It was a clear night under beautiful stars as Brett's truck pulled into the long driveway up to his double-wide. Unlike usual, he didn't coast the rest of the way up. Typically he would have pulled into the carport he had installed a couple of years ago. Now, though, that wasn’t possible. The truck's underpowered headlights rested on a sleek black sedan parked in his regular spot. It was the kind of car found in a city. Owned by someone with money but understated taste.

The problem was, there should be no cars here. Cherry didn't have her license and had never learned to drive. Something that was rare for a country girl, but he knew she had always been a bit of a diva. Brett put up with her antics more than he should but he couldn't help himself. He never could when it came to Cherry. 

This car is what I get for that.

He parked just off the side of the driveway's entrance, planning on walking the rest of the way there. This was a time he wanted to avoid the rattle of the old pickup truck alerting everyone of his arrival. Brett usually didn't have an issue with that, but he wanted to see this. As he made the long walk up the driveway, he tried to keep himself from jumping to conclusions.

Despite attempts to stay logical, Brett couldn't convince himself that a salesman or someone had stopped by for an innocent reason at almost midnight. He was aware he had been spending too much time at work recently, but that didn't mean he was oblivious to his surroundings. It took him a concentrated effort of will not to caress the holster under his coat as he walked.

Things had been good with Cherry for the last five years. It had been rocky before that, but despite her princess tendencies, she had promised him she would change. Brett hadn't believed her initially, but she had slowly regained his trust over the years. The last few months had a different sort of atmosphere, though. He had been attributing it to the extra time at work. His plan was to surprise her with a downpayment to build the proper house she had always wanted.

It was a house he had promised her almost two decades ago. But life had happened, and it just never had been the right time. And they were so close too. Grinding his molars together, he reached for the handle of the door, finding it unlocked. Huh, that surprised him. Cherry was always paranoid about locking the door; it was something he had often teased her about.

The unlocked door let him come in quietly. Slipping around the door, Brett closed it softly behind him. Despite being ninety-five percent sure of what was happening, he still needed confirmation. Brett wasn't sure if there was some masochistic streak in him or if too much hope had sunk in. Nonetheless, he walked to the bedroom door. The kitchen and living room were empty. He didn't need to make it all the way there before hearing some damning noises. 

A part of him wanted to bust down the door. As he stood there with his jaw locked hard enough to shatter teeth, humiliation turned his anger cold. No one appreciated feeling like a fool. Sure, things had been good for a while, but here he was again. It wasn't going to be a repeat of the last time he had caught Cherry in a lie though. There would be no tears and screaming. No separation full of apologies and promises. No, he was done with that.

Brett knew he wasn't going to walk away, either. Some people would just leave and never come back. But he wasn't most people. He turned on his heel to sit in his leather recliner. It was Brett's third favorite thing, the first being his truck, of course. As he watched the door, he started to play with his second favorite thing, idly spinning it on his finger before resting it across his left knee. 

Firearm safety was something that Brett was usually good with. It was important to know the rules. Always point the barrel down range, treat every gun like it is loaded, and never point a weapon at something you are not ready to kill. He remembered all of these and hadn't broken any of them since he was 12, when his father had taken a belt to him for accidentally flagging everyone with a 12 gauge while dove hunting. 

I’m not planning on breaking any tonight, either, Brett thought.

He sat there stewing, suppressing the urge to bounce his knee, just waiting. Then he heard an unexpected sound. Two shots rang through the house. In a second, he was flinging the bedroom door open. 

It was the odd little details that stuck out most. The chair Cherry sat in was the one he perched on to put on his boots each morning. The duct tape around her wrists was wrapped three times. There was a slight cut on her cheek. And the two red blooms on her forehead looked just like poppies. All that he absorbed instantly as his vision snapped to the side. A bald man in a black suit stood in front of the chair, holding a gun.

Brett's gun raised without conscious thought, and he let a bullet fly right for the same spot on the man's head. As the trigger pulled, he saw the complete lack of emotion or surprise on the man's face. Brett felt the gun in his hand kick back. But long before the ringing of the shot should have stopped, the sound vanished. Right as that happened Brett saw two windows pop up like tool tips. Above the man’s head Lvl. 367, above Cherry, Lvl. 74. 

***

Brett expected to hear his shot echo back to him off the bedroom walls. He'd shot many things in closed areas before and knew what to expect without ear protection on. However, the ear-shattering reverberations never reached him. It didn't take long to figure out why.

There was no wall, no floor, bed, chair, body, or ceiling. Surprised, Brett fell backward, landing on his ass, and stared at the smoking end of his Smith and Wesson. As he watched the wisps escape the end of the barrel, he pushed his rage down enough to look around. He couldn't quite get the murderous anger out of his head, but with no target, it was surmountable. For now.

His surroundings were dark, yet he was sitting in a pool of light. Brett looked at the hand holding his gun and swore it was glowing. He blinked to clear his vision, and a stab of light shot right into his brain through his eyes. Holding his free hand in front of his face, he studied it closely. It was giving off its own nimbus of light. 

Brett scrambled back, but the light followed him. He looked up to see if he was under a helicopter spotlight. Nothing but stars filled the sky. More stars than he had ever seen. At any other time, Brett would have been lost in their beauty. 

He set aside the night sky to come back to later. It was strange, but nowhere near as strange as the fact that his fucking hand was glowing. Looking down at the rest of his body, it wasn't just his hand. Through his button-up, he could see his chest and stomach shining. Brett's blue jeans might have blocked the light from his legs, at least enough that he couldn't see it.

He made the mistake of blinking again. The light seared his eyes once more. Now he had a pretty good idea of why that was.

His skin was all glowing. Even his eyelids were glowing. He did his best not to blink. That was typically hard for more than a minute or so, but he had a hell of a good motivator. With the little distance the light traveled, he tried to take stock of his surroundings. Brett sat in a field of grass that continued beyond his vision. The grass was not Texas grass. Sitting in Texas grass was not a pleasant thing. It was pokey, full of burrs and fire ants. 

Shakily, Brett got to his feet. Where was this? Spinning in a circle, he looked all around him. There were dark clouds in the distance in one direction. Peering into the depths it looked as if he could see figures the size of mountains moving around. I think I will go the other direction. Brett thought to himself.  As he walked, he watched for changes in the scenery, but Brett's mind started cataloging the many things that were wrong.

The stars, the grass, the glow, the odd storm on the horizon and the lack of a house. He wasn't where he had been; that much was obvious. Once he figured out where he was then he could think about the how of all this. It was surprisingly easy to set the strangeness aside for the moment. He was working on the problem, so there was no point in dwelling on it. No, he had something else to dwell on.

Cherry. The rock in his jaw reappeared with the image that came to mind. The muffled sound of a gunshot through a closed door. He had been too quick to judge, and for his suspicion, Cherry had paid. When his jaw muscles started to cramp, he forced himself to relax. Oddly enough, the thought of the man calmed him. It gave him purpose, a target, a starting point. Things like that don't happen for no reason. There was more to this, a story he wasn't seeing. And when he figured it out, heads would roll.

Breathing in a double inhale, Brett finally tried one of the breathing techniques Cherry always wanted him to try when angry. He was surprised. His feelings didn't go away, but they stopped feeding into each other.

Fury picked his goals, but he would find the best way to achieve them. That is how he always worked, and this would be no different. As he walked through the seemingly endless grass field, he swore an oath under the stars.