John's Lawn

Well, after my last post, I felt a little better, psychologically speaking of course. Out here we can’t really get therapists, so apparently this is my best bet. Trauma is not so surprisingly something you just get over after some sleep. So I’ve come back to vent more of my traumatic experiences.

It was my second night when things decided to pick up. After my previous encounter, I figured things could only get worse. After seeing all the things Bill had captured in just his half of the night shift, I figured it was dumb luck I only ran into a single shade. Oh how right I was.

After my shift from the first night, Bill helped patch my nose up and it was in fact broken. Unfortunately I was going to have to deal with it till the shipment the next day since we were low on medical supplies. “Just try not to die tonight. It wouldn’t be the shortest term but I don’t feel like havin to train a new guy right after you.” He said in that gruff yet somehow monotone voice of his. Like an old war vet who’s seen some shit, it was unsettling to say the least. He must’ve noticed my grim expression because he followed up, “Listen, gettin attached ain’t gon help either of us. For all either of us know, today’s gonna be our last. Makin’ emotional connections’ll only hurt one of us in the end. Try and keep that in mind.” He wasn’t the best motivational speaker, but he did seem to have his wisdom up his sleeve. 

This job matures the immature quickly or it kills you, he hadn’t died, but a part of him must’ve. Have you ever seen those cheerful old people? The ones who are constantly smiling, happy to be alive? Offering you some candy for being “such a kind young man.” Bill definitely wasn’t one of them. He was aged, it really showed in the stress wrinkles on his forehead. Residing beneath were glazed over eyes that likely had their own stories to tell. They were complemented only by the perpetual bags hidden behind large, wire framed glasses. His built frame looked out of place, had he worked anywhere else, I guarantee he wouldn’t put in the effort of working out every day. All in all, it was obvious he had seen some shit.

“You’re right, sorry sir.” I said almost instinctively.

“Knock that sir bullshit off, I ain’t your drill sergeant.” He responded in a stirn, yet somehow emotionless tone.

“Right sorry si- I mean uh… Bill.” I tried to sound more relaxed. He just shook his head in response. Overall, the day was pretty boring, I went easy on the workout, ate, shit, showered all that fun stuff. When time came for my shift, I was awake before Bill could even come down. The beeping in my ear was all I needed. I counted the time in between beeps… one second. It must’ve been an error as I hadn’t woken up to any of the beeps from the previous night. Regardless, I got dressed, grabbed the neck snare and my gun and ran upstairs. Bill was nowhere in sight, I checked his bed, but still, no luck. I booked it downstairs and out the door to see Bill, standing across from an amazingly beautiful woman. Immaculate, perfect, and other synonyms I can’t think of right now. They appeared to be talking, almost in whispers. I walked over to confront them, then the woman started shouting.

“Ah yes, another government dog! HOW FUCKING PREDICTABLE!” She was pissed, but her voice still matched her appearance to a T, “How many times must I come here and kill your men before you understand what you’re doing is wrong. Attracting entities to capture and torture them just for a bit of extra money. Do you have no morals?”

I decided to pull my bluetooth out when Bill responded to her in kind, “I do what I do so others don’t gotta lady!” It was the first time I had heard him sincerely pissed off, and it was terrifying, “If I leave here the government is just gon keep on doin what it does! So long as I’m here, the burden won’t be placed on another soul, why can’t YOU get that through that thick skull a yours? After all these years I know I’ve got my fair share of dues to pay, but that’s 30 years of other people not havin to. You’re lucky I don’t rat you out to the feds, you know better than me what that USPM group is capable of, they’d have your head on a silver platter if I warned them before you came. Now why don’t you get your happy little ass off this island and leave us alone!”

“I’ll be back soon, we can talk about this again when the other dog is on his leash.” She glanced at me, holding my gun up and aiming at her head.

“Calm down kid, she ain’t here to kill either of us, not yet anyway. Besides, that gun ain’t gonna do much to her. Forgot the alarm spreads to everyone if a shade’s been here for too long.” Bill let out a sigh before continuing, “Just put the gun down and let her go. She’s an 18.” Somehow I realized what he meant immediately… the dial goes up to 20, but it stays at five. An 18 means we’d have to call in for help. I put my gun down, my entire body now shaking. I didn’t say anything as the woman slowly approached the water, gracefully diving into the sea below.

“Wh-who was that?” I asked with a slight tremble in my voice.

“Siren, she drops by from time to time to lecture me on how what I’m doing is wrong. She generally kills the new guys, be glad your brain ain’t liquid right now.” There was actually a hint of emotion in his voice that I couldn’t quite place. Maybe fear? Or, concern? It was hard to tell since his two defaults are monotone or pissed off… and still somehow monotone.

“Does she have a name or anything like that?” I was mostly asking in case she decided to kill me so I could shout an expletive at her before I die.

“Megami.” Was all he responded with, “You oughta get to bed, still got a couple more hours before your shift starts.”

“I’m not sure I can fall asleep right now. I think I’ll just get a coffee and stay up with you instead. I can help out if something else shows up.” He just grunted and headed back inside.

I had been told growing up that if I ever started drinking coffee, I should always drink it black. That I’ll get used to the taste and save money on sugar and cream. So when I went into the kitchen to make some coffee and found no creamer, it wasn’t the end of the world. As I waited for the water to heat up I got to thinking more about that conversation between Bill and that Megami woman. What was the USPM? Why didn’t she kill me? Does Bill put sugar in his coffee? That last one came up when I began to smell the fresh brew of coffee fill the air. It seemed like there was a whole lot more going on than I was led to believe through the interview process. But it makes sense, I work for the government now, I’m only told what I’m required to know. Bill is reasonable though, he may be able to fill me in at least a little bit in a couple hours. The timer went off, interrupting my train of thought. I pulled out a couple mugs just in case I ended up having to double fist it. After pouring the coffee I made my way upstairs, slowly to ensure I wouldn’t spill any.

“How’s the man of the hour doin?” I asked sarcastically as my head peeked the stairway.

“Dead inside.” He stated it in such a matter of fact tone that I chuckled, rubbing my arm uncomfortably.

“Fair enough. Anything pop up yet?”

“Nope, so far nothin. Just a bunch of water.” I realized as I  approached the terminal like area that Bill had put his bluetooth back in, reminding me to do so as well. I put down the coffees and just before I could get the earbud back in, Bill picked up a mug and started chugging it, still scalding hot.

“Uh… You’re welcome? I guess?” I said hesitantly.

“We’ve got the powdered stuff up here y’know. No need to go and make some downstairs. Just a waste of time jackass.” His perpetual frown softened at that.

“So… Bill… My man.” I paused and he glanced at me, raising an eyebrow slightly, “My dude, sorry I had to get that last one out. What’s that UPSM thing you mentioned earlier?”

“That’s USPM.” He said, letting out a disappointed sigh, “Government organization, made to take down shades and the like. Apparently one of that one’s friends or something were taken out by them, so whenever she shows up, I just bring them up and she gets antsy. Don’t really know much about em, except for this one time when they sent one of em out here. They had to take over temporarily while I recovered from a disease one of those pieces of shits brought up from the bottom of the ocean. They only talked to me once when I asked em something trivial like their name and they just told me it was classified. Best you just ignore their existence until that bitch comes back.”

That information, topped with the everpresent anxiety of knowing I very well may die the next time she came, led me to the decision to go through the binder again without saying anything. I flipped page after page to try and figure out what the yellow button meant.

“I know I’m hard on you kid.” He continued with a hint of sadness, “I just don’t wanna see another kid die before me. It’s the type of shit that sticks with ya. All the ones I go easy on end up dying the fastest. Found that out the hard way about 25 years back or so. You can’t afford to let your guard down kid.”

I interrupted him, “I know, I get it. I don’t really feel like dying yet so you can count on me outliving you.” He let out a short chuckle before spitting into his cup.

I went back to the binder, but after flipping through every page and not finding one for the button, I figured I had to ask, “So, what’s the yellow button for?”

Bill looked at me out of the corner of his eye, “Whenever the moon ain’t right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean exactly?” I persisted.

“Blood moons, solar eclipses, all that stuff. Whenever the moon ain’t right, we press that button.”

“That seems pretty important, so why isn’t it in the binder with all the other buttons and dials?”

He relaxed in his chair a little, letting out an old man moan before answering, “I don’t know, guess they just expect at least one person workin here to remember. I don’t pretend to understand the government. Corruption, politics, power, I don’t got any of it on my side, so I don’t understand what they’re thinkin. My best guess is they figure I’ll be around longer than I will.”

“What makes you say that?” 

Before he could respond, a beeping went off in my ear. After three beeps it switched to every two seconds and we were heading downstairs. Once we got downstairs, it was on the island. “You go left, I’ll go right. This thing is fast so be careful.” Bill said as he opened the door.

I pulled my gun out and walked carefully while looking around. If something was here I needed to see it before it saw me. The adrenaline was making my hands shake, I couldn’t hold my gun steady. As I walked, I could hear multiple voices coming from my left. I turned and aimed, but nothing was there. The voices were now coming from behind me, I turned around but as expected, nothing.

“Get over here kid!” I heard Bill yell as I looked around.

“On it be right there!” I ran out of there full tilt thanks to my adrenaline anxiety. When I got to him I assessed the situation. There were nearly a dozen tiny alien creature looking things squealing and making all sorts of sounds. I was going to say something, but my body took over and I aimed at one of them and fired. The bullet took an arm off before bill shot two more of them. The remaining creatures charged us. I shot one in the head by accident before three latched onto my legs. At first it seemed like that was all they were going to do, until my legs started heating up, like someone slowly putting a blow torch up to them. “Get off me you sadistic fuckers!” I screamed, trying to put my gun up to one of their heads. When I finally managed, I took the shot, kicking out the scent of gunpowder and burnt flesh. The other two started climbing up me, leaving melted fabric in their path. I heard a few more gunshots and the one who’d made it to my chest by this point fell off and started writhing in pain.

It was around this point that I dropped my gun to try and pull the thing off. But as I went to touch it, Bill fired another round and took the thing’s head off. The fact that he had shot two of those things off of me without grazing my skin definitely said a lot about his aim. With another four shots from Bill, they were all either dead or incapacitated. I had some pretty bad burns and was on the verge of collapsing when Bill spoke up, “What were ya doin over here kid, you couldda died.” He sounded surprised.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I was already exhausted, “You told me to come help.”

“Shit… Well I didn’t, but that must mean we’ve got at least a 5 on our hands.”

Then, I heard Bill’s voice behind me, “Well kid, you took a wrong turn and look where that got you.”

I heard, presumably the real one let out a sigh, “Oh man, you had me worried for a second there. Thought you were one of them shapeshiftin shades.”

I turned to the direction of the other voice to see a tall, lanky man in an old fashioned suit and a top hat. He wore black aviators and steel toed combat boots. “Oh you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. What even are you?” I asked, still out of breath.

He responded in what I presume his normal voice was. It was similar to his fashion sense, the general idea of an old timey english accent was there, but he would switch it up every so often, “You need not concern yourself with that child. For you see, I am-” he was cut off by a bullet hitting him in the arm from Bill, “Well, that sure hurts like a bitch.”His words were faltering, “I think, I’m need sit down.” He projectile vomited before collapsing.

“Welp, let’s get these shades down to the prison before any more show up.” We pulled all the live and dead alien looking shades into one cell, but the strange voice guy we set up in a different cell strapped to a chair with some special type of chains. The metal didn’t look familiar but it looked durable, unscathed and didn’t even have any scratch marks on it. So either they were new, or they were just that strong. Whatever it was, we went back up to the surface and headed back to the lighthouse.

Anyway, sorry for the short post, I’ve been having to really bust my balls lately. A lot has been happening and I’m just trying to keep up. I’ll update you guys when I get a chance, I’ve got a feeling I won’t be telling these old stories for much longer.