The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey

by Millerson, Brady

  He had not seen a Security agent for quite some time. It appeared as if the military had taken full control of his person. He attempted in vain to scrawl into the forearm of his skin the days that had passed since he had last seen Sofia, but without any access to the Savior, he lacked the ability to discern whether it was day or night. Differentiating between minutes and hours had become nearly impossible.

  The door to his cell opened and two soldiers stepped in.

  “Come with us,” one of them demanded.

  Lifting himself up, John held his hands out, giving the men the opportunity to place the cuffs on his wrists without any resistance.

  “That won’t be necessary,” one of the soldiers replied.

  As they proceeded through the door, John followed close behind. Entering into the hall, he was now standing in a narrow tunnel with barely enough room between the walls for the two soldiers to walk side-by-side. Leading him away from his prison cell, the two men seemed unconcerned about escorting an unshackled prisoner. Other than the batons that they held in their hands, they appeared to be unarmed.

  The light at the end of the tunnel filtering between the edges of the silhouettes of the two men was bright and powerful. John was unable to distinguish the nature of it, whether Savior or artificial. But, he thought, it made little difference what the source of it was, as his destiny was being effectuated without any consideration of his own desires.

  As they neared the exit point, John recognized the Savior as the source of the intensity. The brightness was growing exponentially with each step, along with the sudden rising temperature.

  Greeted with the blindingly reflective sand of the desert valleys as they departed from the tunnel, the three men descended the winding, concrete stairway that led to the bustling training grounds below.

  Gunfire was exploding rampantly throughout the region in never ending volleys, intermittently overshadowed by the booming sounds of explosive ordinance. The training center was much larger than it had first appeared to John from the windows of the control room. Fenced around its perimeter with a barbed wire structure, its numerous stations interconnected through a maze-like network of trenches that were filled with soldiers performing various drills.

  As they walked off the last step and entered into the crowds of uniformed men and women that marched along in strict fashion, John noticed that he was the only person in a black uniform, the only soldier unattached to a larger unit. His escorts seldom checked his presence. He figured that they knew he had nowhere to run.

  Through the ceilingless corridors they walked, continuing past several firing ranges and hand-to-hand combat sessions. Platoons of soldiers passed them by, singing cadence and moving through the masses as a single, organic unit. Still the only soldier dressed in his peculiar fatigues, John was beginning to wonder all the more as to what the purpose of his particular training would be.

  Rounding a sharp corner, they walked under an overhead sign sporting a symbol of a broomstick with its bound sweeping-fibers dripping with blood. The words etched across the bottom read: Under the Rug.

  The trench terminated at a heavily guarded gate at which the three men came to a halt. One of his escorts walked over to the scanner on the wall. Peering into it, the screeching buzz of the locks released.

  Flakes of rust borne metal fell from its bars as the gate began to swing open. Two soldiers, dressed in the similar black uniform as John, only striped like a tiger with streaks of red, stepped through the threshold.

  “We’ll take him from here, fellas.” one of them said.

  As his former escorts turned to leave, John stood in silence before his two newly assigned captors. Standing side by side, John caught a glimpse of their names embroidered above the left breast pockets of their shirts. The one standing to his left was Michaels. The one to his right was Crawford.

  Crawford was a middle-aged soldier with a short military cut and narrow shoulders. His eyes were heavily bagged and sinister-looking under the natural downturn of his thick brows. His nose was abnormally hooked, and seemed a perfect fit for his hunched back. He lacked the stiffness more commonly characteristic of a trained individual. His partner, Michaels, on the other hand, was nearly the same build. Similar in demeanor, as if the two men were borne from the same mold, but Michaels was probably half the age of his superior.

  “You’re just in time for the fun,” Michaels said with a laugh.

  Taking John by the arm, he jerked him forward, leading him through the gateway.

  “We’ve got a lot of toys for you to play with today,” Crawford replied.

  As they walked through the threshold and into the first courtyard, the gate began to close behind them. Crawford spun John around by the shoulders making him watch as the only door to the outside world closed him in.

  After initiating its automated locks, he whispered into John’s ear, “You won’t be seeing the outside of that gate for a long, long time.”

  Forced to turn around once again, John was pointed directly at a stairwell that descended underground at the other end of the quadrangle. It looked to be their objective for the moment. With a shove at his back, the soldiers hurried him ahead, pressing him along the concrete path that terminated at its entrance. Seemingly under the pressure of a time constraint of which John knew nothing about, they urged him with threats of harm to keep up with them, pulling him along by the sleeves of his shirt, kicking at his feet and tripping him to the ground, dragging him by the scruff of his collar.

  Into the stairwell they entered, descending into the bunker below, where the men began to pick up the pace. Flipping on the electronic lanterns that they had strapped to their belts, the walls around them became a living mural of shadows that created a disorienting effect upon the senses.

  Down a tunnel and into a dark room they went, with John struggling to maintain his balance. The laughter and howling of the two men in their jubilatory glee created a mood of pure dread. Lit up only at the end in which they had suddenly come to a standstill, the room was cold and dry. His tormentors walked around him, their lights shining in his face caused a deep burning to his eyes. As they gave him a reprieve from the brightness, John could see that there was a single, metal bench bolted to the floor in front of him. Empty and sterile, it was the only piece of furniture in the room as far as he could tell.

  As Crawford disappeared into the darkness, John could hear him performing an action that sounded like the flipping of switches. The sudden flickering of several lights overhead gave a brief, but indiscernible view of the room.

  The lights stabilized, growing brighter by the moment, until his surroundings were glowing white. John’s newly found visibility allowed him to see that he was standing at the head of an indoor shooting range. The smell of fresh paint that emanated from its shimmering, reflective walls gave the appearance of a recent construction.

  The far end of the room was, according to the distance markers set upon the floor, three hundred meters away. John could make out a single, steel door with a central locking mechanism situated on its perpendicular wall. Between him and the three hundred meter sign, standing erect in fifty-meter intervals, were several rectangular shooting targets with human silhouettes imprinted upon their faces.

  Returning back with a rifle in hand, Crawford shouldered the weapon, taking careful aim at John’s head as he approached him. Lifting his hands in the air, John coward back, causing the two men to burst into laughter.

  “This is your rifle, boy,” Crawford said. “Don’t be afraid of it.”

  A sudden blow to the gut from Michaels caused John to double over, falling to his knees. Removing a leather strap out of the cargo pocket of his pant leg, along with a metallic roll, Crawford leaned over his victim.

  “Don’t move,” he said with a laugh. “This isn’t going to hurt me at all.”

  Wrapping the strap around John’s neck and fixing its latch, securing it with a miniature padlock, Crawford proceeded to pull out a knife, ripping through the back
of John’s shirt and exposing his spine. Unraveling the metallic strip and tearing away the paper lining that was held to one of its sides, he then placed it on John’s back, pressing and molding it into the contours of each vertebra. The two wires dangling from the neck collar were connected to the strip and tucked away at the collar’s base.

  After completing the task, the men stepped away, allowing John the time he needed to catch his breath and stand back upon his feet.

  “Listen here, little dog,” Michaels said, as he bent over and whispered in John’s ear. “You aren’t going to do anything unless we tell you to. Got it?”

  Still reeling under the shock of the blow, John was about to answer him when a sudden pulse of electricity ripped through his body, dropping him back to the floor.

  “This is nothing compared to the pain that we will put you through if you do not listen to us,” Crawford screamed into his ear.

  “Thirty-six weeks, John,” Michaels laughed. “We’ve got you for thirty-six weeks. Every day is going to be a living hell for you.”

  The electrical activity had ceased. Being hoisted up to his feet gave him a flashback to the beatings that the Monster used to dish out. The cruelty of the men was too similar: they behaved in the same manner as the Monster. They cursed in the same manner. They yelled and screamed in the same manner. They even held to the same wicked expressions as the Monster.

  “Take the weapon and shoot the targets,” Crawford said as he set the rifle down upon the table. “We know that you already know how to do that.”

  “Do not charge that bolt until we’re clear, do you understand?” Michaels screamed.

  “Yes, sir,” John moaned in reply.

  The two men started towards the exit when Michaels turned back and said, “Remember, John, we’ll always be watching you. You can’t get away from us.”

  He could hear the door slam shut behind him, followed by the initiation of its lock. It was not long before the static from an overhead speaker began to crackle throughout the room, followed by Michaels’ voice, loud and clear.

  “Get up, now. Charge your weapon… and have fun shooting,” His laughter barely drowned out the hysterical burst from Crawford. “And, John, make sure you kill every target out there, or you’ll feel the pain.”

  Dragging himself to the table, John lifted the rifle from its sterile surface. It was the same type of weapon he had used for shooting practice back on Labor. Pulling back the charging handle, he chambered the first round of the magazine. Taking aim at the hundred-yard silhouette, its blackness contrasted heavily against the bright sterility of the room, John took in a deep breath. Squeezing the trigger, he fired off a single shot. As the bullet bore a hole through the target’s “chest”, John let the rifle’s sights drop, startled at the red, misty cloud that exploded out the back of the cardboard image.

  “Pretend that these are the men that killed Sofia, John. What would you like to do to them?” Crawford’s voice echoed. “Don’t stop shooting. Kill the targets, John.”

  Shouldering the weapon once again, he took aim at the fifty-yard silhouette and fired off another round. As the bullet impacted the targets “head”, an audibly hollow crack resounded throughout the room with the accompaniment of tissue and bone and a similar blood spray blowing out the back. He looked at the receiver of the rifle, dropping the magazine to inspect the cartridges inside. Seeing nothing askew, he replaced it, bringing the weapon back to his shoulder.

  “You should have seen Sofia drowning in her own blood that day, John. It was so, so terrible. I wish you could have been there.”

  John fired another shot towards one of the two hundred-yard targets followed by a similar result.

  “She cried so hard, ‘John, John. Help me.’”

  John fired off several more rounds with the resultant blood and tissue littering the floor of the range.

  “She blamed you for her ills, John. You know it was your fault. Remember when she pointed you out as the reason for her suffering?”

  He fired more rapidly, tearing into the “flesh” of the targets, gutting them thoroughly, until the rifle’s bolt locked open and the magazine was empty.

  “Now, have a walk to the wall on the other side,” Crawford demanded.

  John took a moment to lower the weapon’s sights from his eyes.

  “Go ahead, have a look at your kills,” Michaels arrantly goaded him.

  The walls and ceiling around the targets were splattered with crimson droplets and clotted tissue. The floor was a thick stew of bloody meat and bone. Dangling the rifle across the front of his thighs, John began the hazy, dream-like trek towards the carnage.

  Growing steadily closer, he could see that the gore was spread across the entire range. The fifty-yard silhouette was just within reach. The paper target itself was beginning to saturate around its “head”, dripping down its “body”.

  As he pulled up alongside the ranged milestone, he felt that near-blackness of the mind approaching as he took in the sight of the dead men and women strapped to the frames behind the targets. Bound hand-and-foot and taped across their mouths, their bullet-destroyed bodies leaked their life sustaining fluids upon the floor.

  “Keep walking to the back wall, murderer, then look back and revel at your great accomplishment,” the cruel voice of Michaels belched out.

  The rifle’s forearm slid from his hand, held up by the pistol grip of the other as John fell to his knees. In his disobedience, he brought the electrical bolt of insubordination branching through his brain and the nerves of his spinal cord, dropping him cold and motionless upon the floor.

  “Let’s try that again. Get up and walk,” Michaels’ voice boomed through the speaker.

  Pulling himself up by the metal bars of the target beside him, John stood upon his feet, his legs jittery and weak. Dragging the barrel of his rifle through the coagulating pools as he obeyed their command, he instinctively vomited on the front of his shirt. A tingle of electricity ran up his spine. They were toying with him. Ignoring the laughter dripping through the speakers, he kept moving. He had to, or else the pain would come again.

  His objective was the opposing wall, and that was where he set his eyes. In his periphery were the dead. He couldn’t escape them. He walked the path of death between his victims. Hollow and lifeless, John was no different than the empty corpses strung up around him.

  Upon reaching the wall, he stretched forth his hand, touching its speckled, cold surface. The effects of his blood-soaked shooting spree were behind him. Placing his sweat-beaded head upon it, the fumes of its fresh coat of paint helped to subdue the iron smell at his back.

  “Turn around, John,” Michaels demanded.

  Wiping his forehead across his outstretched arm, he refused to look back. The violence that he had caused was innocently initiated, he thought. He would never have committed such an atrocity had he not been tricked into it. But all the philosophical musings in the world could not alleviate the fact of the matter: they died by his hands.

  “Turn around, now!”

  “I can’t,” he whispered.

  The sudden jolt of a thousand needles burrowed into his brain as he once again fell, convulsing uncontrollably, to the floor.

  “No, you can… and you will,” Michaels screamed through the speakers.

  As the electricity abated, John scooped up his rifle by the sling and struggled to his feet. Turning to face his audience, the loud speakers began to fill the room with the music of the brass horns and stringed instruments, similar to that of which he and Sofia used to listen to back in their home on Labor. The torn and broken bodies of the dead stared back at him as if he were on trial.

  “Look upon this man, women of Basket Town and men of the mines,” Crawford laughed through the loudspeaker. “This is your god. Some of you were witnesses to his powers of life, now behold, death is in his hands.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The tenderness of Sofia’s chest made the sponge bath less inviting. She was sweaty
and uncomfortably coated with the usual thick layers of dust that had seeped through her clothes and onto her skin throughout the course of the day. After allowing the water to dribble down her body, picking up bits of debris on its way into the tin pan in which she stood, it was not long before she felt at least a little more refreshed.

  Her stomach was empty, but she was not in the mood for the consumption of anything. She awoke this morning with a burning nausea that had only grown more intense with each passing hour, but began to settle out by midday. A few crackers and a little water, that was the extent of Sofia’s intake since arriving home. After clothing herself in a freshly, Savior-dried skirt and top, she fell upon her cot, rubbing the aching muscles of her legs.

  The fieldwork seemed more fatiguing than it had been in the recent past. Sleep was continually on her mind during the entirety of the day. Instead of breaking for lunches, Sofia was spending her mealtimes in the shade of the fruit trees, napping away. She would fall asleep the moment her head touched the grassy ground. Oftentimes, the last thing she would remember seeing before being woken up by Maryanne, were the multitudes of thin streaks crossing the sky above.

  It had been three weeks since her last contact with John. Her female companion had not received any more news about his health, mentally or physically. After questioning Maryanne as to how she had obtained the information about him in the first place, Sofia was met with a curiously blank stare. For some reason she knew that Maryanne would eventually tell her about her source, and that more news of John would be incoming. But it was the anticipation regarding her love that was the most difficult aspect of living at all.