Disclaimer:  No harm, no foul, certainly no profit.  All characters within this story, or referred to within this story, are the intellectual propery of Rysher: Panzer/Davis.  And you know what?  I wouldn't own half of them if I could.
Rated: NC-17 for what Sleeps with Coyotes would refer to as 'squick'.
First of the Horton stories.

Handled with a Chain

He killed again today.

Splatters of blood on the walls, the ground, running down the gutters and away into the darkness of the sewers.  The body on the ground, the head on the sidewalk, and a broken sword in pieces under the nearby car.  Cause of death?  Bad luck.  Bad luck to have her weapon trapped and then shattered.  Bad luck to get in the way of a man trying to win the Prize.  The medical examiner will, of course, call it 'Homicide.  Cause of death: decapitation by a sharp object.  Murder weapon:  unknown.  Motive:  unknown.'

But I know what happened.  I Watched it all.

The directives are posted.  No callbacks, no complaints.  Everywhere is calm.  It shouldn't be.

My reports don't bother anyone, do they?  Even though my subject couldn't be bothered to clean up the scene, even though I couldn't risk losing him to take care of it myself, no one said a word.  It's all over the evening news:  "Bizarre murder in Boston; decapitated body found in alley."  But from the Watchers?  No replies, no response, no reprimands.

They're fools.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

My eyes hurt from too much time under florescent flat caffeine lights in coffee houses and bars, all night diners and cheap hotels, composing reports that no one reads, reading directives from people who have no idea what it's really like in the field, no idea what the monsters we're studying are really like.

How could they?  They aren't here.  All they see are reports, cold, crisp black letters on a sterile white page, names and dates, 'Closing reports' and 'New suspect reported.'  For those of us in the field, though, those events are written in dark, arterial blood on dirt-colored parchment that smells of the copper and feces stench of death.  "127 killed or injured in Amusement Park Massacre."  I dream of corpses at night, of small children setting heads to bodies in some sick kindergarten matching game, and wake unable to scream.

I sleep in the daytime now.  After all, Wilmington usually moves at night.

And I dream less in the sunlight.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

They're all blind.

Blind to the dangers, to the threat these creatures pose, to the inevitability of the conflict that will come and that we must win.  These aren't people, aren't humans.  There is, there must be, 'us' and 'them.'  They won't stop at the Game; they'll kill us all.

Immortals aren't a species.  They don't reproduce, after all.  An evolutionary dead-end.  If we wiped them out, would it be genocide?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

He trades in guns and drugs, knowing that his product will kill us and won't kill him.  We observe these creatures, and yet we make no plans for the future.  For what we would do if one of them actually won the Prize.

Is there such a thing?  And if someone became the last immortal not in a duel, but because no one was left, would he or she still win the Game?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

My subject finally lost his head tonight.  He kidnapped a mortal woman to make his opponent meet him and fight.  It was the battle he's dreamed of fighting for four hundred years, if not the ending he expected.  Odd.  I don't know what to do with myself now.  Oh, I'll send the closing report, but... now what?  Will they assign me to some other killer?  Or put me in research, to read the sanitized reports of the field agents and try to assign meaning to them?  To format and file and forget?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Immortals died in the French Revolution to the guillotine and their quickenings went nowhere.  So if we kill them ourselves, we can win the Game by default.  It will take men, and information, and a master plan.  But it can be done; it must be done.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Thackeray, Dickerson, and now Darius.  He had the gall to pray for us as we took his head.  Did he really think God would listen to an animal like him?

* * * * * * *

Joe threw the book away from him, then unthinkingly cradled his hands against his chest as if they'd been burnt.  All he'd meant to do was clean a few things up in his desk, some long overdue cleaning.  Instead he'd found this journal, and recognizing the handwriting, had picked it up to read it.  He'd skimmed through the sections faster and faster as he went, unwillingly fascinated by James Horton's ravings but horrified and repulsed at the same time.

His hands were shaking, the Watcher realized, and shadows had filled the room with the descent of the sun. Where did I lose the afternoon?  What time is it?

Joe put together the shakes and the shivers and the way his mind kept trying to slide away from focus and realized, Shock.  I'm in shock.  What do you do for that again?

He shivered again, cold in a way that had nothing to do with the evening chill in the air.  The album playing on the stereo had long since ended and the silence in the shop somehow let him almost hear Horton's voice.  So coldly reasonable, so absolutely certain, filled with the metallic jangle of chains of pure, perfect logic that had been anchored to a faulty premise....

Without thinking twice about it, reaching instinctively for the light and warmth his soul so desperately needed right now and reaffirming his own choices one more time, Joe Dawson picked up the phone and dialed.

"Mac?  Can I come over for dinner?"

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~

Comments, Commentary & Miscellanea:

The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem.  The full poem reads:

"Much Madness is divinest Sense --  
To a discerning Eye --  
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --  
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail --  
Assent -- and you are sane --  
Demur -- you're straightway dangerous --  
And handled with a Chain."

According to the Watcher CD, James Horton Watched an immortal named Blake Wilmington who perpetrated the 'Amusement Park Massacre' (no details given , but it resulted in Horton getting a Watcher-mandated psych review); Kage/John Kirin (the drug dealer turned prophet from "Blind Faith"); and the Kurgan.

Last?  The lyrics Olympia sent me are for REM's "Daysleeper."
 

Comments, complaints, and/or recommendations of a good psych ward are all accepted by Rhi

A less depressing sequel can be found at Shards & Links.  Or you can head back to the Watchers Reports.

Lovely graphics courtesy of