by Mark Tiro
“They’re gone! They’re both gone! He’s gotten rid of both of them!”
And then I smelled it, too.
It was some sort of burning smell. It was coming up from under the theatre, I think, and it was unmistakable now.
It smelled like a gas leak. It smelled like the gas leak that had leveled Katie’s neighborhood. Maybe it was just some loose wiring, or an old pile of wood that had caught on fire, I told myself. But it was filling the air now. Quickly.
The smell seemed to shift now, to something else. The burning smell, it wasn’t a gas leak anymore. Now it smelled more like… what? What was that smell?
“It’s sulfur!” someone shouted from the audience. Then others jumped in. “He’s conjured up the devil!” Another voice yelled, “He’s a sorcerer! It’s not magic—it’s witchcraft!”
Sulfur. Filling the air everywhere now, I could smell nothing but burning sulfur.
Just then, someone ran in. Maybe it was a fireman. A fireman or a policeman, I think. “Everybody get out. Evacuate now!” he shouted. “That’s an order.”
And then he turned to the man next to him, who was also in a uniform. I could see clearer now. They were both policemen. Now the lights in the place came up. Now it was clear. Smoke was rising everywhere, beginning to fill the space.
“That’s him,” one of the policemen shouted, pointing at me. “That’s the one who killed those two girls and started the fire. Arrest him!”
I looked around, but no one else was there except me.
I was starting to panic. Where were they? Where was Katie?
Worse.
What had I done to Angel? What had I done to both of them?
It must be bad. God—I didn’t mean this. I didn’t mean for any of this. A heavy cloak of guilt began to close in on me. I felt terrible.
Had I killed them both? Had I done this?
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…” I said the words, over and over. But no one heard me. It was impossible to hear much of anything over all the noise and confusion as everyone rushed to get out before the smoke and fire engulfed the place.
The policemen were running down the aisle now. And more of them were starting toward me now, down the second aisle.
I tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t. I was starting to panic.
I turned to run. I started to run. If I didn’t run, if I didn’t get away now, they would get me. They would find me. They would kill me.
It would find me.
Not just the policemen were closing in on me now. I knew what I had done. I had killed them both, burned them up like kindling. My own guilt was barreling down on me now, too. The dark truth of what I had just done was closing in on me.
And I deserved it. I deserved to be killed. I had wanted to get rid of Angel. Had I killed her instead? And Katie, too? Had I killed them both? A bitter taste filled my mouth—in addition to the rising smoke from the flames that were now raging all around the theatre. I had murdered Katie. I hadn’t meant to, but I had done it. Like the fire raging around me, I was raging now, too—burning with anger at myself. I had done this! I had killed my best friend and her whole family, and probably most of the rest of the people in her neighborhood, too. A sick feeling rose up in my stomach. How many other people had I murdered? How many other families had I wiped out, too? How many dead babies were there because of me?
I was responsible. Me and this magic list.
This stupid magic list.
And so I turned. I turned, and I tried to run as fast as I could.
I turned and… fell.
I tripped headfirst.
As I picked my head up from the floor, I saw it sprawled out there, on the floor directly in front of me.
The list.
My list.
I felt my head throb inside, then flare and roar! I hate this magic list!
I hate it. I want nothing to do with it. I wish I had never gotten it!
And still—there it lay in front of me as I was splayed out on my stomach. The police were almost here, almost to the part of the stage where I had fallen. I saw one of them begin to pull out a gun. And maybe even worse—I caught the eyes of a second policeman and saw something that made me shudder even worse. In his eyes was a look of pure contempt… pure hatred.
He intended to kill me.
As the first policeman started to bound up the stairs, I grabbed at the list. It was reflexive, but it was also the only thing I could do. I tore the pad of paper open as quickly as I could. Then I pulled out the pen and tore off the cap.
“Don’t move!” I heard a voice shout. “Keep your hands where we can see them!”
I didn’t see where the voice was coming from. The smoke from the fire was thick now. I could barely make out anything except this damn cursed list in front of me.
Aaarrrgghhh!
Just as I heard the footsteps of the second cop, I caught a glimpse through the smoke. I watched in horror as the second cop began to raise up his gun toward me. Suddenly though, a thick veil of smoke gust up, moving in and filling the space between us. The smoke rolled toward me, filling the entire stage are now.
It was cover. As I heard the cops start coughing from the smoke, I knew this cover from the smoke was my one chance. I was certain any second, I would feel a rush bullets pierce the veil of smoke.
I was still splayed out on the ground. I grabbed the pad and pen and clutched them both tight. I rolled over as quickly as I could, to get away from the spot the police had last seen me.
That’s when the barrage of bullets poured into the spot where I had just been.
But I had rolled over. And I had already put my pen to the paper, writing “#13” just after the last entry I had made. But as the bullets ricocheted around me, I had instinctively pulled my arms up, off the pad, throwing them over my head to cover it.
I hadn’t finished my entry on the list.
The last thing I saw after this was the second cop raise his gun. Again. Now he re-aimed, this time, more slowly. With a murderous look in his eyes that left no room for doubt, he raised up his gun and pointed it directly at me. This time, he would not miss. This time was the end. I knew it, and I braced myself, waiting… expecting to feel his bullet pierce my flesh.
But it didn’t. Maybe his gun jammed, I don’t know. Maybe he shot but an instant too late. Ignorance really is bliss—because in my last gasp, under where I had already written #13, I thrust my pen back down onto the paper. Using every last ounce of focus, I managed to scribble just one word.
And then… it was done.
20
Twenty
I felt the familiar pop in my ears, that now-subtle change in pressure, and then…
“Help?”
I was off-balance, like I’d just woken up from a deep nap. When everything at last seemed to slow down, to come back into focus, who else would I expect to see? Of course it was him. David.
“’Help’ was the best you could think of to write down?” he asked. “Just one word to work with? You didn’t maybe want to be a little more specific?”
I started to stammer a response, but after everything that had happened, I was just too exhausted to answer.
And so I didn’t.
Which didn’t seem to faze him in the least. He just went right on talking like nothing had happened.
“And anyway, I thought you didn’t want to use this list anymore, no? I thought you were done with it?”
David. Him. Always here, always next to me.
I couldn’t help but respond to this. I blurted out, “Did you see what happened? I was about to die? I had no choice—they were shooting at me!”
“I’m glad to see you!” he beamed, as if we were taking a stroll in the park and neither of us had a care in the world.
“I’m glad to see you too!”
And just like that, we were floating down that endless, wall-less tunnel to infinity.
Just like that.
“Couldn’t you change all t
his for me, David?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just stop this? Why do you sit there and make me suffer?”
He glanced down at the pad and pen I was holding. The pen was now lacking its cap, while the list was slightly scorched and smelled more than a little bit like smoke.
“Why don’t you stop this?” he asked me. “You hold all power under heaven and earth in the palm of your hand.”
“I hate this list!” I roared back. “I don’t want anything else to do with it! I want nothing other than to destroy this stupid list.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve had this thought, now, is it?”
“Well, yes… er, I mean—no,” I said. “No, it’s not.” I stopped, remembering all the times this list had not worked out like I’d expected. There were lots of them.
“But this time in the theatre was different,” I snapped back, more than a little defensively. “It was an emergency. I needed to use that list. I needed it to get me out of there… before I died.”
“I thought whatever you made happen with that list wasn’t real? You told me that yourself, no? I mean—if you were just in that theatre because of something you’d written on your list, and if, like you said—it wasn’t real, then did you ever stop to ask yourself, ‘What does it matter if I die?’ If it’s not real—if it’s all just a dream—then what possible harm could come from you dying in your dream? What do you care if a cop puts a bullet through your body if it’s just a dream body? If that dream body only exists in your mind?”
“But the fire was closing in on me. I didn’t want to be burned alive,” I told him.
“What, you can’t take the heat? You’re more of a cold weather girl, would you say?”
“And that’s something else!” I shot back. “I wasn’t even a girl! And no—I do not want to be burned alive, or die in a hail of bullets, even if it’s just a dream.”
“You can have, or be, or do anything you want. Anything. Or nothing—it’s all your choice. Because none of your world is real. Including this thing—this body—you believe is you. It is all a dream. All of it. An illusion. A projection.”
He was more emphatic than I could remember in, well—ever. He said the words with such force, with such conviction, that I couldn’t help but let them sink in.
And then I remembered Katie being dead, and the fireworks that were really a gas explosion. I remembered Angel. I remembered all of it. It all came flooding back.
“What about Katie?” I asked as soon as the memories flooded back. As they did, I completely forgot the point he’d been making just an instant before. “Why did she have to die? And her whole family? And Angel too—I don’t even know where to begin. Why?”
I braced myself for a rebuke. I thought he might get mad.
He didn’t.
He just smiled gently, like a man without a care in the world. He was calm, peaceful. I felt my anger begin to dissipate and disappear… which is what made it all the more jarring when I heard his last words.
“Maya!”
“Yes? What is it—”
“Have you heard nothing I’ve said?”
21
Twenty-One
It was a long while until I ventured to open my mouth again. But I finally did. Despite his words, I felt only kindness, only love emanating from him.
“So if I can do anything with this list, but if it’s all just illusions—”
“A projection.”
“A projection, yes. Thank you. So, tell me—is magic real then?”
“Magic?” he answered, with that same gentle smile. “Well, if by magic you mean a love that can’t be changed or hurt or affected at all by the world—then yes. Magic is real. All of it. And in that, you’ll find your world is magical indeed.”
“I’m not sure that’s what I meant,” I said. “But please, go on.”
“Okay, then. If by magic you mean a special power to change the world as you alone decide it should be, then you’ll find that the world is a bitter illusion indeed. At times, it will seem pleasant and sweet to your liking, but at other times, you’ll believe you’ve been trapped in a cold, cruel prison. And it’s an unstable one at that. One moment your world will seem solid and stable and dependable. The next moment, however, it will change, seemingly at random. In a heartbeat, you’ll find that the world you believed was stable, solid and true has now changed—completely unpredictably—leaving you in despair, tired, sick, and completely adrift but for the bitterness of your tears. And in the end, no matter which world you believe you’re living in, you’ll end up dead and dying—wishing with your last breath that the pain would simply stop.”
“That’s definitely not what I meant.”
“I know,” he smiled softly, jarring me back out of this apocalyptic horror show and back into the loving balm I felt whenever I was in his presence. “That’s why it’s important to gently return your mind to reality—to not let yourself get caught up in the ever-changing fortunes of the world and all the machinations of illusions.”
“So you want to get rid of your list, do you?”
I eyed him suspiciously. I knew a trick question when I heard one.
“After I get back home and everything goes back to normal,” I hedged. “Yes. I do.”
“But this list is magic, no?”
I could swear I saw just the faintest flash of a grin. But when I looked closer, he looked serious.
“This list—it has the power to give you anything you want, right? You can make anything you want come true just by writing it down?”
I was starting to get nervous now. He knew the answers to his questions, so why was he even asking them? Maybe I should just hold on to the list and not destroy it? That way, I could just stop using it but keep it around… just in case of emergency. Kind of like, ‘in case of emergency, break glass’. For me, though, instead of ‘break glass,’ it would be ‘use list.’
“And you just want to throw all that power away?” he went on, seemingly oblivious to my mind wandering. “Are you really ready to tear it up, to get rid of it? The list has worked well for you, no?”
“No. Not well.”
“But it’s worked for you, hasn’t it? I mean, hasn’t everything on your list come true?”
“But it’s not making me happy!”
He looked quizzical, like he really didn’t understand. I knew this look. It was how the science teacher had looked once when this really smart kid had asked him a question that he didn’t know the answer to.
“I don’t understand,” he started slowly. “You thought… you thought that getting anything you want would make you happy?”
“Okay,” he started, “let me ask you a hypothetical. If you had all power to do anything in the world, to make anything you want happen, knowing everything you now know…”
I cut him off.
“You mean—if I had the list? But I do have the list. That’s not a hypothetical. I can have anything I want.” I blurted out. Then I reflected a little more, and went on. “But with everything that’s happened, with everything I know—I would definitely use the list only for good. Well, of course I would. I mean, there’s so much that’s wrong in the world, so much that’s not fair.”
“You would use it to fight injustice, then?”
“Yes! Exactly that! I would fight injustice, things that aren’t fair in the world. I would try to help people. Yes!”
I was excited now, a mist of ideas flickering and swirling around my mind, a myriad of possibilities ready to spring to life. And so I kept going with my answer. “But first I would undo all the damage I’ve done with the list so far. Bring Katie and Angel back to life.”
He raised an eyebrow at this, but didn’t say anything. I ignored him anyway and kept going.
The instant I remembered Angel, though, and what had happened with Katie, I got really mad.
I remembered all the pain. That’s what I saw now. Just pain. Only bad things. I got so mad.
Enough is enough!
I d
ecided to write down everything I ever wanted to have on the list, one time—one last time. Now. And then when I was done—I would destroy it forever. It never really worked like it was supposed to anyway. And it never really made me happy.
Final answer.
I’d get rid of this list, once and for all. But first, I would make everything right. I’d fill up those pages, putting everything back just like it was. Just like it should be. And as soon as I was done, I’d destroy this cursed list once and for all. Forever. That way, everything would be like it should be. And everything would stay that way, too.
I felt a nervous excitement in the pit of my stomach as I pulled open the pad of paper. I was manic now—somewhere between frenzied and frantic. This was it, my one way out of this terrible box the list had trapped me in.
And so I opened it and began to write.
I wrote, starting with #14. “Nothing I write down happens until I finish my last entry on this list.”
Even with that, I was still very careful. As I started to write, I made sure to list out everything clearly and slowly—lest the power of its magic whisk me off on any more half-brained adventures.
I wrote, filling up my list.
I wrote, and I wrote.
And then, I wrote some more.
I wrote to put things right about the past. And I wrote to make things right about the future. I wrote about what I wanted to happen, and I wrote about what I didn’t want to happen.
I wrote so much that my hand became invisible, flying every which way across the pages. Everything became a blur.
By the end of my list, I was in a haze. I could barely read my own writing, or anything I’d scrawled onto that magic pad of paper.
Its time was fast coming to an end now. It wasn’t so much the list or my writing that was a blur, as much as it was the entire reality around me. Just as I was about to pick up my pen and put down the paper for what I knew would be the final time, one last thought came to me.
It was just something I’d forgotten, a little thing. Compared to the problems and injustices—the wrongs—of the world I’d just decided to dedicate my life to righting, this was just one little thing I thought to throw onto my list before I closed it one last time and then destroyed it forever.
