by Steven Welch
Elise bit her lip.
“Something else,” she said.
“You and the world before The Turn. You were killers. Awful killers. You killed the Earth, you killed each other, you killed everything you touched. Now suddenly you’re sick of it.”
“Where’s your friend? The one called Jack. When is he going to show up?”
Taariq shook his head.
“You opened the doors that ended everything. When you create you kill and that’s how I’ll die, I’m sure, not in this tunnel at the barrel of your gun but in something you’ve unleashed, somewhere down the road, maybe years from now, but it won’t be natural and it won’t be right.”
“Fine. Where did you get that thing on your wrist?”
“He got it to me, across miles, and a couple of good people died in the process. There are more of us than you know, Elise. And we work together really well.”
“Jack’s a real hero, I guess.”
“Yes. He has a few names. Jack. The Truth. The butcher of dreams. He’s coming. Might be here already. He has the coordinates to your little hideout and he knows how to get in. They say he used to be one of you. One of you, Elise. But he got smart.”
“The Truth. That stupid cult. He started it?”
“Yes,” Taariq said, “and it’s not stupid. It’s the smartest thing, Elise. Simple. Pure. Everything for a purpose. Everything with a reason. No nonsense, no lies, no fantasy, no bullshit, nothing that will get us killed again because of our own ego. Purity in everything. Simplicity in everything. The Truth.”
Elise was quiet for several minutes. The gash on her face was painful. She only had a few pain-killers left in her kit and she didn’t want to waste one on something small. It could be much worse.
Her cigarette butt hit the water with a hiss.
When she spoke her voice was more shrill than she intended. It embarrassed her and that made her even more angry.
“When you kissed me was that part of your plan or was that because you’re just a scumbag who wanted a piece of me?”
The harsh smile on Taariq’s face faded away. When he spoke his voice was low.
“Not part of the plan. Not a scumbag. I’m done with you now. Please leave me here. I’ll figure a way out. I will. I just want to go away now.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere pretty and quiet and simple. Food, water, shelter, clothing. Peace. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
He turned away from her then and closed his eyes.
Not a bad idea, thought Elise. I should rest here for a bit. Nap. The Octo-Thing will watch out for me. He always does. She leaned back into the boat and tried to get comfortable. Just a few minutes rest, that’s all.
She looked up at the Fabric of Eternity.
For the first time she took a moment to study the tapestry. An art form as old as time. A way to communicate, remember, to tell a story. The colorful threads of the fabric were woven into forms and creatures and human forms. There was an extraordinary pattern of stars and moons rising out of blackness. Then there were shapes that could have been living things, but not human, nothing she knew.
Then there were humans. Yes, the artwork of the fabric told a story of humans coming chaos. The patterns were so tight, so intricate, so busy that it was difficult to understand, to truly see the story that was being told. Her head hurt from concentrating.
What am I going to do with this thing?
The surrounding air shimmered as if a million fireflies were released into the chamber.
Oh, crap.
Everything unraveled, a million threads exploded in a chaos of color and light. She felt the Octo-Thing wrap around her back, she heard Taariq curse.
The shimmer became a quake and then a hot wind smacked her in the face.
Elise smelled something different, fresh, not the musty damp of the world below Cairo.
Heat. Wind. The sun. The sound of surf.
She was somewhere else.
SOMEWHERE ELSE
Elise stood on a beach of white sand along the shores of a vast body of water the color of lilac flowers. An ocean or a really big lake. She couldn’t tell. The sky was clear of clouds but rather than blue there was the faintest wash of green. Beautiful, she thought.
Is this in my head?
The wound. The blood loss. I’m hallucinating.
It feels so real. The wind is hot. The sun is so bright that I need to shield my eyes, especially after the darkness of the subterranean passage under the streets of Cairo. My boots, my soaking wet boots, have sunk into the soft sand of the place where I stand. The air smells clean. It smells different but familiar.
How could I be somewhere else, Elise thought?
This is like that weird scene in the desert during the storms. The cornfield we drove through, the family I saw running, how it was all there and then gone.
Her eyes adjusted to the brightness. The Octo-Thing slithered from her shoulders and into the quiet safety of her backpack. Elise heard a rustle of sound to her right. It was Taariq, still tied up with cord, shifting and squirming in the sand, looking all around, trying to make sense of it.
I remember this smell. I remember this place.
And then it came to her, suddenly and with a weight she could feel.
This is Orcanum.
“You’re home, buddy,” she said. The Octo-Thing peeked out from the backpack.
The wide ocean was as calm as the surface of a great mirror. Beautiful.
She watched as her friend scuttled down her side and hopped out onto the beach. He flashed a bright blue as he stood as high as his tentacles would allow and looked all around.
“What is this place?” asked Taariq.
“This is Orcanum. It’s not our world. There were two worlds that suffered during The Turn. This was the other. I was here. I came here when I was twelve years old. We brought back the ocean.” She smiled because it was absurd.
A fish or something else jumped in the distance.
The Octo-Thing played at the edge of the water. He dipped a tentacle tip into the foam let his fingers dance. Then he splashed and jumped in, then out again.
He looked back to Elise, and she knew her friend well enough to see emotion, to read emotion, in his wide old eyes.
“I know, buddy,” she said.
There was no way of knowing how long they would stay. These moments, these transitions into other places, had been fleeting to this point. Elise felt a sadness and then a concern.
What if he wants to stay? Can he? How does this work? And then what about me?
What brought us here?
Does the tapestry sense our dreams?
Damn.
She scanned left and right and then behind. The air was stable for now, no shimmering effect that signaled a change.
There was something on the horizon in the distance to her left where the water met the sand. Movement and a flash of color.
Elise squinted. Too far to tell what it was. She walked toward the thing in the distance.
“Hey,” started Taariq and then he went silent. If something happened to Elise, he was in a bad spot. Tied up. Easy food for something. He began to call out again, but it was obvious to him that Elise would pay no attention.
What is that thing? She was curious. She had seen creatures of this world, she met the Orcanum and had been at their side when they triumphed.
Whatever it was moved again. More color in the sun. It was big but low, not upright like an Orcanum.
Her heart jumped.
She ran toward the thing.
The air shimmered ever so slightly.
Not now, she thought with a curse. I don’t want to go back yet.
She could see it now, the object in the distance. She could see its many colors as it skittered at the edge of the ocean and the beach. Elise ran.
The Rainbow Crab was the size of a large dog and its shell was many colors all at once.
Elise shouted.
Eyes atop lon
g feelers turned and the huge crab stopped its play at the water’s edge and stood still. Then a big claw went up in the air. A wave.
The air shimmered, more pronounced this time, and Elise couldn’t breathe. Her vision was a blur through tears and she thought her smile would break her face in two.
She fell to her knees in the sand within reach of the Rainbow Crab and felt the weight of the Octo-Thing as it hopped onto her back and peeked around her shoulder.
The big crab’s eyes swayed back and forth on the long stalks, trained on Elise.
“Charlie? Is it you?”
The crab’s claw was the size of a football and thick. It looked large enough, sharp enough, dangerous enough to lop off a limb. The claw reached out toward Elise and she reached out too.
Reality was again coming apart at the seams. Elise could hear Taariq shout and she could feel everything begin to dissolve and spin.
This was her friend, and he had been with her on this world, his home. He had been with her in Paris as well.
They had seen much together. He had helped save the worlds. She had made sure to tell everyone on her return the story of Charlie the Rainbow Crab and his extraordinary adventures. Elise hoped that those stories had traveled far and wide because he deserved to be known as a hero. A damned heroic crab.
She laughed. What were the odds? Just imagine.
If this was a dream, it was a good one.
The Rainbow Crab had no expression, because crabs do not, and it had no way to speak, because crabs do not speak, but the big claw gently touched the tips of Elise’s fingers. She held his claw and felt happier than she had felt in a long time.
And then the threads of everything she saw, felt, and heard, of the air and the sea around, everything shimmered violently and came apart.
She knelt on the cold hard stone of a passage deep under the city of Cairo. Her arm was still outstretched, her fingers reached.
Someone took Elise by the hand. The grip was warm and strong. She looked up into the eyes of a tall man with long white hair and eyes like blue ice. He wore a black shirt and dark jeans that were dripping wet as if he had been swimming. He was an older man but there was a strength to him, in the lines of his face and the tendons of his hands.
“My name isn’t Charlie. It’s Jack,” he said.
RIGHT AS RAIN
So this skinny kid was the hero who brought back the ocean, Jack thought. Some legend.
Her eyes were sharp, and they looked at him with hate and confusion.
Yes. Best not to underestimate anything in this crazy world. No big speech. Just a bullet to the head.
The .45 in his other hand came up and he pulled the trigger.
Elise was already moving. She used the man’s own weight to gain leverage and pulled hard as she kicked high. The side of her leg connected with Jack’s head as she spun up and over.
It was a good solid round kick and the man released his grip and staggered back two steps.
The roar of the gun was a knife in her eardrums.
She felt the weight in her backpack shift as the Octo-Thing flipped out and scrambled down to the wet cobblestone.
The Octo-Thing had seen Elise take care of herself before but this was different. There was something different, something strange about this big man. This was a dangerous man and he was more than he seemed. The Octo-Thing felt his hearts beat more rapidly as he scrambled, panicking, flashing red and white, desperate to help.
Elise reached for her weapon but he was on her before she had a chance. He was fast for a big, old man.
Jack forced her down to the stone and used his weight on her.
A strong hand had Elise by the throat while the other struck her in the gut. The air shot out of her lungs and everything went dark for a split second. The hand on her neck was squeezing hard. She couldn’t catch her breath and she tried to kick.
His face was in hers, nose to nose, and there was a shimmer. She saw him change, for the briefest of moments. Too many eyes in a pale skull too high and the many eyes did not blink.
Jack punched her again, using the side of his palm, a more effective way to deliver the blow. Again, and this time the skin on the right side of her face opened under the impact. Warmth flowed down her cheek. Elise could not breathe and she could not move. He was too close, on her, too heavy. She kicked and thrashed but the hand on her neck kept the pressure on. She couldn’t reach the knife at her thigh and she couldn’t reach her gun. The heavy backpack with the guitar case of paintings forced her into an awkward position, her neck too far to the side, her spine stretched.
The big man had her on her back, her head scraping and slamming against the stone as she struggled, and she could do nothing.
Elise panicked. She tried to bite. The man’s knee came up to her ribs and struck hard enough to snap her bones but she was squirming and fighting so much that the blow slid to the side. Still, the pain was a grenade in her mind and the shrapnel was a star field that burst in her vision, obscuring everything.
She was blacking out.
The Octo-Thing was the color of the dark brick and its eyes were wide. The old creature did not know what to do, did not know how best to help.
I must do something, he thought. But the man is so big and he is not a human man, not like others I have fought.
He will kill me. He will kill my friend.
Jack stared into her eyes as he put even more pressure onto her neck. He saw the cleverness but he also saw fear. He put everything he had into pressing her down to the stone floor and he felt his heart race.
Maybe she knows who I am, maybe not, but I know who she is and what really matters is that I have her in my hands and I’ll put an end to her.
Jack the Dream Butcher did not smile as he looked deep into Elise’s eyes.
“I take no pleasure in this,” he said, and the voice came to Elise like an echo through a tunnel as her consciousness slipped, “as pleasure is a weakness we can no longer afford. Because of you. So I’ll do this for my wife and my son and everyone else that was lost. Then we can all move on.”
I’ll be the last thing she sees and that’s good, he thought, a moment before something cold and weird wrapped around his face.
A weight on his head, then something hard was scratching at his skull through his long hair. Jack didn’t have a choice. He released his grip on the girl, throwing an elbow to her face as he did, and both hands went up to the creature flailing on top of his head.
This evil man is too strong for me but I must help my friend, thought the Octo-Thing.
I will die but I will help Elise.
The Octo-Thing flashed white and red as he attacked. The old creature was desperate and the desperation gave him strength for a thing so small and without bones.
Still, he was just a mass of flesh and muscle so without the structure and base of bone there was not much to him, and Jack’s fingers found quick purchase beneath the body of the thing. He pulled hard. The suction cups and the tentacles flashed and whipped, trying to grip skin but finding hair and cloth instead.
He was clever, but he was not strong enough for this.
Elise saw what was happening. She tried to reach her gun as she gasped for air but it was as if her hand wasn’t attached. She couldn’t control her muscles and her vision was blurred. The last blow left the side of her face numb and she thought that she might have a concussion.
My knife. My gun. Anything. Get my hands to work.
No.
Jack pulled with everything he had and the squirming creature came off of his scalp, taking skin where the suction cups had found a grip. The tentacles flailed again, reached for his arms, his face. The Dream Butcher brought the Octo-Thing up over his head and slammed him down.
Jack slammed him to the ground again. And again. Glowing ink shot from the Octo-Thing and spattered the stone.
The Octo-Thing had been born to a birth sac of millions on a world called Orcanum in a tranquil tidal lagoon the color of a clear Earth sky
. His mother died as he and his kin escaped from their little eggs as was their nature. Many silver fish and many crabs were on hand to eat the babies as they emerged, so few survived the first hours of life. These strange creatures shared a primitive hive mind and once grown could communicate over great distances but this was not helpful for survival when born so they each found their own way. The Octo-Thing retreated to shelter in coral and rock and sand so that, after the passing of moons, he grew large enough to eat and live and travel. The journey of the Octo-Thing took him to the libraries of its world, to the busy markets and bustling villages in the shallow seas and on the shores. There had been an Orcanum family he befriended and there he had learned the beauty of music. What a treasure, the creature thought upon first seeing a violin, and so the Octo-Thing had practiced until it could play a little tune and then another. The music of the Octo-Thing brought great joy to the family and to all of those around. The Turn came, the great deluge that flooded his world, and with it came the humans. Some humans were good but most were not, he would find. There was money to be made in joy, as you know, and so an untrustworthy human had stolen the creature from the family and forced the Octo-Thing to play his music from a cage in a place where there were fights and awfulness.
The girl and her human friend named Jules Valiance rescued him from that cage. For that, and for her kind heart, he would always love her.
What adventures they had seen. What times. In a way, the Octo-Thing helped to save two worlds.
There was pain but that became nothing and all that remained was his love for Elise.
You see, here’s a secret. Octo-Things cannot hear the music they play. They feel the vibrations and that is enough. The vibrations of music on the skin of an Octo-Thing are glorious. The vibrations from the sound of Elise’s voice were even more.
The Octo-Thing saw Elise’s face and felt the music of his songs and the echo of her voice and he knew sadness and love at once as his world went black.
Elise’s vision was clearing and she saw it happen. Her heart broke at that moment as roughly and as hard and as thoroughly as at any time in her life. She had her gun but her hand did not work as it should and the weapon fell to the wet cobblestone.