by Gann, Myles
Power extended lightly and rebounded immediately. ‘Not without him knowing. It looks as though they worked it under the skin this time. This may be fun after all.’
Caleb moved his feet and body into a stance. “We’ll find the woods to be a better place to chat.”
“We already have a place set-up nearby if you’d just accompany us there.” ‘Let me out now.’ “It isn’t far.”
‘No. Violence isn’t abided anymore.’ “Lead the way.”
“You first,” Stephen finally sounded. “You have a history of the easy way out. We’d like to keep an eye on you.”
‘His voice is still irksome after these months. That won’t be a problem without his vocal chords. Then he’ll be signing threats, which just wouldn’t have the same impact now would it?’
“You’re under some false impression that you need to trust me for this to happen, obviously. I’m not going to run, and sorry to say, but I’m not going to fight. We can do whatever tests or talk about whatever secrets you think I have.”
The man with the glasses turned and smiled with Stephen still casting a shadow with his enamored glare. “Follow us.” They turned fully before Caleb made a single step forward. ‘You’re not yelling at me. I figured the no violence policy would send you into another fit.’
‘Do you feel that warmth in your stomach? The pressure at the base of your brain that runs swift through your back? What about the tension in your shoulders that the needed kneading could never relieve? That’s my foreground, and if I were to wail anymore, there’s no telling the skinless horror you’d become.’
Caleb smirked behind the two walking men. ‘You’re still trying to scare me with that? The bet’s over. You’ve lost.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re still nothing but a vessel for me, and you will learn that the abolition of violence from a lifestyle as centralized as ours is a fantastical simulation of reality that will come to dismantle more than just our worth.’
‘What the hell are we worth? Didn’t you learn anything from my ass-kicking?’
‘Heh, you’ve been thinking this entire time you sacrificed yourself to learn, but you didn’t. You put yourself under a handicap to feel pain, oh be still my beating heart! A voice in your head reminds you constantly that there was a very easy way to win that fight. I’ve looked inside your heart and I know the truth.’
‘The truth is that I was beat by three men in a fight.’
‘In which you gave no effort to win. You’re the one that preaches the truth so much.’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘No, but you have no self-concept of what the truth is. Not yet.’
‘You sound almost expectant.’
‘Perhaps I’m counting on it still.’
‘You can’t be.’
‘You assume my priorities are the same.’
‘I know they are.’
‘Then you’re even more lost than I thought.’
‘Change the wording of what you think you want around until your blue in the face, but you can’t change.’
‘Charming. Nobody can change?’
‘He can do anything. You can’t.’
‘He doesn’t know what he’s doing without me.’
‘I know what I’m doing.’ Caleb emerged briefly from his subconscious to feel grass crumpling under the soles of his shoes. ‘And I know what I can do.’
The two men separated with the German walking towards a group of men with various study equipment at the stand-by on tables or near a large, thin looking trailer with no visible door and thick, tinted glass in two long pieces along the front. Caleb turned back to Stephen as he removed his hooded jacket and flung it to the nearest breeze. “Get ready,” he warned.
“For what? A pose off? That’s all this is about, I see. You just want to show off how hard you can flex or how fast you can move to a bunch of admirers of science. Dick measuring isn’t very much fun when the competition has balls the size of mouse crap.”
“You’re my competition. I’m starting to think you always will be.”
“Big fish in little ponds don’t often find the same comfort in an endless ocean.” Caleb noticed the shimmer of metal from beside Stephen’s neck. “Regardless, I told you I’m not here to fight.”
“That’s the only reason we’ll ever come together.”
“That’s your choice, but I can make mine. I’m not getting drug into this.” Caleb turned and held his hands up. His first stride away never landed; there were streaks of trees blurred by the unnatural lines of sudden movement, and a brief, audible crunch before he was in the air. His side hit the ground twenty yards from take-off, and his entire body spasmed and arched in the agony of breathless life. ‘Chest…crushed.’
‘Calm down. You’re healed. Take a few breaths, then let me out.’
Caleb breathed deeply several times before standing up. ‘No…no we won’t fight him.’
‘If you want the truth, you will fight him.’
‘What?’
‘He is an abomination; an unnatural hamster wheel on the tow-rope of these minions. You seek a perfection consistent with the truth and the absolutes of the universe. He is a lie. A living, breathing, breaking lie.’
‘Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. We’ve got to get away. We’ll think then find him again.’
‘No.’
Caleb stood sideways with his hands at his side. ‘You’re going along with my philosophy?’
‘I’m seeing how right it is for us both. The world needs you to do this. Will we answer?’
Caleb spit out a single salty, red stream. ‘No killing.’
‘Let me out and I’ll see what happens.’
Caleb let his arms drift a little from his body and opened his hands to the release of the majority of the caged animal within. Stephen could now be seen smiling by Caleb’s sparked eyes. “That’s more like it.”
Power instantly spread into a dome while Stephen reset for a charge. The now-purple man sprinted forward but not into the clear space; his line was curved around the distortion until Caleb’s back seemed vulnerable with exposure. He charged forward, only to be punched by a swing of blue in the face and caught completely guard-less by Caleb’s sudden movement and strike. “Open yourself up more.”
“We don’t need complete communication for one man.”
“He broke my sternum in one hit; he’s not a normal man anymore.”
“Stay reserved. Let the test be fielded before we deplete our reserves.”
Caleb nodded his head slightly before moving quickly. He arrived at the kneeled Stephen with his hand cocked back; the gathering of knuckled joints were flying off the mast of his arm but finding only a strengthened cradle impeding its progress. Caleb and Power pushed in unison as Stephen felt the ground beneath him cracking and giving under his obstinance and Caleb’s force. Stephen’s right hand shot up suddenly and was snatched in an extended group of deeply blue power; Caleb felt the calm inside of him while hearing a buzzing noise he hadn’t in so long. “You’re running out already?”
“No. I’m just getting warmed up.”
“You don’t hear that?”
“Yes. It’s him not us.”
Stephen’s strain and grunts were amplified before a deep breath, followed by a sudden recede in strength from Caleb’s entrapped hand and a hard slice into Power on his other hand. The buzzing was momentarily unbearable. Both entities railed against the sides of Caleb’s head while stumbling and adding to the cushion of air around Stephen. He quickly sprang to his feet again, ran, and swung, clanging against the side of Caleb’s dome with the same effect. Caleb’s feet shambled backwards as Power was more able to recuperate; Stephen summoned the multitude of his strength again with malintent, but Power pushed at his elbow and shoulder expertly before pulling his coiled arm down under a ring of blinding blue that scorched around his neck. Stephen’s hands instantly attempted a counter, only to find similar brightness embedded tightly between his wrist bones. Power inten
sified each hold until Stephen was groaning lightly in the searing pain that surely shrouded any chain of thought.
Caleb could hear the gasps for air from between the remaining strains of pain in his body and pulled back on Power. It was completely receded before Stephen’s body suddenly fell forward and began to twitch. Three lab coats were in front of Caleb by the time his eyes were completely his again, and Stephen’s body was carried off before he could form any coherent thoughts. ‘Pain. I’ve never felt that kind before.’
‘Me neither.’
Caleb tasted, with a flicking tongue, the familiar mixture of metal and salt before Power easily fixed the leak.
Chapter 19
A series of deep inhales accompanied the rise of two palms, where the holden air stood upon the steady hands, before a series of flowing, lowering back-hands pumped the air lightly from the lungs attached by tertiary means into the countless cycle. About the breather carried a spring column still too young to know warmth; grass filled an abysmal field with a writhe of pines shaking winter’s bone from their fleshed needles. What stray branches traversed the transient, spiteful air of the dewed morning found contortion an exercise all at once. They gave the meadow over from the tweet of bird and the smell of sap to the stillness of air, the mute of breath across the abyss. They could sense nothing, nor see clearly; a blue curtain would not unroll.
Beyond the veil and inside the abyss, perceptions of the natural changed. All the greenery found itself fawn and folioed, tripping unto itself without foot or hand as cause. The air swaggered in coloring particles, ordered photons that escaped nowhere, but changed everywhere. Their golden charm was lost against the deepening blue of a rippling, ever-changing tide, casting green light in beheld savories. Between the variant colors, tight, methodic music could be sewn as a pin to a bosom, as a badge to a careful chest. The still figure fixed at the ideal middle—front of just center, grounded—felt his mind work around the delicate notes and his senses craze with stimuli that didn’t touch his body. Nature unorthodox swelled through him, and yet he sat content with nature’s lack of amazement.
Just behind the perfect center, two feet stamped the grass in a straight, constant trench, left of center four paces, four to the middle, and four to the right—only two swivels, and a pause at the center, the vacant, feminine eyes never resisting the sight of gentle, methodic heaves at the sitting back. “You think you’ve gotten rid of me?”
The back didn’t move as the feet paced right four paces. “I don’t think I ever will.”
She turned and moved eight paces to the left. “Can you still feel the weight of me on your soul?”
“I feel you in everything I’ve done.”
Her pace stopped at the middle. “Do you think she’ll ever be free of me?”
“God I hope so. She deserves so much more than me.”
“Why is that?”
“Look what I did to you. Look at where you ended.”
“Imperfect things must come to an end.”
“Perfect things must be given the chance to exist. You never had a chance. You ended before you ever had a chance.”
“And you blame yourself. For what? For a decision I made?”
“For the one I made you make.”
“You never made me do anything.”
“That’s the rationale that creates base, banal monsters. The truth is I forced you to be who I wanted you to be just by mentioning your imperfections.”
“Did I have any, now that you look back?”
The back straightened again. “No, and that’s the worst part of my life to date: I lied, and you paid the price. I deflected, I couldn’t see the truth until it was too late, and it was for nothing. You were a rationally perfect woman, and I wasn’t.”
“What if it was my choice?”
“It never was.”
“What if?”
“Then you would’ve chosen to walk away.”
“I always had that choice.”
“The world never gave you that choice.”
“How do you know?”
“You were always afraid, but never vain. You bubbled with sweetness, but took pills to dismantle potential anxiety. I always knew you were better than me and that your trust was on my back, but you always placed your life in destiny. Whatever happened, happened. You’d never change it or complain. The world laid me, a mixed bag of feelings, and adolescent dreams at your feet, and you never once considered fighting the good fight. There was always something wrong with you, and I saw some piece of that and tried to fix it. Your mind was never meant to take the strain of my ideals. My promises.”
“Maybe your promises were all that kept me going.”
“That’s not true.”
“It could be.”
“You hated me for twenty years. My first promise to you was snapped.”
“Maybe I hated myself.”
“I destroyed your self.”
“You shaped me.”
“And you’re dead.” The feet suddenly shifted, along with the image. “You are too.”
“This is a slippery slope. You couldn’t save me.”
“I was out. It was an arbitrary night.”
“You were out. You had no chance of knowing.”
“I could’ve stayed. We could’ve stayed in and had popcorn, movies, blankets stretched across feet and cuddling couples and cold water and witty dialogue, and I could’ve stopped him. I could’ve stopped a chain that stretched from him.”
“You can’t blame him.”
“I could.”
“No, you’ve never been able to blame anyone but yourself.”
“I am the prism of action.”
“You are a man.”
“Precisely. I am not a man.”
“Should I be proud of you?”
“How could you be? What have I done that would evoke pride?”
“You have lived, and you have tried to live.”
“I was born with life in my bones. Everything about me is natural.”
“And yet you strive for more. Why?”
“Because the people around me deserve more.”
“It’s not about what they deserve.”
“It’s about what the world will give them. I was given something, and it, as much as anything, wills me to the right thing. Here, the right thing is aligned with them.”
“You are the world, then.”
“Unfortunately for them.”
“How could I not be proud of that? How could we not be proud of that?”
“We?”
The feet changed again. Leather shoes and grey, seamed dress pants took the place of casual slacks. “I am too.”
“You have the least reason of all to be.”
“How do figure?”
“If there is any dispute over my responsibility of deaths, it disappears with you.”
“That doesn’t affect my pride in the slightest.”
“Is the prisoner proud of the man who flips the switch?”
“Imagine that ambition: to take a life with a series of simple actions. The only question that should ever matter to you is why did you do it?”
“How do I answer that?”
“With a statement.”
“Could one statement encapsulate the truth?”
“If it is indeed the truth, then yes.”
“You’re asking me to place myself in a truth. To place my entire mind to a fixed, past point that, although it sticks out like a cactus without a shadow, has become nearly fuzzy in my years. I’m not even sure if the absolute truth is attainable from a distance in either direction of time; actually, this is a fact. The only truth I can know is of the here, the now, but if I remember the ‘then,’ can I not extrapolate some truth? The night was all around me, I recall, and I was filled with what could be called its essence. I wanted to be the night, and I stumbled upon you. My supposed brother gave me strength and vigor; I was suddenly a righteous, self-sufficient judicial system with no need for appeals
. Naturally, when your life was in my hands, when I deceived myself with a lie like a cloud atop the moon fooling a child, I didn’t do the right thing. Perhaps that’s why: I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Not for revenge?”
“I thought they were synonymous concepts at the time.”
“Not for justice?”
“Again, synonymous.”
“Just because it was the apparent right thing to do. You screamed. I remember you screamed.”
“You can’t remember anything.”
“You did scream though.”
“I did.”
“Was that the right thing to do?”
“It was a lie; a scream meant to stop myself from doing something unspeakable, only done because it was the last thing I could think to do.”
“Where were you then?”
“I was where I am now: floating above the center on a cloud of condescension.”
The feet walked away towards the edge of the strange nature. “You’re wrong.”
“About?”
“You’re nowhere near where you sat that night. You’re right in the middle this time.”
There was a steady rustling ahead of him as the figure behind disappeared. From behind the blue veil, a small figure emerged and stood tall. “Even from the inside, your eyes are the deepest brown anyone could imagine.”
“Which one of you thinks that?”
“Caleb thought it, but we both feel it.”
Alice stepped to the edge of bent branches and smiled largely. “That’s cute. If I knock on the side of this thing, will that be cute? Or annoying? Seems like it’d give you a headache if I hit hard enough.”
Caleb opened his eyes and smiled calmly. “I’m sure the door’s open for you.”
Alice reached her hand forward before her body. “What’s it feel like? Jell-O, I bet. Like swimming in Jell-O, like when you were a kid and would always dream of that. I should be walking in now shouldn’t I? Eh, okay.” She passed through the small membrane and continued to walk with her eyes closed. “It’s not jelly at least.”
“Do you see that?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait, what? See what?”
Caleb stood and marveled. “Open your eyes. You’ll see it too.”