by J. Thorn
“I’m sure I slipped one past the goalie at some point. I know I probably got some bitch pregnant.”
Samuel shook his head.
Kole’s blank face transformed into a sneer. His eyebrows came up and he bared his teeth.
“It don’t matter. This is my reversion and I’m in charge. And I’m going to destroy you.”
It took the length of the walk to the city for Samuel to put it together. The situation became as clear as a crisp autumn day. He decided to take a bit of smug satisfaction in revealing it to Kole.
“You have no son to inherit the throne. This reversion, this set of reversions, it’s the last the Great Cycle’s got. This is it, brother. No one gets out alive.”
Lindsay kept her eye on Shallna. When he raised the orb, she took it as an offensive move, leaping in front of Samuel to take the impact of the energy meant to throttle him. Shallna held the orb with both hands at eye level as if it were a conventional weapon. The red lines of energy hit her in the chest and flowed over her entire body. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she stumbled toward the edge of the observation deck.
Shallna seemed unable to break the stream of energy meant for Samuel but now pouring into Lindsay. Her body shook and she inched closer to the edge. Shallna stepped in front of Samuel. As if the orb and Lindsay were opposite charges of a massive magnet, the closer he came to her, the closer she was pushed to the edge. As her head neared the half-wall surrounding the observation deck, Lindsay reached out with both hands to grab onto it. The rain swelled and her hands slipped twice before she could get a good grip.
“The orb,” she said to Samuel. “Kole can’t defeat you without it.”
Her eyes motioned to the edge and then to Shallna.
“I love you,” Lindsay said to Samuel.
Before he could reply, Lindsay stood and threw herself off the top of the observation deck. Kole watched as if the events unfolded in horrific slow motion. Lindsay disappeared over the edge with the red line of energy still tethering her to the orb. Shallna kept his hands on it and, as if the energy was a slack line, it became taught pulling the orb and Shallna toward the edge. Samuel reached out to grab Shallna, but his hands could not grasp the robe as it fluttered through the wind and rain like a bird with a broken wing. The red line disappeared over the edge, pulling the orb and Shallna with it.
Samuel blinked and when he opened his eyes, Lindsay, Shallna and the orb were gone. He stood near the doorway with Kole opposite the cauldron.
***
As she toppled over the edge of the building, Lindsay had seven seconds to contemplate her fate before she hit the ground. The energy from the orb slowed her fall but not enough to save her. She saw herself on the beach with Samuel and it brought both a tear and a smile. She decided not to dwell on the fact that she would never be with Samuel in the way some fortunate souls were able to be with each other. They crossed paths in a dying world and each knew the end was inevitable, yet they managed to share each other’s love. Lindsay could have panicked on the way down to the street or she could have focused on her own mortality, but she decided not to. After all, she died once and there were worse things than dying a second time.
***
When the orb hit the ground, it exploded. A flash of light erupted in silence before the shockwave blew the horde apart, vaporizing those within a three block radius of the blast. The rain swallowed the noise as Shallna plummeted toward it. He watched the energy expand upward like a mushroom cloud. Shallna took relief in the end, relieved to be released of his duties after so long. He was trapped as a Gaki, trapped in the multiverse as Drew Green and trapped as a servant to the lord of the reversion.
Shallna could not remember a time when he wasn’t beholden to one power or another. The energy bloomed upward and he had time for one last thought. Shallna smiled and let the destructive force swallow his corporal form, knowing he would finally be at peace.
***
“Two birds with one orb. I think that’s the saying, isn’t it? Then again, neither of them could fly, so maybe that’s not entirely accurate.”
Samuel looked over the edge. The explosion rocked the foundation of the building and shot glass hundreds of feet into the air. The force of it blew a crater in the ground lined with body parts from the horde. Even in the deafening silence of the reversion, the explosion created a ringing in Samuel’s ears. He glanced upward to see the cloud dropping even lower in the sky, threatening to eat the observation deck.
“You’re almost out of time, Kole. You either kill me or I destroy the cauldron.”
Kole nodded. He took a step to the side of the cauldron and one closer to Samuel.
“Did you really love her?” he asked.
Samuel could no longer pretend watching Lindsay leap from the observation deck of the Sears Tower didn’t bother him. He put his hands to his face.
“Yep. Guess so,” Kole said, answering his own question. “We don’t have to go at it if you promise not to destroy the cauldron.”
“We’re all connected in some way. Whatever we do, it affects everyone.”
“I don’t really care about your New Age bullshit, Samuel. I’m a fighter. Always have been. Maybe I’m the classic second born, always compensating for something. I don’t know. What I do know is you’re either leaving or I’m sending you out of here.”
Samuel dove at the cauldron as Kole jumped forward in front of it. Samuel’s head slammed into Kole’s chest and they both fell to the side of the cauldron and rolled across the steel grid. Kole ended up on top of Samuel and used his knees to pin Samuel’s shoulders. He brought his fists down into Samuel’s face, spraying blood and rain into the air. Lightning came from the cloud and lit up the sky above them. The air turned from green to black as the cloud’s march came close to its conclusion.
Samuel tried turning his head away from the blows. He twisted his hips enough to throw Kole off-balance and to the side. He brought his knee up hard and fast. It struck Kole in the thigh and he winced. Samuel stumbled to his feet and delivered three kicks to Kole’s ribs. Kole bellowed and held his stomach. The descension drained him of his strength and years of his youth. He forgot that and was now paying the price. Kole felt like an old man trapped in a fistfight he could no longer win.
“I have to. You know that. This is what I have to do to make things right.”
Kole rolled over and watched as Samuel grabbed the lip of the cauldron. He shook it loose from its iron moorings and yanked back and forth. The wet fire inside the cauldron ignited and knocked Samuel back three steps.
“It ain’t gonna go so easily,” Kole said. He laughed and tried to stand but his lungs would not allow it. Samuel’s kicks broke Kole’s ribs and several punctured his lungs, now filling with blood.
Samuel grabbed for the cauldron again. The flame was bright green but cool to the touch. With the cloud almost complete and without the orb, the reversion had little power left to intensify the fire. It relied on the master of the reversion and his assistant to protect the cauldron in the final moments, but that would not be the case this time. Samuel yanked hard and spilled one of the burning logs to the steel grid. Chunks of burning wood fell through the observation deck floor and dropped to the ground with the rain.
“Samuel, please don’t. I don’t know what will happen to me. I don’t want to go through this again. Please let me die. For good.”
He paused and thought about Kole’s request. As if his plea was heard, a voice came alive inside of Samuel’s head. Deva’s voice. If he follows the orb to the destruction below before you destroy the cauldron, the Great Cycle will release him from his duty.
Before Samuel could reply, Deva’s voice was gone.
“You can earn your release if you do what I say. Do what our father instructed.”
Kole nodded with the last of his strength. Samuel walked over to Kole and pulled him by the shoulder towards the edge of the observation deck as Kole crawled on all fours. Samuel leaned back and looked at Kole�
��s face.
“You’ve got to fall on the orb, like a Samurai on his sword. I’m sorry. I don’t know why. All I know is that if you go over the edge before I destroy the cauldron—”
“Got it,” Kole said. “I understand.”
With the last of his energy, Kole dragged himself to his feet. He smiled at Samuel before stepping off the edge of the observation deck and plunging a hundred and eight floors to the ground below.
Samuel turned away from the edge of the building where Kole stood a moment ago. He looked up and saw the cloud was inches from the top of his head. Samuel took a deep breath in hopes of fighting off the claustrophobic feeling gripping his chest. The rain came harder and faster and the lightning flashed inside the cloud like a strobe light.
He looked at the cauldron and then at his hands. Samuel knew he had to destroy it but struggled to figure out how that would happen.
“How, father?” he asked.
Break it in half, came the reply inside his head.
Samuel ran for the stairwell. He remembered seeing an old fire extinguisher clipped to the wall, covered in dust. He stepped through the doorway and looked to the right where he could scarcely see the red paint used to coat the extinguisher. With his uninjured leg, Samuel kicked at the brackets holding the fire extinguisher in place. After the third strike, the toggle bolts pulled free of the rotted dry wall and it fell to the floor with a metallic thud.
Samuel picked it up and although it did not weigh much more than a gallon of water, he knew they were made to withstand drops and punctures. He ran back through the doorway and onto the observation deck now completely covered in the gray cloud. He felt like a man trapped inside a burning house, the smoke rising from the floors below. Samuel could not see the edge of the skyscraper and he could not see the antennas rising into the sky above. If he did not destroy the cauldron now, the cloud would claim him and he would not be released.
He held the extinguisher with both hands over his head and swung it down with as much force as he could muster, using the bottom edge to strike the lip of the cauldron. The metallic clang rung in his ears and Samuel’s hands vibrated like hitting a baseball with an aluminum bat. The pain ran up both arms and he dropped the extinguisher to the ground to shake his hands in the air. Samuel felt the cloud seeping into his eyes and dulling his peripheral vision. He grabbed the extinguisher and swung again. This time he felt the cauldron give. A fine line appeared in the concrete bowl. In one motion Samuel brought the extinguisher back up and down again. Sparks flew where the metal struck the stone and the line grew like a black smile. Samuel struck it again and knocked a fist-sized chunk from the cauldron.
A boom of thunder exploded above his head and the building shivered. Samuel shook his head and marveled at the sound, both in its intensity and the fact the reversion loved silence. He hit the cauldron again and now the crack ran through the bottom and to the other side, splitting it in two. The wood fell to the observation deck and began to glow white. The cauldron sat like a cracked egg and Samuel felt the building shake. He blinked and was in free fall as the structure collapsed beneath his feet.
Samuel tumbled through the air, deafened by the roar of crumbling brick and the reversion’s thunder. He smiled while thinking of Mara and Lindsay. He felt as though he would see Lindsay again but was saddened because he did not feel the same about Mara. She was gone and free but Samuel was not sure about Lindsay, or himself. He continued to fall, unsure how far or where he might land. Samuel had one final thought before everything went black. He spoke it into the reversion’s chaos.
“If you can father, give me a chance with Lindsay. We haven’t finished yet.”
He closed his eyes and embraced the nothingness.
***
The skyscraper sunk into the ground, into the space where the ground opened and swallowed the massive structure. It dropped as if collapsing through a trap door in the cellar of an old home. The stone, steel and what was left of the glass cracked and moaned during the descent. The hole spread outward with sand pouring over the sides as the edges retreated from the epicenter, the place where the orb detonated. Those members of the horde on the periphery of the blast site slid into the eternal void with mindless, silent, emptiness.
The more matter that collapsed into the hole, the faster it expanded, racing outward towards the horizon. The remaining artifacts of civilization plummeted down to the core of the earth along with the sand and rock. The mountains broke free and fell forward too, each one’s mass forcing the chasm even wider. The cloud lowered as if forcing the world down a massive drain. When the hole ran all the way to the horizon, it sucked the last remaining light from the reversion, leaving a vacuum to rival the deepest, darkest outer space.
Chapter 17
He jumped in the car and could barely remember how to drive.
She’s going into labor, he thought.
The realization shook him into action. He put the key in the ignition, started the rusty pickup truck and headed out on Interstate 40 towards Nashville’s Baptist Hospital. The radio came alive with another syrupy country song. He slammed his fist into the dial until an angry metal song with an operatic female singer ripped through the speakers with a thrumming of double bass. He wasn’t quite in the mood to break things but it was better than country music.
The man weaved through traffic and honked at the cars unwilling to move over and allow him to pass on the left. After running two red lights and one more yellow than red, the man pulled into a space in the visitor parking lot. He grabbed the keys and leapt from the truck, slamming the door shut, not even bothering to turn his lights off. He ran down the sidewalk and past the pretty nurses smoking cigarettes. His wife’s mother was already there with his son, so he planned on going straight to the delivery room.
“Sir, can we help you—”
“Delivery Room 3603. I already know,” he said interrupting the orderly at the nurse’s station.
The man turned the corner, dodged a meal cart and burst through the door. He saw his wife’s knees first and then her sweaty, red face as the doctor scribbled on a clipboard.
“Hurry,” she said to him.
A nurse held a blue smock and a face mask and the man grabbed both and proceeded to put them on as fast as he could. The baby’s head was crowning and the birth was only minutes away. He stood on the right side of the bed and held his wife’s left knee. She pushed and pushed, each groan sounding more painful than the next.
Before he could realize what happened, the newborn child slid from her mother. A nurse held the baby up and used two fingers to scoop the afterbirth from its mouth, allowing the child to scream its way into the world.
The man began to cry and he leaned over to kiss his wife.
“She’s beautiful,” the man said.
The doctors moved through the delivery room with the precision of ballet dancers, leaving only the most minimal of staff to remain thirty minutes after the birth.
“Can he come in now?” the man asked.
“Yes. I’ll tell your mother-in-law to bring him in.”
The man smiled and the nurse handed him his daughter. She smelled fresh and full of hope. He took three ginger steps towards the door, afraid his motion would somehow harm his newborn girl. But then his memories of doing the same thing with his son returned and he laughed off the worry.
“Here they are,” his mother-in-law said. She sung the words with tears of joy in her eyes as she saw her daughter recovering from giving birth to her second grandchild.
The little boy ran past his father and kissed his mother.
“I miss you, Mommy,” he said.
“Your dad wants to introduce you to someone,” she said.
The boy turned and walked towards his father, never taking his eyes off of the bundle in the man’s arms. The man bent down and held the sleeping infant out to his son. The boy grinned and a light filled his face. He began to cry too and yet did not understand why.
“She’s small,” he
said to his dad.
“Yes, she is. This is your sister and you two have to take care of each other. Can you promise me you’ll do that?”
“I will, Dad,” the boy said. “I promise.”
“I know you will.”
The grandmother’s chest swelled with happiness as she clasped her hands to her face.
“C’mon, introduce them,” she said.
The man winked at his mother-in-law and then looked into his son’s eyes.
“Samuel, meet your new sister, Lindsay.”
###
Acknowledgements
I am forever grateful to Rebecca T. Dickson for making my prose shine. I could not have published this novel without her. I'm also grateful for the continued support of The Keepers.
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