The Adventures Of Pete in San Jose

Tom Thomas

San Jose is a nice city in California, close to Silicon Valley. It is home to several computer companies, the local "biggie" being KreigerWare. Microsoft has an office here too, a huge building with a public square in front of it. The only other thing I found interesting was that San Jose is the site of the Winchester Ghost House, built by the mad widow of the famous gunmaker.

So, I got to my friend Bob’s house, and "visited". He couldn’t stay too long because of work, so I went and roamed the city. That night I had dinner in The Flashback Cafe, a favorate hangout of the owner of KreigerWare, a 13-year-old girl named Mouse. She had a patch over half of her face, and was being escorted by a teen-age boy. Her boyfriend? The food at the Cafe was excellent, and I left to continue exploring.

After a few weeks of this, I was getting tired of the same old routine (plus I was running out of money), so I decided to look for work. I checked the music stores and found a band who needed a guitarist. Me. The band was called Wild Stallions, and consisted of three other guys named Bill, Ted, and Jerry. We jammed a few times, and, even though they loved their music, they sucked. And they weren’t making any improvement. So I left.

I was walking home one night after out last session, and saw a strange sight in the graveyard. Two huge things, unnatural looking in their movement and aperance. The things were humanoid, hairy, and glowing. I heard their fangs tear the flesh off each other as they fought. This is when I lost it. I ran screaming down the street, out of control.

When I came to my senses, I was in a cavern somewhere, surrounded by hideous looking things. They were tall muscular creatures, all bent over and covered with grey fur. They stared at me with nasty looks in their eyes, like they wanted to rip me apart and eat me. One normal looking person came up to me.

"You want to live, right?" he said.

I nodded a yes. I was too scared to do anything else.

"You can call us the Black Spiral Dancers. We need someone. Not you, but if you don’t get this person for us, we will do nasty things to you. You will take this person and bring her to us." He handed me a piece of paper with a name on it. " You have one week." Then the things rushed me, with fists flying. Everything went black. Again.

This time, when I woke up, I was just outside town. I walked back to Bob’s place, and collapsed into bed. But I couldn’t sleep. What the things wanted with this woman scared me. Heck, the things themselves scared me. Their faces were the last thing I remember thinking about before I fell asleep, and the horrible faces followed me into sleep and became my nightmares.

The next couple of days seemed unreal. I was numb to everything normal, but always looking over my shoulder for something unnatural. I placed an ad in the newspaper, informing the woman I was looking for that she had won a prize and needed to contact me. I was horrified by what I was doing, leading another person into a trap to save myself. But I couldn’t allow myself to die. I came first, no matter what. But that thought couldn’t keep my conscience from bugging me.

There was no response after two days, so I started looking for the woman’s apartment.