NARCOLEPTIC DOGS PRESS, IN ASSOCIATION WITH COHERENT COMICS
UNINCORPORATED, PRESENTS...

WARDEN: AN ASH UNIVERSE COMIC
(ASH property of Dave Van Domelen. Warden property of Matt Rossi
and Dave Van Domelen. All Rights Reserved.)
ISSUE NUMBER ONE:   HAUNTED MIND

(Cover: A sunset over New York City, circa 2023, as seen from the harbor. On
a piling, a man is crouching, wearing an open black duster and black jeans,
tabi, and holding a sword-length bundi, in his left hand. He's wearing a red
bandana over his eyes, and the sun highlights him in shadow. He isn't wearing
a shirt, and has a Bruce Lee build.)

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
  Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
  Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
(Edgar Allan Poe, THE HAUNTED PALACE)

Everything leads one to believe that there exists a certain point in the mind
from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the
future, what is communicable and what is incommunicable, the high and the
low, cease to be perceived as contradictory.
     (Andre Breton, from FREE UNION)

Personal Journal of Dr. Douglas Mayhen, MD. PH.D.
JULY 4th, 2005:

     The baby was born without a face above his nose. He was a pallid little
squirming thing...I know that's cruel to say, but it's the truth. He looked
around with those empty half-sockets of his, bone where the eyeball starts in
others, and let out a scream that made me remember the Godmarket (I had
stayed a nominal Christian, but my wife worshipped Odin or something like
that, and when she was...torn apart...I'd better get back to the baby) and
the wars. Then he slumped in my hands and lay there, barely breathing. We've
checked him...he's on a combination air-and-food tube, but he hasn't
responded.
     EEG indicates that this isn't coma. For one thing, his brainwaves are
hyper-elevated. But he doesn't move at all, and for now I've dubbed his
condition 'Black Sleep' because it seems just like the opposite of coma, or
'White Sleep.'
     God, I must be tired. I haven't even said his name yet. It's Thomas
Malfeas, age seven months and four days, weight 10 pounds.  Yes, that's very
bad, but we can't seem to fatten him up. He's the son of a couple of Russian
Immigrants, refugees from the collapse, who just wanted to love each other
and him. He was almost DESTINED for tragedy.
     No, not very medical of me. Screw it. It's my private notes, I'll clean
it up for journal articles. For now, he's on medical assist...today's the day
that we're to decide if we take him off of it. God forgive me, but I hope we
do.

Personal Journal of Dr. Douglas Mayhen, MD. PH.D.
August 15th, 2005:

     Never counted on this. Thomas's parents, Piotr and Synva Malfeas,
decided to take Thomas off of the life support. We removed the tubes, and he
began to breathe on his own. That first breath was a wet, shuddery sound that
shook me right down to my feet.  Everything this kid does reminds me of the
wars...he then resumed normal breathing. His parents went nuts, thinking he'd
wake up. He didn't. So, after five hours, we left him there to starve, which
makes me ethically uncomfortable...aw, hell, I feel like shit about it! But
we did it. Since 2003 that's been the law, so we did it.  Anyway, the next
morning, Angela McCoskey, my chief resident, came to me and told me about odd
occurances in the deathwatch ward.  Seems people had been experiencing...
events. One man reported walking across the room, which is only twenty yards
across, and having it take him an HOUR.
     Then the fun began. I decided maybe one of the older patients was
Paranormal, and in dying was beginning to learn it. Even though that was
impossible. I figured I was a medical Wunderkind, and I was going to be
famous. So I went down there and began observing.
     Nothing happened to me. I stopped at every bed, looked around, basically
made a big pain out of myself. Thinking someone had been spiking the water
coolers, I turned to leave, and walked past Thomas's bed. And was struck
blind.
     It lasted for about a minute...then shifted to hunger. I was very, very
hungry. It was rather painful, and even though I was glad I could see again I
could barely stand. Then I lost control of my right arm, and then my left.
They waved around, and I thought maybe I was going insane. And then it
shifted to my head, which swung around and stared. At Thomas.
     He's back on the feeding tube. Since he respirates for himself, that
didn't seem neccesary. We've moved him to a special wing that we've set up
for infants and other who display Paranormal gifts...unlike others, we can't
test Thomas to determine what he can and can't DO, as he doesn't respond. But
we know he's alive in there somewhere. I've told his parents, God help me,
and now all we can do is wait.
     End journal.

     *         *         *         *         *         *         *

     July 4th, 2022.

     Piotr Malfeas, a little bristle bearded man who works as a sanitation
vehicle operator (Or Garbage Truck Driver) sits in a chair next to his son's
bed and stares down at him, at his little arms and legs. It has been
seventeen years, and he's done this every month.
     "So your mother is not well...who knows about being unwell better than
you, Thomas?...and could not come to see you, but she made you this." He drew
a small cake out of the sack he carried, a leftover from the Vietnam war, and
placed it on the tray next to Thomas's bed. "I'll have the nurses feed it to
you."
     He looked at his thin son, bones in sharp relief all over his body. The
doctors said that he was alive in there somewhere, that he might even know
that Piotr was talking to him. They said that somehow he was keeping his
muscles active, so that if he did wake up he'd be able to move. Piotr did not
know what the words "Supernatural ability in Mental and Dimensional area"
meant. He had never learned to read and was in fact functionally retarded due
to having been raised in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan was the largest waste dump
the USSR had for atomic waste. This meant that Piotr would never be a smart
man, but he knew his son was different.  That he was special.
     Piotr blamed himself for the condition, that his beautiful black haired
son, so much like his mother, was born without eyes.  It could have been
worse, but Piotr did not know that either.
     "Do you want me to read to you? Then I am sorry...I cannot do that, your
mother does that...but I will tell you about when I was a boy, and my mother
told me about the old Grandmother, Baba Yaga, and the day that she was
tricked by a little boy..."
     Unnoticed and unnoticeable, Thomas's lips curled in a slight smile. His
skullcap of short-cut black hair twitched, and as his father talked, his hand
moved. Once. The first time it ever had.

     July 5th, 2022:

     David Maquis was an anchor. The hospital had hired him to sit in the
ward and wait, and if any of the kids (There were about seven of them in
there now) acted up, he walked in and grabbed them, and they'd be just normal
brats again. He had a face like a Wolfhound, all teeth and nose, and he sat
there and glared at the kids over his reading material, usually a touchpad
paper or a Nelson Algren book. He liked Algren. Usually wrote about real,
hard, dangerous stuff.
     David had seen people come and go in the ward. In fact, the only regular
was Thomas Malfeas, and David liked him because the kid never acted up. So he
often sat next to his bed. This turned out, in point of fact, to have been a
mistake this particular day.
     One of the new kids, who'd broken his arm lifting the family car and was
slated for Academy, was talking.
     "This place sucks. It's too dull. You can't even see downtown.  Why are
the walls grey!? I wanna go home!"
     "Shut up!" Now they were all yelling and pointing and swearing, and
David swore as he stood up to break up the fight.  He walked across the room
and pulled Jenny Hader, another new one who'd turned her cat into salt, off
of Bejamin Hadrees, the car- lifter. He never saw the bedpan coming until it
bent around his skull. He collapsed.
     The kids turned. The ones who'd been there longer (Jenny Hader had been
there for two months) gasped, as the naked body of Thomas Malfeas stood up
gracefully. He moved like a snake, sliding to his feet.
     "*)&&%NB(**%%)(*"
     "What..."
     Before any of them could do more than gape, his thin arms had peeled the
bars off of the window. The Hospital had counted on David to keep the kids in
line, and so had never invested in a mechanized security system. Holding two
of the bars like Escrima sticks, Thomas stepped out of the window and fell
from view.

     August 17th, 2022

     The Oblivious were a Paragang, as Stone Phillips had taken to calling
them on the NBC Nightly News. Why Tom Brokaw had died and Stone survived is
something you'll have to take up with God. But with the Wageslave phenomenon
in America, where the poorest people were forced to work like drones just to
keep going, lots of Owens Effect babies were born. And they didn't LIKE being
neglected.
     The Oblivious were also organleggers. The organlegging market had
suffered a dip after the wars, but was up again. That's why Alison Shivret
was running down Fifth Avenue from the group of four teenagers, because one
of them had a gift that told him which people were Universal Donors.
Universal Donors can give organs and blood to nearly everybody.
     She was wearing a green jogging outfit, her hair cut in a military buzz
cut, and as she jumped over a fire hydrant and through a couple of parked
cars she knew that she was dead. The sun was setting, and setting the sky
ablaze as it sank behind the Twin Trade Towers, and suddenly the wall next to
her moved, tripping her. They were on her.
     The largest of them, a brute known only as Wayne, lowered his reptilian
bulk over her and smiled. "Didn't know I could do that, didja? Lamtic, wasn't
ut?"
     Suddenly, he went blind. So he didn't see the thin man jump off of the
top of the bakery and land on his back, driving his face hard into the sewer
grate. The second he felt the impact, his normally prodigous muscles seemed
to go dead, and the force of his face meeting the street drove him into
shock.
     The rest of the gang did, however, see that. The man was wearing a black
denim duster, and a black pair of jeans over tabi, or two-toed boots. He wore
no shirt, and his thin chest was a display of bone and sinew. He wore a
bandana tied over his face.  In his left hand was a blade the size of his
arm, an indian weapon called a bundi (not that they knew that), with a hilt
that went crosswise instead of lengthwise. It was as if he has a blade for a
hand. In his right hand he held a chinese hook sword.
     "What the..." Then they were all blind. The tallest of them pointed his
fingers, his skin flushed from copper to ebon, and a blare of focused
sunlight melted the wall where the attacker was.  He was no longer there,
however. Instead, he was using his bundi to cleave Jimmy, the sunlight
focuser. Poor Jimmy never even felt the pain.
     "Where is he!? Where..." Paul, a boy of deeply tanned skin and beautiful
blond hair, tried using his speed powers to defend himself, but the attacker
matched his speed and at the same time had the double advantage of being
armed and of knowing where his target was. The hook sword swept in, and
swiftly took the fight out of Paul, as well as his Carotid.
     The remaining member of the Oblivious felt himself urinate down his leg
as a hand lifted him and planted him against the wall, Suddenly he could see
again, and was looking at that red bandana as it lifted...and he saw the
blank, unbroken skin where eyes should be.
     "Don't ask me who I am. Don't ask me why I did this. As Cain asked God,
I tell you: I am my brother's keeper. I am your Warden.  Your friends may yet
live...I'm keeping them from bleeding to death. Get a doctor, and they will
live to tell. Otherwise, they die. Are you your brothers' keeper?"
     Barnes nodded, weakly, and the hand let him go and pulled the bandana
down over his eyeless face. As he turned and walked away, he stepped around
the blood and Alison and turned the corner...and was gone.

     December 31st, 2022

     All over New York, he's struck. He hits the gangs, with hand to hand
weapons yet, rips them apart with near fatal wounds, and then takes off. No
casualties yet, and nobody's lain a glove on him. Who the hell is he?
     Detective John Kelly Jr. was waiting, and he hated it. It was New Years
Eve, and instead of popping the cork, in more ways then one, he was stuck
here. Working. On a completely bizarre case.  The geniuses from MetaPsych
were supposed to send somebody to help with the case, but they were 'Busy'
and whoever was coming hadn't come yet. Kelly had the distinct feeling that
somebody upstairs, maybe WAY upstairs, LIKED what this 'Warden' was doing. He
himself was torn on it. I mean, a kid born without eyes?
     "Detective Kelly?"
     "What!? I'm busy."
     "My name's Paul Mahler. I'm from MetaPsych." Kelly stood up when he
heard that and looked down, from his tall red-headed vantage point, on two
men.  "And this is Doctor Douglas Mayhen. We think we know who this 'Warden'
is."
     "You do? How?"
     "That's a long story." Mayhen pulled out his touchpad. "If you've got
time to read it...."

     After reading Mayhen's journal entries and the deposition given by the
hospital anchor, Kelly felt even worse.
     "So this kid hasn't moved, spoken, hasn't really done ANYTHING in
seventeen years, and then suddenly he just...leaves? How can he know how to
walk!? Or talk? Never mind fight like he does..."
     Mahler wiped at his forehead. "I've got a theory on that, actually two
theories. You see, he was never really IN a coma...his brain was highly
active. I think his birth defect caused him to be born with his floodgates
wide open, if you will, to telepathic impressions. He was 'shut down' because
he started off a Hearing-paradigm telepath with incredible range, and had to
cope with it himself.  He awakened when he learned to shut out others.
     "Of course, did he do this himself, or because someone had gotten in and
showed him how...? This I don't know. He may have been actively scanning this
whole time, or maybe someone has taught him, but either way we've got a
problem here."
     "Sure, whatever." Kelly had no idea what Mahler was talking about.
     Mahler smiled. "I know that was a bit obscure...that's the way we're
trained. Anyway, the problem is, from the reports we have here, and the ones
you have, Thomas can apparently control both his own body and the bodies of
others...probably by altering how they process incoming sensory
information. That makes him very powerful, if limited."
     "Look, so far all you've DONE is confuse the hell out of me, here. I've
got a paragang problem, and I've got a kid fresh from the land of make-
believe taking care of it for me. How do we STOP him before he gets himself
killed or kills someone else?"
     Mayhen, who hadn't spoken before now, piped up. "I think he comes back
to the hospital, to the ward. I don't know how often, maybe twice in the past
four months, and he doesn't go in. But one of the little girls said she's
seen him...I think maybe he misses his mother and father, and since he'd
never left the hospital..."
     "He doesn't know where they live." Kelly smiled.
     "They used to come see him once a month, which corresponds to the
visits...on or about the fourth."
     "Five days from now." Mahler looked a little uneasy. "I'm not too happy
on setting a trap for him, but what choice do we have?"
     "I don't see too many." Kelly hoped this would work. After all he'd
learned, he didn't want to hurt the kid, but this had to stop.  "Can you
stick around, maybe try and reason with him?"
     Mahler looked even more uncomfortable. "I suppose I have to, don't I?"
     "I think there are a couple of Anchors on staff here at the precinct...
they're rare, but the NYPD has reason to need them.  Neither of them are
range, though, and from what I understand, getting too close to this kid
isn't healthy."
     
     January 4th, 2023

     The crossfire was set...they were using tasers, as no one really wanted
to hurt this kid. Despite Kelly's best efforts to keep it under wraps, it had
gotten around the department what they were dealing with...and the story was
a sad one. Even in these times, people have souls, and hearing about this had
depressed everyone involved.
     "So how do you want to handle this, Mahler?"
     "Let him get here. Once he's on the roof, I'll contact him, see what
he's thinking. He may just be a confused kid who picked up too many
background thoughts."
     "You don't sound like that's what you think he is."
     "No, I don't. I think he's been programmed, that speech he gives is the
reason. It's too specific, and it never varies. It may well be the only
English he knows. I dislike the idea, but I think somebody found a powerful
telepathic tabula rasa, and decided to make a tool out of him. I don't know
WHY, but..."
     "Shh!" Kelly sensed it...years of instinct. Out of nowhere, the kid
dropped the thirty yards from the building next door and landed like a cat on
the roof. He turned around, the bandanna on his face a blessing. Kelly was
glad he didn't have to look at those white sockets.
     "I know you are there. You might as well start."
     -- SO MUCH FOR HIM NOT KNOWING ENGLISH, MAHLER.--
     ++I guess so. By the way, you don't have to think that hard.++ Mahler
walked out from behind the brick utility stairs. "I'm not armed."
     "You are a mind-reader."
     "Yes, I am. My name is Paul Mahler, and I'm from MetaPsych.  I've been
asked to make sure you're all right. Your parents...."
     "Are not here. I do not sense them. Why?"
     "Thomas, I'd like to help you. There are others like you, you know. I
myself am about your age...."
     "Where are they?"
     This isn't going well...he isn't listening to me at all. I guess he
hasn't got a lot of experience with people. I'll try psi- contact, then.
++Thomas...++
     ++Do you know where they are? I wish to talk with them...It will be the
first time we ever speak. The mentor would not be happy...++
     ++Mentor?++ He IS under someone's influence! ++After we've talked,
Thomas, I'm sure I can allow you to see your parents.  They've been worried
about you.++
     ++Why? I am the Warden.++
     ++Did the mentor teach you that?++
     ++Yes. She taught me to be my brother's keeper. To sense around the
'spirits' of the objects, so the eyelessness would be a help. To master the
weapons. And to screen out the thought-flood.  She made me the Warden.++
     It was like talking to a six year old genius. He knew more than you, but
he didn't know that, and he was so direct...guile has escaped him. ++Who is
she?++
     ++She is the mentor.++ The tone of his thoughts...as if the question
wasn't worth asking.
     Meanwhile, of the three policemen aiming tasers at the boy, none of them
were paying attention to the people who came up behind them and removed them
from this world. Sgt. Patrick McNee had his windpipe closed...forcibly.
Lt. Neil Young felt his blood transform into bleach. Sgt. John Stamos simply
passed out and never woke up again.
     Warden whipped his head up. "I am under attack. The Razors have followed
me."
     "Razors?" Mahler barely had time to look up as all around them, people
in various clothes from surplus stores surrounded himself and Thomas, the
clothing being a sign that they wouldn't allow themselves to be cared for.
There were ten of them, varying in body type and racial identity. Many of
them carried chains and bats, and all of them looked angry.
     "We're tired of you messing in our tzlak, Warden. Tym o' you t sleeper
scurbat."
     Kelly, who realized that his carefully laid plan had fallen apart,
swore.  "Well, at least the gangs all here."

NEXT ISSUE: Mayhem.

WRITER'S NOTES:
The origins of Warden, or Does this Rossi guy ever sleep?

     Hello. I'm Matt Rossi, the perpetrator of the story that you have to get
through to read this. As I've yet to recieve any email to print in a
lettercol, I decided to discuss the reasons I have for writing yet another
series, and why I'm doing so in the ASH universe.
     The reason I'm writing WARDEN is simple enough: I'm a major Frank Miller
fan. I devoured RONIN. I consumed ELEKTRA:ASSASIN. I tore through DAREDEVIL-
THE MAN WITHOUT FEAR, and was a steady reader of Frank's runs on the
WOLVERINE LS, the DAREDEVIL series, and BATMAN: YEAR ONE. We won't mention
TDKR(What could I possibly say that hasn't been said?), but I will say that
you should read SIN CITY, because it is good for you. This series is kind of
my tribute to the ninja clans, obsessed avengers, dark and gritty cops, and
mean streets of Frank Miller's NYC. While WARDEN will never be confused for
any of the series above, it takes a little bit o' influence from them all.
Thanks, Frank.
     The reason I'm writing an ASH series is a little more complex, and it
has to go back to my other Fanfic storylines. As I've written various titles
in various places, the Warden idea kept coming back to me, like that annoying
Raven rap-rap-rapping on my mental chamber door. (In fact, his influence can
be felt on the character I'm currently writing in the LNH) but at the time
there was no place to put him. So I got involved in the Patrol, but Warden
didn't really fit in there either. So I got together and founded a writing
collective called Omega, and was all set to write Warden...but Eric Anderson
and the Colony got in my way. Warden was still homeless.
     About this time, Dave Van Domelen posted the ASH sourcebook, and I read
it, thought it was interesting, and passed on. Then I read the ACADEMY
series...and I was disturbed. Dave had turned the world sideways here. Half
the population dead? Godmarkets? Aliens in third world countries? The North
American Combine (FINALLY those damn Canadian's brought to heel! ;) and
strict Govt. Supervision?  It was a photo-negative of your usual superhero
fare, and it disturbed me. I began thinking about the possibilities for Noir
Heroism here...and then Dave announced that he was opening the place up for
import titles. I sent him a half-assed letter about an ASH/Omega crossover.
He posted to the net that he'd found a writer for LNH 2023, and that he's
recieved 'Some Nibbles' or something equally vague.
     I proposed Warden, he accepted, I wrote issue one, he edited, and here
we are. Just consider me your own personal Virgil on a tour of the dark spots
of NYC, 2023. I hope to explore the genre within this flip-flopped world to
its fullest, and I hope you enjoy it. If not, I blame Communism.
     And Frank, if you are reading this (Who am I kidding?) thanks for my
teen years.