Bright Star

by Grayson Reyes-Cole

  “You understand now,” Bright Star said to him. “You are the savior.”

  “Savior?” he questioned softly. “Savior?” He raised his hands from his sides and rose higher into the air. “I am no one’s savior.” Rush frowned. “I am no one.”

  “Why do you fight it so much?” The question came in a broken voice. Bright Star’s blue gaze lit Rush’s face.

  “I’m not fighting for anything more than the right to be left alone,” Rush told her.

  “It’s not that simple, Rush, and you know it.” Her words, while strong, cracked with her wavering voice. “You can’t be left alone. You have a duty.”

  “I don’t,” Rush snapped. He raked his hands over his face. “I don’t have a duty. I don’t have a responsibility.”

  Bright Star opened her mouth to respond. She closed it again as she considered her next words carefully. “Rush, you have a gift. But this gift is not yours alone. It was given to the world through you. You were given to the world. Your power was not meant to be squandered or neglected. It was meant to be used and used for all of our benefits. Your gift surpasses any other’s ability. Your gift was meant to shift, change, sculpt, and remake the world. Your gift was meant to save the world. That is your destiny. No denial you make will ever change that. You will save the world and accepting that could save even more lives.”

  “No, Bright Star,” Rush returned. “I will tell you what can save lives. Lives can be saved if you would just ask those people to stop hurting themselves and everyone around them. You can ask them to stop putting themselves in harm’s way. Lives can be saved if you just give up this precognitive conjecture. You have to save them. I won’t warn you again.”

  Maternal Instinct

  The pressure was going to kill him.

  Jackson sat at his desk with his hands pressed over his eyes. They couldn’t go on this way. Not one more day. Not one more minute did he think he could live in that house perpetually being stalked by death. Each moment was a waiting game now to find out how many more Followers would move into their home. What new way would Bright Star use to demand Rush’s attention while Jackson hurt each time he saw her and the continual pain she faced. She hadn’t tried in months. But that couldn’t last.

  The pressure was going to kill him.

  That morning when he had decided to come back to the SHQ, he witnessed Dr. Randall Sandoval in the observatory talking quietly with the two attendants. He’d greeted them as always, but unlike any other time, he noticed the thin strips of yellow fabric tied around each of their wrists, including Sandoval’s. He’d seen it before. He couldn’t believe that he was seeing it then.

  Followers.

  He was speechless. He retreated. He had no answers.

  Jackson thought of his mother. He thought of the tape that he had played so many times. That last one she had filmed just for him. For the first time, he considered the fact she had not made such a gesture for Rush. But then, she hadn’t had to, had she? Janie would have known that Rush would be able to keep her close to him in a much more significant way.

  He thought about not pushing the button, but like every other time in his life when he had been lost, he pushed it anyway. He could feel the familiar tightening in his chest, the swelling at the back of his throat when he saw her. She was smiling, but she still looked sick as all hell. Janie Smothers-Rush. His mother, their mother.

  Her curly brown hair hung limp and damp around her face. She swatted at it many times, but it still managed to affix itself to her cheeks and forehead.

  The tape started in the middle. It always did. Their dad had been trying to tape something else and ended up clipping the first part. He’d been sorry. He’d apologized profusely. Janie and Jackson had forgiven him for it. “My miracle boy,” Janie said, smiling wide. “I didn’t know you were coming, didn’t even know I could have another child, but I was so happy when I found out about you. Of course, I worried about your father, how he was going to take it. And I worried about Jacob. But I wanted you desperately. I guess I knew that you were going to be special. Remember, there’s no surprising me,” she kidded. “Well, baby, when it was time for you to come, I was at home with Jacob and no one was answering the phone. Not your dad, not your aunt, not Grampa Ned. No one. So I had to dress your brother, buckle him up and drive us both to the hospital.

  “Your brother was so quiet, so calm. It’s like he knew, too, that you were going to be special. He was just waiting for you patiently.” She paused to take a ragged breath and lie back against her pillows for a moment. Only a moment. Shortly after, she leaned forward again and continued, “When we got to the hospital, the nurses took Jacob away and left me into that awful white room where we were supposed to get ready for you.

  “Jack, baby, I barely showed when I had you. You were a tiny, tiny, still thing inside me. I fretted for months and months because I thought something was wrong with you. The doctors wouldn’t tell me anything. I think they just saw my… my history, and figured that I couldn’t be trusted with any information. They didn’t even talk to me. They would only go outside with your Dad and whisper. Sometimes I tried to talk to him, but it made me so tired. But that isn’t important. He would always come back in and tell me there was nothing to worry about. I never pressed him. I didn’t believe anything could be wrong with my perfect boy.”

  Jackson could feel the tears starting in his eyes. He was a grown man. He had seen this film so many times before. It wasn’t even the last of his mother’s video letters, but it was the one he watched every single day he came to work. Never at home because he just didn’t know how Rush would react if he ever saw him watching these films. Still, it was bringing tears to his eyes as if it had been the first time.

  And in that instant, he thought of Bright Star. She and his mother were so alike and yet so different. They both were devoted to the men in their lives. Janie had been devoted to her miracle boy and so was Bright Star. Bright Star fought for what she believed in no matter what anyone had to say. Bright Star would fight for death, but Jackson knew she would fight for life just as hard.

  Jackson wiped his eyes and continued to listen to his mother.

  “When it was time for you to come, the doctors just kept shaking their heads. They kept saying you were not helping them. You didn’t want to come out. They thought you were going to die, baby. They thought you wouldn’t be strong enough. Can you believe that?” She grinned directly at him. “You of all babies. The strongest and most fearless little boy there ever was, and they thought you weren’t going to make it.

  “I was at my wits’ end, you know. Your Dad wouldn’t come in the room. He just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t.”

  Always an excuse for him, Jackson thought bitterly as he did every time.

  “I remember thinking then that if I couldn’t have you, then I didn’t want to go on living, either.” She looked away from the camera. She was embarrassed to admit it. Jackson could never believe that she had. Not when her mental stability had been called into question so very many times. “Then, your brother was there. My little, sad black-haired boy was there. He was screaming as the nurses tried to shoo him away. But he came back. He came back and he hugged me and laid his little cheek and little hand against my stomach. I thought the nurses would stop him, but no, they seemed frozen in shock. He closed his eyes and I knew he felt the same way I did. He didn’t want to go on either if you didn’t make it.

  “But then, sweetie, I felt your tiny body move. Right there inside of me you moved. You moved, and you kicked, and you fought your way out. I remember hearing you cry that first time. I knew any baby who could cry like that would have to have the very healthiest lungs ever. You were only two pounds six ounces when you were born, Jack, but God, you were healthier than any little baby they’d ever seen…”

  And she kept talking. But, Jackson was no longer listening. It was unnecessary anyway. He knew each of her next words. What mattered more was that now he knew what those words truly meant. He kn
ew.

  *

  Jackson swiped his badge against the reader, waited for the light to turn yellow, then spoke a complicated series of letters, numbers, and whole words in three distinctly different, non-derivative languages. He also exerted a controlled amount of High Energy. The light turned green and he opened the door. When he stepped inside the decon cell, short bursts of air puffed at him for 90 full seconds. Then sound waves bounced against him. He could almost hear the very low tones. Then, an inner door opened.

  Sense Dep

  Unlike when Destroy and Harm submerged him, Jackson was prepared this time.

  Breathing is the most difficult part. First, you have to psych yourself up to even get into the tube. Even though the warm pink jelly is comforting and womb like, the thought of what you have to do makes it almost impossible to get in. Then you have go under. Most guys, even after years in the service, have to be forced under with the sliding lid. It closes over the head, then presses down several inches until all air is one hundred percent displaced. Either breathe in the gel, or panic and die. That first breath of the gelatin makes you swipe at your nose. It gets in your throat and you try to cough but opening your mouth just lets more in. You convulse and bend and snap. You swirl and flail in the near liquid, though your movements seem lethargic and fruitless.

  Then you want to die. It’s what happens at the start. Kill me. That’s what the next thought is after you learn to breathe. You want to die immediately. No one knows why or how the depression sets in so quickly, but you want to die. You think about the times when your heart fills for no reason. Like when you’re at a stop sign just waiting for the mercy of someone in through traffic to grant you grace. Save your life. And there is eye contact. Quick and serious. Eye contact. And there is a pressing of the brakes that you can’t see, but you can feel even before the car begins to slow. She is going to let you pass when she doesn’t have to. She is a comrade. She is a grantor of an extended and beautified life. Your heart is stupidly filled. Whomp! Stupidly filled. You go back to the idea of breathing and you think that you want to stop breathing. You can’t.

  Once you start to breathe you can never stop until the squids come. They lie on your chest and spread electrical tentacles. Your chest gets sore as they suck the will to die from within you. They are not squid for everyone. Sometimes they are octopi spiders, leeches, diamond mines and vacuum cleaners. A heart and tubes that sprout from it, stretching and seeking the heart that is nothing without them. The crying is next. Always crying. You still want to die. And you do know why, but you don’t know why. You have family. A mother a father and a brother who is dead to you. Dead as he has been given away. He’s an orphan… no, he is a soldier sacrifice. The parents give the strong over to the fight. He must protect. He is the placenta that was never ejected from the mother’s body and still calls to the child. Then rational thought comes. Sensory Deprivation is an über placebo. No one needs to die. Delirium doesn’t need to set in. Five times three is fifteen again. Envy Defy Envy Defy. Bionic moving parts and her wet sex. Stupid filled heart. Stupid filled dick. High Energy. Shift. Skateboards eating souls. Free in the street Death will come for you. Stick in her. That’s it. Oh God. Oh God. He wants to die again. I want to die again. Sense Dep. Sense Dep. Sense Dep. Sense Dep. Sense Dep.

  Black.

  Black.

  Black.

  Primordial. Stamen Pistol. Liver Heart. You understand organ. Organ. You want to get to your liver. You want to look at it from when it is bright burgundy, until it is dark rust blood dead. You want to slice into it and see if it looks the same all the way through. You want to eat it and watch what happens in your opened chest.

  Black

  Black

  Red

  Green

  Blue

  Yellow

  Blue

  Yellow

  Blue

  Faulty wiring, the phrase that pays. Ionic. Corinthian. Doric. Doric and Athena. Elements discovered. Heavy viscous. Summer leaves will still die. 36R 4L 12R. Stop me. Kiss the ball. Side pocket. Fly me. Fly me. What more do you want, mother? Why do your eyes come out of your head and follow me home. I’ll put them back in. I swear I will. I am seeing red. It is hazy and green.

  Have to find it. I know where it is. You have to go with it. No? Then you must die. Never an easier choice.

  Precocial. Thunder shakes the room every day, but today the thunder recognizes her. He knows her and knows that she has to come back. He gives her an ultimatum: come back or die.

  Bright Star is there in his dream. She is wearing the feathers and palm fronds of a daughter of Destruction. The flowers, leaves and vines curling around her lush, cream white body. She dances for him and she chants. Her song is about Destruction as Creation. Her song is about Guard and how he cannot be lost to her. Her song is about protection and rebirth. Her song is about delivery.

  She lowers herself into his lap and wraps long, lithe legs around his hips. The feathered headdress brushes his forehead as she leans toward him. Her body presses to his. She wants to tell him something.

  Bright Star blesses Jackson by leaning in even closer until her lips are against his ear. She begins to whisper to him. The words are soft like petals as they brush the inner skin.

  It is a narration:

  You will never know who his father is. We don’t even know who his mother was before she gave birth to him. She has no parents. She has no childhood. She has no last name. She is a blank before Rush.

  When Jacob Rush is born, there is nothing so eventful as torrential rain, lightning, or thunder. His mother does not strain during her pregnancy and she does not strain during the final moments of it. When he is delivered into the world, she is permeated with calm. But it is not only hers. There is a calm that has never been before. An inhale and a sigh that ends a far-reaching suffocation. A worldly suffocation. Not deadly… amniotic. He—Jacob Rush—already belongs to the world.

  Janie—who never imagined that she would be alone at seventeen with a baby to care for—is trapped in a smoke cloud of despair and responsibility. She wants to love him. She needs to love him, because he is all that she has and she is all that he has.

  She wants to love him. She does. But every time she looks at him the black-eyed baby looks back at her and she is frightened. Jacob never cries. His eyes just follow her. Janie imagines that he is waiting. He is hoping that one day she will lift him and hold him to her just because she wants to and no other reason.

  But she can’t, and she wonders—not for the first time—what this thing is inside of her that prevents her from being normal, from picking up her baby and loving him like normal. Janie has never been normal. It is why Jacob’s father sought her out.

  Each day after he is old enough, Janie picks him up from day care. The place is around the corner from the market where she works. Day care is a necessity. That fact helps Janie to feel better about not paying. She can’t afford it, but the nice lady who keeps Jacob doesn’t know it. She thinks that Janie is the first of the working mothers to pay her every week. Like clockwork, or so she believes.

  Janie hates the powers. Not because they make her different, not because she doesn’t fully understand them, but because they make her sick. Each time she uses them, she gets pains in her head and saliva pools in her mouth. Her stomach cramps and she wants to vomit. The pain is worse, stronger every time. She started to double over with it curling into a tight ball on the floor for hours. Janie is a good girl and she doesn’t use them for bad reasons. She doesn’t know why it still hurts her so much.

  It is at the market that she meets Jackson’s father. She doesn’t remember meeting him, but then, she rarely looks at the people she waits on. She also goes out of her way not to touch them. Janie doesn’t like touching people because sometimes her tightly controlled powers break free anyway with the right stimulus. There is just never any telling. Physical contact always gives her visions of their lives and deepest innermost thoughts. Nine times out of ten they walk a
round functioning every day with an impossible, near unbearable guilt. There is happiness, there is excitement, there is boredom, but there is nothing more powerful than the guilt. And Janie always wants to help them. It’s not a desire, it’s a need. And whenever she helps, she knows it may kill her. But she does when she can and then, the sickness would come.

  With Jackson’s father, she feels none of those things. The first time he touches her, albeit accidentally, she draws back quickly. Startled, she folds her hands together and waits with head bowed for him to place his money on the counter. He does so slowly. She takes it and places his change on the counter as well. He leaves the store. It isn’t until he is long gone that she notices she doesn’t feel sick. Then she notices that her contact with him does not bring unwanted visions or insight into his psyche. He doesn’t make her feel… anything.

  He continues to come into the store and always waits in her line. She still isn’t sure what he looks like because she can’t bring herself to look at him directly. She does know his hands. They are large with broad knuckles and sturdy fingers. They are strong, strong hands.

  In three month’s time, Janie Rush is her new name. Everett has also wanted to change the boy’s name to help eradicate what came before. All anyone has to do is look at Jacob to know that he does not belong to Everett. A fact that Everett himself never forgets. But he still insists on the name change, and the boy with black eyes agrees.

  Jacob becomes obsessed with his new name. He says it over and over again. He wants more than to commit it to memory. He wants to commit it to nature. He wants it to become a part of him. No one but Janie knows how much in those early years Jacob wants to belong to Everett. The desire burns in him like acid every day.