This is an interactive story containing 17 chapters. Each chapter tells part of the story and (usually) ends with multiple choices. Click on a choice and you'll be lead to the next chapter in your story. When you reach a chapter that hasn't been written yet, you will have the option to write it! Don't be shy... make an addition!

Kaliko Jones was not quite human - not quite dead, either. Kaliko Jones was a Fhaldren.

Given any wintry day in England, Kaliko would have blended in subtly with the pale faced youths in any of the city's local gangs. He stood tall, yet stooped. Was thin, yet muscular. Wore that blank, yet frosty teen-ager leer, so very well.

At six-foot and two-inches, he dominated the sky-line of John Harrington (a measly five-foot-six) his only companion and very human. Very fleshy too. It was John's flesh that was causing the trouble recently; sticky, red, flesh, that protruded in sore, ragged, blooms all over his abdomen.

"I won't make it to the hospital," John wheezed through clenched teeth, "Just leave me here and get the Demon before he opens the seal for the others."

Kaliko looked around at 'here'; a grime filled, London backstreet, that smelled of rotting food and debris.

"No," he decided.

"But, I'm going to die, anyway. I'll just slow you down. Think of the others - you won't be able to beat them all."

"I know. That's why I have to take you with me. You may as well be a useful corpse."

John couldn't help but snort a laugh at Kaliko's response knowing that arguing would be futile. He was reminded not to hold his intestines in with his bare hands as they would stick like 'crazy glue', and then they were off. Into the sewers that followed the embankment and, possibly, into hell itself.

"Will it be painless?" John whispered, as he leaned on a sewer support while Kaliko sniffed the air and then snapped his head around to face a different opening in the warren of brick-built stink.

"Not really."

"Yes, but it will be over quickly, won't it?"

"I don't know." Kaliko ducked under John's arm and half-dragged, half-pulled his companion down the dim tunnel ahead. John didn't even try to help himself walk. His legs were numb with cold and relatively useless now. Instead, he wanted to take in all that was left of his life. It was a desperate attempt to will the soul he was about to lose to capture some essence of the John Harrington that would stop 'being'.

He stared at Kaliko Jones and noted, not for the first time, how very feral his darting black eyes were. How little specks of red, glinted in them like tiny fires. His nose would twitch and is head jerk slightly to follow its scented directions. He rarely exposed his teeth, but when he did, John noted they were small and sharp, and his tongue was small, red and vaguely furred. Elven ears completed the overall impression of 'Rat'; and that was what he was, really. One of the Fheldren; a human hybrid of Buddha's Chinese calendar animals.

John had only met Kaliko Jones (Rat) and Fenwick Potts (Oxen), but he was aware that nine others were out in the world, secretly saving it from Dragon Demons (the progeny of the twelth zodiacal sign that had gone all zen on Buddha's ass).

He was broken from his reverie by Kaliko tossing him down into the shallow stream of rancid water. He didn't protest - the wind and fight for life were both knocked out of him. Looking along the tunnel he watched the rat/man follow some invisible magic that made him re-coil from the touch of certain bricks in front of him. Then Kaliko turned and ran heavily back towards the prone companion as a bolt of blinding light expanded out behind him, forcing his eyes to close before rough hands grabbed him upright again.

"Time to save the world, John." Kaliko's voice rang over the echo of the explosions around them.

A smell of sulphur and an unearthly roar erupted from all around him and then he was flying. Kaliko had thrown him toward the gaping maw of the Demon and now knew he'd find out for sure, just how quickly was quick.