Author's website: http://unhinged.kixxster.org

Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. Probably a good thing, considering the way I frequently abuse them.

Author's Notes:

Story Notes: This is the third in a series I've decided to call "Slipping Through the Cracks."

This story is a sequel to: "Daemons of the Air"

InnerVision
By MR

Funny how much you can see with your eyes closed. Not that I'd tell Fraser so. He's already half convinced I'm certifiable. I start telling him what I can see in my mind, it'll be a nice warm padded cell for Ray Kowalski. And I can't let that happen. Cause no matter how fucked up things are, I still love'im.

So he can't ever know the truth. I don't like lying to him, but the alternative-I don't wanna think about the alternative, okay? Cause the alternative is him dead. And not just dead dead, dead like Stella and all those other people in Chicago were. Which isn't really dead at all.

Took me a while to figure it out, but I've got a handle on it now. They're mad cause I know what they were doing when they killed those people. Not cause they had to; not cause they were hungry for energy or life or anything like that. They killed'em cause they could. They killed'em cause they're not even remotely like us.

When Fraser first found out about'em, that day he tried on my glasses, I told him I thought they'd been here longer than us. Told'im how I quit wearing my glasses all the time when I was little cause I got this feeling they'd noticed I was there. Fooled myself into thinking that if I didn't use my glasses any more than necessary they wouldn't notice me anymore.

Ever heard the expression about closing the barn door after the horses got out? Hell, when I first saw them, it was already way to late to think about doing anything but run screaming. They were here before us all right. Think of Atlantis and Mu, the Marie Celeste, the Lost Colony at Roanoke-all the people that've just vanished into thin air and never been seen again. No bodies, no blood. Just gone like they never existed. And scientists talk about space aliens and mass insanity and continents sinking and taking whole civilizations with them.

The world's a lot more crowded now than it was in the beginning. Which makes it both harder and easier for them to pick someone. They just gotta they don't pick anybody that'll be missed. And they got to make sure they take the whole person.

See, hat's where they fucked up. Cause like I said, they're not human. Over the years I think they've learned more about people than they knew in the beginning, but despite it, they aren't like us. They're minds don't work like ours do. The major difference is that they don't feel. It's not like they're good or evil. They're beyond that. Their minds resemble ours about as much as Fraser's brain resembles one of the sled dogs.

What's the words I'm trying to get here? Ohm-something. Not omnipotent, cause that's what God is, right?

Omniscient. They're so far beyond us they're in an entirely different dimension. Maybe that's where they came from in the first place. Maybe so long ago nobody even remembers something caused a crack between our world and theirs, and they just slipped through and decided the pickings were easier in 3-D.

I can hear Fraser moving around in the other room, rattling pans. Getting supper ready.

You lose your eyes and you start relying on your other senses. Hearing, touch, taste, smell--that's how you get your impressions of the world around you.

But in my case I've got something else. Something in my mind that lets me see them in a way that isn't really seeing. I'd call it sensing, but it doesn't involve any of the five senses we know about. It's something most people don't have. Hell, I never knew I had it till I lost my sight.

I know it worries Fraser that I never go outside anymore. But I can't explain to him I've got more important things to do now than fool around with sled dogs. It's my job to keep track of them. I'm the look-out.

Cause I know what they started in Chicago with Stella and the rest was just the beginning. They've lost our trail, but sooner or later, they'll find it. They'll find me, and if they find me they find Fraser.

And I'll be damned to the seventh circle if I'm gonna let'em do to him what they did to Stella. I don't know how I can stop'em, but there's gotta be a way. Needs be, I'll make a way.

I've already lost one person I loved to the fuckers. I sure's hell aren't gonna let'em have Ben.

FIN

End InnerVision by MR: psykaos42@yahoo.com

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