by T. Rudacille
Brynna
By the time they opened the doors, everyone was silent. We were all aware of the tension in the air. The doubts that we were safe radiated through that uncomfortably thick silence. I could almost hear the collective beating of several thousand hearts.
There were too many questions to be asked. There were too many uncertainties. The journey there had been fraught with peril; some of us, myself included, had almost suffered fatal heart attacks from the sedative, the ship had almost plummeted out of the sky twice, and as people had grown more restless, the possibility of violence increased more than we could ever have been comfortable with. Finally, there we were, arriving at what we had been told was our salvation. But how could any of us believe that we were truly safe after that long, treacherous odyssey?
A buzzing noise sounded from the intercom, and the doors began to open. Here it was, the moment of truth. A stream of light blinded us all, even those standing far back in the crowd; we had spent so long in the darkness of space. Violet, at Penny’s behest, pushed us through so that we were standing near the front of the group.
“She wants to be the first to see it.” Violet had explained to me.
“Well, we will be the first to die if the air is toxic. So pump your brakes.” I had replied irritably, though I had certainly not directed such prickliness at Penny. Violet was the recipient of it, and rightfully so; was I the only one who considered the potentially dangerous outcomes of any and all situations?
I had overheard so many groups shouting that they wanted to be the first out. But the ominous burst of light seemed to have silenced even the most willful of those brave explorers. Since, thanks to Violet, we were so close to the front of the crowd, people behind us pushed us forward slightly. It became apparent that our proximity to the exit made us the guinea pigs. If we walked outside and burst into flames or fell over clutching our throats as we suffocated, they would know not to follow us.
I pictured us standing there for the rest of our lives, all too afraid to take the first step. There were too many different horrendous scenarios playing in each of our minds. We would be reduced to skeletal remains, each and every one of us, as the years of inertia passed. We would never know how it would have begun and ended on Pangaea.
“I’m going for it.” I heard Elijah say behind me, and I whipped around, my eyes wide.
“I am stunned that you would even consider such lunacy!” I spat at him in a livid whisper, “You have no idea what is out there!”
“Go for it, man.” A guy behind him urged.
There was a rumble of assent through the crowd around us. The glares I shot in the direction of those people encouraging him actually silenced them; they probably feared being set aflame if I decided to turn the heat-intensity of my look up just one more notch.
“Brynna, come on. We’ll be the first people to set foot on Pangaea!” He said to me urgently as he gripped my hand. “We’ll be the first people ever!”
“I am very worried about your fascination with fame and momentous accomplishments. It seems both pointless and foolhardy.” I replied after my eyes had locked with his. After hearing this strange, intricately-worded sentence, a woman standing just behind Elijah looked at me as though she were witnessing a hydra regenerating one of its recently severed heads. I could not help it that I saw no need to edit myself for the sake of bystanders who felt uncomfortable in the presence of such vast intelligence and flawless articulacy…
“I’m going to do it.”
I could see in his eyes a resolution that would not be undone with any snippet of wisdom, sly insult to his intelligence, or even a command to use common sense. His resolve to be the first man to walk on this planet would not be shaken by the threat of death or dismemberment or even one of my elaborately formed warnings. I knew that.
I also knew that I could not let him go alone.
“Let’s do it.” I sighed in resignation. His goofy grin emerged, and I frowned. “Do not make me slap that ridiculous smile right off of your face.”
James grasped my hand, and when I looked up at him, he nodded.
“Keep Penny back,” I told Violet, “If anything happens…”
“Don’t say that!” She whispered back in a trembling voice.
A few more people stepped forward. I suppose their guilt at allowing two young, reasonably attractive, obviously quite intelligent kids and their strapping older chaperone to face what could be certain death was winning out over their own survival instincts. I couldn’t fault them for that. Either that, or they had overheard Elijah’s musings on being the first people to set foot on Pangaea and wanted their own slice of the immortality that such an accomplishment would bring.
On one side of us, a single man strode forward. The pupils set right in the middle of his impossibly large, unbelievably bright blue eyes were contracted to the size of pinpoints. He stared forward, his hands trembling as potent, petrifying fear coursed through his body. It was not his trepidation that was pulling him forward. It was not a need to know what awaited us outside. He was a slight man bearing a strong resemblance to a fly searching for something that would sustain his very life; he was of the group who desired the endless fame that came with being “one of the firsts.”
The woman walking beside me was shaking only slightly and grasping the cross necklace that hung around her neck. Her husband was muttering a soft prayer as he locked his arm around her shoulder. I would have been moved by their show of devotion to both each other and a higher power if it weren't for the fact that every aspect of them (their appearance, their body language, the way the woman was closing her eyes and looking up to the heavens) screamed “performance.”
It screamed something else, too, but at that time, I did not know what. I never could have imagined it then. Not in a million years.
I suddenly wished that there was some deity that I believed in strongly. I would ask for the bravery this slow forward-march required. But apparently, I didn’t need to pray, because my feet moved one after the other, inching me further and further into that mysterious light.
After releasing my grip on James and Elijah, I reached up to cover my eyes as the light brightened. I could not understand the sudden increase in its intensity but still, I walked forward.
The first breath of Pangaean air cast an icy spell over my lungs. It was a sensation so amazing, it brought tears to my eyes that had nothing to do with the bright light of a second sun. Even when I knew that my eyes had adjusted to that bright stream, I kept them closed for a moment longer, preparing myself for the image I knew would take those breaths of invigorating air away.
And take them away it did.
We had landed in a field covered by deep green grass. The blades reached towards the cerulean sky where overhead, the sun was blazing; it was a dazzling yet gentle ball of light. As I stared into its incandescence, my eyes did not burn in the slightest. I could stare right into its depth and feel nothing but wonder burrowed deeply in my soul coupled with confusion and mild, non-threatening confusion—How could we look right at the sun? In the distance, the sky darkened to purple and cradled stars inside that twinkled like drops of rain. We had arrived at twilight.
The air was light and crisp like the first day of autumn. It did not burn as it traveled down into my lungs the way the polluted air of our Earth had. I could not imagine returning to our planet, if it still existed, and having to breathe such toxic fumes. I believed that it would kill me immediately. It was a privilege to take those steady inhalations of such unimaginable purity.
I reached down to touch the grass that rose to my waist. It was not rough or sharp in either the body or the tip. It was as soft as silk in its entirety. I wanted to lie down and burrow my face in it. I wanted to use the earth as my pillow forever.
It was a truly astounding feeling, to see such untainted beauty.
This is what our earth was, I thought to myself, And we destroyed it.
When James and I had killed those giants that morning after our initial
meeting, we had seen the world from my balcony the way it had been intended. Through our whitened eyes, we had seen the stolen truth. Now, we were living in a land that possessed the very beauty we had decimated. We breathed the air that we had forced from our world.
All five senses were alive; I could taste the sweet, clean air on my tongue. I could smell it so vividly as it traveled through my nose. I could see the hypnotizing beauty all around me. I listened to the wind swishing the tops of the trees in the forest that surrounded us and felt the grass as it danced against my legs and tickled my bare skin. Those first moments were, quite simply, indescribably glorious, and I have never forgotten them; to this day, they still instill in me a tear-provoking nostalgia and sometimes, a desire to return to that innocence and wonder.
After seeing that we were still standing, several people were rushing to exit the ship. I snapped out of my mesmerized daze and turned to see Penny, Maura and Violet being shoved forward, struggling to stay on their feet. The ship workers were trying to keep order, but the excitement had boiled over. Though the other survivors had not been able to see this place first, they surely would not wait to be the last.
I cleared my throat and took one large, fantastic breath of air. I stunned those who could see me by shouting in a voice too large and loud for a young woman my size.
“Everyone shut up and listen!”
Yes, that was graceless. But sure enough, the feet stopped stomping down the ramp, and silence replaced the excited chattering that had been deafening only a moment before.
Once all eyes were on me, I felt a familiar fluttering in my chest that turned my stomach. But the thrill of arriving and seeing such splendor was enough to remedy the sudden bout of sickness. I found my voice again.
“If you could not trample each other, I am sure those that would be trampled in this stampede would appreciate it greatly. Try for a little civility.” I paused, wondering if I should add that they were not surprising me with their barbarism. I debated mentally if I should comment on their sudden courage when earlier, they had been shoving us out of the ship to spare themselves. I thought better of both snide statements and instead allowed the joyful beating of my heart to overthrow my acidic disdain just for one instance. I finished my call for order with, “Thank you so much.”
The chattering resumed at its previous volume, but people walked slower and with more consideration for those around them. My eyes found Penny, who was walking between Maura and Violet, grasping both of their hands. Her eyes were wide in wonder. Her mouth was open, too, but a smile was tugging at the ends. In her face, I saw the amazement that I felt in my heart. It was child-like in its very essence. It was a feeling I had never known but was thrilled to see reflected in her.
“Elijah? Are you okay?” James asked him, and I whipped around, feeling a jolt of concern in my heart. Was this peace inside of me a lie? Did being exposed to this immaculate place cause a deadly side-effect that took several minutes to expose its ugly face?
No on both accounts.
Elijah had his head angled up towards the sky, and his eyes closed. He was in a state of amazement that rendered him speechless. This had always been his dream, to travel through space and see another planet. When we were kids, he insisted that he was going to live on the moon. Then, he insisted that he was going to live on Pluto, because no one gave it any credit. When “they” deemed Pluto too small to be a planet, Elijah vowed to campaign for its status to be reinstated.
The boy was a nerd, through and through. His passion for all things involving space rivaled my own passion for literature. He was more likely to show his love for what amazed and befuddled him whereas I kept mine to myself. Now, he was practically in tears.
I should have made a crack about his masculinity draining before our very eyes. I should have told him that if he cried, I would never respect him again. But an hour or so earlier, we had believed that we were falling out of the sky. Now we were safely on Pangaea, our safe haven. I could not fault him for wanting to shed some tears of relief and joy. So many people around us were, as they jumped about, hugging their family members and strangers, alike.
I certainly would have wept a little, if I had been a stronger person.
“He’s totally going to cry right now.” Violet leaned over to Maura and whispered that loudly enough so he could hear.
“I’m not going to cry!” He croaked out in shaky indignation, “Stop staring at me!”
“You heard the man. Look away, ladies.” Maura turned Violet and Penny away and paid me no mind, which had become custom since our disagreement. While Elijah was turned away, struggling to get his emotions in check lest he be viewed by all of us as a pansy, I rushed to James and threw my arms around his neck before standing up on the tops of my toes to kiss him for one long, brilliant moment. His arms came around my back, and he pulled me closer to him. Then, in a quick movement that elicited a yelp of surprise from me, he turned me sideways and dipped me backwards. I was laughing hysterically, amazed at how graceful the quick maneuver had been and how jokingly dramatic it was.
“Yeah, that was a good one, I know.” He bragged jokingly.
I laughed at his arrogant proclamation and pulled his face close to mine so I could kiss him passionately again.
The tumultuous sounds of the crowd around us faded out in my ears to be replaced by the sound of my heart pounding. That warmth that came with his touch blared to life inside of me. I was spoiled by it now and always dreading the moment when it died away.
It disappeared abruptly that time because I felt a light kick on my leg.
“Ow!” I exclaimed, though it was not the kick that was painful. It was having to emerge so quickly from that quiet, comforting place I fell into while I was with James that pained me.
“He’s going to turn around any second! Control yourself!” Violet hissed at me, but I could see the traces of a smile on her lips.
James returned me to my feet, but I kept my arms around his neck. His hands were still rested on my face as we pressed our foreheads together and laughed softly in quiet triumph and unfathomable relief. He kissed me for one quick, fleeting second.
Five thousand people were saved from whatever had taken our earth and the rest of our race. Though we had lost some in the journey, the rest had arrived safely with hearts still beating and lungs still breathing precious air. Like every creature ever to walk the earth, our will to survive had flourished in the face of death and saved us all. It had even beaten the very end of all we knew. In short, it had trumped extinction. In the battle against the sadistic will of God, the Gods, or the universe, we had won.
Looking around at the faces in that crowd of survivors and listening to their loud shows of joy, I could not help but feel a hope that was as alien to me as the planet on which we now walked. Doubt did not cast a shadow on my belief that from our arrival onward, we would live in peace until we met our own individual, not collective, ends.
I allowed myself to fall prey to naivety and idealism. That hope was something I never would have tolerated inside of myself otherwise.
It would prove false. It would carry consequences.
It shielded my eyes, quite perilously, to the coming events.
Quinn
I wanted to shake the hand of the girl who called out for civility, because Alice and I would have been trampled by the over-anxious crowd if she had not. I couldn’t help but admire the girl's resolution to step out first when the rest of us had been so afraid. I wanted to approach her to give my thanks for her bravery. But she disappeared into the crowd that emerged from the ship. Once she was swallowed in the mass of people, I knew I’d more than likely never see her again.
“She’s got a loud voice for such a little person.” Alice said beside me.
“Yeah, she does.” I turned to her, grinning widely. “So, we’re here!”
“I know!” Alice clapped her hands excitedly and bobbed up and down on her feet for a moment of pure joy. “God, the air smells so much dif
ferent than it did back home, doesn’t it?”
My mood dropped at the mention of home. It no longer existed, and the thought of it was sure to depress us both. Alice must have read that in my facial expression, because she quickly changed the subject.
“So now what?”
That question didn’t help keep the mood up, either. It was the newest question with unthinkable gravity behind it. We were there, finally, but what were we supposed to do first?
“We’re all going to sleep on the ship, right?” A man behind me asked.
“I guess we could,” A woman replied, “I hope they don’t expect us to sleep out here. You know that I’ve never liked camping, honey.”
“Well, if that’s the only option, then you’re just going to have to deal with it, sweetheart.”
“I don’t see why it would be the only option, David. They’ll let us sleep on the ship.”
“They’ll let all of us just keep running on and off the ship? Doubtful. People almost got stomped on a minute ago. Plus, can you imagine how long it will take if everyone decides to go in and out at the same time?”
“I don’t want to sleep on the ship, Quinn.” Alice told me after clasping her hands around one of mine.
“I don’t, either.”
The thought of having to stay confined to that ship at nighttime made my head spin. It was the same feeling I would experience if someone threw me in a trunk, slammed the lid shut, and locked me inside. After spending two and a half weeks on-board, I needed to be out in the open, and I knew Alice did, too.
“There are so many people!” Alice muttered as we looked around, “It’s like Rockefeller Center at Christmastime!”
“I don’t like it. Let’s try to move out of the crowd a little.”
We had to squeeze past people as they argued and reasoned an answer to the question Alice had posed to me earlier. What exactly were we going to do now?
As a final answer, I heard an unfamiliar male voice over the loudspeaker.
“Ladies and gentlemen, can you direct your attention to the ship, please?” The man asked.
Alice and I looked to see that he was raising one hand in the air to show everyone where it was they were supposed to be looking. A hush fell over the crowd.
Though this was, without a doubt, the weirdest situation we could have found ourselves in, the universal quality to it was that people could rarely tell themselves what to do. Instead, they opted for the comfort of being told. Alice and I were no exception, but we could blame our age for that tendency, at least.
“Right here, ladies and gentlemen!” He strained himself to reach up higher and continued waving. “People in the back? Right here.”
Now everyone was giving him their full attention.
“Hello, everyone. We are going to be calling you by your housing compartment number. When your number is called, please come to the left side of the ship to gather your belongings. You will be given one tent per party. You will be given one set of matches, a set of rations, and a sleeping bag for every member of your party. We will be handing out rations daily at daybreak. The moment the sun comes up, one member of each party needs to be present to accept their rations. For your own sake, please do not be late.”
“Why would it matter?” I asked Alice softly.
“Shh!” She hushed me as she craned her neck to see the man speaking.
“It sounds like him.” A girl was whispering behind me, and I heard her jumping up and down as she tried to get a better look.
“You are imagining things.” Another girl hissed at her.
I drowned out their argument in order to hear the man better. He was speaking into a megaphone, but we were so far back that it was hard to hear. It was nearly impossible to get a good look at him.
“The ship is going to be closed off temporarily. Please remain within sight of it at all times. If you can’t see it, then you’ve gone too far, and you need to come back. Right now, we’re not sure if there is anything else here. There could be wild animals.”
“Are there people?” Someone in the crowd shouted. Some people laughed nervously, but the silence grew heavier with a sudden tension. Everyone was wondering that. It was not just a question, it was a fear we all shared.
“No, sir. Thank you for asking.” There was a note of irritation in the man’s voice, “Are there any other questions?”
“What will happen if we aren’t there at daybreak?”
“Just be there at daybreak.” The man insisted calmly.
“Why can’t we go off on our own?” Another man shouted.
“It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what’s out there. Ladies and gentlemen, there is strength in numbers. If there is a threat that we don’t know about, we will be more apt to survive it if we are all here to face it.”
One of the two girls who had been bickering behind us nearly shattered our eardrums with her deafening shout to the front.
“What’s your name?!”
“My name is Daniel Olivier. I paid for this ship to be built.”
Violet
I gasped sharply before storming straight ahead. In the process, I almost knocked the young couple in front of me to the ground as I ran forward. I pushed people and didn't bother to ask for their excusing. I knew Maura, Elijah, Brynna, James, and Penny were right behind me, but I didn’t look over my shoulder once, because I was in such a hurry to get to him.
“Daddy!” I exclaimed once I had reached the small stage he was standing on. I threw my arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder as he held me tightly.
“Hey, sweetheart. I knew you were here somewhere.”
“Why didn’t you come find us on the ship? We were registered. Why didn’t you come find us? She told me you were dead!” I pointed an accusing finger at Brynna whose face remained impassive. But if one were to look closely at her eyes, they would see the monstrous wrath burning behind that icy blue. I knew the look, and even in my elation, I felt a shudder pass through me; it always preceded one of her rages, that look…
My father’s face, however, was anything but expressionless. The smile that had emerged when he had seen us faded slowly. It was replaced by a fury so menacing that it almost matched Brynna’s. Her boldness never faltered, though, the way mine would have upon seeing that look. She stood firm and glared back at him, forcefully pushing his buttons, hoping that he would snap.
“Alright, we will deal with that later.” Maura said quickly, and they snapped their eyes to her at exactly the same time.
My dad reached out and put one hand on her face as she leaned forward. He kissed her cheek and she asked, “You alright?”
“I’m fine,” He replied softly, “Thank you for getting them here.”
Penny jumped into our dad’s arms, and he spun her in a circle. She giggled uproariously as she always did in those extremely rare instances that he played with her. Elijah, our dad believed, was far past the age where hugs were allowed, so they clasped hands quickly. It was a cold gesture that I had always found disturbing. It felt like whatever bond they had had before (and it had always been fragile) was permanently dead the day Dad decided he could no longer embrace Elijah. It’s a strange thing, when that happens between fathers and sons.
When it came time to speak to Brynna, he stared at her for a moment as she stared back.
“Come with me,” He ordered coldly, “I want to speak to you privately.”
“I do not want to speak to you, period,” Brynna snapped back without missing a beat, “so I will not be doing so.”
Oh, boy. Off they went …
“Don’t start that inane babbling with me. I said I wanted to talk to you. Now let’s go.” My anxiety was rising as he struggled to keep his temper. My mouth dried out, and my breaths stopped coming as easily despite the crispness of the air.
“I will not take orders from you. Not anymore…”
“There are people watching, Brynna Claire! Now move!”
“I am supposed to care that there
are people watching? When have I ever cared about that, Dad?’
Everything, from the way she stood to the devious glint in her eye, told me that she was purposely trying to stir the angry storm inside of him. My father acted brutally towards Brynna only. I had never been on the receiving end of his wrath. But I knew the consequences of it by witnessing what he had done to Brynna over the years. She never gave in to him or showed any fear, which only strengthened his determination to hurt her.
Her fingers linked with James’s, and he snapped out of an angry daze of his own. He had been glaring at my dad, his eyes burning red. I wanted to warn him that he had better allow his eyes to switch back to normal unless he wanted Dad to know that some drastic, freakish change was occurring in each of us. Somehow, I knew that Dad learning of our evolution would be dangerous for us all.
“She told you that she’s not going. That’s the end of it. Let’s go, Brynna.”
“James Maxwell…” My father’s expression changed from one of deep discontent to one of pure loathing at the sight of him. His eyes traveled down to see their hands grasped together. “Somehow, I knew you would find her.”
What the hell was going on?
“You two know each other?” Elijah asked, “You said you’d never met them, James.”
“He lied.” My dad replied simply.
“I was just going to say that I lied.” James added abruptly, “I lied about meeting your dad, at least. I never made the acquaintance of your mother, and thank God for that.”
“Don’t you say anything about her, you…” My dad started, his anger hitting a violent high point far more quickly than ever before.
“Why would you lie about that? About knowing them? Or him, or whichever one of them you knew? Do you realize what that means?” Brynna was asking him softly, and yet her voice was shaking with anger.
“Brynna, let’s go.” Dad had turned his attention back to her and was obviously growing more and more impatient with every moment that passed.
“Daniel, can’t we just be happy that we’re all together and that we’re alright? There will be time to be angry later. Just let it go for right now.” Maura was urging him gently as she grasped his hand. He shook her off, still glaring at Brynna.
“How do you two know each other?” Brynna demanded, looking between the two of them, “I want to know the truth!”
“And I want you to come with me. Let’s go.”
“She’s not going with you.”
Of the three, James was the most furious. His stature seemed to have grown; he had gained a sudden bulkiness that made him thicker and more intimidating. His eyes were burning red, and he didn’t seem to care that Dad saw. For his part, my father did not seem surprised by the change.
“Do you know what that is, Brynna?” My father asked as he pointed at James. “He looks like that because he feels that I’m impeding on his territory. It’s possession.”
“Well, I do not need anyone, let alone a liar, to protect me. You really feel the need to have a discussion? Then we will discuss.”
“Brynna!” James called after her, but she was walking with my dad to the other side of the ship where they would be out of view of the gawking crowd.
The onlookers had turned away after growing bored when they hadn’t been able to hear the whole conversation clearly, but if Dad reached out and hit Brynna the way he had a tendency to when he was angry, they would certainly turn back around to watch. An outburst like that certainly would not keep him in good standing with the survivors he was trying to lead.
I looked at Maura and saw tears in her eyes.
“I loved him once,” She whispered to me softly, or maybe she had whispered that to herself, because her eyes were on the ground, not on mine. She was swiping the tears from her eyes when she finally did look at me.
“I am sure you know that by now, that I loved him. But I loved him before he became what he is now.”
I nodded, barely understanding what she meant. I was too preoccupied with the fact that Brynna was about to see the worst of “what he was now.” The different man than the one Maura had fallen in love with was one that hated the very sight of his oldest daughter.
I was luckier to escape his wrath than I was to escape the end of the world. I knew that with absolute certainty.
Brynna
Because I was walking in front of him, I knew that he was going to grab my arm, twist it behind my back, and shove me up against the ship’s hard exterior before he did it. Because he was so angry, I knew he was going to hiss at me through clenched teeth to make his displeasure known. The only thing that I didn’t know was whether I’d be seeing the back side of his hand, something I hadn’t seen since I had moved out four years earlier.
“So, you thought that was it? You thought you’d leave your mother and me behind? You thought you’d escape here and shack up with that asshole, Maxwell?”
“How do you know him?” I demanded after realizing how very little fear there was in my heart, even in the presence of his rage. I only wanted to know where their association had begun and what the meaning was behind it. It was difficult for me to feel fear in the face of his anger anymore. I had become so accustomed to it that I found its theatricality and physicality almost comical; both were the result of his inability to simply articulate his undying hatred of me into words.
“You left us to die, you bitch!”
If there was one thing in life that I loathed most venomously, it was the use of gender-based insults. “Bitch”, “whore” and “slut” were disgraceful, but there was one more that was downright despicable. He had called me that before, generally after having one too many drinks.
“Where is my mother?”
I refrained from referring to her as “Mom” for I felt that the term was too closely correlated with warmth and sentiment. I had been doing that for years, simply because it irritated them both so much.
“Where do you think?! She burned up just like I was supposed to! Isn’t that what was supposed to happen? Well, you should have done your homework, sweetheart, because this whole expedition was bought and paid for by me! What, your little friend James didn’t tell you that? Was he too busy following after you like a pathetic little puppy dog?”
“You enjoy asking rhetorical questions, though I must say, I have always found them to be quite useless in determining what one wants to know...”
“Shut up!” He punched the side of the ship right beside my head. I only flinched slightly, which only infuriated him more. “I guess he also didn’t tell you that he engineered the ship?”
Well, that explained his calmness while the rest of us thought the ship was going down... That explained his calmness that had remained intact throughout all the peril we had experienced, actually.
“Now I want you to listen to me. Stay away from him.”
He had lied to me. I would have nothing more to do with him for that alone, not because my father had ordered me to keep my distance.
“If I catch you with him, I’ll deal with it the same way that I dealt with your stupid little friends.”
I looked at him, knowing that my eyes were going to turn red. It was that rage again. It was that inescapable feeling that I must end the life of someone causing me pain. For my pride, for my love of the people to whom he was cruelly and disrespectfully referring, for the years upon years of hatred and abuse between us, for that longing and love for the one he stole away from me, I would end that man.
“The two that couldn’t keep their noses out of your mother’s business went easily. The other two, not so much… Your little friends, I don’t even remember their names. And God, I don’t even remember the names of those two little bloggers now, either, and you were screwing one of them, weren’t you? God, what was her name, Brynna?” He continued to prod me with a sadistically triumphant smile scratched across his misshapen mouth.
His inability to recall the names of four innocent people he had ordered to be killed, three of which were
so dear to me, sickened me worse than if he had spat their names at me in blatant disrespect for them. As far as her, I had tried my hardest not to think her name, or to see her face, or to remember all that had happened… Tears rushed into my eyes, but I blinked them away. I only saw her when my mind was unguarded in sleep, when her face could assail me at my most vulnerable moments…
Rachel. Rachel. Rachel.
I was beginning to panic. Those many painful feelings that only her death could provoke me to feel were utterly destroying the walls I had built in an effort to keep them out. He was destroying those walls, talking about her.
To his eye, though, I was still calm, vaguely sociopathic in my calmness. That is what he thought, anyway. With a surprisingly low level of surprise, I realized that I could hear what he was thinking. How could his barbs not be hitting me? How could I not be sobbing under the weight of his cruel words, of his forceful evoking of painful memories, his whole act of emotional torment? Why was I so damn unshakeable? He would break me. If he could not break my composure, he could break my bones; whatever he had to do, he would wipe that impassive look off my face. He would replace it with a look of fear or at the very least, a grimace of pain.
“You’re my daughter.” He hissed, his hands shaking violently now. “I might find the sight of you to be disgusting, but you’re still my kid. So, do you want to guess which option I’m going to favor when I get rid of him?”
I was through with James. I was ready to pretend that nothing had occurred between us. But the thought of losing him permanently, though I knew I would never be with him again, almost brought tears to my eyes. Tears streaming down my cheeks were as rare a sight as a unicorn tumbling out of a rainbow above Antarctica, so I hope one realizes how extreme the pain I felt was when I pictured James being irreversibly gone.
I hated him for lying to me. But I could not hate him completely. It made no sense, and to me, everything made sense. I did not find the confusion regarding my feelings for him to be a place in which I wished to spend my time. I shook my head slightly to clear the rambling, conflicting thoughts from my mind.
Everything was so loud. Within the confines of my skull, the thoughts were expanding, overlapping, feeding off each other to cause me the most pain.
“Tell me that you’re not going to see him again.”
I did not reply. I was proud to the point of recklessness and always had been. Even now, as I faced the possibility of physical pain, I could not cast my pride aside. It was too resilient, like the cockroaches I assumed were still scavenging amongst the ashes of our earth.
“Brynna Claire,” He growled as his fingers locked painfully around my upper arms. “Do not test me. I don’t like raising my hand to you, but I will if you don’t answer me. You’re smarter than this. Make the smart decision. Tell me you won’t see him again.”
I raised my eyes to him, fantasizing about reaching out abruptly and shoving my palm up into his nose with all the force my newly acquired strength would allow. The bones would shatter, and a jagged piece would be shoved up to pierce his brain. I wanted to lean forward and take an unforgiving bite out of his throat, right on that quickly throbbing, deep-blue vein. I wanted to jump on his back, grasp his head and rip it from his neck, destroying him the same way I destroyed that creature in my apartment.
Instead, I taunted him:
“Raise your hand, little boy.”
His hand came up, and he moved it behind him so that he could muster enough force to send me to the ground. I’ll admit, the pain evoked a small cry from me. I crashed sideways into the side of the ship before sliding down into the dirt. Looking up in time to see James suddenly appear in front of me did not improve my now very disagreeable mood.
“Go. Go away.” I gasped out as I widened my eyes in an attempt to clear my blurred vision. He was sitting me up. “You lied to me, and I want you to go.”
“Brynna, I lied to you because I knew you wouldn’t trust me. If you knew that I had worked with him to build this, you wouldn’t have come with me. We did vote on whether or not to allow them to come. We voted against them both, just like I said. I don’t know what he’s doing here. I thought you’d be safe from both of them here.” He was speaking quickly, trying to explain away committing the ultimate betrayal in my little world before I managed to hoist myself up and leave him forever.
“So you thought you’d save me, James?” I narrowed my eyes as a new outrage gripped me that had nothing to do with my father.
How dare he suggest that I needed to be rescued? I was a strong, independent woman who just so happened to be abused, sometimes severely, by her father. That didn’t mean that I was weak and in need of a knight in shining armor, as they say. How incredibly pathetic that would be…
His own defenses rose abruptly; coldness glazed over his warm, brown eyes, and his perfectly molded jaw tightened. The armies inside of us were raising their weapons, ready to fire on the enemy that had invaded their strongholds. We were pulling away just as we had begun to grow closer.
Deep down, past the anger, the betrayal, and the self-loathing I felt at allowing myself to grow too fond of him, my heart was splitting. I dreaded the moment he walked away from me. I prayed that somehow, I would find whatever was needed to change my mind; I searched desperately for some inner strength that would persuade me to let him stay. No revelation of the sort came, nor did my swelling pride dissolve.
“I told you that you would pull away,” He told me furiously, “You thought it would be me. But I knew it would be you.”
“Congratulations. Would you like some sort of award for your vast knowledge on the inner workings of Brynna Olivier?” I hissed back just as viciously.
“It is quite an accomplishment considering that you’re so fundamentally f…”
“This conversation has reached its end. I do not tolerate liars.”
“But you tolerate that son of a bitch, who just punched you in the face?”
“He’s my father. You’re… You’re…” I was stammering, a new phenomenon with which I was not familiar nor comfortable. The sudden change in my speaking pattern was evidence that I did not mean what I said next, “You’re nothing, James.”
He studied me as he shook his head slightly. I wanted to see anger on his face and the desire to fight me on my resolve to push him away. Doesn’t every woman want that? But all I saw in James’s face was a new determination to get as far away from me as he could, and to stay away this time.
My heart split even more fatally. I was surely bleeding to death internally. The part of me that cared for him so deeply and needed him blindly begged me through her rapidly falling, acidic tears to reach out, wrap my arms around his neck, and beg him to stay. Unfortunately, the side of me that did not allow such fragility to be shown to anyone, but especially men, crossed her arms, shook her head and dug her heels in. She would not beg James Maxwell for anything. She would not beg anyone for anything.
“Good luck to you, Brynna.”
His words were so cold. They were so final. There was not the smallest hint of that beautiful affection I knew he had for me. Over the past several days, a devotion to one another had bloomed in each of us. Mine was wilting away as though its water-source had been evaporated with one harsh ray from the sun. His was effectively eradicated; I wondered if even the smallest traces of it would survive for even an hour more.
My father ushered me back to the crowd, and I turned to watch James walking in the opposite direction, getting further and further away by the second. There were so many people. If I ever needed to find him, I would more than likely be unable to do so. That was the last time I would see him, ever.
I walked back to where Maura, Elijah, Penny, and Violet were standing together and chattering nervously. Only Penny comforted me with a warm hug around my leg and a kiss on my throbbing cheek when I knelt down in front of her. The rest just diverted their gazes and pretended not to notice the bruise that was already forming there.
“Your eyes
are really dark blue.” Penny told me with her brows furrowed in curiosity. “Normally, they’re the color of the sky. Now they’re like the ocean.”
I was barely listening to her, God bless the sweet little girl. In my ears was the rhythmic tapping of my heart, and the last words James had spoke over and over again, and Rachel’s name, her voice. James’s voice.
I forced it away. I forced that immense, unimaginable pain away. I allowed myself just that one moment of agony as I replayed the exact second when he had disappeared from my sight over and over again.
I cannot explain it. I cannot think about it for long. The memory pains me still.
Quinn
Our housing compartment had been the very last, so by the time we got to the ship to retrieve our bags, people had already made their camps. The lucky people who had resided in the first compartment were able to set up right in front of the ship. We were forced to set up far in the back, closer to the tree line at the end of the field.
I had very little experience with camping, though my father had insisted that we try it when I was a little kid. Though my tent-constructing skills left a lot to be desired, I managed to build ours in under two hours. Of course, I had required the assistance of a woman from the camp next to ours.
“Too bad we got the last compartment, right? We’re all the way back here in the nosebleeds.” She had told me as she expertly hammered a peg into the ground.
“I know, right?” I replied, “I guess we’re second-class citizens.”
“I guess so.” She looked up at Alice, who was standing away from us and staring off into the darkened forest. The leaves on the trees were a dark evergreen; the sight of them made me tired for some reason. The forest was odd; every type of tree I could think of was cluttered together in my view. A weeping willow swayed in the wind, its long, flowing leaves grazing the rough trunk of a tall palm tree. A pine tree stood in the shadow of a towering oak. I couldn’t help but muse how weird this place was.
“Your girlfriend looks like she has had a bit of a rough time.” The woman informed me.
My thoughts snapped back to Alice, who remained motionless as she stared straight ahead. I wondered what exactly she was looking for, or if she was really looking for anything at all.
“We all have, right?” I replied with a noncommittal shrug, “Yeah, it’s crazy to say out loud, but there was this thing back home. I can’t describe to you exactly what it was. I just know that it was evil. It sounds crazy…”
“It doesn’t,” The woman shook her head, “I’m the chatty one out of me and my sisters, and I talked to a lot of people on the ship. We all had something after us. You and your girlfriend aren’t alone in that. What was your otherworldly stalker like?”
I chuckled softly at the term. “Otherworldly stalker” was an accurate description.
Though the recollection was painful given the way it all turned out, I found myself spilling all of the details to this stranger. I talked for a long time, and she never interrupted me. She never gave any indication that she was disturbed, even when I finished our story with the very real, very grim end.
“That’s horrible,” She told me, but her voice betrayed no true sympathy, “I guess her zoning off instead of helping you make camp is acceptable then. Poor thing…”
I didn’t know whether to be offended by her suggestion that Alice was essentially a useless companion or to ask myself if I had taken her statement the wrong way. I certainly didn’t believe that Alice not helping me make camp made her useless, though I had been slightly irritated at her as I was sweating and stressing over how to build a stupid tent.
“Baby!” I called to her. “It’s done!”
Alice jumped almost completely off the ground.
“Sorry!” I shouted again.
She gave no acknowledgment of my apology. She just meandered back slowly, glancing over her shoulder every couple of seconds to view the trees again. When her face became clearer to me as she got closer, I could see that her brows were wrinkled, and her mouth was crooked in an expression of curiosity and bemusement.
“Thank you. It was nice talking to you.” I told the woman, who nodded and studied Alice with narrow eyes. After she walked away, I reached out to grasp Alice’s hand.
“What is it, baby?” I put my finger under her chin to gently lift her head.
She glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes slowly scanning the trees.
“There’s something out there,” She told me, “I can feel it.”
She didn’t elaborate. She just unzipped the tent and went inside.
“It’s really big in here!” She called out to me, but I was looking into the darkness behind the tree-line now, looking for whatever it was that she claimed she felt. After a minute, I was able to convince myself that she was still stressed from the events of the past weeks and as a result, was imagining things. There was nothing out there.
I followed her into the tent to see her sitting on the ground, opening her suitcase.
“I want to keep at least one shirt in my bag. I don’t want to wear it.” She told me as she cradled a pink and black striped flannel to her chest. “I just want to keep it in my bag so that it will always smell like home.”
“That’s a good idea.” I replied as I opened the box of rations that we had gotten at the same time we retrieved our bags. “Well, at least the food on the ship was good, because this is all kinds of crap. Look at this!”
Though the proportions were quite large, the food itself was basic. It was only meant to supply the necessary nutrients. It was just enough to survive.
“Just add water. Where are we supposed to get water?” I asked as I held up a can of what I supposed was powdered soup.
“Look a little harder, darling.” Alice told me as she rooted around in the box to pull out three bottles of water. “Look, they gave us the bare minimum! One gallon a day each!”
“That was generous of them.” I replied bitterly.
I was a typical guy; I underwent a Jekyll and Hyde transformation when I became hungry or thirsty. If I was in desperate need of a drink or meal, I was also in desperate need of a straitjacket. A smart person would promptly avoid me at all costs.
“The extra bottle is for the stuff that needs water, I guess.” Alice told me. “So, do you want some powdered soup? I’ll cook it for you. It’ll be like I’m a housewife, right?”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Do you even need to ask?” She asked sarcastically, “I’m only kidding. But seriously, I will make it. Let me test my survival skills right here and right now.”
“You’re testing your survival skills by following a simple direction?” I laughed slightly.
“I am. Don’t rain on my parade.”
“Sorry.” I watched her pour the packets of soup into two plastic bowls. She poured in a small amount of water and stirred the contents with a plastic spoon, “I guess the days of nice silverware and plates and bowls are over.”
“Do we really need them, though? I think fine china and silverware are the least of our worries.”
“I know. I was just making a statement.”
“Here you go. That was like magic. I turned powder into soup. Think about it this way…” She took a bite of the chunky green liquid in the bowl and frowned. “When we went away to college, we would have been eating Ramen every night. We probably would have been using Styrofoam bowls and plastic cups and washing them every night because we couldn’t even afford paper plates. We’re basically living the exact way we would have been living at the end of the summer.”
“You’re trying really hard to stay positive, aren’t you?”
“Do I have any other choice?”
“No. I guess not.” I knew that I needed to get on that fake-optimism bandwagon quickly, or she would break down into tears. She needed my assurance the same way I needed hers. “We’ll chill here for a while until we get to explore. Then, we’ll figure out a way to get some wood, and I’ll build you o
ur house.”
Her face had fallen slightly after she had tried to remain upbeat. Her true feelings were beginning to leak through that mask of happiness. But at the mention of our house, I saw joy on her face that was genuine and familiar to me.
“Maybe we’ll learn to make pots out of clay and stuff.” She replied enthusiastically, “Then you can have your nice plates and bowls.”
“I don’t need plates and bowls!” I laughed again, “I was being dumb.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
I shook my head at her in jocular offense and then leaned forward to kiss her.
“This could all shape up to be really, really cool,” She told me, and I knew that her proclamation was an optimistic thought she truly believed in. “I mean, we’ll just get to chill out for the rest of our lives. No one is going to expect us to work if we’re living on our own. We don't need money for anything. We’ll get up in the morning, decide that we don’t want to do anything, so we won’t do anything.”
“Is this proof that all people are lazy?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” She said through a fit of gleeful laughter, “I believe that, Quinn. I believe it’s everyone’s dream to do nothing. Isn’t that why people started retiring early and moving to Florida and stuff? Why would you work when you can just run around on the beach all day? Look at us. We hadn’t even started working for real, and we were already fantasizing about the day we didn’t have to work at all anymore. It just so happens that our time to do nothing has come a lot earlier than we planned.”
“That’s true. It’s weird to hear it put like that, but you’re right. Do you remember how my dad used to talk about how lazy our generation was?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alice smiled as she rolled her eyes, “I remember those lectures. I just wanted to be like, 'It’s your generation that got us into a crisis, ding-dong!’”
“And it’s their generation that didn't want to work, either. People were losing their jobs left and right, and there were still people who didn’t appreciate having good ones. Do you remember how your mom used to threaten to quit every week? And she was making a ridiculous amount of money!”
“I know. She annoyed me so much with that. Then I’d try to tell her about how she should consider herself lucky. And she was like, 'Alice, if you knew what I had to do at my job…’ ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about…’”
Her impression of her mother was spot on.
“Laziness, dude,” She continued, “She was the prime example of it. That was one of her bad qualities, I will say.” Alice’s smile faded as she looked off, “But I would want her here even if she had only her bad qualities.”
“I know. I want my parents here, too. They should be here.”
“I know they should. But you know, I’ve been thinking lately that I’m going to see them again. One day, when I die…”
“Which will be in a really long time…” I added.
“Which will be in a really long time,” She agreed, “I’ll see them again. It helps more than I thought it would.”
“I know it does. You know that I have no religious beliefs. But I’ve been thinking that a lot lately, too. And it is comforting.”
“It is. So we just need to live out our lives being as happy as we can be. Even though they didn’t approve of us, and they probably never would have, they know that we need each other now. So, we just need to try to live normally even though God knows this situation isn’t normal.”
“You’re right.” I smiled at her, completely in agreement with what she had said, “You’re absolutely right.”
Violet
“Sick” does not begin to describe how I felt when I saw my father and Maura together. I knew that they had a history, though the extent of their relationship remained a mystery to me. Now, with my mother so recently deceased, he was beginning to revisit his old bond with Maura. Besides the betrayal to my mom, the way Maura fawned over him was enough to make me gag.
There were constant compliments on her end that only boosted his already out of proportion ego. She made excuses for what he had done to Brynna, saying that it was Brynna’s own fault. Had she not been so cruel as to leave our mother behind, my dad wouldn’t have been so keen to sort her out.
“It was wrong, what she did,” She told me one morning over breakfast. I was staring off into the distance as the Pangaean sun rose over the top of the ship and blanketed us with its gentle light. “You said so yourself. I don’t believe in hitting any of you. But what she did was purely wrong, Violet. You know that it was, if we are being completely honest, almost evil! He was upset. He acted out in anger.”
“Maura, it’s not like this is the first time it’s happened. He’s always been meaner to her than he is to us,” I insisted, “And since when does she ever listen to him? He tells her to stay away from James, and James is gone now.”
“And that’s for the best! He had to assert his authority there. She may be an adult, and she may mature, but she cannot handle a relationship with a man his age. The poor girl can barely connect with anyone, let alone a man who comes with expectations and experience behind him.”
“Brynna can handle anything, Maura, and you know it!”
“I know that you think so. Where did this sudden change of heart come from? A couple of days ago, you were screaming that you wanted her to die. I do not agree that you should have said that, by the way. I never told you that I feel that was far too harsh.”
“Why are you so ready to excuse what Dad did? Back home, when he treated her like that, you’d always excuse it, and you’re doing it again!”
“I told you, what Brynna did was absolutely, undeniably wrong. He was acting out of anger…”
“It wasn’t out of anger!” I exclaimed, and the bowl I was holding shattered in my hands despite my loose grip on it.
“Violet Mae!” Maura reached out and pulled the shards from my hands, cutting herself in her haste to dispose of them before my father saw.
“It wasn’t out of anger, Maura. He has always done this. She should run away. If I were her, I’d run as far away from him as I could!”
“So, what, are you going to run away now?” Maura asked as she held a paper towel to the cut on her palm. I watched her blood soak through the pure white of the towel, billowing outwards to the very edges like a visible plague.
“He doesn’t treat me like that. But if he did, I’d be gone. Maura, you’ve never stuck up for her. She needs you to defend her.”
“Brynna doesn’t need anyone to defend her. She’s a Viking woman. She always has been, even as a small child. When she still lived at home, I tried to keep him calm so that he wouldn’t hurt her. She’s older now and can handle herself. If I tried to handle this for her, especially with how strained things are between us right now, she would tell me to butt out in colorful terms, and that would be the end of it.”
“Elijah is angry. He said he wanted to kill Dad.”
“That was worrisome the first time he said it all those years ago. He’s said it too many times since, and it has lost its effect.”
Her cavalier attitude towards the whole situation made me want to claw out my hair and scream at the sky. Now that my father was showing her the slightest bit of attention, even his abuse of the girl Maura had always thought of as her daughter wasn’t entirely wrong, at least not in Maura’s narrow view.
Our mother never would have tolerated it, despite what Brynna might have believed.
“Our mother was a not only a permissive parent, but a permissive wife.” Brynna said behind m,e and I turned to see her lying on her back in the grass, a cigarette burning in the hand whose back was pressed to her forehead. I stood up and knelt down beside her. She brought the cigarette to her lips and took a drag, but her eyes never opened beneath her sunglasses. I tried not to look at the dark black bruise on her slightly swollen cheek.
“How did you…”
“I just did.” She replied through a sigh, “You are worried about me.
You needn’t be.”
“Brynna, you’re older now. You don’t have to tolerate him. I change my mind about James, okay? If you want him, go be with him. Just don’t let Dad hit you anymore!”
“James lied to me, and I will not forgive him for it. You know better than anyone just how intolerable I find those who lie. Dishonesty is for the weak. You know how I scorn weakness.”
Well, she was back to normal. I knew, deep down, that those especially complex sentences and sentiments were the result of her desperate attempt to hide her true feelings. I didn’t call her on it, though I should have. Perhaps if I had exposed her created ruse, she would have been spurned into action.
“I do not even know where he is, so even if you did tell me what you believe my words are masking, I would have no course of action.”
“Brynna, stop it!” I exclaimed angrily. I covered my ears as though my secret thoughts were tumbling out of them, moving across the space between us, and whispering to her.
“I cannot help it,” She replied dully, “Your thoughts are very loud. Can you hear mine?”
“No,” I shook my head, feeling like crying all of a sudden, “I haven’t heard yours since that first time, right after Miranda...” A shudder passed through me, and I reached out to grasp the hand she had rested on her stomach. She startled at my touch but hid her surprise immediately.
“Brynna, you’ve never had a weak moment in your life. Why are you being so calm about all of this? Why are you letting him treat you like this?”
“It was one instance of a pathetic man utilizing his superior physical strength to get his point across. He could not do it with harsh words the way that I can. He can only use his hands, like a little elementary school boy striking out at a bully on the playground.” She giggled humorlessly, “It is pathetic.”
“What does that have to do with anything that I just said?”
Tears were leaking from my eyes now. I couldn't understand what was wrong with her.
“I am not going to run from one I deem insignificant. He does not scare me. He is an annoyance and an inconvenience but nothing else. In fact, I find his appointment as leader of this band of ragtag survivors to be incredibly entertaining. I do so want to see how it all plays out.”
“You miss James! That’s why you’re being like this!” I accused her before putting both hands on her face and shaking her slightly. Instantly, she pushed my hands away. After sitting up, she pointed at me.
“Do not mention his name to me again! I will not tolerate being lied to! I had every right to know the truth about him from the very beginning. Instead, he lied to me! Do not bring him up again, Violet!”
She jumped up, straightened her tank top and her shorts, and huffed off.
I put my face in my hands and cried. They were the first tears that I would shed on Pangaea. Many more would come over the years, but the tears that streamed down my face that day were among the most painful.
They came when I realized that my sister was losing her fight. It was being stolen from her by our father, whom I loved tremendously but hated at the same time for what he was doing. I could not stand his violent treatment of her or the way she was beginning to submit to it. I wondered briefly if she was punishing James in her own way by allowing herself to suffer. If she was in pain, and he knew it somehow, his guilt over being unable to protect her would drive him insane.
No, my mind told me gently, She’s punishing herself for getting so close to James.
For once, my inner voice was right on the money.
The conflicting emotions were far too complicated for a girl my age. Through them I could see one solution, clear as the Pangaean morning:
I had to find James.