Tangled Intersections Read Online Free PDF Page A

Eerily quiet, every shadow seemed ripe
to harbor unseen evil. His toes tensed and he gripped the sheet
tighter. But what good was a scrap of fabric going to do him? It
barely covered his ass.
    His breathing small and shallow, he
timidly stepped into the black. After one step it wasn’t so bad. He
took another. Then another.
    Instead of the clink, clink, clink,
boots made against the metal grating, the pads of his feet made no
noise at all. All around him, the station hummed quietly. The
droning sound, usually masked by foot traffic and the bustle of
ships coming and going, seemed oddly out of place. Yet, it lay
under everything, all the time. Only now had it taken center stage,
like a ghost come fully present.
    He might as well have been one,
too.
    Logic placed the time at the wee hours
of the morning, long before civilians arose. “Only criminals are
awake at this hour,” Grison muttered. “The sane are still
sleeping.”
    The fact he himself was not only awake
but also walking niggled at him. Gloomily, he wondered whether
Rister slept or if his tortured mind spun most nights until dawn.
The label, “insane” boasted a lot of different connotations. Rister
was merely one of them. But he was Grison’s own personal subtext.
The one man on the station he wanted most to see dead.
    The thought stopped him in
his tracks. The hard metal grating pressed into the soft pads of
his feet as he stood there, warring with his inner demons. Of which
he possessed many. Kill him. Kill him and
be done with it. Order his death and the blood doesn’t even touch
your hands.
    His rasping breaths reverberated off
the dense walls. That crappy green drink had scalded his throat,
probably leaving scar tissue. Acid boiled in his stomach,
threatening to send him to his knees. But as there was no waste
receptacle available for his use, he needed to get back to his
luxury accommodations before collapsing. If he could only make his
feet move. His fingers however, tingled and twitched eagerly. The
visage of Rister’s death looming large in his
imagination.
     
    Could he do it? Could he
convince them to terminate Rister for his own good? Taking care of
the matter himself would be… messy. It would call attention. Point
the finger of the law the wrong way. He needed it to point to
Rister alone. You’ll fry for your crimes,
you dirty bastard. I’ll make sure of it ,
he told Rister’s glowering face. You can’t
wrangle your way out of this now.
    As he stood there fantasizing, the
cool breeze of the station’s air scrubbers coming on blew the edges
of the sheet. The fluttering against his shins not unlike the feel
of butterfly wings. Just before he started moving again, a hand
clamped onto his left shoulder.
    Grison screamed.
    The high-pitched shriek traveled a
long ways, returning to his ears with the force of a slap in the
face. Shaking, he turned his head and swallowed hard. To his left
stood a very tall, very slim figure dressed in a bleak grey cloak
that covered him head to toe, and shadowed his face. When his
eyesight focused, he caught a glimpse of a ragged scar from the
man’s right temple to his chin. The hand molded to his shoulder had
certainly been burned at one time, but by who or what, he couldn’t
say.
    “ Excuse me, station
occupant. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The eyes of the guard,
when fully turned upon Grison, glowed grayish silver.
    Air hissed through his lips and as he
curled slightly into himself, he noticed his cock had shriveled.
Worse, he felt it leak most likely green liquid onto the dark grey
deck. He shuddered, repulsed by himself rendered weak as a
frightened girl under the man’s tight clasp.
    The security attendant blithely
continued as though his appearance was not strange at all. “But
it’s nearly four in the morning Earth time, and you’re standing in
the middle of the observation deck naked, save for a sheet. Do you
require some sort of assistance?”
    After the assistance he’d suffered
already