“Why do you come here stranger?” The voice melted its way into Ozzy’s mind, boiling through each and every mental barrier he had and smashing into his soul.

  Ozzy couldn’t even begin to bring himself to speak, let alone think clearly. He was on the floor, or what amounted to it in this vast expanse of darkness. Sitting in this thing’s presence, whatever it was, was tantamount to sitting in the void of space.

  “Ah I see, not a mortal as I had expected, but one new to the path.” As the voice spoke it began to equalize, slowly shifting from a sonic weapon that could have boiled oceans to something more akin to the deafening sound of a foghorn.

  Slumping Ozzy finally took a breath of air, his organs crying with joy as the world around them no longer became hostile. All he could do was lay there, not only half alive but feeling like he’d just run 11 marathons back-to-back.

  “Apologies stranger, I am unaccustomed to visitors of your level. I ask again however, why are you here?” The voice came again, this time mercifully quieter.

  It only took Ozzy a few moments to gain the breath he needed to speak. “I don’t know, I was making a specialty core and then I was just here. Where the hell are we anyways?” Ozzy asked.

  “You are within my sphere of influence which lies within the void. Were you attempting to create a core centered around myself?” The voice boomed its question out.

  “I was just trying to make a core for myself, I used a night caller core and a tentacle core, then the person helping me had me infuse them with parts of myself.” Ozzy said.

  The thought to withhold information never even occurred to him. He was so stuck and confused that if he could get any help whatsoever, he wouldn’t endanger the chance to get it by making the creepy voice thing he was holding out on it.

  “An accident then?” The voice asked.

  “In every sense of the word.” Ozzy said, speaking up into the darkness.

  “In that case I’ll consider letting you leave.” The voice boomed.

  Ozzy’s vision swam as the world around him shifted, spinning and warping till he lost any semblance of up or down. His senses failed him, belying heat, cold, scents he knew and didn’t, and even tastes. It was like going through the complete opposite of a sensory deprivation chamber, all of the sensations getting mixed together till all he could feel were the frantic and tortured signals of his nerve endings each trying to shut itself off to end the unholy deluge of weaponized sensation.

  “Had I known you weren’t like the others that come through I wouldn’t have put you through that, apologies.”

  Ozzy blinked rapidly, the horrible feelings leaving him a sweaty mess in the- plush red armchair he was sitting in?

  “What the-” Ozzy looked around rapidly and found himself in a comfortable study.

  The room was distractingly contemporary. Walnut bookshelves, plush carpet, a burnished gold hanging chandelier light, and even a brick fireplace complete with a mantle full of, not paintings, but photographs.

  The most striking thing about the room however was the man sitting across from him, smoking a pipe in a green cashmere sweater, and leafing through a Fisherman’s digest. The man had no face and anywhere a normal human’s flesh would have been there was simply the inky blackness of the void.

  Stranger still Ozzy recognized the magazine, it was the same copy his mother would always leave on her coffee table. She’d gotten it specifically for him and it irked him seeing it in this strangers’ hands.

  “You have fascinating memories Ozzy.” The void said, pausing its reading to look over the magazine at him. “It is impressive how very different your world is from this one. I dare say they’re nearly antithetical to one another, normally when one of your kind slips through the cracks into this world, they’re less surprised by all of the-” He waved his hand around rather than choosing a word.

  “What’s going on here?” Ozzy asked, feeling just as tense as when he’d been sitting hostage in the edge slinger compound.

  “Well currently I’m learning about you, going through some of your life experiences and whatnot, I have to decide whether or not you get to leave.” The void said, once again leafing through the magazine.

  “Why wouldn’t I be able to leave?” Ozzy asked, feeling anger beginning to bubble up in his chest. This was the second time this day he’d been held somewhere against his will. It was getting old fast.

  “Well, in trying to create that specialty core you imbued a bit of yourself, which is imbued with the void, my void. As it is my power when you tried to claim some of it the magic recoiled, pulling you into my domain as you bonded yourself to it. Yet since that bond has already been established, I can’t take it away. Thus I decide you are worthy of it, or I filet your soul open and take back what remains.” He said cooly, not even bothering to look at Ozzy.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “But I didn’t know-”

  “Do the rats know the food that’s been left out for them is poisoned? No, they eat and they die such is the way of things.” He said, clearly, he knew about Ozzy’s rat core and didn’t approve.

  “That’s fair, what do I need to do to get out of here? I have things I need to do back home.” Ozzy said.

  “Already calling it home then?” The man said with a smile. “That is good, you have to adapt quickly here. To leave is simple however, you just need to answer a question for me.”

  “What’s the question?” Ozzy asked impatiently.

  “Why did you leave your mother?” The void asked, its head tilting to the side in curiosity.

  The question struck Ozzy harder than any physical blow could have managed. It grounded him in the present moment, stole the peace running and gunning through a new world had provided with him and took him right back to the abyss he’d been wallowing in before he’d been pulled into the swamp.

  “Do you need a moment to think about it?” The void asked, barely across the room from Ozzy, though question sounded lightyears away.

  ***

  Ozzy blinked the sun out of his eyes to find himself in a memory, he was back in Iraq. He’d never quite be able to forget the smell of the engine bay mixed in with the smell of the city, no matter how hard he tried.

  He watched like a stranger in his own memory, watched as a younger version of himself, barely twenty, hopped in a Humvee and thundered out into the desert. They rode in a small convoy, just two Humvees and four times as many guns. Each of them ready for whatever came their way.

  They hadn’t been ready for the bomb. An IED detonated the moment the first vehicle rolled over it, the explosion so intense it practically vaporized the first Humvee launching the wreckage into the air and sending a sprinkle of charred meat and bone scattering across the sand.

  The second Humvee, Ozzy’s ride, didn’t fare much better. Instantly the front windshield blew out of its frame, crunching Joe Donavan, the older brother Ozzy had never had into a bloody chunk of brain, bone, and blood. The man in the passenger seat, a translator Ozzy had never gotten to know didn’t fare much better. Then they started to roll.

  Three, world shaking, bone breaking rolls landed Ozzy and Tommy, his battle buddy and best friend upside down halfway up a rocky embankment. Thomas was groaning like he’d broken a rib. It was the guttural pained noise people make when pain becomes their only friend.

  Ozzy had to drag Tommy out of the Humvee, and he screamed the whole way out. He wasn’t even conscious by the time he got him out.

  Ozzy listened to him die as he waited for the help he’d called for to come. Listened to his groans slowly turn to wheezes, slowly turn to pained shallow breaths, slowly turn to silence.

  Death was something Ozzy had never acquainted himself well with. Sure, he had killed people. Several in fact before he’d ever made it to the swamp, but they had all been from afar, bullets were impersonal things, and it was hard to understand the impact of your actions as a naive indoctrinated twenty-year-old. Death didn’t truly make itself known to him until he watched Tommy die. Then it all made sense.

  He couldn’t bring himself to continue, and for as long as it took his physical injuries to heal that was fine. The army didn’t want him unless he could walk right, but when the doctor gave him the all clear and they called him back he just couldn’t swing it.

  Failure found him again and again within the army. He simply no longer had any soul for the work, he hardly had the soul to keep on living. Patrols were out of the question, he refused all of them, refused to do anything that might endanger another life, rotting away in his cot. Even just the thought of it turned his stomach, and he couldn’t help but see Tommy, lying there next to him on the rocks, staring up glassy eyed at the sun, a victim of a fight of the same impersonal murder Ozzy had committed.

  Uncle Sam did its best to whip him back into shape, but in the end decided he wasn’t worth the effort. He was sent home with a general discharge, neither good nor bad, they’d just wanted him gone.

  Louisiana wasn’t much better than Iraq. His mom had been a comfort for a time, but in the end, she was just as much a reminder of things as the army had been. Even after he’d taken down the photos his mom had framed of him and his brothers in arms he could still see them. Each empty spot on a shelf, each nail hole in the wall where a picture had hung, they all just reminded him of what he’d lost.

  In the end he’d had to leave. He didn’t have an answer other than a cabin in the woods. He knew his mom wouldn’t be able to go, and he knew it’d kill her and him if he left. More than anything he knew he wouldn’t survive staying in Louisiana though. He’d already tasted the barrel of his .45 twice, he didn’t know if he’d be able to pull the gun out of his mouth the third time. All he could do was leave, maybe that way at least it wouldn’t be his mother who found him.

  So he left, spent all of the money he’d saved and gotten from joining the military on a plot of land two miles from any road up in Alaska. It had left him doing much what he’d busied himself with here in the great swamp, surviving. He didn’t worry about life, he taught himself to stop thinking about his brothers and taught himself to laugh again. He had very nearly convinced himself it had never happened, eating a pretty lie over and over again rather than owning up to the truths. Convincing himself it had all never happened, making it possible for him to kill again once he got here.

  Every now and again in Alaska he’d call his mom. She’d cry when she’d hear his voice, not loud tears, but her voice would crack just loud enough for him to know. “How are you baby boy? Are you feeling alright?” She’d ask him and try to hide the quiver in her voice with a cough or a yawn. Every time he hung up the phone she must have thought it could’ve been the last time she’d hear from him.

  Now it would be.

  ***

  Ozzy, sobbed into his hands, the memories of his brothers, the knowledge his disappearance would only prove his mother’s worst fears true, and the reality that he had done it all wrong, putting holes through his heart more efficiently or cleanly than any bullet.

  “I had to. I couldn’t stay there. I didn’t want to leave her. I had to…” His voice cracked and broke as he spoke into his hands.

  “I know, you had to, but was it worth it?” The void asked, a surprising tone of gentleness entering his voice.

  “No.” Was all Ozzy could bring himself to say.

  “Good. Do not carry that sort of regret as you go about building a life in this world. I will allow you my power, but I am not a being of blessings. Go your way Ozzy, do that which makes you whole.”