The Pale Rider

by J B Trepagnier

  Fuck, had he been playing me this entire time? Was the real reason he didn’t want to tell me anything was because I had figured something out and had tried to get away from him? Did Aeron put me in that fucking coma, and the only reason he came back was that the place had been overrun with Rage Heads?

  Shit, he was right next door, and he was coming back. If he was really dangerous, and I ran, he might hurt Miss Mabel. Where could I go, anyway? Aeron had connections all over California, and I was pretty sure everyone I knew except Miss Mabel was dead. I could go to Jade, but Aeron would get there first since he had Meremoth. She also knew him better than she knew me and had more reason to trust him.

  “I don’t think we can trust Aeron,” I whispered.

  “What makes you say that?”

  I pointed to the Pale Horse I’d painted surrounded by death.

  “Because I’ve ridden on that horse. It belongs to Aeron, and he’s already admitted it’s not a normal horse.”

  Miss Mabel pat my hand.

  “I know you’ve had shitty luck with men, my dear, but you didn’t see him the day you went missing. He was distraught and blaming himself. He couldn’t fake that.”

  “What if I drew something and saw he was dangerous? What if he staged the entire thing because he found out I would run?”

  “He’s here. You’re here. You’ve got a broom I can beat him with, and you’ve been clutching Smurfette like you think someone will steal her from you. Just question him. Or, grab a sketch pad and see if anything comes to you.”

  “What did you send him for?”

  Miss Mabel just grinned at me.

  “You looked like you needed to relax. Most of the booze now is hard to find and homemade. It tastes like something you’d use to run your car with. The marijuana growers got things up and running as soon as they got the power grid back up.”

  “Aw, and you will share your pot stash with us? What’s the occasion? You made me bring my own when we smoked up together before.”

  Miss Mabel pinched my arm.

  “Don’t say I did nothing nice to you. Maybe if we get Aeron high, he’ll get that stick out of his ass.”

  Have I mentioned how much I love this woman?

  Chapter 27

  A

  eron came back with a vintage cigar box and a confused look on his face. Miss Mabel and I were huddled together on my sofa, trying to figure that motherfucker out. She thought I should trust him and go with him to Mexico, but I had my doubts. I put my life in Aeron’s hands, and I believed him when he told me he couldn’t give me my life back right away, but why didn’t he want me to know about those paintings or that I could draw things like that? Why could I draw stuff like that?

  “Is getting high really the best use of our time?” Aeron said. “I would let Ariel explore her apartment to see if it triggered her memories, then we need to get back on the road.”

  “Why didn’t you want me to know about those photos, Aeron? Why didn’t you want Miss Mabel to tell me about what happens when I paint?”

  Aeron flopped on my armchair and started expertly rolling joints with Miss Mabel’s stash.

  “So, I guess we are doing this, or you won’t leave with me? After everything we went through on the road, you don’t trust me.”

  “That’s Meremoth on my wall, Aeron. I keep painting four horses. There are four horses in the Book of Revelations that bring about the end of the world. My train of thought is that I saw all this when I was painting, realized you were involved and painted you this way. I tried to get away at the diner, and it was you and your team that stuck me in that coma and took my memories.”

  Aeron looked like I just ran over his puppy on purpose, then backed up and ran over it a second time. Miss Mabel just lit up her joint and took a huge hit.

  “Can you blame her, Aeron? After her father, she doesn’t really have any reason to trust men, and you made a scene about the paintings.”

  “Fuck it. I will need to get high to have this conversation.”

  Miss Mabel was leaning back on my sofa with her eyes in slits.

  “That’s Purple Panther. It’s guaranteed to get that stick out your ass.”

  There was a lot I couldn’t remember, but I could remember everything about Miss Mabel. She’d never tell me her source, but she could always find the best weed, and she pretty much never shared with me. After she told me it helped with her arthritis, I stopped asking and brought my own when we smoked together. She must have been in a sharing mood if she was breaking out her stash for two more people.

  Aeron took a long inhale and glared at me.

  “If I was trying to hurt you, why would I bring you back here? I came back here after you went missing. I knew these paintings were on the wall, and I knew Mabel was still here. I was hoping she was still around when I managed to get you here. If I were trying to hide something from you, I would have killed her and destroyed these paintings if bringing you back here was this huge ruse.”

  Well, fuck. He had some damned good points. And Miss Mabel liked him, or she wouldn’t be sharing her weed with him. She could sniff out an evil person like one of those truffle pigs. I remembered a guy I dated that I was totally into, and she hated. She kept telling me to dump him, and I didn’t listen. I found out epically and the hard way that when Miss Mabel said someone’s mother should have just swallowed, you should stay away from that person. And she wasn’t doing that with Aeron.

  “Then why didn’t you want me to know I paint the future?”

  “Ariel, you only woke up a few weeks ago. You found out corpses are eating people, humanity has gone to shit, they have bombed most of the world, and you are dealing with horrible nightmares of what your father did to you. I would tell you when you’d had time to come to terms with that. I was hoping to tell you when you stopped waking up screaming.”

  Fair enough, but Aeron needed to stop deciding for me what I could and couldn’t handle. He’d passed part of my test, but there was still an enormous question that he would need to answer if I would go to Mexico with him or stay here with Miss Mabel.

  “Why did I paint your horse as something out of the Book of Revelations, Aeron?”

  I didn’t really believe the Book of Revelations was happening. I knew Miss Mabel’s theory. It made sense, but there was this part of me that just thought men wrote the bible to control people. It was a fairy tale. But something made me paint those horses and start reading it, and it was probably the shit happening now.

  Aeron had that look on his face. I knew it quite well by now. He didn’t want to tell me, and he knew I would not take it well. I wasn’t near high enough to deal with another lie. If he didn’t answer my question, I was booting him out of my apartment and riding out the apocalypse with Miss Mabel.

  “The answer is in your bedroom, Ariel,” Aeron said.

  “Oh, that’s right!” Miss Mabel said. “I forgot about that one. I showed it to you when I stopped beating you with the broom and realized who you were.”

  “You’re dangerous with a broom, Mabel. When you want to keep a painting from a series, you hang it in your bedroom. You kept one from these horse paintings, and you hung it right above your bed because it meant a lot to you.”

  “You’d best take a toke off that joint before you go in there, Speedy,” Miss Mabel said.

  If Miss Mabel thought I needed to be good and high to view some vision painting I decided to keep that would answer whether or not I should go to Mexico with Aeron, I’d smoke this entire joint because I already wasn’t high enough to hear that I could paint the future.

  Aeron was jiggling his knee and looked like he wanted me to hurry the fuck up and go in my bedroom. Honestly, he was ruining what little high I had. I just wanted five minutes to process all this shit. What was I, anyway? Some sort of psychic? I wasn’t sure I believed in all that. No one could see the future.

  Still, there was a lot of shit staring me in the face that I couldn’t deny. I was drawing those horses back then and
now for a reason. Aeron was somehow right in the middle of it. I didn’t want Aeron to be the bad guy. I didn’t want the reason that I kept drawing these horses because Aeron had been working for my father this entire time. I didn’t want to know I had bought his lies this whole time.

  There was apparently some sort of proof in my bedroom, but I was stalling going in there. Because I might not remember a lot of things and I might not know if I could trust Aeron, but there was one thing I knew. Miss Mabel would never lie to me. If she were beating the shit out of Aeron with a broom, she only would have stopped for a principled reason. If he came at her, she would have snapped it in half and drove part of that broom through his neck.

  I was pretty fucking high, but still not high enough to deal with my bedroom. This was the apocalypse. I was lucky even to have weed to deal with this shit. I also didn’t have the luxury of trying to get my shit together before I went in there.

  I stood up and glared at Aeron.

  “I’m going in there alone. You wait here.”

  I hadn’t seen a single Rage Head behind the walls of California, and I already knew that doorman wouldn’t allow strangers in, but I grabbed Smurfette like she could protect me from whatever the fuck I had painted before I got kidnapped.

  I flipped the light on and stepped inside. I didn’t need to find this mysterious painting among all the pictures hung on my bedroom wall. It was huge, and I’d hung it right above my bed. I stared at that thing, and I could only do one thing.

  “What the fuck is this shit?” I shrieked.

  Miss Mabel came ambling in and stood next to me and stared at it.

  “It’s a lot kinkier than what you usually show me, but this is what made up your mind to meet Aeron and Leif.”

  Aeron peered around the corner of the door.

  “Is anyone feeling like they will hit me with something if I come in?”

  “The jury is still out.”

  The painting above my bed was hyper realistic and less stylized than the horses. It was also horrifyingly erotic. It was me standing in the middle of the Oval Office. Aeron was there with three other men. The Oval Office was totally trashed, and my shirt was half off. I was kissing one man on the mouth while the other men were kissing various parts of me. It looked like we were all about to fuck in the middle of a destroyed Oval Office.

  “This is supposed to convince me? I painted some wet dream, and that is supposed to answer all my questions?”

  “Ariel, do you promise not to beat me with Smurfette if I come in your bedroom?”

  “Explain from the door, and I’ll decide.”

  “Your father wasn’t president when you painted that. The men in that painting are my team, and we weren’t fully formed yet. The man kissing you is Dice, and the man kissing your shoulder is Asher. You knew Leif and I. You had photos of us, but you didn’t know Dice and Asher because they hadn’t joined us yet.

  “We knew your father was planning something big, but we didn’t know what. You were the one that told us his plans eventually involved inserting himself as president. When you saw that, you called Leif and me on three-way and said you would come to help us stop him.”

  “It’s true, Ariel. You came barging into my apartment right in the middle of The Bachelorette, and you knew not to bother me during my show. You were ranting about how your father would become president and how you had to go to Mexico so you could stop him. We talked every night about your chat friends. You were trying to figure out if you could trust them or if they were really working for your father. When you painted yourself with them like this, you knew you could. Your visions always come true, Ariel.”

  I pointed Smurfette at Aeron, who was still hiding behind the door frame.

  “I’m not having an orgy with you and your friends in the Oval Office.”

  Aeron held up his hands in surrender.

  “No one is forcing you. Are we past this nonsense that I’m working for your father now?”

  “That depends. Are you past your nonsense where you keep secrets from me, and you decide when you think I’m ready to hear something?”

  Aeron sighed.

  “Fine! But if I tell you something and you flip your shit, keep your bat to yourself.”

  “Are you going to explain the horses now?”

  “This is very biblical, Ariel. Pestilence, War, Conquest, and Death. We’ve had all of those. You saw that and painted it. Your paintings weren’t always as realistic as what’s above your bed. Some were just symbolism, and you didn’t know what it meant until something happened.”

  “He’s right, Ariel. Sometimes, we’d sit and try to figure out what your paintings meant, and it never made sense until something hit the news.”

  “But that’s your horse, Aeron!”

  “Sit down, Ariel,” Miss Mabel said. “You’re focusing on one small thing instead of the big picture. The horse is just a symbol. You need to be worrying about why you saw something out of the Book of Revelations when you painted this series, and it’s all come to pass. I know more about the bible than you do. You always thought it was a fairy tale. If this is biblical, it only gets worse from here. All of this is just the start.”

  “She’s right, Ariel. It’s about to get much worse, and we need you. You saw this, and you painted it. This ends in the Oval Office.”

  “With an orgy, apparently. I don’t even know you assholes.”

  Aeron just smirked at me.

  “Dice and Asher don’t know you either. They might have opinions about this painting too. Leif liked you in chat, but he might change his mind if you threaten him with Smurfette like you do me. We might not want to have an orgy with you either.”

  Well, that was just offensive.

  “So, I guess we are going to Mexico, then going to D.C. to kill the President where we will not be having an orgy in the Oval Office later.”

  Aeron visibly relaxed.

  “We can’t stay here long, Ariel. Catch up with Mabel and try to remember as much as you can, but then we have to leave.”

  What I wouldn’t give to just hang out with Miss Mabel and pretend like none of this was going on. But apparently, I could draw the future, and my father managed to put something biblical in motion. I had no idea how the fuck we were supposed to stop that, but killing him would undoubtedly make me feel better.

  Chapter 28

  I

  spent a lot of time in my bedroom studying the paintings I chose to keep. I was hoping it would give me some sort of clue to the things I painted before I went missing. Some of them had symbols I couldn’t even begin to guess what they were, and some were so abstract, I was letting my eyes blur and looking for a sailboat. They weren’t nearly as apparent as the painting I hung above my bed. What the fuck was I doing that I even painted that?

  Miss Mabel and Aeron were in my room, trying to help me put together the mystery of my art. Miss Mabel was here when I painted them and chose to keep them. Aeron had only been in my apartment a few times as far as I knew, but he seemed to know what all of those strange symbols meant, and I didn’t take him for being into art or different languages.

  Aeron spoke freely about all the paintings in my bedroom, but he was tightlipped about the horses. One of these paintings was about the bombing of a sacred site in Iraq. I painted a tsunami that killed thousands of people. One was a hate crime in Georgia. They were all these huge disasters where people got killed. I don’t know how Aeron figured that out because it wasn’t totally obvious looking at the painting.

  Did I ever paint anything nice like puppies and kittens? What about a lovely still life? Were all my visions doom and gloom?

  “Should I try again? I mean, if I painted he would end up in the Oval Office, and it happened, should I try to figure out what’s next?”

  “We know what’s next, Ariel. We have to take him off the playing field before it happens.”

  “Are you letting me in on this, or is it a big secret?”

  “The Book of Revelations is his
playbook. It’s written that there are three and a half years of peace before the next wave of shit hits the fan. World War III ended three years ago. We only have half a year to stop him before things get even worse. I found you just in time.”

  Miss Mabel gave Aeron some epic stink eye.

  “I know what the painting in her bedroom says, and her paintings always come true, but if you put her in danger, I’ll do worse to you than beat you with my broom. And no Oval Office orgies! Don’t get fresh with her! Ariel, beat him with Smurfette if he tries anything.”

  Yeah, the colossal problem was, until I saw those horses on my wall, I wanted him to get fresh with me. He was still hot as hell, and I couldn’t deny that I always felt safe with him. Now, I was confused, and I hated feeling like this.

  I remembered enough about my bedroom that I kept my sketchpads underneath the drafting table in the corner. I had no idea how to trigger one of these visions, but I had to try. I stalked over to my drafting table and whipped out a sketchpad. I pulled my box out and found a piece of charcoal.

  My vision blurred, and my hand just started moving. I couldn’t tell what was going on in the surrounding room. I was only focused on getting something down on this piece of paper. I could hear the scratch of the charcoal against the paper, but all I could see was a blur. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop drawing until I finished it.

  Finally, my hand stilled. It was over. I blinked until my vision went back into focus. I had no idea what I had just drawn. I looked down and realized that if I really could draw the future, we were totally fucked.

  I had drawn an angel with a fiery sword slaying a demon. I guess all that blustering about the Book of Revelations being a fairytale was me talking out my ass. If this really would happen, then we didn’t have a lot of time to get to Washington and kill my father. How was my father even doing all this?