FROM THE JOURNAL OF A NAMELESS SOUL
part two
by nexus_dragon


February 12th: 6:37pm

I'm holed up in a forth generation flybait room up in the grand 
city of San Francisco. I think I'm safe for the moment. The 
streets are a bit cleaner, and Market Street has enough 
characters to hide the Devil himself in. Some kid with a pocket-
marked face said the locals called this place the Tenderloin 
District, though it doesn't resemble anything to give it's name. 
I'm tired, and I'm cold. This room has holes, and there's not 
enough blankets to cover a square foot.

One of these years I hope someone finds these pages, scattered 
as they are. I've taken the liberty to leave them here and 
there. I don't need someone to come along and put the pieces 
together too quickly. It's sort of a marker guide in case one 
day some forth estate journalist decides to tell this story. Not 
that I expect my five minute limelight. I'm not that lucky. Like 
I said, I'm only trying to live to another sunrise. But perhaps 
by keeping a loose-leaf journal, it will help someone to 
understand one day.

Briefly, I escaped with one-hundred and twelve others out of the 
biblical Hell back onto Earth. That's not my story, though. It's 
someone else's to tell, if they choose. My story happens 
afterwards. Mine, and to some extent, Lucas'. When you've lived 
and died to live again, perspective changes. Life changes. Who 
we are, what we are, the reasons for being. When I died, space 
shuttles were the top story in the local sci-fi journals sold 
for a quarter. Computers were a fictional concept for writers. 
No one had heard of William Shatner and Star Trek. Lucas knew 
them though. He knew about computers, and cellular phones, trips 
to the moon and around the planet. Products of different times, 
I guess. He was a kid with nimble hands and a green touch (and I 
don't mean the plants). It was a quality we shared. It was a 
quality we found common ground with, and a quality we built a 
plan with.

Lucas ended up in San Quentin after tapping a corporate account. 
As fate decided (or so he said), his ISP address imprinted 
itself onto the company's mainframe drive. It means nothing to 
me. It's Latin (and since my language skills are atrocious, you 
know what that means). Then he chose the wrong friends. Sad 
story. Myself, I think it's like my gun with the plugged, melted 
lead barrel. It wasn't supposed to happen, but impossibility (or 
a Devil) proved otherwise. By the time I died, I must have hit 
over two hundred banks. It's a record untouched by time. One 
thing we learn early is cashes, and I spent enough time with the 
old man to know how to hide certain things. His gift was booze. 
Mine was money. And let's just say while we didn't know Capone, 
we had the opportunity to see him a number of times.

Lucas had accounts hidden within bank branches, and I had a 
cashe buried underneath Broadway. We were going to liquidate our 
holdings and meet back at an off-track waterhole off the short 
end of 17th Street. I never saw him again after we shook hands. 
Between that, a local serial killer, burning churches, and 
enough tension to match the size of L.A.'s smog, enough filtered 
through my thoughts to assemble the pieces. It was time to run. 
The Devil is never too far behind chaos.

Through Santa Monica I met a few others who were kind enough to 
keep me updated. We're not hard to find, if one knows what to 
look for. There's a resonance, an aura, a feeling when one of us 
is close. Or maybe it's something of me. I've never bothered to 
ask others if they could do the same thing. One time I saw a guy 
with a worn overcoat and short, grizzled blond hair walking 
through a rain-wasted alley. He scared the **** out of me. I ran 
knowing he's linked with what little time I have left. Those I 
met in Santa Monica said something about a "green-eyed" serpent 
chick who was killing us as she found us. I simply assumed 
that's what happened to Lucas (and the only time I wish I hadn't 
assumed, because what really happened was far worse). I didn't 
bother to find out if it was true or not.

So now I'm in San Francisco. For how long, I don't know. It's 
far away from the politics that plague our little community and 
the stench of death. The population is a den of mazes built by 
that Greek master, Minos. I'm safe for now, maybe even for a few 
months. Though I doubt I'll stay. Something compels me to keep 
running. Why? A curious sensation, perhaps foreshadowing. Maybe 
it's the idea of staying in one place for more than a week. 
Likely, though, it's a dream of one man with a black trenchcoat 
and a pale, grim smirk who's says its all about time. That time 
would become my enemy.

I don't want to know. There's a train on a six o'clock track I 
plan to be on. Where it goes, I really could care less. It will 
be somewhere else, away from the dreams that haunt me and away 
from the blood spilled by my kind. Between angels and devils, 
there's a rain of a different color I've been swept up in. And 
right now, it's time to run again.