Fiction – The Chameleon

Fiction – The Chameleon
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Categories:
2026
Fiction
March 13, 2025
Robert “Dusty” Philman
Sencha Tea
Soren A. Calvo
He couldn’t remember his name after so long. Not the one he used now, but the one he had been given by his mother, all that time ago. Still, he remembered the important things. The color of her eyes, the rich feeling of her curls in his hands, the warmth in his chest when he had heard her voice. He clung to those things desperately. Clung to the flashes of her fingers threading through strings, weaving them from delicate strands into a strong, beautiful imagery.
He remembered even better the way her blood smelled. Remembered the way her voice cracked as she screamed for him, voice desperate, wide and red rimmed eyes brought to insanity in a way he had never seen before. He remembered his feet stepping back slowly, unsure what to do in such a young body, limbs feeling like burdens of actions he didn’t have the experience to figure out, horror coursing through his veins.
Had she felt like this? When the men had grabbed her? When they had pinned her to the ground and she screamed for him, begging them to leave him alone. Begged for her baby before her head lobbed to the side.
No, surely not. He didn’t think that she would have felt like this. So warm. After all, she didn’t get to face her attacker like he did. Didn’t get the grace of knowledge of when, where, and how. No, he had seen the cold terror, not an ounce of warmth to her death. Had seen her desperately claw and fight in a vain attempt to reach her darling child, her knees scraping in the rocks and dirt, kicking it up into the air and weighing it down with her own blood, her voice cracked like a wild animal, sharp and shrill when he remembered it had once been so sweet it scared away nightmares with a single whisper. He remembered the gurgles. The bubbling of blood up her throat as she still fought to reach him. The twitch in her body as it seemed to realize what had happened before even she did. The heavy thud as her fights turned to a whisper and her body slumped to the ground, twitching and pouring blood down her neck into the sand, her head a clump of messy hair and mouth agape in a voiceless cry, red tricking down as she rolled to face him. Staring at him even in death, eyes boring though him.
How ironic, he thought, left in the same situation as that woman who he knew so well and yet not at all. Laying in a puddle of his own blood. It was almost enough to make his chest warm with a cruel twist of entertainment, though he couldn’t quite tell the difference between the warmth of pleasant thoughts and the warmth of fading away.
What a funny joke. He wondered if Satoshi would find it as entertaining as he did. No, probably not, he decided. Sato would more than likely lecture him for getting blood all over his armor. Say something like, “Kitanai, I’ve barely made you that! Go wash it before it stains!” Then he would be forced to bathe while Sato didn’t even let him clean his own armor. It would have been a pesterance if Satoshi weren’t such a sight for sore eyes. How he wished Satoshi were here to hold him in this moment.
Perhaps the moment would go by quicker… or maybe he wanted it to go by slower? He was never a sentimentalist, so he didn’t know why he was clinging to life like this.
Maybe it was better than Satoshi not be here. He knew Satoshi would cry, if he were. Yes, it was better that Sato not be here. It was better that he died here, amidst stampeding feet, heavy pole laden against his back and flag splayed out on the ground, tattered and stomped on by every agency, friend or foe.
He coughed, though it came out choked and tight, the warmth in his neck both excruciating and somehow comfortable. It reminded him of warm nights, an armor smith curled into his side, swords beneath his pillow. Why was he thinking of this now? He should be trying to get up. He should be crawling forwards, stopping the blood pouring from his neck, or simply trying to get home.
It was too much effort. He had enough time to sit and reminisce.
So, instead, he let himself get lost in the day Sato and himself had met. How he had asked Sato of each and every detail of an armor Kitanai had never really thought about all that hard and how unsure of each stitch Kitanai had been.
How he wished Sato was here.
“Which red would you like?”
It was such a simple question, and yet Kitanai had hesitated over it for days. How could he choose from vermilion and crimson? The difference was so minute that he knew Sato had thought him an indecisive fool, yet Sato had offered him to stay within his own residence after a week of back and forth. Showed him the flowers that made each dye, planted in his backyard in brilliant colors and glorious petals. Told him of legends and horrors alike and sat with him when he dwelled over the edge of a pond of koi. Called something as simple as glittering scales of fish beautiful as they sat together. Kitanai could still remember the look in his eyes when he said that, black hair falling long across his face and moonlight gleaming down in rivets from the canopy above, private and quiet.
Would
it
change
anything
for
him
if
he
were
here?
He didn’t know.
He
didn’t
think
he
cared.
He remembered that moment more vividly than any of the faces he had seen before, and he remembered how he had leaned forward and pressed his lips to that soft man. Remembered how sure he was he would be pushed away, and how pleasant the feeling was when those lips—thin and sweet as honey, smelling slightly of coal and tasting like sencha tea—kissed him in return. How privileged must he have been for a man as beautiful as that to choose to sleep beside him each night.
Was he not allowed to be selfish in his final moments?
He wondered if Satoshi would ever know his fate, even if he died here, as he was sure Sato would know eventually, even if it was through a helmet being returned to its maker. He knew how hard and long Satoshi had worked on it. How he would kiss Kitanai and then move to his blacksmithing table or settle in the gardens. How he insisted on threading his needle though each of those little bird’s feathers in delicate strokes of gold that glimmered in the sunlight. He remembered how each tassel wore his lover’s hands down until they were stiff and rigid and how each day Kitanai had stepped outside their home without protection from the strange weapons taking over their lands—ran in a war Satoshi kept telling him wasn’t his to fight—Sato would work even harder. How he pressed leaves into the stitches, chiseled vines into the rims, dancing koi where none but them would see, and birds soaring over his collar.
“Koi, for balance and adaptability; a dragon, for protection and wisdom; and birds, for a free spirit,” he had explained once, when Kitanai had asked him. He never explained anything unless Kitanai asked.
Would he miss him? He could hardly imagine him moving on…
He could hardly imagine such beliefs, something he found so silly and meaningless. He remembered just shaking his head, a look of mirth and muted exhaustion in his eyes. Sato simply gave him a disapproving look and pointed out that if he had asked him every detail, he would have never settled on how to decorate it.
Kitanai hadn’t been able to argue with his lover when it came to his lack of taste for decor. The only thing he had asked was that the flowers and beauty of nature were captured in the bright red leather. The same beauty of the flowers surrounding their home, in the garden around, and fluttering down into the koi water, under that moonlight he found special, like it was only theirs. He had never told Satoshi about that, had he?
He wondered, for just a moment, if he should have, but he was never good with words. It didn’t seem to matter with Sato, anyways. Satoshi always seemed to know what mattered most to him just from the way he spoke of it or the way he looked at Sato when he would twist together stories and retell tales and myths with such passion Kitanai could do nothing but listen like a lovestuck fool.
The
warmth
was
starting
to
fade.
Had it been that long already?
How
long
had
he
been
laying
here?
Where
was
“here”
again?
Satoshi would be upset if he was gone any longer. He always worried when Kitanai was gone for longer than a few days without sending word. He hadn’t sent word yet…
Satoshi would be worried.
He tried to open his eyes. Tried to push his limbs to move. He was met with delicate hands, too small to belong to Satoshi, not rough enough to belong to the artist either.
Aksil
,” the voice said, not strangled or gushing like he had last heard from it, eyes clear and face too young to have deserved death.
Yes, that was his name. He remembered now.
His name was Aksil.
The Attic
Ruthie Crawford
Josie drummed her fingers on her windowsill. She was too busy daydreaming about what her old school friends would be doing at this time, rather than pay attention to her math assignment that sat uncompleted on her desk. She wasn’t exactly mathematically minded like her younger sister. As her eyes kept drifting to the darkening sky, Josie sighed. It was about to start raining, and her mother wasn’t home yet. It had been almost a month since her father, on a whim, decided to move their family to a farmhouse in Illinois. It was exactly what she had pictured a farmhouse from the mid-1700s to look like. Chipping white paint, creaking doors that woke the dead, as well as rusting piles of farm equipment, including an antique tractor, a barn with a collapsed roof, and a rotting chicken coop.
Thunder boomed, and Josie watched as lightning streaked across the dark sky. She then started counting,
1 Mississippi… 2 Mississippi… 3 Mississippi.
Another rumble of thunder shook the house as lightning lit up the entire window. Josie held her breath as it disappeared, then started counting again,
1 Mississippi… 2 Mississippi.
A click went off, plunging the small bedroom into darkness. Josie got up, trekking across the room, trying not to trip on any dirty clothing that sat in accumulating piles. She flicked the light switch a couple of times, her brow furrowing after each click. Rain started falling now, at first as a couple of drops, then as a steady downpour. The house groaned at the unwelcome precipitation. She remembered the first few weeks whenever it rained, Josie and her younger sister Jade would camp out in their parents’ room, trading ghost stories and worried looks. There was a time when they thought the roof might collapse on them, but as time passed, so did the fear. It almost seemed like a silly little thought, but at this moment, it still lingered in the back of her mind. She no longer counted the lighting strikes as her mind drifted into the steady onslaught of old memories; she started smiling to herself… until the quiet whining of a door on its hinges slammed on the tacky brown leaf print wallpaper.
Josie paused, holding her breath as she thought she heard the soft padding of feet on the raspy floorboards down the hall. It suddenly stopped when the thunder died down, then started again after another boom rattled the earth.
“Jade?” Josie asked hesitantly, and there was no response. Her heart started pounding in her skull as she slowly started walking towards the door, grabbing the baseball bat that rested against the frame. She went up the stairs, where a large banister overlooked the house’s entrance. The tension in her shoulders eased a little as she noticed how the chain on the front door was still in place, just like her mother told her to keep it. Josie continued walking down the hall, stopping at the white door with colorful pink and purple Styrofoam spelling “Jade” in big, bubbly letters. Josie plastered herself to the side of the wall, shifting the bat from her left hand to her right as she placed her free hand on the door handle. Her hand rested there for a second, hovering in the twisted motion as she waited to calm down before entering the room. She felt like one of those SWAT officers from her parents’ favorite show; her stomach fluttered.
When thunderstruck, Josie threw the door open, pausing slightly in the doorway. Staring back at her as if she were crazy was Jade, who was reading a book with a flashlight. She looked so dainty in the soft light, her light eyes glanced at her quizzically.
Jade slid off the bed gracefully and asked, “What’s going on?” Looking at the bat Josie held over her head, Jade asked, “Is there anyone else in the house?”
Josie whispered, “No,”
Jade replied, “Why?” The curiosity growing in her voice, thunder rumbled again.
Josie shushed her sister, listening. There was no noise, not even the slightest complaint from the house. Jade looked at her older sister, her neck and shoulders still taut as they sat there for four seconds.
“Jo, there is nothing-”
Josie interrupted her sister, shushing her when thunder boomed again for the sixth time.
Jade started working her jaw, but each time she opened her mouth to add something about the tension in the room, Josie was always there to quiet her. This time, when lightning streaked across Jade’s window and thunder followed, there was a bang inside the house like the sound of a pot falling from a hook. Jade jumped as Josie grabbed the girl’s hand, and they started to run through the long corridor, the dark hallway stretching out before them, as well as the thudding steps of someone running up the stairs.
“There is someone in the house! Why is someone in the house?” Jade asked, uncertainty dripping in her voice.
“That’s not important, we need to go! The closest police station is six miles away!” Josie shouted.
“We won’t make it in this weather!” Jade replied, “Besides, the truck won’t start. Dad was working on it last weekend.”
Josie ran, half-pulled, and half-dragged her sister down to her parents’ bedroom. There was a slight draft coming in from around the bend in the hall, and Josie caught sight of the attic door open; she couldn’t help but notice that it had been closed earlier.
Jade and Josie ran into their parents’ room, slamming the door behind them. Josie grabbed the off-white-colored receiver from its nook in the phone, putting the cool plastic to her ear while she punched in the number. She motioned for Jade to barricade the door with whatever she could find as heavy footsteps fell in the hallway outside the door. Jade found a nearby chair and carefully shoved it under the handle, but they both knew it wouldn’t hold, and the bedroom door didn’t lock. It was another meaningless task on their parents’ to-do list.
“911, what’s your emergency?” A woman’s voice droned on, almost sounding bored.
“There’s someone in our house!” Josie managed to say the operator let out a loud sigh, as if this were another complaint about stolen farm equipment.
“Where is the trespasser?”
“Outside the door,” Josie added, looking at the pure terror in her sisters’ eyes as the door handle began to jingle, “They are breaking in!”
“Uh-huh, and what is your name?”
The handle stopped moving for a second, and Josie watched carefully, hoping, praying silently that the figure behind the door had given up. Instead, she was greeted with a loud thud that shook the entire wall. The sound seemed to reverberate in her chest, sending chills down Josie’s spine. She watched Jade turn pale, whimpering every time the door shook.
Any thoughts of answering the operators’ questions seemed to vanish like a scream caught in her throat. The sound repeated as Josie dropped the receiver. Once she heard the door frame start to splinter, she ran to grab her sister, and they both climbed under the bed. There was a pause as the intruder rammed into the door one more time, this time splintering the chair into multiple pieces as lightning streaked across the window of the bedroom, illuminating the bare feet of the trespasser.
Josie clamped a hand over her mouth to quiet her breathing, but it was to no avail; her entire body trembled. She watched the phone dangling from the cord, then a thin, pale hand grabbed the receiver and gently placed it back into the base.
The figure paused for a moment, possibly scanning the room, looking for the two girls. Josie silently cursed herself for the prominent hiding spot and silently pleaded for the person to leave. She looked toward her sister, who had her eyes tightly shut, like a little kid who had just had a nightmare and ducked under the covers.
Except that this was no nightmare, and the person standing at the foot of their parents’ bed was no shadowy figure that clung to the darkness of a bedroom and frightened you if a car ever rolled by the window. But what frightened Josie the most was the smell of the person and the odd clicking noise they made when they swallowed, as if they were an actual monster; she knew better than to believe monsters existed. Well, at least to the extent that they didn’t hide under the bed or closet stalking children and the desperate in the dark. This monster was human. Jade opened her eyes, turning whiter than a sheet. Josie had to shake her head and put a finger to her lips as the child whimpered. Josie held her breath. She started to count again,
1 Mississippi…
The stranger paced to one end of bed.
2 Mississippi….
The stranger returned to the other side.
3 Mississippi…
The feet disappeared as the closet door squeaked open.
4 Mississippi….
The feet were still gone, but a long, lanky hand crept under the frame.
Jade started crying as Josie squeezed her closer.
Lighting flashed as a face loomed above the modern carpet. The man’s eyes were dark pits, devoid of emotion or light, as he stalked the two children like a lion stalking a gazelle.
Josie couldn’t find the ability to scream; her own scream caught in her throat, as Jade let out a blood-curdling cry when the mysterious figure reached out to grab them from their hiding place.
Josie quickly rolled out from under the bed. She grabbed the neglected baseball bat sitting near the remains of a chair, and the door frame lay now in a splintered disarray. She looked at the horrifying creature in all its glory, it looked like or used to be a man, it had white long hair and beard, the large black beady eyes in his skull held no emotion accept for hunger, its teeth were sharp points and what used to be his limbs were now oddly reminiscent of a spiders long and twisted at grotesque angles.
He let out this awful cry as he lunged toward Josie. She, however, was expecting him as she swung her baseball bat, aiming for his head. Josie watched as the figure or thing flew backward a larger distance than she had anticipated, giving her enough time to retrieve Jade from under the bed as they ran back through the long corridor and down the oak stairs. Josie unlatched the chain to the front door, and the door flew open with a gust of wind. Never in a million years did Josie think that the stormy weather would look so inviting as they ran out into the harsh weather with nothing but their socks.
“Come on, to the truck!” Josie shouted over the pelting rain “But it won’t start!” Jade shouted back
“We have to try!” Josie screamed. The creature was standing in the doorway of the house, except the only thing different was the look in its eye and the crimson blood dripping from its nose. Josie could not mistake the anger in the void-like eyes as it ran toward them like a savage animal. Jade was the one who pulled Josie into the cornfields as they swatted at the sun- scorched, slippery husks. As they began to run through the cornfield they had begun to lose track of each other.
“Josie, where are you?” Jade called out
“Keep running, I’m right behind you!” Josie shouted, trying to reassure her sister as she felt something grab the back of her ankle. She cried out, falling hard. A hand began to pull her backward as she tried to grip the slick surface of corn husks in vain.
Josie turned to see the creature gripping her ankle, its fingernails digging into her flesh as she screamed for Jade as she began to kick herself free.
Jade ran back, hearing her sister’s screams, and started throwing ears of corn that had been baked in the sun too long, and pelted them with stones. When the creature let go, the child grabbed her older sister’s arm, and they began to run.
It was raining harder now as they emerged from the cornfield and saw the sanctuary of the rusty eggshell-blue truck, sitting undisturbed by the storm. Josie climbed into the front seat, opening the glovebox and rummaging through crumbled napkins and the registration papers to find the key. She put the key into the car and turned it on. The engine roared to life, giving a faint hope to the girls, then coughed, sputtered, and died.
“Come on!” Josie cried, trying again this time twisting the key harder and holding it in longer.
“Come on!” Josie yelled again as it failed to start a second time
“Josie!” Jade added, pulling at her sleeve.
“It has to work!” Josie added, shoving off Jade’s hand, perspiration started dripping down her forehead, along with an accumulation of tears.
“Josie!” Jade cried again, “I told you it wouldn’t work!”
Josie slammed on the steering wheel with a cry of frustration, suddenly losing hope. Josie looked at her sister; no words seemed to pass between them, but Jade seemed to understand. She grabbed Josie’s hand as they both prepared for the worst.
Emerging from the corn fields, angrier and somewhat pitiful, stood the creature. He looked menacingly at the girls as if he was going to silence them if it was the last thing he was going to do.
Josie threw herself over Jade, locking her window as well as the back seat in a final attempt to protect them.
As the thing slowly hobbled toward them like an injured animal or an animal feigning an injury to get attention before striking them down. One last trick up Josie’s sleeve, she slammed on the car horn. Maybe the neighbors could hear them. But as the clouds began to part, and the man crept closer to the car, Josie thought of her parents. What would they find? In her desperation, Josie suddenly got an idea. The creature crept up to the driver’s side.
Josie smiled at him tauntingly as she unlocked the door, “What are you doing?” Jade seethed through her teeth
“Follow my lead!” Josie whispered as soon as the things’ lanky hands wrapped around the handle, Josie shoved the door open, making sure to slam it into the man.
“NOW!” Josie screamed as Jade opened the door on her side and took off running to the opening of the barn with no roof. Josie remembered how her father lectured her about not playing near the barn because of the wood that had started to rot and was being eaten by termites, and because of the dangers of any lingering pieces that could likely crush them. Josie knew where she was going, though, because when she did go exploring against her father’s wishes, she saw something of interest.
Jade’s blood-curdling scream interrupted Josie’s thoughts as she whipped around to see the thing holding her sister against the wall, its sharp nails tracing her jawline. Josie grabbed what she was looking for and pointed it toward the man.
“Get away from my sister!” Josie screamed cocking a shotgun, the man turned, a hint of amusement in his black eyes as if taunting her to pull the trigger.
She was just a child, and she didn’t know how to use that thing. Josie wasn’t playing as her finger started to squeeze on the trigger. The man didn’t back up; instead, he pulled Jade in front as a human shield. Josie grit her teeth as the barrel was staring down her sister’s face.
Jade was sobbing, her shoulders trembling, as Josie hesitated. Jade looked like a little kid, crying for their parents, alone and helpless.
Josie then changed her aim, closed her eyes, and fired. The last thing she heard was Jade screaming.
…A murder of crow squelched at the noise suddenly the wings beating harshly in her ear. Josie slowed her breath, counting down from five as she slowly opened her eyes
1 Mississippi… 2 Mississippi… 3 Mississippi… 4 Mississippi… 5 Mississippi
The rain had turned to a light trickle as Jade stood unscathed but covered in the man’s blood. She looked from her sister to the man lying motionless, except that his appearance had now changed from a demonic creature living in their attic to a fragile older man, sporting a large hole in his head. The figure did not have long claws or fanged teeth; he was just human.
Josie’s breath quivered as she stared at him, tears pooling in her eyes.
Jade noticed her sister’s distant look as she stared at the crimson liquid seeping into the barn’s wretched flooring.
Josie looked at the gun in her hands and threw it away as she thought she was going to vomit; it clattered on the floor, rattling Josie’s bones.
“Josie…” Jade said quietly, “You killed him…” They sat there in silence for a while, unable to move, unable to breathe, long after the sun came out.
“No one must know.” Josie’s voice was hoarse and barely a whisper, but in that barn, the words burned Josie’s ears. She looked up at Jade, pleading this time. “Please! No one must know!”
Jade nodded as they both took two shovels and began to dig.
Light and Dark
Nicholle Davis
Waiting. The insufferable waiting.
Athena tapped her sneaker firmly against the cobblestone floor, eyes flitting this way and that as her nostrils flared with impatient breaths. Brimstone, her supposed imaginary ‘best friend’ from childhood, leaned against the wall nearby. He wasn’t nearly as impatient as she was; he sang a jolly little ditty under his breath that floated pleasantly into the stale castle air. Athena had to admit that the song rang bells somewhere in the lost confines of her childhood mind, but it was impossible to put a firm finger on what it was or where it had come from. She scoffed, shaking her head free of the rather ludicrous thought.
A song doesn’t matter. All that matters is getting the information we need so I can get out of this… place.
No, calling this a ‘place’ did a major disservice. It was an entire
world.
A living, functioning world, all inside her head! A bustling market filled with eager merchants looking to sell their varied wares from God knows where, the bubbly laughs of children as they played in the surprisingly clean plaza streets, even the towering stone towers of the very castle she stood in that reached for the open blue skies; it was all a miracle—a miracle of imagination. It reminded Athena of a book series that her friend had come to adore.
What was it called? Was it…
Lord of the Rings
? Yeah… That sounds right.
A low growl of annoyance left Athena’s mouth, and she roughly shook the thoughts from her addled brain.
No! Stop focusing on that! Who gives a damn about this place? I just need to find out how to get home!
“Is everything all right,
guopa?
” Brimstone’s velvety voice snapped her free of her trance, and her grey eyes drifted to him. He pushed his muscular frame off the wall and took a few giant steps toward her, his armor clanking obnoxiously. Worry stretched itself over every inch of his tanned face, stretching his features downward. Athena’s breath hitched when his calloused hands ghosted over the arch of her cheekbone. “Your mind is addled, is it not?” A gentle smile managed to grace his thin lips. “If you are troubled, please do confide in me. Seeing such a shadow befall your lovely face fills my heart with such sorrow.”
The way Brimestone spoke seemed like some mash-up of a knight and a DC Comic superhero. Athena wasn’t too sure how to feel about it, though she would admit it was kind of amusing.
Trying to ignore the heat spreading across her flushed cheeks from the faintest hint of his touch, Athena took an uneasy step or two back. Her head whipped toward the empty throne pushed against the wall nearby, her silky black hair flying with the abrupt movement. She ran her hand nervously up and down her arm. “Fine, I’m fine. I just want this ‘Queen Magenta’ person to hurry up so I can find a way home.”
Behind her, Athena felt the air tense, prompting her to glance back at her formerly chipper companion. Brimstone slapped a smile back on his face and gave a reassuring pat to her slumped shoulder. “Worry not! She shall be but a moment or so longer, I’d wager!”
“I hope so.”
As if summoned, a powerful-looking woman draped in the finest magenta silks shuffled into the throne room, only a few paces from where Brimstone and Athena stood. The woman’s eyes were screwed shut, and not a strand of her braided reddish hair hung in front of her aged face. The cadence of her heels bounced off the walls like a collection of loose ping-pong balls, ceasing once she stood before the spiky, jewel-encrusted throne. The woman’s bright pink eyes finally opened, dropping immediately to the uncomfortable Athena. Athena was stunned as the woman’s stoic expression melted into a familiar smile, and she extended a wrinkled hand.
“Welcome back, Athena.” Her greeting was warm, and her voice was soft and wizened with age. “‘Tis truly a miracle to lay eyes upon you yet again and after all this time.”
Athena nodded unsurely, unsure how to accept the woman’s kind greeting.
At her side, Brimstone bowed deeply, kneeling on one knee like a fairy tale knight. “Queen Magenta, it is an honor to be blessed by your gracious presence once more.” He curtsied, orange eyes closed in respect.
Queen Magenta nodded, folding her hands in front of her stomach. She gave her rapt attention to Athena, who shuffled on the balls of her feet. When the queen spoke again, Athena jumped slightly, nearly crying out in surprise. “What may I do for you, dear girl? It has been quite some time since you have returned to my beloved castle.”
A barely audible gulp forced itself down the teenager’s throat. Athena began to rub her clammy hands together, cursing herself for looking like a fool.
Even though I supposedly made up this woman in my head, she scares me! But why?
An irritated snort left Athena’s nose, and she pushed that immediate thought to the back of her mind. There would be time to address that sudden worry later. She had to stick to her present goal, returning to the real world.
Athena crossed her arms and slapped a blank look on her face, trying to give no visible hints of anxiety or discomfort. “I’ll be blunt. Don’t have a damn clue how I ended up here. Brimstone said you’d know how I could get home, so let’s hear it.”
Queen Magenta’s gentle expression slipped away almost instantly, becoming solemn. Athena’s words were sharp and clipped and hurt the older woman. She sighed softly, briefly glancing at Brimstone, who was frowning deeply. There was a twinkle in his eyes that she recognized and one that she would indulge. Turning back to the impatient Athena, who had crossed her arms firmly across her chest, Queen Magenta nodded.
“If it is the real world you seek, my dear, then you shall need to reach the
Internus Aeternus
ravine, far to the north,” she explained, neutralizing her aged voice. She clasped her frail hands behind her back and straightened her semi-slumped posture.
Athena nodded, relief flashing across her face. “Good, cool, thanks. Guess we should head out now.” She waved eagerly to Brimstone. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Magenta raised a hand, calling urgently after the excited noirette. “Hold. If you set on your return, ‘tis best to exercise caution, my dear. Someone awaits you there, a beast in the guise of a man.”
Athena paused, throwing a skeptical look at the queen. Brimstone, on the other hand, tense, and his expression darkened. The twinkle in his eyes dulled, and his lips curled into a vicious snarl. “
Him
.”
“Him?”
Queen Magenta nodded, lips curled distastefully. “A better word is a beast. A manifestation of evil cruelty, a wild animal who thrives off the suffering of ones like us, but he will seek your suffering most.”
Athena tilted her head, lost. “Uh…why?”
Magenta sighed, clearly troubled by the mention of this mysterious individual. “I shall only say this. He is a manifestation of selfishness and greed. He seeks to prevent your escape to your world and steal you away to the farthest reaches of this beloved world of ours. I shall say nothing more than to exercise caution, dear one,” she gestured to Brimstone, her tender smile returning. “Our beloved Brimstone shall act as guide and protector for you. Now, if you are set, take care on your perilous journey, young Athena. It was a true pleasure to see you once more.”
Athena didn’t get a chance to question the old woman further. With a final wave, the queen bowed respectfully and vanished in a flash of deep magenta butterflies. The vibrant insects danced amongst the air, fluttering away through the wide-open, sun-kissed windows. The duo stood in the vacant throne room for several long moments of silence, Athena trying to wrap up the tiny amount of information Queen Magenta had given her around her head. It hung over her, almost waving in front of her, taunting her.
A dangerous individual set on keeping me sealed here? For what purpose?
Brimstone’s eyes followed the pattern of the butterflies as they danced in the air. Sunlight bounced off the wings like light off a mirror. A pattern flickered across the sky:
Dot. Silence. Dooottt. Silence.
Brimstone couldn’t help but crack a faint smile. That smile fell as quickly as time had allowed it to come, and he wasted no time. He waited for the last of the butterflies to flutter away, leaving dust mites dancing their silent steps in the single beam of sun before he turned to Athena. A deep frown sat upon his perfect face (Athena would never admit it, but the contours of his angled jawline were how she imagined heroes of Greek mythology).
“You heard what she said,
guapa,
” he lamented, exaggeratedly shaking his head. Hollow hints of worry dotted the pores of his blazing eyes.
Athena’s gaze flickered between where Queen Magenta had stood mere moments earlier to where her reluctant friend stood now. She almost gawked at just how
close
Brimstone had gotten in a short myriad of slow moments. Shock reeled in her underdeveloped mind, and her feet stumbled back a few paces. Athena rubbed her arm, gripping her elbow on the third downward round. “Is this random guy
that
dangerous?” It almost seemed implausible for her to believe. A sadistic” beastly man?” In this world,
she
supposedly
made up?
It was almost enough to make Athena scoff or maybe even laugh if the situation was humorous enough. “I mean…Based on what she said–”
Brimstone interrupted her, his features stretched in an exaggerated display of despair and…fear. “
Si.
Fast as the passing gale that blows through the land of Magicka. He’s a slippery demon.” He made exaggerated motions with his hand, dropping onto his knee like an actor in a Shakespearean play. Strands of wavy inky black hair dipped over his sharp eyes, casting a shadow that made Athena feel slightly uncomfortable. She thought there was a hint of some kind of malicious hunger, but she shook it off.
“Surely this guy can’t be that bad,” she reasoned with a smile.
Instead of lightening the tension, all her forced optimism did was thicken the choking atmosphere. Brimstone let out a guttural groan of frustration and threw his hands down in front of him. “That’s because you don’t remember,
compa.
No one ever saw him coming.”Brimstone made a whistling noise with his mouth, drawing his arm toward her like a loose arrow. “No one ever saw him coming, nothing but a flash of silver, the whistle of an arrow! Then BAM!” Athena stepped back as Brimstone collapsed onto his knees, throwing his arm over his head, the practiced ease of an actor. “On the floor and staggering an innocent soul would be!”
Athena tried to laugh off the ridiculousness, Brimstone’s behavior not assisting her in seriously taking the looming threat of a possibly dangerous individual. The man’s orange eyes bore into her soul, sparking a burning warmth through her body. Clearing her throat and fiddling with her clammy hands, Athena mumbled, “You’re exaggerating… You’ve got to be. I get this world is imaginary and all, but–”
A flicker of irritation passed through Brimstone’s eyes, but he slapped on an expression of desperation. A surprised gasp fled Athena’s tongue, feeling the unnatural warmth of Brimstone’s dark hand curling around her slim wrist. He gently tugged her closer, head bowed. At that moment, Athena realized how much of a puppy he resembled.
“No,
compa.
While we are pleased you have returned to us, you are unsafe as he prowls these blessed lands.” Each syllable beats with a mounting sense of fear and urgency. “You are his target; bless your sweet and beautiful soul. I couldn’t bear to have you torn away from me again, especially like that.”
Each hit of his flowery words made Athena shudder or her breath hitch. The glow of his eyes, staring into the depths of her own, worsened the feeling of a blazing warmth stirring in her chest. Trying to get rid of the feeling, Athena pressed the forlorn man for more details. “If he’s so dangerous, then tell me what he’s like. Not just ‘fast’ and ‘dangerous.’ That gives me nothing to go off. Or is that too much?”
The air turned thin as Brimstone staggered back. He threw a hand over his heart, mouth agape, and eyebrows knitted together in offense. “You wound me, dear one! Such details are too horrifying to tell!”
The refusal triggered annoyance in Athena again, snuffing out the strange warmth from before. Although she still shivered under the hawk-like gaze of her once ‘imaginary friend.’ Drawing her silver-eyed gaze from the man, she looked to where Queen Magenta had been. The Queen’s warning still rang in her head, wavering between loud and quiet the more or less Athena gave the words attention.
She WAS the one who warned me to begin with. Maybe she’ll be of more help to me… if I can find her.
Nodding in determination, Athena shot Brimstone a dismissive wave. “Fine, if you keep whining, I’ll go ask the queen. She’s been more helpful so far.” There was meaning behind the threat, but a part of the lost teenager sincerely hoped Brimstone would take the bait and give her more information.
It worked.
Brimstone scampered in front of her, waving his hands rapidly like a cartoon character pleading for mercy or conveying denial. His eyes flew wildly about, and his weight shuffled repeatedly between his armor-covered feet. “No, no, very well,” Emitting a heavy sigh, Brimstone let his darkening gaze trail to the wall. It was a boring wall of stone, but with the intensity of his gaze upon it, Athena figured he was playing a scene in his mind she was not privy to.
Brimstone continued after a moment, each word dripping from his mouth like thick honey, demanding that Athena keep listening. “A shade of death and destruction, that one is. With not even a whisper, he dips his arrows in the vials of cruelty he concocts and launches them into the skins of the innocent and helpless. His smile is so deep as they weep and plead for his lack of mercy!”
“So, he’s a sadist?”
A harsh laugh escaped the raven-haired man, but his eyes held a hint of mixed kindness and amusement. However, it was unclear if the amusement stemmed from Athena’s question or if he had forced it upon himself.
Either seems likely.
Brimstone clasped his hands behind his broad back, body tensing like a taut bowstring as he continued, teeth gritted. “Good lady, that is too nice a word! He is a demon spawned from the depths beyond a pleasant imagination!”
Athena raised an eyebrow, confused at his choice of words.”According to you, I imagined him just as I did you.”
“Ah…Well…”
Silence permeated the air, not once broken. The wind lingering outside the castle had fallen deaf, and the distant banter of the market square beyond the grand entry doors had seemed to cease. It was after what felt like a genuine eternity that Brimstone sighed or heaved a massive breath. The metal-plated boots clanked at each contact with the floor, the sound ringing off the walls until Brimstone stopped before an open balcony Athena had not seen before. Her gaze curiously followed her companion as he stepped outside, leaning his heavy weight against the thinly carved oak railing. She marveled at how it didn’t snap under the combined weight of his body and armor, considering how frail and thin the wood was carved.
“Regardless of how we came to be, it is unsafe for you to be in his sight,” Brimstone explained, his distant gaze following the shapes of civilians mindlessly interacting in the plaza below. His lips curled into a distasteful snarl the longer his mind remained on the unnamed adversary. “He is a selfish, cruel being who enjoys suffering. He will find deep enjoyment in yours, in particular, keeping you trapped here forever.”
Athena’s blood turned to ice at the latter half of Brimstone’s statement. She stared wide-eyed at the back of his head as the wind resumed its toying with his messy mop of hair. Nearly choking on a gulp, she inquired, “You said he’ll try to keep me here forever, right? So, will I… die in the real world?”
Without missing a beat, her companion responded affirmatively. “Quite! Or perhaps much worse.”
Ice-cold panic completely ensnared Athena’s body. She felt herself begin to tremble violently, and her breath quickened. Soft whimpers left her loose lips, and her knees trembled, threatening to buckle beneath her weight as the world buzzed in her racing mind. Brimstone perked up on the balcony, violently whipping around and racing forward quickly enough to catch her. Gentle affirmations poured from his lips, curled in a safe smile as he held her close to him. The warmth of his body seeped into Athena, and she gradually relaxed, now only silently dropping tears. He gently wiped the stray tears from her reddening eyes with a kind but rough thumb. “Fear not, dear one. At your side, I shall remain. His cold snare and honeyed words shall not bind you.”
The strange warmth Athena experienced earlier reignited in her chest. Instead of letting herself become bothered by it, she chalked it up as Brimstone’s body heat restoring her own. She DID find it odd how he had body heat in the first place, but that thought was pushed away for the moment. “Thanks, I guess.”
Her friend nodded, flashing a charming grin that sent a wave of lightheadedness through the troubled girl. Athena’s breath hitched when he tucked a lock of hair behind her slightly pointed ear. The next words from the man’s mouth were full of undisguised vigor and a sense of protectiveness. “Your safety is my priority. With my fair blade, his arrows will not pierce you. His poison will not haunt your darling mind. He will not—“
Athena waved a hand, laughing a bit uncomfortably. “I get it. I get the picture, so stop.”
Brimstone ignored her, continuing to speak in his exaggerated manner. “Mayhaps you don’t understand the dangers! I stress that you need to understand! He moves like a serpent and has the bite to match! Always we must be wary of the encroaching shadows. I shall be the guiding light for you until we may get you safely home, dear one.”
Forcing out another laugh, Athena gave his arm a friendly pat that made his smile grow. “No, I understand. Thanks for that, really.”
“As long as you truly understand. A snake like him could strike at any time. I cannot have you harmed, and if you were, I would be unable to bear living with myself.”
Athena could see how serious Brimstone was about ensuring her protection. While she found it flattering that a guy like him would devote himself to protecting her, it also saddened her a little because she knew he wasn’t real. It didn’t change the fact that she also felt a little uncomfortable with some of his words or gazes. Whenever he spoke, a certain wave of unease followed after her, a predator craving its prey. In his eyes, there was always an underlying hint of something… but she couldn’t determine what. Still, he was the one who found her and vowed to protect her, so all these minor issues might’ve been a product of her mind.
She gave his arm a light slap this time. “Enough with the dramatics, I get it; I’ll trust you to protect me.”
Brimstone smiled a sweet smile, the corners of his almond-shaped eyes crinkling. “Thank you,
compa.”
“Sure, sure, no problem. Should we get going?”
Brimstone nodded, slipping his hand into hers. He began to pull her along, bound with childish excitement even as she cried out in protest and surprise. “Yes! Of course! Come and follow. I shall lead. Let us leave and follow the wind north. To the border, we shall go.”
Athena smiled, glancing up toward the open window. Past it fluttered a magenta butterfly, lingering in the sun’s path. Light shone through its thin magenta wings, casting a halo of purple shade around the duo as they departed the palace. Athena’s gaze remained on the insect until it was out of sight. Under her breath, she murmured. “North it is.”
****
The tension in the crispy air was so thick that Athena struggled to breathe.
Cross the north bridge!
They had agreed.
Nothing else will get in the way of getting me home.
How wrong their thoughts were. At least, that’s what Athena thought.
An arrow buried deep in the dirt sat at the base of the bridge. A small scrap of paper billowed in the calm wind, stuck to the ground by the arrow’s metal tip. Brimstone had urged their stride to halt, and he picked up the paper. Daring a peek over the man’s shoulder, a flash of cursive scrawl passed her eyes, but there was enough time for Athena to burn the threat into the depths of her growing mind.
Your failure is inevitable. You shall not win this time.
The words appeared before her gaze every time she dared to blink. It was enough to leave her shuddering under the mounting fear that their unnamed adversary may be closer than anyone had expected.
There’s no way that guy could have found us already, right?! Shit, shit, shit!
In her fit of unreasonable anxiety that gnawed at the fringes of her delicate mind, Athena shifted closer to Brimstone’s muscular body, desperately craving a sense of protection. Her chest to the plane of his sculpted back, she shuddered as the ominous note continued to haunt her mind.
Every muscle in Brimstone’s body tensed, and as he clenched his empty fist, the letter burst into vibrant orange flames and burned to black ashes, lost to the open wind. Silence persisted for several long moments, the faraway cadence of carefree birds and an occasional breeze being the only break from the veil of quiet. The lack of noise worsened the feeling of unease lingering within Athena. Gulping dryly, she reached a trembling hand to Brimstone’s tight shoulder and gave it a firm shake.
“Um…Brim?” Athena started hesitantly. When he failed to deliver any response, she shook him again. “You good?”
He reared around in an instant, forcing a cry of surprise from the teenager, and she stumbled back a pace, grey eyes blown wide. Any trace of discernible anger faded from Brimstone’s angular features, replaced with deep concern and a hint of an unspoken apology. His blazing eyes burned with kindness as he knelt at her side, slipping a hand around the small of her back to guide her into a sitting, then standing position. The relaxed smile Athena had become acquainted with in the short time she’d been around him stretched across his lips, and he ruffled his black hair sheepishly.
“Apologies,
guapa.
For my mind wandered away from me.” He laughed, eyes focusing everywhere but her.
Athena nodded unsurely, pointing at the note. “It’s because of that note, right? It’s from that guy you and the queen warned me about?”
“Ah, indeed,” Brimstone glowered at the mention. A hefty sigh left his lips, and he placed a hand over his heart. “A worry upon our dear hearts, but” the smile returned to his face, and he transitioned from solemn to triumphant so fast that Athena swore she’d face whiplash. “Fear not! My vow remains firm; I shall act as your guardian for now and always, my dear Athena!”
“I know, no need for more dramatics, Brim.” Her gaze drifted to the sky, a canvas painted with the cool hues of twilight. The last wisp of the sun dipped below the far-off mountains, promising to return tomorrow. Athena shifted on her feet, eyes flickering back to her traveling companion. “Should we stop for the night? Or keep going?”
Brimstone smiled knowingly. “Continue, we shall. Our destination lies not far, dear one.”
Really? So soon? Something doesn’t feel right…
Athena shook the unease plaguing her mind, chalking it up to her remaining anxiety regarding their unnamed hunter. Smiling slightly at the noirette, she nodded, “Lead the way, I guess.”
“Indeed! Come along,
guapa.
***
Seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to hours. By now, Athena’s feet ached beyond her wildest imagination, pain wracking each forced step forward. She felt the limbs pulse within the confines of her dirt-covered sneakers. Not far ahead of her, Brimstone skipped along the makeshift road like a merry child, free of care or burden of pain. The sight of him not debilitated by agony irked Athena slightly, for she found it unfair.
Then again, I did imagine him, I guess. It makes sense that he isn’t tired or in pain like me. He probably doesn’t even know what pain
is.
“Brimstone, are we there yet? My feet are killing me!” Athena complained, debating on whether to collapse then and there.
Her friend grinned excitedly over his shoulder, amber eyes shining like a kid’s in a candy store. He jumped to a stop at the top of the hill, heavy armor clanking obnoxiously. He pointed a finger to the horizon ahead of them. “Yes! Our destination is but a few short feet away, dearest Athena!”
Spurred by a surge of relief and excitement that she’d finally return home, Athena forgot the pain of her swollen feet and broke into a sprint to the hilltop… only to skid to a halt. The verdant hills and barely visible dirt path led to a deep ravine, the mountain edges tinged a deep hue of reddish pink. The very air seemed to shudder and stunt, almost like the environment itself was… breathing.
Alive.
The teenager swore that the taste of iron was buzzing in her mouth, a watery substance sloshing in her mouth like saliva, yet not physically present at all. Whispers seemed to creep from the mouth of the gorge, delivering a sugary-sweet promise of release.
Athena staggered back, throwing the smiling Brimstone a nervous glance. “Are you sure that this is the way back to my world? This place feels… off. Like, wicked off, Brim.”
Brimstone caught her wrist so fast she hadn’t seen him move. The grip he had on her was tight, growing even tighter as he laughed eagerly. “Be at peace. This is the way to your destiny,
guapa.
Trust me,” The happiness morphed into sorrow, almost pleading. His ability to change his emotions at will finally began to unnerve Athena. It sent alarm bells ringing in her mind. “
Don’t you trust me,
Athena?
A sharp yelp fled Athena’s parted lips, and she began to thrash against Brimstone’s increasingly vice-grip. “Let go! I want to go home! Let me go, you bastard!”
Her ‘friend’ shook his head with a mocking pout. “
I am unable to release you. Please, attempt to see and understand. Now, come along…
” Slipping his other hand around her slim waist, Brimstone began to drag the flailing teen toward the gaping maw of the seemingly hungry ravine.
“NO! HELP!”
Thunk!
An agonized cry of surprise ripped from Brimstone’s mouth, forcing him to unwillingly release Athena, allowing her time to scramble a few feet away. To her shock and internal joy, a metal arrow was jammed in Brimstone’s shoulder, crimson blood staining the fine metal of his intricately carved armor. A few feet away, perched on a rock, stood a tall male cloaked in refined leather armor, dyed a cold grey and plated around the knees and elbows. Ominous purple eyes glowed beneath the new man’s hood, barely peeking out from his curtain of silver hair. Athena eyed the large metal bow clasped in the stranger’s veiny hands, particularly the way his fingers twitched as he knocked another arrow shining with a clear substance.
Holy shit… it’s him. That guy that I was warned about! But… if he’s the one trying to stop me from getting home, then why did Brimstone…
Athena was snapped from her thoughts as Brimstone screamed angrily. “YOU!”
The stranger huffed, tapping his index finger against the arrowhead once, twice, a final time.
He’s warning us. Or more likely, Brimstone.
Just before she could blink, the arrow whistled by, aimed for Brimstone’s head. The warrior evaded the projectile and charged at the rogue with his blade drawn. There was a burning hatred in the male’s eyes that worsened the newfound fear Athena already had of him, all aimed at the intruder.
Each swing Brimstone made with his blade was fast, hasty, reckless. The silver-haired man dodged with practiced ease and sometimes parried with his bow. The exchanged blows appeared as little more than unfocused blurs for the teenager, only serving to make her head spin. At some point, their assaulter seemed bored with dodging, turning to hand-to-hand combat–something Brimstone was clearly unready to counter. Within just a few punches and a swift kick to his legs, Brimstone had been disarmed and knocked to the dirt.
“Damn you. Damn you!” Brimstone rasped, pounding his fists against the ground in a childish tantrum. “You shall pay in the ever most painful manner, Alabastor!”
Alabaster rolled his eyes, landing a swift blow to the side of the wailing Brimstone’s head. Brimstone dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, motionless. Emitting an annoyed snort, Alabastor fastened his massive bow to his back. Sneering down at the unconscious man, he shook his head and spoke in a thick, deep Irish accent, “I warned you that your failure was inevitable. You just didn’t listen.”
The breath caught in Athena’s throat once Alasbastor’s piercing eyes finally met hers. She couldn’t help but let out a myriad of pitiful whimpers as he marched toward her, each step marked with an unspoken intent. Though to her shock, he slowed his stride and loosened his tight expression upon noticing how pitifully frightened she was. A hint of uncertainty passed his sharp features, and he stopped a foot from her. The air grew ripe with awkwardness, neither knowing what to say after the unexpected battle, if that’s what it was. After a few minutes, Alabaster crossed his arms over his chest in an ‘X’ fashion and gave the petrified and confused teen a bow.
“It is pleasant to see you again, Athena,” he greeted, the flicker of a smile crossing his thin lips as he rose. “I’m pleased I managed to get to you before Brimstone managed to drag you beyond my reach.”
Athena gulped, rubbing her arms anxiously. ‘So… are you going to drag me away too? So that I can’t go home?”
A disgusted frown stretched across Alabastor’s face, and he stole a glare at the unconscious Brimstone, “Is that the drivel they fed you?” he scoffed. “What utter nonsense, but not unlike them.”
“So… it’s not true? You’re not going to lock me in this world forever, or whatever?”
He shook his head, waves of silver hair swaying as he sighed softly. `No, I can assure you of that. Although it seems there is much more you need to be informed of.” Not wasting another second, Alabastor marched in the direction he had come from in a confident yet tired stride. When he realized that Athena had yet to follow him, he halted in his stride and beckoned her to come. “Let us go. It is not safe for you here.”
She tilted her head, not entirely convinced of his motivations. “And being with you is?”
He rolled his head and set a firm hand on his broad hip. “You are safer with me than in the rest of this accursed place. Now, come, and I promise I will give you every answer your heart desires.”
Athena took a few moments to mull over his ultimatum. Based on Alabastor’s reputation (or from what was fed to her), he was a criminal of sorts, untrustworthy and cruel, but he did save her from Brimstone. On the other hand, there was the possibility it was an act to gain her confidence so he could harm her later. Though she considered the erratic change in Brimstone’s behavior, from his aggression and almost… evil actions toward her to his hostility toward Alabastor. Would he act that way again once he regained consciousness if they didn’t leave?
Weighing her choices for another moment, Athena sighed and nodded, regarding her new companion with a serious look. “Fine, but you definitely owe me some damn answers.”
“Indeed. You shall have your answers. Now, come.”
“Lead the way then, Mr. Mysterious Rogue.”
“…Please do not call me that.”
*****
Athena shuffled, feeling tense in her seat in the hovel Alabastor had dragged her to. It was on the outskirts of this world–the Deadlands, he called it. The horizon was grey as far as the eye could see, and the crumbling settlements were devoid of even a whisper of life. She couldn’t help but ponder what this part of the world was like in her youth. Her chin sat firm on her balled fist as her wayward mind drifted, lost in a hazy past blocked by the passage of time.
“It was no different than Fronttop,” Alabastor’s voice ripped her out of her reverie. A slight smile tugged at his lips as if he could read her mind.
Though he probably can. I did imagine him, too, apparently. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could.
The light thud of Alabastor’s boots bounced off the decrepit home’s thin wooden walls. His voice held a sense of bittersweet longing as he continued. “It was lush, tucked away in these mountains. A small village where neighbors knew neighbors and merchants would come to sell their wares. Currency and goods were a living for this place.”
Athena perked up as if his words struck a chord with her. “That sounds like the farmer’s market in the town I grew up in.”
Alabastor nodded, appearing proud of her putting the pieces together, if not slightly. “Indeed. It was your inspiration for this place, for it was the first of its kind in this world…” He paused, finally taking a seat adjacent to her. It came to Athena’s attention just how… solemn he appeared. His broad shoulders were slumped, violet eyes a dark shade of aubergine and lacking the prominent shine they held before, and his silvery hair falling loose from their tight bind behind his head. His eyes fluttered close for the briefest of moments, and he sighed, a sound of heavy burden and sorrow. “… As was I.”
Athena balked, not expecting the admission. “I made you first? But… I thought Brimstone was…”
“No,” Alabastor cut her off, eyes twitching at Brimstone’s name. “He was not, but the second. A creation not of innocence, but of jealousy.” There was a pause, the wind being the only sound in the vacant place. Lips curling distastefully, he continued. “You were a jealous child, always jealous of the ‘better imaginary friends’ your own friends had…” He waved a hand in the air in an exaggerated motion. “The ‘holy knight’ and the ‘dragon warrior.’ I believe those were two of the favorites your old friends held.”
“Seleth the Holy Knight and Rob the Dragon Warrior,” Athena recalled quietly. Flashes of a figure clad in white riding a horse and another clad in red with the wings of a fierce dragon flew through Athena’s mind.
They were…
“Serendipity and Jakob’s imaginary friends.” The mention of her friends’ imaginary friends, combined with Alabastor’s words, cut into the teenager’s delicate heart like a knife.
He was right.
The idea of having a rogue as an imaginary friend wasn’t as cool to me…So, I…
“I conjured up Brimstone…and left you behind.”
A flash of deep pain shone in the silver-haired rogue’s eyes, though she caught a hint of relief. Relief that she finally remembered. The spark of happiness faded as the southern breeze hit the old home, and the weathering foundation groaned deeply. Biting back another hefty sigh, Alabastor sat back with his violet gaze transfixed on the floor, unable to sustain the will to gaze into her eyes.
“Brimstone the Black Knight. That was your newest idea and the one you became fond of,” he explained, fingers twitching. Athena watched as he reached for his bow resting on the chair nearby. At first, she assumed he’d aim an arrow at her out of his intense (and justifiable) grief, but he instead fiddled with the tight bowstring. His fingers tugged and plucked the string, then released it. The hum echoed off the wall, a song of years of agony and loneliness.
Athena tilted her head, still not fully understanding the past dynamic between the three of them. “Then how come I don’t remember you? Surely, I would’ve if you were my first imaginary friend, right?”
Alabaster glowered, his intense gaze remaining on the floor. He continued to pluck the weathered bowstring. “As I said, Brimstone is a being made from jealousy. I am unsure how, but he altered your mind to perceive me as a villain…Unwanted and alone. An outsider, if you will.”
Silence.
The guilt brewing in the depths of the teen’s heart grew heavier with the harsh revelation. Out of her own petty jealousy for such a childish thing, she created a malicious being to replace something, no,
someone
dear to her heart. Even though they weren’t real people in the minds of others, in this world, they were—a world she had created just to escape from the real world.
But why?
“…Do you know why I made this world?”
Her companion nodded, reclining back in his seat, hands neatly folded on his lap. “It is as you expected—it was your escape. I trust you recall why?”
His words made Athena think. Once again, Alabastor was correct; it indeed was an escape from the shackles of real life. Athena’s eyes dropped to her arms; the delicate skin littered with scars associated with memories she’d long repressed. Memories of feeling unwanted by those who loved her and jealousy of those who had what she wanted—to belong and be wanted. Alabastor had been her mind’s attempt to achieve such deeply craved feelings of love and belonging, only for the beast of jealousy to rear its ugly head and force him away, making him feel the same way she had.
Tears sprang to Athena’s eyes, the sorrow now stinging every inch, every nerve snaking through her body. Her body fled from its seat in the rogue’s direction, and her arms slipped around his neck. The abrupt embrace elicited a gasp from the silver-haired male, rendering him stiff and unsure of what to do. Once his racing mind quieted, his vibrant gaze trailed to his quietly weeping friend, and he slowly returned the tight embrace. Once more, only the wind provided any source of sound or comfort. In the whistle of the wind was a melodic song with faint words of reunion and forgiveness.
“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.” Each word that dripped from Athena’s mouth was hoarse, agonized,
regretful
Alabastor merely shook his head, bearing a kind smile. One of his large hands cradled the back of her head, fingers tangling in the locks of her midnight hair. “Now, now, it is no time for regrets. I forgave you long ago, for you were young. You were alone and desired to feel acceptance. I could not fault you for that.”
“But…”
Pulling away from the vice-tight embrace, Alabastor placed a finger on Athena’s quivering lips and wiped away her hot, salty tears with the other hand. “Enough. Please heed my words of forgiveness, dear Athena. No fault is held to you, not anymore.” Alabastor’s words immediately ceased, as did the song of the breeze. Every inch of Alabastor’s form grew tense, and he slowly rose to his feet. Athena watched with mounting anxiety as the sharp eyes of her companion flickered about the narrow room.
Does he… sense something?
Alabastor’s eyes narrowed, and he lunged toward the teenager, catching her off guard and sending her spiraling to the wooden floor. Hitting the floor hard with a loud cry of anguish, Athena stared up at the man looming over her, body hunched protectively. Alabastor curled around her like a living shield as blasts of raging fire slammed against the thin walls, quickly eating away at the wood. Blast after blast followed, burning down to the lackluster foundation of the house. The slim foundation groaned, and the roof suspended above began to come down. Alabastor dragged Athena into his arms as she screamed in terror. Their surroundings blurred past too fast for the noirette to keep up, but she could see they were rapidly approaching a window. She let out a shriek and pressed her tear-struck face into his broad shoulder once Alabastor jumped. The steadily growing cold air hissed around them, digging into their skin like a series of sharp daggers.
Alabastor landed with a deep grunt, knees bent. In the remains of the house above, a resounding screech of pure, undiluted rage echoed, shaking the air.
Brimstone.
Without haste, Alabastor broke into a sprint for the hills to the north, the dull, grey ground slowly turning to a shade of verdant green, the smell of fresh grass wafting into the air. Athena clung to the male’s closest arm tightly like a child, feeling as scared as one would be of the dark or the boogie man. Fresh tears fled her eyes as they continued north, Alabastor’s stride not slowing or ceasing once. Fluttering insects and the mingling scents of flora and fauna zipped past them the further they went, each moment feeling like a never-ending eternity.
Athena felt her eyes grow heavy as late-afternoon blue skies turned to twilight’s light purple. Her bone-crushing grip on Alabastor’s arm slackened bit by bit with the sky’s darkening. Crickets began their sweet lullaby once Athena shut her eyes, burdened by fatigue. Bordering on deep slumber, she felt the whipping wind’s song soften, the brush of a hand upon her forehead, and a kind, deep voice whisper, “Rest well, Athena.”
****
Bright rays of morning sunlight jolted Athena back to her current waking world. She rubbed the remnants of heavy sleep from her eyes before she realized Alabastor was still carrying her. His gaze was set forward and betrayed nothing of the vigilance he exhibited. When he felt her shift in his arms, the stern looks vanished, and he glanced down, the hint of a smile ghosting across his lips.
“Glad to see you are rested,” he greeted her, returning his gaze to the view ahead.
Athena shrugged, pushing her heavy body up in his robust arms. “Awake enough.” She paused, glancing around at the expanse of land surrounding them. Towering mountains, grey skies, little to no signs of a breeze. The entire area felt cold, dead, even more so than the area leading to wherever Brimstone had attempted to force her into. Feeling another hint of nervousness, Athena dared a peek at her companion. “Where are we?”
Alabastor didn’t reply for a while, eventually sighing. “This is the… well, the
Rivum de re.
This is where you can get home.”
“Oh…” Athena thought for a moment. “If this is where I can get home, where was Brimstone taking me? Before you rescued me?”
Silence. Sighing again, much heavier this time, Alabastor gently helped Athena to stand on her feet. His deep violet eyes trailed to the mouth of the nearby ravine. The opening glowed a daunting white and radiated a sense of cold yet warm air. Deep within, the faint noise of mechanical beeping resonated, following the scent of medicine. The smell made Athena’s nose crinkle in disgust.
“He took you to the
Internus Aeternus,
as I’m sure Queen Magenta told you. It was not the way for you to get home; instead, it would lead to the depths of your heart. You would be unable ever to leave this world, should he have succeeded.”
Athena blinked, confused.
The
Internus Aeternus?
The
Rivum de re?
What?
Shuffling on her feet, she asked, “What’s the difference? If you’re trying to get me home, what the hell was Brimstone’s goal of keeping me here? You said he was a creature of jealousy, right? So, does that have something to do with this…” she waved an exaggerated hand around. “insanity?”
A look of apprehension flashed across the rogue’s tired face. Athena could practically see the gears in the male’s head turning, desperately trying to formulate an answer.
Ironic since he’s a fabrication of my imagination,
she thought, then shook her head distastefully.
No, as accurate as that is, he does feel things like me. I shouldn’t dehumanize him like that.
Her companion ran his slender fingers through his unkempt silver hair, eyes fluttering shut. “I can’t claim to know his true intentions. I just know, as all the inhabitants of this world do, that if you leave this world, we will all die. The rules of growing up and our existence are a difficult concept to grasp, let alone explain. All I can say is that… it is a possibility that locking you away within the depths of your heart may be sufficient enough to keep us alive while dooming your survival in the real world.”
A cold sweat broke out across Athena’s body, followed by a series of stressful trembles.
Keep me here? Doom my survival? Brimstone wanted me to… die just so he could survive?
Her thoughts raced in so many different directions, rendering her inconsolable internally. Trying to rein in the growing need to hyperventilate, she struggled to ask Alabastor about his own intentions. The question made the male pause and regard her with unveiled pity, his hand trailing to her head and stroking it like he was consoling a frightened child.
“I have long accepted the reality of death,” he whispered, kneeling before her.
When had I dropped to the ground?
Smiling softly, Alabastor gave her cheek a kind caress. “I only want your well-being. That’s all I ever wanted as your first friend.”
Those words made all the icy panic melt away unexplainably. Athena felt genuinely safe in this world for the first time with anyone in a long time, imaginary or otherwise. A wobbly smile growing on her teary face, she threw her arms around her first and dear friend, whispering words of gratitude. He merely chuckled and returned her hug, having expected it this time around. The embrace was sweet but short-lived. Alabastor’s eyes flew open, and in a flash, he ripped a dagger from his belt and deflected a sword blow. Athena screamed in surprise, feeling her form get thrown to the side, Alabastor standing protectively in front of her.
When she managed to prop herself up on her trembling arms, her panicked gaze saw the form of Brimstone. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach, seeing the enraged Black Knight clutching his sword so tightly that his dark-skinned knuckles were white. Brimstone’s eyes blazed a deep hue of red, fueled with an intense rage and hatred directed toward the silver-haired rogue. Alabastor returned the harsh glare with one of his own, forsaking his dagger for his metal bow.
Bastardo. Pagarás por la injusticia que has cometido
,” Brimstone hissed, baring sharp fangs Athena had never seen before. In his haze of animalistic rage, she noticed how… wolfish he appeared.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Holy shit.
Alabastor scoffed, nocking an arrow and taking aim at the knight’s chest.
Ní dhearna mé aon éagóir. Tá tú ag dul a rá ar an cac a rinne tú.
Brimstone released a roar of anger and rushed for Alabastor, sword poised to stab his chest. Athena watched helplessly as the two engaged in battle yet again, Brimstone recklessly trying to stab and swing at Alabastor, who parried with his bow and dodged interchangeably. The teen’s head flew in both directions, trying to find a way to assist her silver-haired companion until she caught a glimpse of the dagger Alabastor had tossed aside. She scrambled for the tiny weapon, clasping it tightly between her clammy hands. Athena waited a few moments, her anxiety-ridden brain racing like a loose horse to find an opening to try and strike Brimstone… but where?
Brimstone hissed and landed a harsh kick to Alabastor’s chest, sending the rogue flying to the dirt. The mounting dread spiked in Athena’s heart as the Black Knight approached the wheezing rogue, sword raised to plunge into his chest. Brimstone sneered down at his opponent, gaze glimmering with a twisted sense of satisfaction.
“It seems the game is won,
viejo amigo
,” he said mockingly, a cruel smirk stretching across his face. Alabastor glared up weakly, feebly reaching for his bow. A sharp hiss tore from his mouth as Brimstone’s armored boot stomped down on his hand. The rogue’s eyes screwed shut from the pain, and he inhaled sharply. Taking another moment to gloat, Brimstone brought the sword’s tip to Alabastor’s chest. “
Jaque mate.
Shink!
Alabastor peeked an eye open, perplexed, only for the confusion to turn to unbridled shock. Brimstone’s eyes were blown open, equally as stunned as his opponent. Athena heaved heavy breaths behind the Black Knight, Alabastor’s silver dagger buried in Brimstone’s side—the chink in his layers of metal armor. A raspy breath fled the knight’s mouth, and he dropped to his knees. His eyes were still blown wide as Athena rushed to Alabastor’s side.
Mi hermosa
Athena,” he gasped, back arching from the agony.
Athena ignored Brimstone, dragging Alabastor to his unsteady feet. He nodded to the teen in a silent bid of thanks before turning to the fallen knight, facial features contorted with disgust and a slight hint of triumph. Raising a leg, he landed a harsh kick to Brimstone’s sweaty face, sending him spiraling to the dirt. As the knight moaned in pain, Alabastor turned to Athena, taking her hands. “It is time for you to go.”
Athena shook her head, feeling guilty from the revelation he had provided earlier. “But… you’ll die. I… I…”
He placed a finger to her quivering lips, smiling solemnly. “Your life outweighs my value. It will make me happy to know you are free and alive.”
“Alabastor…”
He shushed her gently, pulling the shaking teen into a hug. The sheer strength of the hug conveyed Alabastor’s feelings to Athena; it was his act of thanks and a silent goodbye. When he finally pulled away, he spun her around by her shoulders and ushered her forward. With the weight of reluctance upon her shoulders, Athena took a few small steps toward the mouth of the ravine. Not far behind her, she could hear Brimstone crying for her not to leave and then a groan of pain as Alabastor kicked him. Just a step away from entering the ravine’s unknown depths, Athena glanced at her former friend and adversary. Brimstone had weakly propped himself on his robust arms, watching her depart with pained tears. Alabastor stood, one leg on Brimstone’s back and his arms crossed, with a smile on his face. Catching her gaze, he waved. She returned his wave while trying not to cry once more. Taking a breath, Athena took the final step inside the ravine.
She was embraced by an unnatural wave of warmth, like a mother’s hug to her child. Every movement made Athena feel like she was floating in the air to an unknown destination. The whiteness of her surroundings steadily faded to a cold black, stripping away the floating sensation and the warmth. Athena’s head felt like it was being ripped apart, and within minutes, she felt like something important was missing. The hug of white steadily returned, and Athena felt a rush of stale air hit her skin. As the world regained form around her, she heard a faint Irish voice speak in the back of her mind one final time.
“Even if you shall forget, I shall always be a part of you. The light to your dark. You will never be alone, Athena. I promise.”
The Willow
Kyle Stoddard
Rain poured down in droves, but for poor old Eleanor Finch, it didn’t matter. Her career was over, and to her, that felt like the end of her life. Nothing mattered—except mending what was broken.
As she walked along the riverside, the smell of warm bread drifted through the air. It seemed impossible, cutting through the heavy scent of rain—yet it was there.
Following the scent, she found a small corner restaurant with iron trellises surrounding it like a fence. Wisteria climbed the iron as old fairy lights glowed in the dark.
Deciding to get out of the rain, she walked through the fence’s opening and into a terrace underneath a pergola, which offered no sort of protection to the few tables out there. She opened the swinging door to the restaurant and walked inside, only finding an old woman behind an open kitchen and a dog lounging on a blanket near the heater.
“It’s near closing. Order what you’d like and find a seat,” said the old woman without looking up from her stove but pointing to a stack of menus on the table near the door.
Eleanor grabbed a menu without a word and sat near a wall that housed a few pictures, each containing a young woman and a different patron of the restaurant.
The old woman came over after a while and asked what she’d like, to which Eleanor quickly opened the menu after tearing her eyes from the photographs. “Could I just get a coffee, black, please?”
The old woman walked away without a word, coming back a little while later with a coffee and some soup.
“I didn’t-”
Eleanor was cut off, “You look thin, eat up. On the house.”
And with that, the old woman walked back to her kitchen and began clearing away the extra food and cleaning up.
“Excuse me!  but what might your name be?” Eleanor asked with curiosity.
“Lucille Willowstein, I run the Willow.” That was all she said, very sharp and simple, straight to the point. Eleanor smiled and introduced herself with a smile, to which Lucille only nodded, never looking up from the stove.
Eleanor looked down at her soup and noticed a tear in the tablecloth. She decided to bring it up after she finished her soup and coffee.
The rest of her stay was quiet; she didn’t not ask about the pictures, nor did she try to make small talk with Lucille. Finishing her meal, she set three pounds onto the table for the coffee, which was rather cheap, and stood.
“Could I possibly come back tomorrow morning with my mending kit and fix the tear in your tablecloth?” Eleanor asked as she approached the door to leave, and before Lucille could answer, she added that she may be old, but she was still useful.
“If you’d like,” was the only response she got in return, but this time Lucille looked up at her. Eleanor smiled and, without a word, departed the small restaurant that she had stumbled upon that night.
As Eleanor left, Lucille turned the stove off, its heat staying for a bit, as it should.
The next morning’s sun came as early as Mr. Patel did. Mr. Patel arrived slowly, cane in hand. He made his way to his usual corner seat, by the picture wall, with a window to look out at the willow tree.
Lucille walked over with his usual tea and newspaper, which was outdated, but he didn’t mind. The tea was strong, not to most people’s liking, but he enjoyed it, gave him a kick, he said.
“You’re here earlier than usual,” muttered Lucille as she walked away, not expecting—or not wanting—a response.
Mr. Patel responded anyways. “I like to arrive here before my thoughts do,” he said, adjusting his glasses and smoothing the newspaper on the table. With that, he looked down at his paper and began to read the same stories for the third time.
Eleanor was the second to arrive, carrying a small bag of needles and sewing supplies. She walked straight to the torn tablecloth and got to work without even asking Lucille.
A coffee was placed beside her without a word, and by the time Eleanor looked up, the one who gave her the coffee was already back behind the counter.
The stove came to life with two clicks, as it always does. Anyone who says otherwise is looking for trouble.
Next, Lucille lined the pots by weight, with the heaviest going to the left. No need to think about it, thinking slowed a person down, and she ran on instinct.
Mr. Patel looked up from his paper and towards Eleanor at the table next to his. Her touch, honed through years of practice, was clear in every stitch.
“That tablecloth has been on my mind for a while now,” he said with a tilt of his head, “Thank you for fixing it.”
Eleanor turned around towards the man who addressed her. “Oh! Yes, of course,” she smiled. “It’s my pleasure. I’m Eleanor, by the way.”
“People around here call me Mr. Patel.”
Eleanor nodded and got back to work. Strange how he never introduced his first name, but to each their own, she supposed. As she finished the final threads of the tablecloth, the old lady breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that her skills could still be of use somewhere.
She packed up her supplies and finally took a long sip of the black coffee waiting on her table. Maybe there was another thing she could fix up, another cloth needing attention, or a cushion that needed some stitching.
She looked around the small interior of the restaurant before settling her eyes on the door that led out back. Outside, more tables were scattered around a large willow tree whose trunk slanted slightly to the right.
A small bench sat directly next to the trunk, with two cushions on it, and thankfully, one happened to be slightly ripped. She got right to work, ignoring everything else in the world except for the torn cushion.
Small leaves fell around her every so often. The willow tree was old, older than the restaurant, and often its leaves would fall no matter what season, yet they always grew back after a while.
Lucille walked out with a new coffee and carefully placed it beside Eleanor without a word, leaving her to her work.
Barely twenty minutes passed before Eleanor tied off the final stitch. Looking at the repaired cushion before her, she felt a sense of pride and joy, the same she felt after a day of work at her old theatre.
The theatre that she would never be able to work at again…
Shaking her head, Eleanor stood and walked back inside. Looking at Lucille, she smiled and thanked her for the coffee before leaving the restaurant. She had done all she had wanted to do and felt no more reason to stay longer than she had to.
Maybe she would return. Places like this had a way of calling people back.
It was late in the evening, near the time Lucille liked to close. Just as she was about to lock up, a man walked in. He looked tired, and the German Shepherd noticed, because as soon as he sat down, she lay down right beside him.
“Bunny likes you, which means I’ll tolerate you.” Not the first words Thomas ever expected to come out of an old woman behind a kitchen counter,
But here’s to firsts
, he thought.
“Can I just get a black coffee and some bread, please?”
Without a word, Lucille started preparing the coffee as Thomas peered his eyes over to the photograph wall. He assessed each picture the same way he would be a patient at work, before turning his eyes to the cup being placed onto his table.
“You look tired,” said Lucille, without a hint of sympathy, it seemed. “Looking tired isn’t going to help you as a paramedic.” She pointed to his polo with the “NHS” logo.
“Doesn’t matter, I resigned right before coming here.”
Thomas watched Lucille bring a small plate of sliced home-cooked bread over, his eyes never looking up at her. She sat down across from him, “Resigned or quit?”
“Does it matter?”
“Guess not.” Lucille stood up and brushed off her apron a bit, “Finish your coffee and bread,” Lucille said. “I’m tired too—and I’d like to close.”
“My name is Lucille, by the way.” She nodded to him, turned toward the kitchen, and walked away without waiting for him to introduce himself.
He finished his coffee and bread a bit faster than he had hoped, but for Lucille’s sake, he finished quickly. And when he finished, he stood and went to the door but stopped just before turning the knob.
He looked at Lucille, who was behind the counter, cleaning up. “My name is Thomas. Tom for short.”
She looked up from the counter. “Come back in the morning, Tom.” She looked back down and began cleaning again while still speaking, “Now that you have all of that time away from work.” And so, he did. He arrived with the sun the next morning.
Quietly entering the small restaurant, there were already two patrons there, an old man and woman.
Thomas found his seat near the front door, away from the others. Bunny approached slowly and lay down against his leg, her head on his foot as if he were a pillow for her to sleep on.
He looked at the other patrons curiously. The old man was reading the paper that was dated from a week ago and sat in the corner, with a window right next to his table that overlooked the willow tree in the back.
The old woman sat at the table next to his and had small hats, socks, and plenty of yarn for a day’s work scattered across her table. She barely looked up from her knitting, except to take the occasional drink from her coffee.
Lucille walked over with a black coffee and some bread on a small plate, the same meal as last night. She sat down across from him and looked right into his eyes, to which he looked away.
“You look better,” she said as she crossed her legs under the table. Thomas sipped his coffee, his eyes downcast as he stared at the bread. He then set his cup down and looked at her.
“I don’t feel any better. The pain is still there.” The pain of loss stung him far more than any physical pain he had ever received before, but his trauma was his own, and he would not burden anyone else with it.
Luckily, Lucille didn’t seem interested in his trauma—only in the life he was still living.
“Have you any hobbies?” she asked without hesitation, steering him away from his wallowing. To which he responded that he found pleasure in writing, especially short stories for his son when he was little.
She asked him if he was still writing. He breathed out and looked around in thought before speaking. “Not since my son moved to Germany with his wife, so just shy of five years now, I’ve just been working ever since.”
Before she could say a word, he continued, “I suppose his departure has just set me into a permanent writer’s block, for I haven’t had a new idea since.”
“Have you called?” Lucille asked.
He nodded, “It’s not the same. After my wife passed, he was the only thing I had left.”
Lucille stared into his eyes; they both shared the same pain of losing someone they loved. She sighed and uncrossed her legs before standing, “I like to read. Next time you come, bring an old manuscript. I’d love to look at it.”
She said this more as an order than a request, and before she departed the table, she told him to enjoy his coffee.
He followed her retreating figure with his eyes as she walked back to the kitchen before shaking his head and taking a sip of his drink.
Several minutes passed before his eyes wandered back to the picture wall. Each individual frame had a different patron, but the same young woman beside them. It was clear to him who the young woman was, and it was no other than the owner of this restaurant.
Each picture was unique in its own right. Lucille would always be standing off to the side with her back turned or her serving a drink, but she was always there. One picture, however, stood out the most because she was actually facing the camera and smiling.
The young Lucille stood next to a man who had his arm around her waist. She wore a bright smile as he looked down at her with loving eyes.
“Lucille, who is that next to you?” He gestured to the frame right above the door that led to the willow tree outside.
“Jack. My late husband,” she said without looking up from her sliced vegetables, as if she knew exactly which picture he was talking about.
“May I ask how?”
She stopped slicing vegetables and, without looking up, spoke one word: “Cancer.” She began slicing vegetables again.
Thomas nodded, more to himself than at her. Checking his watch, he finished his coffee and bread before leaving his money on the table and standing, lightly shaking Bunny off of his feet.
“It was a pleasure, Lucille. I will be back tomorrow with a manuscript,” se said as he stepped towards the door and grasped the handle, “Thank you again for the conversation.”
Lucille did not look up from her vegetables and offered no words either, to which Thomas was content. He left the restaurant feeling a little lighter than before.
Perhaps
, he thought,
I will try writing again
From the True Perspective
Cody Young
I wonder what it’d be like
. He looks up to the void, painted with the brush flicks of purest, most radiant white.
Y’know, up there.
He glanced to the side, choked up by his own wonders.
It always feels surreal coming back here.
His eyes drift back to the ground—a coarse amalgamation of imperfections and something else he can’t quite grasp, like his now whitened fingertips on the loose gravel.
I still can’t understand why.
“Hey.”
It was the faintest echo over his shoulder. He could barely make out such a weakly uttered draw within the battles of his mind.
There’s so much more up there than there will ever be down here.
“[REDACTED], are you—”
“Yes.”
He didn’t actually know. He never really had any idea.
He stood there, unfazed, for a moment, until he sat down next to him.
“It’s nostalgic here,” he said.
“What do you mean?” It was so dark, he couldn’t read him, or what he was doing, or where he was looking. Were his eyes closed? But it was so dark already, why would you need to close your eyes if you couldn’t see anything? He thought, just maybe, his eyes would stay open out of fear of missing something.
“[REDACTED], up there was where I went when I didn’t know what to do anymore.”
He was unable to find what he was looking for.
“What do you know about God?” He asked.
“It’s not real.”
“Okay.”
He glared at him, or maybe it was in his general direction. “What do you want me to say?”
“If I were to tell you God was real, would you believe me?”
He clenched his jaw.
“What’s up there?” As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw him pointing up. He never doubted the void because, despite its error or imperfection, it always held an unambiguous faithfulness, the impossible painting of black and entropic whites. The more you stared, the less sense it all made. Not once had it left him with anything but what he thought possibly could be.
He looked at him. “An impossible painting, you say?”
“I don’t know. I always thought it had to be the impossibility of infinity.”
He nodded his head. “Though maybe not only its scale. Infinity has a purpose. It’s built for a doctrine, waiting to be preached; a curious scientist, waiting to share their introspections with the world; or possibly any normal boy, trying his hardest to float in the inevitable, cascading river…or lying atop a vicious serpent.”
“What does that mean?”
“[REDACTED], let me ask you again. What is up there?”
He still couldn’t quite understand.
“God is merely an example. If it isn’t real, so is everything you’ve seen up there.”
He blinked, staring back at the magical flecks of paint, wondering why the lump in his throat always returned whenever he looked away. It’s as if his ultimate trust were set in this unknown.
I wonder what it’d be like. Y’know, up there.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“No…I don’t think so.” A tear fell down his cheek.
We both sat in silence. The lump tightened. He heard nothing but the calming howl of the wind. The void didn’t change. Everything stayed the same. Quiet. Stagnant. Peaceful.
A cool, midnight breeze flew freely through the air, seemingly unbothered by the unknown of the painting above. It blew through his hair and across his limbs, then through the forest, rustling leaves of the tallest, most ancient trees.
“Sometimes the best moments in life aren’t meant to last. That’s why they’re moments.” His voice was a hollow, yet almost equally prosperous echo. “What is
really
up there?”
“Nothing, right?” He swallowed.
“One of the worst parts of being human is that you can never fully understand anything…but that’s also one of the best parts. What’s really the point if you aren’t led into the unknown by none other than the unknown itself?”
He looked up for the last time. “
It’s everything.
A graveyard of stars littered the void that night. But still, nothing changed. It was a heartbreak most people will never know.
Resonance
Cody Young
A vicious shot of lightning cracked in the field ahead, briefly illuminating a now scorched area of lifeless corn stalks, harvested months ago. The bolt quickly decreased to a weak string of light, splintering back into the sky, and a resonant twilight again engulfed the scene.
I peered into the darkness, expecting the inevitable cascades of rainfall to form and flicker through the field to reach us, but I saw nothing. It made me uncomfortable — one factor without the other. It was different.
The faint chorus of
American Pie
sang in the background. I switched it off, and a deafening silence filled the car, pressing against the locked doors and closed windows. All you could feel was the soft vibrational hum of the car as it idled on the side of a dirt road.
Izzy opened the passenger window and let out a hampered sigh. Her fingers twisted into something that could only resemble gnarled wood, and I imagined them intertwined with mine—the warmth of her small palms that felt like home, lying in front of a cozy fire in the middle of winter. I imagined her glowing smile that made her ocean-blue eyes glisten whenever we were together, her let-down blonde hair, blowing in the waft of Camel’s Hump breeze.
Though I knew they were just fantasies.
The wind howled sharply, piercing through the open window and around the car.
“You’re not cold?” I asked, a surprisingly profound crack in the stillness of the world.
There seemed to be a bottomless anticipation before she shook her head, still out the window. “No, I’m fine.” Her voice was flat, distant.
That same weird suspense returned almost instantly. My stomach dropped, and a lump emerged in my throat. I realized I was still gripping the steering wheel, my knuckles white and fingernails dug into the cheap leather. I let go, putting my hands on my lap. They started trembling.
The rain began so abruptly, starting with one or two small splats on the windshield, to a hellfire of bullets.
I watched Izzy roll the window up. She glanced at me with a scathing look. I wondered if she thought I was somehow responsible for the rain.
Each fall of rain synchronized in a poignant, relentless pounding against the car as the large drops fell in thick sheets. Inside was an immersive cocoon of stillness — the eye of a hurricane — though bitter, as if thousands of miles stood between us.
Izzy pulled up her hood and wrapped her arms around her body. She gazed out the window as rain streaked down the window in long, fuzzy lines. Such a pattern of unpredictability aligned perfectly with how I felt.
“I’m gonna go use the bathroom.” She looked at me, her perfect face a manifestation of all the beauty in the world.
Then, she opened the door and left. I watched her trudge through the rain, and my throat tightened, tears stinging my eyes.
I waited hours that night, but Izzy never returned. I went home.
Reflections in the Rain
Cody Young
Our story begins with a warm summer’s evening in June. School had been let out a week earlier, and the senior class’s graduation ceremony was now three days ago. Many of them knew exactly where they would be going next fall. Most chose an extra four to eight years of education, and few decided to travel the world, or secure a job at a local restaurant or diner or grocery store.
But really, it didn’t seem like their futures mattered all that much to them, just by the sheer number of graduation parties that night. I was invited to one of the biggest parties at a house on the edge of town, home to a guy whose name I could never remember. You could see the lights from halfway down the road, these constant flashes of bright colors in the darkness, which I could never understand the appeal of. As I drove closer down the street, the lights only grew brighter, more blinding. I looked at the house and stepped up to the porch. The music, too, vibrating the walls of the house, was hard to imagine wasn’t waking up the rest of the neighborhood. When I opened the door, an aura of cigarette smoke had washed over my face, colors trumpeting from the hazy living room. I stood in the open doorway, watching people drink what was probably hard liquor, laughing hysterically, apparently having the time of their lives. This, nor the smoke, did not bother me too much; what did was my decision to even show up. I was among the few who had a guaranteed invitation, but I could never understand why people needed this noise, why this meant anything. It seemed to defy all reason, though I wasn’t sure what it was meant to prove, and I couldn’t help but wonder if any of them would even survive the night.
I stayed between the night air and the smoky light for a few minutes, just watching the disheveledness continue to unfold. It struck me as odd, yet was at the same time fairly unsurprising, that no one had noticed the door was wide open, let alone me standing within it. So, I closed the door, backing down the steps of the porch, and stood by the sidewalk, looking up at the house. Perhaps it was a sign of respect, but it could have also been for no reason at all. I turned around to my car and drove home.
Now, I stood before the empty school, days later, a shell of its former glory, insofar as its presence as an educational institution. There was nothing I was looking for, nor waiting for, in particular. I wished I could say I was reminiscing or something of the sort, but that wasn’t it either. I wasn’t
overjoyed
as most people were to be graduating. They simply hated school, perhaps because of the amount of work required or the unnecessary structure, but I don’t know, I didn’t mind it. I quite enjoyed the education system, and I’d always seen myself as a fine student. I did all my work on time. I got good grades. I listened to my teachers. For instance, in the words of Mr. Wilhelm, my English teacher, after turning in an assigned paper, I wrote a “proficiently methodical and astoundingly thoughtful, but somewhat tempered” essay. But I have never forgotten what he told me. I remember standing there, waiting for him to explain what “tempered” meant, but he never did. I didn’t like that. I don’t know why he said it if he wasn’t willing to explain it. Mr. Wilhelm would no longer be anyone else’s teacher here, though, and he was probably driving now, in the car with his wife and his daughter Lucy. They were moving across the country to better afford Lucy’s enrollment at some expensive university next year. She was in my class, my age. She was also the only girl I’d ever had feelings for. I remembered her lips on mine, unclothed, entangled, in the back of my car, and yet her one astray strand of hair. She never told Mr. Wilhelm about me, nor did I tell my mother. We likely won’t ever see each other again.
I walked back to my car and drove out of the parking lot, then down the road. Except that I would have never expected, on my way home, around a bend in the road, to witness a car, off the side of the road, engulfed in flames. I snapped my foot over the brake pedal instinctively, but paused before hitting it. There was no one around, but someone would be there eventually. It was clear that the gas tank had already exploded, so it would be fairly stable now. But most of all, this wasn’t my story. I rolled around the turn.
I passed the car, looking out my right window. It must’ve been burning for some time now. While flames still billowed from shattered windows and the hood of the car, I caught the melted tires, which had a particularly potent odor, and the metal’s scorched skin, black as anything that could have been burning for more than a couple of minutes. All of which suggested the accident occurred less than recently — an observation I thought couldn’t possibly mean anything that important. It already happened, and really, there was no difference between then and now.
I continued down the road, looking back in the rearview mirror, somewhat captivated by the reds and oranges and yellows, dancing far up into the air. I drifted my gaze back to the road, but something caught my eye, like a glint, further down the road. I squinted my eyes until I could make out a boy. The closer I got, the more recognizable he came to be as a person. The boy was clearly younger than I, but sentient enough to be moving. I could see parts of the boy’s body, but they were darkened, charred. His clothes were too. Except that the boy was also on the ground, crawling slowly along the side of the road, leaving a distinct trail of blood behind him. His arm was missing. Both of his legs were missing.
I shot past him, the world speeding up more than it had. One last glance in the rearview mirror: the deep reds of the flames and a radiant, tumultuous sunset only seemed to blend with this boy, clawing at the air with one hand, a blurred, bloody face shrieking in the reflection.
* * *
I walked through the door of my house, set the keys down on the counter, and stared at them for a moment, until my mother’s voice rang from another room.
“Did you stop for gas?”
I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain that my car didn’t actually need any gas, so I just told her I did.
She came from an empty room along the corridor, wearing a cooking apron with pink stains all over.
She was holding a paint roller. “Great. Good. I just didn’t want to have to run out later tonight. I’ll need the car tomorrow. I swear, I feel like I’m always running out for something. Paint, apples, celery, batteries, eggs…” I watched her talk. “I thought I’d finish this coat before dinner, but I really didn’t expect it to take all day! It’s coming together nicely. Just make sure you don’t breathe in the fumes too much.”
I stared at my mother.
She seemed to notice. “Hey, Matty, I’m okay. Doctor on Thursday, ultrasound next month, and then we’ll actually know something instead of guessing,” she said, “and Pastor Richard will bless us. C’mere, hug your mother.” She wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her back, but now I had to wash my clothes.
Then, she said something about food and how I should eat, before stepping back into the pink-painted room. After a moment, I walked over to the room and peered inside. My mother was on a step stool, rolling the pink paint all over the walls. I don’t know if I felt bad or if I wanted to help, but I wondered why she was doing this at all.
She wasn’t always like this. My dad died when I was seven, and since then, she was less of a mother to me and something of a shadow, walking lonely through my life. Only recently had she begun dating again, and it’s changed her. This new guy — I didn’t even know his name — supposedly got her pregnant. She was bullshitting, “feeling like she’s always running out for something” because I am the one who always does that. She just goes to see this man. For the past week, she’s been repainting my dad’s study for a baby girl. I don’t think she’s even considered that it might be a boy. But this just made no sense.
“Why?”
My mother turned outside the door, pausing mid-roll. “What?”
“I don’t get it… just ask him to move in. I don’t understand why he can’t help you. Why can’t you—I mean, what are you even doing?” I stopped, bringing my gaze to the floor, then quickly turned around for my bedroom. I couldn’t make out the muffled words from my mother. I shouldn’t have done that. I should’ve shut up—
what was I thinking?
I sat on the edge of my bed, just listening to the sounds of parsed words.
And then, so suddenly, glass shattered, and a door slammed. My mother picked me up and brought me to my room. She hugged me tight, told me to stay here, that it’s all gonna be alright. I was crying, and she didn’t know how to get me to stop, so she brought me to bed and shut the door. I winced as my mother shrieked, and I cried harder. My dad’s loud, commanding voice pierced through the door, but I still listened. I could’ve wrapped my head around under the blanket, plugged my ears with the pillow, just big enough for my small head, but I didn’t. Instead, I slowly climbed out of the bed, sniffling, my eyes wet with tears, and plodded to the door, reaching up to the door handle, quietly opening the door.
Shards littered the floor; to the left, a window without its pane. A towering figure, looking upon my mother, backed into a corner, hand on the wall. I stood dead still and watched him slap her across the face, yelling words I didn’t know the meanings of. Then his head snapped to me, staring at, yet past me. He stormed towards me, picked me up over his shoulder, and threw me back on my bed. He slammed the door closed. But this time I hadn’t cried. Something about my father’s rage — the way his eyes burned with anger, how the veins on his forehead popped, or his commanding, intrusive presence—felt undeniably
real
. So raw in its chaotic purpose that I couldn’t help but admire my father’s fury. My dad is dead, and yet I couldn’t help but see what survived.
My mother was asleep now, and I lay in bed, watching the street outside my window as cars rolled by in the darkness, and I started thinking about that crash. I wondered if the fire trucks had gotten there yet — if they put out the fire, and then came in with a tow truck and removed the scorched car from the side of the road, to prevent further accidents, but also likely not to discourage drivers or make them ask questions. They must clear the crime scene, so it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Then I wondered about the boy — where his parents were (did they die in the crash?), if he survived, and if he had enough money to buy new appendages. They’d have to be a prosthetic one.
The crash must’ve been unimaginable, but the flames were beautiful, and the boy crawled away, just trying to survive. He didn’t look back at what he had lost. He kept going, and I could’ve helped him. I’m glad I didn’t. No one helped me, and I’m glad. I held my breath like he couldn’t, and exhaled when he cried out.
There was something about this boy that fascinated me. I wanted to see him, to tell him how lucky he was.
I looked back out the window, but this time, up at the sky. I followed a bright line of stars that made up what looked like the Lernaean Hydra constellation. I thought about the constellation. It was a sea serpent that Hercules fought. Every time he would cut off one of its heads, two more would grow in its place. I wondered if that was why it lived so long. Although I also wondered what Hercules would have done without help to cauterize the Hydra’s head wounds — how he would have died if not for the Hydra’s venom from when he killed it. I wondered if he wouldn’t have become a God, and then if the constellation would’ve ever existed. It wasn’t even the right time of year to see it, though, so maybe it wasn’t.
I opened the door of my bedroom, and it creaked on its hinges, a long whine that I hoped wouldn’t wake up my mother. I felt bad for her. She needed sleep. I went to the stove, where a big metal pot with a bunch of pasta was. I wasn’t sure if I was hungry enough to eat it, so I didn’t. I just looked at it. I thought about the pasta my mother used to make after my dad died. It was good, warm noodles that melted the cheese perfectly. It was also easy to make, which was probably why she chose to make it so much — boil water, put the noodles in, wait for them to get soft, strain, and then add sauce and any other seasonings. I kept thinking about how simple it was. Anyone could make it. It felt stupid that people ate pasta at funerals. There was one funeral, when I was eight, and on a big table were giant trays of pasta.
It was my grandfather’s funeral. He died in a plane crash, which, thinking back on it, was a pretty crazy way to go out. I never really knew my grandfather very well, but my mother kept talking about him. He was her dad, after all. I listened to her talk about him and cry, and I tried to comfort her as much as I could. I think I felt bad for her, but I didn’t cry. Even now, it’s hard to be sad about his death. A month later, it seemed like my mother had forgotten it ever happened. Now that I think about it, it’s entirely possible that she made pasta because it was at her dad’s funeral. Maybe it brought up memories. After the ceremony, she and all the adults swarmed the table with paper plates, scooping themselves big portions. My mother made sure I got a good serving before everyone else. So did many other parents. I took my plate and sat in the grass somewhere. People I didn’t recognize kept trying to cheer me up. Some reached in for hugs. I think they thought they were trying to comfort me. I didn’t stop them, but each one eventually left because I didn’t speak back to them. I wished they’d understand that I just wanted to eat my pasta on the grass.
I wondered if I’d want pasta at my funeral. Maybe. Probably not, though. It was too easy.
I then slipped on my shoes and stepped outside. The air was sweet with a strong summer breeze, and the only clear light shown was a full moon in the sky above. I opened the driver’s door of my car, turned it on, and gradually backed out of the driveway. I kept the windows up and drove in silence. I presumed it’d likely take longer than the amount of time since I’d seen the crash for the hospital to release the boy. Assuming he survived. I turned down the main road and hit the gas.
Arriving in the hospital’s parking lot, I parked as far away as I could from the main building, its clinical glow illuminating like an ocean liner on a sea of concrete. Blinking red lights caught my attention from above the hospital, presumably where the helicopter landing pad was. Other blinking lights weren’t as much blinking as they were flashing on one side of the building, where many ambulances were lined up in reserved parking. I imagined the boy rushed out of a stretcher from one of those, into the side of the building that had a large, glowing sign that read
EMERGENCY
I started for the
EMERGENCY
entrance. Reaching the front door, a security officer stood inside. He asked me to put any electronics or metallic objects in a plastic bin, to which I obliged, placing my keys away. Something about this person I didn’t particularly like. He felt too demanding, like I was doing something wrong. I hoped I wasn’t. The officer ordered me to step through a metal detector, which confused me even more. I already put my metals in his bin. The metal detector stayed silent, and I snatched my keys out of the bin and walked inside.
Ahead, an older lady, probably in her seventies, sat down in a chair behind a counter. She was typing furiously on a computer through thick glasses that made her eyes a lot bigger than they probably were. I looked around the waiting room, and it was empty, but for a man sitting near the back. I walked toward him. He didn’t seem to know I was here, as tears streamed down his face. I sat in a chair near him, tapping my feet slowly, listening to him sob.
“Are you okay?” I asked tentatively, looking to him.
The man looked up, his eyes red and swollen. “No.”
He looked back down, and I didn’t say anything. A few moments later, he made eye contact with me again, continuing. “My cousin… he’s in there. He’s, he’s in there.” He sniffled. It looked pathetic. “He was so pale… he didn’t— he didn’t have his legs. His arm… I can’t go back in—” The man broke down in tears. It reminded me of my mother at the funeral. I moved closer to him and tried patting him on the back.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Frank,” he said.
“My mother will pray for him. What’s his last name?” I wasn’t religious, but I was sure my mother would pray for this boy.
“Reimon. Thank you. Bless your heart.” He wiped his cheeks. “Alex will be here soon. Jack can’t even make it… His birthday is today as well. Twenty-one, and he’ll come back to this… twisted present,” he spoke quietly, with vehemence, under his breath, and covered his face.
“Are they Frank’s brothers?”
“Yes, they are…” The man broke into tears again.
I watched him for a moment, then wished his cousin the best of luck and sat up, walking over to the counter. It was far enough away from the boy’s cousin.
The older lady looked up.
“I’m here to see a patient,” I said.
“What’s his name?” She said, still typing on the computer. I paused before answering. “Frank Reimon.”
“And are you the brother?” The lady peered at me over her glasses. “Can you state your name and date of birth?”
“Jack Reimon. June 28th, 1989.”
She looked at her computer and started scrolling, then looked back at me. “Happy birthday. This probably wasn’t the birthday you were expecting. I’m sorry.” The lady looked past me at the man sitting in the back. “Your cousin is with you, correct?”
I didn’t answer, but she sat up in her chair anyway and yelled across the waiting room, “You’re the cousin?”
The man in the back looked up. “Yes! Please… do you have an update?”
“He looks to be stable. He should be alright.” The lady said with a surprising amount of calmness. The man just went back to sobbing, slightly quieter this time.
She faced me again, smiling. “Mr. Reimon, a nurse will bring you in to see your brother soon. I wish him the best recovery.”
“Thank you.” I sat back down, but in a chair closer to the front desk.
After a few minutes, a young lady opened a door in front of me and looked around. “Jack?” My head shot up, then to the man in the corner. He didn’t hear anything. “Yes.”
“Right this way.”
I followed her through the hallway. I thought there would be more doctors rushing in and out of rooms, pushing stretchers with injured civilians through the halls. Instead, it was eerily quiet, like this boy was the only injured soul in the entire hospital. We eventually reached a closed door near the back of the hospital, and the nurse put the clipboard she was carrying on a counter-table and looked up at me. She asked if I needed a hug.
That surprised me. “Why?”
She made a face like she didn’t want to be the one to tell him anything. “Mr. Reimon, you must know by now that your parents didn’t make it.”
I thought I saw tears welling in her eyes. I expected her to expect me to cry, so I tried to cry and hugged the nurse. All I could think of, though, was her breasts pressing against me. They reminded me of Lucy’s.
The nurse then told me that my brother would be high on painkillers and fairly unresponsive, but she and the doctors would give the two of us some space together to “process our emotions.”
She opened the door slowly, and I walked into the dimly lit room. The door shut behind me, and then I was alone with the boy, lying, eyes closed, on a medical bed. His face was scratched, burnt, bloody, ugly.
Bedsheets and blankets covered his missing limbs. I wished I had a blanket myself. The room was quite cold. I looked around for a possible AC unit and found one by the side of the room, under a window with its curtains down. On the wall behind, the temperature was too far away to read, but it may as well have said
cold
I watched the boy as his chest rose and fell, the beeping of medical machines probably keeping him from dying. An IV drip ran from his arm to a stand with several bags of blood, which also had a heart rate monitor. It spiked up with a tick consistently. He looked fairly stable, and I had the urge to say something.
Silence felt louder than words probably could, then.
I sat down next to the hospital bed, listening to the beep of the monitor that filled the room like some life-threatening metronome.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think they would’ve felt much. You always think there’s pain, but really, it’s just light and sound and then nothing. They probably died immediately, because if not, they would’ve gotten out before the fire. They would’ve helped you out, too.”
I looked at the curtains on the window, not expecting him to hear me at all. “I mean, they’re free now, right?” I paused for a moment, as if to give the boy time to breathe. “It doesn’t really matter. They’re gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Things happen. That’s life.”
I kept going. “I’ve always tried to see the world clearly. It’s the most honest it can be, and yet we shield ourselves from it. Life is honest. It doesn’t have to be cruel, just because it’s honest.” I learned forward, whispering, “You’re lucky, you know? You get to live. You get to know something no one else does. You get to know what it feels like to lose something and keep going. You’re a survivor, isn’t that great?”
The boy lay motionless in the bed, but the monitor’s beeping sped up slightly. The spikes became more frequent.
“Just imagine what your life could be like, now. You’re living proof that you can handle it— I mean, death and everything. It must feel so freeing. You can see now how beautiful it is. I saw the car crash. The flames were captivating. Isn’t that weird? Isn’t it weird how something so violent, so final, can feel so alive? But you were there, Frank.”
The beeping now was fast — lines rapidly spiking up and down on the chart.
“My father once struck my mother in a fit of rage. He broke the window of our house. I remember the glass scattered across the floor like tiny shards of poison, and yet, they caught the light in a way that almost made them beautiful. I think that’s when I first understood. I watched him, the way his voice carried the anger he radiated, like watching a storm from afar. I stood in the hallway, watching him as he slapped my mother across the face. I understood, in that moment, that no one could stop it. Not me, not her, not even him.”
I got up from the bed and faced the boy. “He turned to me then, and I froze. I didn’t move a muscle as he slammed me into the wall. It wasn’t enough to hurt me, just enough to make me feel it. And he picked me up, and threw me into my room, onto my bed, slamming the door shut. I didn’t cry. I didn’t run. I just… watched it happen. Really, crying would’ve just made it worse. He would have done more than slam me against the wall. The next day, my father killed himself.”
I just stared at the boy, his eyes still closed, his heart rate monitor a constant, but unstable beat, a violent, ghostly line, up and down. “My mother fell apart, and I would never understand her grief, because as much as I loved my dad…” I stopped. Actually stopped, retracing my steps. “I had lost, but not lost. I was empty, but utterly alive. I was a mere witness to my own tragedy. Isn’t that amazing? I believe, in that way, we are the same, Frank.”
A silence fell over the room. The beeping stopped, a long, unbroken tone taking its place. It was one octave, one pitch. I looked at the monitor, which showed a steady green line across the screen. Seconds went by before the door swung open, three doctors and a nurse — different than the one who escorted me to the room — rushing in. One of them went to the boy’s IV drip, and another raced to the heart rate monitor. I couldn’t see what the third doctor had done before I was quickly rushed out of the room by the nurse. She glanced at me before going back in and shutting the door. I could hear a muffled urgency from inside. I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
I looked at the closed door, then down the long, bright hallway. Fluorescent lights buzzed from the ceiling above, a fixed, controlled tone. I stood there for a moment, as Frank’s brother, before beginning down the hallway. I walked carefully past closed doors with empty rooms and hospital beds lined up like parked cars. A nurse rushed by, but I just continued down the hallway. The door at the end had an exit sign above, and I pushed it open and walked into the lobby. Frank’s cousin was gone. I made my way to the lady behind the counter.
“I’m checking out.” “Jack Reimon?”
“Yes.” And I turned around before the lady could say another word, walking out the front door, no longer Frank’s brother.
It was dark outside, and the air was empty but for the whir of late-night traffic. I walked across the parking lot, noticing streetlamps too far apart and simply not bright enough, then suddenly bumped into a guy. He blew past me. I almost let out an apology before quickly shutting my mouth. I looked over my shoulder, watching him stumble through security, then into the lobby.
I got to my car and turned it on, but sat in the driver’s seat for a minute or two, trembling ever so slightly, before pulling out of the parking lot, away from the hospital, down the road.
* * *
Cars rushed past, a pickup truck with its lights too bright, a black SUV, then a white one, reflecting dim headlights. A billboard above read that the food here was great. It looked great, too, but I wasn’t hungry. I kind of wished I were, then there’d be reason to stop at a diner, table for one, or a gas station convenience store, swing open the door with small bells on the inside handle. The cashiers would know they’d have customers to ring up. A less appropriate approach could be one of the many late-night grocery stores. A whole lot of food in those places; you just had to find it. But most of the time, they’re just home-cooked meals or something you’d need to heat up. Some of those premium gas stations sold hot, ready-made food. It’d historically been a hit or miss, but you never go wrong with a hit. Food was not of concern, though.
There weren’t many vehicles out tonight, which made perfect sense given the time, but it always felt strange. The whole city, asleep, dreaming in their little fantasy lands, then waking up and going about their days like it never happened. Like it served for nothing. I was awake, and so were some others, but their headlights were just too bright. If you’ve ever driven in the winter on a sunny day, you’d know what it feels like. Thin sheets of ice reflect sunlight like a flash bang, as if your eyes were closed, trying to look through your eyelids.
I glanced in my rear-view mirror before I turned onto a street. After a moment, I placed my finger over the brights lever on the side of the steering wheel, then pushed it forward. Street signs flashed back at me, only now willing my attention. I glanced at each one as I drove by, then in the mirror again. The billboards slowly vanished, and the glowing insides of shops and places to eat food became dimmer against a punctual darkness, few and far between, sign after sign. I looked in the mirror again.
One lone car emerged from a right turn-off. They pulled out slowly. I passed the turn-off
Rowe St.
and looked up in the rear-view mirror. I sighed, glaring at the orange light, clicking rhythmically on its right as the car turned behind me. I squinted hard, flipping the mirror up, but kept driving. The car trailed behind as I passed another road sign —
Wheeler
It was just flat land here, some trees and stuff, small bushes, uncut weeds, that sort of thing. Behind the car’s shining, a distant city, not quite a skyline, but something between quaint and modern industrialization. Ahead, more trees. Soon, the paved road — double yellow lines with parallel rumble strips would transition. Beater-like dirt roads, not enough potholes for the city to give a damn, but sure enough to present a border. Some sort of urban suburbia meets the rural end-of-rainbow.
I looked back at the car behind and clicked my tongue before abruptly jerking the wheel to the right, coming to a hard stop on the side of the road. I sat back, staring at the car in the mirror. Its headlights grew larger, two suns in a vastly small moment, until it whipped by without a second thought. I sat up, punching the car into gear, and threw the wheel around. I twitched my foot over the gas pedal, feeding it ever so slightly. The lever on the wheel stayed forward, my finger resting softly on it.
The car in front got bigger with every twitch of my foot, my speedometer rising gradually, then dropping again — a heartbeat, steady, calm. Fifty miles per hour, I fell right behind the car, narrowing my eyes. My grip tightened, firm against the wheel, finger controlled on the lever, then I whipped the wheel to the left onto the rumble strips. The car vibrated intensely before jerking tightly to the right, again and again. My hand compressed against the brights lever, and I pushed it forward, flash in, flash out, the blink of heaven in the underworld. I watched, no reaction, until so suddenly its red lights flared. My eyes shot wide, heart stopping as I slammed my foot against the brakes, bracing for something, anything that could be it. Instead, we both came screeching to a halt, skidding out on the pavement — two disoriented cars in the middle of the road, betwix the city’s lightness and the forest’s darkness.
The person in front shut off their car, its lights fading into its own shadow. I put mine into reverse, then looked in the mirror at the road behind us, catching a faint shadow, yet I only sat still, breathing calmly, up and down. I moved my jaw around; sore, but nothing alarming. A silhouette appeared from the driver’s side, coming into contact with my headlights, hand shielding their eyes. It was a man. He walked slowly through the headlights. I stared at him through the windshield, then slammed the gas pedal and veered off the road, around the sideways car. It smelt of burning, vaporized rubber, as I pulled away from the man, now running ferociously at me. My car straightened out and accelerated down the road, away from his car, away from him, into the trees.
There was a thud as the road transitioned from asphalt to dirt, and soon all that was left were the tall, looming trees and my headlights. A tear ran quietly down my cheek, yet my shoulders rose as a surge of fullness washed through me. A laugh slipped out, thin and sharp, catching in my throat. I laughed uncontrollably, something so visceral, so undeniably
real
—coughing, jerking forward in my seat. Then more, lower, steadier, freeing.
* * *
It started raining, soft drops on my windshield, turning suddenly to persistent splats. My headlights didn’t illuminate the small dirt road as much as they carved corridors between trees. I kept driving until I spotted the
Dead End
sign off to the right of a fork. I pulled up next to it, then backed around until I was almost off the road, sideways along a narrow ditch.
I didn’t get out, though, just watched the rain thicken against the windshield. Drops overlapped with each other until the glass became a blurry, opaque reflection. The engine idled, vibrating slowly beneath the seats. I turned off the car, and a silence swallowed me whole. The rain rushed in to replace it, loud and immediate, striking the roof, the hood, the road. I sat there until the interior lights went dark, feeling the car cool around me.
I opened the door, stepping out into the pouring rain. My shoes sank into the soft ground as I looked out past the sign.
I closed the door, stepping out past the
Dead End
sign that led into the darkness.
There was no outline of the road, no separation between the trees and the sky, only the rain and a dense fog that fell over me. It started to become clear that this was a ridiculous idea. But it had to work. It worked the first time, so what’s any reason it wouldn’t work now? Here? I pressed on, but considerably slower than I thought I normally would, on a random, busy street at any time of day. I took the time to take in the smell of fresh earth. It was heavy and metallic. Wet, but also firm. Measured.
But this wasn’t measured.
It doesn’t need to be.
I could have left, and nothing would’ve happened.
That’s why I’m here.
I knew it ended badly.
Everything does
The large metal gate emerged from the wet haze, black and slick with rain. I reached out, my fingers brushing the cold iron. I ran my hand down the rail, feeling its weight, its presence. I pushed the gate open, and it groaned on its hinges, scraping through the muddy ground.
I stepped through and stopped. Shapes pressed through the fog, rigid and silent — wet stones glimmering in the rain, names etched into them. I passed by one by one, reading body after body, stuffed deep within the earth —
Alice; Collins; Smith
… I stopped at the next one, because its space was free.
“Not yours,” I whispered, leaning down. Not to anyone, just the empty earth. The presence of it.
I rose and walked over to the next one. “You’re porous,” I spoke aloud. “Yet claim nothing. Not useless, just pointless.”
The fog settled over the gravestones like a shrouding blanket, yet I lifted it off each of them, moving from one to the next. “You might’ve been good here.
Larry
took it from you. It’s a fine spot. Sort of average, but fine.”
I walked past a few more. “And you… You’re nothing, huh? Just wait. It moves slowly. You get to watch. I wonder if you’ll ever realize that is the best part that you won’t be a part of.”
One of them had a short name. “You didn’t even get distance,” I told them. “No time to stretch it out.
I mean, it’s efficient, really. You must’ve been fascinating.”
I crouched down near one that had sunk slightly to the side. “You must’ve expected a shift, a sign that they’d move on. Normally, they’d be here with you. They aren’t anymore. Does that make you lucky, or them?” I drifted my hand across the crooked stone. “Owning someone must be burdensome. Especially when they think you want it.”
I continued down the path until the fog swallowed the gate, and I was surrounded by unknown. I must’ve been near the center, of no particular logic besides perhaps my own intuition. For all I knew, I was perfectly aligned, equidistant from each edge side.
In the assumed middle, there was another open grave. I stood over it.
“Something you can’t see through because it takes you under just the same. You don’t lose what’s above. You just lose access.” I look down at the open spot where a grave would be, closing my eyes. “You’d love it here, Frank.”
At that moment, something pressed against the back of my head — firm, unmistakable. It was the hope of who was behind, metal against skin, that kept me from turning. It held my eyes closed.
“Why did you do it?” The voice was shaky, but he must’ve been trying to hide it.
My eyes stayed closed, standing above the open grave. “When something dies, it must not
be
darkness. It’s a lie. We’re lied to, we’re lied to by ourselves because, really, it’s just this opaqueness that goes reflective.”
“Answer me goddamnit!” He snapped.
“I can stare at a dirty window, a lake of brown water, a grass-covered dirt hole, a criminal’s ski mask, which is, I suppose, a face, but it’s not theirs. Dead things… they aren’t dead insofar as they are
gone
; they’re just hidden. That’s all. I’m not avoiding it. You’re not—”
“Why did you do it??”
“You can stand in silence forever, and it won’t touch you.”
“What are you even saying?” His voice cracked. “Why did you fucking do it?!”
I opened my eyes and looked down at the grass, which was almost sparkling in reflection against the hazy downpour. I started smiling because suddenly, I realized why Mr. Wilhelm never told me what he meant.
Because he knew I’d chase it.
“Can’t you see? He died an echo of famine folded unto itself… a horizon of possession and void met, yet neither could claim the other.” The object pressed further into my head. I let it.
“… But you, you must think he died a hero—”
“You bloody son of a bitch!” The man kicked me to the ground, and I fell onto the wet grass. The cold bit my skin. “Why did you fucking kill him!”
I wiped my face, breathing heavily, “Wait, what? Kill him?”
“Oh my god, you’re insufferable!” He kicked me again.
I rolled around in the grass to face him, towering over me, a dark mask over his face, a gun raised directly at me.
“I literally have no idea what you are talking about,” I spat out, laughing, squinting my eyes, trying to see his face again.
“You were… But Frank was… He was—” He started stuttering, sounds foreign to the English language, it seemed.
“You’re a moth in a jar,
Alexander
. And you, you… You are the witness, but you just trace angles of his reflection in your own blood.”
“You know my name? Jesus Christ, you’re a goddamn monster!”
I snorted, “I’m no monster as much as you will be if you kill me.”
“You killed my brother.” Alexander jabbed the gun at me. “You twisted fuck.”
“Lo! I have died, struck down in malice and hatred, yet breathe still in the shadow of thy despair!”
“What the hell?”
“Sorry. That was sort of a niche joke.” I coughed. “I just so happened to be in the right place at the right time. Your brother’s name just came up, that’s all.”
“Why do you do this? I know what you did, you son of a bitch. Walk into Frank’s hospital room as my brother,
Jack
? And then you kill him? Jack is in the fucking military, jackass. He’s running himself into the ground over there while your sorry ass shits on my brother’s last fucking legs.” He spat into the rain—violent, raw. “A poser
and
a murderer. You killed them both. You’re sick.”
I held the silence for a moment as water came down in sheets. “Yeah, you’re right. I apologize. I’m not your brother.”
It started raining harder. He regripped his gun, pointing it at my head again. “Tell me your name.”
“Oh, me? I’m the bane of quiet hearts, shadowed jester in the—”
“Don’t—don’t start talking. Just say your fucking name.”
“—A jester in the courts of unquiet minds!”
He wound up to kick me again
“Just kidding! I’m joking, man. Take a joke once in a while.” I backed off, shielding my face with my hands. “My full legal name is Mateo Gustavous Brown. I live at 1020 Waterville—”
“Shut the
fuck
up!” He followed through with his kick, striking me in the ribs. I wheezed, gasping for damp air. “Why. Did. You. Kill. Him,” he asked. I felt saddened because he really didn’t even listen to my introduction.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Oh my god, you are going to hell!”
“I have a gun to my head…”
“Why were you there? How did you even
know
that Frank was in the hospital? Why did you kill my best fucking friend?”
A pause ran through the graveyard, dark and stormy, like the start of some cliche zombie movie.
Except Alexander’s rage was almost tangible. He wouldn’t shoot me, though. He couldn’t. I knew that much.
I finally spoke up, speaking slowly, methodically. “You’re gonna have to listen to me, Alex.” I realized I was still smiling. I let it fall. “We’re quite similar—”
“We are nothing alike.”
“Will you let me finish?” Alexander shut his mouth, but I noticed his knuckles turned a brighter white than before. What an unshakable grip.
“I said, we’re quite similar,” I continued, staring up into the rain at Alexander’s masked face, into his eyes full of anger and hatred and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on — like a deep sorrow. “We’re both witnesses. We’re both witnesses to when loss happens to someone you love. But this,” I waved my hands at Alexander’s frame in the darkness, “this is different. It’s ugly, and it doesn’t have to be. I saw the car crash. I saw Frank crawling along the side of the road, bloodied and charred. He was lucky, but he wasn’t strong enough, and I looked up to him. And I shouldn’t have. I thought, ‘Oh, wow, this kid is living proof of survival!’ It was incredible. But no. He died a victim of a tragedy.”
“Fuck you. You
killed
Frank.”
“You just don’t get it, do you, Alex? Someone you love has been reduced to a dark room. A room you can’t fix, just trapped inside an opaque house of mirrors, clueless,” I said. “And yet you wish you were there. You keep replaying it. Every version where you got there sooner, where you weren’t standing here right now.”
“Stop,” Alexander said. It wasn’t very loud.
“You hate that the world didn’t pause. That the train didn’t stop moving for your sorry self.”
“Stop it,” he said again, sharper now, but equally as thin. Weak.
“He’s gone, and he will always be gone, and you—you don’t know what it’s like, a pure vindication of the soul, because you’re weak. You can feel it too, though, how it’s like to watch as everything around you burns to the ground with not one scar. Not one touch of the scorching heat, yet looking upon the bright flame as a light in the room. You realize then… You know that the box has a door, which has a door, that has a door, and so on. You’re not angry that he died,” my voice steadied, almost calm. “You need everything to make sense. You want withdrawal.”
I stood up slowly, but Alexander didn’t kick me back down. He was just there, unwavering, as if waiting for his turn. It was my turn now.
I stepped up to him until we were face to face, the gun pushed against my chest. “You don’t want me dead,” I said. “You want the noise in your head to shut up. You want the truth.”
Alexander stayed silent. I stared into his blank eyes. “If you pull that trigger, everything will go away.” “I—”
“Do it.”
“What?”
I snapped my hands around the gun, then pulled it up to my forehead. He let it. “Shoot me.”
Alexander’s breath stuttered. His arms didn’t move, yet the gun trembled in his hands, clanking with every cold drop of rain, white noise against what felt like black noise, standing in the middle of the graveyard. One death out of hundreds, he knew as much as I did.
“You psycho fuck,” Alexander said quietly, his voice breaking under his venom of animus.
For a moment, his grip on the gun faltered, and I seized it from his grasp, stepping back. He dropped his hands to his side, looking at me. But when I moved to the left, he kept staring, straight at the ground, to the open grave space.
I turned away, walking back along the muddy, wet path, the gun held firmly in my hand. But I looked back, just for a moment, and stopped. The rain had gotten heavier, changing pitch, yet I could make him out, still standing above the empty grave, a victim. I walked. The path sucked at my shoes. The rain pressed harder, a dull weight, blurred in wet darkness. It was just darkness.
He was kneeling now, shoulders folded inward, hands covering his maskless face. I wouldn’t have been able to tell if he was in tears. The rain blurred the horizon, reflecting itself in an endless gray, yet my chest stayed calm. I wasn’t trembling; there was nothing but the smallest rupture — the becoming of a tragedy — blasphemous. He knelt there, a witness without its author.
I stood over him, gun clenched, and told my first lie. “You’re right,” I said. “I killed Frank.” Alex looked up at me, the pain in his eyes unresolved. I shot him in the head.
You
Andrii Shadrin
Sometimes you think the easiest way out is to escape. So, you start running. At first, away from people, places. Eventually, from yourself, from the agonizing heaviness of your own mind. You close your eyes, press your palms against your ears, and tell yourself that if you just keep moving, the hollow inside you won’t catch up. So, you book a flight, the destination irrelevant, telling yourself that a different country will mean a different life. That maybe you can leave behind the parts of you that have grown too heavy to carry.
You fill your days with noise. “Stay busy,” you tell yourself. Back-to-back meetings, more responsibilities, another major, another minor. You join a new club, maybe two.
“I’m just trying something new,” you tell anyone who asks, though the truth is you’re trying to outrun your own thoughts. There’s
nothing
wrong with reinvention, right? But then you sit in a meeting and find yourself staring at a crack in the ceiling, realizing you’ve been doing nothing for twenty minutes but thinking. Thinking about people, those who left and those who stayed.
Why?
Those who loved you once, and those who never did.
Why?
The ones you despise but tolerate out of habit, and the ones you cut off because they unbearably annoyed you.
Why?
You wonder if they notice your absence or if, like you, they’re too busy running in circles to care.
You stop replying to texts. Maybe ignore a call or two.
I’m just too tired to answer
. You find yourself scrutinizing people in ways you never did before—catching their lies, the fragments of their stories that contradict each other. You wonder how you managed to pretend for so long that their needs mattered, that their petty problems were worth any attention. You see now that they aren’t, and the thought both releases and isolates you. Because the more you pull away from them, the more you pull away from yourself.
You lose your appetite. Food tastes like ash, coffee is sour, and the things that once made you happy now feel like weights pulling you down into a pit. Even the people you used to like seem dull, lifeless, gray. The ones you hated, you hate even more now, with a sharpness that leaves no room for middle ground.
Two people remain—two people you can talk to. And one of them looks at you one day and says, “You’re depressed. You need help.”
You laugh. A hollow sound emanates from your mouth. “I am
fine
,” you reply. The truth is, you don’t even want to get better.
You sit in English class, half-listening to Professor McCoy talk about
The Old Man and the Sea
. He asks about symbolism, and you suppress the urge to leave the class. Hemingway hated symbolism. Everyone knows that. You stare at your notebook, doodling in the margins, and wonder how much longer you can keep pretending to care. None of the other students did the reading. None of them care. And you? You care too much and not at all, both at once.
The weight inside you feels unbearable. It’s not sadness, not exactly. Exhaustion, maybe? Exhaustion from pretending, from performing, from trying to be someone you no longer recognize.
You think about that poem again, its quiet hope covered in despair. Maybe the darkness will retreat. Maybe it won’t. Does it even matter?
Norfolk University feels like its own kind of cage. Nothing can fix this place, this machine that chews up students and spits them out empty, soulless. You think about the administrators in their offices, oblivious and uncaring. You think about the newspaper, the heart of so many battles. You think about the fights you’ve fought and the ones still ahead. And you wonder if it’s worth it. If any of it is worth it.
You step outside—cold air biting at your skin. You light a cigarette. The campus is quiet. You look up at the sky. The stars tonight do seem brighter, whether it is a promise or a warning—you don’t know. Maybe both. Maybe none.
The poem comes back to you.
Don’t be afraid—it’s foolish. Soon the darkness will retreat.
The Standard Bearer
Eli Sprague
The standard bearer, broken, scarred, blood dripping from the gashes in his armor, enters his place of rest. He looked down at his hands, hands whose sole purpose was to save. He felt he should be proud, happy with what he’d done, but all that remained was exhaustion. The standard bearer with his shield and his broken armor sat down and set a fire. The warmth cutting through the coldness of marches long gone. The soldier removed his breast plate and his greaves, removed his gauntlets and his shield. Knowing there was no one left to protect. For years, the standard bearer had held the broken lives of his people, but he had not known rest for as long as he could remember. And with his armor removed, he saw his skin for the first time. He’d seen skin under his armor, but it felt like it belonged to someone else. This skin he saw could only be his; there was no one else to claim ownership of it. And so, the standard bearer, beaten and bruised, cut open yet unmarked, let the fire hold him. And the standard bearer smiled. “I won.”
Monochrome
Andrii Shadrin
Her dark curls haunted me since the day I met her; a secret obsession, a fetish threading its way into the very origins of my thoughts. My fingers sink into that cascade of chestnut and copper, twisting and untwisting in an attempt to anchor myself to some abstract truth. Especially after the dream I had. That dream—just her and me on the rooftop of an abandoned factory somewhere far away; the city stretching out beneath us. She was my fatal flaw, my muse. Every thought I had seemed to circle back to her, as though she had taken up residence in the marrow of my mind.
Could there ever be anything real between us? Of course not. All we shared were those stolen moments in dreams, fleeting and untouchable. Yet I imagined us together in the cramped intimacy of my single bed. A small pillow, a blue blanket I’d bought on sale at Walmart, her arm around me, my fingers playing idly with her curls. Because she was
mine
. Because
she
was me. Because we were fragments of something larger—sprawling and infinite, far beyond what I could grasp at seventeen.
But then, what could I possibly know of love at my age? Writers devote their lives to attempts to describe it, pouring every ounce of themselves into words that only ever skim the surface. And here I am, fumbling to explain it with the clumsy sincerity of a child. Naive and absurd words, but perhaps that’s where their value lies. In their honesty, their lack of artifice. A child’s heart hasn’t yet learned to lie, and maybe that is why it believes so fiercely in a world where every future is radiant, every story immense and meaningful.
But I know better. The sun will set and the night will come. The stars will flicker out one by one, and with them, the flimsy light of her heart and mine.
Lucky Cigarette
Harry Murphy
He felt the adrenaline spike begin to plummet; he could feel his stomach again, and the nausea caused him to heave, but nothing came out.
Calm down, breathe in for 4.
His hand fumbled for the lighter, the other finding the foil packet half-crushed and empty. Hold for 4.
He could feel the sweat start to chill, his hands tingling and growing heavier as he reached for the fresh pack in his shoulder pocket.
Breathe out for 4.
His hands smacked the bottom of the pack, flipping the top cigarette upside down before pulling another out.
Hold for 4.
The blinding orange flash snapped him back to here; any blood still in his clammy face drained as he realized what he was doing; making it to the end of the cigarette, let alone the pack, was unlikely.
Breathe in for 4.
NOTE: The lucky cigarette was a tradition that became popular in the US military, likely during the Vietnam War, where anytime a soldier opened a new pack of cigarettes, he would smack the bottom of the pack and the cigarette that came up the highest would be flipped upside down. This upside-down cigarette was to be smoked last and was considered lucky. After all, you were lucky if you lived long enough to smoke the whole pack and make it to that last cigarette.
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