time is coming | a continuation of the original now it’s dark
you’ll undoubtedly have to read the initial trilogy to understand the universe here, but i’ll try and make it so it can stand alone. i ain’t putting this on ao3 because it’ll be my attempt at a comic book and to make a long story short, i can’t really focus on the writing on there making a comic out of the text (i learned my lesson after doing the comic for amped and wired).
June 1, 1989. Oswego, New York.
It sure is good to have my old job back in singing with Anthrax, even if it meant pushing John out of the fold. I can still feel the fire directed at me, but I can handle it all, though. If I nearly drowned in the lake and nearly been blown up by a nuke, then I can handle the four of them. But then again, it’s going to be something to rearrange my hockey games with singing sessions and touring sessions, and especially on such short notice.
I have my demo tape, too, produced and polished by Lars of all people. It’s not like I’ll be starving to death at all.
I still think of Maya, though. I saved her as well as the whole world, and the fact that I singlehandedly took down an entire industry still feels surreal to me. Even after five months, it still feels like a dream.
My place also feels empty after the ghosts left and returned to the other side.
It’s all changed. It’s all morphed around and made into something I don’t recognize, and yet I still feel something in the wings. After all that thinking, and all that investigating, I came across this huge ecosystem where the dead were able to cross over into our world, and my grandfather was a part of it all as well. The land could be desecrated against the will of someone else, and if it happened once, it could unquestionably happen again. Even after twelve days, I knew that something could take its place. An industry fell, and one that took place over the course of some decades.
Something had to fill the void, especially with something that was supposedly too big to fail.
I may be a damn Injun, but I’m not an idiot. Being around someone as smart as Lars gave me something else, something that I could go by. Lars said it’s a new era to celebrate, but all this time, I have had this nagging, persistent feeling within me that celebrations won’t last for very long.
It’s another one of those hot and humid days in upstate New York where the mercury isn’t very high but you would swear that it’s raining: it’s not quite the lake effect but it’s definitely something that makes me wish for snow again all day. I should wish for snow so I could curl up in bed again.
Then again, even if I could curl up in bed all day, there’s still plenty of things to do. I’m not the poor boy anymore trying to find his way around the world without the anchor of his band: now I’m the poor boy back in the band and with odd times to deal with from thence forth.
I sit up in bed, and I look out the window to the bright sunlight out there: the plants in full form, the fact that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the feeling of the first heat wave on the horizon. Even in the summer time, it’s so weird sleeping without the ghosts, especially when I expect to find Vera at the foot of my bed or Nerissa right next to me.
I guess it’s not that bad. The last day at the hockey game, we were freezing our asses off, but at least we managed to play the game, though. I put on a sweater, and that long black winter coat as well as my black pants. I think I’m always going to be the man in black, more than the man in black himself.
The sun beats down upon my hair as I’m walking out there, and I know that it can pick up at any given point and time while I’m walking towards the street. Broad daylight and I’m still thinking about that night when I found Maya on the sidewalk. I don’t even want to think about finding another girl in a gutter, especially when I know for a fact that she could lead me to my own death.
The ghosts returned to the other side, but I’m still haunted. I have my hands on the sides of my head even though my head feels fine. It’s too hot and humid. I need something to eat, something to drink, something to do, something to take my mind off those scars and those memories.
Calm down, Joe. Calm down. It’s all behind you. It’s a brand-new day. Never forget where you came from but it’s to build up fresh new memories.
I clasp my hands to my face and I glance back to my apartment complex.
I just want to go for a ride.
I go back to my place and fetch my keys, and I get in my car and drive out of there. There’s always one place that I can go to, especially with my demo tape in the process of being made over there, and my hope is that I can get there before the afternoon thunderstorms flare up over the lake surface, and if the beads of sweat on the side my body are anything to go by, it’s practically inevitable. I keep my hands out of the direct sunlight while I’m steering, and it’s way easier said than done: my car is still a piece of crap and more so after all of that at the beginning of the year. Add to this, the air conditioner barely works and the heater finally gave out for real that time.
And once again, I’m hungry and on the way over to Rochester, through the trees and without a place to stop for a time, except Spence is elsewhere. I’m still driving anyway because there’s only one place that I want to be at the moment. At least this time around, I’m not so hungry that I feel ready to puke there on the floor below the steering wheel.
I recognize the skyline, and I follow my nose to that familiar brick building. I can still smell the fine fabrics. I can still smell everything.
In fact, I can still feel everything. Even though it hadn’t been for very long, it still felt like a distant memory of sorts. I have to find myself a new mindset away from it all, away from the feelings that had haunted me in the wake of the ghosts leaving the apartment.
I take the spot before the front doors. I recognize those black letters on the white background over the bright lights: Sew Into You.
I find my way inside only to be greeted by the black and white checkerboard floor, the presence of the checkerboard all around me, and of course, that blast of air conditioning upon my head as well. I know her headband anywhere, and more so when she turns around and smiles at me as she’s holding a tulle of white lace.
“Hey, Marcia!” I stop right in my tracks at the sight of the deep purple crescent shape around her eye.
“Hey, Joey,” she greets me, and then she stops right at her tracks as well.
“What—what happened to your face?” I gasp upon sight of her.
“Oh—” She chuckles and runs her fingers over her black eye. “I got into boxing after the whole… adventure this past winter,” she tells me.
“Boxing, wow! You don’t see that every day, at least not with girls.”
“Sonia’s been my trainer, too,” she adds. “In fact, she and I both have training and working out quite a bit these last few months. I do boxing, she does that Israeli one—”
“Krav Maga?” It takes me a second.
“Yeah, that one! Add to this, the two of us also do capoeira on the weekends. We’re getting stronger and harder every day after work. You never know when your friends are going to fall into a big-ass ordeal again.”
Right as she says that, the ceiling light over us cuts out and we’re engulfed in darkness, albeit for a second: it comes back within a couple of seconds.
“What the hell?” I wonder aloud.
“The power’s been cutting in and out like this all week long,” she explains as she sets the lace down on the counter behind her. “No idea why and we can’t get an electrician in here, either.” She reaches up for a caress of her black eye once again, and that time she grimaces from the feeling. “I’ll be right back, this is starting to hurt like a son of a bitch…”
As she walks out of there, I turn my attention to the other fabrics right behind me.
There’s a guy on the other side of the tulles… and he looks like me. His long wavy hair the color of molasses, and his smooth skin kissed by the sun, and I am intrigued almost immediately. He’s looking at all the checkerboard fabrics, and I am particularly intrigued by his long and lanky fingers as they caress over the spines of the tulles.
He then turns and looks back at me, and his eyes are as bright as diamonds.
“Hey,” he greets me: his voice is low, almost gruff, and quite sensual.
“Hey,” I reply back to him, complete with a clearing of my throat. “Like what you see?”
“Of course. I could totally use some of this back out in California. You wouldn’t think of it as getting all that cold out there, but it does.”
“California, really?” I show him a little smile. “What brings you to upstate New York?”
“A little relaxation before we head back into the studio,” he explains. “It’s been a little get away for the five of us the last four months, and now it’s time to wrap it all up.”
“Five? Another quintet?”
“Yeah. Why do you ask?” He chuckles at that, rather amused.
“I’m the lead singer of a band, too, and there’s five of us.”
“Dude—” He raises his hand for me, and I give him a high five.
“Dude!” And I feel my heart fluttering from the feeling, and I’m not sure what’s come over me, either. But I hunch my shoulders and embrace the chill up my spine.
“Would you like to take a walk with me?” he offers.
“I kinda just came here to hang out, so… yeah.” I crack him a smile, and I tuck my hands into my pockets.
“I’m Chuck,” he says.
“I’m Joey.”
It’s right then I wonder what Lars is doing right then, especially when we last spoke back in January after the dust had settled. A time to celebrate, was the last thing he had said to me.
He and I walk back outside to that overbearing humidity, but as long as I’m walking with someone else, and someone who didn’t get sparred in the face on accident: there is no way that Marcia can see straight, and I really just have to be away from the empty apartment at the end of it all.
I can’t go back to Black Orchid, even though I know that I’m always welcome back there. I need something outside of the pleasures of the flesh with a bunch of classy as hell girls.
He’s a fair bit taller than me, and quite a bit burlier as well, but my eyes are drawn to his slender waist and sinewy thighs. I don’t really know how to explain it but I feel something with him.
“I hope that we don’t walk too far from there,” I confess to him.
“Oh, we won’t,” he assures me, and he shows me a thoughtful little smile.
“You’re Native American, right?”
“Pomo. From Northern California.”
“I’m Iroquois, from just a block from here,” I retort, and he chuckles at that.
We reach the street corner, and all of a sudden, he stops me dead in my tracks with a hand on my chest. It’s a feeling I can’t really put my finger on, but I actually like the way that his hand feels on my body. But then he points to the street before use: there’s a line of trees up ahead of us, followed by the end of the street itself only for it to end into a dirt road.
In the bushes, I see something move.
“What the hell is that?” he demands in a hushed voice even though we’re a ways away.
As far as I know, it’s Death again.
We glance at one another and then he gestures for me to follow him. I swallow, and I have a bad feeling about this. Five months of quietness went by too fast.
But we’re walking, and he’s bringing us to the bushes in question. Indeed, there’s a pathway back into the trees.
She has long scarlet hair and is wearing a long black gown. She’s holding something in her hand.
“Get down, get down…” he whispers to me.
We both hunker down behind the bushes and we watch the witch down by the trees. The sunlight shines through the trees onto her head and shoulders. The thing in her hand is a skull. It takes me a second to realize that it’s also sparkling.
“Do you think she’ll eat us?” he asks me.
“Eat us?” I raise an eyebrow at that. “I don’t think I can ever imagine a witch eating two Native American guys whole, not without spiking a lot of shit with some mad juju.”
He snickers at that.
“She could make a stew out of us,” Chuck cracks. We watch her until she vanishes into the shadows before us, and we glance at one another.
“What do you think we should do?” he asks me.
“We’ll have to follow her,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders, especially when I know that Marcia is going to be out of it for a time. “We’re going to have to be incredibly quiet, though.”
He nods, and then, with our heads bowed, we creep into the trees. It might seem a bit odd to go on another adventure and with someone who I had just met, but I had done it before, and I was going to be damned if I didn’t do it again. I keep my head down a bit as I lead the way to the clearing, and we’re met with a ring of low pine trees all along the rim. A fine layer of mist surrounds us, even with it still being rather warm outside.
“I’m gonna have to hit up Lars again,” I say under my breath. “I have to call him again, anyway, he’s got my solo album.”
“You’re making a solo album?”
“Yeah.” I turn my attention back to him, and I show him a smile. But before either of us can say anything else, we’re met with a flash of heat upon our heads as well as bright blue light from the canopy of the trees.
“Holy shit—” He grips onto me and the two of us bow down towards the bushes. Against the blue light, which is giving me some serious flashbacks, there are the silhouettes of witch hats and their heads against the trees. I almost feel like I shouldn’t be there.
Chuck and I are going to get our clocks cleaned right after we had just met one another. There’s a tree branch right next to me, and I pull it before us to protect us.
“Leave, believe, retreat!” the witches chant in unison. “Leave, believe, retreat! Leave, believe, retreat!”
“Oh, god, it’s like the worst thing you can imagine,” he says right into my ear.
“LEAVE, BELIEVE, RETREAT!”
This is followed by a loud crack!, followed by a series of bright green, red, and white sparks and another wave of heat upon our heads. I open my eyes to find the witches gone, but there are two figures on the ground on the other side of the clearing. Before I can do anything, Chuck moves out from behind me to investigate it all.
I hold still for a second as he creeps on over to them.
He then turns towards me with a worried look on his face.
“Joey, these two boys could be hurt! Help me!”
I raise my eyebrows at that.
“Oh my god in heaven,” is all I can muster out. But I go over to him, anyway, and every step gives me a deeper pit in my stomach.
The two boys have darker skin in comparison to us, but by the look of their smooth almond-shaped eyes and their pushed in noses, I can tell they hail from Asia. Their long black hair tells me everything I need to know, and the smell of incense and sulfur gives me some ideas. Whatever those witches did to these boys, I knew in my heart that no doctor could solve it because they wouldn’t tell us anything, just like how they couldn’t possibly say anything about Maya or about my grandpa.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I grumble to myself, and I help him pick up the two boys from the ground.
a little something something for the four-year anniversary coming up here on friday 🔥
