The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

It was as if she hit pause again. She froze the scene just as Bruce was dropping to the floor from the spider’s poison.

  “You knew I brought him back?” I could hardly believe it. My self-imposed prison was all a lie. She knew and let me do it anyway. I felt betrayed and hurt.

  “It was necessary.” Mom still wouldn’t look at me. She just stared at the frozen memory in front of us.

  “Necessary?! Why didn’t you tell me you knew? You know I have to stay near him, or he’ll rot.” I still couldn’t believe that she truly understood the facts of the situation.

  That’s when she looked at me. Her eyes were filled with sadness and regret. “Just trust me, Chelsan. It was necessary.”

  “Mom. What is going on?” I couldn’t take this anymore, and I needed to know what was happening.

  THUMP!

  “MOM!” I cried out from the pain.

  And we were back in her garden in front of the trailer. The green smoke was layered in a thick fog blinding my view of the park. All I could see was my mother on the ground, choking. It was surreal standing next to a ghostly version of her and watching as her body on the ground was writhing in agony.

  “I’m dying,” she said.

  I looked around in panic. “No. I can save you!”

  THUMP!

  “I can’t take that noise anymore! Make it stop!” I screamed.

  “It’ll stop soon enough. It’s what’s keeping us linked together right now.”

  “MOM! I’ll go back to the park, I’ll save you! Let me go!” I was sobbing now. Keeping us linked in this strange way was stranding me under that damn tree. I could be half way back to the park by now.

  “Promise me something, Chelsan.” Mom looked at me as seriously as I’d ever seen her.

  “Anything, Mom, just let me go help you!”

  “Promise me you won’t bring me back.”

  I caught my breath. And that’s when I knew; she was really dying. “The thumping…” my voice broke from emotion.

  “It will end soon.” She tried to comfort me.

  I knew in that instant that the thumping was her heart beat. It was the only thing that would tie us together. No! I could barely keep it together.

  She just nodded and then smiled through tear-filled eyes. “I love you, Chelsan. Promise me.”

  I could only nod in response.

  “You must keep safe. Your Grandfather will be coming, and he will try to kill you. You were meant to die today. He won’t stop until we’re both dead.”

  THUMP!

  And I was back under the willow tree.

  I gasped for breath as I was slammed back into my body. The pain to my head was gone as soon as I returned. And I screamed for it to come back again. The alternative was far more excruciating. She was dead. My mother was truly dead. I could feel it with that last thump of life.

  Feeling returned to my body and I ran as fast as I could through the willow branches, across the field of flowers and straight into…

  …A nightmare of unimaginable proportions.

  The whole park looked as though it had been hit by a tornado. Trailers were smashed, overturned, destroyed beyond recognition. The green smoke was gone, dissipated by the time I got back to the park.

  But only my eyes could see the most terrifying picture of all. A sea of swirling black holes of everyone I ever knew and loved. My heart nearly stopped when I saw her just as I left her in the vision, my mother, lying dead amidst her demolished garden. A garden I had kept flourishing and alive for the last ten years. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t stand to see her like that.

  I raced past the twisted metal and corpses to reach her side.

  All I had to do was reach into her chest and bring her back. She’d be with me, forever. I couldn’t live without her. I didn’t want to. I needed her.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I have to,” I whispered in her ear.

  Every part of me was fighting the compulsion to break my promise and use my gift, but grief does terrible things to people and I couldn’t think clearly anymore. In less than an hour I lost everything. She was my everything. I could barely breath. I could barely function. And then I did it.

  Mom’s eyes fluttered open and she looked at me. There was nothing there, just emptiness.

  Her soul was gone.

  I had violated her soul.

  I immediately dropped my connection with her black hole and she fell to the ground once more. I quickly turned my head and puked all over the smashed petunias. I collapsed in a heap on top of her and something inside of me broke. I couldn’t stop crying. My eyes felt like they would swell shut from the amount of tears pouring out of them.

  Then I heard a noise that disturbed the agonizing silence. Sirens and the whizzing of hover-cars were coming my way. I peered up from Mom’s body to see what looked like a swarm of over-sized bees heading straight for the trailer park. It was the press and emergency crews. I looked down at the crushed flowers and plants of my mother’s garden and I knew she wouldn’t want anyone to see her pride and joy like this. I concentrated as hard as I could in my heartache and slowly began to repair every inch of Mom’s legacy. I made every flower bloom whether it was their season or not, every tomato was the richest red, yellow and orange, every peapod was bursting with marble–sized peas, every tulip, petunia and azalea were the most vibrant colors imaginable. By the time I was finished the garden was more gorgeous that it had ever been.

  The onslaught of hover-cars reached their crescendo as they came to a halt a hundred feet outside the park. In a matter of seconds, I was surrounded by reporters, paramedics, firemen and police. Cameras flashed, people’s voices melded into one loud shout, the buzz of hover-gurneys moving around from victim to victim. My head was going to explode from the assault on my senses. There were about two hundred camera crews all crowding around the most news worthy sight there.

  The lone survivor. Me. Fantastic.

  That’s when the voices started to separate from each other in an annoying attack.

  “Were you here when the tornado hit?”

  “Is this your trailer?”

  “Do you know the woman you’re standing over?”

  “Are you the only survivor?”

  Too much. Too much. I instinctively scooted in closer to Mom as if she could still protect me from all this. But I was truly alone.

  “She’s my mom,” I said and found that when I spoke every single person in the area quieted down to hear my response. “What tornado?” Mom didn’t show me any tornado. It was some kind of green smoke. Tornados don’t give off smoke.

  “Clear the way. Clear the way.” Two paramedics swooped in and before I could respond they had hovered Mom away in a gurney.

  “WAIT! That’s my mom!” I cried out. I stood up and tried to take on the crowd full force to get my mother back.

  “We’ll take good care of her,” one of the paramedics called over his shoulder and they were out of my view.

  The pack of reporters closed their ranks, making it impossible for me to cut through.

  “How sudden was the tornado?”

  “Did you hide somewhere?”

  I wanted them to all go home and leave me alone. “There wasn’t a tornado. Something else killed them. Some kind of green smoke.”

  And there was a roar of chatter almost like a rhythm.

  “What kind of green smoke?”

  “Are you suggesting that smoke caused this kind of damage to these trailers?”

  Their voices became a single chatter yet again and I couldn’t tell one reporter from the next.

  “I don’t know… I… my mom…” My head was starting to spin. Go away! Can I see my mom? Leave me alone! All the things that I wanted to say, but found that my tongue was locked in place from being overwhelmed.

  “Were you close?”

  Did he really just ask me that?

  “THAT WILL BE ENOUGH!” a voice came roaring from behind the press.

  All eyes, including the firemen, policemen and
paramedics turned to the largest man I had ever seen. I recognized him right away, the Mayor of Los Angeles, Norman Bradfield. Everything about Mayor Bradfield was round: tummy, face (including the three chins he was sporting) arms, legs, fingers, toes, everything! He had a kind and warm face on the holo-tv. He always reminded me of Mel and that made him great in my book, but in person he had a slyness to his gait. He was a shark, I could tell right away.

  Everyone moved aside as he walked toward me. All the reporters made room for his eminence. It was like they all sensed a photo opportunity within their grasp and they drooled in anticipation.

  “Leave this poor girl alone,” his voice boomed. At least, this, I agreed with. “She just lost her mother!”

  Okay. True, but the way he said it made my skin crawl. He had absolutely no real emotion behind his words. He said them for affect only, no true sympathy or care about me and how I might feel. I had seen Jill pull the same kind of manipulative tactics all the time on teachers and other students; a fakeness I had developed a kind of radar for over the last few years. And this guy made Jill look like an amateur.

  To prove my point, the Mayor actually leaned in close to me and gave the cameras the cheesiest, most over-the-top look of concern he could possibly manipulate his tubby face to make. I wanted to vomit again, this time on his perfectly shined shoes.

  “Now, now. From the looks of it, this girl was the only one who survived this terrible tragedy.” Mayor Bradfield’s voice was so loud it carried all the way to the furthest reporter.

  “She says it was green smoke.”

  “She said there was no tornado.”

  I watched the Mayor’s face very carefully to see what his reaction would be, and I wasn’t disappointed. There was a brief second of what could only be described as panic. I knew something was going on here, and my mom died before she could tell me everything. She was so focused on letting me know all her secrets (and my own) that she didn’t even think I’d want to know how she died in the first place. It was vital that I found out. What if this was a new kind of bio-terrorism, or some kind of natural disaster created by Mother Nature to control the population? What I did know for sure was that it wasn’t a tornado. I was less than half a mile away. I would have felt it, heard it, seen it, something!

  “This girl is obviously confused.” Mayor Bradfield recovered with a smile that stretched so far across his face I didn’t think he could speak. I was wrong. He must practice. “Were you knocked out in the tornado?” He placed his hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me, but he was squeezing quite a bit of pressure on me to the point of… ow!

  I removed his hand with an exerted shove, which caused a slight gasp from the swarm of press. “I was just over that hill and there WASN’T A TORNADO!”

  I could barely hear anything from the uproar I just caused. The Mayor put his hand back on my shoulder with so much force I was paralyzed where I stood.

  “You see! She wasn’t even here! How would she have seen…” He leaned down to me so only I could see his face. His eyes were raging at me. “What did you say you saw?”

  With every chubby finger clamped down on my shoulder in a vise of warning, I spoke quietly. “Green smoke.”

  Mayor Bradfield turned to the press with his glorious fake grin on his blobish face. “Aaah, yes, green smoke. She was probably seeing the tail end of that tornado!”

  I cringed and I could tell from the reporters’ reaction that they ate up every word he said. It was so frustrating not having proof. But who was going to believe a trailer girl over the Mayor of Los Angeles? That’s when I had a flash of petty brilliance.

  I concentrated as intently as I could, though it was difficult with the Mayor’s hand now a permanent clamp on my shoulder.

  It was enough. I had been doing this one the longest….

  …Bruce walked out of the tangled metal that used to be our trailer.

  It was like a lion’s roar when the press saw him. This was more excitement than anything so far. Here in front of them was a true witness to what really happened. And lucky for me, I controlled every word that came out of his mouth. I was tempted to bring a few others back too, but that would be too much to take on. Bruce would do just fine.

  In all the upheaval Mayor Bradfield’s grip loosened and I tugged away from him to run into Bruce’s open arms. “Daddy! You’re alive!” I made sure my voice carried out to the cameras and press.

  It was complete and utter chaos. Camera flashes, screaming voices, and the Mayor like an island in a sea of madness, staring daggers at me.

  “Sir, sir, was it a tornado?”

  “Did you see anything?”

  Bruce stepped forward with his arm wrapped around me. Everyone was silently anticipating what he would say. “I didn’t see a tornado. All I saw was green smoke.”

  Take that Mr. Mayor.

  Between the Mayor and I, we were making the Media’s day. They acted like they hadn’t seen this much excitement in years. And the more I thought about it, the more I remembered a lot of natural disasters like these, but they always seemed so straightforward to me, now it made me wonder.

  Mayor Bradfield used the bulk of his body to maneuver himself in the spotlight once more. He pulled out a holo-tape. My heart leapt with anticipation. Holo-tapes were small devices that projected holographic images from a satellite. We’d be able to see exactly what happened, like a security camera from space. “Let’s see the truth for ourselves, shall we?”

  He activated the device and a holographic image of the trailer park appeared in front of the watching audience. It was just like before I left it to read under the tree. My eyes welled up with tears when I saw my mother in her garden, not a care in the world, not realizing she was about to die. And then…

  A tornado. An actual tornado touched down in the center of the park. It ripped through the trailers like they were made of paper, smashing them to obliteration. Bodies were flown around and torn apart in a terrifying spectacle of torture and destruction. Just as suddenly the tornado dissipated into nothingness, gone as quickly as it came. The holo-tape ended with an image of me running to my mother’s side in the garden and soon after the cavalry arriving. There was no green smoke. There was nothing of what my mother let me see.

  And then I noticed something…

  The garden in the holo-tape was still ruined and destroyed. I looked behind me at the vibrant, gorgeous garden I had fixed for my mother and then again at the satellite feed. They didn’t match.

  This was much bigger than a simple tornado. I decided in that moment to shut my mouth. If the Mayor could manipulate a holo-tape then there were bigger players at work here. This had conspiracy written all over it and I intended to figure out what was going on.

  “I must have just missed seeing it touch down,” I said and then I made Bruce wobble a bit as if he had hit his head a little too hard.

  Mayor Bradfield turned to me again so the press couldn’t see. “Right decision.” Then he whirled around, open arms, open face and with, crinkled-in-concern-eyebrows, motioned to two paramedics. “Help these two out, would you? They’ve been through quite an ordeal.” After posing for one more picture with us, the Mayor started toward the middle of the park. “Come. Let’s see the horrendous damage this tragedy has caused.”

  And the swarm was off, following the Mayor like ants chasing after food.

  The paramedics gave us a once over and moved on to their hover-gurneys, lugging the bodies to their vehicles.

  That’s when I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around and came face to face with…

  …Jason Keroff.

  Gulp.

  He was even more gorgeous in person, but standing in my mother’s garden with zombie Bruce sitting amongst the flowers I didn’t feel anything for my childhood crush. Jason leaned in to me and whispered in my ear. “You’re in danger. Take this.”

  I felt something slip into my hand, it felt like a square piece of metal. “That’s my contact info. Call me. Landline only
. No cell.”

  And he was gone. Off to join the rest of the journalists.

  After all these years of being infatuated with this man, seeing him only reminded me how much of a fantasy it really was. My mom was real and the most important person in my life and now she was gone forever. It made meeting Jason hollow and uneventful. I wanted to cry, but I knew that it would immediately become a photo op for the media so I held it in and waited for them to leave.

  I didn’t have to wait long. With a bigger than life wave to the cameras, Mayor Bradfield entered his hover-limo and whizzed away to wherever Mayors go. The paramedics loaded the last corpse in their hover-trucks and with barely a minute passing, press, paramedics, police and firemen were gone, like they never came. I was completely alone with a drooling Bruce. I rolled my eyes and decided to do a little investigating of my own.