I tried remembering everything about my life in that space. I was a real person with real memories. Not all of them were great, sure, but I made sure to tell myself that they were at least mine. Regardless of what was inside of me at the time, I had lived my life with it gnawing away at my insides and managed not to self-destruct. Not to give into feeling like every day I was drowning a little bit. This was all in hindsight, I knew, but I needed it. I needed to know that part of me was still in control. Even after everything. Even after it all.
My cell phone was gone and my laptop was probably swallowed up by the debris. I wanted at least a little insight into what the world was thinking about the apocalypse I had started. The TV was on its side with a cracked screen, but it turned on when I pressed it.
The first thing to come on was the finale of The Stud. In it, Chud had lined up the last three remaining women. Each one stood by an aisle with a cloth draped over it. The sound was out and it was hard to see through the cracked glass, but one by one, the ladies revealed large, blown-up ultrasounds of their uteruses as Chad first took notes and then held up a card with a one to ten rating on it. The woman who scored the eight acted as if she had just won a Nobel prize.
Every channel was like this; everyone on its regularly scheduled programming. The world was ending and people didn’t seem to care. The newscasters were generally reporting things as if Armageddon was just another Tuesday. Hell, even the Powerball numbers were read.
I thought about my parents. I was hoping they were safe and out of the city by now, but I couldn’t be sure. Oswalt didn’t owe me anything, but if the short amount of time we spent in each other’s space was any indication to his character, he was loyal to James. Knowing that I may never see them again hurt so much that I felt like my chest was about to explode. And then I used this. I used this pain to rip everything out of me.
Petty.
Donaldson.
It all came spilling out of me. And I sat there on all fours, rocking slowly, as the grief poured out of me. Like something had ruptured inside of me and there was no way of putting it back. I sat there until I had no more. Until I felt empty.
When all of it had poured out of me, D was sitting nearby, his back up against a wall. There was a heavy crack in his skin around his forehead and a thread of black blood poured down his neck.
“Why me?” I asked softly. D responded with a slow shake of his head, but I wasn’t having it. “Why me!” I yelled again.
“I don’t have that answer.”
This both infuriated me and made me want to keel over and start crying again. “How long?”
D’s face told me that answer already. “I don’t know, Grey. You’re asking the wrong person. The night Palls came in here, the night this whole mess got set into motion, was the first night we met.”
This answer wasn’t good enough. I stood to my feet even though I felt as if my legs were lashed to stilts. “I had this thing inside of me the entire time, so why didn’t I turn out like the rest?”
D looked over the broken wall overlooking my neighborhood. “I’m not the one to ask.”
Sitting there, right in front of us on a jutting metal beam, was a crow. It was a slim, curved bird with a ruffled feathers. Its black beak had silver at the very tips and was roughly the size of a greyhound. The number 7 was imprinted into its eyes.
I dragged myself to stand in front of it. When I was just a few feet away, I asked, “Are you proud of yourself?”
The Shade blinked, but remained silent.
Looking passed it—at a New York being swallowed by fire and destruction—I laughed. “You know, I thought my life sucked before this. I thought, nothing can be worse. I mean, just a few months ago, before all of this mess started, I just would’ve rather stayed indoors. I didn’t need friends. I didn’t need anybody really, and I kind of chalked it up to the luck of the draw. Just what I was stuck with, randomly, out of the blue. ‘Little Mental Mandy’ would be something I lived with to the end of my life. And I sort of came to peace with that, in my own way.
“But then that wasn’t all true, was it? I did have a choice. This entire time, I had a choice. Except, you never let me see it. You blocked it out of my brain, somehow, I don’t know. I don’t know if that is even possible. But it was you. You, the entire time. Buried in my bones and skin. You never got to me like all the other people because they had never known what it was like to be trapped inside your own body. But I did. And I’m not saying that you recognized that, and that we had some connection, but I like to think that you tortured me throughout the years and then found yourself a prisoner.” I laughed. I actually laughed even though tears were rolling down my face. “You were in your own little hell inside of me, weren’t you? That would be really fucking fitting.”
The Shade never took its eyes off of me. D didn’t say a word.
I wiped my face again. “I don’t know what I was expecting talking to you right now. I just figured that for once, I should. That like everything I’ve been up against in my life, I should acknowledge that you even exist before I promise myself never to be swayed by your whispering, by your influence, again. I’ve beaten you already. I do it every single day I wake up. And I’ll keep beating you until there’s nothing left of me which, coincidentally, might be a few minutes from now. I don’t know. That’s all I want to say, I guess.”
Just as I turned away, the Shade spoke. It didn’t whisper to me this time. Instead, it had a feminine voice. “You want a medal? On the backs of everyone who has died? On the billions who will die? On the idea that when you take your last breath and you will bite the big one, Amanda Grey, you will serve out the rest of your afterlife in hell until kingdom come? You’re satisfied with that?”
“As long as I choose it.”
The Shade flapped its wings twice and landed on the broken curvature of the farthest wall. “I can read your mind. I’ve been in there and let me tell you, it hasn’t been pretty.”
“If you’re really in my head,” I shouted, “then you know what I’m willing to do to find out the truth. So are you out here for a pep-talk or are you going to tell me what I need to know?”
D stood up holding his head, and my Shade nearly began beating it wings aggressively at him. “Don’t trust it.”
“Uh. Pot meet kettle,” I groaned. “Just, one of you, tell me what the hell is going on.”
D crossed his arms. “We Shades are shreds of something larger, something darker.We’ve been forming over the recent millennia. But amongst us, there is more at stake. We are also at war with each other. Every time we form, our wills are at odds. This means that when one Shade absorbs another, they are forced to serve the dominant drive. This is as they are written in the prophesies called ‘The Subjugation of Wills’.”
Rubbing my temples from the numbness forming behind them, I replied, “I’ve never heard of that prophecy.”
“They are written of Shades, so they are prophecies scribed in hell,” D responded.
“Paged in Lucifer’s bible, a book bound in flesh,” the Shade added.
“Scrawled in the blood of sinners.”
“Penned with the bones of angels.”
“These scrolls sit in the chamber of the Dark Lord himself in the lowest, coldest part of hell.”
And then D added, “I heard they were looking into e-book reprints.”
“Ooo,” the crow replied. “It’s a good market for it.”
“Okay!” I yelled. “Can either of you please tell me what this struggle, this ‘Subjugation of Wills’ thing, has to do with me?”
My Shade sighed. “She’s even more annoying on the outside. It means that our un-holy war would bring pain and darkness to your world. There will be famine and disease and lines twice as long at the DMV. But something isn’t right. This is too soon. There is a secret hand dealing these cards.”
“Someone or something
is forcing all of this to happen, and they’re letting it all come down on your head,” D explained. “Only question is why?”
My Shade spread her wings out. “You two don’t need me here. I’m leaving.”
This was in no way what I was expecting. My Shade had some serious confidence issues.
“Hey.”
“What?”
I walked over and stood staring at it. It turned its head slightly at me. “I’m kind of stuck right now,” I told her. “Because on one hand, I want to pet you. And on the other, I want to punch you so hard that your beak flies off.”
The crow stood glaring at me. “I know what’s behind that threat, Grey. I also know that there’s a part of you that wants to curl up into a little ball and wait this whole thing out. There’s a part of you that wants to track down your parents and just run and run and run. Makes more sense, doesn’t it. These people, this city, has never done a thing for you. And in the long run, what does it matter? You’re going to hell anyway.” When I laughed as a response, it asked, “What is it, Grey?”
“Nothing. It’s just funny hearing that voice on the outside for once.”
The Shade rolled its two 7’s and a tear formed in its chest. The entire bird flipped itself inside out and fell into a black puddle. Twitching, the dark pool crept along the ground and climbed into my shadow on the ground where it slowly dissolved.
“D. I saw you meeting with the other Shades. Where was that?”
Remembering this seemed to get D seriously flustered. “Yeah. You want to tell me how you managed to find yourself in the outer cusp of hell? That place is kind of waiting area for the damned. Used to be called the ‘Hotel California’ but now it’s just a high-end Asian fusion coffee house/bed and breakfast. Things are changing all over the place. What were you doing there?”
“Oh nothing. I just fell from a building.” D face palmed, but then quickly screamed as he touched his skull. “You all right?”
D winced again. “Oh nothing. Just a fractured skull.”
We sat there for a few minutes without saying a word. I didn’t want to admit it, but part of it was just enjoying his company. I wondered if in his own way, he was doing the same.
“I’m sorry about Petty.”
I gave him a silent nod. “She’s going to hell, isn’t she?”
“We can’t keep dwelling on this. What did you do with the Shade I imprisoned in her body?” Reading my body language, his eyes went wide. “Grey?”
“I wasn’t going to leave it there. So I sorta kinda … ate it?”
“You— No wonder you nearly split my head open!” D exclaimed. “Okay, well. At least it’s contained. That means we have all seven Shades under control.”
I walked right up to him and shoved him backward. “No! No! You don’t get to talk like that. What are you planning? If you’re some ancient evil, why are you helping? If you weren’t going to eat me, then why have you been looking out for me this entire time?”
D threw his hands up. “Hey. I never said that I didn’t initially intend to eat you. I totally did, okay? It’s just that I …”
A chill ran through my body. “You what?”
“I … my entire existence, I’ve always been stepped on. I’ve never been the Shade of the greatest will. I’ve always been the bottom. But then, you gave me a chance. And I saw that you had been going through the same thing, in your own sloppy human kind of way. I’m going to beat these Shades and become king someday, and you’d better believe that when that day does come, my kingdom will bring a plague of horror and torment to any and all of your kind. But like, for now, I think I need an Advil.”
I sighed and limped over to what was left of my kitchen cupboards. My mom kept a safety bag for emergencies. After a minute of rummaging through it, I found the right container and tossed the entire bottle over. D flicked it open with one finger and downed six.
“What’s the plan?”
He wiped his mouth. “We need to flush out the person responsible. Something tells me that whoever this person is, they are watching our every move. Maybe not right now, but they’ve been watching from the very beginning.”
Outside, thin flakes began to fall from the sky, but it wasn’t snow. I held my hand out and a gray flake landed in my palm. It was raining ash. “I think we can use that to our advantage. I have two Shades and you have five. We might as well use them, too.”
D sighed. “I don’t like the sound of this. Please don’t say ‘I have a plan and it’s just crazy enough to work’.”
I smiled. “Oh god, no. We’ll both probably die pretty painful deaths. But then again, what do we have to lose? The world can only end once.”
CHAPTER 42
“And that’s it,” I said, leaning back in the wooden seat.
The priest on the other side of the screen didn’t move or respond. He simply sat there, just a static silhouette buffering.
My throat was raw and dry after talking for so long. I’m not even sure how long it had taken me to get from beginning to end. But I did. Every piece, every facet. Donaldson, Petty, my parents, Lou, the Burley burger burger, scythe HDMI ports, the Smilie Cult, Mason, Gary, Cain, the Pope, my roach neighbors, the Beholders, warrior angels, Franklin the plant, Gaffrey fucking Palls, pet sacrifice, Bag Boy/Man, the Lie bra, me in a dress, “Make New York Nice Again”, Oswalt, Hotel California (under new management), ramen noodle delicacies, the stars falling, Mordor nachos, angels who play harps, an actual “puppet politician”, and Craigslist.
“I’m …” The priest trailed off. The darkness in the confessional booth smelled like cheap carpet and old books. “This was quite the story.”
“Right. So,” I rubbed my palms together, “how does this absolving thing work? Is it still twenty Hail Marys or is there a prayer that consolidates it all?”
“I’m …” The priest kept pulling on his collar and clearing his throat. “Can you wait? Right here. Can you wait right here?”
And then he bolted out of the confessional.
Sighing, I let my head drop back, allowing it to thud up against the wood of the backrest. Working my way through everything and trying to explain in detail was at first my way of getting some therapy out of this, and while I was hoarse, I did feel better. Lighter. James had a point—this confession thing was a greatly needed baggage drop-off site for the terminally stressed.
However, somewhere in between, and I can’t point to one place in particular, retelling my entire story from the beginning, had made me question a few things. Maybe I had been too close to the blood and overall mayhem to fully process these things, perhaps I was too busy trying to stay alive while Fate was having a gay old time bashing me over the head for two months. But things had started standing out to me. Odd things. Peculiars. And though I saw many faces peering back at me in the darkness, one seemed to come up every single time.
At first, I laughed. After everything, I figured that’s where I should start—just straight up laughing at the whole thing. I guess that the identity of the person who ruined my entire life (minus the reasoning behind it all) had been a bit too obvious, and that was probably why I didn’t notice it sooner. If anything, I told myself that if there was any big lesson, any massive take away from the whole mess I had found myself in was that you can worry about a thousand horrible events happening in your life—a loose AC falling on your head, a faulty traffic light when you’re already in the middle of a walkway—but it’s the thing that’d closest to you that’s really in line to slit your throat.
I sat in that booth for over ten minutes, half waiting, half dozing. When the priest didn’t come back, I dragged my ass out of the confessional.
As I approached the front of the Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, passing row after row of empty pews, my footsteps echoing throughout the empty church, I reminded myself that I saw this coming. Oh yeah. I knew he would show up. From the mome
nt I figured out that everything, every bit of suffering I’d been subjected to, was plotted out, executed, and orchestrated by someone’s twisted wet dream to frame me for the apocalypse. I was banking on him showing up, actually. After all I went through, every life I was blamed for uprooting— the destruction of homes, the city-wide catastrophes—I knew, I just knew that the scumbag who had set me up from the very beginning couldn’t help but show his smiling face, right there, at the very end.
And there he was, waiting for me in the front row as I got out of the confessional. I didn’t have to ask about the whereabouts of the priest who was supposed to be listening to me the entire time. Each row I passed as I walked up to the front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was decorated with one or two of his limbs, organs, and/or other assorted body parts. I was so numb to it all that I walked passed each one without feeling in my skin, let alone any connection to the human carnage. The last pew on the right held his head: eyes wide open, mouth now frozen in mid-scream. I stopped to stare at it, realizing that I had spent hours in that confessional and had never seen this man’s face before.
I slid into the pew next to the cause of my misery but said nothing to him. Instead, I looked up at the church altar. Behind it, the bold image of a crucified Christ gazed down on me. I paid special attention to his eyes.
“He looks sadder than usual,” I said aloud.
Barnem clicked his tongue. “Melodramatic. He only seems that way to you, Grey. Because you don’t understand.”
Angrily, I turned to face him. “Then make me.”
But this only made Barnem laugh. He looked nothing like I had last seen him. Sure he was dead the last time, impaled to a wall like an angelic shish-kabob. Now he wore a bulky iron chest plate, one that resembled the garb of the angels laying siege to New York City, but his was slightly more decorated as it sported a gold crest which moved and shifted around the gray metal, sometimes creeping over his shoulder as a lion, other times blossoming on his chest like a ball of flame. Barnem finished the ensemble with iron gauntlets over his hands, but also acid washed jeans and his thin arms completely bare. With his hair shaved off at the sides, and the rest of it propped up into an obnoxious mohawk, he looked like a lunatic cosplaying as an intensely deranged psychopath.
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