by Travis Borne
“Stay down,” Patrick said. “Maybe they’ll forget it.”
Andy and Bart bent down to help. After touching Jerry’s arm they jolted. HOT! And Jerry’s skin took on an appearance of molten metal. Vessels were bulging at his temples and blood dripping from a forehead gash merged into his beard; the hairs were glowing like yellow wires and the blood was vaporized. He pushed up on the pavement—it cracked—and reconstructed the tower who was a determined and activated man. Erect and solid, he was seemingly larger!
“Ah, he wants a little more before heading downtown. It’ll be my pleasure,” Rex said. He unsmiled then torpedoed toward Jerry, slicing air.
Jerry stood firm. His emotions were a throbbing pulsar, and time slowed.
It’s just what he had done on Wednesday. He’d been here long enough to learn a few things, but this was something new. Ugly, detestable memories, and those of beauty and love—all of it merged into one channel. He felt the juice, hot in his veins, pumping, sloshing with pressure and through to every capillary, and refilling his gray matter, galvanizing it from the bottom up. The twisted, sick recollection, and pain, was not a terrible thing, not right now. The empowerment was a long-overdue deluge providing him strength in ways he’d never imagined, not even back then.
Rex was still coming at him, brutally, but in slow motion as if time was a record being held back by DJ Chronos looking down at Jerry with a smile. Jerry turned his head. He watched the people—one frame of time, two, three, flick, flick, slowly. All was silent save for the fire crackling in his chest. Humans and workers were cheering him on with new hope. He could see Andy, Luke, Roger, Fat Molly, and Carmen, their eyes lit up as if xenon gas was doing the waltz with electrodes. And he also saw—could it really be? Valerie!
The emotion of love surged, sending warm fluid like runaway trains, all colliding into his heart. She was walking behind the crowd across the street, ghostlike. She turned to him, defying Chronos’ halted record, and smiled. She encircled the perimeter, walking slowly, gracefully. And he saw something else, under the crowded feet, someone, walking behind her. There was a small opening in the crowd and Valerie stepped out and into the open; she gestured with a smile and a wave—then she stepped out. He knew right then! It was his daughter. She was a beautiful young girl, even resembled him a little. She, she, she…would have been our daughter!
Tears and cold sweat became a downpour on his face. He reached, and smiled, and they returned the look.
“I love you,” Valerie said. And the beautiful young girl waved; her smile turned every cell in his body to raw blinding energy. Valerie blew him a kiss and said, “Her name is Cindy.” Cindy waved, then faded away with a smile not unlike Amy’s: mega bright and uplifting. A tear descended Valerie’s face, then she too disappeared.
The loss was a punch to every cell that’d energized within his body, and his entire form illuminated with yellow-white light. He shut out the entire universe, as well shedding a tear for a daughter who would have been, and his love, so long ago, Valerie.
“I love you Valerie, but I must let you go. I have been given another chance and this time I must not, cannot fail.” He felt the loss of his daughter and Valerie. Then again saw the world, his current reality. He saw Carmen to his right. Patrick, Andy, and countless other friends—they wanted him to destroy the oncoming filthy excuse for an existence. His vow, this time… “I WILL NOT FAIL!”
Time returned and Rex was a train. He smashed into Jerry, taking him deep into Marti’s, through the double doors, shattering them, through every table, through the massive staircase and out the back wall.
55. The Newcomer
Days earlier…
Stinky, like a box of rotten bananas. And everything was blurry. After crawling out of the dumpster he approached the street. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there but it appeared to be the outskirts of a mountain town, a crater of a city surrounded by lush forest.
Daylight was a flashing strobe and motion blurs made tracers for as far as he could see, down the hill into the town. The colorful phantasms were rainbows of light tracing every street and path, as well into and out of myriad buildings, on top of many. And they went around and through his body as if he’d entered some sort of acid-trip disco wonderland.
Jake looked up, seeing a pulse go round like a tracer. Another odd, mauve-colored blob, like something from a lava lamp, made an oblong deviation up and around both mountainsides. He wobbled at the sight. Nausea handed him several dry heaves and he fell forward, vomiting buckets of stomach gas. While he was on his knees the whooshing rainbows bumped him like warm air bullying a piece of crumpled paper, harder and harder as the seconds passed.
The nausea stopped after about six painful heaves. He looked up again. The bright needle point of a bulb moved slower now. The sky flicked: flash-pop, off-on, then off, then on with a blinding flash accompanied by an ice-pick, ear-penetrating ring, then on for a moment, then off for a slightly longer moment, then after several seconds, off, then after ten more, on—and it stayed that way, brightly so. The banding rainbows slowed and the nudging bumps of prismatic air became people walking around him. Some said, “Excuse me,” others said, “Hello,” and others still, “Where did you come from?”
The road plummeted, sloping into the heart of the most colorful town Jake had ever seen. Sights, sounds, and the fresh smell of country air became crisp and refreshing. It looked like an elaborate tourist destination that’d received fifty truckloads of thousand-dollar bills: money spent on anything conceivable, all things entertaining and fun. There was a tower with a moving platform at its center, people relaxed around its saucer-like edge as it gently descended from the sky.
Jake stood in awe of the creative world. He noticed the imaginative part of his mind telling him weird things. Quirky words and overly descriptive metaphors invaded his brain, then he spoke…
“It’s like…someone dropped a city-bomb into a forest crater. Colorful dreams, a city of dreams!” The sudden burst of clarity shocked his mind and he kept trying to categorize what he was witnessing. The civilization grew outward like a plague, thinning like the branches of a tree; the roads penetrated the forest like a diminuendo of rubber snakes—paths to who knows where. Some miles away, the surrounding mountains were at least ten thousand feet tall; some of the peaks disappeared into the sky. Jake’s head rotated like a slow-motion bobble but he soon caught it, and stopped it, and again aimed his noggin at the town. “This is really wonderful. A carnival utopia creeping in and about the green world like a virus. Marvelous!”
“My shoulder!” Jake rubbed it and immediately arrived a sense of relief—it was fixed! Had Boron actually done him a favor? He’d been totally repaired, liberated, and delivered to this fascinating world? He looked clean, had on a fresh set clothes—tan canvas cargo pants with fanny pack, a pocketed vest over a green-black flannel, plus a fishing hat complete with heapings of lures!
“I feel reinvigorated, happy. This world, somehow has a strange effect on me. Like it’s raining pleasant vibes deep into my bones from that dot of an immensely bright sun, perhaps as well, that lavender moon. It looks like a huge gas planet.”
For a moment he forgot the turmoil: the unnerving journey in the hull of that unknown ship, and Boron, that motherfucker! The crushing of his shoulder, and poor Macy—yes, I remember now, I went in. I passed through those archways, then there was that final portal, the one that stripped off my clothes as if someone was playing a prank. My body was as if suspended in time, but my mind had stayed intact—and the slippery ride through the tube!
He remembered everything accompanied by a haze, like a dream: zipping through the glass network as if watching himself from the outside in slow motion; it was smelly like he’d been smeared with cooking oil, but fun in an odd, out-of-body-experience kind of way. Then everything went black. Then I ended up here, in this…town. He walked around for a while and couldn’t help but like the place. It was clean, perhaps like some tourist town in Switzerland, yet l
ush and green—actually, similar to a city in the states. He recalled a memory from his childhood: sliding down a mountain slope on a winding white slide, with a push-pull lever for fast and slow, at a ski resort in the summertime.
Yes, it reminds me of the Appalachian Mountains. I’ve been here, a city named—
A man in a clown suit ran past him, heading toward the town. “Fight!” the man exclaimed. “Jerry is fighting Rex, hurry!” The outburst shattered Jake’s quiescent and meandering slumber down the hill.
“Jerry?” He didn’t know any Jerry, or anyone named Rex, but the sense of urgency snagged him like a fish hook. “Where am I?” Jake yelled out, putting his mass of bulk into gear to catch up.
“Midtown!” a woman’s voice blared.
Jake pursued, clobbering pavement to follow the runners. As he ran, he noticed just how good he felt, damn good, extraordinarily good, and fast and strong. More runners appeared from side streets as Jake went by. They joined him and quickly a mob formed.
Hushed chants of Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, echoed throughout and Jake could feel the energy poking into his body like nervous, anxious, yet hopeful tingles. And behind him were many others, all gasping and gaping, sprinting to catch up. The cleanly paved street curved and sloped, channeling people into the wonderland; it finally straightened into what had to be the downtown area. He saw masses of people ahead, thousands stuffing a central intersection. To the right was an outrageous museum of oddities, and a chocolate store, and on the left side of the street, a bar. It was three stories high and had open-air levels, balconies, and the roof was packed with people. The grand establishment was titled, Marti’s Place, and a huge neon sign said just that. The brilliant colors changed welcomely. And Jake settled into the crowd, looking at the odd bunch of humans, and, the others. Each was trying to get a glimpse, countenances brimmed with consternation and fists clenched, some crossed their fingers—and all hushed. The lure of this fight hypnotized everyone.
56. Leave the Brother Alone!
They flew out of Marti’s just as fast as they’d entered, clipping the wall and turning the double doors into splinters. The crowd leapt like parting seas; Jerry was a locomotive with a bug on his windshield. He slammed Rex, back first into the white pillar of the oddity museum across the way. A section of the roof’s overhang crashed down onto the pavement behind them and dust flared as if a witch was arriving.
Jerry followed up with punches to the gut and Rex heaved over, and as if he’d never felt any, Rex’s face projected pain, as well stomach-imploding surprise. After Rex was deflated of his gasses Jerry grabbed his sides as though he had handles, and raised the thin man into the air. He turned him around, glaring into Rex’s shocked, black marbles for eyes; his had become possessed emeralds. Jerry engaged his arms, and as if he was doing a 100-mph push-up, straight up, he sent Rex flying like an ejection seat sends a pilot. The stunned officer came down soon enough, meeting an uppercut that sent him across Main.
But, Rex got up. And quickly he recovered; shredding asphalt, he’d become red himself. Like a gun’s firing pin, he slammed into Jerry, sending the big man into the crowd like a BB into a haystack. The crowd was a sponge and pushed back as if Jerry had performed a stage dive, and Jerry bounced to his feet. Before he could reengage, Rex unleashed his punches. To the gut, to the face, left-right and up-down; the hits were a jackhammer blur—but Jerry was steel! And Rex began to slow. Like a film projector that had eaten a bolt of lightning, its energy depleting rapidly, smoking, breaking down, Rex’s fisting fury became visible again such as a normal mortal. Jerry raised the neatly dressed, decrepit mini-boxer into the air once again and shook him as if he had a grudge with a doll, then swung again. He followed up precisely, over and over and over, and the crowd gasped. Cheering erupted and many sent long-deserved acrimony to the officers guarding the perimeter.
Orders of, “Try anything and it’s the underworld for a month,” went round. Some red-suits said, “It can’t be.” Then Rolfe said, “Hold on, Rex, we’re coming!”
Jerry’s motions appeared as a blur, just like the officers! He was molten red and now obviously larger in size, with determined, fiery green eyes. His curly hair and beard burned like light-bulb filaments. And the crowd exploded with cheers of joy. The fighting was a blur of motion but everyone could tell, Jerry was winning this!
“Destroy him, Jerry!” and, “Send him down there!” and, “Jerry’s hammer, I knew it!” erupted from the crowd.
“You can do it, my love,” Carmen said quietly, as if sending him her thoughts. “I believe in you no matter what happens, forever.” She squeezed her fists tight and held passionately tense.
Then Jake arrived. As inelegant as a confused, drunken elephant, he squeezed his way toward the front. Stupefaction slapped the big black fisherman as he became a new witness to the event.
Jerry turned Rex’s face into a blob of red-yellow mush with a bit of green and gray in the form of slime and noodles; the head fell back and Jerry shook him straight, as if to wake him, then kept on pounding. Cheers reached a precipice, then the officers, leering at the sight of their leader getting demolished, stepped in. They became lightning and surrounded Jerry like blinding white ants on rails. Rolfe grabbed Jerry’s punishing fist and stopped it in midair.
“Aaaah!” Rolfe yelled, then released quickly. His fingers had just been scalded by Jerry’s molten skin. He erupted with pent frustration, “Get him now!”
The officers, blurring with speed, ran around Jerry. They dashed about, punching, kicking, maneuvering wildly with bizarre in-and-out tactics—and soon, they brought Jerry to his knees. Rex fell limp onto the street.
There were just too many.
Others who’d been guarding the perimeter of humans ran around in a circle, fast enough to make an impenetrable force field. They collaborated like a collective and a fire extinguisher was called for. An inside officer caught it with one hand and they used it on Jerry simultaneously, alongside the nonstop, relentless attacks.
After the pounding, which soon penetrated his molten metal skin, Jerry’s face became bloodied. They unloaded the contents of six fire extinguishers then beat him with the empty tanks, and Rex was dragged away from the chaos. A horde of twenty officers managed to subdue the now somewhat cooled and powdered white giant. Jerry’s blood mixed with the powder and quickly he was blotchy red-white. Where they had a grip on him hands sizzled, releasing the noisome odor of burning flesh, but now the consequences were elevated to level do or die: restrain this anomaly or lose control forever. They would not, could not, release him.
Rolfe stepped aside, meting orders to several of the officers. They held Jerry tight with their combined power, overcoming his extraordinary might, and guarded the citizens with utmost importance.
“You might win once, a small meaningless victory, but you’ll never truly win,” Rolfe said, loudly addressing the crowd. “He put on a good show and now he will be rewarded for his efforts. One year in the underworld.” The townspeople gasped. He turned to Jerry. “We’ll watch over your girl, meanwhile. I promise, each and every one of us will take a turn, we’ll all take very good care of her, big, stupid man, yes, I promise you that.” Rolfe laughed. Jerry jerked, covered with powder but still rage red. Ten officers held him but even his newfound might was at a disadvantage.
The once overjoyed laughter had turned to sobs and meek cries.
“I told him to—”
“Shut up, Pat,” Carmen said. She wasn’t sobbing. Silent words left her lips as she stared at her man, proudly. “I love you.” Huffing, bound tight, Jerry’s swollen, but still bright green eyes met hers in a moment of inflamed passion.
The frenzy was put to rest. Officers held the circle as they’d done during the fight and fear mongering quickly resumed by those who created the red-suit fence. Animosity blared both ways.
“Now, everyone stay put. The show isn’t quite finished,” Rolfe continued, “we’re going to demonstrate what happens to those who do not obey. And,
oh yes, we can do much better than the beasts with their archaic tools and ludicrous games. We’re going to show consequently, just how terrible things can really be, right here in good ol’ Midtown.” Rolfe moved within mere inches of Jerry’s face. Jerry jerked violently. Rolfe was tall, but still shorter than the giant. And he felt the heated air spewing from Jerry’s mouth, and with it, the rage and hatred toward him and all officers alike. “What do you say, you big joke,” he said quietly, “time to put out your fire once and for all.”
“Yo, man, why don’t you just leave the brother alone!” Jake yelled. Quickly, officers converged on the thickest black man anyone had ever seen. Jake looked like a short bodybuilder that had returned from a fishing adventure. Then realization set in. Faces lit with surprise; he was a new arrival!
“Ah, bring him here,” Rolfe demanded. His eyes widened at the sight: a new citizen! Four officers took the massive man by his boulder shoulders and brought him over. “Been a long time since we’ve had—” He looked about. “How many other new citizens do we have here?”
A breeze stirred, away from the fight and up the road, swirling toward the top of the hill. The wind went into an alley and brushed up against a tarnished green dumpster. Inside were white bags of garbage with plenty of holes; several curious critters were picking at them. The air above a box of bananas swirled, disturbing dust from a discarded, cracked-open vacuum bag. The rat-like creatures halted their nibbling, raised their heads, sniffed, then scurried out and away.
57. The Blaze
Two officers escorted Jake to the center of the hollow where Jerry was being held hostage. Rolfe brought his clammy, thin-skinned face close to the truck of a man as if to smell the new arrival; his thin nose flared, taking in a whiff. Jake held still and his eyes moved about. Like Rex and the other officers, Rolfe had loose, old-lady skin, with high cheek bones and black marbles for eyes; he was barely thicker than his mentor, Rex, but taller—and at least six inches taller than the truck standing before him.
