by Kyle Dane
Fearing what will come out of my mouth next, I force myself to stop.
“Uhh,” I let out a stress-filled sigh from this decision no one should have to make. It's like trying to open my eyes and swim under murky water. I can’t see my path.
Hayvin walks away without a word, obviously wounded by my war-driven tongue. As she leaves, the backyard clouds finally lose their grip on the massive water weight, and down to the ground falls a heavy rain. The turkeys keep pecking.
Guilt now hits my heart. Hard. Like a bullet fired by an invisible moral police force alerting me to the cruel, oxymoron crime of spewing hateful fumes at a person I love. Even though I've never said the words out loud, I do love her.
My eyes close, head cocks down, and my thumb and index finger pinch the crest of nose as if I was rubbing away a headache.
After a couple minutes, Hayvin surprises me when she returns to my presence. Her eyes are red and puffy. The surrounding skin is wet from smeared tears.
“Read this,” she instructs, then vanishes back to her room and gently closes the door without the SLAM I expected.
I glance at the object in my hand. A book. No, it's a diary contained inside a transparent plastic case. “Memories” reads the pink embroidery on the journal’s black cover. Why? Why would she want me to read her personal journal? What does this have to do with anything?!
Instantly, I'm constricted by a fierce case of claustrophobic anger that can’t be contained within the kitchen walls. I’m compelled outside to run, purposelessly sprinting through the wet air of the wide-open backyard. The turkeys flee before me in flight for their lives, although I have zero interest in them.
∆∆∆
I reach the green woods. Undeterred by nature’s no-running zone, I continue the blind race past trees, ducking under low hanging moss and branches, and jumping over obstacles like a wild, rain-soaked deer. Wind sails past my skin and hair, blowing away pieces of stress but it’s not enough. Need to lift weights. But no...I don't even think that would help. I think I'm experiencing something beyond a simple anger episode. This is a panic attack.
As freakishly as the rain began, it stops, and light shoots down through dispersing clouds. Up ahead I see a small clearing. Meadow grass is now stomped underneath my angry feet. I stop moving and breathe. What’s that in my hands? Oh yeah...Hayvin’s diary. I sit Indian style on the grass, resting from the deer-sprint. The diary looks up at me, absolutely unwilling to share its secrets from a cover glance. If I’m to know, I must read.
Don’t, Ruko. Don’t burden yourself with childish games and drama. Don’t read this. Don’t. You even listening to me?!
My breathing gets heavier, packing on the pounds of energized trauma as if I were still running. Why am I so scared of a book? My jaw clenches and body tenses in what I suppose is a final attempt to resist reading, but I command myself to do it anyway, defying the nay-saying hater voice in my head like I’ve done fairly well the past couple months.
I remove the protective casing and open the cover. A piece of tissue paper acting as a divider tab automatically takes me to the middle of the book, evidently where Hayvin wants me to start. The journal entry is dated about six years ago. The feelings of a younger Hayvin—written with blue ink—now begin to speak...
“I can’t take it any longer. Need to write down what happened that night…how it’s affected me. I’ve been running from the first Red-out ever since it happened, pretending it never did. I need to face it. If anyone out there reads this, please know you’re not alone.
When the Lashers first appeared, I was at the movies with my best friend Jenness. I remember we were so excited to watch it cuz Kai Stone was the lead actor. As we drove to the theater, we play fought about who Kai would like most between the two of us. Who he'd think was prettiest, smartest, or funniest. We’d go back and forth, talking about features of our bodies we knew Kai would like. Jenness had beautiful, curly black hair. I used to call her “Hot Curls”. But she couldn’t compete with my exotic eyes that look like yellow flowers. We'd fantasize about how perfect our lives would be together as lovers. How romantic he’d be; sweet, understanding, gentle, kind, protective, sexy...but none of those dreams matter now.
The movie started at 9:45pm Saturday night. The line was long. I remember waiting outside in the dark beneath a normal white moon. Normal black sky. All of us clueless of what was about to happen. Seemed like everyone in town was there. Even saw my ex-boyfriend, Timber, and his new girlfriend Blaney. I dumped him a week before because he tried to get into my pants even after I told him no sex. That’s all he cared about. I was so glad to be out of that terrible relationship.”
My heated head cools a bit as I chuckle at the dead drama of freshman year. It was hell. Nothing compared to the hell of modern times, of course, but still, I'd never go back to the days of pubescent cruelty, days feeling so crazy low in a place ironically called high school.
“Jenness and I showed up an hour early so we'd be first to pick seats. Two rows from the front was our normal spot. Had to tilt our heads to see the screen, but we loved it. Twenty minutes into the movie, Jenness had to use the bathroom, because she drank way too much soda. I told her not to, like every time before, but she never listened to me. Why Jen? Why didn’t you just listen to me?!”
Hayvin now writes directly to her friend, Jenness, as if she was somehow reading the words from another place…
“You were always stubborn, but also the most beautiful person I ever knew. Kind. Loving. The closest thing to a sister I had. You were there for me when my parents divorced. Without you, I don’t think I could’ve gotten through it. I miss you, Hot Curls."
At this part of the diary I notice small spots where the paper is thinned out and wrinkled, as if the page had been exposed to splashes of water. I realize they must’ve been tears. Hayvin was crying when she wrote this part. A few letters are smudged but still legible. I read on…
“Jenness couldn’t hold it any longer and had to pee. I promised I'd fill her in on the movie parts she missed. She sprung out of her seat and flew up the isle to the bathroom. I remember laughing. I miss laughing. Several minutes passed when I realized Jen's seat was still empty, and I wondered what was taking her so long. Then I saw a light coming from inside my purse. I bent down and pulled out my lit-up phone that I would never turn off, theater or not. Waiting for me was a text from Jenness that said in all caps,
HotCurls: ‘GET OUT!!!’
Confused and concerned, I read her second text…the last text message I’d ever receive from my best friend,
HotCurls: ‘SOMETHING IS KILLING EVERYONE! GET OUT NOW!!!
Panic struck me as my trembling hand tried to keep hold of the phone without dropping it. Each word from the text message filled me with a horrifying thought. I remember looking around. Nothing seemed strange or wrong. Dozens of people sat peacefully in their seats watching the movie on the big screen, eating popcorn, sipping on soda, and enjoying their Saturday night. Everything seemed normal. Deep down I held the hope that Jenness was just messing with me…that her text was a stupid joke and that she was gunna jump out and scare me any second. I wished so badly that was true, but somehow I knew Jenness wasn’t joking. Whatever was happening outside the theater room was serious. Real.”
My heart begins to throb as my own experience replays on the silver screen of my memory, rolling in sync with identical plot points and similar character emotions that Hayvin's personal story tells. Like how I felt when I hoped Dad was just messing with me when he shouted, “Ruko! The Hive!” Now I can’t stop reading…
“Another minute passed. Still no Jenness. The people behind me got annoyed that I was looking back so much. I checked my phone again and again, hoping to get a third text. Nothing. I almost went to the bathroom to check on Jenness but then, all at once, deathly screams filled the theater room. Screams that were so loud they overpowered the movie volume. I shot out of my seat with others in the front rows and looked to where the screams w
ere coming from…the back of the room. The movie screen gave off just enough light to show a real-life scene of horror that is forever etched in my mind. Two monstrous figures were brutally attacking people while they sat in their seats. Men, women, children, the elderly…didn’t matter. The pleasant room that was just filled with peace and happiness suddenly became a four-walled trap of chaotic panic. Some people were scrambling to escape while others tried to fight back…but the attackers couldn’t be stopped. They were so outnumbered but just kept on killing...with their bare hands. They were not human. I knew Jenness was already dead and that I was next…there was nowhere to hide.
Through tears of hysteria I managed to see out of the corner of my eye the green glow that read, 'Emergency EXIT.' Followed by other people, I ran for the door, pushed it open, and burst outside to be greeted by red darkness. The exit took me to the backside of the building where there was nothing but open woods. I ran for what was probably a half hour before I was forced to stop because of the piercing ache at my side. I staggered and then fell onto my back, all the while crying uncontrollably while looking up at the sky from the ground floor. That was the first time I saw it…the red moon. The red sky. It peered down at me from above, adding to my confusion and emotional distress that could be compared to a cat 5 hurricane whipping inside me. I couldn’t believe what was happening or begin to understand it. I was in shock. I laid there in mental, physical and emotional overload. Complete loneliness closed in, which smothered my will to act. It didn’t matter that I was lying in a rough bed of rotted leaves, broken tree branches, and poison oak. Or that bugs were crawling on my arms, legs, and in my hair…I didn’t respond…couldn’t. Jenness was dead. It was the darkest time of my life.”
I stop reading. My heart is weighted down like a thousand sandbags crushing it. I look up. The sunlight bleeds through tree branches overhead, creating what I acknowledge to be a stunning view, but I can't enjoy it. Can't take in the beauty, because inside I feel revoltingly ugly. Dark. Guilty from all these years focusing so hard on myself, my own pain, and my own innocent suffering. I've been unable to see—truly see—the pain of others or realize the sobering truth that my life was not the only one ruined that day. So many others were horrifically affected just like me. People I could've helped. Comforted. Encouraged. I don't know...done something other than nothing. Kind deeds of service. Talking to someone. Offering a smile. How many opportunities have I passed up? Don't want to know the number.
“Ahh,” I groan as the guilt transcends into literal pain, like acid eating at my soul. Hayvin, my dear friend. Jenness, a girl I never even knew. I hurt for them both. I realize that the horror they've each known is no less than my own and equally deserving of attention. Sympathy. Charity. Justice even.
The dam in my eyes can no longer contain the lake of tears that’s been waiting to be released for the past half decade. I close Haven’s journal and sob. My forearms automatically mount themselves atop my knees, my head falls and hangs down between them, and the mild sob turns into an uncontrollable outpouring. I’m crying. My rigid fingers dig into the soft soil around me, like a tractor, and uproot the wild grass as my pride is uprooted by this sudden flash flood of tears. I completely stop fighting. And cry.
CHAPTER 16: REBIRTH
Before long, the watery exhibit of remorse is ended. Now, all I can feel is one thing: rage.
I open my dripping eyes. The tree in direct view becomes blurred out and replaced by a hallucinatory picture of V’lore. The Lashers. And also a cerebral image of V’lore’s base—how I imagine it to be—lurking secretively underground, just as the Stranger described. The base whose existence is the only thing standing between us and justice for all. Justice for Hayvin’s heartbreaking journal entry, my own pain, and the continuous suffering of an entire nation.
I rise off the ground in a feeling of rebirth and hustle back to the Kes farmhouse, knowing what I must do.
∆∆∆
Through the back double doors, I enter and head straight to Hayvin’s bedroom. Not here. I check each room of the house but find zero hint of Hayvin. There’s one more place she could be. I walk to the front yard and sure enough spot Hayvin slowly rocking on the porch swing. One bare foot is in her lap—cradled by her hands—and the other is planted on the cement floor pushing the swinging sofa back and forth.
Hayvin stares straight ahead at the massive pecan trees. Two squirrels put on an impressive acrobatic show, leaping and bounding across sky-scraper branches with no safety net. She watches nature’s complimentary trapeze act, but is also zoned out in cavernous contemplation; surely she’s thinking about her journal entry, and about me and the hurtful things I yelled at her.
Gently, I sit next to Hayvin. She lets me. But doesn’t give a side-glance. The squirrels keep entertaining.
“Thank you...for sharing that with me. I’m sorry, Hayvin.” I commence mission apologize. “Sorry for what I said...for what you've gone through. I'm truly so sorry. If you need time...space...I totally understand. The more I think about how...”
An unexpected hug snips my tongue. Hayvin's head is now buried in my chest, and just like that she’s forgiven me as quickly as she ever has when I’ve made a mess of things, this being the biggest mess. Who does that? She’s taught me so much about what it means to be human—a good human.
∆∆∆
After some silent porch swinging and mild cuddling, I re-commence the controversial conversation. “You’re right,” I admit.
“About what?” Hayvin asks.
“We need to do it...we need to stop V’lore.”
She looks uncertain. “I don’t know anymore…what if I was wrong…I don’t want to lose what we have, either.”
“No. You were right, Hayvin. If we don't use this new knowledge, if we don’t act, then it'll condemn us forever…the regret we’ll feel. Trust me, I know. I’ve lived a long time not doing what I should’ve…helping people. So we need to try. Thank you for helping me see that.”
Hayvin shows a brave smile that reflects her renewed willingness to put it all on the line, even our own lives. “So...we’re goin' to the Blue Hole?” She checks.
“Yes, but not the way the Stranger said. Not on the Red-out. We go before.” I add the revised detail.
Hayvin challenges, as I knew she would. “But he said it’s safer on Red-outs, that there’re fewer guards and no Lashers near the base...that it's the only window.”
“It's been seven years since the Stranger was there. What if he's wrong? Things could’ve changed. There could be guards and Lashers now. And it's just me and you with virtually zero protection. He didn’t think this through. He’s so desperate to end his own guilt that he’s overlooked basic logic, an oversight that would get us both killed before we ever accomplished our mission; we’d never get close to the Blue Hole. If V’lore truly is behind all this, if he’s as dangerous as the Stranger suggests, then he’s not going down easy. He'll have protection. Even on a Red-out. So if we’re gunna do this, we need to be prepared to fight who knows how many armed guards. We need our own armed force.”
“But how? I don’t know about you, but my contact list of warriors for recruiting is a bit bleak. Who do you know who has guns, a trained army that can fight, and…” A lighting strike of horror appears on Hayvin’s face. “…no, Ruko…you’re not really considering…”
“...the Tyros Clan, yes,” I finish for her.
“How can you even…” She gets feverish.
“Hey, they were the first thing that came to your mind too, without me saying anything. There’s a reason for that.” I point out.
Hayvin’s desperation stabs at fantasy alternatives. “What about Police? Can’t we talk to…”
“Hayvin, you know there’re no organized police forces anymore. None with numbers or even weapons that’d be any use to us. And that’s if we could convince enough people to help.” I remind.
“Yeah, but Ruko…the Tyros Clan…they’ll kill us. Won’t they?”
“I just have to convince one person…Sankeela Sano. The rest will follow him. And I know what to say to tempt his pride into helping us. Remember, I know how he thinks. I was one of them. Plus, if they did try anything, they wouldn’t hurt us…cuz you’re staying here.”
“No way!” she freaks.
“Hayvin, it’ll be more dangerous if you’re there. I need to talk to Sankeela alone. Trust me.”
Hayvin tussles with the idea but approves the plan in her own wordless way.
“I’ll be gone and back like I never left. Two days, maybe three, that’s all I need.”
Hayvin struggles more.
“Hey, look at me.” I grab her shoulders and stare into her eyes. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
“I believe you. Please…just be safe,” Hayvin begs.
“I will,” I assure. “And I’m not leaving just yet. I’ll wait till after the next Red-out, so it’s safer. That’s three days away.” I strategize more. “In fact, I’ll leave two days after the next Red-out so I don’t have to deal with drop zone drama. Don’t stress. It’ll all work out.”
I force a smile after uttering the optimistic words Abbud would be proud of. Funny. I can almost feel the other me trying to interject thoughts of doubt, apathy, or negativity, per the norm, but I hear nothing distinct or overwhelming. It’s as though the pessimistic voice is finally dead—vanquished for good. I truly am reborn.