The Journey

by Dan O'Brien

  The Lonely sank to his knees.

  He could feel a great weight upon him.

  “I would wish nothing more than to have been great or remembered as great.”

  The Chameleon lowered himself to one knee and grasped the Lonely’s chin: hate, love, despair, hope. “Some men are born great and carry it with them all their days. Other men are made great, forged in the fires of their ambition and defiance.”

  The Lonely felt distant, floating.

  “And others were great all along and never knew, but those around him carried that greatness with them all the days of their lives.”

  His eyes welled.

  He felt tears deep within him flood to the surface.

  “I wish to have done great things, changed the lives of those who had loved me, if there had ever been any.”

  The Living Tapestry disappeared.

  Together, they stood before a door, a simple wooden door.

  The Chameleon looked at the Lonely: fate, choice, darkly, clearly. “It is not about what you have not done, it is about enjoying and experiencing what you have,” spoke the Chameleon.

  He pushed open the door, gesturing within.

  “The Keeper….”

  The Lonely took a step forward, assisted by the sure arm of the Chameleon. There was no great light, no grand pulling of energies; only a soft wind––and sounds in the distance that seemed familiar.

  Fireflies

  The sounds of gunfire vaulted over his head.

  Clouds of debris and gray smoke hazed everything about him.

  The Lonely took a deep breath, the previous steps of his journey nearly forgotten.

  He looked down at himself.

  There was a musket in his hands, the smell of black powder heavy all around him. The ground was riddled with the bodies of those fallen, their jackets and stripes something remembered.

  They were soldiers of the South.

  This was the Civil War.

  He could hear the shouting of other men, some had a southern drawl and others sounded more the part of the Queen’s English.

  Shouts of Charge and For the South echoed across the dulled fields of battle that were laid out before the Lonely. This war had seen more casualties than what would be seen in combined wars for many years to come: the epitome of wasted lives for something that was little more than a belief.

  The Lonely shook his head and reminded himself of what he had been told about the nature of war. It was always such that people fought over things that matter heavily in the moment, but very little in immense vacuum of time.

  He crouched low.

  Holding his musket tight to his body, he moved across the body-strewn battlefield, careful to duck and dodge as cannon fire threatened him from overhead.

  Bodies were thrown, men cried out, but the carnage continued.

  This was an act of inevitability.

  The Lonely could not comprehend the necessity for seeing such things. There was little to be learned in a history that had already transpired.

  “War shows how the consequences differ for the rich and powerful who choose to wage war and the poor and less powerful who fight the war. It is in this complicated act of violence that we see the inequality of men.”

  The Lonely stood tall for a moment.

  Cannon fire exploded in the air above him, dusty fire that crawled across the sky.

  “What was that? Who said that?” exclaimed the Lonely, looking around wildly.

  “Though you have seen the halls of men, you have yet to live with them, to live the horrors and terrors as acutely as those who must experience them,” spoke the voice again, though to the Lonely it felt like it was being shouted at him from all sides.

  The cannon came again, much closer this time.

  He felt the shock of the explosion.

  Reverberations crawled down his spine as if he were a crude, bone, tuning fork.

  “What is the….” began the Lonely, but the explosions came again.

  The shouting of the soldiers seemed distant, a pale echo of what they had been at first. The dark curling smoke that crawled from the ground like sentient creatures soon filled the approaching night air.

  The stars above were muddled by patches of clouds and dusty rivers of smoke that flickered across the passing skies.

  His body had gone numb.

  He stared up at the tumultuous skies in awe.

  The Lonely looked across his body as best he could.

  There was a cold wetness that crawled over his skin.

  “Am I dying?” he asked weakly.

  The sounds of the battle had been drowned out.

  “War is inevitable, that much is true. However, it will only last as long as people find in others a reason to fight. Instead of recognizing what we share, we identify that which makes us different. When war is waged it is the poor who suffer. When tyrants beat down the doors of their enemies, it is their people who reap the horrors and tragedies of war.”

  The Lonely gasped for air; his lungs felt as if they were being crushed by an enormous weight. He tried to lift his arms, but the act was too great.

  Darkness crept from the sides of his vision, blurring his sight until it consumed his vision completely. His mind floated, his body freefell though there was nowhere for him to fall.

  The voice came again. “Not yet….”

  The Lonely’s eyes snapped open.

  He checked his body in a series of erratic hand motions.

  He was still alive, in a manner of speaking.

  The sky above him was cloudy, night had not yet fallen, nor was it day. There was a miasma about the air.

  He pushed himself to his feet slowly, feeling for his center as his legs were weak beneath him.

  Buildings were stacked all about him.

  Most were rundown.

  The pavement beneath his feet was cracked and warm.

  There was tangible apprehension in the air.

  He looked around and saw that all around him stood a quiet mass of people, noise rising from them slowly. Their collective voices soon reached a crescendo and the Lonely realized that he had not heard them until that moment.

  He knew this place, it was familiar.

  Then, it came.

  The water was heavy as it struck him in a thick, continuous stream. Others around him rebounded from the water. He tried to see who was spraying him.

  White officers aimed and the water thrashed against fleeing crowds of African-American protestors as they struggled to get out of the way of the mammoth stream that dispatched them so easily.

  “The inequality of men cannot be beyond your comprehension, for it is as much a function of human life as breathing. The unfortunate truth is that people will be judged upon what makes us different and not what similarities we share. We fail to see that we all struggle, that we all rise against unfair, unequal treatment,” spoke the voice again.

  “I did not do this,” managed the Lonely as he ducked beneath the wild spray of the hose.

  A child was struck instead, lifting his small body against the wall of a passing building and then sending him tumbling across the pavement.

  “Every day we encounter injustice. Many think that a passive approach such as money or laws will solve humanity’s ills. People tend to ignore injustice and go about their daily lives, judging people with outdated, unjust beliefs. This silent inequality harms humanity the most.”

  The screams raged; the battle cries of both sides roared like a deafening symphony that would not be silenced. The suffocation of the crowd swarming around him made the Lonely panic.

  People desperate to recognized as people.

  The compaction of the all the bodies was frightening.

  The world spun; he felt as if he was going to be sick.

  A flash, a sound, and then the crowd was no more.

  He awoke to foreign sounds.

  The language was something familiar.

  He fell, an arm caught him. The arm bore an insignia
he knew well: the swastika, the symbol of the Nazi Party.

  The Lonely swallowed hard.

  He knew that he had jumped realities again.

  That he was no longer amidst a civil rights crowd, but had instead found himself at something terrifying beyond comprehension.

  The crowd swelled as it had before.

  The Nazi officer looked at the Lonely carefully.

  There was distrust in the man’s eyes.

  “Wer bist du?” called the man over the roar of the crowd.

  The Lonely panicked.

  The man’s face was close to his, grizzled features watched the Lonely carefully, waiting for a response.

  “Ich bin Deustch,” replied the Lonely slowly.

  Though he spoke the words, he was uncertain whether they were his or not.

  The officer looked at him again and shoved him forward deeper into the crowd. A pyre had been built, around which the crowed ebbed and flowed with the words that emanated across the courtyard. People threw books upon the flames in glee, the destruction of knowledge so easily thrown away.

  The voice that echoed the Lonely knew without thought.

  It was der Führer, Hitler.

  The Lonely shook his head, holding his hands over his ears.

  “I do not want to see this. I do not want to hear this,” he screamed.

  And again, the omnipresent voice came. “We never wish to see those dark spots upon which society and humanity are judged. There are these great tragedies throughout human history. These are only a glimpse of what the human animal is capable.”

  The crowd raged.

  The voice drew hate mongering like water from a raging river, flooding the shore. The people threw books, they screamed, they pounded their fists into their air. There was purpose in their blindness.

  They had found a meaning, something behind which to follow.

  “Again, we see that when a tyrant demands war, it is the poor and those without power who suffer. They bear the brunt of a nation’s shame beyond the one man who had brought about the pain. This is the nature of men, of society. We know that a few must lead many. But often, we find ourselves following unfit leaders, people who would rather drive the world into darkness than realize that they have caused the darkness and need to step away for the sake of life.”

  The Lonely tried to back away, but the crowd was like that of swells upon the open ocean in a storm. The more he pushed, the more he was pushed back.

  He fell.

  He screamed.

  He cried out: “No more.”

  But, the world would not listen.

  What was happening had happened and would happen again as long as people were afraid to stand up for what they believed in.

  The Lonely realized he had squeezed his eyes shut.

  The roaring was gone again.

  He opened his eyes slowly; afraid of what would greet his eyes this time. The savannah opened out before him, extending in every direction. Amber ground and distant jungles were spread before him.

  The sky overhead was bright blue.

  The sounds of nature crept around him.

  “Where am I?” called the Lonely, his voice echoing across the plains.

  “As man evolves, his priorities evolve with him. Or perhaps what society makes a man believe he should have as his priorities. Horrific acts of violence and genocide often go unnoticed to the eye of the evolved, cultured man. His world has become a selfish one in which he sees only what he wishes to see, for he has the luxury to craft what he wants to include in his life.”

  “What does that have to do with this picture-perfect place?” queried the Lonely, taking a few steps forward.

  “Because often in places most serene, we find the worst acts of humanity: genocide, famine, disease. These are not from a primitive past, but are catastrophes that are overlooked as men and nations move forward in search of something greater. We sometimes move about our lives, taking for granted the simple things, things that perhaps others would be killed, and often kill, for.”

  The landscape was brilliant, but something broke its tranquility: machine gun fire. The Lonely ducked, even though no bullets came close to him.

  It was a reaction of pure instinct to the sound.

  “What is happening?”

  “One cannot help but understand a connection between want and need. Civilized nations want to help, but no longer feel compelled to do so. Without interest in a region, that region suffers from its own devices. People need many things; need things that are little more than veiled wants. Eating is a necessity in life, the ingestion of necessary proteins and nutrients are essential to live. However, a life lived in excess confuses what we need to survive with what we desire to survive.”

  A helicopter pounded overhead; the wind struck the ground and created a vortex, a whirling mass of air that forced the Lonely back.

  He raised his hand to shield his eyes.

  A shadow passed over his vision.

  A thick heavy crate drifted to the ground. In thick letters the word SUPPLIES was marked on its side. The helicopter gained speed, whisked again into the skies like a winged creature of lore.

  “Supplies,” whispered the Lonely, as he ran his hand over the lettering.

  “A minor hope in a land of great distress. The only offer a greater nation has for a world so depressed.”

  The gunfire came again, this time it was close.

  He ducked low, behind the crate.

  A metallic beast rose from the savannah, riding on the heat of the day. The jeep bounced and swerved this way and that. Men hung from the sides, weapons brandished playfully in their hands, as if there were handling sticks instead of automatic weapons.

  Dust scattered around their vehicle.

  “Where are the people? Where are the ones who need the supplies?” asked the Lonely to the heavens, to the voice that had plagued him.

  The jeep roared to a stop, skidding on the ground.

  They dismounted like so many locust upon a field.

  Their jeers and cheers exemplified by the weapons they held high over their heads.

  “The strong will always control the weak. The few controlling the many with fear and violence, both physical and mental. This is the power of apathy, when greater nations, more powerful and persuasive nations, stand on their laurels and petty feuds instead of coming together for the world.”

  The men came closer.

  The Lonely could see their faces.

  A shot of panic pierced him like the point of a sharp knife.

  What could he do?

  What should he do?

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked.

  There were more shouts now.

  Beyond the men in the jeep came a crowd of men and women, elders and children. Rags covered their bodies, their figures drawn thin––near skeletons. Some carried sticks, some machetes for cutting a path through the jungles.

  The groups exchanged shouts.

  Gunfire rang in the air again.

  Woman screamed, children cried in terror.

  The Lonely watched as the men fired into the crowd without remorse. “This was created by powerful men, their lack of interest. Their bottom line has created a world like this,” echoed the voice.

  The Lonely barely heard what had been said.

  He was in motion.

  A small child: tears ran down her face.

  Her ebony skin shone with fear.

  She huddled––bony legs drawn up to her chest.

  One of the armed men turned to the crying child.

  There was nothing in his eyes.

  He had been crafted into what he was by circumstances, survival in a world where great atrocities are passed over for political crusades.

  The Lonely did all that he could: he rolled in front of the child.

  Shots were fired.

  The world went silent, numb to the Lonely.

  There was a powerful force, a shuddering of his form that he felt from the to
p of his head to the tips of his toes.