A Quick Get To Know The Author 

Try Not To Burn Excert & Book Cover

CHAPTER 1

IN BLACK

          
 “It's a bittersweet day for San Francisco, ladies and gentlemen. Our long, city-wide nightmare has finally drawn to a close, but it did not come without a heavy cost. News comes out of the San Francisco Police Department that renowned serial killer Victor Gregory Rellik has just been shot dead, mere moments ago, on the corner of Geary and Webster. Two police officers were on the scene at the time of the shooting. Details are still scarce as of this moment, but what we do know is that one of the police officers—his name has not yet been disclosed to the press—has been shot in the head and has been rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

            “His partner, reported to be former police Lieutenant Francis Takeda, demoted after his alleged involvement in the Douglas Minton police brutality case, is being lauded as a hero by eyewitnesses at the scene.

            “We go now to Carol Daly, live on the corner where Rellik's Reign was brought to its shocking conclusion. Carol, what have you been able to learn?”

            “Thanks, Jackie. I have two men standing by who saw the entire grisly event unfold. We'll get their thoughts in just a moment. But first, I have just received word on the condition of Officer Takeda's partner, a twenty-two year old man who, I'm sorry to say, has now became Victor Rellik's thirty-fifth...and final...victim.

            “Officer...”

***

            Brandon Morales saw only darkness. Frozen, unflinching darkness. A bottomless pit that had swallowed him whole. The blackness existed all around him, choking him, closing in on him, while at the same time extending for as far as the eye could possibly see.

            There lurked no light in the blackness, no point where he could see a seam or crack in the wall of endless shadow. No place he could use to regain his bearings, to work out which side was up and which side was down.

            He tried to reach out with his hand toward the dark wall. He saw the blackness tremble, like ripples in a stream of water. But he couldn’t see his hand. Couldn’t feel it, either.

            He couldn’t feel anything at all. He couldn’t blink. Couldn’t shout out. Couldn’t even feel his breath filling his lungs.

            Fear yanked at the corners of his mind, resolute panic endeavoring to seize control of his thoughts.

            Had he stopped breathing? Was he dying?

            Was this what it felt like to die?

            Was it already too late? Is this how he would spend the rest of eternity?

            There were so many questions, but no voice to speak them, and the darkness had no answers.

            He thought back to the last moment he remembered before the world went black.

            He thought back to Geary Boulevard, located a few blocks west of San Francisco's Tenderloin district. The rust-flecked mint-green coupe he and his partner pulled over. He remembered stepping out of the squad car into the still summer air. Walking toward the car alone, the sunlight glancing into his eyes off the coupe's rear window.

            Brand started to inform the driver why they pulled him over, that he had a brake light out. Nothing major. Nothing that should have been a problem, just a friendly word of warning. You should look into fixing that. Thanks. See you later.

            Then the man’s face tugged at Brand's memory. He’d seen that scowl before. He’d seen the scar on the man’s lower lip before. He’d known him somehow, but he didn’t know why or how.

            Then it hit him. The realization. It must have been plastered all over his face. Brand started to reach for his gun, the order to freeze forming in his mouth.

            Too slowly, though. Far too slowly. The serial killer was already raising his hand toward the opened window.

            He was smiling. The fucker had actually started smiling.

            The man held something in his hand, but the object was blurry in Brand’s shattered memory. Not much of a mystery now, though.

            Brand never even saw the flash of the gun. Everything just went black.

            Literally.

            And that was it.

            Brand had never felt this alone in his entire life.

            He saw no light at the end of this particular tunnel, cheerfully ushering him back into the land of the living. Nothing at all. All he had were his thoughts and a wall of stifling darkness to accompany him.

            Could he be in a coma? Was he laying in a hospital somewhere, a human pincushion with tubes snaking out of his body, depending on doctors and machines to keep him alive?

            Or could he simply still be at home in his apartment, lying in bed, awaiting the blare of his alarm clock?

            He felt hope surge up within him. It was possible, wasn’t it? That this entire day had just been a dream. A nightmare. That he had never even seen the killer this morning. That he had not even woken up yet.

            Of course, in order to cling to that tenuous thread of hope, Brand would have to ignore the fact that he still vividly remembered everything he did this morning. He remembered reading the newspaper, featuring the story of the three climbers that were rescued on Mount Hood last night. He'd gone on to read about the horrific synchronized bombings at the Parisian nightclubs.

He knew there was a thirty-five percent chance of showers this evening. He knew the final score of last night’s Lakers game: 107 to 98.

            He remembered setting aside the comics section, intending to bring it with him to work, since his partner loved to read the Tom & Tony comic, but hated the liberal political leanings of the San Francisco Reporter and refused to pay for one of their papers.

            He remembered the look of minor disappointment on Francis’s face when Brand realized he’d forgotten to bring the comics section with him when he left home. Brand somehow doubted that he would have dreamed all of that as well. Most of his dreams involved women, shooting zombies, zombie women, or forgetting to put on his pants when he went to the station, not reading the paper and proceeding uneventfully through a normal day.

            Which meant that the serial killer had to have been real. Which meant that Brand was probably dying. Or already dead.

            Brand’s thoughts went quiet for long moments as he saw the face of the killer once again. Saw the grin cut through the killer’s face the instant before the world went dark.

            And then Brand heard a noise. A voice.

            He thought he was only imagining it at first. The voice sounded strange to him. Muffled, flowing in from a thousand directions, but never at the exact same time from any direction, as though he was listening to a movie on a massive but thoroughly busted surround sound setup.

            “How long do you think it’ll be before he wakes up?” the thousand voices spoke, each seeming to belong to the same young woman.

            “Fuck should I know?” another chorus of voices replied; also female, but sounding slightly older. “I’ve seen some of ‘em start movin’ after a half minute, others a couple of hours. Most of the time, I don’t wait around to see.”

            “How long were you in black?”

            “Hard to say. Wasn’t exactly in a right frame of mind then...”

            There was a pause, leaving Brand alone again with his thoughts as they continued to tail-spin, as he tried to figure out where the voices were coming from, and who they could possibly belong to.

            “You don’t think he can hear us, do you?” the first series of voices asked, having been lowered to a whisper.

            “Anything’s possible,” the other chorus replied.

            “I remember hearin’ someone talking around me before I got out of it. It was Toby. He was singing to me, you know? Trying to keep me calm.”

            The other woman laughed, and it sounded as if a thousand people laughed in unison. “He was singing to you? Toby? Our Toby? Well, will wonders never cease? What song, can you remember?”

            “You’d have to ask him that,” the first voices said. “I wanna’ say it was ‘Pay the Future No Mind’, but it was so long ago, you know? But it did help, in a weird sort of way. It let me know there was nothing to fear.”

            Another laugh. “Nothin’ to fear, huh? Toby always was a liar.”

Michael Matula Interview