by Ma West
It was like feeling in the dark, but at last her hand made contact. It wasn’t a pulse, it wasn’t a breath, but it was warm, and it was enough for Sasha to let go as the fog overcame her.
It was the last thing Drexter expected to see, but it was a most welcome sight. The night sky loomed large and frightening, fought away by only a single light. The rays bounced and filtered throughout the room, gradually fading as they went.
Yet the light’s power was unmistakable. One beam spread out for all to find in the dark. Captain Drexter’s eyes focused intently on it, feeling its warmth in the sudden cold, rising to his feet under the power of its hold, and again he felt alive.
The demon man next to him was having a similar experience, at least until he simply returned to his position of self-imprisonment and ignored the light. Despite his complaints, the captain felt pity for someone who could carry such guilt as to impose himself into this type of prison.
Hoping to make a joke, the captain moved his finger toward his mouth as if lighting a smoke. “My friend, will you not enjoy a light with me.”
“Stop fucking calling me your friend! I don’t want to interact with you, I don’t want your god, and I don’t want your fucking preaching anymore. So take your god and leave it the hell away from me. Damn, dude, take a fucking hint before I fucking kill you!”
The dismissal wasn’t unexpected, but the eruption stunned the captain. What the hell did the demon man mean by “your god” and “your preaching”? The captain had much time to contemplate how he, a nonbeliever, could be accused of “preaching.”
The fog always, always, always brought about bad things. Unless engaged in combat, the fog was to be considered a threat. This time around, even the fog couldn’t overcome the physical, and Sasha’s body could only endure so much while hungover and without food, water, and sleep.
The fog was lifted by a light, a bright light shining directly into Sasha’s eye. A man in uniform knelt above her, moving his mouth repeatedly. Yet she was having trouble making sense of it all, as history had taught her that the fog could block out sound. They were in a hallway, the lights were all red, and there was commotion everywhere. Emilia—Sasha began to search for Emilia, but her head was being hindered by something around her neck.
Bodies were in fervent motion in the background, and Sasha tried to focus her search, but the man in uniform kept getting in the way. Another uniformed man, a Hispanic man of small stature, came beside her and laid down a long board. The new man’s uniform was different, and it was for Synied security.
The first man moved his face in front of her. This time, however, he brandished a weapon. A needle held up in front of her was all it took for the fog to come back, and when the fog came back, bad things always happened.
Chapter 26
Round and Round
Time had no meaning in the world of the fog. Its natural rhythm adjusted to the situation even though Sasha had little control. These two men posed no danger and were in the midst of trying to help her, but she had no conscious thought.
Again the blows came swiftly, accurately, and painfully to the two men. Several well-placed kicks knocked them to their knees, and their pleas to stop were only met with fists of fury. Luckily, the fog hadn’t interrupted the others from working on Emilia. Although fast, the fog had only appeared for a groggy revival, and it vanished with the sight of her friend.
Emilia lay lifeless, with a tube deep inside her throat, and two different racks held bags of fluid, each dripping into her arms. Pads ran along her bare chest, sending out signals that came in all-too-slow beeps. Emilia had a brace around her neck and was taped down to a board. Sasha exited the now-half-opened elevator door and approached the two uniformed paramedics, a man and a woman, each slender and black. The woman barked out commands as the man either complied or responded with an answer, but it all made no sense to Sasha.
Sasha’s own body cried out in stress, fatigue, and dehydration, causing her to collapse into a sitting position. All the discomfort, all the pain, and all the close calls she had with her friend only amplified how Sasha felt about Emilia—that they were soul mates.
The beam of sunlight had given new energy to the other prisoners, as well as a new sense of urgency. Several men, including T and the wheelbarrow man, were working feverishly at a window. “There are people in the streets. I can see people,” one of the adjoining men yelled in excitement.
“Motherfucker, it’s nighttime, and the power’s off. How you going to see shit?” The question came from down below, but Drexter wasn’t able to see who had spoken it.
“How the fuck you seein’ shit now? I don’t fucking know. I can just see what the fuck I can see.”
“Well what the hell are they doing?”
“I don’t fucking know, standing around in shit. Now you want me to paint you a damn word picture or pick you a damn lock?”
“You’re going to fuckin’ do both.”
Captain Drexter listened as intently to the conversation as a news junkie would a major story, pained by the event but unable to look away from the oncoming emotional train.
Then, with another earthquake-type lurch and twist of the group’s stomachs, they saw the most horrifically beautiful image move into their singular view: Earth.
The words came as unconscious whispers, yet they still came over and over again. “Please, God.” Had someone brought it to her attention, Sasha probably would have stopped the prayer, but here and now, as she watched her friend lie in limbo, the prayer came over and over.
Slowly the commotion came to a halt. The man kneeling next to Emilia had his hand on her shoulder, while the woman stood on her knees. The room grew silent before Sasha’s ears focused on a familiar sound that had already faded into the background. The beeps of the medical machine were gradually rising in pace. Another gentle cough from Emilia was more than enough to jostle the entirety of Sasha. Without thinking, she held her breath in anticipation. When Emilia sputtered her first word, “Sasha,” Sasha beamed with the pride of a mother and exhaled her response: “Emilia.”
A burst of excitement ushered in a new round of activity. This time, even the demon man looked up from his prison. The brilliant-blue light shined throughout the prison, reaching deep and even illuminating the bodies as they lay soaked, dead, and soon to be smelling. The contrast between Drexter’s hellish prison and the heavenly blue of the ocean was stark and terrifying.
“What the holy hell is that?” a voice from above asked.
“Yo, that looks like the fucking Earth from all those movies. What the fuck is going on?”
A deep, thick moment of silence passed as each man worked out the answer for himself. Captain Drexter didn’t speak loudly, but in the absence of sound, it traveled well. “We are in outer-fucking space.”
A loud commotion of heckles, jeers, and disbelief rained out in response. A shoe then rapped against the bars. Bits of material came out, when Captain Drexter realized why the shoe had become disposable, which simply grossed him out. “You must be a fuckin’ grunt, soldier. It’s just the sheriff playin’ some sort of fuckin’ game with us.” Again Drexter missed who had spoken. “They just got some sort of projector on a screen, probably some civie watchin’ Forrest Gump in space, or some shit. No, now is the time to escape. T, you fuckin’ done yet?”
“No, I ain’t fuckin’ done yet. I ain’t got no shit for tools.”
Captain Drexter turned around, only to find the demon man back in his own prison and two nasty corpses lying just beyond. This place was truly hell, so he retreated to a mental hole, where he sat cursing the Lord he had been accused of preaching for.
“Sasha, I can barely hear you. My eyes won’t open. What?” Emilia let loose another volley of sputtering coughs.
“Emilia, I’m here.” Sasha moved closer and grabbed her hand. It was warmer than before, but it still felt weak and limp. Tears sprang from her eyes. “Just relax, it takes time. We’ve been through a lot, and rest will help you.” Emot
ions were hard to control, especially as a teenager, but for Sasha, one of them trumped the rest: love. Love was the only emotion that could make her weak on the outside but strong on the inside, and Sasha’s internal processes told her that now was the time to reassure her friend, her love.
After some time, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder from the black female paramedic. “Miss, for our safety, I’m going to have to please ask you to go ahead and back up now so we can move her to a better location.”
Sasha was too deeply involved with Emilia to take offense at the request, nor to accede to it either.
The words echoed, but there were no further physical attempts to communicate. “Miss, miss.”
The paramedics and the security guard had grouped together, tending to each other’s wounds. The black paramedic raised a can of mace and pointed it without firing.
“Where will you take her?” Sasha could feel the presence of the lady. She had no need to turn her head and look.
The lady paused. “I actually don’t know that yet. We don’t have access to a medical facility.”
“If you don’t know where she’s going, then I’m not fucking going anywhere.”
“Ma’am, this isn’t open for discussion. She can’t lie here in the hallway, and I can’t finish my job while you are present.”
“How about I kick your asses again if you don’t fix her right this goddamn second?”
“Ma’am, after what you did before, we would choose to take our chances on running for our lives rather than deal with you.”
Sasha felt the buildup of fog evaporate with her surprise at the lady’s bravery.
“Now, ma’am, if you’ll kindly step back, and I mean way the hell back, we would be glad to fix your friend out of the goodness of our hearts, but even Christians believe in self-preservation.”
Tears replaced Sasha’s anger. “What did you mean, we don’t have access to a medical facility?”
There was another long pause before the female paramedic spoke. “Because, honey, we are in outer space now.”
She responded before her brain had time to process what was said. “Oh, good, I’m dreaming. I thought this hell was really going on around me.”
The prisoners made several attempts to exit, but they were thwarted at every turn. The window’s plastic was too strong to smash through, the locks wouldn’t budge without tools, and the front door could only be opened from the outside. The group’s resourcefulness and creativity were surprisingly advanced for such obviously uneducated individuals.
Captain Drexter spent most of his time pacing, worrying, and fretting. His list of worries was getting longer, but Sasha remained permanently affixed to the top. How or why they ended up in space—or if they really did—was an incredibly big issue, but it took far less precedence than escape, water, or even food.
His conversation with the Lord had led him nowhere but round and round. Scanning his surroundings, he couldn’t help but feel that the Lord was right to wipe out the human race, that Jesus was the fool to save it. He was abandoned before a trial, discarded by a society that would rather just lock up black men and leave them to die than hear out their stories. Looking for things to curse and resent was easy, but the captain knew that good wasn’t difficult to find either if he looked hard enough.
“Something’s happening, yo. All those people, they be running now. They all running this way.” T pointed as he spoke.
The voice sounded like it came from the vicinity of the wheelbarrow man, but Drexter still couldn’t figure out who was speaking. “What the hell they running from?”
Another man joined a nearby ledge, but T maintained the best viewing platform. “Oh shit. Oh shit, y’all. They fuckin’ running from a, from a, from a—”
“Fucking spit it out!” the wheelbarrow man yelled.
“A goddamn alien, yo.”
It took some discussion and debate, but it was finally decided that Emilia would be returned back down to the shelter. The floor they currently occupied was a holding area for biologically altered samples, and while it offered medical equipment, it didn’t have a doctor and failed to provide any measure of safety.
No stairs occupied the building, and the elevator was out of commission for the midterm, no less. While they didn’t suspect any spinal or neck damage, the paramedics weren’t physicians, nor did they have access to X-rays, nor could they diagnosis the vision problems she was having. Moving a body up a shaft was a greater challenge than moving one down, so they decided that once a physician could be found, they would have to come here.
Sasha eventually agreed to the paramedics’ request, but not until they had chosen a location. She nursed her shoulder and wrist while gracefully and expediently climbing down the ladder in the elevator shaft. The crew worked surprisingly well together. Several times, Sasha had to fight back the impulse to join in, but after a while, she was able to calm down, even agreeing to a saline pack, some bottled water, and military rations that had survived the flood.
It wasn’t a moment of serenity, but as Sasha lay back, relieved by her friend’s successful journey, she thanked the Lord for getting her this far. She sat next to Emilia and ran her hand through her hair. Emilia’s conscious self was back, but her vision still wasn’t, and it was getting harder and harder to reassure her friend that she would see again.
It was a new and different role for Sasha. She had always had plenty of attending nurses, doctors, and specialists, but she had never had to care for someone before. Sasha couldn’t guess how much time had passed since she first met Emilia, but it felt like she had grown years during it.
The wheelbarrow of a man barked out his reply. “What the hell? You guys been hitting something off of the fiend corpses or what? Talking about being in outer space and aliens walking down the block and shit.”
T shouted out a response but was outblasted by the eruption of gunfire.
Everyone in sight ducked, but it was obvious that the bullets were not being fired at them—barely even a ricochet bounced off the exterior walls. It was a peculiar sound for a gunfight. A massive amount of ammunition was being expended, but there was no chorus of attack or moves like an army battle. No, this sounded more like soldiers unloading on an approaching runaway vehicle.
To anyone else, the motion would have seemed abnormal, but fearing an oncoming vehicle, Captain Drexter found the best cover he could: two dead corpses. Round and round he went in his cell, but only they stood out. The thought and the idea that crept into his mind was more dreadful than any he could imagine. Truly, he thought to himself, only a greatly powerful asshole could design so much torment, and how awful a god it must have been to allow it to happen.
Captain Drexter had experienced anger before, but as he moved the first corpse, he felt a rising intensity of anger that bordered on hate. As he moved the second corpse, he moved to a level of hatred so strong it fueled his muscles, bore his pain, and spurred him on to “live.” It was a hatred that burned in rage for one thing, the only thing he could imagine putting him in this position: the Lord.
He grabbed the bloating bodies of the dead fiends and stuffed one underneath the bench and against the wall, snuggled up alongside it, and pulled the other close in front. It was a constant battle with the dry heaving, but he was determined to do one thing: live. If there really were aliens, then Sasha was born for this, and she would need her father more than ever. If not, there was an entity in need of some repayment.
Chapter 27
In the Name Of
It would be too long a wait to keep Emilia immobilized to a board, but they insisted on a neck brace as she lay on a damp couch in the middle of a very soggy, stinky, humid room. The residue left behind from the water suggested that it wasn’t entirely clean water, but at least there wasn’t any toilet smell.
Ration packs and water bottles had been stuffed into every crevice of cabinet space, and the entire group now mingled and recovered from Emilia’s move. Sasha finally found the time to speak with
her friend, and she couldn’t help but bombard Emilia. “What do you think she meant by ‘we are in outer space’? Do you think we can trust these people? How long do you think it has been since my dad left?”
The questions came out in machine-gun fashion. She formulated each next question while still spitting out the last idea. A warm hand placed itself on Sasha’s lap, and after she put her hand on top, another covered it. “Sasha.” The sound of Emilia’s words was so sweet to her ears. “Sweetie, you need to slow down. I don’t have any answers to your questions.”
Guilty tears streamed down Sasha’s face. “I did this to you. I did this to you. I’m so, so, so sorry.”
Emilia stared blankly at Sasha. “Sasha, my dear, you saved me. You didn’t do anything other than become my hero today.”
The words filled Sasha’s heart with a sense of relief and desire. “But your eyes, your body.”
“My body will heal. I’m alive, and that’s more than I expected. I feel like, well I guess I feel like I have been given a gift.”
“You’re not mad? Angry at what has happened?”
“Who is there to be angry at when, after all, I’m still alive with a will to be done? So I am thankful that you have given so much to protect me, from those boys, from the water and the paramedics, who were actually trying to help me, by the way. I know now that God sent you to be my protector. I am ever so thankful.”
Sasha felt a coldness sneak into her heart for a moment as she thought about how naïve and foolish this person was—thankful for an existence that would blind her. Sasha would have had other desires for such a god, if they existed.
