Sweetie leapt up and, darting in terror, charged across the street and down an alley as the gun spat and banged. Adele rushed out of the apartment and saw as her dog vanished between two of the opposite buildings. The car sped away and the Choom teen lay in a pool of wine, a superficial wound in his upper arm bleeding through the silver tattoo of a skull.

"Sweetie!" Adele called. "Sweetie!"

9. Into the Alley Hearing the gunfire outside, Silvia ducked down, away from the window in her mother's flat until she heard the car roar away, and the pathetic cries of the wounded teen rising up in the heat. It was the crying of Adele Waterfall that caused her to grab her Stun-Beam 20-20 and rush down the stairs and out to the sidewalk.

The old woman was crumpled, her face in her hands, sobbing.

"My G.o.d, are you hit, Mrs. Waterfall?" Silvia panted.

"No, no-it's Sweetie-he's gone!"

Silvia swivelled, took in the scene, the stunned movers checking themselves for holes, the bleeding punk, the wall pocked where bullets had danced. No sign of the dog.

"Where'd he go?"

Adele pointed to the dark alley across the way, heat rippling up in front of it like a veil of watery ghosts.

"I'll find him," Silvia said, helping the woman to her feet. "I promise l'll find him, Mrs. Waterfall."

The young woman walked her friend over to the steps of the apartment house, sat her down and then, stuffing her compact pistol into the pocket of her blue jean shorts, jogged across the street and entered the alley. She was swallowed by its shadows.

The alley took Silvia out to The Park with its clutter of cement and weeds. Skinny's cairn was there, like a hunched thing in the clumps of drought-faded goldenrod. The sterile white of the Nex-Tech complex gleamed in the late day sun and the rooftops of Little Manila poked up just north of that. She hoped Sweetie hadn't gone there.

10. Luzon In some ways, the Luzon Market was the heart of Little Manila. For one it was the central spot amidst the crowded buildings of the area, the other consideration had to do with cultural activity. In Silvia's a.s.sessment of things, the quickest way to know a people is to witness their food and music. The Luzon market offered both. It was an open-aired food market where fast staccato music blared readily from open windows and doors at either side of the street. While some of the music had a manic celebratory quality, the food was something else all together.

There were vendor tables and open shacks, bins heaped with exotic vegetables, slippery piles of squid and fish and, of course, the dogs. Silvia had seen this part of the city once and had sworn she would never return. We can only imagine her horror as she moved slowly down the avenue.

There were dogs everywhere. To the right: ten or more dogs were lying on the sidewalk with their forelegs wrenched painfully behind their backs, tied with wire, their muzzles wound shut with duct tape. Watery eyes pleaded. To the left: an old woman kicked at a whimpering dog which was sprawled in trash, legs trussed as with the others, a can with poked breathing holes strapped over its snout. It looked hungry. Dogs in cages crammed so tightly they seemed one great and pitiful ma.s.s. One tied outside the cages-which could hold no more-wagged its tail shyly at the pa.s.sing young woman, despite the reddish wire that held its mouth closed.

Silvia bent by one of the cages and peered in, looking for Sweetie. The apparent proprietor, a substantial shirtless man with cigar smoke for teeth, studied her hungrily. "Cheap," he offered, waving his cigar at the cage.

"No thanks," Silvia said, moving along.

Bang!

A man had slammed a mid-sized dog onto the top of another cage and was slitting its throat. The blood rained on the other beasts in the cage, awaiting similar treatment. A pleasant-looking older woman stood waiting for her selection to be butchered, a bag of fruit tucked under one arm.

Silvia could hear the commotion of c.o.c.k-fighting coming from the smoky doorways of several buildings. Birds screeching, men laughing, women cheering. Outside of these establishments, the non-victorious birds were tossed unceremoniously into open trash bins, their lush and trailing plumage spattered and torn. Some, barely alive, twitched and rasped pitifully.

Another doorway-the blackness beyond throbbing with frenetic music and the sounds of dogs screaming. Silvia had never heard dogs scream before. Young shirtless men chatted nonchalantly outside and paused only to eye a corpulent, bikini-clad prost.i.tute as she bent to adjust a heel. The smell of roasting dog came smokily from within.

A rich blond woman with a glossy black heli-sedan stood humming to the music at a nearby stand as her two armed bodyguards loaded several trussed dogs into the trunk of her vehicle. Silvia noted that tying a dog's forelegs back not only immobilized it, but also offered a convenient handle. The men slammed the trunk shut, paid the pleased vendor and opened the door as the blond slipped inside. Silvia had heard that dog was becoming a popular c.o.c.ktail snack with the wealthy.

The sun-but not its heat-was lowering. Silvia's T-shirt felt like a paste of sweat as she reached the end of the market, the squarish weight of her small stun-pistol pressed uncomfortably to her hip. Thank G.o.d, she thought-no sign of Sweetie. Still, her stomach was a fire of bile, and tears joined the sweat beaded on her cheeks. Leaving the Luzon Market and the cramped, darkening heat of Little Manila, she thought of Skinny, how the boys that killed him, like the scientists and technicians back at Nex-tech, and the men making those dogs scream, would all probably go on to live long and relatively happy lives.

11. The Ancestor Masks Punktown, with its more than varied ethnic subdivisions, was an uncomfortable quilt of colors. An awkward puzzle of pieces and peoples, traditions and religions. Dusk came on and Silvia found herself on another planet, so to speak. It was the Kalian sector, the Sarik Duul neighborhood, more specifically, reflecting a somewhat obscure island culture from the planet Kali. There, set against the black of monolithic buildings and pointed baroque temples, was a carnival of tw.a.n.ging, chiming music and air hot with spices and incense. Neons twisted in graceful alien letters, bled into the humid sky and the scene made Silvia think of the pictures she used to take with her mother's intentionally distorted laser-camera-a dream of radiant crayon.

A small child in a glistening grey mask trotted up to the girl, splashed her with some spiced water from a bowl and sang, "Happy Death Day!"

Blinking, Silvia remembered hearing something on the news about the upcoming festival. It was the day when the people of Sarik Duul offered up their bodies to house the spirits of all who had died within the year. Each wore a mask that represented a dead friend or loved one-as they would have appeared at the time of death. Each of the Sarikians was a walking Nirvana containing generations of deceased spirits.

Silvia made her way awkwardly through the hot crowd of bodies. The Sarikians seemed to float in their long shimmering robes, their strange beauty-shining grey skin, glossy black hair, plush lips and thin eyes the solid black of onyx-obscured behind masks that represented these same exotic qualities in slightly elongated stylization.

The young woman felt like a trespa.s.ser in these people's communal ritual and was glad to see other humans and other races, tourists perhaps, partaking of the festivities. Children shrieked from wheeling neon-embossed rides like robot octopi and bought drippy globes of warm spiced fruit on sticks-like mutant lollipops. She could not tell who was who, for all wore the masks and a woman might wear the face of a father or dead husband, an old person might wear the face of someone young. One ma.s.sive figure, obviously a man, had the strange peaceful face of an infant. He bellowed, "Happy Death Day," as he pa.s.sed, towing a flock of bright balloons.

Seeing as this was Punktown, there was a quant.i.ty of masks representing those who had died violently over the past year. These came swimming out of dark and neon air like figures from a terrible dream. Here a woman, uncompromisingly depicted, with half her face chewed by bullets; there, an old man blackened with the craggy scarring from fire; another, apparently the victim of a low-grade plasma bullet, with its mock flesh like bubbled pumice. They must have needed fingerprints or DNA to identify that one.

Silvia sought out puddles where a dog might go to drink, trash cans where a dog might smell food. She ducked behind concession tents, squinted into spice and garbage-scented darkness. Behind one of the food booths, a grey naked man had a grey naked woman against a wall and was thrusting into her from behind. They turned to look at her with those too big glossy masks and laughed. Silvia rushed away, around a corner and tripped over something.

Sweetie. He was lying on his side, his eyes open, mouth slightly ajar. Silvia gasped and bent to touch him. He felt cool in the hot air, soft and grey beneath the trembling stroking of her hand.

"Oh, Sweetie," she whispered.

This was better than seeing him butchered in the Luzon Market, she consoled herself. It was his age and the heat...but still she imagined his terror and confusion, his being lost in the noise and color of a strange place and mostly, his being separated from Adele. Sweetie had died alone.

Trucks rumbled out onto the thoroughfare; the Sarikian dead of the year, having been stored in a great warehouse pumped full of preservative gases, were being delivered to the festival. The crowd stood by quietly as the bodies, glistening in coc.o.o.ns of green silk, were heaped in a great pyramid and splashed with bucketfuls of strange oil and spices. A figure in a red turban spoke a soft prayer through a microphone and then tossed a torch on the mounded dead. There was a rush of greenish flame and soon the air was horrible and beautiful with the smoke of the dead and spices.

Behind the food stand, Silvia still sat on the ground, petting Sweetie. The strange light of the green flame flickered on his fur like the reflections of a swimming pool. A sound of soft steps came from behind and a gentle voice, m.u.f.fled in its mask.

"Miss?" It was a Sarikian accent.

Silvia looked up over her shoulder at a tall figure whose mask portrayed an old man-it looked as if he had died in blissful sleep.

"May I help you?" He swept an open hand in the direction of the fire.

Silvia sniffled and nodded. "Thanks," she said, standing.

The man bent and lifted the dog into his arms, noticing it was missing an ear. He turned slowly and walked out into the open, Silvia following. The crowd let them through until they were at the edge of the fire and the man, whispering a prayer, tossed Sweetie in.

"Happy Death Day," Silvia muttered.

12. Two Weeks Later Adele knew that Silvia meant well, but she also knew that there was no way she could keep her promise of finding Sweetie. Two weeks had pa.s.sed now and Adele was not an idealistic person. She sat by the window looking out at the sprawling, impa.s.sive city. She did not play music. She hardly ate. She drank tea and stared at the city and slept. Slept too much, but never long enough.

After the first week she had walked down to a place the locals called The Coin House, an old tenement with outer walls that had been made of a cheap experimental plastic. The walls, now yellowed and softening, were a strange glinting texture along the lower level where people hammered coins into the thing for luck. Stupid old woman, stupid superst.i.tion, she thought, turning away from her own offering.

The air was hot and the tea was getting cold and Adele was starting to doze off, sitting there by the open window when she heard the familiar bark. She looked around her new studio flat, a clutter of unpacked books. The bark came again-it came from outside. She turned to the window and looked below where Silvia stood smiling up with Sweetie on a leash beside her.

"Sweetie!"

The old woman bounded down the stairs, out of the building, and rushed to embrace the dog.

"Sweetie-my G.o.d, it's you!"

"I told you I'd find him," Silvia said, grinning.

It was a good lie, Silvia thought. She had given Sweetie's ear to her beloved Roger Brine of the burgeoning cloning center and let him work his magic. She hoped that Adele would not notice that the new version was a bit younger than the original.

"Sweetie-it's you. It's you!"

Being a clone, this animal would not remember the old woman. Perhaps, Silvia hoped, if there was mercy in the universe, then some measure of the love Adele and Sweetie once shared had somehow pa.s.sed on to the replica from its host.

Sweetie looked up at Adele, smiled and licked her face.

GREY AREA.

Biographical Data Compiled by Jeffry Thomas 1. JEFFREY THOMAS:.

author 2. SCOTT THOMAS:.

author 3. TRAVIS ANTHONY SOUMIS:.

artist 4. DAVID G. BARNETT:.

publisher/designer JEFFREY THOMAS is the oldest of three sons born to Robert and Lorraine Thomas, and took an early interest in the arts. His mother relates that even as a toddler, little Jeffrey (born Dana Thomas, but his parents changed his name a short while after his birth because Dana reminded them too much of a mutant child by that name living on their street, who was fond of catching and eating the neighborhood pets) would pause mesmerized in front of the VT when a horror movie such as Into My Sickness or G.o.d Is Alone played, and that in his boyhood he covered reams of paper with his drawings and filled computer chips with his own crude stories (crude in subject matter more so than in execution).

Thomas worked a variety of jobs in his twenties and thirties (carapace waxer at a farm that raised giant beetles, their sh.e.l.ls used in the creation of Scarab hovercars; operator of the Vomit Comet and Screamer rides at the annual Paxton Fair; production operator at Cugok Pharmaceuticals; proofreader at Paxton Printing) before his career as a writer, which rocketed when he switched from the fiction of books such as Letters From Hades and Boneland to the nonfiction studies of his hometown and its citizens, Punktown, Monstrocity and Everybody Scream!

In recent years, proving himself to be something of a renaissance man, Thomas has broadened his artistic horizons by acting in such movies as the thriller Die, Plaid-Skirt Schoolgirl Kittens, Die (learning j.a.panese, archery and taxidermy for the role) and the musical Mutant Cabaret (as the only nonmutant in the cast, the single-person "audience" captured by the demented mutant dance troupe-one of its members played by Thomas' cat-munching childhood neighbor, whom he suggested for the part). More recently, Thomas has also made a bit of a name for himself as a cadaver artist. His puppet show Rivendance (while dismissed by one narrow-minded critic-whom we shall discuss later-as "Mutant Cabaret with mutilated dead bodies hanging from wires in place of dancing mutants") was quite successful, and his performance art display of cadavers (their bodies pumped full of various pigments) dropped from the roofs of buildings in Industrial Square, Sidewalk Canvas, had critics hailing him as "a modern day Jackson Pollack."

Two years ago, Thomas was killed in a shuttle accident when returning to the planet Oasis from a writer's convention in the visiting orbital city of Port Haven. (Some have suggested the craft was sabotaged by one Cy Heliotrope, a highly plagiaristic writer, neurotically jealous of any other author working within the same subgenres-even though he steals from those same authors shamelessly.) Fortunately, this was at a time when cloning was not restricted to generic labor drones, and Thomas' body was successfully replicated. However, when a chip of his memories was fed into the new clone's brain, it was found to have been switched (either accidentally or, again, a work of sabotage by you-know-who) with the back-up file memories of a businessman of j.a.panese heritage. (One film critic theorized that residual memories from this businessman, left over after Thomas had his brain scrubbed and his own memories properly input, made it easier for him to learn j.a.panese for his aforementioned movie role; not so ironically, perhaps, this critic who pooh-poohed Thomas' hard work in learning j.a.panese is the same disgruntled author who has tried to sabotage Thomas' career, when not sabotaging his means of transport, and if he thinks Thomas isn't onto him about that he's a bigger fool than he is an egotist.) Currently, Thomas is reviving and polishing his long-antic.i.p.ated book Health Agent, the true account of the crime spree of Punktown's insane artist Toll Loveland, who among other "artistic statements" spread deadly disease to his performance-goers. In another unprofessional personal attack, this time on Thomas' cadaver performance Sidewalk Canvas, Mr. Bloated Ego (-and body!) even went so far as to liken Jeffrey Thomas to Toll Loveland, and suggest that Thomas was motivated to write Health Agent as a way to glorify the artist rather than the dedicated Health Agency investigator who finally brought Loveland down. Mr. Thomas could only rebut, at that time, that if Mr. Smart Critic's ma.s.sive carca.s.s were to be filled with pigment and dropped from a skysc.r.a.per in Industrial Square, the resultant explosion of paint would put a fresh coat on half the block, and it would be the greatest artistic achievement of Senor Gordo's life (er, and death).

But this pathetic swine's antics had not ended yet. In the most recent incident of obsessive hara.s.sment, Thomas was leaving a coffee shop on Forma Street, B Level, when a helicar swooped so low that it almost buzzed his scalp, and a balloon filled with purple paint was hurled out at him, missing him but striking a nearby Choom man-who along with Thomas drew a pistol and fired after the retreating vehicle. But whereas Thomas scored a few good hits that he hoped cracked the vehicle's chitin sh.e.l.l (its make was, maybe very intentionally, a Scarab), the Choom unfortunately grazed a bystander, a Tikkihotto gentleman, who pulled his own weapon and returned fire, hitting the Choom man with an explosive round that vaporized his head before he even hit the pavement with a splat of red that, in combination with the purple, looked like a mocking imitation of Thomas' brilliant Sidewalk Canvas work-perhaps his cowardly, portly rival's intention all along. Now who is emulating the diseased "art" forms of Toll Loveland, Mr. Hypocritical Critic?

But the most unsettling aspect of this whole incident was the visage Thomas saw leering back at him through the rear window of the Scarab after it had buzzed him-for it was his very own face. Thomas can only conclude that his disturbed nemesis somehow obtained another clone of his body (Heliotrope really must have some insider at that cloning facility), and had his own memories implanted into this new vessel, in the ultimate form of plagiarism. Not that Thomas can blame him; the new cover is surely an improvement on the old book, so to speak. Now, if Heliotrope will only have a copy of Thomas' memory file switched with his own mind, too, he will finally and fully become the artist he believes himself to be.

SCOTT THOMAS has been accused of being a pseudonym for brother Jeffrey, a pen name by which to bring out yet more of his seemingly limitless number of books; in essence, Scott and Jeffrey have been thought of by some as being the same person. In a way, they are. Or at least, they might be considered twins-although Scott was born two years after his older twin.

When he was two years old, Jeffrey suffered a breathing ailment that required him to undergo a medical scan, something he had never had performed before. During the scan it was discovered that in his chest, beginning to compress one of his lungs, was a dermoid cyst, or teratoma, a ma.s.s that was found to contain several teeth, much sebaceous material, a bit of cerebral matter, a single fingernail, and tangles of blondish hair. It was the presence in this cyst of cerebral matter that inspired Robert and Lorraine Thomas to give the plucky little tumor a chance at independent life. They had the cyst removed, and the cells latent within it were sparked into accelerated growth. The result was a very distinct individual, today known and renowned as the author (of such collections of fiction as Cobwebs and Whispers and the aptly t.i.tled Shadows of Flesh) as Scott Robert Thomas.

This theme of twinning has recently raised its head(s) again in the life of Scott Thomas.

It has become common knowledge of late that the once utterly mysterious Vlessi race are actually the extra-dimensional counterparts of people from our own dimension (though a Vlessi's counterpart in our plane of existence could be anything from a Choom to a human, a child or an adult, or even a being of the opposite s.e.x). The Vlessi, who even now seldom visit our dimension, are themselves a nonhuman race: tall and slender, with sleek white fur and cloven hooves, and a bulky head resembling a human pelvis, with six eyes scattered across it. They are usually naked except for a scarf, its color or material often signifying social or religious status.

At a signing at Punktown's Tatnuck Bookseller last year, at which Mr. Thomas was autographing copies of his collection of erotic horror stories Shadows of Flesh, he looked up to find a Vlessi wearing a metallic pink scarf waiting in line, clutching a copy of the book in its broad hands. Though the ent.i.ty had no mouth to smile at him, or eyelids to flutter at him, it was apparent to Mr. Thomas right away-from the way the being lifted its unwieldy head eagerly when he looked up at it, and from the way its multiple rows of nipples stood glaringly erect-that he was in the presence of a very ardent fan. Sure enough, when it came time to sign the Vlessi's book, the creature began to babble its admiration for his work, particularly this latest collection. "Your stories are so...so...thrilling," it gushed in its translated voice. When Mr. Thomas thanked it and asked it to whom he should inscribe the book, the Vlessi said, "Could you write, 'To me, from me'?" When the author raised his puzzled head, the extra-dimensional explained proudly, "My name is Aga Borusi-but I'm you. I'm the Vlessi incarnation of your spirit. Isn't that wonderful? I'm a Vlessi, and a female, and I'm even ten years younger than you-I've read your bio again and again-but we're the same soul! And as such, you make me so, so proud of these stories! I felt so connected to them, it's as if you had written them just for me. Or as if I had written them through you, or for you, or...you know what I mean!"

Thomas told the being he was delighted to meet it-her-and although he gently explained that he is an intensely private person ("Don't worry," the Vlessi replied, "with me you'll be alone with yourself!"), he allowed himself to be talked into dinner with Aga Borusi after the book signing. But as he feared, Thomas' admiring alter ego was not content with dinner alone, and repeatedly begged that the writer should bring her to his apartment so that she could look at his collection of books. Thomas rebuffed the creature with as little sternness as possible, and his natural compa.s.sion caused him to feel guilt when Aga Borusi fell into moody silence after that. They parted awkwardly.

But in the weeks that followed, there came a series of phone calls and flowers-both of these sweet at first, but later brittle and rotted. One afternoon he found a note stuck to his flat's door with a Vlessi stiletto. "Haven't you ever wanted to make love with yourself? I don't mean masturbation. I mean...yourself?" Not knowing which concept -making love to himself or to his Vlessi self-repulsed him more, Thomas disposed of the note and almost of the knife, too...but at last decided it was prudent to tuck the weapon under the edge of his mattress.

Still, his fan's attentions seemed relatively harmless until the day he was summoned to a hospital's emergency room to find that his brother Craig (the youngest of the three Brothers Thomas) had been admitted for defensive knife wounds to his hands and arms, and a shallow cut along his ribs. Craig related that he had been attacked by a Vlessi in a pink metallic scarf, who had tried to drag him into a hovercar, in the process muttering more to herself than to him, "If I can't have one brother, I'll have another." When Craig had struggled to resist abduction, she had produced a new stiletto and things had become deadly, but a pa.s.sing forcer had heard the cries of alarmed spectators and the Vlessi had then fled in her vehicle.

Craig recovered quickly from his injuries, and Scott Thomas concluded that his Vlessi self had finally become too spooked or discouraged to resume her bid for his attentions, perhaps even returning to her own plane. He himself has had no contact with his enamored doppelganger since.

TRAVIS ANTHONY SOUMIS is, for good or bad, best known for his series of paintings called "Dreams are Dark," exhibited several years ago at Punktown's Hill Way Galleries. These paintings were the result of Soumis' six months spent in the dimension of the Kodju people, the first two months recovering in a hospital from an adverse reaction to the teleportation process, during which convalescence he made sketches based on the images of his delirium. Soumis believes that some of the sketches were inspired not so much by his fevers and the restorative drugs, however, as they were by the ent.i.ties he seems to have glimpsed, dwelling between the planes of existence.

Among the paintings created during this period were the covers for three of Jeffrey Thomas' books. The Sea of Flesh and Ash combines two novellas, one by Jeffrey Thomas and one by Scott Thomas, both stories actually inspired by the painting used on the cover. This painting's properties so disturbed the Brothers Thomas, when Soumis showed them the original, that they suffered serious bouts of depression and severe nightmares, and channeled some of these psychological reactions into the subsequent novellas. Thereafter, Jeffrey Thomas made sure only to view a reproduction of the art for the cover of Punktown: Third Eye, electing not to see the original. And the cover painting for the German-language edition of Jeffrey Thomas' book Monstrocity was deemed so psychically unsettling that the publishers elected not to utilize it at all, though this painting was later used by another publisher for the cover of Jeffrey Thomas' fiction collection AAAIIIEEE!!! This image alone, even in its reproduced state, has been linked with a number of suicides.

While amongst the Kodju, Soumis studied paintings from the Ganglia Dynasty, obsidian sculptures by the Order of Blind Monks, cave paintings by the extinct, cannibalistic Chol'i tribes, and the holograms of the late Kodju artist Mykari Yo, who himself went mad and took his own life after completing-and a moment later, destroying-a work called "Dreams are Dark," from which Soumis derived the t.i.tle for his own series of work.

Chemists and psychologists who have studied Soumis' controversial body of artwork have concluded that its potent effects are caused not only by the unquestionably disturbing imagery itself, and the subconscious awareness it inspires in its viewers of the uncanny life occupying the seas between dimensions, but by the very pigments Soumis employed-some of these pigments defying categorization in human terms, and challenging both human eye and human brain. The primary pigment used can only be described as conveying a sepia-like tint, as interpreted by the deficient visual apparatus of h.o.m.o sapiens (in the way that only the Tikkihottos can properly see and process the color they call "shrain," appearing to humans as something hovering between green and gray). Kodju poet Uki Taru has described this pigment, which his people call "mat'ko" (rough translation: dust-flesh), in the English-language poem t.i.tled (appropriately enough) MAT'KO: "A smear of ash from flocks of moths the fires slay, The tears of immolation, the blood that's wrung from smoke, The blush of tombstone, the scent/sound/taste of decay, When eye is nose/ears/mouth and every sense shall choke, Drinking in the dimness from the bone-tailed end of day."

As a result of their disconcerting aura, the Hill Way Galleries requested that Soumis remove the "Dreams are Dark" paintings from their facility, accepting an earlier group of work in their place. The originals have since been sold to a wealthy collector whom Soumis is under obligation not to name, but who keeps the artwork in a vault in his home, apparently only viewing it through spectacles designed by a Kodju engineer for the purpose, and also only after the paintings' owner has taken a drug to control depression, anxiety, and psychotic episodes.

More recently Soumis was the source of additional controversy when the author/critic Cy Heliotrope received a request from the artist, asking if he could design the cover for his next book, free of charge, so impressed with Heliotrope's work did Soumis claim to be. An admirer of the paintings Soumis had done for the covers of Jeffrey Thomas' books, Heliotrope took the artist up on the offer, and shortly thereafter received a painting in the mail. Heliotrope's wife Babs told the paramedics who soon responded to her call that when her husband opened the package, he stared blankly and silently at the painting for as long as a minute before suddenly bursting into screams, running out of the house, and disappearing down the street. When he was found, the writer was naked, curled in a shivering ball in a garbage-strewn lot, with globs of mud plastered over his eyes, stuffed in his ears and nostrils, and filling his mouth. The painting itself has never been found, and Soumis claims not to have a reproduction of it in his files.

Friends of Heliotrope, who in the wake of the incident commenced medication and weekly psychological counseling, accuse Soumis of purposely attacking the writer, as if he had sent him a letter bomb through the mail. They cite Soumis' friendship with Jeffrey Thomas, and the long-standing feud between Thomas and Heliotrope, and suggest that Soumis brought home with him from the Kodju world a tin of the infamous mat'ko pigment, which he used in the creation of Heliotrope's book cover in a conscious attempt to drive the writer insane.

Travis Anthony Soumis denies these accusations empathically-and when Jeffrey Thomas was interviewed on the subject, he responded, "One can't give Travis credit for that. Mr. Heliotrope was already insane."

DAVID G. BARNETT is a well-known if somewhat ominous fixture at various writing conventions, easily recognizable from the fearsome Maori-style tattoos that cover his face and body, rendered in shrain and mat'ko-colored inks. He is the founder of Necro Publications and its imprint Bedlam Press, the author of the collection Dead Souls (Shocklines Press), the editor of Necro's anthology d.a.m.ned, and an accomplished graphic designer. Punktown: Shades of Grey is his first foray into publishing nonfiction.

A popular anecdote about Barnett is that at one con, he confronted a magazine publisher and former client who had failed to pay him for a graphic arts project. When said former client retorted, "Blast off, ink-face," Barnett pulled a Decimator .220 from a holster under his jacket and clipped the man across the jaw with the b.u.t.t of its handle. The owned money was immediately produced.

But a recent event that Barnett attended, PunkCon 33, produced an even greater stir, and will be the talk of many a convention to come.

During that weekend, while manning his table of wares in the dealers' room, Barnett was pleasantly surprised to look up and see none other than Jeffrey Thomas browsing through Necro Publications' offering, even picking up a copy of his own novel Letters From Hades to flip through (though muttering, bizarrely, "c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p."). Barnett had never met Jeffrey in person, but had seen photos of him numerous times, and so he greeted the writer enthusiastically. But the person in question almost flinched when the publisher spoke to him, fumbled the book back onto the table, and started drifting off toward another table instead, mumbling something about Barnett having mistaken him for someone else. Barnett was perplexed; it wasn't just that he recognized the man's face, but also the distinctive yin/yang tattoo atop each of his hands. Why would this author with whom he had thought to have a good relationship pretend not to know him like that? Barnett felt a bit insulted, but tried to write the writer's behavior off as the eccentricity of a creative person-known, like his brother Scott, to be somewhat on the reclusive side.

Still, Barnett's eyes followed the man around the room. He wished he could make out his name tag, but now the individual was too distant from him. It had to be Thomas, but going incognito. It didn't make sense, however; if he were so introverted as to come to the con but not meet his fans, not read from or sign his books, why come to PunkCon at all?

Barnett's musings were forgotten, briefly, when a Vlessi stepped up to the table to inspect its offerings. He had never seen one of these extra-dimensional beings face-to-what-pa.s.sed-for-its-face before. After apparently not finding what it was searching for, in a translated voice the ent.i.ty asked if Punktown: Shades of Grey by Scott Thomas had been released yet. Barnett said that it was still a few months away, and informed the creature that the book was co-auth.o.r.ed by Jeffrey Thomas. The Vlessi said it preferred the writing of Scott, admiring its "poetic sensuality," but confessed to enjoying the elder brother's Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, and said it would settle for Jeffrey's stuff if it couldn't find Scott's. Barnett confided to the alien that he thought he'd seen Jeffrey perusing his books only a minute earlier. At this, the Vlessi seemed to become very intrigued, and it quickly headed off in the direction Barnett had indicated, which caused the publisher to feel a twinge of regret. If Jeffrey were seeking to remain inconspicuous at the con, Barnett feared he might have just put an unwelcome spotlight on the writer.

Barnett was in the midst of a pleasant conversation with one of his authors, Charlee Jacob, when his attention was diverted by a commotion from across the dealers' room. Upon seeing the source of the problem, he bolted up from his seat in alarm. Jeffrey Thomas was in the grip of the Vlessi with whom the publisher had spoken only minutes earlier. The extra-dimensional being had seized Thomas by his wrists, and though he was struggling wildly it was evident that the Vlessi was much stronger. From inside his jacket, Barnett drew his Decimator .220, lunging out from behind the Necro Publications table-and accidentally b.u.mping into Charlee Jacob as he did so. Peripherally, he saw her stumble backwards.

Thinking to rescue his writer, Barnett took a firing stance and sighted on the Vlessi with its metallic pink scarf. But just then, there was an odd hum in the air that seemed to ripple across Barnett's flesh, and he saw a misty blue-green light appear directly behind the Vlessi. The alien backed into the eerie glow, drawing Thomas with it. The gaping portal of light entirely swallowed the Vlessi, then the author-then closed up and was gone. The humming faded with it.

"Charlee, are you alright?" Barnett heard someone say behind him, but he was intent on moving forward to where he had seen his writer vanish, kidnapped into another plane of existence. He reached the precise spot where the two had disappeared, other convention-goers already having gathered there in a stunned circle. One of them, writer Jeff VanderMeer, knelt down and recovered something that had dropped to the floor in the scuffle. It was a name tag, and when Barnett extended his hand VanderMeer pa.s.sed it to him.

Bewildered, Barnett stared down at the PunkCon 33 name badge, which read: CY HELIOTROPE.

As if commanded by an instinct, David Barnett glanced back toward his Necro Publications dealer's table. There, he saw two of his authors in animated conversation. Charlee Jacob and-for the first time he'd ever seen the author in person-Jeffrey Thomas.

end.