The Work: a story

Paper. Finally, clean paper. Or at least, the back of it is clean. The front is…well, if you’re reading this, you can flip it over and see. I managed to steal this from the hallway between my cell and the bathroom. I doubt anyone will miss it; there are hundreds of them, posted haphazardly all over that hallway, the building – everywhere, I wouldn’t be surprised to know.
Haphazardly. I like that word. I wonder why no one uses it. You see the word “hazard” everywhere, mostly on these obnoxious posters: “Copy is safe. Creation is hazard. Please report all instances of creation and spontaneity to the Department.”
The Department. Not the Department of Normalcy. Not the Department of Equality. Not even the Department of Copy. Just the Department. Everyone knows what they mean, anyway.
Obnoxious. There’s another good word. He taught me that word, “obnoxious.” Used it to describe the posters before I ever did. He-
 This is rubbish. Wasting paper recording every thought that runs through my head – I’m going insane, aren’t I? Well, what should they expect, putting me in a blank, empty cell with nothing to do all day but mull things over in my brain until it explodes… Out of all the ways I could die, I never considered boredom. Now there’s a thought…I apologize, reader. If there is a reader. They may burn this, you know. Like they did so much else. Maybe you’re the one tasked to burn it. Maybe this paper is crinkling and curling and blackening as you read. If so, please, if you read nothing else on this page, read this: CREATION IS LIFE. DO NOT TRUST THE DEPARTMENT. And if, by some lucky chance, this paper is not in imminent danger of becoming ash, perhaps you would be so kind as to make sure it stays that way. Hide it, if you must. Protect it, if you can. And read it, if you please. Because this is my story.

 I first met Adam out on the streets near my apartment block. He wasn’t hard to notice - a messy mop of red easily stands out among the masses of neat, black haircuts. The Department, at that time (was it only seventeen years ago?), had already begun encouraging parents to genetically tailor their babies to “desired” specifications. Even if they hadn’t, the parents would have, anyway, to “protect” their children from social ridicule. You were stared at if you were too different.
 I had been born almost perfect - straight, thin, black hair; smooth, unmarked, pale skin; average height, average weight, average build. The only things that hadn’t worked out as planned were my eyes. To my parents’ horror and the doctor’s shame, the eye color gene had failed to switch on properly, and I was born with green-grey eyes, instead of brown. The government issued my family free colored contact lenses as compensation, but by the time I was old enough to wear them, the damage had already been done. The other kids were already calling me “Green Girl,” instead of my government-issued name, Mary (parent-given names insinuated that parents had created their children, and were thus quickly outlawed early on). “ “Green Girl”…not a clever nickname, but then again, I cannot blame them. They weren’t brought up to be clever - cleverness was a sign of creation. And that was bad. It hadn’t been outlawed at the time, but it was still bad.
Adam was indeed very bad. His hair - bright red and curly - screamed of badness. All the instructors were afraid of him. He would stand in front of the equality class and, instead of reading out our assigned essays on about the wonders of equality, would illuminate the vast history of inequality and the struggle for equal rights. He brought to life the Civil War, the Holocaust, and the suffragists - things that the teachers had never taught and sometimes things that they themselves had never heard of. And he never read these from his document processor - not that our document processors held anything other than the pre-written, pre-approved essays that we were told to read aloud each week. He simply spoke out of his own head. None of us knew how to do that. None of us knew how to produce a single non-conversational sentence from our own heads without long, arduous thought, never mind entire lectures on history. We weren’t taught history at school - at least, not the kind that Adam knew. The school’s job wasn’t to teach new things - it was to instruct us in old ways. We only knew as much history as we needed to know, to reinforce our beliefs in Copy. And Adam was most definitely not Copy.
All the other students - and the teachers - would watch him with fascination and fear. Make no mistake, no one interrupted him whenever he was talking, but no one talked back, either. Teachers never spoke of him, not even to complain to higher-ups – perhaps they were afraid that this would be seen as their fault. Or perhaps, like me, some secret part of them was not repulsed like the rest, but fascinated. Maybe having non-Copy eyes made you sympathize more with other non-Copys - when one is fourteen years old, one will make odd connections.
Either way, one evening, when I saw him in the empty street outside my home intently studying stray rocks, I worked up the courage to step outside and ask, “What are you doing?”
He looked up at me, and then glanced up and down the street before whispering, “Looking for something to write with.” His voice echoed harshly in the empty street, bouncing off the poster-covered alleyways.
“To what with?” I asked, stepping closer and lowering my voice. Whatever it was he had been doing, it was definitely non-Copy.
“To write with.” He continued to pick up rocks for examination, as if I didn’t exist.
“What is ‘write’? You mean, to turn to the right with, or what?”
He finally turned his eyes on me, with a look of irritation. “Keep your voice down, will you?”
“I will, I will.” I was directly in front of him now; I bent to pick up a rock, and asked, “So what is this ‘write’?”
He looked into my eyes questioningly, guardedly. Always my eyes. They were what everyone stared at. But he was looking into them, not at them. It was something altogether new – and uncomfortable.
 Without warning, he dropped his rocks and grabbed my face with both hands. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked me, in the most intense fourteen-year-old voice I had ever heard.
“Well...yes, I suppose so.”
“Because if you tell, I’m doomed. My whole family is doomed. Perhaps the whole town will be doomed. And you’ll be doomed - they’ll lock us all up in a place where we’ll never be allowed anything to do or make or be, and all we’ll do is sit there and rot and die. You understand?”
I tried nodding, but he held my head too tightly for that. So I whispered, “Yes.”
That first evening was the beginning of my lessons in creation. He had me help him find rocks - there was a specific kind he had been looking for, one that left dark traces on anything they were rubbed against. After we had gathered a handful of these, we took them back to his house, and he introduced me to his parents - both of whom looked very non-Copy, too. They seemed surprised to see me. And they were even more surprised when he asked them if I could learn to write. They looked at each other, and then at me, then at Adam, and then back at each other. Adam’s father asked him, “Adam, may I have a talk with you about this in the other room?” They walked out silently and closed the door behind them. His mother stayed behind and talked to me. I can’t remember what exactly we talked about, but looking back, I think it was some kind of test. And I passed.
The first few months were sheer bliss - Adam taught me to write the letters I had read all my life without knowing where they came from, and words that I had never read, words like “radiant,” “imaginative,” and “leapfrog.” Beautiful words that rolled off your tongue like water, and tasted sweeter than fresh air. He taught me to string the letters into words, and words into sentences. And he taught me to form those sentences to express my thoughts and feelings, as he did so easily. He even gave me a notebook in which to write them down - a small booklet he had made from ripped-up posters and a piece of string. And soon, we were writing stories - first biographical, describing our lives, and parables, and eventually, epic adventures in which the two of us battled the demons and dragons of the school, Copy, the Department, whatever we felt like.
We found an abandoned housing facility on the quiet side of town, papered up the broken windows, and made it our hideout - our “home for stories,” he called it - filling it with stacks and stacks of torn posters, napkins, boxes, anything we could scrawl on. We even wrote on the walls. And always, always, there was a steadily growing pile of rocks that we collected to write with. Adam called them pencils, for some reason – I thought the name was silly. And one day, when we were both fifteen, I found, tacked to a part of my corner of the room, a shred of paper which read, “I love you.” I stared at it for a long, long time before taking it down and putting it into the folds of my notebook.
I never learned what that word, “love,” meant...and I didn’t want to ask. I knew, from the way it had been written, from the care with which the scrap had been ripped into a neat rectangle, from the way Adam smiled at me that day, that it was something sacred.
Our group, which had started out as just the two of us, grew into five, and then twelve. Most of them were children and teenagers, like us, but a few of them were older. Caleb, for example, was a twenty-seven-year old man with long, braided hair and a penchant for sketching. When he was seventeen, he had overheard his teachers discussing putting him in the Institution, so he ran away from home and eventually found us. We, after a heated debate, had agreed to offer him temporary asylum – a spare mattress in the corner of our hideout. When we returned the next morning, he had filled the corner – and the entire length of an adjacent wall – with a swirling, eye-defying mural. Needless to say, we decided to keep him.
Caleb was the only one who lived in the house, although any one of us would gladly have taken that position as well. We all knew that doing so would raise suspicion, so none of us said anything about it, beyond a longing glance back into the room before we left each night. We never missed a chance to be there – straight after school, we would arrive secretively in twos and threes, set our things down, and get to work. Some of us were artists, others writers, and still others were performers. We had been cautious about the amount of noise we made at first, but as time went on, we allowed ourselves more and more volume in our speech and song and laughter.
And, maybe, that’s what got us caught.
I remember it was late afternoon. I was sitting in my corner, writing some frivolous what-if stories. Well, I had always considered them frivolous, but Adam liked what-ifs. He said they gave hope. Anyway, I was writing. Adam was across the room, doing the same. Caleb was beginning yet another mural on the wall behind me; he had already finished covering the majority of the house’s other walls with sketches. Some of the other kids - Preston, May, and John – were in a huddle in the middle of the floor, working on some project together, and giggling. In another room, I could hear someone reading out loud, in clear, ringing tones. But beyond that, it was quiet.
Suddenly, Caleb stiffened. “Someone’s coming.” A quick glance out the crack in the door confirmed his words: a group of men, striding purposefully towards our haven. They were carrying things in their hands – but I didn’t wait to find out what.
“Everyone out the back door, now!”
The room became a scuffle of shouts, cries, and papers. Somewhere, I could hear Adam’s voice, yelling, “Don’t take anything with you, just go!” Loose scraps of paper and posters were fluttering about like frightened birds, disturbed by the rushing and shoving and pushing.
And then I was outside, ushering people out the back door, pushing them out, in some cases. “Go, go, go!” I counted their receding backs. Eight, nine, ten, and Adam standing beside me. That left one. “Who’s still in there?”
And suddenly, amidst the noise and the chaos, I heard the long, thin scratching sound of a pencil against plaster. Adam and I turned as one and ran to the window looking into the main room, scrabbling at the paper we had used to board the empty hole up against the wind. Caleb was inside, standing alone amongst the scattered pages in the abandoned room. He had a pencil in his hand, and was making long, sweeping curves on the wall perpendicular to the window.
“Caleb! Get out of there now!” Adam yelled harshly.
He turned to look at us briefly, his eyes sad. And then he returned to his drawing.
“Caleb! Please! We’ll find somewhere else, I promise!” I pleaded.
His voice was quiet, resigned. “I’m done running.”
We weren’t given a chance to respond – a loud gunshot cut through the silence. I heard a loud ringing in my ears as I stumbled and fell backwards, but I didn’t feel any pain. Then I turned my head and realized why. Adam lay next to me, a dark mass spreading across his chest. He touched it slowly, and his fingers came away red, as red as his hair. All I could do was stare at him, as he stared at me. His lips moved, trying to form words, but all I could hear was a slow exhalation, followed by a low, guttural sound.
And I realized he was no longer staring at me.
I couldn’t move, not for the longest time. Everything was numb, and my mind drew nothing but a blank. Time slowed. It was only instinct that caused me to jump at the touch of a hand on my shoulder. I don’t remember if that touch was friendly or not, whether it was the soft brush of commiseration, or the harsh grip of arrest. I only remember running – to somewhere, anywhere, I didn’t care.
I hadn’t run more than twelve steps when I fell to my knees, all the air knocked out of my lungs by a fist to the stomach. I was dragged to my feet, and then dragged some more back to where I had been before. I didn’t look at Adam’s body.
And then a man was in front of me, asking questions about the house, the papers, the people. I didn’t speak – just kept shaking my head, more out of numbness than defiance. The man seemed to give up after a while, and then knelt down to examine Adam’s body. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it; he cursed, kicked the body, and then stood up again. He looked at me for a reaction. I gave him none.
And then someone came up to him, asking if they should enter the house. My eyes sluggishly wandered to the hole we had ripped in the paper window. There was movement inside – Caleb, still at his work, no doubt. I could hear the insistent scratching, loud in my ears. I wondered what he was doing. Why couldn’t they hear him, too?
And then the man was asking me something again, only this time, he looked as though he cared less about the answer. I shook my head again. And then he said something to the man next to him. The man nodded.
And then I heard a wooshing sound, like the wind through an abandoned building. And then the roof of the house went up in flames.
Time suddenly returned to normal (or was it too fast), and suddenly I was tearing myself from their grip, crying, screaming, fighting, and running all at the same time trying to stop the building from burning, trying to stop the stories from burning, trying to stop Caleb from burning, burning my hands and my arms as I fruitlessly beat against the fiery walls that refused to let me in but I didn’t care, I was going to get in, I needed to save our stories, our pictures, our lives, save Caleb –
The fire had eaten up the paper in the windows; like butterflies made of flame, they fluttered around me as I walked slowly to the window frame. Inside, Caleb was still drawing, his back to me, the corner of his sleeve starting to catch fire – no longer in huge sweeps, but just filling in the details, details I could not see for the tears. His final mural was surrounded by a living, breathing frame of reds and yellows, which cast a flickering light on his work. The work…
As I stared, he finished the last line, and turned to see me. And there, framed by his work, framed by the flames, framed by the window, framed by the house, framed by my eyes…he smiled.
And then a giant piece of the ceiling caved in, and I was pulled away. I dimly recall being put in a car, driven somewhere, and being put into a cell. And I remember sitting down and not doing anything for a long time, with nothing but that final image in front me. That final work.
The picture was of Freedom.

The Triangle Lego: a story

There once was a lego piece that was a triangle, instead of a square.

She knew that she had intentionally been made a triangle for some purpose, but no one had told her what. And she had never seen any other triangles around the brick box.

And every day, the kids would come and play with the legos. And every day, she would watch all the square and rectangular pieces get put together, to make beautiful houses and ships, models and skyscrapers. And all those special pieces, the ones that created slopes or curves, would be put on top of them to make them even more beautiful. But she...she would never fit - she couldn't be put next to another piece without creating an ugly gap.

Every once in a while, some kid would pick her up and try to fit her in. But she never did, not quite - no matter how hard the kid shoved, and how hard she tried to help, no other piece could sit comfortably next to her. Sometimes they would fit her on the top of a tower or a boat, and for a few moments, she thought she finally belonged. But it was always on the top. All the other pieces were nestled closely together, enjoying each others' company. She, because of the way she had been made, never could.

Gradually, she began wondering if she hadn't been placed in the wrong set. Maybe she was in the wrong box. Or maybe she had just been made wrong - a faulty piece.

Eventually, she stopped trying to fit in. She sat in the box, avoided the hands of the kids reaching in for pieces. She stopped trying to grow an extra corner and become a square - she knew she never would be. Instead, she amused herself with other activities - creating her own ideas for projects made of squares, and building huge skyscrapers in her mind. They were beautiful skyscrapers.

And sometimes, at night, when none of the kids were around, she would tell the squares of her ideas. And they were willing to follow them, at times. Every night, they would make real the skyscrapers of her dreams, and she regarded them with pride as her projects, her ideas. But she was never a part of those skyscrapers. She could only direct them.

And she wanted so badly to be part of one herself.

It was hard, not to consider herself a failure, a factory mistake. But every time she looked at the box she had come from, she saw a picture of her, right along with the pictures of all the other pieces. And so she knew that she was not a mistake. She had been made this way for a purpose. She was intentional. She just had to find out what her purpose was.

Her picture, along with the symbol "x2." That had always puzzled her. She had searched and searched for the other triangle, and had never found it. But she knew that there was one. Someone just like her. Someone she could click with. And somehow, she knew that they would eventually meet. And she looked forward to that meeting, with all her heart.

Paradise: a story

In our world there is a story, almost never told word-for-word, but oft repeated in some thin disguise.

The story goes that once, there existed a Paradise...of sorts. It was a garden, created by a powerful being, who put all sorts of wonderful things in the world in it. - at any rate, the two people, a boy and a girl, whom he had put into it, and had lived in it all their lives, considered it so. But one day, another wise and great being gave the girl who lived in Paradise an apple, that would give her wisdom and knowledge equal to the one who had created her and her Paradise. The maker of the Paradise had told her not to eat it, but in a bold step of faith, she did.
After she ate it, she saw the garden with new eyes - not as Paradise, but as Prison, with high walls surrounding the garden, and guards at every gate. She realized her own potential, all that could be done to create a true, better Paradise, outside the limits of the maker. She saw past all the lies and confinements set up by the maker. And she set out to teach everyone to see with her eyes, and to know the truth of her so-called Paradise.

I live in this world, a descendant of her descendants, surrounded by the realizations of her potential. I live in the new Paradise, created by her and her children.
And there is hardly anything of Paradise about it. We have been trying to recreate Paradise for ourselves for thousands of years, and have failed.

But I know the secret: without the Maker, no Paradise can exist.

Love, Literature, and the Lydian Mode

She is sitting at her desk, a pencil in one hand, and the other hand holding a cold can of diet Coke. Every once in a while, her pen stops scratching, so that she can take a sip. When she tilts the can against her lips, her little finger lifts itself from the surface of the can, a remnant of the elegant habits of a time and culture now lost. A time and culture she is attempting to bring to life.

I stand behind her, outside the shadow of her lamp, wondering how best to perform the task set before me. In these modern times, people no longer understand what I try to say to them - they do not pick up the traces I leave in the sparse trees, in the faces of the people pushing past them. Subtlety is lost in the 21st century, replaced by clocks, computers, classrooms, places and things which tell you everything and leave nothing to Imagination.
He has a very difficult time, Imagination. He has bags under his eyes from keeping awake through the night so often - Dream often needs his help these days, to make his work worthwhile and interesting. He complains to me about how often people ignore him, how many times they dismiss him. I see him often; sometimes we work together. We do so more and more; with people the way they are, the strength of both of us is needed to get the job done.

But today he is busy - most likely some new artist, or, even more likely, a filmmaker. I can’t say I blame him for leaving me today; the films these days could use a bit of his work.

The girl has moved, reminding me of the task at hand. She has turned on her computer (uninspired devices, really, but sometimes useful in my line of work), and is now instant messaging a friend, whose screen name is, as I read over her shoulder, “thenextbard.” I smile faintly as I recognize the name; I have visited him several times, each time with great success. The girl is talking with him about her writer’s block. I laugh to myself quietly at the irony of my standing right next to her as she types the words. I’d like to tell her that everything will be alright in a few minutes, as soon as I find out how to do this, but that’s not recommended in my line of work.

“Thenextbard” tells her he has to go. She says farewell, sighs, and reaches for her mp3 player.

Suddenly I know what to do.

But in order to do it, I must make another quick trip.

I see him now. A friend of hers, but not the bard. He is also sitting at the computer (they seem to be everywhere these days, but today I will not complain, since I have a use for it). I have visited him once or twice before, so I know how this should go. I gently tap him on the shoulder, so that he will turn around.

He doesn’t, choosing instead to scratch at the shoulder, still typing with one hand.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Feeling in a somewhat violent mood, and also being in a rush, I crash his computer. I know he hates it, but at least it gets his attention.

After the usual human string of curses and attempts to reboot, he sags back into his chair. I could tap his shoulder again, but instead I decide to run my hand across the strings of the guitar behind him.

This usually creeps people out. But not him. After all, he often insists half in jest that his guitar is a real person, so why shouldn’t make a sound?

It’s worked. He has picked up the guitar, and is now fiddling with random tunes. Now that all the pieces are in place, I carefully, subtly guide his fingers so that it plays something approaching an ancient scale - the Lydian mode, actually. If he were one of us, he might realize that this was the same kind of music that used to resound through the Greek temples. But he isn’t. And so he plays, unaware of my presence, unaware of how his gradually forming composition will be used.

I prepare to leave, but before I do, I do one last thing. With his computer screen still black, I change it so that when he returns to his instant message page, there will be only one name there.

I return to the girl’s side, after running a few errands that take no more than half an hour - sending mothers the right songs to calm their crying babes, presenting a new metaphor for a poet to use, giving another writer a few words to put in her essay, etc.

Sure enough, after a few minutes of waiting, the boy with the guitar appears on the girl’s IM screen. After quick hellos, he tells her to check her email. I linger just long enough for her to download the mp3 file and listen to the first straining notes, and then hurriedly grasp her pencil and begin writing furiously as the music plays on.

Nothing like a few moments of complete satisfaction with my job.

I visit her again, a year later, to see how she is doing. As I see her, sitting at a table, signing copies of a book (the book I helped her with, I note with some selfish pride), I grin. With all the busyness of her still-young life now, I may have to check on her in the future, and help her out with whatever uninspired sequel she will probably be working on then.

Postscript:
A few years later (not that time makes a difference to me), I was approached by one of my colleagues, Love. I don’t talk much to her; our paths rarely cross. But today, she greets me with a “Hello” and automatically rushes into her story.

“Do you remember a writer girl you may have helped with a book?”

I reply, saying that there have been many writer girls that i have helped with books.

“Have you helped one by getting a friend of hers to play her a piece of music?”

I slowly nod, and ask what about them that could be so interesting, although I have already guessed what it is. I wouldn’t want to spoil her fun.

“Well, I don’t want to spoil your fun -”

Ironic, I was just thinking the same thing.

“-but you might want to go take a look at them.”

So I do.

I see them both, sitting in the park. I smile, because outdoor places are useful places for my work.

They are both sitting on a park bench. The girl is still writing, but today, she smiles as if she knows she can never get writer’s block again. The boy is still playing his guitar - the same guitar, although now significantly more beat-up. He is smiling as well, as he closes his eyes and inhales the clean, crisp autumn air.

The girl stops writing suddenly and puts her paper down. As she does, I spy a small but brilliant glimmer on her left hand, which goes to turn the boy’s face towards her. He turns his head, his hand still strumming the strings.

The strumming stops only when their lips meet. And even then, afterward the long, lingering moment, he plays one final chord. In the Lydian mode, of course.

Negotiations: a story

Negotiations

written by Faith Liu
based on the short film by Ryan Mullins, Faith Liu, PJ Liu, and Joshua Jackson


No one had thought of the Anderson house as a possible home to a hostage situation. They were your average American family, with an average amount of money, an average-sized house, in an average neighborhood of an average part of the country. Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
No one had thought of forty-seven-year-old Sean Anderson as a potential hostage, either. He was no danger to anyone, he wasn't related to anyone that would be a potential victim of a hate crime, and his family had no vast deposits of money or political power. He was practically harmless.
And now, gagged and unconscious, he was completely harmless.
Not that the hostile party was particularly concerned with that fact.

The main room of the basement had become far too small for the Hostage Rescue Team. It didn't help anyone relieve tension either. Knowing that in the next room was a serial killer with an unconscious hostage, and being able to do nothing about it made the HRT restless. They had more weapons, more skills, and were more prepared than any other SWAT members, but being able to fast-rope was no use if there was no window big enough to come down through. The only thing to do was wait.
John Able, the officer in charge, was just about to glance at his watch for the third time since calling for a negotiator, when he heard the door to the basement open. His sigh of relief was automatically followed by a dubious glance at the negotiator herself.
She was tiny - a five-foot two girl, of possibly Middle-Eastern heritage, with black, curly hair that made her look as though she had come fresh from high school, and soft brown eyes reminiscent of an Audrey Hepburn. Her tan trench coat seemed two sizes too big, making her look even smaller than she was. More like a hostage than a hostage situation negotiator, the man thought.
"What's the situation, Mr. Able?"
John cringed. Her voice was high enough to belong to a sixth-grader - as clear and innocent as a songbird. Too innocent for her line of work. But he held out a hand anyway and said, "Call me John."
"Alright then. I'm Ariel Parker."
He nodded, and followed that up by quickly summarizing the situation. "One victim, as far as we can tell. Sean Anderson. Fifty-seven years old. Judging from the lack of noise, we think he's knocked out."
"What about the kidnapper? The file sent to me didn't give me much - a white male in his twenties could mean anything."
John acquiesced. "HQ nicknamed him Double. Real name is unknown."
"Why Double?"
"Because in every case he's been involved in, two people - one victim, one negotiator or a forced negotiator, have been shot."
No facial response to that, so he continued. "He's done three of these so far, and in two of those, the killing and the escape happened before the FBI could get there. Always a secluded area. Witnesses see nothing, hear only gunshots. He's either trigger-happy...or just too smart."
"Then what's his point? Killing everyone first doesn't get him a reward."
"No, it doesn't. He always demands a ransom, but whether paid or not paid, it's still the same body count. Two."
"Yeah, the file told me. Always takes one person, then somehow gets another body by the time he leaves. No discernable patterns as far as victims, time, and place go. Always demands money, a different amount each time, and always specific down to the cent. Still two dead either way." She paused, processing her own information. "He's not doing this for the money, then."
"Correct."
"Do you know what it is he wants?"
"No. None of the negotiators have managed to get out of the room with that information."
"I see." Her eyes shifted to the left, but otherwise, no emotion. "He always has to talk to the negotiator in person?"
"Yes. That's...that's why the negotiator is always dead. He won't allow it any other way."
"Can we talk to him on the phone? Through notes? Shouting through the door?"
"We've already tried getting him to talk. All we've gotten so far is a note slipped under the door, saying he won't talk to anyone but the negotiator."
Her eyes stared at the floor. Either she was thinking hard, or there was a fascinating insect specimen next to his left foot.
"You one of those psychologist types?" he asked, merely to relieve the tension.
She raised an eyebrow. "What's the other type?"
"The politician."
She laughed. Not a real laugh, but enough to relax her face. "The psychologist, definitely. Behavioral, to be precise." She ended, almost to herself: "But it doesn't really matter in this case."
A pause. Then she asked, "Where are they now?"
"In the next room; from what we can hear, they're in the corner of the room."
"Lighting? Surroundings?"
"Bare lightbulbs suspended from the ceiling. Your typical unfinished basement. Lots of shelves. Power tools, toilet paper, storage stuff. No windows big enough for our snipers. You get the picture."
"Anything else I should be aware of?"
"Then you're going in?"
She shrugged, as if it were no big deal. "Of course. That's what I'm here for."
Able shook his head at her innocence. "You sure this is wise? Once you're in there, we can't cover you. And anyway, we do have the clearance to just go in with the guns. He won't be able to escape this-"
"He still has a hostage. You can't risk it." Her voice was becoming challenging, so he responded with like boldness.
"We can't risk losing you, either. Or anyone else after you. Statistically, going in heavy-duty would be safer."
"But would it be right?" She let the question sink in for a moment. "Mr. Able, I have two jobs: one is to get the hostage out, and the other is to get the criminal out and into handcuffs. Compromising on one to get the other is not an option."
John took a deep breath and looked at the floor for a moment. "All right. I won't say I approve of this, but seeing as it's your own life on the line...I'll assume you know what to do with it." He forced his eyes back onto her face, and was again shocked by how young she seemed. A girl her age shouldn't even be involved in such business, much less die in it.
"Did you bring a bulletproof vest with you?"
She looked at him again, eyebrow raised. "What for?"
Again, he was slapped in the face by her innocence. Or her naivete. He wasn't sure which one it was. "For protection, dammit! What if you get shot?"
"Then I get shot."
He knew his mouth was hanging open, but was too surprised to care. "Listen, as a negotiator, you don't go in with weapons. That doesn't mean no protection!"
"I don't go in with weapons assuming that he will do the same. If I wear a vest, that means I don't trust him, and that he can't trust me."
"Trust? Are you crazy? You're worrying about trust at a time like this?"
"Yes, in fact I am." Her voice had a decided edge to it now, as if she were growing uncomfortable talking about the topic. And well she might; the thought of getting shot was as distasteful to her as it would be to any other person.
John's shoulders slumped as he realized there would be no convincing her. "Well, then..." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Good luck, Ariel." Realizing this might be the last time he would see her alive, he impulsively hugged the small girl.
When she pulled away, he saw that her eyes now had a sorrow in them that made them seem ten years older. She murmured a thank you and hurried off.

She didn't want him to see her cry.

As she headed for the door to the adjacent room, the rest of the HRT team seemed to step aside for her, almost in awe. They all knew what she was doing, and most of them thought she was crazy.
She probably was.
She put her mouth to the door and spoke loudly, "Hello? This is the hostage negotiator. Alright if I come in?" Other than the volume, her voice seemed perfectly at ease.
She checked her watch, and decided to wait for one minute. At 48 seconds, a piece of paper towel was slipped under the door. The thin, spidery writing had been done in a red pen. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
"Religious nut...what else is new?" she muttered to herself. "Alright, everyone," she called to the men in uniform surrounding her. "Stand clear of the door...and pray as though your life depends on it." She laughed nervously at her own joke. No one laughed with her.
Taking a deep breath, Ariel Parker opened the door...
...and stepped into the lion's den.

The unfinished room was dark, except for the stream of light from the tiny window near the ceiling that lit up the center of the room. The room itself was oddly shaped, with small alcoves hidden in the walls. All of them were in complete black; any of them would make a good hiding place.
She called out a precursory "Hello?" but got no response. She glanced behind the work shelves. No one. Turning around, she made her way towards the other end of the room. A pack of paper towels stood opened on the floor near the furnace. Part of one had been ripped off.
Taking the bait, she checked behind the furnace. Still no one.
"Hello? This is Ariel Parker. Are you there?"
She stepped out from behind the furnace and out in front of a particularly dark alcove.
She heard a sound coming from the blackness, and spun around just as the ceiling lightbulb came on, illuminating the alcove.

"Ah...the negotiator." A dark voice, low with menace and - was it really? - amusement.
Under the naked lightbulb stood the killer, looking as every serial killer should: dark coat, closely-cropped brown hair, ghostly pale skin that looked as though it had never seen the sun. Despite that fact, he was wearing a pair of dark shades that concealed his eyes. A strange accessory, but not as menacing as the M4 Carbine in his hands. Pointed at her, of course.
She could see the man behind him, slumped against a wall, unconscious. His hands and feet were bound with zip-ties, a gag was tied around his mouth, but otherwise, he looked unharmed.
She took the metaphorical deep breath.
Step one: establish rapport and maintain calm.
She lifted her arms away from her sides to show that she didn't have a weapon. "I'm Ariel Parker, the-"
"Hostage negotiator, yes." He wasn't hasty to interrupt. Not nervous or frantic. Just...in control. It wasn't normal.
Alright, moving on. Step two: find out what he wants and establish authority over the situation.
"We have the money you want...back in the other room. If you like, I can go back and get it as soon as we've established the terms of exchange."
He didn't respond to that one. She had a feeling that he was waiting for something, his eyes boring into hers from behind the dark lenses.
Step three: find out what he really wants.
"But I don't think that's what you're after, is it?"
"You're the psychologist; you tell me." He seemed to have relaxed now, to the point where his tone of voice might have been used in dinner conversation.
"What is it you're after?"
He cocked his head in an exaggerated motion of thinking. "Money." He was playing with her now.
"I don't think that's what it is."
Silence.
"I can't get it for you unless you tell me what it is."
He laughed quietly. "You wouldn't be able to get it for me anyway."
"Well, why don't you try me?"
He laughed again - a long, steady, unsettling sound. She couldn't be sure if it was a good or a bad sign.
When he had finished, he leaned against the concrete wall, and motioned for her to sit down on a nearby stool. "If you're going to be that persistent, you might as well sit down for the story."
She obliged, noting hopefully that he had set the Carbine down on the ground, if only to give his hands a rest.
"How well do you know this man here?" He pointed to the hostage behind him.
She glanced at him, and then replied almost impatiently, "He's in his fifties, works as professor at the community college, has a wife and two children, and has no criminal record to speak of. Has he offended you personally in some way?"
"No - mustn't jump to conclusions, miss. What do you think Mr. Anderson was doing two nights ago?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Well, I do. He wasn't at home watching TV with his wife - he was at the home of one of his students. One of his female students, I might add." He laughed again, a darker laugh than the one he had used earlier. "He told his wife that he was going to be at a meeting. Definitely a lot more exciting than those previous, don't you think?"
She decided not to respond to the question, asking her own instead. "What does this have to do with-"
"Ah, ah, miss. Let me finish." For a brief instant, his mouth twisted into an indulgent smile, as if she were a child with too many questions, but then his face became grim. "That wasn't the first time, either. Anderson has been doing this for years...and hasn't been caught or punished. Until now, that is."
"I still don't see what this has to do with y-"
"It has nothing to do with me. This has to do with justice." His face betrayed no emotion whatsoever. She almost believed him.
"Then that is a matter for the law to handle, not you."
That statement brought an explosion from the man. "Look around you, miss! The law doesn't work. Innocent people are being violated, killed, all the time, and with nothing to make up for it. Justice has not been served - it cannot be served with our human systems of so-called law."
"And how does what you're doing help?"
"I'm letting you know. I'm letting everyone know. The only proper response to evil is to eradicate it - to destroy it. The wages of sin is death. There is no substitute."
"Is that what you're going to do? Prove that there is no substitute for...for this?"
"I won't be doing it. You will." The Carbine was pointed at her again.

Slowly, she stood up. Slowly, she thought over what she was going to say. And slowly, she said it. "What is it you want me to do?"
"You get to make a choice. You can either let me kill this man, as is deserved, or you can try to offer an alternative."
"You just said there was none."
"That's only what I know. Obviously, you think otherwise. You have one hour to come up with a substitute, or to let justice be done. If you're wise, you'll choose the latter."


"The wages of sin is death."
He smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the low light as he raised his gun.
"But." She stood up. "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
His smile disappeared. "Wrong answer. Your Lord Jesus isn't coming down to save this man."
"No, but I can." She breathed in and out, hard. Tried to keep her hands from shaking. "I have a substitute."
"Oh really? Well, let's hear your offer."
She bit her lip. Shut her eyes. Opened them. Managed to look at him straight in the eye. "Me. Kill me. Let him go."
The man's lip curled into a snarl. "How noble. You're stupid, you know?"
"Perhaps."
"You expecting your God to come and save you? Huh?"
"If He wills it."
That answer seemed to infuriate him even more. He crossed the room, gun in hand, in two seconds, slammed her body against the concrete wall, shoved the barrel of the gun into her gut, and sneered in her face, "Well, your God can't save you now."
In a rage, he turned and kicked the still-unconscious hostage in the ribs. "And this guy? He won't even know what you've done for him. No one will care!" He was screaming now. "This!" He picked up the man by the shirt collar. "This pathetic piece of worthless junk is what you're dying for?!"
She remained leaning against the wall, eyes shut tight, wordless.
He dropped the man on the floor, and suddenly his voice dropped down to a whisper even more dangerous than his screams. "And what about you? What about everything you've worked for, that you're never going to see finished? What about your family, your friends, that you are never going to see again? Is this worth it?"
She heard a click as he prepared the gun, still talking. "Death isn't fun, you know. And trust me, your God's not coming to save you this time. Or anytime else. No one can save you now, except yourself. Look at me!"
Her eyes shot open at the command. The man now looked emotionless, except for his hands, which were clenched tight. "You're going to go through with this?"
"Yes."
There was a bang, and suddenly her left leg gave out from under her and she fell onto her knees, gasping.
"You sure?" he asked through clenched teeth, his finger still on the trigger.
"...yes."
Another bang, and the hand supporting her trembling body felt like it was on fire. Her shoulder hit the concrete.
Before another word was spoken, another bullet hole appeared in her back.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, between which muffled sobs could be heard.
Through bleary eyes, she could see a dark form looming over her. "Last chance now. Do you want to back out?"
She was in too much pain to speak, but she managed to make a barely perceptible shake of her head.

Darkness.

If one ever happens to pass by the Calvary Church of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on any given Friday, be sure to step in for a minute or two. It's a relaxing place, with long, dark pews, colored by the afternoon light filtering in from the stained-glass windows. A simple wooden cross hangs at the front, with a matching altar underneath. The soft carpet muffles almost any sound, so that it's so quiet, one feels as though one can hear the imperceptible sounds that angels make when flying. It's a peaceful place. A place of rest.
And, if you happen to come in at the right time, you may observe that there are three people sitting in the front row - two men sitting on the pew, one other in a wheelchair. They are very quiet, and don't seem to be doing anything other than contemplating the cross and the altar. Occasionally, one of the men - the older one - will grasp the hand of the person in the wheelchair.
If you are patient, you may see their faces when they leave up the aisle. The first, you will observe, is a young man. His hair is brown, and closely cropped, and he wears dark clothes, which contrast against his pale skin. He walks with his back so straight one might call it stiff. But his eyes, which are a soft green, bear the look of one who has been relieved of a great burden.
The older man is pushing the wheelchair. His hair is gray, and there are deep lines, worn by care and penitence, in his face. There is a name tag pinned onto his shirt, revealing that his name is Sean Anderson and that he works as a greeter at the church. He wears the gentle smile of one who has been forgiven of a great sin, and is now at peace.
Now that you can their faces, you realize that the person in the wheelchair is a girl in her twenties. Her left leg is in a cast, and her right arm is heavily bandaged. Her black hair falls to her shoulders in waves. Her eyes, doe-like and soft brown, stare into the distance, as if contemplating something profound and wonderful. Her face is that of one who has served as a vessel, poured out for God, and filled again to overflowing.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." - The words of Christ, as recorded in John 15:13.