Un Proof read issue 1:


“It is with an extreme power for observation, and an empty heart that I must inform thee that God has died. He left this Earth leaving the only sign of his death in the fact of the existence of the human race. Time as it seems goes by and more and more this Earth erodes and dies at our presence. Because in this world, in these dark days, there is nothing more than life, love, and an eventual death.”



It was on a murky highway road that I first laid my eyes upon an angel. I saw her come down from the sky in the wake of a tornado, her white, thin, almost transparent wings flapping in the tumultuous weather. She said her name was Mary Ann, five months from now I am left crying in my own home. Her dress was green and torn up, so were her wings. To make a make shift glider at a moments notice isn’t an easy feet for a seventeen year old.
My mind was perplexed, I myself could not phathom how it is possible for her to accomplish such a feat. I was twenty two at the time, fresh out of college when I met her on that murky highway road. Life as it seemed stopped, the sun breaking through the clouds to light up her wings and almost passed out form. When she landed and her legs broke, what was I supposed to do. A tornado crashing in the other direction swept her here, and after so much misery was I to leave her?
I took her to the hospital, she told me her name was Mary Ann. In five months I am left crying in my home, in seven I’m bleeding out on the lobby floor. They put casts on her legs, it wasn’t as bad as we thought, they said she’d heal in a couple months, she was better in three weeks. She stayed with me her house destroyed, her family as far as we know gone. She had three brothers, Michael, Kyle, and Jared. Her father was a traveling salesman who raped a young Hispanic woman in Florida and was sent to prison a few years ago. Her mother a nurse working multiple shifts at the hospital, illegally taking adrenaline to work in extra hours to support her children.
In three months we make love, I am left having a seizure on the floor, bleeding from my eyes. She tells me of her childhood, the unusual circumstances of her birth, instances out of the usual. I normally wouldn’t believe them, if she didn’t fly down from the sky like an angel. My angel, coming in from the murk. Her legs get better, and she is soon back to physical training. Despite the fact she is skinny, she holds an amazing amount of strength, would never think it looking at her. She is rather shy, she keeps to herself more and more as her strength returns. I watch her beat a mugger to a comatose, mentally retarded state.
In three months she washing blood off her hand crying, we kiss. After the incident of our love making she becomes cautious of me. I forgive her right away, but signs of affection and love begin to slip away. I tell her I’d die for her, she tells me she doesn’t want me to. In seven months I’m bleeding out in the lobby of the theatre, thoughts of Mary Ann in my mind. Mary Ann disappears one foggy day, the same murky tumultuous sky that she soared into my life in. I’m crying, the hardest I ever have in all my life. I hang her broken glider on my wall.
I become depressed, and hate my life. I watch her fall from the sky in my dreams, hoping, dreaming. In seven months I will die, not knowing why. One night I decided to go out to the movies, having fun for the first time since she left. I walk into the lobby and feel a sudden pain. I lie on the floor bleeding out till my vision disappears and I die. I watch her glide in as my eye sight goes black. In eight months I will be reborn….






At five in the morning there was a flash, and from the sky a wind blew so hard you swore it was from a giant fan. The clouds opened up and the starts shown in the sky as a massive torrent of fire lifted into the sky. I turned on the TV to see what was going on, but it seemed all the channels were out. I went back outside to see if it was still there but it wasn’t. I stared in the sky till I saw something heading out of it. Whisps of smoke coming from it, it landed smack dab into my pool. Lucky for me the pool light was on so I could see it was a boy about nineteen years old, but still a boy to me by comparison.
I was in my flip flops and a robe but I jumped in anyway. The water surprisingly was warm and I swam till I reached him. When I touched his arm it felt hotter than the water, almost like a hot potato. I dealt with the pain and put him on my shoulder kicking up to the surface and rolling him onto the tile surrounding the pool. I hopped out and check on his breath, it was normal. I quick ran inside and grabbed some towels throwing them on top of him. I smacked him across the face a few times gently, ‘Wake up boy’ I said to him.
He kept unconscious though, but after ten minutes he woke up. His red pupils shone even if the yard was illuminated by the pool. Bright red, swirling darker, as if there were fish swimming in red water. ‘Kid, ya alright’ I asked him. He looked down at his wet partially burned clothes, then the towels, then me. ‘I’m alright’ he said, and got up seeming as if nothing had happened. He shook his head as if working off a daze ‘there will be a man here in five minutes to pay you for your generosity, and your silence’ he said. ‘Don’t tell anyone about this, and thank you for helping me’, then he left right out of my yard.
The next day there was nothing on the news, and a briefcase in my backyard with five hundred thousand dollars in it. To this day I still don’t know what happened to that boy…




The Variables





Fine night for a good old patrol, in the big ol’ city. I was stationed to Los Angeles a few days ago on watch, and everything looks normal as usual. Single homeless mother sharing heroin needles, mayors having affairs, gangsters killing innocents in drive bys, and a city packed with people who came seeking a now broken dream. Horrible city where on every other street in the valley there is a teenager stealing a dog to sell, or throw in the LA river. Just my kind of place.
It isn’t my job to stop muggings, or robberies, I’m on look out for mass destruction. Which we think will happen tonight outside good old Van Nuys boulevard, once world famous for cruising it has become nothing more but a haven for illegal immigrants and cheap flee markets. Could be the KKK, or Arian brotherhood neo-Nazis, could even be something worked out of Lou Dobbs fucking head. Point is someone wants to target an attack in a primarily Hispanic area where a lot of illegals live.
Benhart thinks I’m enough for the job so I just keep patrolling these streets via rooftop. By three in the morning the freaks are out and the streets calm to ghostly dangerous chill. Any woman walking home tonight is doomed, especially single mothers. That is when I see him, right there on the street. A pale ghost of a man in a suit walking down the boulevard, sticking out like a sore thumb in the night. He sits at the bus stop at Vanowen and Van Nuys, briefcase next to him. I wait in the shadows waiting for the most opportune moment.
About five minutes later a man about seven feet tall, in a brown poncho, sombrero, jeans, and cowboy boots sits next to him. His eyes are covered by a purple cloth, his nose barely poking out of his head, his mouth a tight fragment of skin over yellow teeth. They speak in hushed words for a few moments, if I’m to strike it must be now. I jump down from the roof of the 99 cent store which I was hiding and begin to approach them.
“So how has your stay in LA been” I ask. At this the man in the suit tries to run, I raise my hand, he trips falling past out over his own shadow. The other man stands up and faces me, his face stone. “How bout you big boy, you don’t look like you’ll fall so easy” I say. He begins to laugh a bit his hand reaching to his side where a hand cannon to massive for words lay holstered.
“So you are Grimm” the man says in a dark voice. “I’ve heard much about you, it is interesting to actually meet a man who made a deal with the devil. Tell me how you’ve been able to keep the devil from redeeming your soul for so long.”


“Him and I have a special thing worked out”

“Hmm I’d like to know”

“Well I send him down souls in my place, like yours is about to be. I give him enough he no longer holds me to my word.”

“That it?”

“That’s it.” I say. I raise my hand up the street lights going off covering the street in darkness, nothing but the moon to light it. The man quickly lifts up his hand cannon and begins to fire. The manhole raises up into the air and absorbs the slugs before they hit me acting as a shield. He keeps firing till he has to reload, that is when I send the manhole cover flying hitting him across the face knocking off his sombrero and eye covering. He gets up slowly and starts to laugh.
“That’s all you got!” he yells his white hair covering the red shining lights underneath. His gun begins to shine and expand into something much bigger, with multiple barrels. Red and shinning like a mini-gun from hell, he begins to fire. It hits my body tearing off bits of me tearing me into smoke, I reappear behind him. I lay my hand on his back and slowly darkness covers him making him fall into the street till only his head is left above ground.

“How much did he pay you?” Grimm asks him.

“Uh, half a billion now, other half later”

“retty expensive life” Grimm says and then touches his head making him fall and meld with the black top. He slowly walks over to the man in the suit and touches him making him disappear into nothing along with the briefcase. Then Grimm disappears into darkness and there is nothing left. A couple seconds later the lights turn back on.