Divine_Scream

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  We gave our thanks, but it was silenced by the chaotic scream of oblivion and its forever war on all of existence. A moment later, we became that war.

  Chapter 23

  The Banshee

  Like a heavy hand on her throat, pulling her from the realm of sleep, Banch flew up into a sitting position, a soft comforter slipping off her naked body. She let out a squeak of bewilderment and immediately felt rawness throughout her neck. She recalled, though she wished she could forget, letting free the Divine Scream. While it wasn’t a scream she’d done many times, she knew it shouldn’t have caused the coarse feeling inside her mouth and down her throat. This was a backward sensation, like using a muscle in reverse, an against-the-grain uncomfortableness.

  A scream had been negated, and she was unnervingly certain she knew which one. Some force had literally reached inside her and plucked the many strings of her vocal cords to counter the effects.

  Few beings could control such things.

  “The Kings,” she whispered, wincing at the pain that came with her words.

  Jared!

  Kicking the beige comforter off, she scrambled to her feet, head filling with leaden heaviness (now that was an effect caused by the Divine Scream). She’d never had such a failing of control. Never shared her entire self with another soul in such a reckless fashion. It was the first scream a banshee learned before leaving the Mother’s cup; it was the scream that defined you, made you relive your entire life, like how people used to do with slideshows or photo albums, but this was experienced by another person, all in one orgasmic blink.

  After sharing herself with only two other long forgotten souls, Banch had never expected to use that scream again. It had happened almost involuntarily. She’d only slept with a few men in the Deeper Unseen, and for how old she was, that practically made her a virgin in the cosmic scheme of things. But Jared was no different in that way. He was very inexperienced, and yet, they had been perfect together.

  But Jared wasn’t here. He wasn’t in the bedroom and the bathroom was empty.

  What have you done, Jared?

  She could almost hear the stern lecture from a sister banshee. Don’t be dense, Utumm Resona, you know what the human has done. He felt your plans, the fatigue of going on, when the light is so close at hand and yet you’ve never yourself stepped into it and left all the suffering of the worlds behind. He knows your intentions now and he means to stop you, because he is in love with you.

  Banch grasped her forehead. It ached with questions. What had he gone to do?

  He cannot bear knowing you’ll be gone forever.

  Her eyes warmed with tears. “No!”

  Time had resumed. That meant the Assembly would recover soon and Jared would be powerless. It was inconceivable to imagine his torture in the fortress, being able to do nothing to stop it. She breathed in silently, feeling so small and powerless—if he was taken, she had no choice but to go on with her plans—the Assembly wouldn’t allow her to return to the fortress and they certainly wouldn’t allow her to provide Jared any sort of reprieve. They’d make sure she would never get to him again.

  She went to find her clothes and discovered them neatly spread over the coffee table. Banch picked up the note. Read it. Read it again. Closed her eyes. Opened them and picked up the tube of lipstick.

  Oh Jared.

  No.

  How would she know if he’d made it? She had no clue how long she’d been out before the Chronos Scream was canceled. Why had the Silent Kings intervened in the actions of another? The Assembly couldn’t have asked for this as one of their grants because they were in a state of suspension like the rest of the world. That meant the Kings had to consciously meddle in her affairs. They wouldn’t even do such a thing if it meant their own safety. It was their choice to let fate unravel on its own.

  Unless the universes were at stake. That would be the only cause.

  Quickly, Banch got dressed. Her skirt fit a little looser now after being torn off. It was impossible not to feel like an absolute fool now for getting… so caught up with her lover.

  The TV turned on and startled her, blouse halfway dragged over her head. She pulled it down and watched a sandy-haired news anchor. The camera tilted at a strange angle and suddenly the news desk sat in a meadow full of wildflowers. The anchor stood up and looked around, mouth agape and his blue eyes wide.

  The walls shook in the hotel room, sucked inward, and an awful noise surged from below.

  Disturbance Paradigm.

  “Oh damnit!”

  Banch ran for the door and slammed into a beveled stone wall that appeared from nowhere. The opposing force threw her back into the armrest of the couch. The black fabric in the couch quivered as though it had become a living beast. Its molecules were destabilizing. She couldn’t believe the disturbance had reached into pieces of furniture. This was something unlike she’d ever seen. This was awful. Many people would die if this thing wasn’t righted. The Assembly had its work cut out for it.

  The lights in the sushi roll lampshades flickered in different shades of color. Burning red. Radioactive green. Molten orange. Soaring blue.

  It wouldn’t surprise her if life itself ended for everything in a matter of seconds, but she wasn’t waiting to find out. She found an opening between the shifting walls and squirmed into the hotel hallway.

  The carpet rumpled under her feet, bunching together. She tripped and slammed to the floor on her elbows. The jolt got her teeth clicking. In the hall the canned light overhead continued to pulse in unnatural cadences and colors. It disoriented her but she staggered into the lobby. Beyond the reception desk everything rolled off into a cobalt abyss of streaking starlight. It almost reminded her of the light the dead would venture into, so calm and vast and embracing.

  She shook her head of the thought. Focus. She had to reach Jared. There was no telling how he’d deal with this. The dimensions would right themselves. The only way out of this was letting the Assembly do what they did best. More people would be hurt, there could be no doubt, but hopefully the casualties were low, as well as any pain and suffering.

  Banch charged out into the sinking street, and hoped such a scenario would come to be.

  Chapter 24

  Jared

  On his best day Jared had absolutely no sense of direction, but since the Disturbance Paradigm had set in now, he had no clue even what planet he was on. Terrain stretched, morphed, rearranged. This had been the beginning, but now buildings seemed affected as well—they almost unfurled and grew like organisms. Streetlights whipped about, made of concrete licorice. Manhole lids expanded in wrought iron orbs as though some giant sewer creature with powerful lungs blew air up into them like bubble gum. Jared saw one lid rupture and scatter shrapnel through a barbershop window. The glass shards twisted in the air, suspended there, rather than falling to the ground.

  Everything was nuts, and he’d caused all of it. Just because he wanted to do right by Banch. Now he might be responsible for the destruction of this world and all other variations of it. He’d always known he was better off receiving help than giving it and this brutally proved that theory for all time.

  As surreal as these things looked, they were only too real and that was the hardest part to process. Jared’s mind felt like it was rebelling. His insides tickled. He glanced down to his arms. His skin flickered, losing color and regaining it like a television image on the fritz. With each change of hue he got a long chill down his spine that pooled in his calves and shot down to his feet, into his toes, then burnt his toenails. He hopped about like walking on hot coals. His tennis shoes burned and he worried they might catch fire. He had several horrible notions race through his mind: what if his frightening thoughts became true just by thinking them? Or worse, something unimagined?

  What if something had happened to Banch while she slept? He’d seen so many buildings collapse, implode, reconfigure—he’d be responsible if something bad happened to her.

  He stopped short i
n the inhaling, exhaling road. It was like being on the belly of a slumbering dragon. He shook away the unsettling thought and returned to Banch. There would be no way to find her. The universe either ended or this thing resolved, but there would be no navigation through this bizarre maze. Especially for someone as helpless as him.

  He stood on a bus stop bench and tried to get a bearing on the ocean. From here he believed he could see something. The sky bubbled off into a froth with no other indication of water beyond it. The ocean could no longer be seen.

  A piece of steel from the bench’s armrest slithered up and Jared caught it in his fist, the silvery dough wiggling between his fingers. He squeezed. And squeezed. So hard. He was so impossibly angry. How could he let this happen? He’d asked himself that a million times since his encounter with the Silent King and yet asking the question a million times wasn’t enough. His intentions had been pure. He’d wanted to be the hero. He wanted Banch to wake up with a clear choice before her—life or death—but the person she’d chosen to save from damnation cared more about her than any lover or friend she’d ever known. He was already high up in her mind, God knew why, but he wanted to punctuate that with something noble—maybe it would change her mind, make her want to live.

  Jared splashed the metallic grease onto the sidewalk.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t have changed her mind.

  He inspected his hand and there was no residual. Other pieces of metal from the bench slithered up like chrome cobras. He jumped off the bench to the quaking ground and headed left—just because, no real reason; he knew he had to choose some way to go. He walked toward a building in the center of the road. Cars were parked around it in a circle with odd uniformity. The vehicles shook, experiencing an earthquake rendered just for them. The Disturbance Paradigm was doing its best to make him second guess his mind again.

  He started around the single story building, which looked like one of those community center buildings circa 1985 with a wooden beam frame around its perimeter—the office of either a dentist or a realtor.

  A shadow fell over him. He craned his neck and his body went stiff. A larger industrial warehouse bent toward the smaller one, looking like its concrete had turned to taffy. He tried to hurry past before the other building crashed down, but then he heard the screaming and froze.

  On top of the smaller building stood a young blonde with her hair in a bun, a young boy clutched to her side. She wore a torn pants suit dyed with blood at the various tears. The boy appeared unhurt, but his eyes suggested terror beyond anything conceivably possible.

  “Help us! Please!” called the woman. “We don’t know how we got up here!”

  Jared was locked in place for a spell as he watched the larger building become ghostly and fade out of sight.

  “It’s going to come back!” she called. “It already disappeared twice and it gets closer every time.”

  “I—uh—I mean, hold on! I’ll get you down!” he shouted.

  What? Exactly how will that happen, you jerk?

  His eyes darted around. The roof wasn’t too high. The frame flexed in and out repeatedly, though, and was far from reliable enough to climb. There was a small palm tree however, and it grew only a couple of feet from the building in a planter of island bush poppies.

  “The air conditioners want to eat us!” the little boy yelled.

  “Hold on. I’m on my way.”

  He clamored up into the planter and jumped onto the palm tree. The world pitched and he almost slid back to the ground. Somehow his hands wrapped around the thin trunk and he got a great hold on it. He hadn’t climbed a tree since childhood—maybe since his days spent at Bella Boyd’s when he’d been more adventurous. Now he tried to tackle this problem like an adult version of that same child. You’re bigger. Stronger. More capable. Right?

  He dug his feet in. His knees still ached and his legs had little strength left in them but the solidness of the tree was reassuring in this strange new world.

  “Hurry!” the woman called.

  “Trying!” Hand over hand, he kept pushing up. Every grip got sweatier, felt less likely, but he slapped his palms against the tree to make it work. He got a rhythm, even though he acknowledged it as an unnatural one, probably coming to pass because of physical laws being moot—but who cared, whatever worked—and he made it to the roof with only a couple feet between the woman and child.

  “Give me your hand. You can hold onto me and we’ll slide down.”

  The woman nudged the boy forward.

  “Come on,” he said. Jared extended his hand. “Let’s get down. Okay?”

  Visions of Denise’s kids flashed through his mind. I could have been their father if I hadn’t been so scared.

  The boy grabbed onto Jared’s hand.

  “Gotcha,” he said, and pulled the boy closer to him. Hot, feverish breath blew down his neck, probably with the same cadence of a young, stressing heart. Jared tried to ignore the beating because his own heart felt very near absolute failure. His forearms shredded against the coarse trunk as they slid down. His feet met the ground and he had a simultaneous sense of trepidation and excitement at the prospect of climbing back up.

  The boy caught onto Jared’s pant leg. “Don’t leave me!”

  “I’m not! I gotta get your mom.”

  “She’s not my mom!”

  “Well shit, kid, I don’t know! I gotta get that woman. Let me go!”

  “Will you come back?”

  “Sure I will. I totally will.”

  “Promise?”

  Jared threw himself onto the palm tree. “Cross my heart,” he said in a diffuse bass tone he hadn’t intended. The bark’s texture felt different this time. His hands connected with something mushy and dense like putty—then softer like pudding—then jello—then air—it was holding, gripping, clutching to nothing and the lack of sensory input drove him into a panic.

  “I CAN’T do this!” he screamed.

  “What?” said the woman above.

  “What?” said the boy below.

  “Nothing…” He hugged the tree to rid himself of the falling sensation in his guts. Only two more pushes and he would reach the top of the building. “Hang in there,” he said, and throttled up to the very top.

  The woman hesitated, eyes going left and right, then she stuck her hand out. Jared enclosed his hand in hers, hard, and pulled her forward, taking her into his arms. The palm tree went rigid, snapped, and splintered, a dusty cloud of wood exploding underneath.

  “What’s that?” said the woman, panicking. “That sound?”

  “It’s nothing,” Jared replied.

  The tree slid apart into two pieces and dropped.

  “Okay, it’s something,” muttered Jared. “Hold on.”

  The woman sunk her fingers into his shoulders. The tree halted at a slant, caught in a splintery mess of its own pieces.

  “Let go,” he told the woman.

  “Like hell!” she yelled back.

  “Look, it’s not that far of a jump.” When Jared glanced down it looked way farther than he himself would be willing to jump. “Damn it…”

  The tree broke and swayed closer to the ground. Jared rocked his shoulders to free the woman’s grip. She instinctively tried to hold on but he thrashed her away. She dropped and landed on her side in the planter below.

  “Asshole!” she cried out and held her hip. The young boy hurried to her side. “Come on! Get me out of here!”

  Jared saw them for a blink before the tree catapulted him over the roof. He flung his hands out to grasp something and met a circular vent, which slashed through his palms. He landed on his ass and a knife-like pain went up his tailbone.

  The larger building suddenly loomed over everything again, but now it appeared all around the smaller building, with Jared caught inside it. Then, in only a few seconds time, it vanished again.

  However, with it having come so close, sharing the space, something about the smaller building had changed. Jared sat there in shoc
k. He’d glance at his hands, cut and bloodied, and then he’d glance around the roof. Although part of him understood what was happening, the larger part of his awareness could not.

  The single-story office building actively grew taller. It rumbled and stretched skyward, on and on. All he could do was hold on. He began to cough when the air was thinner. He wondered if this eccentric new skyscraper would penetrate the atmosphere and reach into outer space. But after fifteen minutes of dizzying movement, wood clicked and flexed beneath him as the building’s expansion halted. He spotted a 747, maybe only ten thousand feet above, flying sideways and looking oddly like a boomerang.

  He was still able to breathe, thankfully, and from his earlier experience today with the Lung Spike, he could do so in a surprisingly efficient manner.

  You’ve come a damn long way since the doctor’s office this morning.

  Suddenly his cell phone rang and scared the hell out of him. The ring tone had a hellish timbre to it, definitely not the one he’d chosen. He fished the phone out of his pants pocket, his bleeding hand stinging terribly.

  “Hi, Kaitlin,” he said when he saw who it was. His voice startled him; it sounded like a man’s voice. It didn’t belong to him; it could never belong to him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Are you okay?” he replied.

  “I was in the ER, hadn’t been admitted yet.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I think… I’m still there. The curtains around my bed turned solid—they’re like plastic walls. I can see people’s shadows behind them, but the curtains are like a foot thick now. What’s happening to me? I thought my hallucinations were over.”

  “Just a while longer.” Jared’s eyes filled. “Just sit on your bed and wait. Things will go back to normal soon.”

  “The walls are closing in, I think.”

  Jared searched around helplessly for a moment, unsure what to say. Kaitlin saved him that and spoke again. “You hate me because we couldn’t be together, don’t you?”