Vs Reality

by Blake Northcott

  Dia continues to backpedal as Goto advances, walking in unison like a perfect mirror image. “I stay away from that shit. You know, Big Brother watching and all.”

  “He does like to keep a watchful eye on you lot, doesn’t he? And as you know, it’s our job to send you to The Basement when you step out of line.”

  A towering figure emerges from the side door of the nightclub and joins them in the alley. Heinreich steps to Goto’s side, ensuring there is no possible route for escape. They’ve done this enough times to know exactly how, and where, to neutralize a target; their movements are so crisp they appear choreographed.

  Cole’s eyes dart back and forth between the two men, and then back to Dia. “I don’t know who you guys are or what the hell is going on here, but I’m like five seconds away from calling the cops.” He yanks his iPhone from his front pocket and holds it up as if he’s threatening them with a live grenade – as if the mere sight of the glowing device would cause them to scurry away in fear.

  Goto snorts out a light chuckle. “Go right ahead. And while you’re speaking with the police, you can ask them to send a coroner. You’ll be requiring their services momentarily.”

  Extending his hand, Goto rotates his fingers in the air – the valve-turning motion that fires bolts of agony into his victims.

  A moment passes.

  Nothing happens.

  Goto furrows his brow and glares at his palm, confused and frustrated. He looks as if he’d just put fresh batteries into a television remote and can’t figure out why it’s not changing the channels. He shakes his hand out several times, flexing his fingers, balling them into a tight fist. He extends his hand towards Cole once again and repeats the same action.

  Nothing.

  He lets out an exaggerated sigh of disappointment, shoulders sagging. “Well, this is aggravating. Mister Heinreich, would you please give our mystery guest a hand?”

  Without responding to Goto’s request, Heinreich takes a few rapid steps towards Cole and throws a vicious back-fist, connecting sharply with his jaw.

  Cole careens into the brick wall of the alley, jarring his spine, snapping ribs. The pain is searing, all-consuming; his vision swims with a spattering of flashbulbs, surrounding everyone in the alley with a glowing hue.

  I can’t believe this is happening to me, he thinks. How can it be possible? This many shitty things happening to the same person, all at the same time? All of Cole’s recent failures blast through his consciousness: and the soul-crushing indignity he faces on a daily basis at his job; his girlfriend who ended their two-year relationship using a text message; and his meteoric rise though the amateur mixed martial-arts circuit that was snuffed out by a single loss. And that’s what he traces it all back to: A lucky punch that he should’ve seen coming. But he didn’t, and he ‘zigged when he should have zagged’ as Gary so succinctly put it. And now he’s here.

  That shot didn’t just shatter Cole’s orbital bone that night – it shattered his confidence. An avalanche of ceaselessly flowing events followed, each worse than the last, leading to tonight, this very moment in time. A night when he thought something good was about to happen; a silver lining in the drizzling rain cloud that’s been following him around for what feels like forever. And now this: beaten and mugged in an alley, and he’s powerless to do anything about it. He’s powerless to do anything, period. Amidst the dizzying ache that’s crushing his head like an invisible vice, he suddenly stops feeling sorry for himself…for the first time in a very, very long time, Cole decides to stop blaming fate, stop blaming circumstance, and stop cursing everyone and everything around him. He chooses a different emotion. Anger.

  And then something unexpected happens: his pain subsides, his vision clears, and he feels an intense energy burning from within. Something awakens. His blood pumps like high octane jet fuel, hot and intense, coursing through the veins of his right arm. He watches in amazement as it transforms from a small, sinewy limb into a powerful weapon. As his muscles thicken and expand, inky black liquid secretes from his pores; thousands of microscopic drops rearrange themselves into a detailed design of a snake; it circles his bicep, crawling down his forearm, venomous fangs bared and poised to strike by his fist.

  The rest of Cole’s body soon follows: it doubles in size, shredded with lean muscle, veins pulsing. Then his injuries disappear. The gash on his forehead closes, leaving no trace that it had ever been there – not even the faintest remains of a scar. The swelling on his face subsides, and the dark purple bruise circling his swollen eye vanishes.

  Heinreich watches the transformation, jaw slack.

  Cole screams his throat raw and lashes out, slamming his fist into Heinreich’s chest. It happens in a blur; like a glitch in a video game, he moves so quickly that to anyone observing, it looks as if frames of animation are missing. The giant sails twenty feet across the alley into the abandoned car. Flesh and bone meet steel and glass, crashing like thunder. The force of the impact wraps the wreckage around Heinreich’s back, shattering every window.

  Cole looks down at his palms outstretched palms, eyes frantic.

  Taking advantage of the distraction, Dia yanks a stun gun from her purse. She buries it deep into Goto’s neck and squeezes the trigger, infusing him with fifty-thousand volts of electricity. Goto attempts to scream, but he can only manage a muffled gurgle. His body tenses for just a moment and then falls limp, collapsing to the damp pavement.

  “This can’t be happening,” Cole repeats to himself in rapid-fire succession, hoping that the incantation will wake him from his nightmare.

  Dia produces a second weapon from her purse: a small pocket knife. She unfolds the blade and pulls down the leather wrapping from her forearm, revealing a roadmap of scars; some thicker and longer than others, all in various stages of healing. Even in the dimly lit alley, Cole can clearly see the raised, jagged skin, thin lines criss-crossing from the top of her wrist to the crook of her elbow.

  She digs the blade into her skin and pulls it, opening a wide gash that bisects countless others. She winces, biting her bottom lip. Her fragile scar tissue opens like warm butter, blood pouring freely, cascading down her forearm and dripping off her fingertips.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Cole screams.

  Dia shakes her head and lets out a deep sigh. “Damn it, that should have worked. I need you to hit me. But not too hard – don’t knock me unconscious.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he shouts, grabbing two fistfuls of his hair. “I don’t think this is the time for S&M fun. Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  Dia grabs Cole by the shoulders and stares into his eyes. “Donovan,” she says with a chilling calmness that does nothing to calm Cole’s nerves, “I need you to focus. We don’t have much time and backup will be here any second. Stop being a little bitch and hit me.”

  Her gaze is hypnotic; a firestorm consuming a village.

  Cole forces his eyes shut and massage his temples, trying to make sense of her request. “Um…all right…so, you want me to hit you in the body, or the face? Because I can do either, but…”

  She groans in frustration.

  His eyes snap open when her right palm connects squarely with his left cheekbone. Rage overtakes him. Without thinking he retaliates with a slap of his own, rocking her head back, sending her to a knee.

  Cole clasps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to...but it just happened.”

  A thin stream of blood trickles from her right nostril, dripping down her split lip. As Dia regains her footing the transformation has already begun. In a heartbeat her raven hair turns to platinum, and her dark eyes glow like electric blue crystals, the whites disappearing. Cole leans in and notices that her facial features are also changing: her cheekbones have become more angular, her skin more luminous.

  “Wow…that’s the last time I call you a bitch.” Dia wipes her nose with her forearm, dragging a wet crimson smudge across her cheek. “But you might wanna give me some
space – this is gonna be a little warm at first.”

  Cole obediently steps away, pressing his back to the wall of the alley. He wants to give her as wide a berth as possible for whatever the hell she’s about to do.

  Dia plunges her hands into what looks like thin air, but she seems to grab hold of the universe’s fabric, fingertips disappearing into a tiny glowing seam. With a tearing motion she pulls open a rift that emits a blinding light; a jagged burst of sunlight torn directly from the darkness. With her hands still pressing on the seams of the tear, Dia looks back at Cole. He’s mesmerized, frozen. If the skin on his face were any paler it would be translucent.

  Dia detects a subtle movement in her peripheral vision, obscured by the light streaming from the portal.

  Goto is staggering, stumbling back to his feet. He straightens his posture and fumbles for something inside of his coat pocket. Or so it seems, until Dia makes out the distinctive leather strap concealed below his armpit.

  A holster.

  She screams out to Cole, her voice trembling.

  He blinks rapidly, jarred out of his trance. He follows Dia’s line of sight.

  Goto draws a silver hand cannon like an expert swordsman extracting his blade from a scabbard. He levels it, cocking the hammer with his thumb.

  Dia leaps headfirst through the opening, swallowed by the burning light. Cole follows her through just as Goto squeezes.

  The glowing rift begins to close as the bullets make their way towards the opening.

  Chapter Eight – Dissipate

  New York City

  August 26, 2011

  2:18 am, Eastern Daylight Time

  Heinreich clumsily scrambles back to his feet after being knocked unconscious, leaning on the remains of the pulverized car for support. He gently massages his head as blood trickles from his ears.

  Goto narrows his eyes and peers down the alley, watching intently as the glowing rift fades. It abruptly closes with a twisting jolt of electricity, swallowed back into the nothingness that it had been torn from. “Well that was extremely disappointing.”

  Heinreich gingerly walks towards his partner. He rubs his aching back and hacks out a cough, dotting the street with blood. “Someone must have heard your gunshots. We need to return to the Basement before the police arrive.” The word ‘the’ comes out sounding more like ‘zee’; his accent seems to be more pronounced after being knocked unconscious. He might be concussed.

  Goto remains laser focused on the darkened alley, as if staring at the exit point will somehow cause the rift to reappear. “That’s a brilliant plan. Let’s do that: let’s return without the cargo.” He turns to face Heinreich, and responds with a deadpan that can only be delivered in a dry British accent. “And when we have to explain to Govinda precisely why we’ve returned empty-handed, we can go into great detail about how you were rendered unconscious by a single punch, and how I was disabled by a battery-powered toy that was probably purchased on eBay.”

  Heinreich’s eyes drop to his feet. “When you explain it that way, my idea is sounding…not so good.”

  “I’m in no mood to get liquefied or have my spinal column removed one vertebrae at a time, so we need to consider alternative courses of action. The problem is that Miss Davenport remains nearly impossible to catch, and we have no intelligence about this new arrival.”

  “Or how he did that thing.” Heinreich points to his arm and flexes his bicep. “How he grew? He did it without any pill.”

  Just then, Jens stumbles from the side door of Platinum, half drunk and completely confused. He staggers down the stairs and in to the alley, Bole and Brew in hand, stepping right between Goto and Heinreich.

  “Donovan!” he shouts, slurring his words, “Cole, man, are you back here somewhere? Need the keys? I thought I saw you come out the side door with—”

  Jens is cut off mid-sentence as he’s introduced, once again, to the center of Heinreich’s impressively hairy chest. “Look dude,” he says, gazing upward, “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just looking for my friend: tall, skinny dude with black hair? He’s all messed up…looks like he just walked away from a plane crash? He was in the bar with this hot dominatrix chick with angel wings tattooed on her back?”

  Narrowing his eyes, Jens examines Goto, and can’t help but marvel at the fact that he’s brandishing a very large, very illegal handgun, braids of smoke twisting from its barrel. “Hey man, that looks like a gun. What about the ban? Where did you get a—”

  His sentence is cut short by an explosive right hand, cracking the side of his skull. One punch from Heinreich sends Jens spinning like a top, rotating before he hits the pavement.

  Heinreich scoops up Jens like a toddler, flinging his limp body over his shoulder.

  Chapter Nine – Aftermath

  New York City

  August 26, 2011

  3:47 am, Eastern Daylight Time

  Dia and Cole lie naked in her king-sized bed, half draped in silky white sheets. The candle-lit room reflects orange and gold flecks off the fabric, filtering the room with a soft hazy glow.

  Still fascinated with his new form, Cole raises a muscular arm overhead, slowly running his fingers along the edges of his intricate snake tattoo. The scales, the texture – it’s incredible how detailed the design is. It’s just like the ink he’d always dreamed of getting done, but had never taken the time. He’d never had the courage, if he was being honest with himself. It always seemed so permanent – such a commitment to a single image. He never liked the idea of something he couldn’t change, especially if it was something that turned out to be a mistake. He had enough of that in his life already.

  The tattoo, his body, this incredible girl...Cole was still confounded by everything that’s happened in the last few hours, but oddly, he’s not interested in searching for answers. At least not at the moment. After a never-ending streak of bad luck, Cole’s faith in karma has been fully restored. He feels like he’s won the lottery twice in the same day, and isn’t about to start asking why.

  Cole rolls onto his side and props himself up on an elbow.

  Dia rolls to face him, cheek pressed to her pillow, platinum locks cascading over her face.

  They gaze into each other’s eyes, warm and breathless, glistening with a sheen of perspiration. Cole hasn’t been in this position in ages. Not sure how to proceed, he asks the question that one person inevitably asks the other in this relaxed, but sometimes painfully awkward situation. “So…what are you thinking about?”

  She sighs. “I was just wondering how the universe was created.”

  “Huh.” Donovan raises an eyebrow and brushes the hair from his forehead. “You really aren’t into boring, run-of-the-mill chit-chat, are you?”

  Dia sits up, hugging her knees close to her chest. “I think they have it all wrong. Most science-types have everyone convinced that it was a big bang: one powerful explosion a few billion years ago and ‘poof’, out pops this entire universe. Matter comes first, then comes consciousness, and before you know it people are here on this remote chunk of rock: munching on cheeseburgers, driving SUVs, watching crappy reality television shows – but they don’t know the real truth.”

  Cole’s lips curl at the edges. “All right, doctor, so what’s the ‘real truth’? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  She leans in closer. “That this has all happened before,” she whispers.

  Cole blurts out an awkward laugh. “Dia, I have no idea where you’re going with this, but if you start babbling about Sea Orgs or ask for my banking information, I’m out of here.”

  Now smiling, Dia playfully shoves Cole into the supple mattress and climbs on top of him, straddling his waist. She presses down on his muscular chest with both her palms as if he’s going to try and escape.

  He’s more than happy to concede, letting his arms fall to his sides in surrender.

  “No, jackass,” she giggles, “I’m not talking about scientology or any other religion. I’m taking about actual science h
ere. Try to keep up.”

  Cole does his best to produce a serious expression, though his lips refuse to cooperate. “Ah, just checking. Please continue.”

  “What I’m saying is that I don’t think that was the first big bang. I think that before our universe was created, another universe was here in its place.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And before it ended, everything was probably rolling along smoothly for a few billion years, maybe longer.”

  “And then?” Cole asks.

  “And then, one night on some little blue-green planet that probably looked a lot like this one, a girl was sitting in her room when she accidentally cut her arm. The pain was sharp, and unleashed something deep inside her. She triggered, manifesting a new ability. After some time, this girl learned to harness and channel her newfound power, and she eventually opened gateways by tearing the fabric of the universe. She kept experimenting with her ability until she could actually walk through these portals if she opens them wide enough, and could move freely from place to place.”

  Coles laces his fingers behind his head. “Hmm, this story is starting to sound familiar. Is it about anyone I know?”

  Dia presses a finger to his lips. “Wait for it, there’s a twist ending. So, one dark and stormy night she tears the fabric a little too far, and a little too hard. All of a sudden the universe starts to unravel, like pulling a thread from a tacky wool sweater my aunt Margaret would knit me every year before Christmas. This girl knows that if she keeps pulling at the loose thread it will destroy everything, but she can’t stop herself. Deep down, she knows that her reality is a big, ugly scab that needs to be torn off before the healing can begin underneath.”

  The smile fades from Cole’s face. “And then…bang?”

  Dia nods. “Big one. The tear gets too great, and the universe swallows itself, resetting existence. Everything we know – the Earth, the sun, stars, galaxies – it all gets sucked into a ravenous void before anyone knows what’s happening. The big bang happens once again, and just thirteen billion short years later, ‘poof’. We all get a new shot at redemption.”