Project: Magnus

The first thing Cap­tain Remark­able noticed when the world came back into focus was white. The sec­ond thing he noticed was the dis­tinct absence of cold. No bit­ter 'wrap your arms and shiver' kind of cold that one would asso­ciate with so much white­ness, not even a notice­able change from the temp on the Daedalus.

“Where are we?” the cap­tain asked look­ing around.

“North Pole,” replied Faulkner.

“The toy fac­tory. Why isn’t it cold?”

“You’re assum­ing it is in a cold cli­mate area?”

“Well yea, it’s called the North Pole isn’t it?”

“It’s not called that because of it’s loca­tion Cap­tain but merely for his­tor­i­cal purposes”

“Okay, so why come here?”

“Because I don’t know any­thing about the loca­tion they are keep­ing the Prime so I want to be as pre­pared as possible.“

“And by that you mean?”

“I mean that I need to grab some gear and weapons and locate where they are keep­ing him. The plan is that we will tele­port in and extract him with min­i­mal muss and fuss. Now excuse me a moment while I check in and gather some things.”

“Under­stood.”

---

The first thing Cap­tain Remark­able noticed when the world came back into focus was white. The sec­ond thing he noticed was the dis­tinct absence of cold. Again. "And where might we be now?"

"Some­where I cer­tainly didn't expect to be, although when I think about it, it does make per­fect sense."

"What… oh my,” said the Cap­tain as he took in the vista before him. Every­where there were peo­ple. Peo­ple push­ing car­riages filled with chil­dren (scream­ing and oth­er­wise), peo­ple car­ry­ing bags full of shiny pack­ages with col­or­ful bows. Peo­ple going up and down mov­ing stairs and peo­ple going in and out of var­i­ous lit­tle shops. And every­thing was inside. That was the bit that took the Cap­tain most by sur­prise, the fact that all these peo­ple and boxes and bags and shops were all com­pletely enclosed in a build­ing that appeared to be many, many times the size of his ship.

It was, need­less to say, a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing. Even for the Captain.

"Wel­come Cap­tain, to the Mall,"

"What is this place?"

"Well, it's called a mall. Basi­cally it's exactly what it looks like, a but(but?) of stores and peo­ple under one roof. Think of it as a mar­ket indoors."

"But it's so… big."

"Thank­fully it's the same size on the inside as it is the outside."

"I'm sorry?"

"Noth­ing, inside joke. Okay, expla­na­tion time. Remem­ber how I men­tioned that there were mul­ti­ple ‘San­tas’? Keep that in mind, I’ll come back to it. The first thing you need to know is that we are in a dif­fer­ent dimension.

Any­way, see the crowd gath­er­ing on the far side of the open area? That is where they are keep­ing the Prime."

"What, out in the open like that?"

"It's a per­fect cover really. Here the peo­ple con­sider him the giv­ing of gifts to good lit­tle boys and girls and go on an annual pil­grim­age tak­ing their chil­dren to sit on his lap and relay to him what they want as gifts."

"Seri­ously? Kind of takes the fun and sur­prise out of it a bit doesn't it?"

"The peo­ple here have com­mer­cial­ized the hol­i­day to the point of hi-​​jacking sev­eral of the hol­i­days that typ­i­cally come before Christ­mas. They don’t care about what it means of what kind of psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age it does to any­one. They just want stuff. It’s got really bad in recent years here so we tend to avoid this dimen­sion if we can.”

“You said to remem­ber about mul­ti­ple Santas.”

“Right. Well, we typ­i­cally have a Santa for each dimen­sion or plane. In some cases mul­ti­ples is there are worlds that require it. How­ever, this is the first time a Santa, Prime or oth­er­wise has been to this dimen­sion in many gen­er­a­tions. The rea­son is because they have co-​​opted the Santa image. Remem­ber I men­tioned that this was the per­fect place to hide and being a per­fect cover ear­lier? That’s because this world is filled with malls like this one. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of them. And every sin­gle one has a Santa. Not an offi­cial Santa, just some­one dressed up as what they have come to believe Santa looks like. You’ll notice that they the Prime has a white beard and a red suit now.”

Cap­tain Remark­able stood star­ing at the gath­er­ing crowd try­ing to get a glimpse of the Prime, “So how do we do that with all these peo­ple around?”

“It cer­tainly makes it more dif­fi­cult, but not impos­si­ble. And I’m sorry, but I need you to serve as a dis­trac­tion while I make a grab for the Prime. It’s risky but we don’t have much time, they will fig­ure out we are here soon but they don’t know about you yet. It might be enough.”

“Okay then,”the Cap­tain said as he took the gun look­ing thing from Faulkner, “let’s go get us a Santa.”

Faulkner smiled, “That is a Gar­land Gun. If they get too close just point and shoot. It will fire sil­very ropes to entan­gle them, but know this; the minute you fire it they will know we are after the Prime. You have to time it prop­erly or they will be able to cir­cle back and stop me.”

“I under­stand,” replied the Captain.

“And par­don me for say­ing so Cap­tain, but a few min­utes ago you looked like you were about to pass out, now you seem like this is a nor­mal every­day thing for you. I know I’m not that good of a sto­ry­teller, so what gives?”

“When I thought this giant Mall thing existed on a planet in which I’ve been just about every­one, it unnerved me. How could this exist and I not know about it?

How­ever, when you explained that it was a dif­fer­ent, what did you call it, dimen­sion? Right, when you explained that it began to sound like some­thing Harley would say, and after hav­ing him as a crew mem­ber and shar­ing in his adven­tures for all these years, I can deal with things I don’t understand.”

Faulkner barked a laugh, “Fair enough. Okay, let’s go.”

“I am look­ing for a piece of the Matrix.”

“A piece of a matrix? Why come to me with this?”, asked Talos as he

“Not a matrix.”

“Wait, you are look­ing for ‘the’ matrix? The World Matrix?,” Talos asked laugh­ing, “Son, thats just a leg­end. A fairy tale told to young bots to get them to sleep. It is not real.”

Aneil shifted in his seat. He was becom­ing most decid­edly uncom­fort­able with the laugh­ing the old shaman bot was doing at his expense. He had been to the Dark Con­ti­nent sev­eral time in the past as a researcher and infor­ma­tion gath­erer. He had per­formed his duties well enough that he had been assigned Lead Researcher for the Noble Project, which was where he had encoun­tered the leg­end of the Matrix.

At first he had dis­missed it as just another crazy story just as the shaman had, but the more research he did for the Noble project the more he dis­cov­ered ref­er­ences to the ancient leg­end. So many so that he had began to won­der if there might actu­ally be some­thing to it.

He sub­mit­ted a pro­posal to the Admin­is­tra­tors but was refused on the grounds that it was all based on here say and cir­cum­stan­tial evidence.

Which meant he was fund­ing this trip with his own credits.

The sounds of the ser­vos whirring in the old bot as he paced around the room brought Aneil out of his mem­o­ries with a start. He real­ized Talos had been talk­ing to him. He glanced up to see him star­ing down as if expect­ing an answer.

“I am sorry, I was not lis­ten­ing. What did you say?”

“I was say­ing, assum­ing this ‘world matrix’ is real what makes you think it is around here or that I could help you?”

“It is real Talos. I've found it. Well, most of it. Accord­ing to the leg­end it was …”

“Bro­ken into a hun­dred pieces and scat­tered across the world. Yes, I know the sto­ries as well”

Aneil stood and waled over to his pack. He extracted a small, intri­cately carved, metal box along with a small cir­cuit chip, ancient things he had found in an old tomb not far from here. He han­dled the chip del­i­cately over the Talos, then opened the box. Inside was red tri­a­con­ta­he­dron shaped object about the size of a closed fist nes­tled inside a blue lat­tice work cage. As Aneil removed the con­tents sev­eral places were vis­i­ble where pieces of the red inner object were miss­ing. Talos sim­ply stared.

“As you can see, it’s not quite hun­dreds of pieces. But it is real Talos. Only a few pieces are miss­ing. That crys­tal con­tains all the infor­ma­tion about the Novatun tribe that lived about 60 kilo­me­ters north of here. Within that infor­ma­tion I have found sev­eral ref­er­ences to the Matrix, or at least what I believe to be the Matrix. There are mul­ti­ple ref­er­ences to the ‘heart that rules the world’ being bro­ken and scat­tered. It con­tained a list of places where the ‘heart was kept’ once it was bro­ken. I’ve man­aged to deci­pher most of them.”

Talos just stared at the crystal.

“Sorry, it is in an ancient for­mat and syn­tax, how­ever you can read it if you use your uni­ver­sal bus port. “

Talos did as sug­gested and inserted the crys­tal into a slot on his left wrist. He froze for a moment as he quickly down­loaded and scanned the doc­u­ments it con­tained, search­ing for the ref­er­ences Aneil had mentioned.

After a few sec­onds he removed the crys­tal and handed it back to Aneil, “Yes, I see what you mean. There are a sub­stan­tial num­ber of ref­er­ences in the doc­u­ments. I assume this was an ancient archiv­ing device?”

“That is my belief yes. We found it dur­ing a dig over a hun­dred and twenty-​​five years ago. At first it was just mean­ing­less infor­ma­tion and we sim­ply cat­a­loged it and put it in stor­age, not giv­ing it a sec­ond though. It was not until I began see­ing more and more ref­er­ences to the leg­end that I went back and res­canned the infor­ma­tion on this crystal.”

“Assum­ing I agree with you and I know some­thing about where the Colos­sus is, why would I help you? Telling you would bring hoards of vis­i­tors to my per­sonal paradise.”

“Because I’m not the only one looking…”

Aneil was inter­rupted by a series of explo­sions out­side. As both he and Talos started towards the door a small rust red bot cov­ered in soot and oil clam­ored through cough­ing and stammering.

Talos knelt in from of the new­comer and took his by the shoul­ders, “Tim­Tim, calm down. What is happening?”

“The Vok,” gasped Tim­Tim just before he collapsed.

“The Vok! You brought those insane bots here?” Talos turned to Aneil.

“No. I was track­ing them actu­ally, but when I real­ized they were headed in this direc­tion I rushed ahead. I had though I would have more time. We must go before they find us.” Aneil said as he turned and grabbed his pack.

“Go? I’m not leav­ing. This is my home now.”

“Old man,” began Aneil as he pulled an elec­tronic device from his pack, “I do not have time for fool­ish argu­ments. You now con­tain a copy of the infor­ma­tion on the chip. Infor­ma­tion the Vok lack but greatly desire. If you stay they will destroy you to get it. Even if you offer it up. You know them, they will assume you are hold­ing some­thing back and tear you apart, vir­tu­ally and phys­i­cally to make sure. I will destroy you myself first.”

Talos stared down the bar­rel of the Sta­tic Gun, "Fine, I will come with you. But be warned, I will not for­get this."

On the third floor of the hos­pi­tal in a room near the end of the hall con­fu­sion has set in. ¬†In a bed sur­rounded by nurses and doc­tors who are scram­bling, among med­ical debris scat­tered all over the floor and a dozen machines that emit a cacoph­ony of beeps and hums and old women lays dying. ¬†No one knows why or what is actu­ally wrong. ¬†There are no symp­toms other than the fact that her heart is fail­ing. In the cor­ner, alone in his chair, her hus­band cries.

Allow me to intro­duce myself, my name is Zif­fer Elroy Drumkins. And yes, I believe my par­ents hated me. Most peo­ple just call me Zed.

I'm 17, from Boston, MA and I'm a Zom­bie Hunter.

Trust me, it's not as glam­orous as it sounds. In fact it's kind of messy, but I do get to travel to remote and exotic places and met excit­ing peo­ple. Not.

I've learned a few things about Zom­bies over the years.

They main­tain full func­tion of any­thing not destroyed when they die. That includes the brain. For exam­ple, if your brain is dam­aged but your arms are fine you could hit a base­ball. Assum­ing you know what a base­ball is. Or what a bat is even for.

They can speak. Sorry to say it but George Romero got it wrong. Maybe he knew and left that part out in his movies because it's too ter­ri­fy­ing. It may not seem like much, but trust me, when a hor­ri­bly dis­fig­ured crea­ture sham­bling about is call­ing your name, it's not pleas­ant. Espe­cially when said per­son is your mother. Of course you're prob­a­bly use to her sham­bling about call­ing your name or maybe that's just me.

They have an hier­ar­chy of sorts. There is a mas­ter zom­bie all the way down to slaves and drones. Drones are usu­ally the ones that have had a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their head (and sub­se­quently their brain) dam­aged and are basi­cally stu­pid. Mas­ters are strong phys­i­cally, very strong. They have to be to make it up the food chain.

They aren't all that com­mon. There is prob­a­bly 1 zom­bie for every 100,000 peo­ple on the planet, give or take. They tend to gather in groups (clans, covens, flocks, gag­gles???) and hold up some­where away from people.

They don't actu­ally 'hunt' peo­ple. True, they love the taste of human flesh (eww!) but they are actu­ally attracted to move­ment. Stands to rea­son when your eyes are glazed over that you can't see very well. So if you were to stand stock still they'd walk right by you. Not that many peo­ple will stand still while a pack of flesh eat­ing mon­sters are strolling by.

There are actu­ally 2 types of zom­bies: Dead and Infected. The names are mis­lead­ing, but then again they didn't ask me my opin­ion when they named them. Dead zom­bies are peo­ple that died and then con­tracted the virus and were rean­i­mated. These are usu­ally the ones you see bum­bling around. Infected con­tracted the virus and died as a result (mean­ing they are un-​​injured) or were bit­ten. Kind of like Werewolves.

Finally, there is a cure. If you can get to it within the first 12 hours after infec­tion it can stop the virus. And yes, I real­ize how much that sounds like vampirism.

I've also learned that none of these rules mean a damn thing when your stuck on the roof of a park­ing garage in the mid­dle of the night, your only weapon being a sand pail of not-​​quite-​​ripe peaches that you just (ille­gally) picked and your best friend, Sixx, is stand­ing next to you in a fuzzy pink hos­pi­tal gown with rab­bits on it, all the while sur­rounded by a band of rea­son­ably intel­li­gent zom­bies who were actu­ally out look­ing for you specifically.

Trust me, pink is not his color.

Oh, and Sixx is a zom­bie as well.

"Explain to me again how you ended up wear­ing a ping hos­pi­tal gown."

"Really? You think now is the best time to bring that up again?"

"Well yea. It gets fun­nier every time you tell it."

"Oh hardy-​​de-​​har-​​har. What are we going to do Z?"

"I called Stephanie, she and Mike are on their way over now. They only live a few blocks from her."

Stephanie and Mike are the other half of our team. Steph is actu­ally my ex but we've remained friends. She's 5' 7", very much a tomboy and can kick the ass of just about any­one I know, includ­ing me. I've seen her take on 3 strong Infected at once and not even break a sweat.

Mike, her part­ner, puts Steph to shame. She is very fem­i­nine but is a bet­ter fighter than any of us. The belts in Judo, Aikido and Capoeira help. Don't let the blond hair fool you though, she doesn't take crap from any­one and doesn't suf­fer fools period. Imag­ine Char­l­ize Theron with a ninja sword and an atti­tude. And the fact that Mike and I get along bet­ter than Steph and I has noth­ing at all to do with my praise. Honestly.

"Get­ting into trou­ble again I see?" Steph says through a giant grin on her face.

"You know me," I reply as Mike tosses me my sword.

We wade through the first wave of grunts, slic­ing and hack­ing and the occa­sional thwack when I heave a peach at a zom­bie. I take the heads of a cou­ple of twins, Mike takes out three local busi­ness men. Sev­er­ing the head is the only sure way to guar­an­tee that a zom­bie is dead. Romero got that much right. Then again it works for just about every other crea­ture on the planet as well. There are a cou­ple excep­tions but that's another story.

I glance over and see Sixx beat­ing another zom­bie into sub­mis­sion with their own arms, hoop­ing and hol­ler­ing the entire time. At least he enjoys his work.

He takes a break from the beat­ing to look up at me just as I cut off the left arm of a zom­bie still hold­ing a broom.

"Any one else notice they aren't really putting up a fight?" he asks.

It's then that I notice the leader stand­ing off in the dis­tance. He real­izes I've seen him and steps forward.

"I come with a message."

"And what might that be?"

"The Matri­arch would like to speak with you."

With that the remain­ing zom­bies turn and leave. Some­thing I've never seen hap­pen before. Not exactly a good sign to be honest.

We all stand and stare at each other for a few min­utes, Steph is the one to finally break the silence.

"What do we do Zed?"

I pause for dra­matic effect, "Let's go find out what my mother wants."

Another Wife Approved &trad; pro­duc­tion. A lit­tle dif­fer­ent, but I think fun.

---

_​TarryAna stood star­ing through the win­dow. The most adorable lit­tle puppy stared back at her. ¬†He had jumped up and placed his front paws on the glass and gazed at her with his floppy pink tongue hang­ing out the side of his mouth.

She grabbed the strap of her shoul­der bag, yanked it far­ther up her shoul­der and marched into the store. ¬†She asked a few sim­ple ques­tions about the dog, basic things like what does he eat, how old he was, when his last air­plane checkup had been performed.

Once sat­is­fied, she handed over the 2 sacks of gold and Spear of Asagoul as pay­ment, grabbed the bag of squeaky toys, took the leash from the cashier and strolled hap­pily out the door with a shaggy, bouncy brown and white dog in tow.

---

_​TarryAna stared through the car wind­shield at the dark omi­nous clouds that were form­ing ahead. She had known it was going to rain and yet had stub­bornly left her umbrella at home, deter­mined not to be a slave to the weather.

"How's that work­ing for you?", she mut­tered to herself.

She glanced quickly into the back seat at the paper gro­cery bags, hop­ing she could make it home before it started to pour.

Maybe she would call John and have him meet her at a restau­rant where they could pass away the time while the storm passed.

---

_​TarryAna stood and stared out the win­dow, refus­ing to look at the mound of gro­ceries piled on the table. As of yet she hadn't decided what exactly she was going to do about the fact that her room­mate John has just spent their entire bud­get on milk, eggs and bread.

She could see the bags reflected in the glass. They hadn't man­aged to dis­ap­pear despite her fevered attempts to wish them away.

"Seri­ously? You bought 5 gal­lons of milk and 3 loaves of bread and how many dozen eggs?"

"6."

"6! What were you thinking?"

"Well," replied John as he whim­pered, "It's what you do when there is a snow storm"

"It makes no sense. What are we going to do with all that food."

"But," John whim­pered again (why did she find that cute?), "It's what peo­ple do!"

Despite her best efforts to stay mad she smiled and walked over to the dis­traught John, wrap­ping him with her arms and plan­ing a giant kiss on his cheek.

"We'll just eat lots of french toast," she said smil­ing as she leaned back and looked into his eyes.

"For­give me?"

"Of course! Help me crack the eggs?"

---

Wally returned to his chair, feel­ing much relieved from his trip to the bath­room, won­der­ing if he would ever get used to not leav­ing the com­puter for hours at a time.

As he glanced at his screen he noticed that the tav­ern was empty save his avatar _​TarryAna who was sit­ting partly slumped in a chair as if sleeping.

"Bas­tards left with­out me!"

Quickly grab­bing his mouse he tapped the space­bar to unpause the game, caus­ing _​TarryAna to quickly jump up and draw her sword on the screen. The fact that she had been sit­ting when he arrived but stand­ing when he had paused the game reg­is­tered for a split sec­ond before he issued a quick flurry of com­mands on the key­board, caus­ing the elfin avatar to charge out the tav­ern door utter­ing a gut­teral bat­tle cry.

He sud­denly had an odd crav­ing for french toast.

This isn't my strongest piece and con­sid­er­ing that I've been bad sick all week I prob­a­bly should have stayed in bed and left well enough alone.

Yea, right.

This is also an exper­i­ment. ¬†I'm decent at descrip­tion but wanted to try doing some­thing in pure dia­log to see if I could carry a story that way.

Any­way here is my Sep­tem­ber 18^th #fri­dayflash. Please com­ment below!

(more…)

He sat watch­ing the television.

It wasn't on but that hardly mat­tered since he wouldn't really be able to pay atten­tion to it anyway.

The pills were start­ing to take effect.

It wasn't much, just enough to make him feel just a lit­tle drowsy and woozy.

The world had taken on a bit of a glow­ing haze.

He had just began to real­ize he wasn't able to really focus on anything.

The real­iza­tion that he had passed the point of no return hit him slowly.

He was past the point where, if he called the police right now they would never arrive in time.

The thought was pleas­ing, but he didn't smile.

He had read some­where that peo­ple who left notes were sim­ply cry­ing out for help, but he had left one any­way, not want­ing his fam­ily and friends to live in doubt and wonder.

He wanted them to know why.

Wanted them to know he had sim­ply reached the point where he couldn't deal with any­thing anymore.

Wanted them to know he had sim­ply given up.

He wasn't sure how they would take or deal with it, but it wasn't some­thing he would have to worry about.

So he had the note.

He had pur­chased and taken 2 bot­tles of the pills. It hadn't been easy, espe­cially the last half of the sec­ond bot­tle, it had hurt badly, his throat being raw from all the swallowing.

The room was rented through the end of the month, but he was sure some­one would look for him in a day or two.

If noth­ing else, to find out why he hadn't been to work.

The feel of the room changed again.

It had got­ten darker but the light hadn't changed, almost like the sun had passed behind a cloud.

Slowly he real­ized there were only min­utes left before he wouldn't be able to keep his eyes open any longer.

Not much longer after that and all his wor­ries and prob­lems would cease.

He leaned his head back in the chair, par­tially sur­prised he still had that abil­ity and closed his eyes.

The world swan for just a sec­ond and set­tled in around him.

He took a deep breath.

And let go.

---

He walked steadily down the sidewalk.

He pat­ted his coat pocket to make sure he hadn't left any­thing behind. The tim­ing had to be pre­cise but it helped that he knew exactly where he was going and exactly what to do, after all he had been here and done it before.

Well, HE hadn't actu­ally done it, but it had been done and he had done it.

The cir­cum­stances ran cir­cles in his mind, threat­en­ing to con­fuse him again even though he had a firm grasp on what will and had hap­pened. As he approached the door he reached into his back pocket and removed the room key.

He slipped the plas­tic card into the slot and waited for the door to click.

Care­fully he turned the knob and stopped, glanced at his watch and he waited.

He counted to him­self and when he reached a num­ber that sat­is­fied him, he pushed into the room.

The room wasn't dark, but it wasn't exactly light either.

It reminded him of a sunny day when the sun was behind a cloud.

He again smiled.

Glanc­ing around the room he saw the other sit­ting in the chair by the win­dow just as he remem­bered, the empty pill bot­tles on the night­stand next to him.

Again he pat­ted his coat pocket then, sat­is­fied that every­thing was in place, he reached in and pulled out a syringe.

He removed the cap and held the nee­dle straight up in the air and pushed the plunger, remov­ing all the excess air, just as he had seen in the movies.

Again the smile.

Slowly he walked over to the fig­ure in the chair, pulled up his right sleeve and plunged the nee­dle into his arm.

When it was empty he replaced the cap and stuffed the syringe back into his pocket and waited.

He wasn't impa­tient or ner­vous, he knew what would happen.

It had hap­pened already so there really was very lit­tle mystery.

Slowly the other's eye­lids flut­tered and he woke slowly.

"Wha… where am I?

"Still in the hotel room."

He smiled as the other started at him and squinted try­ing to focus.

"Don't worry," he told the other "every­thing will be fine. "

"I don't want to live!"

"Yes, you do.

You just don't know it yet."

"What hap­pened?"

He laughed to him­self, "I saved you. "

"Who… who are you?"

"No one."

"I'm con­fused."

"Yes, you would be. You won't remem­ber this con­ver­sa­tion for a while, but you will live. Things will change and they will get bet­ter. " he said watch­ing the other strug­gle to grasp hold of real­ity and as the med­ica­tion began to take effect.

"You can't know that. No one can."

"I do. I know it for a fact."

"How?"

"I can't tell you that." he said as he turned his back to the fig­ure in the chair and smiled again.

"I can tell you that Ray will be here in about 10 min­utes and that the drug I gave you will never show up on any tox­i­col­ogy reports.

It will appear to oth­ers as though he arrived in time to save you.

"Ray left this morn­ing for New York."

"No, I can­celled his flight and set it up so that he can't leave until tomor­row. The details are unim­por­tant right now."

He walked over to the door, opened it and started out.

"I don't under­stand!" cried the chair bound figure.

Paus­ing he looked back at him still in the grip of the med­ica­tion he had given him.

"You'll receive a let­ter in about 15 years explain­ing every­thing. It will take you another 5 years to accom­plish your goal."

"How do you know that!"

He reached into his other back pocket and pulled out a worn look­ing envelop, "Because you did."

Harley sat and waited.

He con­tin­ued to sit, and con­tin­ued to wait but now added 'glare' to his action list.

He had con­sid­ered sim­ply star­ing but glare had more men­ace and con­sid­er­ing that as a Silky Ter­rier he was taller sit­ting than stand­ing it made more sense to glare and sit.

It hadn't moved for sev­eral min­utes, teas­ing him. He remained per­fectly still, only his hair moved now and again blow­ing in the occa­sional breeze.

Sud­denly it twitched!

A slight wind was start­ing up again so it made sense that it would move, but he had to be on his guard in case it decided that was the per­fect chance to escape.

Care­fully, he raised his back haunches and shifted, with extreme care, into a posi­tion more suit­able for stalking.

Slowly he lifted his left forepaw.

No move­ment.

He slowly extended it out in front of him and shifted his weight slightly.

Still no movement.

Care­fully, oh so very care­fully, and slowly, he low­ered it again and shifted his weight for­ward more.

A twitch.

Harley froze.

Had he been seen?

Did it know he was there?

Should he pounce now?

It was too far away to get to in a sin­gle jump, but it might be pos­si­ble in two.

The breeze came again.

A dou­ble twitch!

He crept for­ward a tad faster now.

Sud­denly the wind gusted faster, lift­ing it into the air.

It was escaping!

Harley gave chase.

It drifted upward slowly, just out of leap­ing range.

He was about to give up when the wind died a lit­tle and it sank back to earth, skit­ter­ing across the ground.

He sped up and just as it began to lift into the air again when the wind picked up he pounced.

He grabbed it securely between in his teeth, lifted his foot to free it, turned and trot­ted back to the porch with his head held high and a grin on his face as he car­ried the yel­low candy wrapper.