by R. E. Vance
Miral was the last to leave. She bowed deeply to Joseph, thanking him over and over. I tried to catch her attention, but as with Astarte, the emotional experience of meeting Joseph had obviously taken its toll.
Alone, I turned to the Other and, before I could stop my mouth, I said, “What are you?”
“I thought you deemed it rude to ask.”
“I do, but did you see what you did here tonight? Seriously, I have to know … what are you?”
Joseph laughed. “How easily we break our principles, claiming that necessity deems it acceptable.”
“As much as I love your quotable wisdom, I’ve got to know,” I said.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you three guesses. That way you will not be breaking your own vow to never ask.”
“And if I get it?”
“Then you’ll know.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you won’t.”
“Oh, come on!” I protested. “OK, fine, but if I don’t get it, then you’ve got to tell me.”
The Other shrugged and said, “Let’s cross that bridge when we get there.”
“OK, fine. Let’s see … You’re unique. But we knew that much already. Perhaps you’re a legend?” Joseph’s eyes lit up at that. “There are stories of humans who were chosen to perform great deeds for the gods. Hercules, Achilles, Benkei … and let’s not forget the prophets who got to visit all the various heavens and hells … Human?” I hazarded.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
I considered who he could be. My second guess was that he was a god who had chosen not to leave. I couldn’t ask. I didn’t know how. How do you ask a being responsible for creation itself what they are? The thought hung at the edge of my lips, begging to get out.
“No,” he said. “I’m not that either. But we established that with the angel already.”
“But I didn’t say anything.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t have to. Your hesitation said it for you.” He put up his index finger, indicating one last guess.
I racked my brain for some commonality that Others shared, whether in their myths or legends, but nothing came to mind. My thoughts went on like this for a long time. So long that I was beginning to feel rude for keeping him awake, even though Joseph still had the same patient look on his face. All I really knew about him was that all Others respected him and that he was always cordial to everyone. I finally settled on “A dragon using a glamor in order to look human, maybe? Or a shape shifter?”
“Which is it? A dragon or a shape shifter?”
“A shape-shifting dragon,” I offered.
“Cheeky,” he said, shaking his head.
“Damn it!” I said. “Fine, but that middle guess didn’t count. You’ve got to give me one more. Please.”
Joseph chuckled. “This is why I so love human beings. Always demanding what is fair and bargaining for it. Fine. One more guess—but I suggest you sleep on it.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Jean,” he said with a soft smile as he headed upstairs.
On the landing below his, I bid him goodnight. He walked to the base of the next set of stairs. The lights flickered and Joseph looked at them with concern.
“It’s just the rain,” I said. “Messes with the electrics of this old building. I can’t afford to get it all fixed up.”
He sniffed the air. “There’s a storm coming,” he said, continuing up the stairs. “Thing about storms is that one way or another, they always end. You would do well to remember that.”
“You know,” I said, shaking my head, “you’re the second person today to say that to me.”
“Sounds like you know some very wise people. Have a good night, Jean-Luc Matthias, who is just missing the Mark,” he said, laughing again at his own joke. “A good night, indeed.”
“Goodnight,” I returned, although the comment hung empty, shallow after a night of so much good. But I was exhausted and too lazy to think of anything more to say. Had I known that Joseph would be dead in less than three hours, I might have tried harder.
Just When It Was All Going So Well
For the first time in a very, very long time, I went to bed excited—not only to see Bella, but to wake up the next morning. Whatever was happening in Paradise Lot—Fanatic, gangs of HuMan Otherphobes, bills, orgies and pissed-off mother-in-laws—I actually felt hope for the morning. Dawn would come, and with it things could get better. Much, much better. I was energized. Happy even, and I didn’t think sleep would come easy.
I was wrong. On all counts.
I closed my eyes, sleep taking me before my head even touched the pillow. The darkness came rolling in, a tidal wave of nothing, and—like every night—I ran. But this time there was less terror and more excitement to see Bella. My wife may be dead and the memory of her may haunt my dreams, but a piece of her was that memory, and that memory—like Bella—wanted the world to heal. I needed to tell her that someone had finally arrived with enough respect, kindness and wisdom to be the glue to hold us all together.
I ran to the edge of everything, where Bella always saved me moments before the darkness came. That night she took me not to the beach where I had proposed or the cottage where we first made love, but to our first apartment. And not the happy move-in days. Marriage is hard, and we were mac-and-cheese poor, and this was the apartment we moved into after PopPop died. It was also the apartment I left her alone in when I joined the Army.
Typically, my brain would guide us to happy places, and on an eve when I was particularly happy, I just assumed I’d go somewhere happy. But then again, misery is a habit and my brain was probably compensating. Stupid brain!
“You look well,” she started, looking around at the apartment before finally settling her gaze on me. “Chipper, even.”
“I feel good,” I said, sitting on our two-person sofa—if the two people were toddlers.
“Does it have to do with that new guest? Joseph?” I wasn’t surprised that she knew his name or sensed that my peace came from his presence. After all, she was my delusion. Therefore it stood to reason that she knew everything I did.
I nodded. “He has a wisdom to him. The Others listen to him. Humans listen. I really feel he can change things for us. For the better.”
She gave me her poor-naive-Jean look and said, “I hope you are right, but please, don’t pin your hopes on him. Remember, we’ve been here before.”
“Sheesh,” I said, “I thought I was the negative one. Where are we? The Bizarro World?”
She chuckled and said, “Trust the Unicorn, but don’t put all your hope in him.”
“Unicorn?” Then it hit me. In order to be loved by all, Joseph needed to be a legend of legend—like TinkerBelle—which meant he needed to be an Other that appeared in all traditions. A unicorn was one of them. “A unicorn! Of course … Why didn’t I think of that?”
She stepped toward me, her hand outstretched, but with every step she took, the farther away she got. The room began to stretch out, elongating, pulling her away. Still, she strode toward me, but it was like she was on one of those super-long moving walkways you see at airports. Bella was walking against the roll and losing.
I stepped forward to close the gap, but I too was being pulled away from her. “What’s happening?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” Bella said, putting her hand over her lips. “I had hoped for more time.” She blew me a kiss—you know, that cute thing you do with your lover—and I did my part by pretending to catch it. Except instead of it being a mime, my entire body was hit by the shockwave of her kiss, knocking me clear out of my bed.
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I woke up on the floor, all my toys shaking as a slow-moving waterfall of dust fell from my ceiling. Tink was out of her castle, flying over to me, a look of worry on her face. “What … what happened?” I said, my mind still waking up.
Tink pointed upstairs and then put her body into a cannonball before exploding out he
r arms and legs in all directions. She followed this up by whirling around, gesturing for me to leave my room. The look she gave me told me we were under attack.
Hellelujah!
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I made my way to the outer hall. The second floor was completely untouched. For a moment I thought that maybe, just maybe, there had been no explosion. But the shockwaves alone told me I was lying to myself. I ran upstairs, where Astarte met me on the landing and pointed to Joseph’s room. I took a moment to prepare myself for what was beyond the threshold and opened the door.
There is something decidedly unbelievable about explosions. Not that I didn’t believe in them. I did. The GoneGods knew I’d survived more than my fair share of them. But still, through all the explosions I’d had the misfortune of being near, I just couldn’t get used to them.
First of all, there is the sheer chaos caused by a bomb. The scattering of debris, whole objects broken into smaller pieces along unnatural lines in the most unnatural places. I’d seen a car blown in two, its hood upside down in a trench only a yard from the strip of road it had been driving along, its trunk hanging in a tree like a deformed metal bird’s nest. And that was a car. A soulless, unfeeling hunk of metal.
I’d also seen what happens to a body, human and Other, when it was caught in a blast. One moment there was a whole being, and the next moment its foot was several yards away, sole on the ground, stump pointing upwards, while the toes faced away from the blast as if the foot were trying to run away and had simply forgotten to take the rest of the body with it. A wing in the hands of an angel, her other wing flapping futilely as she tried to get off the ground. The suspended entrails of a yeti hanging from cedar branches like poorly hung Christmas decorations, the yeti regarding it with a look of admiration that seemed to say, “Look at what I made.”
I’d seen all that and worse, and still I wasn’t prepared for what waited behind the door.
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The room was empty, its bed, side table, closet and chest of drawers all missing, presumably littering the road out front. From the threshold, I could see the bathroom sink embedded in the building across the street. The outer wall had been blown out in a nearly perfect square that did not encroach on the floors above or below. The explosion should have torn holes into the inner walls, damaging the hallway and adjacent rooms, but as far as I could tell, the only damaged area was in the room. It looked like someone had taken a giant vacuum cleaner and sucked everything out.
What’s more, the area where the bathroom once was should have been covered in water, its pipes still spouting. But from the mouths of broken pipes water gushed up only an inch before hitting some invisible shield and spreading out like water pouring onto glass from a garden hose. It defied physics.
I tried to cross the threshold but instead hit an invisible barrier at the door. I pushed, but I didn’t have the strength to get through. Then I realized that everything was being held together by a force field in the room, like a balloon inflated in a box. In the middle lay Joseph, his arms over his chest as if he were being swaddled by an invisible blanket. “Joseph,” I cried out, banging against the force field. “Joseph!”
The old man turned his head slightly. Upon seeing me, he smiled, before a look of pain ran across his face, his lips curling. He took a deep breath and mouthed one word.
Push.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I pushed with all my might. The force field didn’t budge. Astarte and four scantily clad bodies came to my aid, and our combined effort caused the wall to move, but it wasn’t until Judith joined that we finally caused it to pop.
Water started spouting everywhere. I yelled at Judith to go to the basement and turn it off. She gave me her typical derisive look and headed downstairs. As soon as that was taken care of, I stepped farther into the room. Then, turning to Astarte and her guests—noticing for the first time that they were all humans—I said, “You got to get out of here. Out the back door and, please, call for help.” As five naked bodies ran out the door, I added, “And for the love of the GoneGods, put on some shoes.”
Then I ran over to Joseph. Little droplets of rainbow-colored blood trickled out of his eyes and from his lips, but still the Other smiled. In a voice far too casual for what had just happened, he said, “Sorry about that, Jean. Magic is so much easier to turn on than off. But I think I did it. Didn’t I? The hotel, the Others, they are all right, yes? Did I manage to contain it?” He coughed.
I put my hand against his chest and nodded. “Yes. No other part of the hotel was touched,” I said. “Because of you, no one was hurt, Joseph. You did it.” I looked down at him and saw that his arms were pressed so tight against his chest that his ribs were compressed to make space for his forearms. His legs were mangled, broken in several places and pushing up against his torso. His neck was also pushed against his body, like a turtle trying to get back in its shell. The features of his face were flat and tight; blood dripped from the corners of his eyes and into the tributaries of his wrinkles. He looked like he had just been pulled out of the belly of a snake, after every part of him had been crushed within the serpent’s contracting muscles.
“Good,” Joseph said, and even though it caused him great pain, he managed a chuckle. “You still have one last guess.”
I couldn’t believe he still wanted to play our stupid little game at a time like this. “Forget about that,” I said. “Can you heal yourself? Spend a bit of time so that you can have some more here? With us. With me,” I said through the glassy, shimmering lens of trapped tears.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ll have to use your guess now. I doubt I’ll be here to answer you tomorrow.”
“Oh, come on!” I said. “There’s got to be something you can do. Maybe I could do something.” I looked at his injuries but was hesitant to touch him, lest I make them worse.
“Yes, there is … You can guess. Have you had time to think about it?”
“Yes,” I said, frustration pouring out of me. “A unicorn. You’re a unicorn.”
Joseph smiled. “Good guess. How did you know?”
“It came to me in a dream.”
Joseph nodded and said, “Your dreams are very wise. You should always listen to them.”
A tear finally escaped, its stream running hot down my cheek. I clamped my eyes shut. “Who did this, Joseph?” Struggling to keep my rage caged up inside, I asked again, “Who?”
“It has finally arrived, Jean-Luc,” he rasped. “The storm. It is finally here.”
Part II
Prologue
There is this girl whom I love very much. That is what I say to her the day I propose, getting down on one knee and handing her a twist tie. I’m only seventeen and it seems like a romantic gesture. Besides, it is all I can afford. She accepts it with far too much enthusiasm, jumping up and down on the sandy beach.
We are bound together; we are forever.
“Do you love me?” she asks as we fall to the sandy floor.
There is no ceremony, no formality, just a frantic rush to get our clothes off. She gets on top of me and I slide into her with no resistance, and as her warmth envelops me, I say, “Yes,” panting between thrusts. “You know that.”
“I do,” she says. “But tell me.”
“I love you.”
“No,” she says, our bodies no longer moving, “not like that.” Her eyes lock onto mine and I am drowning in their beauty.
“How, then?”
“Tell me,” she repeats. “Really tell me.”
I smile, pushing myself up. I want to be deeper within her. I want to be a part of her. “OK,” I say. “In this life and the next, I will love you forever.” Cheesy, corny or whatever else you want to call it, I mean every word.
“I love you, too,” she says, riding me, our bodies pulsing faster and faster, two teenagers in love, galloping into the future together.
That night we make love for the first time. Don’t get me wrong—we have known each other before, but
that night is different. Her soft, firm breasts are delights I’ve experienced before, but that night they are ecstasy. Her nipples are attentive to my touch, hardening as my fingers caress them. Her warm body against mine is familiar, but somehow new. Renewed. She kisses me, but unlike the thousand kisses that have come before, her lips are electric.
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Our love is condemned by her mother, Judith. She hates the idea of her precious daughter marrying so young. Even more than that, she hates the idea of her precious Bella marrying me. She refuses to sign the papers that will let us marry before we’re eighteen. That’s OK. We have our whole lives, and eighteen isn’t that far away. Bella will be seventeen in two months and I will celebrate my eighteenth birthday with the ringing of the New Year.
My PopPop, on the other hand, is happy for us, and even though Judith has forbidden Bella to come over, PopPop never tells.
Not that we have to keep up the charade long. Judith dies without warning. Bella finds her curled up on the bathroom floor, clutching her knees like a newborn. A heart attack. Just one of those things. God’s will. Nobody’s fault. Fate. Destiny. Pick your poison. Whatever it is, Judith is dead.
Through tears and frustration, we realize we are free to marry early, but we choose to respect her mother’s wishes. We wait until Bella’s eighteenth birthday. It is a sad ceremony—a large black-and-white picture that sits in the first row is a poor substitute for a mother. As my bride-to-be says her vows through tear-filled eyes, I think I would give almost anything to have Judith here to make my Bella happy.
Be careful what you wish for.
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