by Night, H. T.
Krull was one of the most muscular beings I had ever seen. His long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and his face was pale. He had put warrior makeup on his face, arms and neck. Being that he was of Japanese descent, he looked like something out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He was John Woo’s wet dream. Clearly, he had to be the baddest motherfucker on the planet. But as far as I was concerned, he was the second baddest motherfucker on the planet. Even as beat up as I was by the ravens, I stood my ground. I didn’t have much choice. I wasn’t about to fight a thousand Mani men. And no way in hell would I surrender and serve the evil entity that was Krull, a Mani would ruin the entire planet if he was not stopped.
“This is a real Mani army!” Krull yelled out. “You probably recognize some of my men!”
I looked around his army. There were guys that I had taught, fed, and sheltered for the past nine months. Now, they were facing me as enemies.
“Are you through with your little Boy Scout mission of trying to stop the inevitable!” Krull continued, as he got closer and closer to me.
“You know I’m not!” I shouted back.
“That’s too bad.”
“I don’t see it as a bad thing.”
“I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse!” Krull said, in a lousy Marlon Brando impression from The Godfather voice.
“You corrupt, power-hungry warmonger. You wanna-be Mani overlord. You son of hate and misery. You harbinger of death and destruction. I don’t want to hear anything you have to offer.”
Krull looked at me with contempt. “Well, look around, Josiah, you don’t have much of a choice. You can’t exactly fight your way out of this one.”
“Josiah, it’s Helen. What’s going on?” I heard Helen’s voice in my head.
I looked at Krull and smiled, trying not to give him any clue I was communicating with someone telepathically. “I’ve been ambushed. I’m in Temecula off of highway 79. Krull is six feet from my face. I need everyone down here fast.”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I looked at Krull and he nodded his head to a person behind me. Then suddenly, I got hit over the back of my head by something. It was the worst pain I had ever felt. This was not good.
I fell forward, and I totally blacked out.
* * *
I opened my eyes, and something had happened. I was no longer on Highway 79. I was no longer surrounded by Mani ready to kill me on the word ‘go.’ I remembered what The Deity had said to me. ‘Look up.’
I looked up, and I was on a beach somewhere. It was a location I didn’t recognize. I laid there, far away from the world. Suddenly, I heard a voice in the distance.
“Josiah.” It was a woman’s voice. “Josiah, can you see me?” I turned around and there was a blonde woman walking towards me wearing a light blue dress. At first, I thought it was Helen. As she got near, it was clear to me who this was.
It was Maya Reign. My sister.
“Maya?” I asked.
“Yes, Josiah.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re dreaming, Josiah.”
“So, you’re not real?”
“I am very real, but you are dreaming.”
“How can you be real if I’m dreaming?”
“Hold my hand,” she said. Maya walked over to me, and I held her hand.
“This is going to hurt, just keep holding my hand.”
“What’s going to hurt?”
Suddenly, my eyes opened, and I had regained consciousness. I looked around, and I was 100 feet in the air. I could see mountains and trees in the distance. I was strapped into something metallic. I looked all around me, and I was a mess. I was in some kind of torture device. My hands, wrists, ankles and feet were killing me. But nothing hurt as much as my head. Something was pressing up against my skull.
I’m not sure how much time had passed, or the whereabouts of my location. All I knew was that I was in a lot of pain.
“Josiah, you’re awake!” a voice called out from below.
I could barely breathe. Whatever was holding me up was restricting my breath. It was some kind of elevated crucifixion device that these sick fucks had put together in their spare time.
One of the things that kept hurting and made me wish for death was my head. I thought it was because I had been hit in the back of the head before I lost consciousness. But, again, the pain was also in front of my head, protruding into my temples.
I tried to look at the image below me that was speaking to me, but the pain was too intense and I passed out again.
Once again, I slipped back into a dream state. I opened my eyes and I was back on the beach. I was looking out into the ocean and I could hear seagulls flying overhead. My sister was walking towards me from just offshore, the water at her hip level.
“Don’t give up, Josiah, don’t ever give up. I am here. I am with you!” Maya walked up to me and wrapped her arms around me the way she used to when we were kids when I was afraid of the dark.
“What’s happening to me?” I asked, pleading with her.
“You’re going to be okay. Just whatever you do, don’t give up.”
I opened my eyes back into consciousness. I was back in the mechanical torture machine. I could see a mass of Mani men below me.
“You enjoying yourself, Josiah?” Krull yelled. He had elevated his body in the air to match mine. I looked all around me and could see I was also on some kind of crane. The pain I was feeling in my head, hands and feet were excruciating. It was the worst pain I had felt in my entire life. What were they doing to me? Krull continued to float right in front of me where I was hanging. “Confused, are we, Josiah!”
“What is happening?” I asked. I was at his mercy. I was completely helpless. I looked down at my feet and I could see a steel bar going right through the top of my ankle from one side to the other. They had pierced my feet. I looked to my left, and my left arm was pinned to a metal crane with several spikes piercing through my wrists and hands. To my right, they had done the same to my right arm.
They were crucifying me in a metal cross that was 100 feet above the earth. I was also tilted at a 45-degree angle in which my body was being pulled forward. Again, my head hurt more than any part of my body.
Krull flew in front of me holding a mirror and now revealed that he was holding a mirror. “Look at you, The Chosen,” Krull said, mocking me. “We decided to crown The Chosen while you slept.”
“Why?” I yelled. “I never asked for that!”
“But, so you are,” Krull announced, looking at his men. I looked down and there were a lot less Mani here than met me in Temecula. “You are the chosen king,” Krull continued. “Every king needs his crown, and here is yours!” Krull lifted the mirror he had in his hand to my face. I looked at my image. They had implanted a metal crown on top of head and through my skull. Entering from all sides of my head were metal spikes that were drilling into my skull.
Holy shit! This is not the way it’s supposed to end.
I had no idea where I was, and whatever was happening to me had cut off all communications to Tommy and Helen.
Krull looked at me. “You thought you could communicate with your friends with your mind?” Krull laughed. He somehow knew that I tried to contact Tommy and Helen. Then I began to lose consciousness again. “Don’t go away, Josiah,” Krull shouted in my face, laughing at the top of his lungs. “We need to talk!”
It was no use. I slipped out of consciousness again. I was now floating in a raft in the ocean. Maya was with me as the sun shined down on me. It was the first time I had felt the sun in quite some time and it was nice. My dreams were the only relief I was getting from the agonizing pain that was being delivered to me. This was the first time I was aware of my reality while I was with Maya. My conscious and unconscious self was merging into one.
“Help is coming, Josiah, just hold on,” Maya said. “Just hold on!”
Again, my eyes popped open. Krull was right up in
my grill, using his fingers to open my eyelid. “Hello, Josiah. You awake?” Krull was just messing with me now. “Are you finished with your disillusioned prophecy? Will you now join me? Or will you leave it all out here tonight? Literally? Every bit and piece of you?”
I spit in his face. “I deny you!” Through my pain, I blurted out, “I will never stand with you. I will never turn on this world. Your ideology is outdated and self-serving. I will die here, before I would ever agree to follow you!”
“That’s too bad,” Krull said, shaking his head.
Then I heard a voice from the sky. “You won’t have to! “Look up, Josiah!”
I looked up and it was Atticai, followed by a sea of ravens. He was coming right for Krull, leading with his foot. Atticai kicked Krull in the face in a downward spiral. Krull collapsed to the ground onto his back. I looked around me and several ravens followed Atticai down.
Krull didn’t have a lot of men in this location and he was clearly outnumbered by Atticai’s crew. That didn’t stop his proud men from fighting, however. The next few minutes were as bad as Mani bloodbath as I ever could imagine. I was stuck on my metal cross, unable to lead or assist my Mani army. It was probably a good thing because I doubted that I could have been much help, in my current condition. But to my complete surprise, Krull retreated and took his army out of whatever secret location he had brought me to.
Atticai gently released me to the ground and it took about 45 minutes to unhook me from Krull’s mechanical crucifix. The most painful part was removing all the metal spikes from my hands, feet and head.
I collapsed to the ground. I was battered, bruised and bloodied. But I had been saved. I was saved by the last person I ever thought would be my rescuer. Atticai came to my rescue. I looked up and once again, I blacked out. This time there was no Maya…just darkness.
Chapter Twenty-six
I’m not exactly sure how everything transpired, but somehow I was brought back to my house in Victorville. For the next two weeks, I slipped in and out of awareness of my surroundings and sleep.
I would have memories where I was awake and Lena was lying next to me, just holding me. That would never last long because I would lose consciousness again.
In my ocean world, Maya, my sister, was there each time, getting me through. This time it was Lena, but I started realizing that she was actually there. She had come back from Amsterdam to see me.
This went on for days. Then finally, I woke up, and it was for good. I opened my eyes and felt more strength than I had felt in a long time.
I looked up and saw Lena. She was really there and it wasn’t a dream.
“Hey you,” Lena said to me. “Are you back for good?”
“I hope so.” I maneuvered my body and sat up. My butt was extremely sore. But nothing to the pain I had in my head, hands and feet.
“Are the boys here, too?” I asked, not sure how I felt about Lena being back.
“No, they are still in Amsterdam with Linda and Wyatt. They are both doing an amazing job watching over them. You’d be happy to know they’re both taking their jobs very seriously.” Lena looked at me, and I could tell she was trying to be strong.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked, knowing better.
“What’s wrong? I can barely recognize you. You look awful, Josiah.”
“Thanks.” I had no idea how bad I looked. I could only imagine how gruesome my face must look after having metal spikes drilled into my head.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Lena said, breaking down.
“No one is asking you to. Please go back to Amsterdam where you can be safe.”
“I don’t want to go back to Amsterdam! I want to be with you! What I’m trying to say is I can’t watch you die. I can’t bear witness to you giving this ultimate effort where you return to us like a dog that has been run over by a car and dragged for miles!” Lena began to cry. “I can’t imagine what they did to you. What you had to go through. And for what? For those people out there? Those Mani men and women that you don’t even know?”
I looked at Lena and I knew that this visual was hard for her to handle. “I wish you didn’t have to see this, but this what I signed on for.”
“Even still, you have a family now. We don’t have to do this. We can go away and leave and be a family. We can leave this all here!”
“I wouldn’t even have our family if I didn’t have this calling on my life. Neither would you. I can’t turn my back on it now. I know this is hard, but it is what is asked of me.”
“Look at you. Your face looks like you went a thousand rounds with Mike Tyson… and lost. Your hands and arms are so bruised and ugly that I can’t even look at them. The doctor thinks you might not be able to walk after what Krull did to your feet!”
“Come here, sweetie,” I said, keeping my cool in front of her. Lena was becoming hysterical. One of us in panic mode was enough. With tears dripping from her eyes, Lena crawled into bed and laid next to me. “I know I’m pretty hideous-looking, but I’m going to heal. The last time I checked. I don’t even have to walk if I don’t want to. I’ll fly down the aisle if I have to when we get married.”
“I’m the one who is going to walk down the aisle, not you. You can’t take that from me, too.” Lena just looked at me in disbelief. Her comment was half teasing, but her tone was the this: she was fed up and done with my Chosen One duties.
“Well, I have to get to the front of the wedding ceremony somehow.”
“How will you stand there?” Lena asked.
“I’ll float like Casper, the friendly ghost.”
“I’m being serious, Josiah.”
“Lena, if you think for one second that I’m going to allow myself to be crippled, you know me better than that. I’m going to get better. We will do this together.”
Lena was quiet. “I don’t know.”
“I need you, Sweetie. I need you now more than ever.”
“I just want you, Josiah. When is the harmony that you keep talking about going to happen?”
“When Krull is defeated.” I paused. “Can I ask you something? How did I get here?”
Lena sighed and said, “They told me that Atticai delivered you to Tommy!”
“Someone say my name?” Tommy bellowed from right outside the room. Tommy entered my bedroom and smiled when he saw that I was sitting up. “Wow, sitting up and everything. How are you feeling?”
“Sore all over,” I said.
“I bet. Well, why don’t you heal yourself and we can go kick Krull’s ass.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Tommy looked at me, perplexed.
“It doesn’t work that way. For whatever reason, I can’t heal Lena or myself. Only the Triat can heal me.”
“Then let’s pray or do whatever spiritual crap we have to do to heal you. You look like Rocky Balboa at the end of every Rocky film.”
“Rocky 2 was the best,” I said.
“I’m a Rocky 4 man myself, but seriously, you look awful, bro.” Tommy walked over to me and knelt down next to my bed.
“Thanks,” I said. “I should have combed my hair before you came in here. Help me stand up. I want to see if I can walk.”
“You sure?” Tommy asked.
“I’m sure.”
“Josiah, you had metal spikes that were completely in your shins, ankles, and feet!” Lena said to me. “Don’t push yourself too soon.”
“I want to try.” I looked at both Lena and Tommy and gave them a look as if to say, “Either help me, or I’m going to get up myself.”
Tommy reluctantly looked at Lena for her approval.
“Don’t look at me, Tommy,” Lena said. “You know your best friend is a stubborn mule.”
“But even stubborn mules have cartilage in the legs and feet that make it so they can walk.”
Tommy pulled the covers off my body. I was naked from the waist down. Tommy glanced at my package and said. “Wow, a mini chubby, it’s good to know I stil
l get you excited.”
“No mini-chubby, bro,” I said. “That’s me, soft.”
“Well done. Let’s put some shorts on this pool stick before one of us gets poked in the eye by this hog!” Tommy proclaimed.
Lena opened my drawer and pulled out a pair of black basketball shorts. She handed them to me, and I slipped them on. I was afraid to look at my feet and hands, but decided that this was the time to do so. From my knees down to my toes, my legs were cut up and looked like a purple mess. My hands and wrists looked the same. “All right, help me up,” I said.
“You want to get another guy in here?” Tommy asked.
“Sure,” I said sarcastically “I just thought you were man enough to do it yourself.” I know that was all I had to say. Tommy was a machismo-driven dog that was as easy to manipulate as a trained Labrador.
Tommy came over to me and helped me put my legs over my bed. He lifted me up, and I put some weight on my feet.
Damn! That fucking hurts! But I still continued. The pain I received when Krull was torturing me was worse than this could ever be. So, I pressed on through it. I was able to put a little weight on my feet at first. Then, I was able to put all my weight on it. Tommy stepped aside held me up with one hand.
“You okay, Josiah?” Tommy asked.
“I’m okay.” I looked over at Lena and she had a look of despair on her face.
“Be careful, Josiah. Don’t make your injuries worse,” Lena said.
I wanted to show Tommy, but mostly Lena, that I could do this on my own. “Let go of me, Tommy. I want to stand on my own.”
Tommy let go of me, and I stood there. I kept my balance for a good 30 seconds. “I’m going to try to take a step.” I lifted my foot up and stepped forward. The pain was excruciating, but I needed to do it. It took all my strength to take three steps, but I did it. “Okay, I’m done.” Tommy sat me back on my bed. “Okay, that was pitiful,” I said.