by Jeff Strand
"Are we sure there's a finite distance that we're supposed to walk? Maybe there's some kind of puzzle to solve first. Like, I don't know, maybe there's a moment of self-actualization or some sort of major epiphany we have to reach within ourselves before the Cyclops's lair shows up. That sounds kind of goofy, but I really don't feel like we're making any forward progress."
"Look!" says Harriett, pointing ahead.
It's far off in the distance, but we can see something sparkling in the center of the path.
"So...maybe the puzzle was that we needed to realize there was a puzzle?" I ask.
"Perhaps."
"This place is freaking weird."
"I agree."
We walk with renewed enthusiasm. As we get closer, we can make out that the sparkling is coming from a door. Just a door, with nothing behind it that we can see. It looks like it's made out of crystal.
"As an unemployed person, I've gotta say, a diamond door would be a nice souvenir from our journey," I say.
"If somehow we're allowed to keep the door afterward, you can have it."
"Thanks."
We're almost there. There's a picture engraved on the door, but we're still too far away to see who it is, though it doesn't look like a Cyclops. There's nothing visible behind the door; it's basically just a large rectangle of crystal blocking the path, but the desert continues far past it.
A voice whispers in my ear. It's a raspy, low, male voice. "A choice..."
"Huh?" I ask.
"What?" asks Harriett.
"Did somebody just whisper 'A choice' in your ear?"
Harriett shakes her head. "No." Then her eyes widen, and she nods. "Wait, now they did."
"You may regain what you have lost..." the voice says.
And then we're close enough to see the door. Engraved upon it is a picture of Becky.
It's her. It's not just a beautiful woman who looks like her. The image of my wife Becky is on this crystal door, looking happy. It's not from a specific picture I've ever seen, but she has the short haircut she got and immediately regretted on her fortieth birthday. This was a few months before the terrible call we would receive from her doctor.
"What do you see on the door?" I ask.
"My parents," says Harriett, her voice quivering.
"It's my wife."
"Turn back..." whispers the voice. "And your lost one will be waiting for you..."
My knees wobble but I keep myself from falling. I reach out and brace myself against the door, which has no doorknob. I think I'm too stunned to start crying, but the flood of tears is quickly building up.
Harriett places her hand on my shoulder. "My parents wouldn't want me to turn back," she says.
"I understand."
"I am not going to try to sway your decision."
"Thank you."
And now the tears are here. Becky. I could have her back. Right now. All I have to do is not put myself at risk of dying a horrific gory Cyclops-related death, and we'll be back together.
We could pick up where we left off.
I'll drive her home and everything will be back the way it was.
There'll be a lot to tell her. I'll parse it out in small doses so as not to overwhelm her with all that's happened to me since she passed away.
I'm glad I didn't sell our house, or get rid of any of her stuff yet. Unless it has burned down while I've been away, the house is the same as it was when she went into the hospital for the last time.
I can get my job back. If I call Dirk, explain that he was right, that I was overcome with grief and should never have behaved that way, he'll let me have my job back, no problem.
This was my reward for going on this journey.
I get my wife back.
And, of course, as these thoughts go through my head, I know that I'm not going to turn around. Nobody in their right mind would trust a disembodied voice offering to bring back their dead spouse.
She could come back and still have cancer. I could watch her die all over again. Or she could live forever in agony.
She could be a zombie.
She could be a pile of her cremated ashes, alive and aware.
She could be buried alive, buried deep, buried where I'd never find her.
I'm not turning back.
Will I regret this decision for the rest of my life?
Honestly, I don't think I will.
This isn't my destiny. This is Harriett's destiny. And we're going to fulfill it.
"Sorry, creepy voice," I say out loud. "I reject your offer."
Harriett smiles and takes my hand. "Thank you."
"Now what?"
"Now we kick the door down."
We kick together. It didn't take much. The door collapses into a million pieces, like it was made of paper-thin glass. Not made out of diamond, alas.
Now we're standing in the doorway of a crappy looking hovel. The ceiling is high enough to accommodate his fifteen-foot height, but otherwise, it's a much smaller place than I'd expect for a Cyclops that has an entire town in its grip of terror. There's some oversized wooden furniture and a sofa, but the place looks like a meth den.
The Cyclops is lying on the sofa, eye closed, snoring.
There's a wooden crate in the corner. It's big enough to hold Maraud, though he wouldn't be comfortable, and I can hear soft banging from within. He's in there for sure.
"Don't set him free yet," Harriett whispers. "I'm going to drop the poison into its mouth."
I nod and try to remain perfectly still. Harriett will only have to take about ten steps to reach the sofa. If I were a Cyclops of that size, I'd at least kidnap some people and force them to build an extension to the place. This is no way to live.
Harriett takes her first step. The floorboards creak. Of course they do.
Fortunately, the Cyclops is able to sleep through the sound of Maraud pounding on the crate, so these creaks may not wake it up. Moving carefully but quickly, Harriett moves across the room. I try not to breathe too loud. If the Cyclops doesn't wake up, all she has to do is shake the drop of poison into its conveniently open mouth, and we'll be done.
Her foot comes down on a particularly noisy floorboard.
The Cyclops continues to snore.
That's right, I think. Keep snoring. Keep snoring, you son of a bitch. Be as loud as you want. It'll all be over in a few seconds.
Now Harriett is hovering right over the creature. I feel like I may have a heart attack. If I do, I swear that I'll do it quietly and try to collapse onto something that won't make much noise.
She reaches for the charm on her bracelet.
The Cyclops opens its eye.
Its arm shoots out like it was spring-loaded, grabbing Harriett by the neck. It sits up, not letting go, then stands up all the way, hoisting her into the air.
I frantically look around for something I can use as a weapon. I pick up a chair. It's made for a giant and kind of unwieldy, but should do some serious damage if I can swing it hard enough.
The Cyclops prepares to fling Harriett across the room, then seems to notice the bracelet. It furrows its brow.
I think Harriett is trying to say something to it, but all she can do is make choking sounds.
The Cyclops lowers her to the floor.
Then it punches her in the arm, hard. I can hear the crack as the bone breaks. Harriett cries out in pain and falls to her knees.
The Cyclops loops a talon around the bracelet and snaps it free. Then it picks Harriett up by the neck again, lifts her to her feet, and flings her across the room.
She crashes onto the floor, mercifully not landing on her broken arm.
I thrust the chair at the Cyclops, but it's too heavy, and my effort is so inept that I'm surprised the creature doesn't laugh in my face. It grabs the chair from me and hurls it at Harriett, just barely missing her head.
It swings at me, talons out. I get out of the way, but it's so close that for an instant I can almost see five red streaks across my
chest.
The Cyclops places the bracelet in its palm. Then it raises its other palm and slams them together.
Harriett sits up. Her scream of "Noooooooo!" is implied even though she doesn't actually say anything.
The Cyclops grins and tosses the flattened charm away.
We are so screwed.
Harriett stands up. There's no bone protruding from her arm, but just from the way her arm is dangling I can tell that it's a massive fracture.
"Is that the best you can do? My arm is still attached!" she shouts at the Cyclops. "That's a pitiful effort! You should be ashamed of yourself!" She is shouting these things through a grimace of pain, but it's far more eloquent than I would be if my arm had just been broken.
I wish we had the opportunity to call for a time-out and discuss our plan. What the hell do we do now?
The Cyclops stomps toward Harriett, cracking floorboards with each step.
She stands her ground, apparently willing to fight it with one arm.
"Hey! Over here!" I shout at the Cyclops, for no reason that I can fathom. But the creature doesn't let me distract it. It keeps going for Harriett.
I glance over at the flattened charm in the corner. We've had a lot of terrible luck during this adventure, but we've also had some good luck, and maybe the drop of poison is still in there...
I rush across the hovel and pick it up.
The Cyclops swings at Harriett, a blow that will remove the majority of her facial structure if it connects, but she ducks underneath its claws and hurries across the room, to the opposite corner from where I'm standing.
I can't believe it. The charm is flattened but didn't rip apart. We're still in business.
Except that now I can't unscrew the lid.
The Cyclops looks at me, then at Harriett, then back at me, as if trying to choose which one of us to kill first.
I tug on the lid. It won't come off.
I need something to puncture it with.
I hope the Cyclops chooses Harriett. She'll make it through one more attack, and that'll give me time to figure something out.
The Cyclops chooses me.
It reaches out toward me with both hands and lets out a roar that shakes the entire hovel like an earthquake.
Okay, I have a plan. A terrible, terrible plan.
"I surrender!" I say. "Take me and leave the girl alone!"
I very much doubt that the Cyclops understands me. All I need it to do is sort of grasp my meaning enough that it doesn't feel compelled to immediately slash me apart. I haven't fully analyzed its offensive strategies, but it seems to do the "swipe" thing when it feels threatened. Otherwise, it picks people up.
I stand in place. The door isn't that far away. I could make a run for it pretty easily.
The Cyclops strides toward me.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is going to end with me dying.
The Cyclops grabs me with both hands and lifts me into the air.
That part of my plan worked. The part that didn't, and it's a doozy of a problem, is that it has grabbed me so that my arms are pinned to my sides.
Since I really need my arms to make this work, I'm now going to get my head bitten off.
I feel weirdly calm about this.
Maybe it's because the part of my brain that controls fear has shut down to protect me.
Or maybe it's because Harriett is rushing across the room to rescue me.
She kicks it in the ankle with enough force to shatter a human ankle. The Cyclops isn't impacted anywhere near that much, but it does take a swipe at her.
My arm is free.
Not the arm I wanted, but I'll take it.
I take the bracelet out of my other hand, then jam the flattened charm against one of the Cyclops's talons, poking a hole in the center.
Then I slam the charm, which now has sharp corners, directly into the Cyclops's eye.
It goes in deep.
I don't stop. I keep pushing, trying to get the entire charm in there. Ooze covers my fingers.
The Cyclops lets out a howl of pain and rage and lets me go. I hit the floor, then fall on my ass, because in my life a moment of heroism should be followed by something undignified.
Harriett pulls me to my feet and we scurry away from the creature, which is going absolutely ballistic, stumbling around, swinging its arms, and crashing into things.
It doesn't seem to be dying, though.
"I don't think it worked," I say, which wasn't very smart, since the Cyclops is blind but not deaf. It turns its head toward us, roars, and comes at us.
It crashes into the wall.
A blind Cyclops is a lot less threatening than one that can see, but there's not much room in this place to keep avoiding its frenzied attacks. We'd better set Maraud free and get the hell out of here.
The Cyclops trips over the couch.
Harriett and I hurry over to the crate. I try to raise the lid, but it won't move. Obviously, it's locked, or else Maraud would have done it himself.
If I were a Cyclops, where would I keep the key?
The Cyclops takes a vicious swing at Harriett.
The wall is spattered with red.
But it's red...goop. It's not blood. It came from the Cyclops's arm.
It takes another swing at Harriett, and I see a thick blob of its arm fly off.
Maybe we can just push the crate toward the doorway. Maraud can't be that heavy.
The Cyclops comes right at us again. When its legs strike the crate, the skin bursts into a sloppy mess. It tumbles forward and hits the floor, flesh coming off like it took a direct shotgun hit.
It gets back up.
Harriett points to the wooden chair. "I'll use my good arm if you use both of yours."
Together we pick up the chair and slam it into the Cyclops. A huge portion of its skin and insides hit the floor, leaving behind a goop-covered skeleton.
It takes a swing at us and its skeletal arm flies off.
It throws back its head to bellow in rage. Goo sprays out of its neck, and then its head falls off, exposing most of the skull as it splatters against the floor. The rest of the bones drop to the floor.
Somehow, impossibly, we just killed ourselves a Cyclops.
I use one of its arm bones to pry open the crate. Maraud is in there, packed in ice. Harriett throws a filthy blanket on him as he looks around, shivering.
"I get that you two did all of the heavy lifting at the end," he says, "but I'll give anything if you'll let me hoist its skull in front of everyone."
* * *
When we step through the doorway, we're immediately back in Rapport, at the cave entrance.
An angry mob is waiting for us.
Jeannie, who is standing in front of at least a hundred townspeople, looks surprised to see us. "Oh, hi," she says. "I was just finishing up my motivational speech."
Maraud hoists the Cyclops skull into the air, and everybody cheers.
EPILOGUE
Harriett and I sit in the doctor's office. Her arm is in a sling. They don't have X-Ray equipment in Rapport, but the doctor tells Harriett that the break is "very bad" but that "you're not gonna die."
We'll take it.
Earlier, a couple of teenagers, breathless and sobbing, ran back to inform everyone that they were able to walk past the edge of town.
Rapport is still in the same spot. It's just that now the residents can leave the way we came in. I hear murmuring from some of them about how Rapport is a perfectly good place to live, and now that there's no Cyclops to fear, there's no reason to leave. Others are already gone. I assume this is going to be one hell of a news story that few people believe.
"Did I mess things up for you?" I ask Harriett. "Should I have thrown the charm to you and let you jam it into its eyeball?"
Harriett laughs and shakes her head. "No. What you did was perfect. I still consider my destiny properly fulfilled."
Earlier, Sheriff McGarnet gave us a half-hearted apology, but then burst into te
ars and gave me a huge hug, so I think she appreciates what we did.
* * *
The townspeople are in the park, dancing around a celebratory fire. They've already torn down the totem poles. There's laughter and music and food and no news crews yet.
"I think I'm going to stay," says Maraud.
"Really?" I ask.
"Not forever. But for a while. Don't mind people hailing me as a hero. Maybe I'll run for mayor. Think I'm done with fighting, so politics may be the next step."
Jeannie laughs. "Well, I'll miss you, big guy, but I can't wait to fly home to my grandson. The shop is where I belong. Though I may take more days off in the future. We'll see."
"What about you?" Harriett asks me.
I shrug. "I'll go home, I guess. Find a new job. This has been one hell of a distraction, but I think I'm ready to move into a smaller place, mourn some more, and return to a normal life."
"Do you regret...?" Harriett trails off.
"No. That would have been insane. No way was there not an ironic twist built into that choice." I look over at Maraud. "By the way, do you really have to keep that thing with you all the time?"
Maraud pats the top of the Cyclops skull. "Yes, I do."
"Okay. What about you, Harriett? You've got this whole new world to explore."
She smiles. "I know. But first, I'm going to return to South Dakota and speak to Seth's family. They need to know that he died bravely and that they should be proud of him. At some point I'm going to make my way to Ireland and tell his daughter about what her father did. Once I have fulfilled those moral obligations, I am going back to the tavern where I kissed Mitchell so that I can kiss him a great deal more."
"I'm sure you can find other guys," I say.
"Perhaps I can. If I meet them along the way, I'll be very pleased."
"You do know that you need to go to a hospital and get your arm set in a cast and stuff first, right?"
"Yes."
"Uh-oh," says Maraud, pointing. "There's the first news crew. Who wants to be on TV?"
"I do," says Jeannie, standing up quickly.
"Evan?"
I shake my head. "Actually, I don't."
Maraud looks at me like I'm a dullard, but shrugs. "Harriett?"
"No."