by Platt, Sean
The Prophet wasn’t just crazy, he was insane. And the Joker’s smile on his face was proof.
It was the same kind of insanity which had moved Boricio from thinking of himself as a stain on the planet to the possible caretaker of its safety. Boricio didn’t know what the vial would do, but knew it could do something terrible, and he could tell by The Prophet’s dancing eyes that he was ready to find out exactly what that meant.
Boricio breathed his way to calm. “Please,” he said. “Don’t do anything with the vial. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Well, that may be true, Son. But that’s why I asked you to tell me,” the old man said. “I tried to make you a part of this, Boricio. Truly, I did.” His voice dropped an octave. “There’s nothing I wanted more. But I could tell ‘round about your third cup of Jack that it was time to prepare a different sort of sermon between us.”
“You can’t do this,” Boricio thrashed against his chains. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know; I’ll help you with your church.” Boricio pleaded. “Whatever you want, as long as I can have that vial back.”
Boricio flashed back to what the serum had done to Rose. The serum he felt he had somehow tainted. What might it do if The Prophet opened it? Would it turn him into a beast, also? Or would it give him abilities as it had done to Luca?
Boricio wasn’t willing to sit back and see what might happen. He had to talk sense into The Prophet.
But how the fuck do you talk sense into the insane?
“The vial is dangerous,” Boricio said. “It killed my girlfriend!”
The Prophet smiled and said, “Did you know that the vial thinks?” the old man said. “I mean truly thinking, no different from you or me? Well,” he smiled. “It’s actually quite different from you and me. All I mean to say is that it knows it’s alive, like we do, and it wants to be more alive, and live longer, just like us. I suppose any one of us breathing can relate to that. Well, I’ll tell you Boricio, I was happy to hear its voice, especially speaking to me so clear the way it did. The way He does. It helped me sort through quite a few of my more pressing mysteries, and now I feel like I’m ready for The Good Lord, which I must confess,” he laughed, “is quite a relief on a day like today.”
The Prophet patted Boricio on the shoulder again, then turned and started toward the stairs.
“Tonight is the night,” he said as he reached the bottom step. “That has been foretold, and there is nothing I can, or would, do to change it. But as I said, Boricio, I believe you were meant for much greater things.” He pulled a set of keys from the hook by the stairway then dangled them in the air. “If you can prove you have a place for Jesus in your heart, I’d be happy to make your wishes come true the next time I’m down here.”
Boricio motioned for the old man to come closer. The Prophet smiled and started walking toward the wall. When he was just a few feet away, Boricio shot a giant ball of saliva right into the old man’s face.
The Prophet lost his smile, then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. He said, “Such a shame,” then shook his head like he’d just seen a puppy shot. “We could’ve done something special together.”
The old man returned the keys to the hook, then creaked his way up the stairs and out of the dungeon.
Boricio was already thinking about Luca before the old man left, but the second he heard the door close above, Boricio closed his eyes and tried to pull his brother to his mind.
Luca.
Nothing.
Luca!
Nothing.
I need you Luca, please. If you can hear me, we all need you. Now.
Nothing.
Boricio remembered Luca’s horrible dreams after he began getting his abilities, back when Will was battering his little brother with test after test. Luca would wake in the middle of the night, sometimes alert and often screaming, on occasion about “The Terrible Scary.”
I’m in the Terrible Scary right now, Luca. I need you to help me.
Boricio was starting to feel a state or two past stupid for trying to speak to his brother when he was a thousand miles away.
But Boricio had seen the kid manage the impossible before.
Luca!
Suddenly, Luca answered.
“Boricio?” His voice didn’t sound like it was in his head. Luca sounded like he was three feet away.
Yes, it’s me. I need your help.
“Where are you?” Luca asked.
I’m in Alabama.
“Alabama! Why are you in Alabama?”
Long story, but I promise I’ll tell it to you. Right now, I need your help.
“What can I do?”
I need you to come get me. Come to where I am. Can you do that?
“I don’t know,” Luca said. “Alabama is far away.”
Not as far as Las Orillas.
“But I know Las Orillas. I used to live there.”
Just think about me. It will work.
Boricio didn’t know if it really would, but was likely dead if it didn’t. And God only knew how many more might die if The Prophet opened up the vial and unleashed a mutant plague on the world.
There was a long silence, and Boricio thought his brother may have disappeared. Just as he was about to call for Luca again, Luca spoke.
“Okay,” he said. This time he sounded even closer.
Boricio opened his eyes and saw Luca standing in front of him, wearing his blue flannel pajamas.
Despite the danger, Boricio couldn’t help but smile. “I missed you,” he said, tears in his eyes.
His brother looked angry. “Is that why you called me?” After a second, Luca added, “I’m using sarcasm.”
“I’m sorry,” Boricio shook his head. “I should’ve called before now, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“You did call, the other day,” Luca said. “Then you hung up on Dad.”
“I’m sorry,” Boricio said to the floor. “Really I am, Luca. But can we talk about it later? I need you to help me right now.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Boricio nodded toward the keys on the wall. “I need you to get those keys and unlock these shackles.” He nudged his nose toward his left wrist, then to his right.
Luca pulled the keys from the hook and unlocked his shackles.
Boricio’s arms fell free. He gently grabbed his brother by the shoulders, lightly spun him around, then looked him in the eyes and said, “I need you to go home, Luca. Okay?”
Luca shook his head. “Not without you.”
“You have to,” Boricio said. “I promise I’ll come home after this is over, but I have to take care of some stuff first, and I need you to leave before I do. Right now, Luca, for your own good. Okay?”
Luca stared at Boricio, his nostrils flaring and mouth pursed into a tiny O.
He shook his head. “You have to come home now. Dad misses you. So do I.”
Boricio felt like time was moving at triple speed.
Luca shook his head no.
“Please, buddy. Do this for me. Just trust me. I promise — on you and Will and Rose and everything I’ve ever loved or will ever love again. I’m on my way home right now, and you can even tell Will I said so. I just have to take care of one thing and then I’ll leave, okay?”
Luca slowly nodded, but didn’t say goodbye. He was simply there and then he wasn’t.
Boricio ran from the basement, then outside into the night, frantically searching for the old man and finding him nowhere. The lights in the church were on. Inside, he could see that church was in session, and realized with a sudden horrible certainty, that the preacher was probably giving a sermon, with the vial as the star.
He ran toward the church, and could hear the old man on the other side of the door. “Then let us open the doors to Heaven and welcome Him back into our world, Amen!”
The chorus of pews sang in reply: “Amen!”
Boricio charged through the doors as the old man opened
the vial. He screamed, “No!” as Boricio charged him.
The vial’s liquid boiled from the top, spilling out and onto the old man’s hand, searing his flesh with an audible sizzle.
The Prophet screamed, but his voice was drowned by thunder crashing outside, followed by several strobing flashes of light, so bright it seemed like lightning was coming from within the church.
Boricio screamed as the world started to shimmer around him.
He fled the church and nearly ran head first into Luca on the other side of the door.
“What are you doing?” Boricio cried.
“I came to get you.”
Boricio had never been so happy to see anyone in his life. He threw his arms around his brother as they both began to disappear.
Luca was gone, and so was he, but they weren’t gone together.
For Boricio, everything went black, and he opened his eyes completely alone on a mountain, far above a city below.
The lights went out all at once as darkness swallowed it all. A second darkness, festering waves of smoke, clouds, or something unlike anything Boricio had ever seen before, spread across the sky, blotting out the moon.
A pair of gigantic ink black tornadoes — as wide as half the city, at least — then reached down from the sky, twisting in a tango of anger, tearing the world by its roots as it spun, then slamming its plunder into mountainous piles, which were peppered across the thrashed landscape.
Darkness had come and there wasn’t a damned thing Boricio could do to stop it from consuming the world.
* * * *
CHAPTER 9 — Boricio Wolfe Part 2
Dunn, Georgia
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…
Boricio’s bald doppelgänger stood on his porch, calmly staring as though he wasn’t a barrel of Mardi Gras beads worth of fucking weird. And with the way Callie was just standing there beside him, it looked like she was agreeing with his side of the story.
“I’m giving you until the count of pre-cum to tell me what in the beer-battered bullshit is going on.” Boricio turned to Callie and jerked his thumb toward the bald fucker beside her.
“Captain Copycat can shove the fat of my fuckstick down his throat and suck on it like it was the sweet inside a Slurpee until he swallows my dishonorable discharge.”
Captain Copycat turned to Callie. “Wow,” he said. “You weren’t kidding.”
Callie shrugged, then smiled at Boricio.
Boricio moved his eyes from the Captain to Callie. “You wanna tell me what in the fuck is going on? Or why you brought a chewed caramel looking version of Boricio, who talks slow enough to make me think he ain’t learned to swallow fast enough to hurry his sentences, not to mention the two love birds behind you. Because this shit is just weird enough to be one of my fucked up dreams. And if we’re in the middle of one of my fucked up dreams, well then I’m apt to all sorts of crazy shit. So tell me, Callie, am I dreaming.”
Callie didn’t answer. She said, “Can we come inside?” instead.
Callie’s calm made Boricio step back from the door. He gestured for the group to come inside without quite knowing why, thinking he would’ve likely killed Callie for the same calm in any one of the sweet minutes before Luca broke him.
Boricio pulled the gun from his belt and waved the pistol, motioning the four of them toward the table.
Captain Copycat turned to the love birds behind him and said, “Leave your guns in the van.”
The one who looked like a sissy didn’t say shit, but the one who looked like he grew up jacking off to Die Hard said, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” then nodded toward Boricio like he was solving a mystery.
The Captain shook his head. “That’s an order.”
“So you have your own team too, eh?” Boricio cackled, then plopped into a chair on his side of the table and held his gun on his twin. “My team is named Team Boricio, what’s yours? If you don’t have a name yet, I’d like to suggest Team Twat Waffles, though of course that’s just a suggestion based on a first blush assessment of your team’s overall potential.”
Captain Copycat ignored Boricio, lowered himself onto the seat across from him, then looked him in the eyes as if he was no scarier than a scratch.
No one had ever held Boricio’s eyes like that before.
“Wanna tell me your name, or should I just keep calling you Captain CumCatcher in my head?”
The fucker then said the unbelievable.
“My name is Boricio, like yours.”
Boricio’s eyes flew to Callie as his fingers tightened around the butt of his gun. “Wanna explain what this fucker’s talking about?” He waved the pistol toward his doppelgänger. “Even if a fucker’s smart enough to look like me, minus his chewed caramel fuck face, there ain’t but one Boricio, at the end of the world.”
Boricio was mostly quiet for the next 15 minutes, perhaps for the first time in as many years, while Callie and the other Boricio brought him up to speed. Die Hard and Wimpy Dick joined the bullshit session, standing at the door while Boricio drifted from disbelief to fascination.
Most of those 15 minutes were spent catching Boricio up on the bare basics rather than the other Boricio’s personal history, but it didn’t take Boricio long to realize that Captain Copycat had enjoyed many benefits that had been ass-raped from Boricio’s life.
Boricio was getting tired of hearing Captain Copycat go on and on, so he interrupted him and asked, “Where the fuck are Charlie and Adam?”
“We were getting to that part,” Callie said.
“Well, you weren’t getting there fast enough.”
Boricio wondered what Mary and the rest of Team Boricio must be thinking upstairs. He wondered how much they could hear, especially since the conversation was fairly muted. He wondered if they knew about, or saw, fugly Boricio.
Even after five minutes, Callie still hadn’t said shit worth saying.
“So,” Boricio repeated, “once again, where the fuck are Charlie and Adam?”
Callie said, “Adam’s dead. He died before we got to Black Mountain. Charlie’s at Black Mountain right now.”
“Why?” Boricio said. “He didn’t want to come to the happy reunion? Or is this not a happy reunion? Let me know if it ain’t, so I can put the ice cream back in the freezer.”
“Charlie’s infected,” she said. “They’re holding him in quarantine so the infection doesn’t spread. They’re trying to help him.” She gestured toward the Captain. “Boricio thinks they’ll be able to cure him. He thinks Charlie will be fine.”
The Captain seemed suddenly impatient. “Where’s Luca?” he said, for the fourth time since coming into Boricio’s home.
Boricio growled, “Why do you need to see Luca?”
The Captain said, “Because he’s my kid brother.”
“How’s that?” he said. “I don’t have a brother. So you wanna tell me why one Little Boricio gets to go to the market and have roast beef, while the other Little Boricio stays home and has none?”
That’s when Boricio remembered what he’d seen when Luca had gone in his head and “fixed him,” the other Boricio as a child — a seemingly happy child, adopted by Will.
The Captain said, “In my world, my father, Will, adopted Luca, just like he adopted me.”
Boricio said, “But this Luca’s from our world, right? The good one. Not your fucked up under the table other side of the rainbow fuck-all.”
The other Boricio apparently had more patience in his pinky than the real one did in his whole body. Because if the Captain was talking to him the way he was talking to the Captain, he’d have already cut the fucker’s head from his body, then left the whole lot of them to figure shit out while he found a place to go bowling.
The Captain said, “I’m not sure which world your Luca is from. But I must speak with him, regardless. I believe he is the key to all of this.”
Goddammit if the fucker wasn’t right.
“To a
ll of what?” Boricio asked.
“To everything.”
Boricio swallowed, not knowing what the fuck everything meant, even though he knew every word was true. “There’s something you should know,” he said.
The Captain raised his eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Luca’s not a kid,” he shook his head. “Not anymore. He’s nothing like you’re probably picturing him.”
The Captain still had his eyebrow raised. Boricio wondered if he had just the one, or if the other was hiding under the eye patch. If it was, Boricio wondered whether it was raised as well. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just what I said,” Boricio said. “Luca’s not a kid no more. I can’t explain why, but maybe you can, since you’ve apparently traded handsome for layers of bullshit I’m not stupid enough to peel.”
The Captain said, “Where is Luca and what’s wrong with him?”
Boricio grinned, then shrugged. “Like I said, Captain Copycat, I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s been healing people, and every time he does it, he gets a little older. He’s been doing it a while, so now he looks around eleventy.”
Die Hard said, “That’s not possible,” while Wimpy Dick shook his head.
“Anyone want a ticket to see shit themselves?” Boricio asked.
Without another word, Boricio rose from the table, shoved his gun back into his pants, then said, “Hey you, Wimpy Dick.”
The guy standing beside Die Hard turned.
Boricio laughed. “You always turn when you hear those four words together? How about cum-catching cocksucker?” Boricio frowned, then laughed louder and said, “I guess you could probably count them words as three.”
Wimpy Dick said, “My name’s Brent.”
Boricio laughed. “Okay, Brent. I want you to walk in front of me while we head up the stairs and I lead you all to my ugly half’s ancient little brother. But I don’t like the idea of all you guys walking behind me. Seems like I’m leaving myself vulnerable, and not just for a reach around. Take the lead so we can get the party started.”
