Home Sweet Home: Briar

With thugs watching my every movement, I obviously could not leave now. So, I suppose I'm setting down roots - pun intended - in this dusty desert town.

It was the work of an afternoon to throw up a boxy house on stilts. Why stilts? The ground wasn't steady enough at the surface. They actually put posts about ten feet into the sandy dirt below. My suspicion is that magic has something to do with it - it always comes back to magic - but the 'boys' say that it's been that way as long as they can remember.

Forgive me if I don't trust the memory of the uneducated criminals of the area.

The house had no windows, and only a single level - but it had room under it to park the car, so that was something anyway. A narrow staircase linked it to the ground.

They set a large garbage can out front and hammered a mailbox into place, painting the numbers on the side of it in bold print, and drove away. So ... this was home. I had a typewriter, a collection of concrete bricks and wooden boards that could loosely be called a bookshelf, a handful of textbooks, a bed. I also - er - 'bought' a few children's books. I have an idea for how to gently undermine the mob, the government - everything. But I'll need to study the writing style.

The house was lit with candles, which wasn't a huge problem since the 'wood' was actually sheets of metal painted to look like wood paneling. One of the thugs had an artistic bent, and was quick with a paintbrush.

Water, I explained to them, was vital to me. I needed water to survive.

They told me that the water wasn't really fit to drink, suggested I try drinking wine or beer, since that was clean and healthy.

For, you know, a given definition.

I was insistent, though, and they set me up with a toilet and sink, even, the plumbing worked into one of the posts and linked to the main water supply. I never used to drink, and I shudder to think what alcohol will do to my new body.

They said they'd send someone to check up on me every day, take any new orders I had. Mondays, the money all went to the boss. I didn't agree with that, but I certainly wasn't in a position to argue.

Oh, and I still had to pay the city for the privilege of being on their land and using the water. The mob wasn't going to interfere with a good thing, after all. Fortunately those bills weren't exactly high at the moment.

Home, I guess.

Tomorrow, I'll get a job at the paper. That'll be new - when's the last time you've seen an actual newspaper? It's - it was anyway - all about the Internet.