EC Port District:

By Scott Aubushon

Three years ago Stu Rutledge was a very successful sport fisherman’s guide, working off the East coast of Austrasia, sailing the waters of the Great Basin Reef. He owned three boats and catered to the very rich. Sometime during that year he took out a group of businessmen, one of whom included, though he didn’t know it at the time, the Quiet Man.

Which trip was it? He would never know. He took between fifty and sixty groups of very wealthy men out every season. He would never be able to place which one of all those men had actually been the man who would be his future boss.

Something during that fishing trip must have made an impression because at the end of the fishing season he was flown to Epic City and offered a large amount of money to be the Quiet Man’s personal messenger.

He went into a very normal, high-rise apartment building overlooking the docks. He then went to a very normal looking, though expensive, apartment near the top floor. He knocked and a very normal -- perfectly normal -- voice said, "Come in."

Stu stepped inside the unlocked door (of course it was, who would want to break in?) and saw a perfectly normal looking, small-framed man in a long silk robe walk down a hallway towards him.

From Stu’s history in the East he knew the man was either Indian or Bangladeshi.

He had an open, utterly unblemished, peaceful face.

The Illustrated Man stopped in front of him and asked "Another message?" in that frighteningly normal, placid, voice of his that was totally bereft of any discernible accent, of any kind. It was just a flat sort of unassuming speech.

"Yeah, the Boss said to tell you ‘I want him scared to the point that he sweats money.’"

"’Sweats money’", the Illustrated Man repeated wonderingly.

"Yep."

"What about his family?"

"You heard what he said, from his mouth to my ears to my lips, that’s exactly what he said, so I guess they’re in."

"But he doesn’t want him killed."

Stu sighed inwardly. The Quiet Man lived by the motto: speak softly and carry a big stick. He said little and was exceedingly precise in what he said. He was specific when needed and vague when he wished to allow latitude. It was one of the reasons that Stu was hired; he never forgot what was said to him.

This man, the Illustrated Man, should have known this by now.

"I guess he couldn’t sweat any money if he was dead."

The Illustrated Man smiled widely but didn’t say anything. His teeth were so bright; they seemed blinding in that dark face.

Stu nodded briefly then got the hell out of there.

Izmir Karpathos strode confidently through the lobby of a posh hotel. He was renting a large, sumptuous suite there until he could purchase an appropriate residence near his newest budding success story in the docks of Epic City.

He had just finished taken a leisurely sky tour of his holdings by zeppelin. Construction was going quickly and without hitches. Contracts were rolling in. Ships were already in route. The whole project was actually three months ahead of schedule and he learned this morning that current estimates showed he would turn a larger profit than he originally believed, at an earlier time than he had ever hoped. Things couldn’t be going better.

He squeezed into the elevator with his four bodyguards and pressed the button for his penthouse suite.

Just as the doors began sliding shut, a small unassuming man stepped forward abruptly and halted the doors. He quickly stepped in, glanced at the lit up penthouse button, and hit the button to shut the doors behind him.

He then looked up and Izmir lost all his thoughts.

Izmir Karpathos came too, as if out of a trance, noticing first that his hands were sticky. He looked down and saw that they were red and covered with the gore of his four slain bodyguards who were sprawled about the floor of the elevator. Izmir’ fine coat and suite were splattered with their blood.

It all came back to him.

The small man had dropped his jacket and was standing, bare chested, in front of him and his men. Fine black lines were rotating and spinning about into an ever-tightening circle of a black hole directly in the center of his chest. Izmir felt terribly nauseous as the bottom of his stomach fell out.

Desperately Izmir stared into the face of the slight man, trying to avoid that churning circle, and saw that lines on the man’s face were doing the same thing, spinning about, down towards a bottomless pit where his face was. Frantically, loosing all sense of reality, Izmir dragged his gaze up and focused on the man’s eyes one final time to avoid all those twirling lines on his chest and face but saw that they were even in the man’s eyes. Fine slender threads, circling about into black holes, in the man’s eyes.

Izmir could only stand there and watch as the man calmly reached into each of his bodyguard’s suit jackets, remove the guns stowed there and calmly execute each man with his own gun, one shot to each man’s head. The guns, after being used on their prior owner, were dropped into that man’s lap.

No one said anything or did anything to stop him as he massacred them all. When the four men were killed and the last gun dropped, the slight man with the nightmarish swirling lines stood in front of him and flashed a brief bright smile. The doors shortly opened and he stepped off the elevator.

Stu Rutledge was ensconced in his favorite booth in his favorite diner the next morning. Laid out in front of him were his breakfast, his first cigarette and several newspapers. It was his habit to pass through the papers each morning, to stay on top of any news dealing with business. Of course, the story that immediately captured his interest was the one on the front page of the Sanguine News that had the mug shot of Karpathos within it. The story, in very excited language, detailed the behavior of Karpathos the previous afternoon wherein he was seen running through the lobby of the very expensive hotel he stayed at, screaming for his life, covered in the blood of his slain bodyguards.

It seems that an assassination attempt had just fallen short of taking his life. Karpathos was so shaken that he was in seclusion at an unknown location. He was also not cooperating with the police in the investigation.

"Good boy," Stu said quietly, smiling to himself and taking another puff of his cigarette.

The story went on further detailing just how much Karpathos had already invested in the docks and that it was highly unlikely he would be able to pull out now from his commitments without risking bankrupting his corporation.

"Sweating like a pig, a billionaire pig," Stu chuckled.

Stu had a fine breakfast that morning before going into work.