by Brian Rella
“Jason!” his mother yelled.
“Run! Maggie, run!”
Frank’s mother backed away with the children in tow, watching the first mantis stalk Jason.
“Jason!” Maggie cried.
Jason turned in time to roll away again, before the mantis’ blade-like arm pierced his chest, but he was not fast enough. He howled as the giant’s arm sliced through his leg, almost severing it.
A third mantis sprang from the woods and onto the front lawn. That made three of them. Maggie’s eyes grew wide at the geyser of blood spurting from Jason’s leg. She frantically pulled the boys toward the house, David wailing in her arms. They ran up the front steps and she shoved them into the front entrance, slamming the door behind them.
There was a monstrous crash into the heavy front door, then scratching and clawing as the boys and their mother backed away from the front of the house. Wood splintered and groaned as the mantis battered the house, trying to get at them inside.
The onslaught stopped. Maggie cowered with the children in the kitchen, holding them close, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
Suddenly a cacophony of shattering wood and tinkling glass came from the front of the house. Maggie wrapped her arms around the boys and all three peered around the corner of the wall to get a glimpse of the ruckus.
Green lances stabbed at them through the front entrance.
The battering started again and with a huge crash, the bulbous head and antennas of a giant mantis broke through the front of the house. Maggie screamed as the mantis pushed itself into the house and swiped at her and the children with its massive lance-like arms.
Maggie yanked the children across the kitchen and out of the back door. In the back yard, she spun around in circles, looking frantically for safety.
She stopped, bent down and took Frank by the shoulders, placing David on the ground next to him. She pushed David toward Frank. David wept, clutching at her shirt, trying to get back into her arms.
“Frank, take your brother’s hand and run. Run to the Duffy’s. Go now!” she yelled, pushing their hands together and shoving them toward the Duffy’s house.
“No, Momma, no! You come with us!” Frank cried.
From outside the house, they heard a loud crack, like a huge egg breaking, then an unearthly screeching sound, and a man shouting.
That doesn’t sound like Daddy.
The mantis inside the house was ramming its head through the black sliding glass door. It paused, seeming to notice the sounds from the front of the house. Its antennae twitched back toward the sound and then it retreated the way it had come.
“Boys, now!” Maggie exclaimed, pushing them toward the Duffy’s.
They moved around the back of the house, glimpsed the scene in front yard, and stopped.
Jason clawed along the ground away from the monsters. A man and a woman attacked one of the mantises in front of him. She raised a hammer over her head. It glowed with yellow light as she smashed it down on the mantis’ hind-section, punching a hole in its thick shell, and destroying its wing.
A third person appeared, leaping across the road and into the fight. Both men and the woman, wearing all black, were attacking the giants ferociously with glowing weapons. Magic? Frank thought as he witnessed the battle while grasping his mother’s leg.
With a roar, the blond man swung a vibrant red axe at a mantis’ hind-section, and hacked it off, causing black sludge to ooze from the wound.
A bald man sailed through the air, landing on top of another mantis. Straddling the creature’s neck, he raised two glowing blue saitachi above his head. He sank the three bladed weapons so deep into the monster’s head, the short blades near his hands disappeared into creature. The mantis’ body shook, twitched, and fell to the ground. The man removed his blades from its shell with a grunt. Black fluid spurted from the wounds as he hopped off of it, and moved back to help his companion.
The blond man fell to the ground, a mantis poised above him, about to split him in two. He raised his hand in defense and shouted something Frank couldn’t understand.
Light flowed from the man’s palm and struck the creature in the face, forcing it back. From the far side of the yard came a cry. The warrior woman soared through the air, her hammer crashing down on the mantis’ neck, decapitating it with a snap.
The woman reached down and pulled her companion to his feet. They touched palm to palm and murmured to each other glancing around at the battlefield. Nodding, the blond man fled into the woods at an impossible pace, bounding across the road, and disappearing into the trees.
The bald man approached the family. Frank’s father shouted from the ground, “Please, don’t harm them!”
The man turned to his father and cocked his head at him with a puzzled face, and then turned his gaze to his mother. She pulled the boys close to her.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He had an Asian accent.
“Ye…yes,” she stuttered. The man glanced at Frank. He had no hair on his head or face, or even his arms. He looked Japanese or Chinese, his eyes narrow, his nose wide and short, his lips thin and tight. A membrane of blue light surrounded his entire body and seemed to pulse softly around him. He looked Frank in the eye, winked and then turned back to Frank’s father.
The bald man kneeled beside his father and the warrior woman joined him. They spoke to his father, but Frank could not hear what they said. His father shook his head and called to his mother. “Maggie, call 911!” he shouted.
Frank’s mother stood there, dumbfounded. Frank could not take his eyes off the man surrounded by the soft blue hue. The woman looked at Frank, and he saw she glowed with a similar shade of blue. She whispered into the ear of the bald man. The bald man nodded and looked down at Frank’s father.
“No need for an ambulance,” he said. “We can help.”
JESSIE
October 17, 2015
Beauchamp, Louisiana
* * *
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Flight 216 to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. At this time, we’d like to ask our first-class ticket holders to begin boarding. Please have your boarding pass out with your identification before you board the plane.”
First time on a plane. First class. Jessie grinned as she held her boarding pass out to the flight attendant. The woman wore a tight smile under a button-like nose.
“Welcome aboard,” she said as she scanned Jessie’s pass under the red beam and waited for an affirmative beep. She ripped the long part off the ticket, handed the short part back to Jessie, and feigned a so happy to have you aboard today smile.
Jessie walked down the ramp, excited and nervous. She had never flown before. In fact, the only time she’d been out of Louisiana was when her mom and dad had taken her to Mississippi to visit family, and that had been in the back of her dad’s old Ford F-150. Jessie had been young and remembered little of the trip. They went to a funeral for someone she had never met before. Her mom cried a lot, and her dad kept wrapping his arm around her, comforting her.
Dad comforting Mom – the good times.
Jessie cherished those memories, and as the nostalgia washed over her, her eyes filled with tears. But she pushed back those memories. She didn’t want to think about her mother or the past. Both had occupied her thoughts enough. It was time to move past this part of her life. She had to.
Despite part of her believing her mom had gotten her comeuppance for letting Steve and Marie into their lives, and ignoring what was going on with her daughter right under her nose, she still had pangs of guilt.
How does a mother do that to a child? How does she ignore the unhappiness and pain of her own flesh and blood? She got what she deserved, the dark voice in her head said.
That’s why Jessie’d had Arraziel fix her. Her mother was broken, after all. Despite her outer beauty, she was ugly and warped underneath her pretty packaging. Why else would she let a bully into her house to beat up on her daugh
ter? Why else would she let a child molester into their home? Now she looked more like her true self: horrid and deformed, just like she was on the inside.
Still, Jessie remembered her mother before her father died. She wondered if there was good left in her that Jessie could have revived with love, patience, and time. Part of Jessie was saddened by what she had done. It wasn’t her mom’s fault any more than it was Jessie’s that her father had fallen off that building and to his death. Could she blame her mom for being depressed? Hadn’t she been depressed too? Hadn’t she cried herself to sleep for months after? How would Jessie have dealt with the death of her own husband?
You wouldn’t have ignored your daughter, drank yourself into a stupor, and let child abusers into your house. You are much stronger than that, Jessie.
That dark, bitter voice of justification in her head won out in her struggle to rationalize what she did. It always came down to her mother’s actions, not her past, or her potential. Jessie was stronger than her mother.
The truth was Jessie would have been raped and physically abused for the rest of her life under her mother’s care. She’d had to do what she did to escape the inevitable.
And no one will ever hurt you like that again, Jessie.
The voice in her head was right. Chicago will be a new start. A do-over. I will start the life I was meant to live and leave the past where it belongs – behind me. I will never look back.
Her boarding pass read row 3 seat A. Jessie found her seat and settled in for the flight. A blanket, pillow, and a small bag full of some toiletries lay in her seat. She moved these aside and sat down. Another flight attendant dropped by with a tray. Jessie glanced up at her. Her hair was pulled back so tight her cheeks looked like they were pinned to the back of head.
“Water, orange juice, champagne?” she offered, lowering the tray.
What kind of woman offers a fourteen-year-old girl champagne? Then she remembered. I don’t look fourteen any more, do I? It made her smile. Looking older would have advantages.
Jessie had never tried alcohol before despite it being easily available in her mom’s house. She remembered her mom drank champagne on special occasions.
This is a special occasion, isn’t it? she heard the dark voice in her head say.
“Champagne, please,” Jessie said. She had never tried it and wanted to celebrate her new start on life.
The flight attendant handed her a slender plastic champagne glass, filled with the bubbling yellow liquid. She sipped it and the bubbles tickled her nose. It was dry and sweet at the same time and she liked it enough to drink most of it before placing the glass down on the tray beside her. As she set the glass down, she noticed buttons on the side of her plush chair and played with them, adjusting the seat until she was comfortable.
Her knapsack was between her legs and she reached down and pulled out the Arraziel book from among the other books of dark arts she had taken from Olga’s bookstore. She placed it cover side down on her chest. The flight would take about two hours and she wanted to finish the book and do a little thinking about her next steps before arriving in Chicago. Should she try to find Pasmet, the demon she had discovered on the map on the back cover of the Arraziel book? Or should she put it all behind her and start a new life? Maybe she could get a job, finish school, and make something of herself.
Jessie glanced around her, suspicious of people looking over her shoulder and seeing what she was reading, but the flight was not full, not in first class at least. She spread the blanket on her lap and fixed the pillow behind her head. Then she opened the book to where she had left off and began to read.
From the corner of her eye she noticed the flight attendant approach, and she snapped the book closed, bringing it to her chest. The tight-faced woman collected the almost empty champagne glass and said, “Ma’am, you’ll need to raise your seat for take-off.”
“Oh,” Jessie said, softening her face and grip on the book. She fiddled with the seat controls until she was sitting upright, then put the book to the side as the plane taxied to the runway, and the captain made pre-flight announcements.
The plane gently rocked Jessie in her chair and she suddenly felt sleepy. The champagne had made her slightly dizzy and she closed her eyes, realizing she hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. She’d been busy sorting things out at the bookstore, covering her tracks, and getting ready to leave for Chicago.
The plane engines roared with a steely whine and the white noise added to her fatigue and drowsiness. As the engines roared louder, sending the plane down the runway, she was pressed back into her seat, and the plane gently lifted off into the air.
Jessie was asleep before the plane leveled off at thirty thousand feet.
She was standing in darkness. There was something moving around her, but it was too vague to make sense of. It was fuzzy, or hazy, like black snow on a breeze, swirling around her face.
Then she saw the eyes. They floated in the air in front of her, on the black snowy haze. The eyes were green, but not like a human’s, or even a cat’s. They were large, oval shaped, and translucent. There was an otherworldly quality to them as they hovered in front of her.
The snowy mist was purple-black and reflective. She reached out and touched it, and it became tinged with fluorescent purple where her finger made contact.
A voice spoke.
“Does this form please you?” it asked, the voice sounding ominous and deep, like the ocean.
Jessie didn’t see a form other than eyes and black snow. She wasn’t pleased or displeased. She was curious.
“What are you?”
The eyes closed and the black snow moved in waves, circled like a cyclone, and took a human form: the form of the tight-faced flight attendant.
“What do you want me to be?” it said.
“Not that,” Jessie replied.
The flight attendant spiraled apart into a cyclone again and took another human form.
Jessie was staring at the image of her dead father.
“Do you prefer this?”
She winced as painful memories surfaced from her subconscious. “No!” she moaned. The image of her father dissipated and returned to scattered black snow again.
The eyes hung in front of her. “Tell me what pleases you, my princess,” it said.
Princess?
Jessie realized she must be dreaming. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. She remembered she was flying on the plane. She must have fallen asleep and this was some kind of psychedelic dream.
Lucid dreaming. Cool.
“Show me your true form,” she said.
The black snowy haze withdrew, spun high in the air on an invisible gust of wind, and grew in size and mass. The eyes remained focused on Jessie, then they closed, and the mass of black snow radiated purple, and the glowing snowy mist took shape.
Jessie heard a rhythmic thumping in her ears. A cadence. A heart beating. The hazy mist took the form of an enormous heart, over ten feet tall. Its valves and chambers pulsed and vibrated with the hypnotic beat. Its flesh was glossy black, accented with violet and lavender; a membrane surrounding the heart made it look slick, wet, and shiny. Veins filled with green blood coiled out from the heart, some supporting it from underneath, and others floating around it like tentacles, waving gently in the air. One crossed in front of Jessie and she saw a mouth at its end, with a circle of teeth around the inside. Fluorescent green blood oozed from the vein’s opening, as the spider web of veins grew in size and number, surrounding both her and the beating heart.
“Nice,” Jessie said.
“I am glad you are pleased, princess,” it said, through no mouth Jessie could see.
“Who are you? Why do you call me princess?”
“I am Nalsuu, the Father of Darkness and Chaos.”
Jessie giggled. Lucid dreaming was cool. Nalsuu. Father of Darkness and Chaos. Metal!
“Well, Father Darkness – or do you prefer Mister Nalsuu? – what do you want from me?”
>
Nalsuu’s veins contracted, touching her, pulling her into him. The heartbeat grew louder and faster, and a bellowing laugh boomed from deep inside the chambered organ. She felt it rattle her bones, and was suddenly afraid.
Jessie shook with fear. This dream wasn’t cool anymore. It was scary. She felt around for something to hold as she slid toward the heart. She clasped something in her hand and gripped it tightly.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain…”
The darkness faded, the image of the heart with it, but the heartbeat hung in her ears and that voice, that bellowing, deep bass voice echoed in her mind.
“We’re experiencing some rough air and we’ll be climbing to try and get above it. Shouldn’t be bumpy for too long. In the meantime, please return to your seats and fasten your…”
Jessie opened her eyes. She was on the plane, the Arraziel book lying on the floor, open, and she was holding tightly to the armrest of her chair.
Her breath caught at the sight of the open Arraziel book at her feet. She reached for it, but the seat belt held her back. She unbuckled her belt and fell to the floor, grasping the book in both hands while trying to maintain her balance.
“Miss,” a stern male voice called. “You must get back into your seat and fasten your safety belt.”
Jessie shot the male flight attendant a look that must have scared him, and the authority he thought he had vanished from his expression. Jessie did as she was asked, never taking her eyes off the flight attendant, who pretended to look away, unaffected. He went back to the galley, drawing the curtains shut behind him, the metal curtain rings raking across the curtain rod.
Jessie grasped the book of Arraziel to her chest and looked out the window at the dark clouds around the plane, the laugh from the heart in her dream still reverberating in her mind.
FRANK
