Furies- Thus Spoke

by O'Brian Gunn

  “I didn’t put much stock in you when I was alive, and now that I’ve met you, I can see why.”

  God pauses in his game to stare at him. “Are you...are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Heavenly chuckle. “I created emotions. Blew them right into you when I breathed life into Adam. Now look how the both of you repay me.” He turns back to his game. “The things children do to their fathers. Ungrateful upstarts. And now you start to ask yourself if I’m exacting my revenge on you through all the world’s turmoil. Take a good long look at what you’ve done to me, done to each other in my name, and ask that question again.”

  “So did you do it?”

  God scans the cards and places a king on top of a queen. “Do what?”

  “Bring me back.”

  A divine shrug. “Right now I’m keeping the world in motion, planting a seed in a woman’s womb, and giving a little girl the ability to walk again...among other things. So many cards in play.” He tilts his head at Giorgio and winks.

  “You have a reputation for being all-knowing, wise. Why did you allow me to live my life as I did? My existence was a waste of breath.”

  “Looks like someone had an epiphany.” He taps a card against his lip in concentration. “I hate the way that word is tossed around these days. Epiphany. Take a word that’s supposed to be about my only begotten son and make it about yourselves.” He looks up. “Oh, me, now I’m doing it. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we look alike.” He takes a card from the deck, plants it on a pile and takes another. “Maybe you squandered your first life so you wouldn’t mess up this one.”

  “You say that like I knew I was going to suddenly die in traffic, wake up in a necrophiliac’s bed, and kill her as she revived me with a kiss.”

  God flicks chartreuse eyes at him and hints at a smile before going back to his game.

  Giorgio stops.

  “Are you trying to tell me that on some level I knew what I was doing, that I knew what was going on in my life and didn’t do anything to stop it because if I had I wouldn’t be here as a living corpse having this conversation with you?”

  “No, Giorgio, that’s not what I’m telling you.”

  “Then, what is it that you are telling me?”

  “Simple, nothing.” He finishes the game, smiles, and gathers the cards. “You, and by you I mean your kind, give me too much credit. I know I’m omnipotent, glorious, astounding, all-giving, wonderful, the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords, but at the end of eternity, I’m just a divine force, the oil that greases the cogs of the universe. I gave you a brain because I knew I’d be sick unto death of thinking for you.” The cards dance and shuffle between his hands in a blur. “Now, what do you think?”

  Giorgio looks out at the field of dead flowers. “I think that I was brought back to get a second chance at life, to take the experiences of the first go-round and use them in this life...death...existence.”

  “Go on.”

  “I did waste my first life, and so do plenty of other people.”

  “And?”

  “And why were people like me born in the first place? Why did you, someone who knows the entirety of our life before we take our first breath, give someone like me the chance to be part of this world? Why put someone like me on the Earth in the first place if you knew who I would be, who I would always be?”

  God raises an eyebrow.

  A leaf twirls down to the grass.

  “You didn’t bring me back to life, did you?”

  God shakes his head.

  “Then who or what did?”

  Music plays in the background Giorgio’s divine manifestation: Chris Cornell’s “Can’t Change Me.”

  God suddenly starts flinging cards away, watching them spin and spiral out. “None of you know what it is just yet. It could be a curse, could be a blessing. Might be a cure, or it might be a disease. Or maybe it’s the next step...could be the last step. Some call it a mistake while others say it’s My will. The curious want to study it and the greedy simply covet it.”

  “So what is it?”

  God stops flicking cards. “I just told you.”

  “You told me nothing!”

  “And nothing must come before something.” God leans his head back against the tree. “But I’ll give you a hint: what you’re looking for isn’t a thing, it’s an entity, one that’s existed even longer than I have.”

  Giorgio waits just one minute here.

  “Many of you don’t realize this, but I have a wife, and it’s she who brought you back. Why, I don’t know. She’s been quite wroth with me these past few eons and refuses to converse with me. But I can still feel her, just as she can still feel me. One phrase keeps bubbling up when she’s near: Alpha-Omega.”

  “I think I’ve heard of that.”

  “You should, it was born in the city in which you died.”

  “Alpha-Omega.”

  “The beginning and the end intertwined as one.” God shudders.

  “Am I ever going to see you again?”

  God holds his hands up. “That’s entirely up to you. For all either of us know, you may live forever, or you may fade tomorrow. But I can tell you that I won’t be visiting your unconsciousness again. Touching a living mind with the barest inch of my essence is enough to drive a person deliciously insane. But you’re different.” He drops a card on Giorgio’s lap as he stands, walking away on a field of dead leaves.

  “Wait.”

  God stops, but doesn’t look back.

  “Who’s your wife?”

  God chuckles. “Nature, of course.” He pats a tree trunk as he continues on, placing a gentle kiss on a bent branch. “She’s going to change the world.”

  Giorgio looks down at the card as God vanishes.

  There’s nothing on it.

  He returns to undead consciousness in a park and finds that the night is almost over. A leaf flutters to the grass. He looks down and sees that the leaf is brown and thin with cracked veins. He sees that the grass around him is dead as well, as is the nearby bed of flowers. Giorgio lurches to his feet and sees that the trunk of the tree is wan gray and brittle. Lifeless.

  Giorgio looks down at his hands.

  They couldn’t be more alive.

  Giorgio looks up at the sky.

  “I don’t know what to make of you. You sit up there and unravel my sanity as I wallow down here having conversations with myself, questioning my behavior, my reason.” He takes up a brittle leaf. “This leaf is dead, and yet it brings life with its death, returning to the earth, enriching it as it takes place in the cycle of nature.” A puff of laughter. “Your wife.” The leaf twists. “Even though she doesn’t say a word, she speaks.” He brings the leaf closer to his ear. “Alpha-Omega, you say? The beginning and the end intertwined as one.”

  He stands to his feet and the leaf flutters from his fingers as he walks. “Where there’s one leaf, several more are sure to be found close by. And when you find the leaves, the tree is sure to follow.”

  Giorgio passes a sign.

  Welcome to Dominion City

  FADE OUT

  Dominion City - Phosphorus Park

  SHE ruffles her hand through his hair as colors from the screen flash across his face. She traces her finger down the line of his nose and over the smooth circumference of the silver ring protruding from the corner of his bottom lip.

  He looks up from her lap. “What?”

  The sides of her generous mouth raise. “Nothing.”

  “Thought Tuesdays were your nights with Rod.” He rubs her arm.

  “He thinks the two of us may be spending too much time together, said it was okay if you and I saw each other more.”

  He shifts on the couch. “He starting to warm up to the idea of being in a polyamorous relationship?”

  “…I think so.”

  He tenses. “The two of you haven’t talked about it?”

  “No, we have. He just doesn’t like to go into detail.”

  “Well, it’s the
details that make this kinda thing work.”

  A commercial blares noisily across the screen.

  “Did you ask him?”

  She picks up the remote and flips channels. “About what?”

  He gently squeezes her wrist. “Jo.”

  “Thomas, it was hard enough for Rod to adjust to you and I dating, now you want me to ask how he feels about being in a threesome with boyfriend number one?” A sigh barrels from her nostrils as she glances at the DVD player, noticing the time. “I’ve got to go.” She kisses him on the mouth. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Jo stands in the doorway as the door swings open, keys jingling softly where they hang out of the lock.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Rod spins at her voice, the folded shirt in his hands forgotten. He notices her noticing the half-packed suitcase. “Jo, you’re um...” He casts his eyes down as he wads the shirt in his hands. “I thought you would be with Thomas all night.”

  Jo steps into the house and repeats herself. “Are you going somewhere?”

  Rod glances down the hall before looking back. “Jo, I can’t do this. I thought I was open-minded enough about the idea of being in a relationship with a woman that has two boyfriends, but I’m not.”

  “So just say that! It’s okay. You don’t have to leave without saying a goddamn word!” She shrugs her purse off her shoulder. “You were just going to pack your shit up, drop some half-assed note, and leave?”

  His jaw goes slack and words fail him. He looks at her feet. “I’m sorry.”

  Her hands ball into fists. “Sorry does not—”

  A door opens at the far end of the hall. “Rod, did you want me to pack your—” The brunette woman looks up from the suit in her arms and stumbles to a stop when she sees Jo glaring at her. Her eyes snap to Rod.

  Jo lowers her voice. “Tell me what the hell this bitch is doing in my house.”

  The bitch draws her thin brows together. “This was my house first.”

  “Which you lost when the two of you got divorced, dumbass!” Jo turns her fury to her boyfriend. “Rod, please tell me you didn’t get back with her.”

  His eyes flutter as he blinks. “No one else would help me pack on such short notice.”

  Jo advances a step. “So you call the cunt who you said ate your heart and shat it out?” A palm slaps her chest. “Explain this to me!”

  The cunt disappears down the hall.

  “Why didn’t you talk to me about this?” Jo braces an arm on the wall. “I told you that it was okay if you didn’t want to do this, that it was fine if you wanted me to spend more time with you. I love you, Rod, I honestly do. I want you to—”

  The brunette walks into the living room with a cooing baby in her arms. “I’ll put Curtis in his car seat.”

  Jo explodes toward the door. “NO!” Her body is a barrier. “You are not taking my son out of this house.”

  “He’s my son, Josephine. My son.” She moves Curtis to her right shoulder. “Move out of my way.”

  “I move when you put him back in his crib.”

  The woman holding the baby looks over her shoulder. “Rod, call them.”

  “Penny, if you just—”

  “Do you want to leave or not?” Penny eyes him.

  Rod reaches for his phone.

  Jo doesn’t move from the doorway. “You’re calling the police? You think they can get here before I beat her skinny ass?”

  “We took the precaution of calling a couple of friends in case you did exactly what you’re doing now. They’re parked down the block.”

  Jo darts for the baby. Penny wrenches him away. “Get away from my son!”

  “You don’t know how to take care of your son! I am more of a provider for him than either of you ever were!”

  Two men walk in through the front door. The one with red hair holds his hands up. “Jo, you need to let Penny through. You don’t want to accidentally hurt Curtis.”

  Jo grabs for the baby. “Don’t let her take Curtis! Please!” Vices masquerading as hands grip her by either arm. She kicks out, struggling to break free, thrashing madly as Penny glides out the door.

  “Jo, stop it!”

  Jo continues to struggle.

  They shove her down to her knees.

  Jo continues to struggle.

  Hands on the back of her neck.

  Jo contin—A peculiar sensation boils through her skull. Heat collects around eyes clenched in fury and threatens to liquefy the gelatinous orbs. She obeys the instinct that commands her to open her eyes. The world blazes neon indigo. Lasers erupt from her eyes and sizzle right through the window.

  “The fuck?” One of the men loosens his hold.

  Curtis wails outside.

  Jo turns her head as the overbearing heat gathers again and is released as her eyes rest at the man on her left.

  Curtis’s wails mix with the jagged scream pouring from the man’s throat as twin lasers lobotomize him.

  The man on her right yells, releases Jo, and flees the house.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Jo squeezes her eyes shut at Rod’s voice. “Shut up, Rod.”

  “But what you just—What was that that came out of your eyes?”

  Her fingers curl into fists. “Rod!”

  “One of those things went right through the window. What if—what—what if you hit—”

  “ROD. SHUT. UP!” Her eyes peel open. Heat spews at Rod.

  Words are jammed in Rod’s throat. He looks down at the hole eaten through his chest. He expected to see more blood and less charred flesh. The crumpled shirt falls from hands he can no longer feel. His knees hit the hardwood. His face is next.

  Jo whimpers with tears rolling from beneath shut lids. “Rod?”

  Silence.

  “Rod!”

  Curtis cries.

  Jo stumbles outside, catching herself on the doorframe, slamming her legs into the porch swing. She stops.

  “Where are you?”

  A fly flicks past her ear.

  The heat presses against her eyes, throbbing at her temples and aching to be released. The wind blows and carries the slight smell of blood twined with baby powder.

  Curtis hiccups and Jo spins her head at the sound, adjusts her aim, and opens her eyes.

  SSSSHHHHHRRRR!

  Penny screams and falls back.

  Jo instantly smashes her eyes shut.

  “Curtis?”

  Nothing.

  “Curtis?”

  More nothing.

  Jo doesn’t dare to open her eyes as she goes down to her knees and searches for the child.

  Her child.

  EPISODE FOUR: In Glass Boxes

  “WHAT’S WRONG?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you okay? I’m not hurting you, am I?”

  “No, Adam, it feels fine.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Nothing, it...it’s just that we’ve been trying to make a baby for a year. And we’ve been in this bed for...three hours now.”

  “It didn’t sound like you weren’t enjoying those three hours.”

  “…I’ve wanted a child of my own to care for ever since I was little. The day I met you, I knew that it was your child I was meant to carry.”

  “So why are we stopping?”

  “I’ve talked about this with an obstetrician. She told me that I’m perfectly healthy, that there’s no reason I shouldn’t be pregnant...especially as much as we’ve been trying lately.”

  “Maggie, what are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you that there’s nothing wrong with my body, Adam.”

  “But you do think there’s something wrong with mine?”

  “I...”

  “You can say it if you think so.”

  “When was the last time you had a physical?”

  “I’m in perfectly good health. If we keep trying, we’ll make a baby.”

  “Adam, we—


  “No, Maggie! We are going to have children. Look at us; Heaven holds us in the palm of its hand. It won’t forsake us now and we won’t forsake it, we can’t. We were meant for each other, we were created for each other.”

  “I’m not saying that’s not true, I’m not. But there are some things you and I can’t control no matter how hard we try. I called Dr. Hannigan and he has an opening on Tuesday.”

  “You what?!”

  “Adam—”

  “I can’t believe that you would—”

  “That I would what, care about you and your health?”

  “Honey, I’m telling you that—”

  “Let the doctor tell you. Let him tell us...together.”

  “…All right. What time?”

  A house of life and death intertwined, where one held the hand of the other, forever swaying, forever joined.

  Bisset grimaces at the paradox as she walks the halls of the Dominion Medical Center, stepping past birth, life, recovery, death, and those leaning in the limbo between. She feels the joy, the pain, the relief, the emptiness, and the despair. She sees the sickness, the cancer, the disease, the anguish, and the decay. She leans against a wall with a hand clutching at her heart.

  “Turn it off.”

  Seraph steps out of the room across from her. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “The hell you can’t.” Her lungs are lazy. “You gave me this...condition, now turn it off.”

  “It wasn’t mine to give, Bisset, only to guide. And it’s not a condition, it’s a blessing.”

  She sucks air through her teeth. “I thought The Dragoness was the one who believed blessings came in the form of suffering, of feeling the woman down the hall take her last breath.”

  The angel in ivory steps forward and takes Bisset’s hand. “Control it, step away from it. Look at me...Bisset, look at me.”

  Her eyes roll up and collide with golden globes.

  “Yes, drown yourself in me.” She clutches Bisset’s hand and watches as her breathing returns to normal. “It’s hard isn’t it? To be the vessel for suffering as well as salvation.”