see over back fences as she crept along, now and then getting a glimpse into somebody’s lit kitchen: an ancient lady in a bathrobe, sitting hunched over a cup of coffee. A woman in a nightgown, ironing a pair of striped trousers. A young man with all his hair standing up, walking to and fro as a tiny baby screamed on his shoulder.

Shadow flitted past them, unseen and unknown.

Here was the house with the unlocked iron gate; she had learned that if she ran down the steps at the side of the house, crossed the lower garden and ducked through a hedge, she emerged just above the tallest of the bamboo thickets. Now she dropped down the steps in three bounds, silent, and crept into the darkness on the other side of the hedge.

There she stopped, listening, until it began to grow light. She felt her way forward, taking infinite care. A voice spoke from the other side of the bamboo thicket.

“I don’t think she’s coming back tonight.” That was Darlene.

“She has to come back sometime,” said Julie. “Little bitch.”

“But it’ll be daylight soon,” said Darlene, with a trace of whimper in her voice.

“I don’t give a shit, okay?” said Todd. “She broke my fucking nose. I’m going to kick her ass.”

Shadow grinned. She found a comfortable position and settled back to wait. The sky paled; the roar of the waking city rose from down on Highland. Finally she heard Darlene again, crying.

“Look, who needs her anyway? We have to get back.”

“It’s not like we’re really going to die if the sun hits us,” said Todd.

Julie, sounding outraged, said, “We’re creatures of darkness. It’s the principle of the thing, you know? She affronted the Kindred!”

“Whatever,” said Todd.

About ten more minutes passed before he exhaled loudly, said, “This is crap,” and got up. Shadow peered through the bamboo and watched the three of them trudging sadly down the street, in their white pancake makeup and black polyester cloaks.

Shadow had Sunday and Monday nights off. When she’d had the Impala, she’d gone driving. She’d head out Santa Monica as far as the beach, where she’d walk beside the dark water, or go to some of the clubs out there.

She didn’t feel like staying home that Sunday night. The nearest club was down on the Boulevard, just off Orchid; she left early, before sunset, and instead of going straight down Highland took the back way, all the way up and over the hill on the other side, emerging behind Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Once or twice, through the quiet residential section, she thought she heard footsteps echoing her own. When she turned and looked, though, there were no coven members swirling their capes; only a man, indistinct in the twilight, walking along without drama.

The club, The Pearl Diver, had been there since the 1940s and had originally had a South Seas theme. All the tuck-and-roll banquettes had been torn out, though, and now it looked vaguely industrial. There was a bar, there was a platform for the DJ’s equipment, there were a few chromed steel tables and folding chairs; all the rest was dance floor.

It was usually pretty quiet on a Sunday. Shadow liked it that way. She didn’t go to meet people. She liked to dance, but by herself; she liked to drink, and that was safest done alone too. But it was good to do these things in a public place, in a pool of colored light, to music so loud she felt its vibration in her bones.

Shadow ordered a vodka on the rocks, on the grounds that it had fewer calories than other drinks. It was pure, it was volatile; one drink and her exhaustion drained away, and she was out on the floor and jumping to the music. Her hair flew, her knees and elbows pumped, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass who might be lurking in the darkness at the edge of the dance floor. She was moving.

At some point she was in a bright warm place and the DJ had just put on Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love? There was someone dancing beside her, suddenly. She looked up at him, snarling, but her shout of anger died in her throat.

He was as caught up in the dance as she was, he wasn’t even looking at her. He was fast, he was sinuous, he was in perfect control. He needed nothing.

She thought he might be a surfer. What was a surfer doing in a punk hangout? His skin was tanned dark amber, with a red flush under it, and his forearms were tattooed. There were bright glints in his red hair. He wore ragged jeans, a torn shirt, but a fire opal winked from his ear.

Shadow felt all her breath going out of her. She staggered away from him, got another drink at the bar, found a vacant table and sat down. Her legs were trembling. Other people were staring at the guy now. Two older girls sitting at the table next to hers watched him with avid expressions.

“Damn,” said one of them, in awe.

“Who is that?” said the other. “The God of the Beach?”

The music ended, and the dancer looked around. He spotted Shadow, walked to her table and loomed over her. He looked familiar. Where had she seen him before?

“Can I buy you a drink?” he said.

“Hell yes!” said the nearer of the girls at the next table, as she leaned forward to catch his eye. His unmoving gaze rested on Shadow.

“Okay,” said Shadow.

He went to the bar and returned a moment later with a pair of vodkas on the rocks. He put them down and seated himself next to her.

“Okay if I sit with you?” he said. He didn’t smile as he said it, and that lowered her defenses a little. Smiling people always wanted something more.

“Yeah, okay,” she said.

She waited for him to say the stupid things non-punks said when they came into a place like this. Most men, looking at her Doc Martens and black ensemble, assumed she was a lesbian and did something idiotic like jovially telling her they were lesbians, too, trapped in the bodies of men. She’d never known what that was supposed to make her feel, other than contempt.

But he said nothing. He just sat there, watching her.

“You can really dance, you know?” she blurted, and felt like a fool.

He seemed to think about that, watching her as he took a sip of his drink. “Thanks,” he said at last. “I liked your dancing too.”

Eyeing him sidelong, she tried to define what it was about him that was making her heart contract so painfully. He looked a little like Scott Rosenthal back in eighth grade, the boy she’d dreamed of marrying someday. He looked a little like Rick, the nice guy her mother had dated for a while.

No; Samantha had fantasized about a white wedding, without ever actually getting up the courage to even say hello to Scott Rosenthal. Samantha had hidden in her room, crying, while her mother had had a drunken quarrel with Rick and ended up throwing him out.

Shadow never wept over anybody.

The guy was talking to her in a low soothing voice, and she realized that he wasn’t nearly as inarticulate as he had seemed at first. He spoke quietly, patiently, yes, a lot like Rick. What had Rick’s last name been?

“…But I don’t really think you’re into this?” he was saying. He put his hand over hers. His hand was warm. It startled her a little.

“What?”

“All this,” he said, nodding toward the couples at the bar. “All these desperate people.”

“No,” she said. “I just come here to dance.”

“I could tell,” he said. “Me too.”

“You burn up the floor, man,” said Shadow. “Not like the rest of these posers. They’re needy. That’s why I like my space, you know?”

He nodded solemnly. Shadow looked down and saw that her glass was empty. Without a word he got up and brought her another drink.

She found herself talking to him about her life. He listened without comment, without smiling. What was there to smile about? But now and then he squeezed her hand.

It made her feel lightheaded. It made her want to do something stupid.

Someone was standing beside their table. It was the bartender, the older one, looking surly.

“What’s this Kiki says about putting drinks on your tab? You ain’t got no damn tab,” said the bartender.

Rick (No, that wasn’t his name. Had he told her his name?) looked up at the bartender and smiled. His smile was all light and warmth; Shadow leaned toward him involuntarily.

“You didn’t recognize me, did you?” he said pleasantly. The bartender peered at him, confused. Then he laughed.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with my eyes? Never mind! Can I get you another round?”

“Yes,” said the guy.

Shadow drank, but was no longer relaxed. She was shaking. Where was her self-control? She didn’t need this guy. But, she told herself, she could use him, couldn’t she? Of course she could. Samantha would be going all dewy-eyed and dreaming of a future right about now, but Shadow knew better than that. He was somebody, he was an actor or in a band or something, obviously. He must have money.

If nothing else, she might talk him into walking her home. She could tell him about the vampire covens, and they’d have a good laugh.

Her glass was empty. The music had stopped, the lights gone down; the DJ was taking a break. People at the tables around them seemed to be half asleep. When had she stopped talking?

He closed his hand on hers and rose from his seat. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Shadow followed him outside. The night was dank, chilly, smelled tired. He led her along the Walk of Stars, under the glittering lights, and they turned up Orchid into the darkness. She looked around as they got to Franklin.

“Where’s your car?” she stammered, suddenly wary.

“We’re going back to your place, remember?” he said, sounding amused. “And watching out for vampires.”

“Right,” she said, and now she remembered telling him, and felt so relieved she took his hand again and gave him a little-lost-girl look. “Vampires are scary.”

He put his arm around her as they crossed Franklin. God, he was warm. Maybe he’d loan her enough money to get the Impala repaired. Maybe he’d move in with her. Maybe she’d move in with him. But she wouldn’t love him, because only the Samanthas of the world were stupid enough to do that. Shadows kept control, kept their distance.

But she had to admit she wanted the strength of his big body, its heat, its hardness. Well, why not? It was there to be used. All the way up the hill and down the other side, she clung to him. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t come up with any excuse just to be with him?

They were at her door. No vampires. She let him in.

She switched on the light in the bathroom, which was a dim little bulb with a pink shade. In the half-light he peeled off his shirt, and she saw that his tattoos swirled up his arms and across his broad chest, coiling patterns like Chinese dragons. Nowhere stark white unsunned, even when he stepped out of his jeans. Nothing to repel her, nothing on which she could look in scorn. If Samantha had gone down on her knees and prayed for a lover, he’d look like this.

But she was Shadow.

She got up and skinned out of her clothes, summoning all her arrogance, and if he was repelled by her pallid skin or those five pounds she couldn’t shear off no matter how she starved herself, if he regretted being here, well, it was too damn late now. She gave him a push toward the bed.

“Come on, stud,” she said. “Do you do anything else as nice as you dance?”

She kept control, at first. She rode him, hard and careless, and he performed like a big, stolid horse. It was only when she collapsed on him, when he put his arms around her and rolled over onto her, that Samantha, dumb bitch, began crying and telling him how beautiful he was.

She couldn’t get out of his arms. She was too weak to get out of his arms, even when the sheets blackened and the flames rose in a great burst, lighting up the room like sunrise. Unsmiling, he looked into her eyes. His muscles rippled, the dragons on his body went writhing over her flesh. He put his face close to hers and her hair flared up, all the chemicals from the dye erupting in rainbow sparks, and there was pain but a kind of ecstasy too. The fire was paring away her ugly, overweight body.

And Samantha was gone at last and she was Shadow.

The landlord was so old his skin was going transparent, but he wore a sporty cap and had no trouble hobbling around with a cane. He led Jon into the parking lot and waved a hand at the incinerated ruin of Unit D.

“That’s it,” he said. Jon shook his head, looking at the police tape around the wreckage. He leaned back to look up at the overhanging trees whose branches had shriveled from the heat, the stands of bamboo with their leaves seared away. Then he glanced across at the bulldozed space on the other side of the parking lot.

“This is your second fire in a month, isn’t it?” he said, with suspicion in his voice.

“Yep,” said the landlord. “No connection, though. This one, tenant fell asleep smoking in bed. Near as the cops could tell.”

“Yeah?” Jon stepped back, raised his camera and took three quick shots in succession. “That’s too bad.”

The landlord shrugged. “Good excuse to sell the place. Some young guy like you could tear all these units out, put in a nice big condo building, make a lot of money. You know anybody who’s interested?”

Jon shook his head. He walked up to the edge of the police tape and leaned in to get a closer shot of the tumbled ashes, the twisted bed frame with its paint blistered, its rubber casters melted off. He saw no sign of the mattress; the police must have carted it away.

Something caught his attention, moving back in among the cinders. Jon reached forward gingerly and lifted back what was left of a coffee table.

A kitten backed away on unsteady legs. It was black as the cinders themselves, and so young its eyes were pearly.

“Oh, cool,” said Jon, wishing he could use the image for Negative Pulse. He raised his camera anyway, and took a photograph.