by Dana Faletti
10
JOSHUA PRIDE
Her eyes couldn’t decide if they were green or blue. Golden hair fell loose down her back in waves. I wanted to just take all of her in, her laugh, her smile, her deep dimples, her casual yet nervy flair. She was a Goddess in blue jeans, and I couldn’t stop staring at her.
The first time I watched her step off the bus onto school property, that was it. She was mine. It was like never knowing how hungry you are until you see a large cheese pizza sitting on the table in front of you. You’re all of a sudden starved. I was doing okay alone, but as soon as I saw Callie, I couldn’t stand to not be with her. I never knew it, but for almost an eternity, I’d been waiting for her. And now here she was, knowing but not knowing. Naive, but not totally innocent. Here we were, about to break rules that only applied to us. She had no idea…
“Whoa…” She’d said almost breathlessly after we’d kissed for the first time. Whoa was right. There was no denying the fact that our bodies and souls were screaming for each other.
I had to tell her the truth, to get it all out in the open.
And I would…after I kissed her for a couple more minutes.
The truth was I was a little worried. I mean, she could totally freak out once she found out. I was pretty sure she knew the rules, and I wasn’t sure she was as much of a rebel as I was. Where I was fairly seasoned at this, she was just a newbie. Centuries of eternal youth can take its toll on a person. Sure, I was cocky. And I was feeling a little rebellious too. I was tired of the whole one man show deal. It had been fine before I’d actually met another someone like me. It wasn’t fine any more. I’d found my match, and I couldn’t be alone any longer. As far as I was concerned, Callie was a total deal breaker, and it was time for a few changes in the rulebook. Progress was about to be made.
Most great heroes had sidekicks, and I was over mine being miniature and flappy. I needed a partner who was special. Specific actually. Someone with greenish eyes, golden hair and sweet dimples. Someone who could slay demons by night and flirt with me in English class the next day. Someone who was an Arc, like me.
Now, I’d been doing this a long time. Centuries really. I was one of the longest running Arcs out there, from what I’d heard. Of course I’d never met another Arc until Callie – not for lack of trying, but I picked up a lot of scoop from the chatty Micros who were always on my back. There were a couple of others in the Middle East who’d lasted as long as me, but no one in the states.
Not to be immodest, but I’d pretty much kicked it at my job. There wasn’t a Rayser out there who could survive me. And there definitely wasn’t a demon who could touch me. I think I’d actually been wounded twice in my career. Twice in over two hundred years. I was that good.
I’d prevented tons of teen suicides, school shootings, mall shootings, drug deals, self mutilations. Blah blah blah. I knew Callie got totally emotionally caught up in every soul she saved. I’d watched her in action. I was like that at the beginning too. I’d grown a bit of a thick skin over the years. I’d seen Callie comforting victims, encouraging them with a loving embrace. Touching.
I was more likely to cuss a kid out for being so damn stupid. After I saved his soul, of course.
So, after all the work I’ve done, all of the success I’ve had, you’d think I’d be given a little leeway. I mean all I’d asked for was a friend, somebody to talk to, to be real with. Over the years I’d grown close to some humans, only to have to leave them or to have them leave me, or worse, forget me. Rationally, I got it – cloaking erased any memory of me from their minds. I could be best friends with a kid for four years of high school – hang out with him every day, shoot hoops, mac on chicks together – all of it, and then poof, one day I knock on his door, and when he opens it, he sees a total stranger. All of them – the teacher, the classmates, the parents. They all see a total stranger in my face.
Sometimes, it really sucked. There were bouts of high school I had really enjoyed, friends I’d grown close to. Lives I wanted to keep living, instead of starting over again and again. But I understood that this was my mission, my purpose. So, I moved around sometimes, trying to mix it up for myself, but at this point I’ve been everywhere from Alaska to Maine.
I’d started my career in Virginia. Jamestown. Seventeen hundreds. Birth of the U. S. of A. I could close my eyes and see the scene of my discovery as if it had happened a minute ago. I could still smell the smoke, hear the gunfire, see the stars in the too dark sky. I used to believe heaven was behind those stars. It only took me about twenty years to start remembering the truth.
“What’s the matter young Joshua?”
“Father, the pain in my head is blinding.”
“Perhaps you should go home and rest for the afternoon.”
I barely made it the half mile back to our cottage, and when I arrived, I was alone… Or so I thought.
I fell onto a mattress in the room I shared with four other brothers. I closed my eyes.
Thunder was pounding in my head. Lightning flashed behind my eyelids, intensifying the pain with streams of color. Music started to play out of nowhere. Suddenly the pain was gone, and I opened my eyes.
“Hello Joshua.”
I followed the voice to a small winged man wearing jeans, a wife beater and black sunglasses sitting on the edge of my mattress and… speaking to me. Well, that was just too much. I went running out of the house at top speed, the pain in my head replaced with fear. Was I going crazy? Were the headaches just a precursor to total insanity? The public did not take well to mental illness during the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. I imagined myself, naked except for a loincloth, spittle running down one side of my lip, in a dark, cold dungeon like room with no windows. I was doomed.
Obviously Jixer caught up with me. He actually hounded me day in and day out for two weeks before I even paid him any attention, even eye contact. I figured if I ignored the craziness, it would go away. Every day or so, the headaches would come on, and I’d push them off of me like a weighted blanket. It wasn’t easy trying to concentrate between the pain in my head and the incessant jabber in my ears. I mean, besides the story he was trying to sell me, Jixer didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. His fashion preferences didn’t come into style until the nineteen fifties or so. He had the rebel without a cause vibe going on, but it was lost on me. I just thought he looked sloppy and strange all the time. I mean, of course he looked strange – he was a rock and roll fairy flying around my mainly Puritan, early America head, claiming to be an angel come to teach me my purpose in life… Beyond that – his dress just was not appropriate for the day and age.
I’ve often thought they need to fix little problems like that. Not that it would make a difference in the long run anyways, but Micros should appear like angels at first – not all jazzed up in their own styles. It would be much less confusing for the unknowing Arcs.
All Micros had their own style, and that style could pop right out from any decade, past or future. It could seem old fashioned, sci fi or even Lady Gaga Esque in the human present, but their tastes were beyond the boundaries of eras, so it didn’t much matter. Look at Silas, for God’s sake. Elton John meets Barbara Walters... but it worked for him… mostly.
Anyways, Jixer followed me everywhere – to my apprenticeship at the Blacksmith, to plow and work in the afternoons with my father, to stickball games we’d pick up in our free time. He just wouldn’t give up. And, I was stubborn. I completely ignored the guy – didn’t even swat him away when he flapped his little wings in front of my face. He was a part of me I would not give credence to.
Until one day when my little sister Nora plowed through the door of our barn, wailing like a banshee, tears streaking her sweet face. She threw herself at me, and I noticed her clothing was torn and dirty in places.
“They are still following me, Joshua! Help me.” She sobbed, burying her head in my shoulder.
“Nora, what do you mean? Who is following you?”
“A
group of men, Joshua.” Her voice cracked. “They grabbed at me and threw me on the ground.” She sniffled. “They tried to take advantage of me.” More wailing.
I remember thinking I would find them and kill them, shoot them dead for hurting my baby sister. Grabbing our father’s shotgun, I left Nora in the barn.
The smell hit me in the face before I saw them. Three boys, not much older than me. They had obviously gotten their hands on some moonshine and were stumbling down the path, laughing and causing a raucous. They weren’t from our village, and I wondered what had led them to our little town.
“Joshua,” This time Jixer landed on my shoulder. Up until this point, I’d never let him touch me. I reacted for the first time, sidling away and swatting at him. Trying to regain my composure, I refocused on the gang of hellions and gripped at my shotgun.
At that moment, I realized the smell was not coming from the boys. Behind them slunk three creatures the likes of which my sixteen year old eyes had never beheld. They smelled like rotting eggs and looked like piles of manure with eyeballs and stumpy limbs, and they were making their own kind of raucous – whispering words that strung together, almost sounding like words on top of words to me. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, just that their whispers were ugly and… well, loud. My head was pounding…again.
“Close your mouth, Joshua before you catch flies in it.” I glanced at Jixer who was leaning on a tree with his arms crossed, seeming to survey the situation. I was rubbing my forehead, probably trying to massage the hallucinations away, when I had an overwhelming urge to pummel those walking sacks of crap.
So, I cocked my father’s shotgun and aimed. One, splat. Two, pow. Three. The end.
There was goo all over the path. The creatures had seemed to just explode as soon as the bullets touched them. The smell was still strong, but at least their incessant whispering was gone... Their unknowing sidekicks had scattered and were peering out at me from behind a shrub and a couple of trees. My headache had disappeared with the whispers, and without the pain, the reality of the situation dawned on me. I’d just shot dead three imaginary clumps of crap…. with gusto. I cleared my throat.
“Get out of here, you three. And don’t let me catch you near my sister again.”
“Good cover, Joshy.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at Jixer, still leaning on his tree. I remember thinking how surreal it all was, thinking I must still be at home in the bed, maybe feverish, hallucinating, dreaming perhaps. There was no way I was going to accept this angel/fairy nonsense, right?
Yeah, wrong. Of course as time went on, I accepted it whole heartedly. I watched my parents and siblings age from afar, knowing I was all but forgotten to them. By the time I was eighteen, they were totally cloaked into believing they’d had four boys instead of five. They had no memory of their Joshua. Obviously, my family had been my hardest loss, the deepest cut.
But, I’d healed, and after learning who and what I really was, I put my whole heart and soul into stopping the Raysers. For a long time after losing my family, I didn’t get too close to anyone, became a sort of loner. But right around the early 1900’s things started to get too cool to hang back from. There were all sorts of people popping up from all over the place, and I kind of dug getting to know them, learning their languages, tasting their foods. So, I rejoined society in a way, started attending schools and churches, making friends, even though I knew that ultimately I was alone.
Except for Jixer. He was always lurking around in my lives.
I changed my styles with the decades, cut my hair, grew my hair, dyed my hair – yeah only once. I’d fought during the Civil War – against both demons and Yanks. I’d seen Patsy Cline sing at the Grand Ole Opry and Aerosmith perform live at the New Year’s Eve Times Square Countdown. I was at Woodstock – lots of demons there, and also some people that could be mistaken for Darks. Crazy time - the sixties.
I cried on September eleventh when I watched armies of Darks flying victoriously alongside planes that flew into buildings, killing thousands of men, women and children. I’d seen and done a lot over two centuries. But, I never ever changed. Besides the obvious hair and clothing switch ups, I was still the same sixteen year old guy from Jamestown, Virginia. Over time, my memory evolved enough to surpass the level of cloaking that was originally used on me, and I remembered everything from before. It changed everything... knowing what, where and how was beyond the here and now, but it also changed nothing.
I was still sixteen on the outside. I still had a world full of Darks to contend with. I was really crazy skilled at my job. But, I was lonely. I really yearned for somebody to be totally honest with, to really share myself with, the real whole of me. And, it was forbidden. I mean, if I dared to share my truths with a human friend, they’d be cloaked anyways, but I’d surely get an earful from Jixer as well. (Not that I couldn’t completely zone somewhere far and away from his voice, but still…) And, as far as other Arcs, the rules were no contact, no sharing, no distraction. A handful of other angels called Clears kept track of Arc placement, ensuring that no two Arcs would meet.
Trouble was, I’d gone rogue about twenty years back. The Clears didn’t even bother sending me stations any longer, because they knew I didn’t follow orders. I went where I wanted, followed my instincts and killed a damn lot of Darks. I got away with it because of that. I was too good to reprimand, and so they tolerated me. Sure, Jixer still kept track of me, hung about, probably reported back to his Micro in charge or whatever, but he didn’t really advise me anymore. I was my own boss. King of Castle Pride – that was me…
See, that would be so awesome if the castle wasn’t so big and empty. King Midas would have understood my loneliness. At least he had a bunch of golden statues though. I’d rather have those than Jixer on his mini motorcycle – which he sometimes appeared on.
So, a few months ago, Jixer was sharing my space, which was totally irritating me. I had leased a studio in Manhattan where there is always a ton of Dark action going on not to mention some strong Rayser territory. Sometimes, I just lived in hotels, sometimes I stayed in houses. This studio was in Greenwich Village – screaming with Raysers and troubled teens on the streets, and it had a wall to wall flat screen. Divinity does not equal humility all the time, and I really dug watching games on this T.V.
One night, Jixer was chatting it up with this hot little Italian number. They were smoking their little cigarettes and Jixer was sharing his tiny pewter flask with her. I was sitting on the couch, minding my own business, watching a basketball game. When they started sharing stories about their Arcs, my ears peeled, and I eavesdropped my way to finding out about Calliope Evans.
Twenty four hours later, I stood, hidden behind weeping willow branches, across from Mackle High. When I saw her face, I knew she was the one. She was the Arc Jules had been talking about, the one who didn’t know it yet but would soon find out.
And so, I watched her. I followed her. I stalked her. And, when I’d introduced myself to her in English class her smile had sung to me. Making her laugh was a prize I’d always work to win.
I’d followed her, even on the day of her discovery. I was mostly just curious as to how she would take it, so I played the peeping tom act and peeked through the living room window only to see her lying on the floor, looking right up at me.
I kept watching. She was unbelievable in battle. This girl killed Raysers by breaking their necks with her bare hands… Yeah, I’d done it, but I preferred weapons. This girl was hard core, and yet she was so gentle looking, so feminine.
And, so now here we were on the roof of the high school, our lips burning into each other, the secret I knew I had to tell her burning a hole in my conscience. I wanted to show her the drawings I’d done of her. There was one of her cradling that girl’s head in her hands – the bulimic she’d saved. Callie had wings in this sketch. There was another one of her standing in the bus line with me in the background behind the willow, watching her. We
both had wings in this one.
I searched my bag for the folder of pictures. Must have left it in the car.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her.
But, when I got back up to the roof, she was gone. Most guys at this point would figure the girl ran off. She got scared or decided she wasn’t interested.
I knew Callie was neither of those things. She’d been summoned. And, although I felt like my desire to be close to her was the most important thing in the world, I knew there were people and circumstances out there that put me to shame. We were fighting the battle of the ages, and she was a soldier like me. I’d catch up with her tomorrow, and we’d start all over again.
What else did we have but time?
11
“I can’t believe you busted up my date, Silas.” Joshua was gonna think I totally bailed. I was sick to my stomach just imagining what was going through his head.
“Looks like he’s a cheapskate to me, leetle girlie.”
“Stop calling me that, Jules, and he isn’t a cheapskate.” I rolled my eyes at her.
“Deed he pack peanut butter and jelly for your peek neek?” She tossed her red hair to the side, laughing.
I sighed, looking her up and down. Who in their right mind would argue with a woman in a red leather bustier and matching spiked heels? Her jeans looked like they’d been painted on, and her wings… denim patches bedazzled with star shaped studs… God in heaven, you need a dress code, Dude. I settled for just shaking my head and raising my eyebrows at her. Let her laugh all the way to the catwalk. Then, we’d see who was speechless with shame.
“This better be a soul worth saving. Talk about timing…”
I shook my head as we headed into a dark inner city area. There were abandoned buildings with broken windows and half open doors, bottles and papers littering up the street. And, it stunk. “Lovely part of town.” I pulled out my cell phone, hoping to think of some excuse I could text to Joshua that would explain away my disappearing act.