by Sean Platt
“I think you have to do what’s best for you.”
“And what do you think that is?”
Boricio hesitated, shifting on his feet. He still wasn’t used to his words or opinion mattering, and found himself continuously surprised that Rose seemed so reliant on both. He took her hands and squeezed them tight, loving her with every part the Boy Wonder had taken to fixing. “Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare the truth thou hast, that all may share; be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.”
“Is that Voltaire?”
“Probably,” Boricio said. “Point is you need to be bold because if you’re not, you lose. Even in a tinkle fairyland full of phonies and weirdos and cults, it’s best to know the game you’re gonna play, so you can spin the dice or roll the wheel or do whatever the fuck you’ve gotta do to make the house go home and hand you your bags of cash on their way out the door.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors,” Rose laughed.
Boricio laughed with her. “Do what’s best for you, Rose. Do that the right way and you’ll get what you deserve. Then you can keep on doing what’s best for you for the rest of your life.”
“What’s best for us,” she corrected.
He felt punched in the gut with what felt like a smile. “What’s best for us,” Boricio repeated, squeezing her hands tighter. “Sometimes you have to dribble down court with fuckers you’d love to see fall, but you keep on dribbling. Let’s meet the Brothers and hear what they have to say. I can’t see any harm in that.”
Her smile spread wider. “OK, I’ll call Veronica. The Maris Brothers it is.”
“Well, yee-fucking-haw,” Boricio laughed.
Rose called Veronica. Two seconds after the third ring, Boricio heard her squealing like a happy hog. He leaned over the terrace and looked out toward the restaurant’s entrance and the fool passing out his periwinkle fliers. Boricio thought of Brother Rei, and the bullshit he sold back at the compound. He wondered if Tweety Bird was sipping Kool-Aid, too, or whether he was one of the assholes brewing it: another predator feeding on fears and false hopes.
Either way, no periwinkle flier-passing motherfucker could ever know shit about real predators, not like Boricio. The thought smeared a sudden, impossible-to-bury smile, wide across his face.
He couldn’t wait for his alone time. They were in a new town, far from home; Boricio could finally play.
It had been far too long since his last purge.
Three
Brent Foster
Clifton, New Jersey
September 2013
Brent Foster woke up to the sound of barking dogs — upstairs again.
Fucking Chihuahuas!
Every time Frank or Nancy left the house, for even a minute, and then came back, all five dogs went totally nuts.
Brent pulled the pillow down harder over his head, desperate to drown the incessant yapping. He glanced into the darkness over at the alarm clock’s soft-blue light. It was noon on a Thursday, but it wasn’t as if he had anywhere to be, or anyone to tend to. Gina had seen to that, sure enough. Brent did, however, have two freelance articles he needed to finish — one on tech stocks, and the other on car insurance. Both paid about half of absolute shit, and neither article held a flicker of interest, but since his job at the paper was now a soured memory, he had to take anything he could find to pay for his basement room, rented from the old couple in Clifton, New Jersey.
Brent had been living in a goddamned basement ever since his life had gone to hell, which felt like forever ago.
Forever since he’d come back from the other world.
Forever since Gina had looked at him like he wasn’t crazy.
Brent wished he’d never told Gina the truth. Because the truth seemed more like a fabrication than the lie Sullivan later helped him design for the rest of the world — that he’d blacked out and couldn’t remember his many missing months. Despite his cover story, Brent lost everything.
His job was no longer there — cutbacks at the paper, sorry.
Gina, not knowing if he’d just up and left or had been murdered, found comfort in the arms of another: Jack Howard, a former friend of his at the paper — sorry, it just happened.
If that was all that had happened, Brent might have recovered. He would have. If he had accepted his losses, he might still have his son, Ben, in his life.
But Brent got drunk and loathsome, feeling sorry for himself. That was when he made things worse than he could have ever imagined.
He went to his apartment — the one he lost — and picked a fight with Jack. He sent his old friend to the hospital and himself to jail. No matter how many awful things Brent saw in the other world, none matched the horror of his reflection — standing over Jack, his shirt smeared in the same red that dripped from his fists — etching a memory through his son’s watering eyes.
Ben was terrified of his father because his father was suddenly a monster.
Jack dropped the charges against Brent — attempted murder, which could’ve kept him in jail for a long time — but only after Brent agreed to a divorce without shared custody rights to his son.
This is how his world unraveled.
This is how Brent wound up living in someone else’s house, feeling like he had moved into his parents’ basement.
As the dogs started a fresh round of barking, Brent found himself wishing he’d never returned from the other world, even if it was being overtaken by aliens and quickly destroyed. There was nothing left for him here in this world. Even empty, the other was better.
Sullivan promised assistance, said he’d help Brent get on his feet — just give him some time. But Brent could think of nothing he or anyone could do to fix the mess he’d gotten himself into. Some holes were too deep to climb from.
Brent looked at the clock again. If he started typing, he could probably finish the articles by 6, which would give him plenty of time to go meet Kevin Vaughn, one of his only remaining friends, and hang out like they said they might.
Get up, get your work done.
Brent pulled the pillow tighter over his ears instead, then started snoring.
He woke at 9:41 p.m., startled by the length of his slumber. He clicked on his nightstand lamp and found his iPhone.
Brent checked his messages: Kevin had texted him three times, first asking if they were still getting together, and at last, 20 minutes ago, saying, OK, he’d catch him next time — he was headed to his fiancée’s, Felicia’s.
Brent tossed the phone on his bed and sighed as he looked around the room. The walls seemed even closer than normal. The ceiling hung lower.
I have to get the hell out of here.
Brent grabbed his clothes and headed upstairs for a shower. Fortunately, Frank and Nancy were already in bed. While he wanted company, and the Torrelinis were kind, he needed to get out of the basement, if only for a few hours.
He showered, grabbed his helmet, and headed off on his scooter, unsure where he was going, but glad it was somewhere.
Brent wound up driving back and forth outside his old apartment building in Manhattan, wondering what the hell he was doing there so late at night. He looked up at Ben’s darkened window. He wished like hell he could go knock on the door and ask Gina if he could see his son and kiss him goodnight.
The pain of being so close to, and yet so far away from, Ben was a quiet murder to his soul. And as the grief deepened its twist in his gut, Brent felt the old anger stirring. The kind of anger that landed him in jail; the kind that cost him his son and the life that went with him.
I better get out of here.
As Brent began to turn around and head back toward home, he spotted a familiar face walking along the street — Stan, one of the 215ers who had died on the other world.
How the hell?
Brent squeezed his brakes, and the scooter lurched to a sudden stop. Stan, who was carrying a paper grocery bag in both hands, looked back.
“Stan!” Brent shouted, waving
his hand.
Stan looked at him curiously, as if trying to identify the dumbass on a scooter. Brent took off his helmet, “It’s me, Brent Foster!”
Stan shook his head, turned around, and quickened his pace as he headed toward the apartment building entrance.
“Wait!” Brent called out, but Stan ignored him, and raced inside.
Brent pulled up to the curb and was about to get off his scooter and run in after Stan, but then saw the big, giant doorman standing just inside the doorway talking to him as Stan pointed outside.
Brent wasn’t sure what Stan was saying, but his instincts kicked in, and he decided he’d better get the hell away from the building before someone called the cops, and he had to explain why he was driving past his ex-wife’s house late at night.
And why he was packing an unlicensed gun in a holster under his coat.
As Brent drove back to his house, he couldn’t stop wondering how it was possible that Stan was still alive.
He heard the man get torn apart by aliens. He and Melora had both died.
Then he remembered something that he hadn’t thought about since Oct. 15.
Stan and Melora had showed him a video from one of the many cameras the 215ers had secretly placed in their neighbors’ apartments. The videos had showed people vanishing in black smoke. It had seemed, at the time, that most of the population had vanished in a similar fashion.
However, as Brent later discovered from Ed Keenan, the people of Earth hadn’t vanished. The vanishings only took place only on the other world. A lot of people died, but many more just disappeared to who knows where.
Brent, Ed, and the others he’d fought the aliens with, hadn’t vanished, though. They’d been yanked over.
So it was possible that the Stan, Melora, and Luis he’d met on Oct. 15 hadn’t come over from Earth along with him. They were native to that world. How else could they have video recordings of people who vanished if they themselves had vanished? The cameras wouldn’t have come with them.
Brent felt as if a light bulb had come on in his head, which suddenly explained everything. Well, maybe not everything, but it did give him hope that the Stan, Melora, and Luis of this world might still be alive.
Brent’s heart raced with possibility.
Were the Stan, Melora, and Luis of this world also 215ers who had prophesied The Event? And if they were, could they help him find proof he wasn’t crazy? Proof he could show Gina? He could never win her back, not after all that had happened. But how could she deny him visitation with his son if he could prove it was all real, that he wasn’t crazy?
Not even Gina could be that cruel.
Suddenly, and for the first time in forever, Brent felt purpose.
He raced home, eager to hatch a plan to connect with the 215ers, and reclaim his life.
Four
Luca Harding
September 2013
Las Orillas, California
Luca turned his entire body away from his bedroom window and its open blinds. It was too bright outside, and the last place on Earth he wanted to be today was school.
He crawled deep under the covers with his biggest pillow, then hugged it close to his body, and pulled the comforter up high over his head; there was better thinking inside the fort.
Luca wondered if it was still faking if he said his stomach hurt worse than it did. It wasn’t stay-at-home bad, yet, but it might be later. It probably would be later. Then again, Luca had been getting the headaches, and they did worry Mom. That might be the best way to play it. Dad was more worried about his stomach aches, and Mom his head. Luca decided he’d know which hurt more once one of them came to check on him.
Luca usually hopped right out of bed and ran downstairs for his waffle, thinking about warm syrup on the way. He took his showers before bedtime, right before he laid out all his clothes. Mornings were supposed to be easy because Mom was always in a hurry, and she hated to be late. Though she didn’t like to rush him, Luca could tell by her face when she was feeling impatient.
He stayed under the covers, figuring Mom would be up any minute to check on him since his waffle was probably getting cold. After what Luca guessed was 15 minutes of nothing, he heard footsteps outside his door. Not Mom, Dad; Luca could tell because the footsteps were heavy instead of light, just like the breathing.
The door opened, and Dad said, “Luca?”
It took him a moment to answer. To prove his pain, Luca crawled out from under his blankets, peeling them back down over his body. Still, he said nothing, just looked up at his father with wide and what he hoped were sick-looking eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked, studying Luca.
“My stomach hurts!”
Luca clutched his stomach, over the invisible knives.
“Oh no,” Dad said as he sat on the bed and planted his hand at the back of Luca’s head. “Are you going to be OK? How long has it hurt?”
“All night,” Luca made his voice whiny, but not too whiny since Dad didn’t like that.
“All night?”
Luca nodded. “I couldn’t sleep well, so I’m really, really tired, too.”
“Come on, Son,” Dad said. “You just need some waffles.”
He slipped his arms under Luca’s body, ready to scoop him from the bed like he did when Luca really didn’t want to leave it, but before he could tug, Luca cried out, “No, Dad. I really don’t feel well.”
“I understand,” he said. “You have a bad case of the I don’t want to go to schools. I used to get those all the time, I still do now, except it’s work instead of school. But same thing, Luca, believe me, I get it. But you have to go to school. Anna has to go to school. I have to go to work. Your mother has to go to work. That’s life, we all have jobs. You’re fine. I checked on you a few times last night because I couldn’t sleep, not to mention about 45 minutes ago before you woke up. You were perfectly peaceful, so, Son, let’s get you downstairs and eating your waffle before your mother wastes it and makes you another. Or, you can tell me what’s really wrong.”
Luca wondered how his father was always able to read him so well, and could tell when he was faking something.
Dad waited. Luca crossed his arms and said firmly, “I don’t like school anymore, and I never want to go back.”
Dad laughed. “Wow, that’s quite a difference. What changed your mind? Have they started serving snake in the cafeteria? That’s what did it for me.”
Luca laughed, even though he didn’t want to. Dad knew how to make him do that. “No.”
“Tarantula? It’s tarantulas isn’t it? They’ve started putting tarantulas in the tacos?” Dad slowly shook his head as if absorbing horrible news.
“No,” Luca said, smiling. “No tarantulas.”
“Then what?” Dad held open palms to ceiling. “What could possibly have happened that has made Luca Harding hate school?”
“I just don’t want to go,” Luca insisted. “I’ve learned all I need to know.”
“Oh?” Dad raised his eyebrows. “Well, in that case, I stand corrected. If you already know everything there is to know, then you’re right, and school is clearly wasting your time. We Hardings will have none of that.”
“Are you serious?” Luca asked, daring to hope.
“Absolutely.”
Luca stared at his father, wondering if this would be the first time he finally outsmarted him. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” Dad said. “I mean it. I’ll ask you three questions, and if you get all three of them right you don’t have to go to school.”
“OK,” Luca said, feeling deflated already, knowing Dad’s questions would be too hard.
“What’s the capital of California?”
That was too easy; California was Luca’s state.
“Sacramento!”
“That’s right!” Dad clapped Luca on the shoulder. “Hmmm … can you tell me the difference between their and there?”
Luca smiled. That was easy, too. Dad was a
sking him questions a second-grader would probably know.
“The one with the I is people and the one without it means a place.”
“Very good!” Dad leaned into Luca. “Are you ready for the last one?”
Luca nodded.
“What is the square root of three?”
Luca looked at his father with no expression, not at all surprised that he felt suddenly tricked. “That’s not fair.”
“Why? If you know everything, you should know all about square roots. And three is a teeny, tiny, easy number.”
Luca could figure this out. “What’s a square root?”
Dad smiled. “It’s a number that produces another specified number when multiplied by itself.”
“I don’t understand,” Luca said, determined to get it.
“I’ll give you an example. Eight is a square root of 64.”
That made sense. Suddenly Luca understood. And Dad was right, three was a teeny, tiny number. He pinched his nose, trying to understand, but it was like his brain wouldn’t work. One times one was one, two times two was four, and three times three was nine.”
“You have one minute,” Dad smiled.
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s totally fair.”
“One and a half,” Luca said.
“You’re going to school, Son. The correct answer is 1.73205080757.”
Luca’s eyes went giant. “How did you know that?”
“Stupid trick,” he said. “Now, do you want to tell me what’s really bothering you? I’d love to hear it.” He glanced at the clock on Luca’s desk. “But we have to hurry. I’ll bet the keys on my chain that your mother is already cooking you a second waffle, and if we’re not down there before it gets cold she’s gonna be mad at both of us. So, what’s up?”
