Dorian would stand on the steps to wave goodbye, every morning, in a tank top and gym shorts, with a cigarette in hand. He would acknowledge Scott with a quick wave before heading back inside for the entire day where he worked from home as a full-time bum and part-time deadbeat. Word on the street was he was injured and on temporary disability from the USPS, but it had been a couple years now.
Then, one day everything changed.
A knock rang through Scott’s empty house, nearly 10:00pm, just as he was just about to head off to bed with a busy day of mail sorting duties in the morning. He begrudgingly answered the door that he was sure could just be a pesky elderly neighbor. Scott flicked back on the living room lights, walked along the old wooden flooring, and turned the handle. There she stood.
“Scott... I am-, I am so sorry to bother you,” Megan said, cradling a young, sleeping girl in her arms, and tears streaming from those large hazels.
“No, no,” Scott said, a little baffled. “Here, come in from the dark, you can lay your daughter on the couch. Everything ok?” He escorted them into the old home.
“Megan what’s going on? Is Dorian heading over?” he asked with nervous intent as he tried to keep himself composed.
She turned to him, her face glowing in the light. The face he had loved for so, so many years had changed a little and it was not the tears. It was the bruised, purple and black swirled circle surrounding her eye. Barely visible from the dark of his porch, but now with full lighting it stared at him in a way that boiled his blood and rattled loose emotions that had been so unused it was debatable on if they ever existed at all. So much sadness, and anger, and regret, all finding new life at the surface at once. His eyes grew wet, and a single tear rolled like a tumbling snowball down his thin face. Scott wrapped Megan in his arms as he dreamt of every night when he was just a lonely teenager. Only, not like this.
Megan seemed almost confused by the embrace, and Scott knew that it was because she had never seen this side of Scott, and was most likely puzzled why he felt so much for a neighbor he barely knew. If only she knew, he told himself. But, right now, she would take comforting from a friendly face even in an unfamiliar setting, and she met his embrace. The two stood locked for a just moment.
“We... we got in a fight...” she said breaking the silence. “It was my fault at first. I was leaving him my cards every day to pay our bills while I was at work. Then these fucking pink slips came, more and more. Electric, insurance, mortgage. He had been spending it all. Online gambling... Couldn’t even fucking win…”
“Megan, listen to me. Nothing is your fault,” Scott said.
She pointed her pale finger up at her eye, “This is not my fault. But trusting him? Oh yes, that is definitely my fault. Honestly, Scott I don’t know why I’m here… I just... I had nowhere else to go...”
“I’m glad you came here, Meg,” he answered. “I’ve wanted to have a real conversation with you since we were kids...” Scott knew even as the words rolled from his tongue that this was not the time. Yet, he could not stop them.
“Kids? What?” She wiped the tears from her face.
“Shit…” His hands raised and locked behind his head, he stared at the ceiling and paced briefly before taking a big breath and turning back to her. “Megan... You defended me from him since high school… So many times he would just... just FUCK with me and yet you could stop him. You stuck up for me.”
“Wait... Scott... Biology class?” she asked as if a fog was lifted.
“Well… many classes. And hallways, and cafeterias. Hell, even when we would all go out to the track for gym and he would kick me off the bleachers so he could smoke cigarettes with his friends. You at least tried, and that is more than anyone else did. Even myself.”
She stood paralyzed. It all came back to her and she questioned her own mind how she could have forgotten all of these instances. She stared at him, making the comparison within her head of him from school and him now. “Scott… I... how could I have not noticed sooner or done more…”
He moved closer to her and took her hands in his. They were so cold, shaking against his palms. He did not know if it was the temperature or adrenaline, and he almost blurted out everything he had felt for her back then, or even what he felt for her now, all at once.
“Megan. I have known you for nearly my entire life. There are things I just couldn’t say to you then, and I can’t say them now. But I have to tell you. It has eaten at me… For so long…”
They shared a silent glance. Still, unmoving, calm but with hearts that could have replaced a drumline.
“You saved me, Meg. You kept me alive all those years and you never knew it. It’s… it’s my turn to protect you... To protect Caroline.” With his eyes he motioned to the young sleeping girl on his couch.
“Oh yea? Then who’s gonna protect you, white Urkel.” A dissonant voice came from the dark doorway. The thud of large footsteps pressed against the living room floor as Dorian came into view.
Megan jumped back and stood in front of her sleeping daughter. Uncharacteristically, Scott followed suit and stood between Dorian and the girls. Now his heart went from a drumline to machine gun bullets. The pounding was so loud he thought everyone else in the room could hear it. Dorian grinned, red faced with glazed eyes. As he got closer Scott could smell the alcohol. He closed his eyes for a moment, his life flashed, and he felt a heavy disappointment in every moment except for tonight. Tonight was the greatest moment he had ever known.
Scott, overwhelmed by the moment, had not phoned the authorities. It had not crossed his mind, and all he could focus on was Megan, and her safety.
“Megan, grab Caroline and head home,” Scott said, his voice trembling. “Dorian heard what I said... And I am guessing we should talk... Alone.”
Dorian walked up to Scott, nearly pressing chest to chest. He no longer loomed over him but he still had the size advantage, not to mention the natural strength that came with that size. And, most importantly, the experience of physically fucking someone up. Megan scooped the child and headed for the door. She stood, illuminated by the home’s light, and locked eyes with Scott. Her eyes were so soft, and it was the nicest look he had ever received. She smiled briefly, another tear fell, and then with another step she was swallowed by the night.
“Well,” Dorian said in a growl, “Bitch is gone. Let’s talk.”
“That night, I died, well, Scott died,” he said looking into Jackson’s cold eyes. “He was so strong, I had no chance and I knew it. I thought that would be my final moment with Megan and I was content knowing that she knew.”
“Well, somehow you’re here. Your body or not, you are still Scott. Not Dorian,” Jackson said in a low, chilling tone.
“He grabbed me by the neck, I felt him squeezing harder and harder. I couldn’t get him off, no hitting or kicking or fumbling worked. His eyes... He felt nothing about my life. Never thought death would feel that way... So... isolating,” he replied.
“Yea, know the feeling,” Jackson retorted.
“I was limp, and he held me like a ragdoll. I was no longer in my body and I was watching him with my body. But... well... I was all fragments, I could barely move and it felt like the wind would carry me away. I fought it. I fought so hard. Then he walked back in the room, my body over his shoulder and my garden hose over the other. He strung me up like a damn piñata. I knew he would get away with it… he would keep hurting them and he would get away with murder... And I snapped.” His face bunched, bent, and another tear fell over the stubbled, tough terrain of his cheek.
“Makes sense now... The possession. Spawns from a need, a desire to continue… But still,” Jackson said quietly as he raised the gun back up.
“Don’t…” a squeaky voice from before said, the words shaking in her throat as she sniffled quietly. “Please…”
Jackson cocked his head from the shadows, the gun still raised to the Un-Ascended. Megan stood, only feet from them as the porch light barely outlined he
r silhouette.
“Wait... you knew?” Jackson inquired, confused and with a firm scowl.
She nodded in the darkness.
“He is…” Megan paused. “Normally inside by now, I just came out to see where he was and then I heard the both of you back here…”
Jackson stood, his reality almost broken by the walls he built up from the hatred for the Demons. He thought he understood everything but something new bothered him. “If she knew then why do you pretend to be Dorian? Use his name, practice his habits? Pretend to be reformed? I’ve watched you, the only thing that Scott did in this body for himself was take the open position in the mailroom.”
Scott smiled earnestly and let out a small laugh. “Stranger, I don’t do that for Megan,” and he pointed up to a small window upstairs in the home, where stuffed animals sat in the sill and the glow of a nightlight rested against pink curtains.
Wind blew once more, and his jacket rippled with its movements. A silver handgun made its way back into its holster, hidden beneath the tan coat. Jackson adjusted his hat, then turned his back to Scott/Dorian. He walked silently past Megan, and she followed him with her eyes as he made his way toward the dark cover of the side of their home. He gave one last look back to them.
Jackson walked through the chill of the night over the soft, damp grass. The anger inside subsided, and something else materialized. Something within him wanted to smile, and that same entity felt relief that for the first time he had held a gun to an Un-Ascended and not fired. It was the small piece that remained of the Jackson he used to be. He could sense himself deep inside and thought of how it must clash in there with the rage. He tried to muffle that voice as well, the soft one that told him it was okay to still feel something, to feel anything. But, that was not the man who would find vengeance.
He walked into the night, and for a moment he gave in to that piece of himself, and he hoped that the family would have a rewarding life. One that he only wished he could have had with her.
5
Aspire
For a man who held gifts from the higher beings of the North-Lane themselves, Jackson still felt just as fatigued as any other man would after a long and draining night.
He had felt conflicted, as if he was swallowed entirely by a gray area that he had not considered, or did not want to. He walked along the rainy streets of the suburbs, heading toward his apartment with slumped steps and a head full of more questions than answers. Jackson thought to Fortega-Greene again, and wondered if he would have been so quick to snuff them out as well. He wanted to tell himself he wouldn’t, but he had changed so much since he returned.
The night had come for Jackson’s first case, and no amount of pacing through the apartment or speaking to his new angelic associate would ease the pressure surmounting within him. His entire body felt light and his head spun at what he may have to do with the weapons at his sides, and he told himself that he had to do this to muster the courage. His stomach turned as he stood in the shadow coverage provided in the alleyway and stared at the rusted door to the abandoned apartment building written at the top of the paper in blue colored pencil. He watched as the door would open just enough for light to shine out into the darkness of the night and beam out onto the empty street, then someone would arrive, normally older and well dressed, before popping inside. He watched this for some time, until finally the guest traffic had stopped. Jackson took a breath and felt the scratching inside as the hidden anger began to move again.
“Four…” he said quietly to himself. “Four guests… don’t know how many inside…”
There was a fuzzy relocation forming in the depths of his mind of a bright white space, a gun in his hand, and a voice telling him to always know what he was up against. To always remember that he will be outnumbered, but to know by just how much before he acts. The voice sounded like the Ender, and as quickly as it came it left once more. He thought on what he recalled, on those words and how to use them as the warm end-of-summer air blew against his stone face. He walked toward the building and clung to those words.
The windows were painted black and offered no way to see inside, and from what he could tell there was no other way in than the front door. Even with that rage within him stirring, he could not shake the trembling of his hands as he searched for anyway to get a better visual on what he was up against. He walked tightly beside the building, following it around its side until finally, right where the brick gave way to concrete, there was a shattered basement window that was just large enough for him to pass through into the unknown darkness below.
“Can I help you?” A voice cracked the silence like lightning as Jackson crouched down beside the broken window. “Need something?”
Jackson turned to find an older man behind him, wearing a staunch black suit with a tie the color of the sky in the morning. His eyes were stern on his wrinkled face, and a thick white mustache hung over his scowling mouth. The moonlight shone over his hairless head and outlined the protruding cheekbones of his thin face. In many ways he seemed harmless, as his boney, wrinkled hands slide into his pant-pockets.
“You homeless or something?” he asked again as Jackson stood back up. The old man’s eyes followed him up as he croaked, “Woah, you’re a big fella.”
Jackson felt dormant adrenaline course through him like battery acid, and every hair stood up from his skin. He was anxious, and cautious. Jackson nodded carefully.
“Well, won’t find any shelter in this old house I am afraid. I’d let you come in, but my associates and I are having a business meeting inside, you see,” the old man groaned. He eyed him up and down again, “Actually… looking to make a little money tonight?”
Jackson stood in silence, choking on his anxiety. He nodded again.
“We could use someone of your… stature, to help us with something for the night. But, keep an open mind, will you?”
It was at that moment that Jackson could see something crawling out from under the thick forest of his mustache and grow as it moved. It pushed the skin of his cheeks into layers of wrinkled valleys, and pulled his lips into thin, tight strips of flesh to reveal jagged, discolored teeth inside. It was a smile that Jackson knew, one so otherworldly and so terrifying that he swore he only had only seen it once before.
It was a Demon.
“Well? What are you staring at? Come, now,” demanded the smiling old man as he turned and began to walk around the corner to the front door once more.
Jackson followed, his heavy stomps echoed behind the tap of the old man’s dress shoes. They looped around the bricks of the alley to the front door that Jackson had monitored, and the man pulled it open, flashed that smile toward Jackson once more, then nodded his head as if to ask him to follow inside. Reluctantly, Jackson obliged.
“Found us a little…. Help,” said the old man to the small gathering inside.
The room was small, musky, with odors of growing mold and stale tobacco permeating through the walls and up from the floors. It was dark inside, all but a large lamp that stood in the corner offering just the dim hint of its light to the group, just enough to show their shark smiles as they turned back to Jackson like a snarling cackle of hyenas. They sat in a semi-circle on folding chairs atop a damp, stained rug that may have once held a color but now was a dull, faded beige. The crescent of seats faced away from the door and opened to the darkness of a hallway where the faint, gentle sound of crying bled out like pus from an open, festering wound. Jackson scanned his surroundings, flicking his eyes from one Demon to the next.
Some men were old, like the one who had brought him inside, and others were young but sickly. One in particular did not smile at all, a middle-aged man with a baseball cap pulled low and who stared into the dark hallway as he shook his leg up and down in a nervous, anxiety-ridden twitch.
“Now,” croaked the old man to Jackson. He placed a hand on his back, and walked him to the back of the semi-circle, between the group and the front door they had come through. “You’ll
stand here, face the door, and if you hear so much as the wind blow you press up against it. All your weight. Don’t let it even budge, got it? We’ll pay you good.”
Jackson nervously nodded again.
“Good, heard we might be expecting some unwanted company tonight.”
The old man stepped between the chairs and took his own seat, and the group began to chat amongst themselves. Jackson listened closely, and he could feel his once-dead heart pump furiously within his chest and sweat swell on his forehead. His eyes fluttered back and forth, and he moved his hands up to the handles of his weapons. The firm grips of wood and metal grazed his palms as he pushed against them. He thought of how he must look, like that of an old cowboy preparing for the big dual, and the idea soothed him like a children’s lullaby. He closed his eyes for just a moment, tuning out the audience behind him, and could almost see the bright white world again, Paragon.
He saw his hands in front of him, and could feel the Arm of the Savior cold in his grasp as he stared off into the bleak emptiness of Paragon. He could see shadows rush back and forth, quickly like roaches running from a kitchen light, and he could feel the pressure as he pulled the trigger and watched the shadows disappear one by one. Then, he heard a strange sound and opened his eyes.
“Alright, looks like the boss isn’t coming. So let’s start this off without him, how’s that sound?” said the old man from before as he stood up and walked up to the edge of the dark hallway.
Jackson turned his head slightly and could see the display from his peripheral view as the man disappeared in the shadows. He could hear the sound of whimpering intensify, the soft cries now growing into muffled screams as the old man reappeared dragging out a thin, young woman in a tarnished blue dress. Her dark mascara dripped down like rivers over her pale cheeks and passed the silver tape over her mouth. Her nostrils flared vigorously, her eyes opened wide, and she writhed and fought with her hands bound at her back. It was a blur from his hidden view over his shoulder, but he swore the old man was holding something in his other hand.
Order of Dust Page 6
