Ephram
Ephram managed to pull one arm away from the guards who’d been dragging him along the dank passageway. That was as close as he got to getting free. He couldn’t break the other one’s hold on him. And within moments, the other had recovered. Together the big men in black military armor took turns subduing him with a combination of punches, kicks, batons and a couple jolts with a taser. By the time he was put in the chair and strapped to it, there was little fight left in him. Perhaps he should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque after all.
The room he’d been dragged to stank of rust and a couple decades of mildew growth. The lights were dim, fluorescent, a couple flickering. Everything else in this place had the feel of a place abandoned for decades. Not a surprise, but hardly pleasant to endure, in addition to the beating that had left him aching all over, for his own good they'd told him. His dad used to say that too.
The lights brightened, though several of the overhead fluorescents still flickered, and one immediately burnt out. Before him was an array of monitors. Black and white. Dusty. They showed scenes of an office. Several people sitting at their desks or walking from one workstation to another. Ephram recognized it all.
He tested the bindings that held him to the chair. They were solid. He took in a breath, felt his ribs ache in response. He let it out slowly. Then the doorknob rattled. He glanced to the left as an elderly man in a dark suit entered. By the man’s stoop and heavily lined face, Ephram guessed the man must be close to eighty. if he was what he appeared.
The man smiled mildly when their gazes met.
“I hope you understand why this was all necessary,” he offered.
“Not exactly,” Ephram replied. He could still taste blood in his mouth from the beating he'd taken. You could just have had a receptionist like normal people do.
“You came here looking for something specific and important to you,” the old man said. “It’s our job to ensure you find it. Most people have trouble coping with what they find here.”
“I’m not most people,” he stated. “I at least was honest about that.”
“Were you?” the man asked, then glanced at the monitors. “And yet, what are we looking at. And why are we looking at it?”
“To offer me a taste of my own medicine?” Ephram asked.
He'd probably had that coming.
“Surveillance,” the man told him. “Of your employees, those you direct to do your dirty work. The messes you feel you must clean up.”
“I wouldn’t describe my business that way,” Palantine told him. “It’s about problem solving. Fixing things.”
The old man reached over to the table and picked up a folder, began rifling through it.
“These names look familiar; Nora, Frank, Benny, Flores, Angela…”
“They’re my people,” Palantine admitted.
“They aren’t people!” The man suddenly shouted at him then slammed a fist on the table between the two of them. This was getting somewhere. “They are your tools, your playing pieces, pawns, knights, rooks.”
“I think you misunderstand the nature of my business,” Ephram told him through gritted teeth.
This wasn’t going to be easy. Not with this man, not with those fish eyes glaring at him. Well, Palantine could take his licks like a man.
“Do I? Do I!?” the old man protested, his voice rising as he did as though he was speaking an audience of more than just one. “Lets see how you view them, and how you watch them suffer when they are forced to face what you compel them to.”
This was getting a little melodramatic. Ephram would have preferred to get right into it, and save the histrionics.
“I think you are a little confused,” Ephram offered. “I’ve just told you they aren’t playing pieces or tools. They are people to me. I'm here for them.”
“We’ll see.” The main said. “You understand every reaction, every twitch, every glance you make will be monitored, recorded, assessed. Mocked if that's appropriate.”
“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” he replied. "As opposed to shits and giggles."
“That’s what you claimed,” the man said. “So, there are your offices in Columbus. Reception, Main office, kitchen. Cozy. Home away from home.”
“It doesn’t take a lot of people to do the work that comes our way?” Ephram replied. “It’s fairly specialized. Personal.”
“But you do go through employees, they don’t tend to stay very long” the man said.
“It can be stressful work,” Ephram admitted. “And challenging, in certian ways.”
The man gave a harrumph, then glanced back at the dusty screens.
“Nora, Frank, Benny, Flores, Angela, and someone we don’t recognize waiting in reception,” the man said. “A client?”
“Probably a new hire,” Palantine said. “They are understaffed at the moment.”
“Those empty desks?” the man noted.
“Tasmin is on assignment, in Africa, with Dr. Burnes,” Ephram noted, not meantioning Erick. “But you already know that.”
“Ready to watch them as they undertake your work,” the man said. “That you don’t take the time to prepare them for. That could leave them ending up dead. Or worse.”
Ephram let out a breath. The tone the man was using was still bit over the top, even for the role he was playing. Where was the audience he was playing to?
“It would likely be more enjoyable with a cigarette, even an electronic one,” Ephram suggested. He’d had a pack in his jacket pocket. They’d taken that from him, left him in his white dress shirt, pants and socks. They’d taken his shoes for some reason, and even taken his tie. They'd better not do anything with them. It took months to properly work in a good pair of shoes, not toe mention a tie.
The man pointed at a corroded no-smoking sign on the wall.
“More’s the pity,” Ephram offered. “How about a coffee, I assume you want me to sit through this all of this?”
“Black?” his adversary suggested.
“Cream and sugar,” Palantine replied.
“I'm afraid we're all out of cream and sugar down here,” the old man replied.
“And… I will need at least one hand free to drink it,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t try to escape.”
“No.” The old man smiled as he looked back from the door he was already walking towards. “You aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
Also running on Scribble Hub
Stepping Through (Fantasy Adventure Comedy)
Tina Ruttledge had just about had it with post-university life, including a string of dead end jobs that weren't exactly meaningful or even paying the rent in an expensive city like Toronto to live in. And at 24 she's beginning to wonder, as the only thing she's really been into is her dodgeball league, and due to government cuts, her league has been shut down.
Enter Devon Olafson, standing 4' 4" tall with a job offer that seems too good to be true, even if it is just a well paying administrative position in a stuffy office in 'Scarberia' that looks like it would have been more comfortable in the 1980s, a decade or so before she was even born.. Tina knew there was something a bit otherworldly about the short guy whose become her new boss.
But Devon was looking for more than just an out of work millennial, and Tina is about to embark on an adventure that she never could have imagined. And she might even survive it, if she doesn't start throwing muffins, that is.
(YA Science Fiction)
14 year old Tory Ciarelli did not want to get stuck on the planet Mars, but here she is, dragged 50 million miles from her home Earth, by her parents to the new frontier. She has a plan to escape Mars, but might not be able to accomplish her goal on her own.21 year old Gurminder Kalsi is a third generation bornehere Martian, a rig driver working for the planetary clans who were abandoned by Earth but managed to survive and prosper but are now at the mercy of the massive new colonization effort. He too is trapped on the red plane, but not by circumstance, but by biology. Born on Mars he can not leave to go to the world his grandparents came from.But together Tory and Gurminder might be able to find a way out of their traps. If they can work together. If they don't manage to make things worse...
(new chapter every other day - Scifi Comedy)
Iain Compton never planned to be abducted by an alien spaceship. It just… happened. And now he’s been awakened 22,000 years in the future and half a galaxy away by a pair of oddly human seeming beak nosed aliens and a space ship A.I. that seems to have more than a few screws loose. Oh, and then there's this gorgeous alien woman who he probably shouldn’t trust at all.
His plan is to find a way home to Earth, even if its unlikely to be remotely the same; to find a better class of companions among an often strange and inexplicable galactic community, at least one who won’t use him or sell him out at the first opportunity; and to do something about the parasites in his brain who are supposed to connect him to a library the size of the galaxy, but seem to only be interested in advising that almost everyone and everything he comes across wants to kill him.
But at least he can still send tweets.
(A new chapter every day - Scifi)
It has been more than two hundred years since the destruction of galactic civilization by the invasion of the Macros. Althea Ram, exile from a culture which survived the apocalypse, has been searching for answers amongst the lost worlds of the Consortia.
Her past failures, pyrrhic victories and dwindling resources have lead her to plan a desperate transit to Elysium, a world which could provide her everything she needs. But the probability of getting there on the first try is very low. And she has no way of telling how dangerous her destination might be. Because on any lost world, Althea must face dangers; hostile environments, the technologies once beneficial, now warped by Macro control, the descendants of human survivors - turned violent and suspicious by the Macro threat, and even herself, driven by needs she barely controls, or understands.
(new chapter every other day - Fantasy)
Veteran wizard Greylsan Amberglass, ostensibly on a mission to gather chronicles from The Fourth Council's entowered wizards, follows the trail of a doomed borderland margrave in search of his corrupted and dying land's missing Arcory Stones. The search leads him through the Alliance of the Thirteen Greater and Lesser Kingdoms to some uncomfortable truths about how the magic is being conducted in the kingdoms and disturbing answers to own his personal quest.
23 Pangbourne Place (new chapter every other day - Urban Fantasy)
It has been almost thirteen years since a terrible inferno took the lives of Johnny Smith(formerly Hutchison)’s friends and fellows trying to enact a dangerous spell to raise The Devil to grant them special powers. Things didn’t turn out so well, as Johnny was the only survivor.
Since then he has made a special effort to keep himself out of the limelight, ultimately ending up as a the building manager for the apartment building at 23 Pangbourne Place. But nothing has been forgotten, and Johnny is about find out that forces from Hell still have him in mind for their machinations. The question’s are, can he wriggle out from their grasp? Can he keep occupancy at 23 Pangbourne Place at 100%? can he keep his vampire lawyer’s lover’s hands off of him? Are the gargoyles who serve as building security out to get him? And can he face up to what he did in the past, thwart his dark destiny and help his Catholic girlfriend prevent her grandfather from turning into a zombie? Yes, he is going to be a very busy guy this November…
Got my first 1 rating on this, but of course no comment as to why.
Man, maybe some grouchy reader out there needs a hug?