“This dimension
Of incomprehension
Enjoys an invention
That leads
And bleeds
Without question.
Let me ask:
If you lost your world
Would you settle for mine?
Would you lose the Mojo
Or rather die?”

-from “Lose The Mojo”
by Alison Blaire, Not By A Longshot [2007]

---

Presence, Kansas
About twenty miles from the Nebraska border

The applause didn’t fade for minutes, so the television cut to a commercial. When the advert took over, he became aware of the heels clacking toward him.

“Hello, welcome to Dandy’s. Can I start you off with a coffee, daddy-o?” The nametag pinned to the breast pocket of her oversized shirt read ‘Raquel’. She noisily smacked her gum, keeping the pen in one hand close to the pad in the other. The orange striped shirt hung far over loose flares that scraped at the tile, making her shoes invisible.

Through the pain, he said, “Yes, decaf please.”

“Still need a few minutes to look at the menu?”

He gazed at the laminated sheet in front of him. The font was too small to read; his vision was blurring in waves. Grimacing, “Just the coffee for now, Raquel. Thank you.”

“Coming right up!”

She was scampering away when his chest suddenly seized.

“Hhhaaaakkk!” he slammed his fist on his chest. Then, he quickly grabbed his napkin, flinging the tableware off it, and covered his mouth, with a barely muffled, “Huuaaackkkk!”

Raquel was obviously looking back at him. Wearily, he pulled the baseball cap farther down his brow. But he couldn’t hide his hideously yellow hand or the blood soaked napkin. The waitress took a few steps backward before finally turning around fully, and retreating behind the bar.

He looked away, toward the window. Outside, there was nothing but plains and a Kansas highway. In the distance he could see the clouds rolling, getting darker and darker as they got closer. There were only a few other patrons in the bar…a family in the corner far away from him, a lone man a couple booths down, and two truckers laughing at the bar. None of them paid attention to his coughing attack.

His eyes wandered to the television again. He couldn’t see it at all but he could hear it clearly. There was still applause

“There you go, ladies and gentlemen! That was Alison Blaire with another cut off her new record ‘Not By A Longshot’, due in stores in just two weeks! Alison, it’s great to have you again. Been a while.”

“That’s what people keep telling me, Millie. But this one’s been…a while in the making I guess.”

“That’s right, tell us about that. You play around with your style quite a bit. It’s almost like a whole new sound but—”

“Yeah, sorta…”

“—for those of us who know your work from years ago, it’s still in the same vein. I was so, so impressed. It’s getting the best kinds of reviews from all over the country. You’ve just got to tell us what was going on in your head.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t listen to the critics; they’ve been so hard on me for so many years—”

“Oh, come on, Alison, spill the beans! We notice you’re suddenly single again…!”

The audience shared their interest with a long series of hollering.

“Heh…um, yeah, Millie, I just got out of a pretty long…pretty complicated relationship and, yeah, I guess a lot of the album is about that.”

“What happened to this guy? That mystery beau that you tried so hard to keep out of the tabloids? What was his name? Arthur Centino?”

“Something like that. Well, um, Millie, just a few weeks ago…he finally succumbed to a cancer that he had been battling for quite a few months. The end was…so unexpected.”

The crowd now was silent.

“Oh, god, Alison, that’s horrible. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. I…I’ve gotten through it. I worked a lot of it out on this album, my feelings for him…my time with the X-Men and X-Corp…all that stuff. I even have a free concert coming up in Mutant Town…erm, I mean District X in New York City. Just a week after my record hits stores actually.”

“Well, let’s talk about that! It’s something we’re all looking forward to! You’re playing with Lila Cheney, is that right?”

“That’s right, yes.”

“God, it’s been forever since she toured! What’s she been up to?”

“You know Lila. She’s always touring…all over the place.”

“How far do you think you’ll get?”

His back stiffened, and he looked up. There was no one there. Raquel was behind the bar, at the kitchen, relaying an order to the chef, who he couldn’t see through the small porthole. Here in the far corner of the diner, no one would bother him. No one—

“Yet here I am. You can’t escape me. It’s only a matter of time before it’s all over. Not so lucky now, are you? Lucky one! Ha!”

His chest tightened again. “Huuuaaackkk!” He was barely able to bring the napkin to his mouth in time. His eyes squeezed together so tightly, he felt tears spill down his cheek.

When he opened them, there was someone sitting in the booth across from him. He jolted in his seat a second, but then remembered nobody else could see this man.

A long brown coat was buttoned from the neck all the way down to his ankles. A top hat with a wide brim disguised his face. Black, gloved hands held a long cane. The thunder roared through the window beside him.

“You have to ask yourself…if this was always your fate, then just how lucky were you in the first place?” The mouth of this stranger didn’t move, but it was clearly his voice.

There was a flash of lightning, and suddenly this man was right next to him. Kneeling next to the booth, whispering in his ear:

“Your future is in my hands. Or are your hands in my future? Heeheehee…”

An arm whipped out, but it grasped nothing. His tormentor reappeared across from him, sitting cross-fingered at the booth.

“Embrace death, Longshot!”

“No!” The Lucky One slammed his fists on the table.

---

On the other side of the diner, Raquel was talking to the chef, Tony, who also happened to be the owner.

Twenty years ago, Tony opened this trailer diner. He filled it with trinkets and the music of his childhood, during the nineteen-fifties. His heart and soul was in this diner, kept popular by truckers for every year since he opened. Of course, the grease-filled meals did their own part. Tony had seen his fair share of losers and misguided souls in his little diner, but he wasn’t here to help them. A hot meal and they were on their way, little more, little less.

“See that guy in that far booth? Talking to himself?” Raquel smacked her gum as she talked. “I think he’s some kind of freak.”

“You mean a mutie?” Tony talked loud over the stoves in front of him. He had no problem talking this loud; his patrons never heard him. Burgers sizzled and water boiled, oddly, to the rhythm of Tony’s heavy breathing.

“I dunno.” Raquel was looking at the stranger now. He was mumbling to himself, occasionally coughing into his napkin. “He’s dressed in leather like some kind of
bondage freak. All kinds of knives inside his jacket.”

Tony was not a thin man, and his body, from his stomach to his jowls, jiggled as he waved the spatula at Raquel. “You watch him. I don’t mind taking his money, but I swear if he causes any trouble, I got no problem kicking his ass out the door.”

Raquel winked. “Gotcha, Tone. Oh, and I’m changing the channel after Millie to watch Vance & Angelica.” And with that, she was on her way, sliding across the linoleum like she was on roller skates. A plastered grin on her lips, she smacked her way toward the family at the closest corner of the restaurant.

Tony, meanwhile, flipped a half-pound burger half-consciously, and kept his gaze on the stranger in the far booth. If there was anyone who looked like trouble, it was that guy.

---

Leon Franco needed to get out of this place. He came to these sparse stretches of Kansas for silence, for peace. And that was the last thing he was getting.

All he wanted was food, drink and then to mosey along down the highway toward another empty expanse. This diner was miles away from the nearest anything, with only the phone lines and the thunderclouds to keep him company.

That’s what he wanted. Peace and quiet. Why couldn’t he have it?

The images just warped and faded through his brain, like he was surfing the channels of his television…

He’d blink: a new image would torment him.

Sometimes it would be an old American war movie, with some poor eastern European dubbing job. Sometimes it would be just be sounds, like classic radio programs, with Groucho Marx or Basil Rathbone. Sometimes it would be cartoons, from Felix the Cat all the way to The Simpsons. Most of the time, it was music; trance, usually, but there was a little bluegrass, classical opera, and television theme songs in-between.

Sometimes…Leon would see monsters.

There would be small ones, like little dogs, with bearded jaws, and long tails. They would scamper through the shadows, fangs glistening in whatever light they could get. For some reason, Leon knew that these creatures were called ‘Gogs’.

There would be big ones, like orangutans on some kind of crazy monkey steroids. Leon was terrified of them. They would only appear one at time, leaping at him from the corner of his eye, then disappearing just as fast. For some reason, he knew these creatures were called ‘Magogs’.

It was rare, but he’d see someone else too…

He’d see the Thunderthief.

It was the Thunderthief’s fault he was going crazy.

“Leon! Are you crazy yet?”

Leon looked up with bloodshot eyes. “Almost there.”

The Thunderthief was there. He wore a long, brown coat that buttoned all the way down to his jackbooted ankles. The wide brim of his hat still couldn’t contain his smile. Gloved fingers tapped whimsically at the top of his cane.

“No, I need you to go crazy now.” The Thunderthief said simply, “The Lucky One is at the end of his rope too. Look at how I’ve brought you two together so serendipitously! Now, I need you to kill each other, okay?”

Leon felt his eyes twitching. He was trying not to stare so hard at the Thunderthief in front of him. He knew this was a hallucination. He just knew it.

“Open your eyes.” The Thunderthief said, though the high collar of the long brown coat hid his mouth. “Dammit, listen to me! I am the voice of your incomprehension! I am the skipper of your fate schooner!”

Leon felt his chest heave. Strangely, a chuckle erupted. “And, what? I’m just a whacked-out Gilligan?”

The Thunderthief laughed, “You can be anything you want to be, Leon. Just as long as you’re crazy.”

Leon let out a burst of laughter at that. But he realized what happened and brought his two hands to cover his mouth. Eyes wide, he said through closed palms, “Do you promise to leave me alone?”

The Thunderthief nodded, “Oh yes, Leon. After this, you won’t hear from me ever again. I promise.”

Leon nodded along with the Thunderthief. That was good enough. “Okay.” With a smooth movement of his wrist, he reached into the pocket of the jean jacket he was wearing. The hilt of the pistol was warm in his grip. When he pulled back the hammer, the gentle click was hardly a noise.

“He’s sitting at the table just across the way.” The Thunderthief thumbed over his shoulder. “See him? Trucker’s cap? Nappy blonde mullet? Retro leather digs?”

Leon saw him. Straightening himself, he stood from the booth. The gun was heavy in his pocket and it slapped his waist as he started to walk across the linoleum.

“That’s it, Leon!” the Thunderthief’s voice rang through his ears like his conscience. But Leon could no longer see him.

All Leon could see was the blonde man in front of him.

---

“Here’s your coffee.” Raquel set the saucer and cup down on the table. “You want cream?”

Longshot shook his head. “No, thank you.” He still didn’t look at her.

“Uh-huh.” Raquel was peering at him all the way back to the counter.

He was trying to hear more of the television, but he realized that the program about Dazzler—Alison—had been over for a few minutes now. He closed his eyes and sighed. Longshot had been hoping to hear another song.

Wearily he gazed through the wide window next to his booth. His vision kept fading in and out, but occasionally, Longshot could see the vast countryside clearly. For a second, he did, and even spied two black specks in the distance, cars speeding toward the diner.

Longshot felt his stomach sink when he saw those cars.

He pondered it no longer. Someone sat down in the booth across from him.

“Hi.” The man said quickly. “I’m Leon. You don’t know me.”

Longshot blinked at Leon. Briefly feeling the inside of his jacket for his knives, Longshot eased. Examining Leon: damp, curled brown hair, scruffy half-beard, eyes that never looked right at you but darted around you like they were avoiding you, lips that would occasionally mumble something never heard.

Longshot rubbed his sickly hands together, and rolled his yellow eyes. “I know you, Leon. The Thunderthief sent you.”

“Yeah!” Leon said, happily. “So you know what I’m going through?”

Longshot chuckled. He rubbed gingerly at his neck, feeling how sore and cramped it was. “Yes, you could say that.” His eyes looked toward the window again, but he couldn’t see much.

Leon’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Do you think we can beat him? You and me? Together?”

Longshot’s vision cleared, and he saw the two specks on the distance were now much closer. Black sedans. He looked back at Leon. “Not by a long shot.”

“Don’t say that!” Leon yelled. He slammed his fists on that table.

Raquel and the fat man who did the cooking—Longshot hadn’t caught his name—both stared hard at the two of them. The family in the corner was still laughing to themselves. The two truckers at the bar were spying over their shoulders.

Longshot was looking at none of them. He saw the small revolver that rested next to Leon’s right hand on the table in plain view.

“Leon,” his voice was still hoarse, “this is already over. We’ve both lost our minds. This is not going to make things better. No matter what the radio waves in your brain are telling you right now.”

Outside, in the stormy distance, the two black sedans were getting closer. Longshot made the mistake of looking at them again…

Leon followed his eyes. His throat bobbed up and down with a dry gulp.

“Who’s that?” he asked, a little frenzy rising with the volume of his voice. “Who’s driving those cars?”

“Let’s get out of here, Leon.” Longshot said quickly. “Don’t worry about them. Don’t worry about anyone. Just you and me. We can get out of here. We can go crazy together, somewhere else, just don’t do this here—”

“Awww, maaaan…” Leon moaned. “Is this how I’m gonna die? Man, this sucks! What kind of fate is that? That’s some shitty thread, destiny!” He put his head in his hands.

Longshot knew everyone was looking at the two of them now.

Leon stood up from the booth. The gun in his hand was plainly visible when he waved his hand in the air. “I’ve got to kill you. He told me that was the only way out.”

Longshot said, “And you think he wasn’t lying? There’s only one person you can trust right now, Leon.” His eye flashed again.

Leon’s eyes kept flashing toward the window. The black sedans were getting closer. The gun was starting to tremble in his hand, but his voice was way ahead of it. “Why is this happening to me?”

Longshot apparently didn’t hear Leon’s question. “Either give me the gun, or walk outside with me now. We can finish this some place else—”

“Shut up!” Leon’s squeezed his eyes shut, and felt the sweat drip from his forehead, down the bridge of his nose, and settle just outside his nostril and—

A vicious crack pierced their eardrums! There were screams (from the family sitting in the corner of the diner, and maybe Raquel). The smell of smoke and an eerie echo followed. Debris dripped from a brand new hole in the ceiling. Longshot cringed back a bit in his booth, but Leon didn’t move at all.

Everything was tense…muscles, eyes, the hands of the clock ticking on the wall…

“That’s enough, freaks!” it was the fat man from the kitchen. He raised his shotgun a bit higher from the bar. One eye squinted lower than the other. The girl Raquel cowered a bit behind him.

The truckers along the bar had braced themselves for a quick escape, but they stared intently. The family in the corner was rushing through the side exit—the one near the bathroom—thanks to a quick-witted mother and father. Longshot’s eyes surveyed the scene.

Longshot raised his hands a bit. “Leon…listen to me…” His eye was glimmering in a pattern that Leon found strangely soothing.

“Shut up!” the fat man screamed from the counter. His thick voice cracked, “No talking! Just get the fuck out!”

“Leon…” Longshot said slowly, and his eye kept shining like some kind of strobe.

But Leon was gone. The barrel of the gun rose again. “It’s too late for that now.”

The barrel flashed twice. Longshot’s eye stopped flashing. There were two holes in his chest and they were burning. This hot pain almost overtook the pain in his gut, and the pain in his head…

The coughing started and the falling started but the gunshots hadn’t again just yet—

As he fell, the hands of the clock on the wall looked like they weren’t moving at all—

But Leon was moving, spinning as fast as Longshot was falling. His waist twisted toward Tony, as the fat man raised the shotgun again—

Longshot’s fingers pressed against the inside of his jacket, feeling how wet and warm it was there. His eyeballs rolled toward an unlikely prospect…

Raquel was looking right at the blonde haired man—the man who was just shot twice in the chest—and he…winked at her.

“Tony!” she yelled it, but she wasn’t quite sure why, nor why she suddenly had the urge to pull the fat man with every bit of strength in her one-hundred ten pound frame. But she did. She moved faster than she ever realized she could move.

Tony fell to the tile with Raquel, behind the bar, as two gunshots sailed through the space where Tony had stood a split-second before.

Leon was still moving. Longshot was still falling. The gun took aim at the truckers at the bar, who were already out of their seats, ducking. Longshot’s fingers were out of his jacket. The knives left his fingers. And the hands of the clock on the wall counted one second.

One gunshot rang, leaving another hole in the ceiling. Louder than that was Leon’s scream. Two knives had burst through the palm of his hand, spraying dark blood across bright white tile. The gun looked like it was suspended in air before it finally started to fall…

The clock on the wall clicked one more second. Longshot hit the white tile with a wet splat. His glimmering eye was dull.

The color had drained from completely from Leon, his eyes still locked on his palm, and his two new, heavier appendages. With his other hand, he kneeled and picked up his gun again. As he did, Leon’s eyes met with Longshot once more. And Leon heard the Lucky One whisper to him.

“It’s not quite over, Leon. You still have to deal with…them.”

And Longshot winked at him.

Then, Longshot died. The light in his eye was gone. He lay still, but the blood kept seeping from under him across white tiles.

Leon grinned a little. Doesn’t that mean he won? But then he remembered the Lucky One’s last words. What was that supposed to mean? Them? He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Them…He stood fully, the gun heavy in one hand, the bloody, dripping knives weighing down his other. But he scarcely felt either when he turned and looked in the window behind him. Them?

The black sedans had arrived.

Leon’s eyes widened and he saw exactly what he knew he was going to see: them.

Gogs. Magogs. Horrible, hideous, disgusting creatures. They were coming to take him away.

“No!” Leon raised the gun at the window. “No! No I won’t let you! I want to live! I want to live!”

He pulled the trigger twice more. Shots rang like thunder, and glass shattered, fell like a waterfall. And he jumped through, to the parking lot just outside, just in front of the sedans. He’d shoot every last one of the beasts if he had to…

The monsters flowed from the sedans like disease from Pandora’s box. There were so many of them, so many different sizes and colors. They were everywhere. They filled every inch of his eyesight. And they were leaping at him.

Leon screamed again, “No! Back monsters!” and he pulled the trigger.

But instead of the comforting, hot thunder, there was only a soulless ‘CLICK!’. He pulled the trigger three times more and it was only the same. The thunder was gone. It had been stolen.

“No.” Leon said the word once more. And then he was dead.

---

“Jesus Christ! What the hell just happened?”

Officer Cale Mulroney was standing at his black sedan, not sure if the muscles in his legs were going to move or not. His knuckles were white and shivered slightly, but his gun was still pointed dead ahead.

“Cale! What the hell, man? What the fuck was that guy’s problem?”

Blinking, Cale looked to his left, past the other black sedan, toward the best friend he had on the whole force—Jeremy Jenkins. Jerry was similarly positioned—behind the open driver’s door; that’s what they teach you—and his gun pointed at the same target. It was just a stiff pile of flesh now.

Cale swallowed. His throat was dry, so it hurt. When he finally moved, he realized how weak he was. “I-I-I don’t know, man. He came right through that window! He was—it was like he thought we were monsters or something.”

“That was a fuckin’ death machine in his hand—look at how big that thing was!” Jerry moved from his car now too, but still kept back from the body like it was going to jump at him, bite his ankle.

Cale brought his hand to his mouth. “Is he dead?”

Jerry looked at him with puckered lips. “Gee, you think? I swear I put like six bullets into this psycho.”

Cale felt a sinking inside of him. His mind flashed back to the three bullets—no, four bullets, better to be honest, that Cale himself shot into the man.

“Oh shit!” Jerry looked up at the diner. “You think there’s someone else inside?”

Cale felt the adrenaline pump through his veins, and he was able to move again. “We gotta check, but…I haven’t heard anything.”

Jerry nodded. “Okay, I’m gonna check it out. You go ‘round back.”

Cale watched his counterpart carefully climb steps to the diner’s main entrance. Then Cale followed the asphalt to the back. On the way there, Cale lucidly thought about the weather.

Didn’t it look like rain just seconds before? Where was all the thunder?

Oh well, Cale tried to refocus, maybe we just got lucky.

---

For more on the fate of Longshot check out M2K’s Uncanny X-Men!