Kind of weird to be writing from my players's perspectives since, y'know, they're being played by my friends. By "weird" I mean when I sit and write these I have to wonder if this is actually how they'd react to their situations and such...oh well. Artistic license!

I think I'll try bed again now.

Roger's Introduction

"Where are w --"

"Questions later." The old man's accent caused the last word to come out latah. "For now, just walk with me, son."

"Walk. Right." Roger stood at the mouth of the alley, brow furrowed, lips compressed. He rubbed his throat and looked back to where he was pretty sure he'd just died. He knew a thing or two about how much blood a man could lose and still live. Scientifically, there was absolutely no good goddamn reason he was walking and talking right now.

At least Amelia didn't see it, he thought, hurrying to fall into step with the man who had called himself Cotton. At least she's still alive.

Theoretically, corrected the literal and analytical part of him that had been beaten into being over the course of $100,000 worth of medical school. Technically, she could have gotten into a car accident and died on the way home.

Shut up, Roger told that part of himself.

"You're a man of science." Saa-ens. Roger hadn't heard a Southern accent that thick since Tombstone. "I have need of your services, Roger."

"Great. Did you have to kill me to get them? Because my consultation fees --"

Cotton tapped his cane smartly against the concrete. "Questions later." For the first time since they'd known each other -- admittedly, not long -- a note of annoyance crept into the old man's voice.

"You picked me --" You goddamn bastard. "-- because I'm a 'man of science'," Roger snapped, forcing himself to look up at Cotton and meet his gaze. "Asking questions is my job." Crazy old cooter.

"Not right now." There was more than just threat in the old man's words. A wave of fear -- alien and out of place -- briefly passed over Roger, and for a moment he wanted to run screaming away from here. But he didn't, and wouldn't. Too much had happened that he didn't understand. The only place he knew to get answers was from the tall old geezer walking next to him.

"With a pillow and a red suit, he'd make a perfect Santa," Amelia had said as they'd sat at the bar tonight. She'd pointed him out to Roger. She'd had five rum and cokes by then. She always got a little silly by the fourth.

Yeah, perfect Santa, Ames, Roger thought, looking back down at the cracked sidewalk. One who stabs kids in the neck and then says it's what they wanted for Christmas. It'll start a new tradition. We'll call him "Stabby Claus".

A lake breeze picked up, causing Roger's shirt to stick to his chest. It finally occurred to him that he was strolling down a street somewhere near Wacker Drive, wearing a shirt soaked red down the front and escorted by a Civil War reconstructionist reject. It felt like it should be a nightmare, except that he knew it wasn't. This was real. He was dead. Or a little more than dead.

Illogical. Completely illogical. He had to know how this was possible.

"I'm sorry, son," Cotton said after a moment, a trace of something that might have been sadness in his voice. "I know you loved her."

If you knew it, Roger thought, then why'd you kill me?

But he didn't voice it.

Questions later.

Oh yes.