ZERO

The Prologue

Bounty Hunters tend to come in two flavors: Big Muscle Biker, and Let’s Fight About Something (and I Might Also Be a Biker). Both favor denim or leather vests with an absurd amount of zippers, and display tattoos that would just as likely warm a mother’s heart as send her to her prayers. They generally drive loud motorcycles or awkwardly big trucks that leave them smelling of diesel and sweat.

Then there’s me: I wear crisp, ironed button-down shirts, pre-faded blue jeans, and dress-casual shoes. I wear a hemp bracelet my niece told me was hip in the 90s, and a gold ring with a diamond set in black stone. I drive a small sports car. I use cologne. My name is Lloyd Wealcan, and I’m a Bounty Hunter.

I run two businesses out of separate offices. Two days a week I teach piano lessons and work audio production out of a private studio in Des Moines, Iowa. The rest of the week I operate as a bounty hunter in my office on the Flip Side.

Most people aren’t aware, but every major city has a flipside. In many cases, flipsides are opposites of their real world counterparts. Des Moines is a relatively low key, Nice Town kind of place. As a result, it’s flipside is darker and carries more of a big-city corporate and heartless vibe. I like to describe it as a den of iniquity, to steal a phrase. It’s every dark desire you’ve ever craved, and every craving you would never think to desire.

This isn’t to say all flipsides are like mine. Chicago’s is a beacon of peace and all that is good; hippie central, in other words. Rio de Janeiro’s is rich, all ritz and high class. Anybody who’s anybody spends a weekend there a few times a year. I certainly do.

As best as I can piece together, most flipsides were willed into existence by the struggling emotions of their opposites in our world. When human civilization first began gathering and forming cities, those cities became congested and conflict was introduced. Opinions, practices, law - these began defining boundaries of society and the less dominant emotional essences needed a way of being acknowledged. They burst through to create an alternate version of those cities in a parallel reality I call: The Flip Side. The opposite. Yin and yang. However you want to phrase it.

Some flipsides manage to retain their more traditional, historic selves - cities that have been around long enough to have a history that embraced every emotion, with roots so deep they refuse to let go. Rome and Athens have flipsides still stuck in their respective Empire days. London’s still holds a firm grip on it’s Victorian era identity.

There are also cities where olde magicks - the kind of magic that deserves the dated spelling and that existed before civilization conquered their territories still retain authority in their flipsides. Edinburgh, Moscow, and Sioux City to name a few.

On the Flip Side, reality follows rules it makes up for itself. Overall city layout is usually passingly similar to their real world counterparts, but actual buildings and their construction can differ drastically. The Des Moines flipside packs its city blocks with skyscrapers and skywalks. The alleyways are always dark and foreboding. It’s a city’s darkest, most dangerous corners and largest, most heartless businesses - without any signs of normal society in between.

In my flipside, you’re either somebody, or your life isn’t worth the time of day; and these are my hunting grounds.

Catch you on the Flip Side…

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