by Amy Field
“No, no,” he kept repeating through his tears.
He then turned to Kelvin, who was holding his wounded stub of an arm and attempting to crawl out of the room. Vanda shot another small vortex at him, swallowing up both his legs below the knee, the doctor hitting the floor at once. Again the doctor screamed out.
Vanda held on tight to O and began to feel an energy within him grow and develop until it started to consume him. All his pain and suffering overwhelmed him and surrounded him like the temporal field, merging with it and sending it into ever increasing spirals that threatened to tear everything apart. Every muscle in his body ached with the most wretched, melancholy pain. His love had been ripped from him; his very soul torn in half and scattered to the wind like ashes. He held her face in his hands and pressed his forehead up to her’s; his sobs convulsed and rippled through his body. He wept so hard then that he was unaware that the room around him had begun to disintegrate and flow around him like a tornado. He held on to O’s body as they were lifted up into the air, through the camp and up into the stratosphere.
Zilo watched from the ground with the others as the two floated off through the building, ripping a hole in the camp as they floated upwards and out into the open, towards the stars that glittered in the night’s sky. He had never seen anything like it; Vanda was controlling matter in the present, not just in his vision. He watched as the two disappeared upwards.
He turned to the others and signalled for them to leave the base; the government forces destroyed. They escaped out of there and blew the whole place to the heavens. Zilo watched the sky as they raced out of there in a stolen government transport, wondering if he would be able to see the lovers flying up into space.
As Vanda carried O’s body up to the edge of the stratosphere, he opened up an orb around them, trapping oxygen inside and creating a vessel that would contain them. Inside the glowing blue orb, he held her body, and they floated out of Earth’s atmosphere. Once they had reached space, he opened up a vortex that led to the other side of the universe, to the outer rim. They were pulled into the wormhole and traveled through a tunnel of colourful, speedily rotating stars. He held onto her limp body as they sped further and further into the unknown reaches of space.
They emerged on the other side, and Vanda looked around him. Everywhere it was velvet black, and a soothing silence surrounded them. He frantically searched the area around them but found nothing out there in the wilderness of velvet space. He bellowed into the dark abyss, crying out at it, imploring for something to show itself. But nothing did. He looked down at the limp body that he held in his hands, within the orb, and sobbed so loudly that he made a noise that no one would ever think a human was capable of making. It sounded like something was shredded within him, and he howled like a melancholic wolf would if he looked up at the sky and realised that the moon was no longer there.
Just as he had lost all hope, something began to rumble besides him. A beam of light struck out from a tear within space and Vanda had to shield his face from its blinding glory. It was here. Vanda immediately pushed the orb towards it.
When he reached it, he held O out to it; presenting it to the light. The light began to flash and change color. Vanda moved into it, the light burning his eyes as he did so, until he was within the very structure of the light, consumed by its pure incandescence.
The light began to expand around him, and O’s body started to float out of his arms, breaking through the orb. Everything went completely white forVanda then, but as he reached out into the white, but couldn’t find O. He screamed out in the wilderness, but heard nothing back. The light intensified to such a pitch that Vanda lost consciousness.
Vanda awoke on a bed. Lying next to him with her emerald eyes open and staring straight into his face was O. Vanda instantly took hold of her firmly in his arms, hoping that she wasn’t a mirage, and began to weep tears of the purest joy.
“I thought I’d lost you forever,” he wept.
“I didn’t know where I was,” she said timidly. “Everywhere was white and I was floating; lost. But a voice kept telling me in a strange, but somehow familiar language that I was okay and that I would soon be back with you. I think it was God.”
“Where are we now?” Vanda asked.
“I’m not sure; I only just awoke, at the very second that you did.”
They both got up. They were in a strange room decorated like the old European palaces of the Baroque period; large windows, repetitions of simple patterns carved into the plaster work, Louise XV furniture, chairs with spindly little legs like those of a terrier dog. Outside was a sprawling meadow of the most beautiful green, rolling hills bordered by forests of massively tall trees that seemed to be as big as skyscrapers. From outside, they heard the chatter of birds and the giggles of children come echoing into the room.
Suddenly, the young boy of Zilo appeared at the open doorway.
“You’re back!” he said, his words tinted with the utmost joy.
He ran towards them and jumped onto the bed, embracing the pair as he landed.
“Where are we?” O asked the boy.
“I’m not sure,” Zilo said. “But where ever it is, it’s heavenly. We haven’t got any technological equipment yet, so we’re a little lost as far as finding out our position. I certainly don’t recognise the place from anything I’ve ever seen before. But it scattered with theses beautiful little houses everywhere.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Vanda mused.
“Yes— we,” Zilo inferred. “After you had disappeared, a great beam of light struck Earth and removed everyone from the lower levels of Earth’s cities— we at first thought that the government had initiated the purge. But soon we realised that it was something more than that; something had brought us to here. It’s the most beautiful place, and it’s huge too. You should check out the architecture, and it’s already full of farming equipment and anything that we could ever need. It’s perfect for us.”
The three then left the house and walked outside amongst the beautiful new world that they had been cast into. Everywhere, people joyously walked with their children, huge smiles on their faces. All of a sudden, two children came bounding up to them and took ahold of O around her waist. It was the children from the family. O lifted the small boy up into her arms, the little girl holding onto the hand of Vanda, and they all walked through the picturesque beauty of their new world.
They looked towards the horizon and noticed the dual suns that burned in the sky. Something— God or otherwise— had saved them all. It had heard their cries in the darkness and removed them all from their inevitable nightmare. When Vanda and O had entered it, their love had merged with it, and it had taken on their struggles. Their love so impressed itself upon the light that it felt compelled to grant them and their kind salvation from the tyranny of evil men.
Call it what you want, but many came to call it the Rapture. Those that had spent their lives struggling under the despotism of the oppressive and vindictive government were removed, as well as those that suffered amongst the colonies. Everyone else was left behind to reap what they had sowed.
As time went on, Vanda and O started a family of their own and lived out a humble existence in the new colony. They had much to do, though, as the land needed leadership. They taught the new generations of the perils of the world that they had left behind, Earth, and of how its immorality had mutated it into something horrific. They taught them a set of morals that spoke of complete equality. No man would ever be allowed to be superior to another. Even though Vanda and O worked in the new government, they were treated just as all would if they toiled in the field or collected the refuse and in this spirit, they created a utopia built and made for all.
Sometimes at night, they would tell their children of the stories of their past. The children would look at them with disbelief at their tales of photon canons and sentry droids. Of course, they kept the worst of the details away from them; there was no point filling their heads with the ev
ils of this other time. In fact, as time went on, neither Vanda nor O could scarcely believe the world that they had once lived in, especially when they looked upon the joyful faces of their brood.
They would grow old together in this kingdom; their souls were inseparably fused together for all eternity; traveling through each new dimension as one symbiotic being; living the glory of this life over and over again, throughout all time, their love never waning; the light of their combined soul never going out.
Vanda didn’t need his visions any longer; he was living in one.
THE END