by P. J. Day
She wiped her nose and eyes and stood up strongly from her bed. Mother’s thin arm attempted to grapple her shirt. Cindy seized her mother’s hand and turned to her. “I’ll leave. I’ll leave the family, but I need to confront Dad.”
“No, just leave this house and don’t look back, Cindy.”
“I need to tell him something.”
“He doesn’t love you. He only loves his honor. Go away and don’t come back. Why do you want to speak to the man who hurt you? He’ll only continue to hurt you.”
Angry, Cindy pushed her aside and walked out of her room with a hurried gait. Her father leaned against the kitchen counter, observing Linda’s work. He turned his head toward the hallway, where Cindy had emerged from her room, her face feisty and emitting resolve.
“I hate you,” she said, angrily.
Her father’s face stilled, his lip without curl.
“I’m going to figure this whole thing out. I don’t know what it is, but I know for sure it is larger than you and your stupid, abstract, invisible honor.”
“You’re a failure,” he said, without inflection. “You’re a loser.”
Cindy sustained unflinching eye contact with her father, her face flushed with rage.
“Get out of my house and never come back. There is nothing for you here.”
“No. You need to listen.”
Sue came from behind and placed her hand on Cindy’s shoulder. Cindy grabbed her mother’s hand and brushed it off immediately. She turned to her mother, and said, “You’re weak. You never loved me. Your fear of Dad was stronger than the love for your children.”
Her mother covered her face and began sobbing.
Something poked the skin underneath her armpit. The memory of a thick, red book under her arm entered her thoughts like slow-moving fog. She reached for it and shoved it in her father’s face. “Look, I have something in my hand that I discovered, that I pursued because I never gave up what I loved, the mysteries of this planet, of this universe; I sought them without your heavy hand.”
She opened the book and placed her finger on the page. Her father’s face was without a reaction, her mother continued to sob, and Linda sat stone-faced, as she usually did when the entire family gathered with tension.
Cindy raised her head with confidence and began reading with clarity and with measured diction, translating the lexicon as it sparked in her mind, “Aftí stirízetai gia tin eiríni̱ pará ti thélisí tis...she rests for peace, against her will...enslaving humanity for perpetual amity.”
Her father’s eyes reacted as if a different mind were behind them. His mouth gaped in surprise. “How do you know?” he asked.
“Because I fought for myself. I fought to prove myself, that there was more to life than living someone else’s life. Even if I were to struggle. Even if I were to uncover nothing,” Cindy said, with her face trembling. She then reached out at her father and placed her slight hand around his throat. Surprised at his daughter’s sudden physical hostility, the father didn’t react. Cindy bellowed with gnashed teeth, “Go ahead and hit me. Try hitting me again.”
The walls and furniture, her mother and sister, and the feeling of dread she recollected as she stepped into her parents’ house again began to dissolve like a watercolor painting drenched in rain. Her father’s face twisted and morphed as if made of clay. The room she’d found moments ago slowly reappeared. A haggard gray figure, wearing a beaten and stained tunic, with a pathetic set of wings on its bony back, emerged unmoved in her tightened grip.
“What the hell are you?” Cindy asked, at first with panic, and then with smoldering courage. “Where am I?”
“How did you retrieve the Apocryphon? How did you get in here?” wheezed the wilted cherub.
Cindy removed her hand from the wretch and stepped back. The darkened room had come alive with ambient light. The walls sparkled of pure gold. A radiant tomb rested against the far wall.
“I came through the church and came in through the river,” Cindy said.
“The sacred dowel and the Rondure of Nicaea, how? You’re a mortal,” it asked.
“Fate?” Cindy quipped.
The room emitted a burst of static.
“What was that?” Cindy asked. “It happened when I first came in here.”
“You’ve awakened them.”
“Awakened what?”
“The protectors of the harvest.”
“What harvest?” Cindy asked. She then gazed at the dilapidated wings. “What are you?”
“You’ve arrived here unprepared, yet you’ve managed to infiltrate the heart of the Prophecy; tis’ fate,” the winged man sighed, then gurgled a chuckle.
“Are you an angel?” Cindy said, as her eyes narrowed.
The winged man coughed and rested on his thin and frail legs. “My name is Murat. I oversee the Blessed Sacrament’s tomb. I’m old and weak now. My body and power has succumbed to your plane. All I have is the power to instill fear. To repel all who enter, but I clearly don’t even possess such a skill, as you fought my attempts with ease.”
“It clearly would’ve worked if I hadn’t prepared emotionally and mentally to face my father once again. I’ve dreamed of seeing his face for the past couple of years. I know who I am now,” Cindy said.
Murat nodded weakly.
Cindy pointed toward the tomb. “Who rests there?”
“That is the Blessed Sacrament’s tomb.”
Murat rested on the ground, weakened and without the ability to provoke. Cindy walked up to the tomb, from which protruded a Madonna’s figure holding a lily on her bosom.
“Is she inside?”
“No,” softly breathed Murat.
“Where is she?”
“Guarded.”
“Who’s guarding her? Where?”
“Your end is near.”
“My end is near? What do you mean?”
“The Seraphs are going to disembowel you,” Murat grinned, as he panted on the floor.
With adrenaline, Cindy’s senses heightened. She rushed the door to the room and removed the dowel and rondure from the door, and slammed it shut, locking it once again. She stepped back and placed the artifacts in her pockets. She turned to Murat. “They won’t get through.”
Murat gasped a laugh. “They’ll scratch and claw their way through the rocks to get in. You have nowhere to go.”
Panic changed her otherwise pleasant demeanor, and Cindy walked up to Murat and grabbed his wing, giving it an abrupt yank. Murat squirmed in pain. “Where is the Blessed Sacrament?”
Murat screamed.
“You pathetic and forgotten wretch, where is she?”
“Let go and I’ll tell.” Murat grimaced. “Let go of my wing, please.”
Cindy loosened her grip and crouched so she could gaze into Murat’s sunken opalescent eyes.
Murat respired. “She’s being kept in Shia’s house.”
“Shia? Who’s Shia?” Cindy asked with confusion.
Murat cackled like a dying crow. His phlegm-tickled chortle sent a shiver down Cindy’s spine. “The actor. Mr. Labeouf.”
Surprised by the name, Cindy grabbed and squeezed Murat’s wing. “What the hell is going on? Shia Labeouf? Why would Shia Labeouf be entrusted to hold the Blessed Sacrament? Tell me the truth.”
“We’re both going to perish in this dank, cold room. So, I might as well let you in on something,” said Murat, who proceeded to sit on his bottom. He then looked up at her with pleading eyes. “Let me ask you this; how attractive is Shia to you?”
“He’s okay, I guess. Nothing spectacular,” Cindy said, letting go of Murat’s wing.
“Quit being coy. His looks do nothing for you or most women out there.”
“Depends. He can be cute at times.”
“Do you think he’s talented?”
Cindy rolled her eyes. “Where’s this leading?”
“Just hear me. Do you think he’s talented?”
“He’s okay. In most movies, he’s
just there.”
“So, how does a young man who’s neither great looking nor greatly talented, achieve the success he has?”
“Hard work? Familial ties? I don’t know.”
“No. He’s the last Kronotos before the harvest.”
“What is a Kronotos?”
“An actor who agrees to protect the vessel to ensure the harvest, and is rewarded with divine success. One who is mediocre, average, but has the will and fateful certitude to guard the Sacrament in case people like you poke around long enough to discover the tomb.”
“So, the Blessed Sacrament is in Shia Labeouf’s home?”
Murat nodded.
“Tell me. Where in his house?”
Murat’s thin and bald head perked up. The small holes on the side of his head pulsated like the quivered gape of a miniature mouth. “Above ground, where else?” he said.
A piercing shriek resonated through the bedrock. Loud scratching and clawing mangled at the door as if someone was scrawling furiously at a chalkboard.
Cindy picked up Murat from the floor and shook him violently. “How do I get out of here? Is there an exit?”
Murat’s eyes perked up, his jutting brow bones looked as if they were about to pierce through his translucent and tender skin. “Maybe,” he grinned.
The shining beacon above the Blessed Sacrament attracted two of the guardians. They pummeled the door in spastic rhythm. Cindy heard the thumping of rocks as they hit the door and ground.
“They’re digging in,” Murat said. “They will tear me to shreds and punish me for my failure and then they will play with your innards, as you scream for mercy.”
Cindy opened the Apocryphon and riffled frantically, searching for a picture or a word that might signal an escape.
“Once the Seraph can see you or the space in front of it, it will teleport. They don’t even need to breach. Accept your fate, pray for your forgiveness,” Murat breathed, as he hunched over the floor.
One of the Seraphs managed to take a chunk out of the bedrock, creating a foot-long space between the room and the outside. Its shriek briefly paralyzed Cindy.
“Kufikiri hekima moja kufikiri...Kufikiri hekima moja kufikiri,” she chanted loudly, repeatedly, as she continued her hurried thumbing through the pages.
Inside the book, her eyes came upon a crude depiction of the Sacrament’s tomb. Next to the tomb, she recognized the same iron grips she used to descend into the initial chasm. She scanned the alien words, hoping to come upon a familiar consonant, vowel, or pattern that she could deduce. She quickly found a somewhat familiar Latin-derived phrase. The Seraph penetrated a hole in the rock with its claw. Cindy saw the black and shiny talon breach the bedrock as if it were foam. Murat bowed his head in surrender.
“Precor nam ascensus,” she said.
The nape of her neck tingled as if hit with a slight gust of air. She turned around and a collection of iron grips appeared against the wall. She gazed upward and a concrete manhole, like the one at the floor of the church, appeared as well. She quickly climbed the grips, and the Seraph’s large, spiraled eye peered through the hole it created. Cindy scaled the grips with cat-like reflexes, aided by an unprecedented rush of adrenaline as the creature teleported into the room. Cindy paused and turned her head down toward the tomb’s floor and scrutinized the creature with morbid curiosity. She couldn’t comprehend the physical makeup of such a beast—her heart beat furiously and with a flutter that raced up her windpipe and gullet, and finally lodging at the back of her throat like a pulsating tumor blocking her airway. The Seraph circled Murat, its claws tapping the hard ground like a drunken tap dancer. Murat laid close to the ground, his head lowered in submission. The Seraph pounced on the feeble and once-strong sprite and tore into its flesh as it were rice paper. Murat didn’t scream or yelp and absorbed the brutal attack in silence.
Terrified by the savagery that had taken place before her eyes, she fumbled the rondure out from her backpack while tightly snuggling the Apocryphon and the backpack between her arm and rib. Her wallet and cellphone fell to the ground with her scurried extraction. She placed the dowel into the hole and pushed through. A salient and stinging burst of sunlight blinded Cindy as the cover opened. She immediately pulled the rondure from its hole and threw it up through the opening.
The Seraph shrieked and lunged at Cindy who was still climbing the collection of iron grips. The tip of its claw grazed Cindy’s soft skin, partially slicing her Achilles tendon. She cried out in pain and kicked at the beast with her other foot as she hung on the grips with both arms. The Seraph hesitated as she connected with its face, giving Cindy precious seconds to climb up the remaining grips. She pulled herself up out of the hole and slammed the cover. The Seraph managed to place its talon between the metal covering, as it struggled for a grip. Cindy bounced on one leg and body slammed herself down onto the cover, stunning the Seraph as it shrilled in annoyance, giving Cindy enough time to lock the cover with the dowel. She sat in an empty office, with an empty desk, and sunlight peering through a large, decorative window. She scooted backward, finally resting against the wall. She stared down at her ankle, the back of her foot gnarled and gashed.
She scanned the deserted office and found a dirty rag discarded on the empty desk next to a half-bottle of Windex. She snatched it off the desk and tied it around her ankle. Her mouth pulled back in excruciating pain. She then reclined her head against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Repel the thoughts, Cindy,” she breathed softly before nodding off; it was her body’s flight response to the horror and her injury.
Chapter Twenty-six:
Buttons
The city was calm, with not a siren or a spotlight hovering in the distance.
A large window in Logan’s hotel room opened up to the sprawl west of downtown. The television played in the background. Talking heads in a panic. Beautiful, ear-pierced blonde girls with vitriol spewing from their glistening lips. Prognostications of the unknown, of the suddenly powerless and threatened, blared through the news-channel groupings of every cable and satellite box across the country and the world.
Logan’s eyes focused on South Central. The neighborhoods tucked underneath the 110 North overpass, forgotten by gentrification, and infamous by culture, remained subdued. As the world burned in offices and high-rises across the land, there was no sign of smoke or fire in places where revolution usually sparked. Instead, the revolution was being broadcasted and waged through the flickers of LED’s and LCD’s displayed on the blue serenity of amoled screens and revealed by the oily swipes and scrolls on Gorilla and Sapphire Glass.
A knock on the door drew his attention away from what lay beyond the large window. “Who’s there?” he asked.
“Buttons...” said Keelen.
Buttons had been Keelen’s nickname when they’d dated that one summer. She wore blouses, that for some inexplicable reason, had buttons on their shoulders or pockets, which Logan loved to tease her about.
“Come in,” said Logan, as he opened the hotel room door.
Keelen lunged at Logan and gave him a hug, not just any hug. It was a tighter embrace than the ones Marines received at the end of their deployments, or at least the ones that came home to a semblance of loyalty. She almost squeezed the breath out of him.
“Whoa, it’s only been like 24 hours,” he said, lifting his hands in the air.
“I thought something happened to you,” she said, her cheek planted against his chest. “Everything that’s going on is giving me anxiety. I’m glad you’re safe.”
“You like the Buttons reference?”
Keelen pulled back from her hug and raised her eyebrow with playful castigation.
Logan smirked. “I’m sorry, but those buttons served absolutely no purpose. It’s not that you didn’t look good in them, but you know...”
Keelen pressed her finger on Logan’s lips. “Stop it.”
“Okay...okay...no more Buttons, I promise.”
“I don�
��t think you called me here to talk about my past wardrobe decisions.”
Logan smiled. It’s not that he didn’t think Keelen dressed well, he just thought pointing out silly details like the number of buttons on a blouse was not only a good way to break the ice, but it showed his attention to detail, which Keelen appreciated. Also, something about the buttons sparked familiarity and a warm feeling of nostalgia in Logan.
Keelen looked at Logan with tired eyes. “I need to sit down. My legs feel like they’ve been used as punching bags.”
Logan pulled out a chair from the small table across from the bed and offered it to Keelen. As she sat, she sighed at the news program on the television. The media pounded her senses. It also made her question Logan’s role in the chaos. “What did you do?”
Logan reached out for Keelen’s hand and said, “Just trust me.”
She retracted her hand away from his grip. “I don’t want to end up in prison. How do I know you’re not doing something illegal?”
“I guarantee you there’s nothing shady going on.”
“What about the video?” Keelen asked, changing the subject abruptly. “How did you not appear in the video? What kind of shit are you pulling?”
“Can an explanation wait?” he pleaded.
“No, I think I deserve an answer now.”
“Deserve, huh? Why do you think you deserve an answer?”
Keelen sat back in her chair in slight agitation. “Seriously?”
“Answer my question...”
“Are you really going to make me answer that question?”
Logan sat still. His face unmoved.
“Because...because...I don’t want to be complicit in what you’re doing,” Keelen stammered. “Because as your friend, I deserve an explanation.”
Logan relaxed his abrasiveness. “Listen, in my gut and in my heart, I know you’re special...unique, even. But what’s with the self-entitlement? You deserve an explanation?”
Keelen crossed her arms and curled her mouth to the side in submission. “Fine, you’re right, I don’t deserve an explanation. But as a friend. As someone you trust, can you let me in on what you’ve been up to?”