A Tale of Bodies
an excerpt

Five years was a long time to intentionally not think about something. Kyle wished it could have been longer, but the events of the day were forcing him to consider options. Once again, he felt like decisions were being made for him before he really had a chance to react to them. He tried to distract himself with work, something he had been able to do in the past, but today, his mind would not leave him alone. Had his boss not been sitting across the bar from him, Kyle would have started drinking as soon as he got in. But, even drinking wouldn’t have helped today, his boss was being part of the problem.
Malen was not a particularly large man. He was somewhere between six and six and a half feet tall, he had a terrible slouch. He was incredibly wiry and skinny, maybe only two hundred pounds, possibly closer to two twenty five or forty, it was hard to tell, Kyle hadn’t ever asked. He just exuded this aura of something greater than what was contained within his unassuming frame.
His skin varied in color depending on how much he was outside. Kyle had seen him pass for Caucasian, Latino, and Native American easily in three separate situations. His dark hair was cut at shoulder length and fell to either side of the crown of his head. His facial hair was his pride and joy. He had grown massive chops that stuck straight out from his skull at least a full four inches. He claimed that they had once been long enough to braid, but at the time of that claim he had been incredibly shit faced which made the story difficult to believe.
Malen typically wore light colors and exclusively they were expensive and well tailored. He never wore any jewelry that Kyle had ever seen, nor any other sort of hanging or dangling decoration like a tie. His two indulgences into the world of fashion were his boots and his hat. The boots were made of black leather polished to a shine even when covered with a fine layer of desert dust. They were ornamented with shining silvered steel buckles and toes all of which were engraved and acid etched with hauntingly beautiful designs. His hat was a white fedora with a black ribbon and small feather. It never left his side. It was currently taking up residence on the top of the bar next to the ledger he was writing in.
Malen had plenty of bad habits, Kyle had worked for the man for a little over three years now and he had seen it all. He drank to excess, enjoyed glutting himself on excellent local food. When intoxicated he was known to spin wild tales, none of which seemed possible, even to Kyle. In addition to this he was known to relieve himself out the front door of the bar on nights when he decided to partake of the finer liquors stocked in his establishment. He gave Kyle no end of trouble with his sharp tongue and dry wit, either. But none of these things bothered Kyle particularly much; they were all trivial to the one single thing that made Kyle’s mind scream in tortured agony.
Malen knew. Kyle knew Malen knew. He had known that Malen knew the moment he walked into the small bar to ask about the help wanted sign. He also knew that Malen knew that he knew that Malen knew. The absolute worst part about the whole situation was, that Malen knew, refused to speak about it, but still said the kinds of things that only people like the two of them would know anything about.
Malen himself had made it quite clear that, that particular subject would only be brought up once between the two of them by him. After that he would never be the one to bring it up again, ever. Kyle had a deep seeded suspicion that he did not want to find out what kind of repercussions he would suffer were he to bring up the subject of what he and Malen both were again.
Kyle was cautious simply because Malen scared the shit out of him. Malen was powerful, even defined relatively he was powerful. Kyle had never encountered an individual who felt even remotely as powerful as Malen before.
The first three months working with the man had been hell for Kyle. Malen had pushed Kyle’s buttons and twisted verbal daggers into every possible corner of Kyle’s psyche trying to get him to either reveal himself for what he really was, or to make him attack Malen outright. Which one of these, Kyle wasn’t sure, nor did he want to ask. On the last day of the third month after he had started work at the bar, Malen had handed Kyle a beer after they had closed up for the knight.
What he had said hadn’t ever left Kyles mind, and the words worked on him every time he looked at the man. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves. We both know what we are capable of. Don’t bother denying it, I can feel your power like an itch I can’t scratch. But I’ve given you a metric ton of crap over the last three months and you’ve stuck by your story. You’ve never one used your talents either.”
“I have my suspicions about who you are and why you’re here, but as of tonight I don’t care. If you were anything other than what I suspect, then you would have done something to fuck up by now. So long as you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re welcome in my town.” Malen had cracked a beer open for himself and at that point he had taken a long pull at the bottle.
“I will never speak of this again,” and that had been that, sort of.
Though Malen had been true to his word, never openly speaking of their abilities, things he said still made Kyle’s mind want to question, and yearn for the knowledge of the whys and wherefores of what this man was telling him.
Like today for example, Malen had told Kyle he would have a visitor at precisely three seventeen PM. Kyle had arrived, as always, promptly at two, which meant for the past hour and fifteen minutes, he had been swaying between asking Malen for more info and pondering what had gone wrong.
The reason for Kyle’s assumption of something bad happening was that was the only reason any of the people who knew where he was would seek him out. He had run here to the small town of Shade from his hometown in central Missouri, but not directly.
It had taken him nearly two years of wandering before he found this small town. The reason Kyle hadn’t settled anywhere else was that everywhere else he had been to, the communities in those places had tried with varying degrees of pressure, to suck Kyle into their problems and feuds. As a person with power, everybody who had ever met Kyle since the day he had discovered his abilities, wanted him to use their benefit. Everyone except for Malen.
Kyle had learned a hard lesson about the use of power. He had killed a man, a powerful man, with the assistance of an item of extraordinary power. The creators of this item had foreseen this happening and they had installed safety measures to curtail people from using it for this purpose. Kyle had blindly accepted the price required to slay that man and he had paid in full. The cost had been a great one, indeed, nearly driving him insane. He had survived, and now he lived with the entire eighty year life of a man who had tried to kill him burned forcibly and permanently into his brain.
The parallels that Kyle could draw between his early existence and this man, called Nolthak, scared him more than anything he had experienced before. The two of them were both powerful, both young, both inexperienced, and until Kyle had gained Nolthak’s additional fifty years of experience and his descent downward into darkness, psychosis and madness, they had both been idealistic. Kyle had, in his head, reminding him every day, the swirling chaos of a mind that had become drunk with power and bent on revenge. That mind had made a conscious choice and it had been the wrong one, it had been a choice that had driven it to destruction.
That was why Kyle had run. That was why he lived a normal, as much as could be expected, life here in a small nowhere town. That was why he would not use his abilities until he had absolutely no options left, nowhere left to run or hide. He did not want to travel the same path as Nolthak. He was afraid that should he start to use his power he would then be able to justify any killing he did with it, just like Nolthak had done. He was afraid that the power he held in check every day, every time he got angry, every time he got frustrated, would corrupt him like it had done to Nolthak.
Kyle’s friends, and his brother especially, hadn’t understood, and how could they. They had not seen Nolthak as Kyle had seen. They hadn’t experienced how he had started, just like Kyle, a stubborn idealist bent on changing a corrupt system of rules. They had not witnessed the betrayals, both of Nolthak and of Kyle, by people who they had thought they could trust.
Kyle knew some, while they didn’t understand why, they knew that what Kyle was doing was the right move. He had kept in touch with Bella and Josh, now married and happy in their own lives. The others had only responded with silence when Kyle had sent out letters telling them all where he had ended up.
Abruptly Malen set his pen down and turn in his chair to face the door. Kyle glanced at his watch and then up as a man entered the bar. It was the last person Kyle expected to see.
Tim hadn’t changed all that much in five years. He still had sandy blonde hair, though his widows peak had grown more pronounced and his gray eyes still held that same piercing quality. At that moment they had fear and concern in them as well as he regarded Malen.
“I’ll leave you kids to talk,” Malen told them and sauntered past Tim into the New Mexico afternoon.
“Do you know who he…?” Tim began.
“Malen,” Kyle replied as the man approached the bar.
“And do you know what he…?”
“No and I really don’t care. He hasn’t fucked me over yet, so he’s ok in my book,” Kyle informed him.
“Tim and Kyle had been friends in high school until Tim’s family had fallen on hard times and Tim had tried to close himself off from everybody. Kyle had tried to draw him back out of his shell and it had backfired. They had both left that encounter with scars, physical and mental, that had taken a long time to heal.
When Kyle had returned home five years ago the two of them had reconciled some of their differences. That is until Kyle had chosen to run rather than stick it out. Tim hadn’t understood at all. It didn’t help that he had been enamored of the woman who had betrayed Kyle, either.
“Want a drink?” Kyle asked into the uncomfortable silence.
“Nah,” Tim replied.
“How’s things?” Kyle asked cautiously. Tim sat down and gazed at the bar top obviously troubled by something.
“Got married,” Tim said softly. Kyle rocked back on his heels, his eyes widening in surprise.
“Really?” he asked. Tim hadn’t directly answered the question but he had just told Kyle exactly what was bothering him. He had approached this in a way that told Kyle what his first priority was, for that, Kyle was grateful. “And who’s the lucky girl?”
“Steph,” Tim replied. Steph, had been one of the girls that Kyle and Tim had hung out with in school, a cute little blonde girl. Kyle hadn’t seen her in over a decade and he wondered what she was like. “Three years ago,” he added.
“And,” Kyle prompted, he knew Tim wasn’t finished.
“My daughter is nearly two,” Tim said and Kyle finally understood.
“Steph… is she…?” Kyle tapped his temple, Tim smiled in response.
“About as powerful as I am,” which meant ‘not very’.
“So why are you here and not at home?” Kyle asked.
“Something’s going on,” Tim replied. “I’ve gotten whispers of it out and about.”
He was referring to his habit of going out on long walks. By long it was understood that it took him days to reach his destination and days to get back. Somehow Tim managed to have a decent knowledge of what was going on in the world, and especially things that happened at home. It was obviously one of his abilities.
“Something like what?”
“I’m not sure, but nobody has seen Josh, Bella or your brother for three months now,” Kyle let his breath out slowly in a long hiss.
“And?”
“And some people are wondering if you’re going to come back to try to find them, like you did with your mom,” Tim told him.
“And?” Kyle prompted. Tim was avoiding something.
“And more are wondering if this time it was you that made them all disappear.”
“Ah, so,” Kyle remarked softly, Tim flinched at the sound of his voice. “The illusive point emerges. You want to know what’s true and what, if anything is being made up to soil my good name,” the last two words of the sentence came out loaded for bear with sarcasm.
“Did you?”
“I did not. I haven’t seen or heard from any of the people at home for over a year now. That is until you walked through that door.”
“Then you’ve got to come back and…”
“And do what Tim?” Kyle asked violently causing Tim to rear back in confusion. “Defend myself? Search for my missing brother and friends? Make up with Rachel?” Kyle spat her name out like a curse. Tim stared stunned at Kyle for almost a minute as Kyle calmed his boiling temper.
“What the hell happened between you two? I’ve only seen that kind of emotion from you once before,” Tim said as Kyle continued to calm himself.
“Ask Rachel.”
“I did.”
“There you go…”
“She said to ask you,” Tim interrupted. Kyle sighed and sat back against the counter at the back of the bar.
“She slept with me,” Kyle said.
“Yes I gather, but why the hatred? Typically the opposite happens between people who do that kind of thing.”
“She slept with me under orders to sleep with me,” Tim’s face went deadly still. “She slept with me to elicit that emotion from me, to hook me into a vulnerable position. If I had proceeded into a relationship with her, the high council would have had a ready dagger to stick into my back if I had gone and done something they didn’t like.”
“That kind of thing doesn’t happen,” Tim said softly but Kyle could tell he didn’t actually believe it.
“Tell that to Nolthak,” Kyle offered.
“Like you’d…” Tim began angrily.
“That was the price I paid,” Kyle replied interrupting him.
“For what?” Tim asked incredulously.
“For being able to kill him,” Kyle told the man patiently.
“What?” Tim asked sounding shocked.
“I used an item as a battery of sorts to get enough brute force power to blast Nolthak into eternity. The people who made said item didn’t want it to be used like that. So the price for me killing somebody was to have that persons life put up here,” Kyle said pointing to his temple. Tim stared in shock at Kyle for a moment.
“When he was my age, Nolthak was a lot like I was back then,” Kyle informed his friend. “I’ve seen firsthand what getting involved with the high council will do to me.”
“Yes so you also know how to avoid making the decisions that Nolthak made.”
“That’s just it. The high council would manage to eventually paint me into a corner until I told them to fuck themselves. Then what?” Tim looked down at the bar again at a loss for words. He knew what Kyle would do in a situation like that. It had happened before. When Kyle ran out of options he fought until the other party stopped moving.
“You still know what not to do, what mistakes not to make…” Tim said obviously trying to find a way to get him to come home.
“What if I make different ones?” Kyle asked and Tim went silent again.
“So you’re just going to let them say these things about you?” he asked.
“You are now the only person alive who knows where I’m living,” Kyle replied.
“If they come asking…” Tim began.
“Tell them where to find me,” Kyle replied. Tim looked up seeming both surprised and relieved at the same time. “You have a family. If they want a fight, let it be with me, not with you.”
“So that’s it then?” Tim asked.
“That’s it.”
“You’re committing suicide, you know that, right?”
“I seem to remember hearing that once before,” Kyle replied.
“Do you want some…?”
“No, go home Tim. I don’t want you involved,” Kyle said forcefully. “The people who will come after me are way out of your weight class. Hell they’re way out of mine, probably. I don’t want your daughter to grow up without a father. I know what that’s like.”
Tim sighed heavily. “Yeah me too,” he said softly. “But I feel bad leaving you like this.”
“Don’t,” Kyle told him. “Besides, if Malen is half the badass he makes himself out to be I ought to be ok,” Kyle said with a grin as Tim looked rather uncomfortable at the reminder of who owned the establishment he was sitting in.
“Ok then I’ve done all I can do. You know it’s coming now. Good luck. Hopefully I’ll see you around Kyle,” Tim stood and without another word or backward glance, walked out of the bar. As soon as he was gone Malen appeared from outside.
“You look like you just swallowed something unpleasant,” he remarked.
“My past might be catching up with me,” Kyle told the man who chuckled.
“Happens to the best of us,” Malen told him with a smile. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Honestly?” Kyle fingered his pistol where it sat at the small of his back. “I’m gonna get a bigger gun.”