Excerpt: Pets Deemed Acceptible for the Denizens of Hell, a Working Title

January 16, 2116 5:56 PM

Edward shifted in his chair, and the thing creaked and groaned, then shifted. He feared, for a second, that it would collapse under him, but the plastic held sturdy as it had for the months and years that it had been in use. He looked around the dingy dance hall, over the faces of the others, over the dusty party decorations. A small sign sat next to a mostly-empty pot of coffee and read in bold, black letters:

“Welcome, WVA members! Please help yourself to refreshments!
- the Just Rentals Staff”

Every place they met was very much like that. Usually, the place of choice gave them a small sampling of cookies and coffee, but both food and drink were generally gone by the time the first veteran entered the room, picked away by the homeless and hungry. The thought behind the cookies was a nice one. The thought behind a lot of things and actions taken by everyone to get around the shity hand they had been dealt by giving them small luxuries. Cookies made from real sugar, the best meeting rooms, copious amounts of coffee.

Just Rentals had not, however, made any attempt to clean up after the previous festivities, and Edward supposed the reason for that was the inability to hire a cleaning crew. He snorted, and the woman who had just sat down next to him gave him a small cursory glance from the corner of her eyes but nothing more.

Even though most people lacked a job, they had fallen into hard times with a vigor and fervor known only to the American people. Those who had enough to stay away from any front of the war either had well-paying jobs or had the experience that they would not stoop so low as to do something such as cleaning up after someone else. They continued on with their old lifestyle by hiring others to clean for them at a greater price than a place like the rental hall could afford, they bought the most expensive technologies and kept much of the older generation in demand. So much so, in fact, that many of those who worked in technology and had, before the war, been middle class at best, but they now made wages close to those of a surgeon.

America was a sadder place now than it had ever been before. He stood to get a cup of coffee and trampled over several flat balloons in the process. The pot only had about half a cup left, but that would hold him over for now. He poured the deep brown liquid into the small cup the rental place had provided and downed the cold brew in one go. Delicious?

Rubbing at his outside left thigh, he stood for a moment, again taking in the complete destitute of the place. The group leader shuffled through the door at a sedate pace, shuffling papers as he went. This one was new, and Edward wasn’t surprised. The turnover rate for lackeys who conducted the government mandated psychological evaluations and group meetings was at a remarkable high. He would not be surprised to find that a new man or woman came through the doors of the assigned meeting place every other month, which, considering the bi- monthly practice, meant that these young kids with college degrees and a promising, hopeful outlook on life, were either promised something more than what any of the veterans could fathom...or they were too scarred by the cynical and damaged veterans to return.

The man stopped when he caught a look at Edward’s face, his eyes flaring open in almost- shock. Edward knew what he looked like. He saw it in the mirror every morning as he tried to shave around the blind side of his face, using his fingers to more easily feel over the folds of scar tissue. The reactions had gotten no better even after his doctor had cleared him for the prosthetic as the eye could only look so natural sitting as it did in the greatly scarred socket. His entire upper eyelid had burned away, and he did not have eyelashes or an eyebrow on that side of his face. He doubted that was the most gruesome part about his face, he could only imagine how others reacted to the scarring that covered half of his face and trailed into his shirt collar. He could always see them imagining the extent of the damage, could see the cogs in their minds working and sensing that the damage trailed down his torso--where the extent of the damage had left him looking much like a scaled- down model of Mars--to his left leg and only trickling down to a stop just above his ankle.

If only his mouth had been damaged beyond human recognition. Then, he could play a convincing Two-Face.

...

August 17, 2115 3:17AM
Landon looked over the photographs for a third time. Then a fourth. They were all of the same man, although at different moments in his life. In the first few of the sequence, the man was healthy, if not brooding, and dressed in the outfit befitting of the National Guard. The man’s arms were wrapped possessively around that of a young, smiling woman with dark skin and hair, white teeth. He knew from other resources that the two were onle ten years apart, rather than the fifteen or twenty that they looked.

Some of the photographs had the man kissing the woman while some had the man alone in his uniform. In one, the dark- haired man perched on the bending branch of a small tree, holding a small baby dressed in a summer orange dress. The leaves had not yet fallen, though their colors had begun to turn the hues of fall--red, orange, yellow, brown--and the man and his child blended in with the colorful fauna, a startling, striking, happy smile on his face.

Landon let his gaze shift to some of the other photos. The ones that had come from after the First York Battle. The same man lay on a hospital bed, one faded blue eye looking through the bandages that criss-crossed over his face. Landon knew that the bandages continued down the man’s body, but the photograph was only of the man’s head.

The man leaving the hospital had his eyes downcast as they wheeled him through the propped-open sliding doors. His leg was still wrapped in a large amount of bandages, as was his torso and face, though he seemed more lightly dressed than previously. Perhaps it had been the publicity, perhaps it had been that the man did not need heavy bandages. He doubted the latter.

The man looked so immensely sad that it tugged Landon’s heart from his chest and threatened to eat it like a small, devilish child.

Landon looked over the close-ups again and again. They were a close match--almost identical in features from the roman nose and blue eyes, to the jaw-length black hair. His company could work with the other man’s scarring and perfect the planes of the the rough face to match his own, could give the man a new left eye, though he had gone for nearly a year without one.

He flipped through the short list of information he had hired someone to compile for him which consisted of three pieces of paper and a USB flash drive, which was still useful in some cases.

Edward James Saxx, thirty-nine years old. They were even the same age. He flipped through the three pieces of paper he had in front of him to find a birth date but found none. He moved his fingers over the hard wood of the desk to rest lightly on the phone. He carressed the cradle with one finger, a soft, obsessive stroking.

Two children? That could prove difficult but...location unknown boded well for him. He wondered what had happened in the family, but did not dwell on it as he picked up the phone. He pressed a well-known number into his telephone, connecting himself to the two men he liked to call his lackeys, though, really, they were more like body guards, and he knew he should respect them.