Acquaro

by Trevor R. Fairbanks

  Gently he pushed her hand away, afraid of her touch. “Dad’s dead.”

  She nodded. “I figured as much. He always had such a gentle soul. This world can be hard on people like that.”

  “Gentle soul?” he asked. “He used to beat the shit out of you!”

  “Only because he had no other way of expressing himself,” she smiled grimly. “Besides, I think that his abuse prepared me for all this. In that way, it was a good thing. When you get to be as old as I am you start to see the good things, even in the bad.”

  “There’s something going on, mom. Something in our world, the real world.”

  “The real world?” She lifted an eye brow. “Hector, you of all people should know that there’s no such thing. There is only the here and now. Oh, I’m sorry. I should have taught you to listen to your dreams, to pay attention to your fantasies. It’s so easy for everything to come true.”

  “He’s come into our world,” Hector, said, ignoring her. “Lordax.”

  “Lordax,” she mused. “Then it has begun.”

  “No, it’s over,” Hector spit. “Or it will be. We,” he nodded at Lila. “Are here to end it.”

  “End it?” she asked. “But Lordax has powers you do not understand! Even now, I can feel it! He’s calling down the ...” she quickly bit her tongue. Hector even saw a trickle of blood spill from her bottom lip.

  “Calling down the what?” he demanded, reaching out to grab her. “Mom, tell me. What the fuck is he doing?”

  She looked into his eyes and he saw tears form. “The dragon.”

  “A fucking dragon,” he spit, shoving her away and turning his back. “Great. That’s all we need. A fucking dragon.”

  “But you can stop it,” she said, reaching out to him. “Yes! My boy can stop it! The only boy to escape from the clutches of Gurkiel! Why, Hector, you are a hero! A hero!”

  “How?” Lila asked.

  She looked at him. “Are you still playing your drums?”

  Hector’s eyes narrowed. How did she know he played the drums? “No.”

  “Then you’d better start. Because the only thing that has any chance of defeating the dragon is Acquaro.”

  “Acquaro. What the fuck’s that? Some God of the ocean?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “He is a bull god. If anything, he is the god of sex and violence. And only he can stop the dragon.”

  “So where do we find this Acquaro?”

  “The Mountain of Thorns.”

  ***

  The Mountain of Thorns had not been hard to find. Like everything else in Gurkiel, all one had to do was believe and there it was.

  By afternoon Hector and Lila stood at the base of a dark mountain surrounded by thorns. It towered over Gurkiel like a God. And, like its name suggested, a wall of thorns circled it and a cold wind shuddered past. Hector took Lila’s hand. Despite the chill they were both sweating so hard the droplets froze on their skin.

  “Look,” Lila pointed. “The shadow.”

  Indeed, the mountain cast a long shadow over the land. It was hard for her to see it and not think of her father.

  “I never saw this mountain the first time I was here,” Hector said. “Now, I can’t picture Gurkiel without it.”

  “I need a picture,” she said, reaching into her purse. “Good thing I brought my automatic.”

  She pulled it out and snapped a photograph of the shadow. It was perfect. Inside the camera the film developed quickly and spit out the picture. Both looked at the little white bordered picture in her hand. The shadow had bull horns sprouting out the sides of its head, scratching the sky while blood red eyes peered out from underneath, scorching the land.

  “So, this is it,” he said.

  “You’d better set up your drums.”

  Hector nodded and went to the van. He started dragging out his old drum set piece by piece. Cymbal by cymbal he constructed it here at the base of the mountain, his hands going through the motions. Even though he had not touched his drum set in months he could still remember how to set it up. He could have set it up in his sleep. When he was ready he started to play.

  The Dragon

  burned Varmint Ranch to the ground. The leper colony went up first. Silently. The diseased men could not even scream as fire eased them into the next life. Then came the liquor store and finally The Copacabana itself, the remaining trailers reduced to ash. But it was not enough. The great wyrm demanded more for its burning stomach. On long ebony wings it soared across the night sky, raining fire down on the desert below, creating long fiery streams that ran across the border of Arizona and California.

  With its smoldering ember eyes, the dragon saw something else that needed to burn. The Lost City.

  It swooped in between the towers, spitting death. The black population of California took this as a sign and began to loot and pillage the city of their birth, breaking windows and grabbing anything not nailed down. Asian American shop owners crouched on their roof tops with long guns, but even they could not help but stare up at the horror from the sky. The good people remaining in the city fell on their knees and started to pray, as churches filled with those hoping to avoid the oncoming apocalypse.

  Only there was no avoiding it. The world was going to burn, and salvation could no longer be found in a book or a belief. Salvation was already lost to all.

  As morning came in slow waves and the night was filled with smoke, the dragon became weary. It made its nest in the giant building that was the center of Los Angeles, spitting fire at anyone who dared come too close.

  ***

  “We march!” King Lordax shouted so loud all Gurkiel shook with his thunder. He raised his sword to the sky with a cruel smile, a signal for war and a sign of certain victory. This was the day he had been preparing for, the day he had been waiting for. Soon the world would be his.

  In front of him stood the Halfling Army, dressed head to toe in shining elf armor that could withstand anything the humans had to throw at it. They were part human, part elf, and all magic. Lordax was already counting the souls in his head. All would fall to his might, every single one of them. They would all die. And Gurkiel would stretch from sea to shining sea.

  Underneath the bridge, with her troll son and daughter, the woman lay spent. She had given birth to the army and now she lay dying in the filth. BroTroll and SisTroll went to her, finally silenced. Somewhere in their corrupted little minds they could sense who she was, their mother. They held her and listened to her weep.

  But she giggled one last time as she heard the drums being played in the background.

  The Mountain of Thorns

  Why was she dancing?

  Hector liked it, even if he could not understand it. The way she moved was very erotic, as if her body could call up spirits on her own, without his drums. He played her a good beat on his snare anyway and watched Lila swivel her hips. It was turning him on. Blood started to flow in his veins and he wondered about the things that old Indian said. Blood was the river between their worlds. Blood could call forth the spirits. His hands were bleeding.

  Hector started to play louder, really hammering the old drum set. The skins were out of tune, the cymbals were dull, and the sticks were causing blisters to form. A splinter was already working its way between his thumb and forefinger, right in the web where it hurt the most. But he kept playing, going into a drum roll that lasted forever. He hit the skins harder, trying to call something down from the mountain.

  Now Lila was bleeding as well. When had she started doing that? He did not know, but it was giving him a massive boner. Her pores had opened, and the blood was seeping out of her body, flowing over her in an obscene wedding gown. She twirled about like a spastic ballerina, and he could sense that the mountain was listening.

  ***

  What was that infernal racket? The bull sat up with a snort. He had been having such lovely dreams and now this. When would these damn humans learn to stop bothering him?

  He peeked out from the
cave and saw her. Her. The remnants of Leonard Samson felt himself collapse and the bull shuddered. He felt his heart start to beat. He felt his soul melt at the very image of her. Had it not haunted his dreams since he moved to that stupid trailer park?

  And it really was her. For some reason or another Lila Torne was here. And she was bloody.

  Fight it, something told him. An inner voice that he had not heard in a very long time. The voice told him that he was no longer human. He no longer had to follow his silly insipid emotions. He was a god now, a bull god. He did not need her. He only wanted her.

  But he did want her. He wanted her more than anything.

  Like a rampaging inferno he burst from the top of the mountain, only to see the gathered army of King Lordax beneath him. The elf men looked up and saw the massive animal charging. They even managed to raise their spears and draw their swords, but he was paying no attention. His eyes were only focused on her. And she had seen him, too.

  Now she was running but she would not get far. She would not get away from him. The blood was in the air and he charged. The bull god did not notice the halfling warriors who died beneath his hooves.

  ***

  “Move!” Hector shouted at her. Lila jumped into the van as all Gurkiel was destroyed behind her. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it. Things like this staggered the imagination. A bull had charged down from the mountain and now it was chasing them.

  Hector slammed the van into gear and started to drive as Acquaro turned, looking at them with his beady bull eyes. Its horns scraped the sky and its nostrils flared.

  “It can smell you,” Hector said. He could, too. Lila smelled bloody, like a damp tampon. It turned him on.

  He pushed down on the gas pedal, forcing the machine to move faster. Hector looked at the rearview mirror and saw the bull giving chase. He floored the ignition, feeling the van bounce over a rutted path.

  There was no way, he thought. The bull was the size of a mountain. There was no chance of escape. He tried anyway.

  Lila held on for dear life as suddenly the dirt road turned into a highway. And they were driving towards Los Angeles.

  ***

  Around him the world warped and twisted. Things fell into one another and portals were opened. There were scents in the air that he had not smelled in a very long time. There was blood in the air and a desert around him. The desert was scorched. Sand had been fused to glass and flaming rivers ran across the ruined land.

  The bull god looked about. The Copacabana was destroyed, his former home gone. All of it gone. The city around it was nothing but smoldering ruin. But his eyes could see for miles and now he looked up, towards the sea. There was a city there, he could remember. A city where the lost went to be lost. Los Angeles.

  The bull spotted the dragon. There it was, on top of the highest building. Below it the city was in ruins, its people in disarray. There was shouting in the streets and gunshots ringing. Glass breaking and chains going up.

  And the dragon. Over it all the dragon looking back at the bull.

  It screamed and Acquaro decided to accept its challenge. He roared in acceptance and watched the dragon take flight. The giant wings stroked the sky as it aimed itself at the desert like an arrow and flew.

  ***

  “Lila!”

  The girl was not moving. Her head was up against the glove box of the van and there was blood. So much blood.

  In the distance he could hear the leviathans having their battle. Fire raked the night sky. A bull screamed. But he did not care. All he cared about was her.

  “Lila!”

  Hector carried her limp body from the van and laid her down by the side of the road in the soft dust. She was so still, hardly breathing. He felt her body, touching her veins. There was no pulse. The body was cold. There was no blood left.

  Behind them the bull met the dragon in the middle of a desert inferno. There was a scream as a horn pierced scale-flesh. Then a roar as flame crisped the animals back side. A smell hovered in the air like fresh hamburger cooking on a grill. But Hector did not care. She was dead.

  “She’s fucking dead!” he shouted.

  The two monsters stopped. They turned and looked at him. Hector stood his ground, hands bloody from the drum session, heart thumping with agony.

  “Go ahead,” he finally said, turning his back to them all. He climbed into the van and started the engine. “Destroy the whole fucking world. See if I care.”

  He put the van into gear with a final curse and started to drive. Behind him the world started to burn.

  1999

  La Canada, California

  about the author

  Trevor R. Fairbanks was born 2/18/1975 in Southern California. An avid skateboarder in his youth, after breaking his arm too many times he took up writing as a “safer” hobby. At the age of thirteen he met Ray Bradbury who was kind enough to give him the advice “Write Every Day.” He followed this advice for the next thirty years. After receiving rejection letters from every mainstream and independent publisher in America, he self-published his first novel “Scarwynd” under his own imprint, Raw Youth Press. Later, he began Telstar Literature to showcase mature works. When he isn’t writing he enjoys playing surf guitar, watching giant monster movies and collecting comic books.

  tr.fairbanks@gmail.com