Break the Bastion

by Christopher Rankin

  His father started laughing. “You’ve found the one exceptional woman!” He said.

  “I have.”

  “Just remember one thing,” said his father. “My dad told me this when I was young but I didn’t listen. I just thought he was pissed off at the time. He warned me each and every woman was put here to destroy a good man. It’s where evil comes from, you know. They infect us with it.”

  “Grandpa sounds like a real romantic.”

  “That’s OK,” said Killian. “You’re young. You’ll realize soon.”

  …

  Late that night, Morgan woke to Brian coughing and gasping for breath. The boy’s disease was in a fit of rage. Morgan went to his bedside, wiped some sweat from his face and forehead with a towel, and took out two steroid pills. He helped Brian hold a glass of water to swallow them.

  His little brother swallowed the pills, then his head quickly fell back on the pillow. Brian’s condition made him very weak, but the fatigue that night was particularly bad. He seemed only partially conscious. All the coughing, shivering and sweating had his body severely depleted. His compromised immune system was at war with a particularly nasty opponent, one driving him sicker than perhaps ever before.

  “What’s with all the damned coughing?” grumbled Morgan’s father at the doorway. “The person that makes your lives possible is trying to sleep. Tell that brother of yours,” he said to Morgan, “that he should try a little harder not to cough so much. It’s damn annoying.”

  “He’s sick!” Morgan snapped. “What the hell is he supposed to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Killian, forming a scowl with his droopy face, “maybe the little shit can muffle the coughs into a pillow or something. Maybe he doesn’t need to completely ruin my days and my nights.”

  “Stop it.”

  “He’s passed out. He can’t hear me.”

  “Don’t worry. When I’m eighteen, we’ll both be gone. We won’t bother you anymore. You’ll never see us again.”

  “That’s a few years away. If you don’t watch how you talk to me, neither of you will get to see it.”

  Morgan stood up at the foot of the bed and took a step toward his father. Still six inches shorter, he threw his shoulders back and held himself up like a boxer at weigh-in. His father just stood there, without giving away so much as a millimeter.

  “What are you going to do?” He asked Morgan. “Do you think I’ll hold back one bit just because you’re my son?”

  “I know you won’t.”

  His father leaked out a twisted smile, taking a step back to sit on the edge of the bed. “Boy,” he said. “I almost like your style. You’re just like me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “When I look at you, it’s pretty clear to me that you’re my boy. Don’t get me wrong. That won’t stop me from beating the piss out of you. It’s what helped me. But that brother of yours, he’s not like us.”

  Morgan knew where his father was going with the conversation. This had been going on since before genetic tests were available in Azurton. At Brian’s birth, he had already seemed suspicious of Morgan’s mother.

  While she bled out after Brian was born, he refused to be by her side in the hospital. After her death, he did his best to ignore Brian, leaving everything to Morgan. Although he tried to avoid Brian, Morgan’s father seemed to resent the boy occupying the air space of the house.

  That night, before he left the room, Killian told Morgan, “I didn’t bust my ass for my whole life to take care of some other bastard’s sick kid. I ain’t no cuckold. Boy,” he started to ask, “Do you know what animals do when something like this happens?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Yes, you do,” his father said just before he left.

  Just as the door closed behind him, Morgan saw Strix’s light take over the room. The owl told him, “Don’t worry, Morgan. Brian is fast asleep. He didn’t hear anything.”

  “He isn’t safe.”

  “You’re correct, Morgan. He isn’t safe here.”

  “What can I do?” Morgan asked, sounding frustrated. “I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  “Don’t worry, Morgan. The solution will reveal itself to you.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  Strix said, “We understand you’ve been bonding with Callista. That’s wonderful.”

  Morgan felt a faint trace of a smile on his face. This was the first time he had used those muscles in his face since he left her. He told Strix, “I guess so.”

  “Very good, Morgan. We’re very pleased to hear that. When do you plan to see her again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Love,” Strix went on, “is of much interest to us. Love is something humans simply won’t give up on.” The owl added, “Even at the end of your world.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s ending, Morgan. Everything you’ve ever known. Every conceivable human organization and institution. Every bit of culture and tradition. The days are numbered. You know that. You can’t stem the mighty ocean forever. What’s more is that humans have given up even trying. Of course the end is inevitable.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “The sooner you believe it, the better, Morgan.”

  Morgan looked over to his brother, Brian, who was shivering under the covers and beading sweat on his forehead. He told Strix, “I won’t believe it.”

  “We’re very sorry for this burden,” said Strix, “but Brian’s end is coming soon.”

  “No, it’s not!” Morgan stood up. “He isn’t that sick! He’s not going anywhere!”

  “It’s not his illness that is to be feared,” said Strix. “It’s the world he was brought into. It’s evil, you know. All of it. That’s why it will end. That’s why it needs to end.”

  “Stop,” said Morgan, his eyes starting to fill with tears. “The world is not evil. There may be evil in it, but it’s not ALL bad.”

  “Even love,” said Strix, “is corrupted by this place. Don’t you see, Morgan. It’s gone rotten. All of it. Your brother will actually be spared the worst of this place.”

  “Please stop.”

  “We’re very sorry, Morgan. We know the burden this knowledge is to a human being.”

  “What can I do, Strix? There must be something,” Morgan said, rubbing his palms to his face to wipe the tears.

  “Just let go. The world needs to start over.”

  “Why are you saying this to me? What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “You’ve known for a long time that you’re special. Haven’t you, Morgan?”

  “No, that’s just it! I’m nothing special at all. I’m just a juvenile delinquent! I’ve been thrown out of just about everything except for school and I’ll probably get around to that eventually. I’m not exceptional in any way.”

  “You’re lying of course. That’s what you’ve been taught by everyone around you but you don’t believe that nonsense. You feel the truth, Morgan. You can’t deny it. Be honest. When Doctor Lorrance selected you, there was a part of you that wasn’t surprised. There was part of you, Morgan, that expected the day to come, the day when your destiny begins to reveal itself.”

  …

  Chapter 17

  Lucas the Chrysalis

  For the next several weeks, Morgan visited Callista everyday after school, coming home only in the evening to care for Brian. A few nights, he even went back to see her after he was sure his brother and father were asleep. They spent the time laying outside, kissing and talking about Strix.

  During this time, Morgan felt a growing infatuation with her body, but his hands were held back by her will. It was agony for him but he couldn’t generate desire for anything else. Every time he left her for home or school, he was immediately starving, even for just the smell of the nourishment.

  Callista became his dreamy respite, his only emotional shelter, and she bloomed until she had taken over the soil of his imagination.


  …

  Lucas ran every night. His route up and down the hill became like a worn race track. Through the rain and storms, Strix’s headlights lit the way while the owl cheered him on. He’d gotten stealthy with his exits and his mother didn’t discover his disappearance once. The pills she gave him during these weeks had been almost entirely discarded.

  His body’s swollen, almost gelatinous form, hardened further and the masculine features in his face etched out. The transformation seemed almost supernatural. Slabs of muscle infiltrated his frame and straightened his back. The bald spots on his scalp filled in with healthy black follicles. He no longer had phlegm drowning his lungs and sinuses.

  Near midnight one night, Strix told him to take another course up the hill, all the way to Callista’s neighborhood on top. When he asked Strix why, the owl told him he would find a surprise.

  He stopped running when he got within sight of her house. At that time of night, it was strange to find her outside. She was sitting on the edge of the property with the orange glow of her lit cigarette.

  Lucas approached her, his body steaming sweat into the night air.

  She looked up and in her face, it appeared like he had brought warm relief from something. “You’ve been pretty mysterious lately,” She told him, flicking off some ash from the cigarette. “Morgan and I haven’t seen you much.”

  Lucas, who was still catching his breath, just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Why do you look so different?” She asked him.

  Lucas looked down over his body like the two had just met. “I guess I am different,” he said. “Strix has been helping me.”

  She invited him to sit next to her while she smoked. “I’ll put it out,” she said. “I know it isn’t very becoming.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Lucas, who had turned his focus to the Bastion in the distance.

  “I know I shouldn’t do it. I guess it’s a weakness.”

  “What’s so bad about weakness?” Lucas asked her. “Is being powerful and strong the only worthwhile way to be? Is weakness really so evil?”

  Callista didn’t answer at first. Eventually, she said, “I guess I never thought about it.”

  For a few minutes, they just sat in the grass, looking out to the Bastion while she smoked. Callista was surprised to find the silence comforting. It was as though their minds were going in the same direction and they didn’t need to talk. Lucas brought a kind of tranquility with him.

  Her eyes caught the red beacon on top of the Bastion. It still felt as though the light was beckoning to her.

  After a while, she told him, “Strix told us your father died from Storm Madness.” She exhaled some smoke, saying, “Just like my mom.”

  “He only weighed seventy pounds when he died,” said Lucas. “In the end, he became so scared that it stopped his heart. At least that’s what they told me.”

  “My mom was there and then she was gone,” Callista told him. “She seemed fine for a long time, maybe a little depressed but nothing serious. One night, during a big storm, something set her off. She ran out into the storm and my Dad couldn’t stop her. We think she either drowned or got crushed in the storm. The police never found her body.”

  “Did she say goodbye before she left?”

  “Actually, she did, sort of,” said Callista, appearing surprised. “I never told anyone though, not even my dad or Morgan. She came into my room that night. She’d been crying and her whole body was shaking.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me to run away…far away. She didn’t say why but she seemed scared. So scared. Then she kissed me and left. That was the last time I ever saw her. It’s pretty much the only thing I remember from that time for some reason.”

  “My dad was afraid at the end too,” said Lucas.

  “Of what?”

  “My mother.”

  …

  The following night, Lucas woke to the feeling of the warm orange sun on his face. He expected to find morning but instead the light was coming from Strix. The owl had his eyes and feathers glowing red, white and orange. Outside it was nearly pitch black.

  “Good evening, Lucas,” said Strix. “We hope you found our light show a pleasant way to wake. There is an issue with the experiment that needs your attention.”

  “Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “We’re afraid so, Lucas.”

  “Why?” He asked, letting his eyelids shut back.

  Strix’s eyes blinked and his motors hummed. The owl transformed its voice to Callista’s, saying, “I need your help, Lucas. You’re the only one that can help me.”

  Lucas sat up in bed, wiped his nose and put his feet to the floor. “Why wouldn’t Morgan be able to help?” He asked Strix. “Aren’t they together now?”

  “Unknown,” answered the owl. “However, it’s imperative that you see her at once.”

  He tiptoed past his mother’s room and avoided the spots of hardwood that he knew would creak. Just before he slipped the front door closed, Strix told him to borrow something from his mother’s orchid bench.

  Without asking why, he took two magnifying glasses she used to trim and pollinate her orchids.

  …

  Lucas followed Strix’s directions to the cable car that lifted him to Callista’s house. When he got off, he took the wooded path until he could see the glow of her bedroom window. In the frame, he saw Callista’s silhouette next to two red owl eyes.

  She whispered out her window that the door was unlocked, to come up and be quiet.

  To Lucas, her bedroom seemed like the bridge of a spaceship. Her view of the Bastion was better than any photograph or illustration he had ever seen. The room was larger than five of his bedrooms and it was probably the quietest space he had ever walked into. The absence of ocean hiss was almost alarming.

  “I don’t hear anything up here,” Lucas said to her. “It’s like the ocean is on mute.”

  “My dad did everything he could to insulate the house for ocean sounds, especially my room. The sounds never bother me,” Callista went on. “Sometimes I go outside, close my eyes and just let it fill my head.”

  Lucas turned his attention to something strange out the window.

  “Do you see that?” Lucas asked her as he walked to her floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. “On top of the Bastion. Something is going on inside that dome.”

  “I wish we could see it better,” she said, pressing her face close to the glass. “No matter how much I squint, even with an old set of binoculars I found, it’s still a blur. I asked my dad for a telescope for Christmas but they’re hard to find anymore. No one wants to look out anymore. They either don’t care of they’re too scared.”

  Lucas thought of something: his mother’s magnifying glasses. He took them out of his bag and popped the glass lenses out of the frames. Callista asked him what he was doing but he was so focused that he didn’t answer her right away.

  “It’s true no one builds telescopes anymore,” he told her, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

  Lucas went over to the wall by Callista’s bed, where she had a colorful poster tacked up. It was a map of North America her father had given her when she was a little girl. The Eastern and Western alliances on the coasts were shaded in red and grey. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans had joined in the middle of the continent, splitting the US into two factions.

  He took the poster down and unfurled it on the bed. Callista asked him what he was planning but Lucas was still too focused to answer. He took the lenses from the magnifying glasses and rolled them into the poster paper.

  “The lenses have different focal lengths,” he said after a minute. “If we can get them positioned correctly in the tube…” He fidgeted with the rolled-up poster until he had both lenses where he wanted them. Wrapping the poster tube tighter, he held up one end to his eye. “Viola!” He said.

  “Let me see,” said Callista, trying to grab the makeshift telescope.


  “I built it,” Lucas said, smiling. “I get the first look.”

  He pointed the paper tube out Callista’s window, toward the faint red dome at the top of the Bastion. Everything he saw was upside down. At first the strange building looked like a spot in his eye, burned in from watching a sunset. However, after a few seconds, Lucas made out features of the red dome, a door and huge windows.

  He thought he saw something moving inside.

  “Come on,” said Callista. “Let me see.”

  Lucas ignored her and instead adjusted one of the lenses in the tube. The image sharpened and Lucas could tell that someone was moving inside the dome. There was at least one man up there. The face wasn’t distinct enough to identify. Whoever the strange person was seemed to be painting something at an easel like an artist with a landscape.

  “What is it?” Callista asked him. “What are you seeing?”

  “It’s blurry,” he said, “but someone is definitely in there. It looks like they’re drawing or painting something.”

  “Let me see,” Callista said, pushing her way to the eyepiece of the telescope. She held one eye up.

  The figure in the dome appeared more like an apparition than a man. It seemed to move like a blur, hands moving too fast to see. Callista could see part of what the figure was drawing. It seemed familiar to her.

  The bold blue and green colors reminded her of the glowing sketch she saw in her father’s office, the map. As she stared into the telescope, she started to make out the same features in the figure’s painting. The coastline, the Eastern and Western territories and the Bastion were all there in the background. The lines of light overlaid on top seemed to be something different, perhaps even random.

  “What do you think those colors and dots mean?” She asked Lucas, handing him the telescope. “And what kind of painting lights up like that?”

  Lucas didn’t understand the markings either. “It looks like some kind of advanced highway system running through all the homes,” he said. “There are bright spots too, definitely special markings.”