I will do everything I can to purge my demons and make my way back to you. You are my life and my love and you always will be.
Yours for all time and in all places,
Jack
Delilah was stunned as she read the letter again. Jack had dropped it off for her just before she left work. She only knew him casually, but when she opened the letter and read the first line, she immediately headed to the address he'd written on the back of the envelope. She was relieved that there was no commotion outside the building when she arrived. Maybe she wasn't too late. When she reached Jack's door, it was slightly open so she pushed inside to find him gone.
Knowing his plan she headed straight for the roof. She didn't find him there either, but she did find fresh footprints in the dust. They led to the edge of the roof and his shoes, right where he said they'd be. She braced herself and eased over to the edge for a look. The distance down to the street seemed to want to pull her over, but there was no fallen body down below. Pushing herself back from the edge, she closed her eyes to settle into the rooftop below her feet.
It looked to her like Jack had done exactly what he'd planned in the letter: walked to the edge of the roof, removed his shoes, and disappeared. As she made her way back from the roof, Delilah's unease and confusion turned to anger. "What kind of sick joke is this?" she said out loud to no one.
When she reached Jack's door again, she was expecting to find him in there laughing and she was looking forward to slapping the smile off his face. Instead it was quiet and all she found was the table with a half full bottle of whiskey and two empty glasses. Dropping the letter on the table, she sat down in one of the creaky wooden chairs and poured herself a drink. As she set the bottle down, a man pushed through the half-open door freezing just inside. He looked from her face to the letter on the table and said, "I'm too late; he's gone." He slumped into the chair opposite her and hung his head. Seeming to deflate as he let out his breath, "I'm sorry," he said.
Seeing what looked like a letter of his own in his jacket pocket, Delilah poured him a good, healthy drink. He looked like he needed it. She put the near empty bottle back on the table and paused, wondering if there might be another interruption. They simply sat and sipped.
Breaking the silence, she said, "So you must be the Detective. Want to tell me what this is all about?" He didn't reply and her anger grew with every moment of his silence. "So what's the joke? You can tell me now. I'm sure it's all very funny," she said.
"It's not a joke," he said.
"So Jack's crazy then, right?" she said.
"No, not about this," he said.
"So maybe you can fill me in on what's going on here. Who the hell is this 'Jack' character anyway?" she said.
His head snapped up. "Who's Jack? You mean you don't know him? But you're Delilah, right?" he said. His brief look of confusion transformed into a knowing smile as she answered his question with a nod.
Delilah shifted forward in her seat a bit and said, "What's so funny?" She was starting to think she had found a smirk for that smack she was saving.
Straightening up, the Detective was suddenly very businesslike as he said, "You got a letter and you rushed over here, right?" She nodded. "There was no body on the street so you came up here and he was gone," he said, punctuating his statement with a good long sip of his drink. She nodded again and relaxed a bit, her slapping hand finding its way to her drink instead of his face. "So you checked the roof and found his shoes just like he said they'd be, but still no body," he said, finally finishing his drink, "He was just gone." She nodded again, setting down her empty glass as well. "So what's the trick? It's got to be some kind of joke, right?" she said splitting the last of the whiskey in the bottle between the two of them. "It's not a trick and as far as I can tell, Jack is gone, maybe for ever," he said, taking his hat off and setting it on the table.
"So he's dead," she said, getting her first good look at him. He had a familiar face but didn't know him.
"You called me 'Detective' before, so Jack told you about me in the letter. I'm guessing he also told you other things and some of them sound pretty crazy. Well, some of that crazy stuff is true," he said, "and separating the true from the crazy is the fun part."
"Sometimes it's hard to tell which parts of a person are real. I thought you and Jack were real from the way he talked about you but you don't seem know him," he said, sizing her up in a whole new light.
"I knew his name and that he like his coffee sweet, but that's about it," she said.
"Well, he talked like you were old pals," he said as he raised his glass, "So here's to our pal, Jack."
Delilah met his toast with what was left of her drink and they set the empty glasses down. She felt strange. The anger had passed and the confusion was back, but now she was curious too. The world seemed unreal to her at the moment and it wasn't from the whiskey.
Seeing the spark in her eyes, the Detective stood as he put his hat back on and offered Delilah his hand. "You said something about coffee before? I think we'll need some if we have any chance of sorting this out," he said.
"Okay Detective, I'm Delilah, pleased to meet you," she said giving his helping hand a shake. As they made their way through Jack's door, he said, "Please, call me John."
"John?" she said, "Short for Jonathan, just like Jack?"
"A little like Jack," he said, "but we'll get to all that."
CONTRIBUTORS
Julia Druk is a digital product lead for Marvel Comics by day, and a writer, translator, and rogue literary editor by night. She has recently edited "Fleeing from Absence" (2009), a collection of four essays on time, space and information by Olga Ast. Her translations appear in "The Days are Getting Longer" (2012), a selection of poems by Vladimir Druk. Her essays and ruminations on technology and society have been published in "Infinite Instances: Studies and Images of Time" (2011), among others.
Daniel Govar is an artist, illustrator, animator, filmmaker, programmer and creative bon vivant. In addition to creating the animated series' "Eclipse" and "Chi-Chian" for SyFy Channel, and the science fiction comic "Azure" for DC Comics, Dan has also created untold numbers of illustrations for books and commercial purposes. When not drawing Dan is the co-founder of Comic Book Think Tank, a creative forum for experimentation with digital comic storytelling, and the Tolkien collective There And Back Again.
Dave McCullough. Not to be confused with David McCullough, the author, historian, and lecturer, Dave McCullough is an author, software developer, and craftsman. He has an affinity for arcane crafts like coopering, blacksmithing, and hand-coding HTML.
Ron Perazza is a veteran of DC Comics Online, where he launched the award-winning digital imprint Zuda Comics. He currently develops digital publishing products for Marvel Comics, is a member of the Editorial Advisory board for The Comics Grid, an open access, academic journal dedicated to comics scholarship, and a founder of Comic Book Think Tank, a creative forum for experimentation with digital comic storytelling, where he co-created the science fiction thriller "Relaunch" and the Tolkien inspired "The Road Goes Ever On."
Matthew Petz is a writer and artist who has worked for DC Comics, Random House and Discovery Channel. He is the award-winning creator of "War of the Woods" which was hailed by MTV as one of the best webcomics of 2010. He lives in New York City with his lovely wife.
Peter Timony is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the author of "Detectobot", a digital comic currently published by MonkeyBrain, and “The Night Owls”, which was a graphic novel published by DC Comics in March of 2010, and nominated for three Harvey Awards that same year. Both are illustrated by his twin brother, Bobby Timony. Peter has been called one of the most significant writers of his generation by his mom. He lives with his wife Kerry in New Jersey.
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