Komodo
Page 4
The candidate’s party—that suite, that particular series of moments, his presence—was one of them, a lesser-known one, a backwater. But the point is, you have to introduce enough chaos to wrench that nexus out of one path into another, muddy the waters in such a way that the mapping, the tracking, goes completely haywire. Thus the gun.
Nothing rewires a nexus like a murder.
The ghost frogs popped into existence with ever increasing velocity and rapidity as I strode across the room to meet the candidate, one hand reaching into my handbag as I did so because I wasn’t going to freeze him with a look. I wasn’t going to crush his mind with my non-existent psionic powers. Sometimes, and I hate to say this, but a good old-fashioned, reliable gun is the best, the quickest way to effectuate change. Or protect against it.
But I’d mistimed it all, and the komodos came thrashing into existence on my trail right then, and even worse angels were appearing through the Rips—like blood through paper cuts, seeping into clarity, and by the time I had raised my gun the candidate had shifted and I didn’t have a clear line of sight, and I only clipped him in the shoulder, and the angels were trying to reach him, and the komodos were trying to reach me, and the party was a screaming mess, with the humans there, the unwitting witnesses, trying to comprehend what was going on and failing, as they tried to get out of the way . . . while the komodos, semi-visible as gasps and gashes of light, quick-silver tongues of water flashing, a suggestion of a curious and brazen eye, thrashed and spun so much in that space that the sides of the suite buckled and swayed as if we were all just inside a cardboard box full of, well, full of the ordinary kind of komodos.
The komodo that had clamped onto my leg jumped onto my back shrieking “angel-spawn!” and curses much worse, even as I also saw the confusion of the rest, torn between attacking hated angels or hated me, who had bearded them in their lair and only been wounded . . . and in the midst of all of that confusion, whirling around frantically, I made it back to the door somehow, and with a herculean effort spasmed in such a way as to send the komodo gnawing on me flying back into the room.
I slammed the door, already changing into an old Mexican woman, and abandoned the wounded part of my leg in favor of a telescoping metal strut while the bedlam continued inside.
As I reached the elevators, as I pushed the button, as the metal halves shut, I saw the suite door smash open, and a writhing mass of humans, komodos, and angels burst forth, at least some of them surprised to find an upright foot, ankle, and bloody calf greeting them.
I was pretty chewed up by then. I was pretty much dead, and only by locking all the compartments of my individual cells was I able to function, to move at all, for a little while.
As I left the hotel limping and made my way through a series of back alleys, I was already pondering the oddest thing I had seen in that perfect mess: that Gabriel stood in the corner through the whole thing, as if he had been there the entire time, and did nothing. Stood there inhabiting a kind of perfect stillness. Which made me wonder about factions among the angels. Had he wanted me to do this? Had he shown me what he had shown me, put me on surveillance of the alien researcher precisely so I would do what I had done?
Had he even thought so far ahead as to take me from the plane for this exact reason? I have no answers. I only know that as I left the room, I had also seen that the candidate had been mauled to death by the komodos, and that was as good as a bullet to the head.
Here I have to tell you the most unbelievable part, considering how far we’ve come, child. Ghost frogs are easy. Komodos are easy, too. Even angels.
The truth is, I am completely ordinary. I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and I swore I would leave as soon as I grew up. I was a constant source of grief to my parents, I’m sure, because everyone else had always stayed with the farm, and without me there was always the chance it might go under. But I did leave—I was one of the me’s that got away—and I went to college and I pursued a degree in political science and began a career. I went from city commissioner of a small town in Georgia to state senator, and I began to date a city planner from Atlanta. His name was William. We got married. We built a house all our own. Somewhere along the way, we acquired two dogs, a lab and a golden retriever, both of which reminded me of my days growing up on the farm. We loved the same movies and liked to go hiking in the mountains. Neither of us wanted children until a little later. We had the rest of our lives ahead of us. Ordinary, usual lives.
In some realities, we still do, and it is some small comfort to think of William still with me, still sharing those same mundane adventures. Somewhere. Like snapshots of the lives of people very close to you, people you would have liked to have been. You want someone to have that.
I didn’t ask to be taken off of that plane. I didn’t ask to become privy to the secrets of the universe. I didn’t want any of this to happen. Knowledge is a terrible thing. Sometimes you can’t escape it any more than you can escape a komodo.
But you don’t want my life’s story. Only I do.
How would you have told this story if you were me? Would you have told it straight-out, let it roll across the floor like a tongue of red carpet until it ended at the feet of a conclusion? No, I didn’t think so. I don’t think so at all. You would have done what I have done, if for no other reason that in the moments of the telling you might hope for the audience to suspend disbelief.
But when you come to the end of the tale, that’s something different. You can’t expect much from the reader after that, especially when the end is a dead end. I’m bleeding out now for real, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Time does not heal all wounds. The komodos truly did me in, in a way Seether could not and I only barely made it here, across town, to this half-deserted bar with the party going on in the courtyard out back. There are only so many escapes for anyone. But I can still make it look like a magic trick to you, child, like red ribbon or sawdust, so I don’t scare you. Befuddle you, perhaps, but scare you? Never.
So I’m just an old Mexican woman now, leaking stuffing. To make you laugh. Always better if a death can make someone laugh, I say. The great amusement, the great love, the great revenge, and the great death. The incarnations. The skins. The stories.
What happens next, I don’t know because I don’t know if all possible scenarios truly exist even though the angels stand outside of time. Did I do enough? Did I do enough to redeem my trespasses? Is perhaps even the country with the army of ghost whales now advancing past the point of reboot?
Maybe Gabriel will still appear here in a blast of trumpets and explain it all to me, although he’s cutting it a bit close. No. Probably not. Probably they’re still dealing with their own after party.
You’ll find papers on me that give you my name and other basic information. You’ll also find a recording inside my bones—just split them open and it’ll come right out. Don’t be shy; Seether wouldn’t be. The recording will even play on your primitive equipment. (For good measure, I’ve attached a back-up embedded in your actual recording device, but that of necessity is microbe-small and perhaps beyond your ken.) You see, child, there’s government surveillance on this bar because it’s known as an occasional neutral meeting ground for drug lords. So I’ve not just been speaking to you, but to them, as they too try to make sense of the aftermath in that hotel room. Hiding in plain sight. Leaving a record for the Normals, so I don’t disappear forever.
So now you know a few things you didn’t know before, if you choose to believe me, and there’s nothing left to say. Seether’s coming now for me for real, but not to devour me, oh no. Now he’ll bend down and take me gently in his arms and comfort me as the light turns to darkness and whisper to me that it’s all been worth it, that it’s all okay. And I am going to choose, in this reality, to believe him.
As for you, child, run along now. The whole rest of eternity is the after party, and you don’t have to understand a word I told you. Hopefully, you can just live in it.
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Jeff VanderMeer, Komodo