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Just After Sunset

by Stephen King

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DARKER... - EXCERPT


Coffeehouse Blues

If you were human you could smell the coffee (both new and old), the clove cigarettes, the Patchouli, and the sweat. When Jake had been human, those smells meant that he was home; happy in his boredom. Now sitting among the people he had once called friends, all he could smell were emotions. Emotions and blood.

The two were, of course, related. A young man sat on the corner of one sofa that had seen better days. His blue eyes were downcast in the wax cup that was nearly empty. Jake, as a human or a vampire, had never met the man before and his closely-cropped blond hair made him look out of place among the black dye jobs and brunette ponytails. Jake could smell a sad despera-tion from him; a broken heart. The man’s heartache made his blood thick and heavy. It smelled rich to Jake. Exotic. And Christ he was hungry.

All over the Broken Wit Coffeehouse, emotions clogged the air and Jake wondered if they could suffo-cate him. Their blood was calling to his blood. Want-ing to mingle. To slow dance. To fuck.

He should not have been surprised when Tina came upon him unnoticed. With all that his senses were consuming it was an easy enough task. Still, it unsettled him.

“Hey babe.”

“Hi Tina.”

“Whatcha doing over here all by yourself? You being moody?”

Jake placed a smile on his pale lips and looked into her eyes. He sensed her flinch, but only slightly. It was a natural reaction to his unnatural self and any hu-man that got too close to him had the same experience.

“Yeah, I’m being moody.”

His voice came out flat, though he strove for levity.

“I haven’t seen you around for a while. Where you been?”

He studied her for a moment enjoying her rosy cheeks and thick pulsing throat. The hair on her head, now only shoulder length was some shade of purple and the part of him that remembered her fondly missed her long brunette curls.

“Just taking a little time off. Trying to find my-self, I guess.”

“Any luck?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

She laughed at that and the sound ground in his head as though he were chewing glass. Suddenly he hated her. She was alive and her blood was so very warm. She must have sensed the eerie chill that rolled off of him because she said, “Do you want to be left alone?”




Merely Acquaintances

Dancing on her grave?

I had a dream that I was dying. Only I was not slipping from my body. I was not climbing and staring stupidly down at my own lifeless shape. It was her. It had always been her.

When the telephone rang I was neither surprised nor frightened. A comfortable numbness is what I felt as I walked the cold wooden floor in my bare feet. Only a tiny bit of sleep still lingering in my eyes.

“Hello?”

“Rick?”

My father’s voice sounded anxious and strange. I heard that same sound in his voice when he had told me that Samantha had been put to sleep. Weepy, just barely keeping its syllables. She was a good dog, but she was tired. He had said. I’ll miss her. That voice was back once more and I pulsed with feeling for him. Behind his voice I could hear open air, the kind you get when dialing from a pay phone.

“I’m at the hospital. It’s your mother. “

“Is she...?”

“No,” he answered, though I could feel him want to say more.

Maybe “not yet”.

“What happened?”

“That cough, the one I told you about. Well it got so bad tonight that she woke up with it again, coughing into her hands. When I turned on the bedroom light to see if she was all right, she had blood in her hands.”

Blood. As though she had coughed so hard that she had broken something vital. Something that a Band-Aid and a pep talk on quitting smoking would not fix. I realized that we had both grown silent, each of us wandering in our own thoughts, I suppose. What else could be done at a moment like that?

“Will you come?”

Ah, such a heavy question for four in the morning. I sighed silently, hoping he hadn’t heard, though I’m fairly certain he had.

“Yes.”




The Unbearable Violence of Being

I stood at the back door smoking. The day had finally grown cooler as the sun lowered in the west. I sighed a breath of blue smoke to the sky and figured I’d better get on with it.

The barn was enormous, old, and looked exceptionally unsafe...all part of its charm. Inside was the Sears Craftsman mower. I mounted it, my body dropping heavily into the plastic seat. Yoda, my Border Collie ran quick circles about me the way a shark might do in water. A few moments of the engine whining and cranking, then exhaust spit from the rear and I rode the mower to the far end of the yard.

The farmhouse rests on a hill, rising up and away from the street. The farthest end of the yard seemingly held up by an ancient wall of stones. Time and weather pulled the stones downward to the ditch below, but the wall still held to its shape in a presentable manner. At one time the wall stretched to surround most of the yard, but the eastern side had fallen away and been forgotten. The southwestern side— well, that was the mainstay of what survived. All who drove on Old Sugar Run Road, or RR1 as it was more commonly known, would see the southwestern side of the wall and of course ignore it as nothing more. What’s a wall? We see them every day, standing straight (usually) and doing their job of holding the world in place. It seems the only time we truly notice them is when they stop doing that job. When they lay in pieces of brick or stone and what they once held, lay upon their own ruins.

I had always respected that wall with its precarious side. Not because it was built by hands that no longer lived, and not because of any reverence for the artwork with which it might have been laid. Nothing so romantic. I respected that wall because I feared it.

The farmhouse atop RR1 looked out over the valley, but not too defiantly. If one were to stand on the edge of the southwestern wall and look out into the world, across the valley, one would feel the pull of the mountains and the almost insatiable desire to step off and fly; like a waking dream. Then, perhaps for the mind to awaken purely, one would look down into the ditch that lay some eight feet below, littered with parts of the wall’s own body and broken chunks of Pennsylvania asphalt and be thrown into instant vertigo. Only then would you feel the slant of the yard as though the entire mountain were being pulled into the valley. A quick step back, and another, and finally another for good measure. To have the ground under your feet be solid earth and not the tip of the wall.

Ken had shown me how to ride the mower along the yard’s sharp edges more than once. You ride the edge and lean off the seat in the opposite direction to encourage the mower not to tip. He looked like some kind of rural circus performer, his act taken for granted, but to a visiting customer, an act of awe. The mower appeared large to a “city boy” (Ken’s nickname for me when it came to machines) and stronger-willed than myself. And when I would lean, the mower would slide and slip and go its own way. In my mind I saw the mower tip repeatedly, sending me over and then coming for me with its hungry, spinning blades.

I’m sure my imagination, as sharp as it is, as willing to walk down the pathways of the darker “what ifs” more often than the average person didn’t help me to train that mower. And so the machine intimidated me as most machines do. Oh cars are not so bad since over time I forge a bond with my cars. I know how they move. Just when to tap the brakes and when to ease up on that turn. But the mower and I never connected in quite the same way. After all, it was a symbol of unpleasantness. Mowing the ever-growing lawn was not my favorite weekend task.

It was the last time I would mow the lawn. I would be moving in another week. Going back to Massachusetts. It’s beautiful in the mountains of Pennsylvania; more beautiful than many places I’ve seen. But it’s lonely too, without even the sound of constant passing traffic and indifference to keep one company. At home there was plenty of both...and the love of friends to calm my sometimes anxious spirit. It was the last time I would mow the lawn. I know I’ve already said that but I want to make that fact as prominent a point for you as it was for me that Sunday evening. I was to be leaving for home soon, where my lawn, although not quite small could still be done with a hand mower. But before I left, I had to do a fine job on the farmhouse lawn. And that’s what I set out to do.




Jake

The pot smoke scorched his throat and he twisted the cap off the green plastic Mountain Dew bottle took and enormous swig. The soda was warm but it worked wonders. He dropped the skateboard onto the sidewalk of Washington Street and kicked off. The sidewalks here were wide and at 2AM, completed deserted. He closed his eyes as the wheels soared along the concrete and sometimes, when his buzz was just right, it felt as though he were flying. But not tonight. Tonight was one of those times when he felt somehow disjointed, as though everything about him didn’t quite fit, right down to the clothes and skin that he wore.

He opened his eyes. Where could he go, he wondered? The cops had already kicked him out of the parking garage and Central Plaza, which meant if they caught him again they might just bring him in for spite’s sake. He couldn’t do with being arrested again and it would suck to lose the little plastic bag of shitty weed in the right front pocket of his jeans to boot. He needed to be off the main street for starters. He sailed by a bank parking lot, spying the boardwalk that ran along the edge of the Merrimack River and thought, what the hell, at least he could see the cops coming with enough time to still hide his smoke.

The boardwalk was deserted and he stopped the skateboard and laid down on one of the several park benches that lined the wooden walk. There weren’t even stars to see, as cloudbank held most of the eastern seaboard hostage. The air had that heavy humidity that made him want to curl up and sleep. The heat of the day, which had been trapped by those clouds, continued well into the night and looked as though it might remain for the next day as well. He palmed the sweat from his brow, aware that he needed a shower and even more aware of needing a good night’s sleep. If he hadn’t been so sure the cops would stumble upon him, he might have closed his eyes for a nap right then.

He did close his eyes, but only to think about going home. That was as far as he got.




Hunter's Run

Bart enjoyed the unimpeded driving which the back roads of Vermont allowed. Wide roads with few travelers and even fewer state troopers. In some places, mostly downward slopes, he even managed to get the Sputterwagon to a whopping seventy-five per hour before she’d start to cough and shake and really earn her nickname. Since reaching the border of Vermont, Bart had for the better part kept his baby under sixty-five because he simply loved the Green Mountains. Such brilliant foliage, as though the mountains themselves had been set ablaze. Hues of blood red ripping through fields of amber, orange and of course, green.

Occasionally throughout the four-hour journey from Massachusetts he either wandered or was pulled into the on-going conversation with his friends, which mostly drowned out the cassette player. Bart was younger than his fellow B Boys by five years. When they had all been younger (God, was it really that long ago?) the age difference hadn’t seem to matter so much. They would enjoy their weekends hunting, fishing and with a fair amount of womanizing thrown in for good measure. But as the years progressed and one by one they each found themselves in wedlock (and in three of the four cases child-lock as well), Bart began to feel himself falling further and further behind his friends. Maybe further wasn’t the correct choice of words, however. He actually felt as though he had progressed beyond them. The general sense of conversation these days was bitter cynicism toward family and wife and though Bart did a little jumping on the bandwagon from time to time, he still loved his wife and the birth of their daughter Kimme last spring only worked to bring them closer together. Julie was his best friend and sometimes that didn’t sit well with his other best friends.

He found that over time, when he was one on one with any of the others, the talking that passed between them was somehow more real. But when they all got together, it was high school time again … and Bart often felt that high school was just fine being left in the past.

At the base of a steep incline, well into the Green Mountain range, the old station wagon began to choke.

“Uh oh. The Sputterwagon’s at it again.” Barry chided and they all chorused a laugh, even Bart in spite of himself.

All through high school Barry had been the class clown and since graduation, some twenty years before, just a clown. He was good for a laugh, but mostly he was just a pain in the ass. Bart thought it no coincidence that Barry was also the B Boy who was the most unhappily married. Earlier that year, after a night of pool and beers Barry confessed that he’d been sleeping with a woman he worked with at the furniture store. No, his wife hadn’t found out yet. Yes, she was growing suspicious.

“When are you going to get rid of this beast and get yourself a real car?” Bill, the only illegitimate B Boy asked.

“I’ll make you a deal.” Bart retorted. “When you trade in Francine for a newer model, I’ll do the same with SW here.”

That broke them all up for a bit.

“Seriously guys. You know how long I’ve had this car.”

“Since college, right?” Bill asked.

“Right. And she’s never died on me. Not once.”

“That’s cause you treat her like a mistress.” Barry stated, without much humor. “No wonder you’re so happily married. You’ve had a girlfriend the whole time.”

“Ha ha, Barry. Ha ha.”

“Ah let it go Bart. You’re too young to be nostalgic.”

Bart wasn’t so sure this was true and any advice gleaned from Barry had to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. Perhaps there was some truth in it though. The Sputterwagon’s simulated wooden sides had dozens of dings and rust had steadily been eating away at her body like a cancer, turning that flat green paint out in ugly sores. The Sputterwagon was in her own Autumn and the rust her own foliage.

A group cheer roused him from his thoughts and beer foamed over his vinyl sets as his friends smashed their cans together. Although Bart hadn’t seen the sign this was proof positive that they had just entered the town of Poultney. They were only a half hour or so away from their destination. On the other side of town, which was home to Green Mountain College and not much else, was a small farmhouse set on thirty-two acres of land. Most of that acreage was heavily wooded and every year Old Man Carlton (as Barry, Brian and Bill referred to him), or Uncle Carlton (as Bart knew him) invited the friends up for a weekend of beer, barbecues and bow hunting. On the opening weekend of deer season for the past six years the B Boys packed their coolers and equipment into the back of the Sputterwagon and took the journey to Carlton’s Farm.

“How long now, Bart?” Brian asked.

“Brian you ask the same question every year.” Bart responded, amazed. “How can you never remember?”

“Dunno. Must be left over from childhood. Too many are-we-there-yets I guess.”

“Less than a half hour you dumb shit. Same as the last six years.”

All their moods had brightened considerably. In a few short hours they’d be prowling the woods looking for that one buck that would hold them in high regard until the next year’s hunting season, when that record would hopefully fall.




The Sentinel

In the fall of 1965, death had come to Crescent Bay. A faceless, creeping death, which the police could no longer pretend they had under control. The Crescent Bay Gazette had given him a name, with its bold headlines. They called him the Housewife Killer. In just under two months, three women had been found murdered in their homes. The last of these, a mother of two named Marie Madison had been found sitting at the dinner table, her throat slit from ear to ear, like some deadly, everlasting smile. After that, we all began to notice the Massachusetts State Police cars slowly creeping our streets, as stealthy as the killer himself.

At the time, I had been nine. Nine years of wonder and comfort, combined with the cockiness of youth, I was fearless. The Housewife Killer didn’t scare me and I found the idea that he could be anyone, even more exciting. So, during those short periods after school and before dinner, I would carefully watch my neighbors on their front steps. If any of them were to flinch under my gaze, then I would have them. I would go running into the house, tear the telephone receiver from my mother’s hand (she was always talking to Emma Tilden who lived a block over) and call the police myself. Then I would be on the six o’clock news, a hero with strawberry-blonde pigtails.

I lived on Bartlett Street; in a small single-story, home I’d heard my father call a ranch. We didn’t have any cows or horses on this ranch though. In fact, we didn’t have any pets at all. My mother was allergic.

There was just my mother, my father, and I. Sometimes it was lonely, especially when it rained, and I couldn’t go out and play with the other girls on my street. At Christmas time though, things couldn’t get any better. I didn’t have to share presents with another sister, or worse, an obnoxious brother. In fact, the only boy in the whole neighborhood was Hillary Hutton’s six-year-old brother, Ricky.

Bartlett Street was more than ten miles from the Nettle Elementary School, which all the girls on my street attended. The town council had passed a motion some five years before that any parents who lived more than eight miles from the school needed to find their own means of getting their kids back and forth. On Bartlett Street, that duty fell upon my mother. We were the only family on the street with two cars. We weren’t rich or anything. When my grandfather had died, we got his car, and that big old Pontiac had become our school bus.

“They say we’re out in the boonies,” I had heard my mother say one afternoon to while chatting with Mrs. Tilden. “But if you ask me, the whole damned town is in the boonies.”

And that was my whole life. I would go to school, play with my friends, do my homework, and go to bed. It was a simple time and I had begun to believe that nothing would ever change that, until the Housewife Killer changed all that forever.

It was a bright day in late October that our paths crossed. Ms. Wilmer had let us go, only after warning us not to talk to strangers and to make sure all our bedroom windows were locked. I fought through the mad rush of kids in the coatroom and ran into the crisp, autumn air. It was the first day that while the sun still shone; I could see my own breath.

I was waiting by my mother’s Pontiac, a car that seemed as big as any bus to me, with Angela Cravatts and Hillary. We were waiting for Marcy Daly, whose father was a police officer. I saw Marcy lagging behind to taller boys and waved her over. Fifteen minutes later, we were turning onto Bartlett Street from Kingsbury Avenue. Then my mother was jamming on the brakes and I lurched forward. My chest crashed against my mother’s extended arm, which saved me from a sure bump on the head from the dashboard.

Standing in the middle of the street was a transient, known the whole town over as Crazy Dennis. For a long moment, none of us made a sound. Then my mother said, “Damn it all.” It was her favorite frustration line. She honked the horn angrily and Dennis just stood there for a moment. She was about to honk again, when he began to shuffle off to the right side of the road. He was dressed in dark green work pants and army boots. A grimy suit jacket that had once been tan was opened, revealing a stained undershirt beneath. His hair was longer than my own by nearly six inches and his black curls met with a scruffy beard of the same color. The beard completely hid his mouth but I could see his eyes just beneath the bushy eyebrows. Those were angry eyes.

“Don’t look at him,” my mother said and she pressed the accelerator.

But I did. I couldn’t help myself. I looked right into his face as we drove past and he watched me as the car sped up the road. I had to crane my neck to keep contact and I felt my mother’s hand slap my leg.

“Do as you’re told Julianne!”

I snapped my head back around, too curious to be upset by her reprimand.

“Why is he like that, Ma?”

“I don’t know,” she said curtly. “Shellshock, I guess.”

“What’s shellshock?” asked Marcy from the backseat.

“He was in the Korean Conflict.” Her eyes met Marcy’s in the rearview mirror and she said ‘conflict’ like it was a black, sour-tasting word. “A bomb went off close to him. It didn’t kill him but it … well I guess it kind of scrambled his brains.”

We had come to a stop in front of Angela’s house.

“Is that what made him Looney?” I asked.

“Yes dear. Angela you’d better get on in. We’re running late and your mother will be worried.”

I could see that the conversation had made my mother uncomfortable, and although I wanted to press on with a sparkling idea I had, I knew better.




Winter Bride

In the dark of night, Jonas stood before the gazebo. The dark stain on its floor was most certainly blood, but here in the city, to the uneducated eye, it could have been anything from paint to a long expired Slushie. The victim, the owner of the blood, must have gone unnoticed, as there was no police tape strapped around the gazebo, announcing with its bright yellow, that this was a crime scene.

In the park lights, the small glass vial he held in his hand shimmered as he uncapped it. He dashed the open end of the bottle toward the gazebo, his arm swinging in the sign of the cross. He capped the vial, slipped it back into the pocket of his long coat, and waited patiently. Sometimes it could take a while. Sometimes, nothing ever happened. He was beginning to think this was more the latter, when finally the smoke began.

It rose off the floor of the gazebo, where the blood was thickest. It rose of the bench where the wood had been splintered. The smoke from the bench was darker than that which rose from the blood. That’s where he had been sitting, Jonas realized, and a chill danced up and down his spine, making him shudder. Was it fear that he was feeling, or excitement from being so close?

The smoke filled the gazebo and flowed out of its open spaces, giving the illusion that the structure was on fire. There was of course, no fire, just the smoke of memories, and the evil that created it. In the rolling spirals of smoke, Jonas saw the vampire and his victim. His insides burned with rage at the youth of them both. Whoever had made the vampire had done a grave injustice to the universe. The vampire was little more than a boy. And the victim, that very pretty girl.

Jonas turned his head away from the scene but could not dislodge the sound from his mind. What a tragedy all this was. The taking of innocence; the feeding of dark hearts. The sooner this was ended the better, he thought. Jonas stepped into the gazebo, careful not to let his shoes meet the smoking blood, but he did sit where the vampire had. He sat and prayed, all the while breathing in the smoke that rose from the tainted wood. The smoke went into his lungs, effected his blood and rose into his brain.

“I’ll find you, demon.” He said softly.

Then he let himself be overwhelmed by the smoke.




Bloodlines

Jake could plainly see the difference between himself and Collette. The most telltale distinction was how quickly she had shed her humanity; something that had been a long, arduous task for Jake. He often wondered, especially when he compared himself to Collette, whether he accomplished it at all. While Jake did only what he needed to survive, he took no pleasure in the deed. His body, of course, rejoiced in that singsong climax as the first wave of blood reached his tongue, but not his heart. That part of him would forever remain detached.

It was true enough that he would become a slave to her euphoria while feeding from time to time. It was easy enough to do. She was so passionate and devilishly beautiful. Her pale body was that of a grown woman, and, unlike the models in the Playboys that he had once hidden beneath his mattress for fear his mother would find them, somehow fuller. As though, the difference between them was the ripeness of age. Something happened to the female body as it moved from girl to woman, and it was something Jake liked very much. He often felt the sting of his lost human life, and watching Collette could sometimes make that sting bright and bitter.

He saw her drop the man she had been feeding on and watched him crawl though the snow, the gaping wound on his throat leaving a crimson trail as he went. She finally turned to Jake, smiling, her full vampire face smeared with blood, tissue clinging to one of her incisors.

“I’ve got a genuine taste for it,” she said and laughed.




The Man Who Would Not Shower

“Do they think I’m crazy now? Or maybe this is because they’re beginning to believe?”

Abe Kitchner looked at the man intently, all the while keeping his features noncommittal. The man returned the doctor’s gaze, but only for a short while. Then he went back to fingering the links of his shackles.

“What do you think the reason is?” Abe asked plainly.

The man looked up from the chain links, nervously around the room and then back.

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Do you want to share your thoughts on that?”

Abe watched as the man’s fingers gripped the chain so fiercely that they went white. Suddenly the man leapt to his feet.

“You don’t understand do you?” he screamed. “None of you fucking understand it!”

Abe tried to remain as he was and although he flinched internally, he hoped it hadn’t shown on the outside. The door to his office burst open and two beefy gentlemen in guard uniforms entered.

“It’s okay,” the doctor said to the guards without removing his eyes from the patient.

“Doc I really think—”

“I said things will be fine. Won’t they Richard?”

Abe held Richard’s eyes and within a moment the aggressive energy which had bubbled over in the young patient began to subside. As it went, Richard sat back in his chair and went back to fidgeting with his links.

“We’ll be right outside, Doc,” the taller of the two guards said, glaring with disapproval at both the doctor and his patient.

“Thank you gentlemen.”

Abe waited for the door to close before speaking again.

“So Richard. You said I didn’t understand. Will you help me to understand?”

Richard looked up at the doctor and could see no evidence of anger in those eyes. Just a tremendous sadness and something like terror.

“I want to believe I’m crazy,” he said quietly.




In A New York Minute

I love the autumn. On September 11, 2001, although not officially in season, it popped up to greet me with an exquisite sky. The air was cool and crisp and the sky an infinite baby blue. I remember as I drove in the early morning traffic, that a day like this would be a good day to die. I don’t want to go on some dark, winter-gray day which holds nothing but the promise of cold rain. Or worse still, a sticky summer night, when I feel trapped within my skin and beneath a layer of sweat. Autumn always makes me feel free, and when I’m feeling particularly strong-minded, I can believe that death is a freedom. So on that easy morning, this is what I thought. That thought will play in my mind for the rest of my life.

I hadn’t been in the building for more than fifteen minutes when a fire alarm, screeching like the end of time itself, sent about one hundred of us into the parking lot. Normally these events last no longer than ten minutes or so. The fire department will arrive in a single truck, reset the alarm and send us filing back into the building. This day was different. We stood for nearly a half hour, and there were three fire trucks that arrived that morning. I thought there might just be a real fire here after all.

As we stood, most in cliques, involved in cliquey conversations, a young man named Dan approached me and said he’d been to my Web site. This took me off guard, as I’d never known Dan any better than to give a passing nod to in the hallways. I was surprised to find that he knew my name, let alone had been to my Web site. This sparked a getting-to-know-you conversation which took us back into the building and eventually into my small office.

There are times in one’s life where a moment occurs that you will remember always. You will remember what the day is like. You will remember exactly where you were and probably, as in my case, exactly what you were saying. I was speaking, and rather intensely mind you, of Internet marketing and what could be accomplished with a little attention to detail when that first feverish face appeared in my doorway.

“Can you get to CNN.Com?” It asked?

The face in question belonged to Rich, another person I only knew well enough to nod to.

“Why?” I asked. “Are we disconnected again?”

“I’ve been trying for the last five minutes and I can’t get through.”

I punched in CNN’s Web address on my computer and watched as the site refused to display.

“I guess we’re out of service again.” I said, still not sure what the big deal was.

“I guess so.” He said. “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”



Copyright Notice: Excerpted pages of Darker... by Stefan Bourque, (containing text from the short stories, Coffeehouse Blues, Merely Acquaintances, The Unbearable Violence Of Being, Jake, Hunter's Run, The Sentinel, Winter Bride, Bloodlines, The Man Who Would Not Shower and In A New York Minute; An Essay Inspired By The Events Of September 11, 2001) published by Wicked Pages Press. ©2003 by Stefan Bourque. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that Stefan Bourque or Darkwriter.Com or Wicked Pages Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires consent of Stefan Bourque or Darkwriter.Com or Wicked Pages Press.


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