by S. E. Sasaki
Rage detonated within me.
I charged into the dining room and leaped at the raven-clad monster, going for his throat. Father had been slicing into a great roast and he stopped, open-mouthed, gaping at me. The demon reacted swiftly, reaching out with his left hand to tear the great carving knife from Father’s grasp. He then turned towards me, the carving knife poised to plunge into my chest. The
false priest’s right hand shot out, with inhuman speed, grasping my throat, his fingers squeezing off my airway in a tight fist. Father lunged at Father Ulysses, groping for the carving knife, trying to prevent the priest from stabbing me. Both men fell away from the table, with me clutched in the demon’s hand, onto the floor. As they struggled for possession of the blade, I saw it happen a second time!
I let out a howl.
It was almost in slow motion, this time, while the demon fought with Father for the carving knife. The only thing I could do was bite down hard on the creature’s left arm, trying to make it stop what it was doing, but the evil priest just threw me off, as he finished his abominable attack. I highly doubted anyone else could have seen what the devil had done to Father, what he had done to my pretty, sweet Paris.
By this time, Hector had come around the table and was grabbing at me.
“Cassie!” he was yelling. “Stop it! Stop it, I say!”
I was hollering at them all to “Get out! Get away! Let me handle this! Run! Run! Run!”
But none of my family paid me any heed and I saw Mother and Helena rush to Paris’ side, to see if she was all right. Just then, the demon jumped Hector from behind. The evil priest grabbed Hector’s dark, wavy hair, his taloned hand fisted in Hector’s brown curls, and he tore Hector’s head back. In an instant, he was violating my beloved Hector and I dropped from Hector’s suddenly limp and lifeless arms.
I snarled in inflamed fury, as I saw the light of life extinguish in handsome Hector’s eyes. Madness rampaged supreme in my mind then, as I vowed I would not let this creature live. I hurled myself at the intruder. He swung the knife at me. I caught his stabbing hand by his wrist, tearing at the fiend’s skin, gagging at the wretched odor of this malevolent demon. I resolved not to release the impostor, yet he almost casually threw me off. I flew over the dining room table, sliding through laden dishes, candlesticks, crystal glassware, and sterling silver utensils, dragging the entire Easter Sunday meal onto the dining room floor. Everything landed with a great crash and I slipped and scrambled amongst the broken dishes.
As I finally regained my footing and went for him again, I was panting madly. The black-garbed fiend had grabbed Mother from behind now. He spun her around to face me and, with astonishing speed, punched the purplish black, long, thin, whip-like proboscis—that lay hidden beneath his human-appearing tongue—up her right nostril. Her head was flung back with the assault, only a soundless gasp escaping her open lips. I saw bulges flow, like peristaltic waves, along the proboscis from Mother’s nose to the demon’s mouth. Then he dropped her lifeless body like a sack, amongst the roast potatoes scattered about the floor. There was only a slight trickle of blood leaking from her nose. Her blank visage now mirrored the faces of my darling little Paris, Father, and handsome Hector.
I leaped at the monster again, teeth bared. He threw his fist and it crunched into my jaw. I felt searing pain as the bone splintered in my face. I hit the edge of the dining room table, falling not far from Mother’s prone body.
Helena backed away from the fake priest, her eyes wide like full moons, her mouth open to release a scream that never came. She raised her hands up to cover her face, as she shook her head in denial at what she was seeing, horror painted all over her dainty features. She, at least, had the sense to completely cover her nose.
I roared a savage battle cry, as I came at the monster again, leaping up onto the table to come at him from above. He would not get Helena. I would not let him. I had to protect her, at least!
The creature’s proboscis shot out towards my nose and I snapped at it. I caught it between my teeth and did not let go, grinding my incisors as tight as I could and I pulled, twisting around. The end of the putrid-tasting, snake-like tube wriggled between my gnashing teeth, tearing and sucking tissue right off of my tongue, causing me to almost pass out with the pain. But I was determined to tear it out of the demon’s face, if I could. The villain howled in fury, an uncanny shriek that pierced my eardrums and left me almost deafened.
The devil incarnate seized me, raised me high above his head, and hurtled me hard against the dining room wall. My impact shattered the drywall and I hit the underlying brick wall with a gasp. I fell into the hole in the wall, the tip of the demon’s proboscis dislodged from my teeth. Unfortunately, I slumped, momentarily stunned.
“I will take care of you, in a moment,” the evil priest growled at me, his eyes glowing like two burning charcoals. His proboscis, dripping dark, black blood, coiled and squirmed like a severed worm, as it dangled from his scowling mouth.
The dark vile priest turned and stalked towards Helena again.
He snarled, “It was never about you, you know. Again and again, forever and ever, history blames you, because history is written by idiotic poets hired by arrogant, puffed-up lying bastards who would cover up the truth. Those victors never wanted to be known, down the ages, for their avarice and their infamy. History is always rewritten by the victors, you know. Our penance, our punishment, our purgatory, our fate, is to repeat this insufferable dance, over and over, throughout time.
“I have come to pity you the most, you know, Helen. Because you never knew why and you always got the blame. And why? Because you’re beautiful? Ridiculous! What woman is worth a thousand ships? This whole drama would make me laugh, if it didn’t make me want to weep first!”
And with that, his proboscis stabbed up Helena’s left nostril, as I struggled to free myself from the hole in the wall. I whimpered, in unbearable agony and shame, as I saw her lovely head flung back.
I was too late!
The loathsome creature, dressed in the garb of a priest, rapidly sucked Helena’s brains out of her head—in no time at all—just as he had done to the others. I collapsed in defeat. I had not been able to save a single one of my beloved family. I had failed them all. I deserved to die.
The evil demon now turned to me, his gaze triumphant and his laughter mocking.
“Come at me now, doggie,” he said, wiggling his fingers to ‘bring it on’.
“You know, I see you, Gabriel. I see your glorious, golden, incandescent soul, burning brightly within this ridiculous, insulting, fur-bearing mutt of an incarnation. Just seeing you reduced to this, with no memory of who you really are, makes me want to scream.
“Over the centuries, I have come to both admire your stubbornness, your tenacity, your willfulness, yet also pity you for it. I can hardly say I am impressed by your foolish loyalty and your lack of sagacity when it comes to choosing sides. Give it up, will you? Let us all be done with this! Gabriel, when will you learn that you cannot defeat us and there is no sense in trying? What is the point, after all these centuries, after all these battles, after all this blood and death and pain?”
I glared at the monster.
“Look at you! LOOK . . . AT . . . YOU! You are a fucking dog! Where is the glory, in that? Where is the justice, in that? What does this tell you about what your master thinks of you
and your loyalty? Do you like sleeping with fleas? Do you like licking your butt? Do you like sniffing assholes? Are you proud of being a FUCKING DOG?”
The black clad demon began to change, began to transform into something brilliant and blinding and winged and breathtakingly beautiful. The now rapturously radiant angel held his arms to the sides in an open gesture of conciliation, his lovely face a mask of suffering and pathos.
“Why do we continue to play this silly charade, century after century, Gabriel, or do you prefer to be called Cassandra? Horn-blower, whistle-blower, never heeded, whatever you are, I have thou
ght carefully about this for a long time. Over and over and over again, we enact this pathetic dance.
“Why?” he hollered, in a voice so loud, it shook the house like thunder.
“Why in Hell are we doing this?” the demon rasped. “Why do we repeat this tale, over and over and over again? Is it you? Is it? It must be you, Gabriel! It can’t be Helen. She can’t want this! It can’t be the others! Hector? Paris? Who would want to die, over and over and over again, in this miserable farce masquerading as tragedy? It can only be you, Cassandra . . . Gabriel. Will you finally come to your senses and let this all go? Let it go and thereby free us all? I beg you!
“Just . . . end . . . this,” the fiend whispered, shaking his head, almost a plea. He was too beautiful to look upon now. “End this now, Gabriel. Once and for all. How I tire of all this.
“Jesus, I need a new gig!”
The exquisitely beautiful devil, now with alabaster skin, glittering pearlescent wings, shimmering silver hair, and the face of my beautiful Helena, stared at me with centuries-old weariness in her tormented, tear-filled eyes. She spread her slender, graceful arms outward, as if pinned to the proverbial cross, and she bared her long, pale, slender throat.
“End this,” she whispered, in Helena’s gentle, loving voice. “Please.”
For I don’t know how long, I gazed in confusion at this horrible yet beloved specter. I felt a mixture of horror, outrage, hate, astonishment, admiration, regret, and despair at my beloved, gentle Helena . . . and hesitated.
Then I lunged for her throat.
A moist, purple spike slammed up my nose like a jackhammer and I saw, through my tearing, right eye, pretty little Paris, sitting up, doll-like, smiling at me hungrily, her snake-like proboscis protruding from between her puckered, shell-pink lips.
The End
What We Left Behind
What We Left Behind
Dying a thousand deaths she waited, hands fidgeting, feet shuffling, body trembling, in the Toronto Interstellar Arrivals Terminal. Most of the people waiting were like herself, well into their second century, or around there. Many were seated in antigrav chairs. Many sat in the hard, grey plasfoam seats of the terminal, with their robotic personal exoskeletons close at hand. Others stood with their hands placed on the top of their suspension canes, their antigrav belts at their waists. She could tell those because the soles of their shoes just brushed the ground. Fewer, like her, stood on their own two feet, not requiring, yet, any aids to propulsion or ambulation. She took some pride in that, at least.
Her wavering eyes constantly watched the opening and closing steel doors, guarded by four terminal guards with pulse rifles. Those thick, reinforced doors were situated right below the huge digital screens, displaying arrival and departure times of all the shuttles coming to and leaving from the space terminal.
There were also people waiting, who looked like they were in their eighties or seventies. Some even looked like they were in their fifties or younger. They were probably grandchildren or grand nieces and grand nephews or even great grandchildren. It was hard to tell, these days, how old someone really was with all of the plastic and genetic reconstructions that the young and old were going in for. Imagine, wanting to look older and paying good money for that!
Idiots.
She could tell the younger ones, no matter what they looked like. They were the ones still laughing and looking so carefree and still hopeful. They looked like they still cared. They did not look like . . . the older ones. Tired. Worn out. Just waiting.
Like her.
She tried to stop fussing with herself, her hair, her clothing, her appearance. She tried to stop wringing her bony hands. She saw herself reflected in a mirror on one of the pillars, an elderly, heavy-set, saggy-faced old woman with too much makeup for her age and genetically modified hair implants. She’d dressed in the more modern styles, wanting to look youthful but instead, she’d just ended up looking like an old fool.
What was she doing here anyway?
Part of her wanted to run away—or at least hobble away briskly—but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t do that to him . . . again.
After eighty-two years, receiving a notice that said his ship was finally returning to Earth and would be docking on this day at Toronto Interstellar Starport, had sent her into a tailspin. She had sat, staring at the announcement on her screen, her heart suddenly pounding so loudly, she could hear nothing else. Like a wild, caged animal, she wanted to flee, to escape, to run. She would have liked to have said that she had forgotten all about him, that she had put him out of her mind, had buried him in the graveyard of her past, but that would have been the most preposterous of lies. She had never forgotten him—ever—even if she had wanted to, which she hadn’t. She would never forget him, not until the day she died, and his name would probably be the last one on her lips, followed immediately by the pathetic words, ‘I’m so sorry’.
Had she not kept herself alive all of these years, with the hormonal rejuvenation treatments, the multiple surgeries, the endless anti-aging therapies, the anticancer injections, the years of meticulous diet and relentless exercise, just to be able to meet him again face to face.
Now that time was nigh upon her, when she could walk up to him and tell him the truth, and she felt choked, strangled, suffocated, and drowned in a sticky, pasty, nerve-wracked sweat. Part of her was screaming for her to flee from the terminal, like one of the rockets launching all of the time from here—not that she could, in her centurion decrepitude—but she could not. Her shame would not let her. In all of the time he had been away, and in all the time she had been regretting her choice—eighty-two years, four months, twelve days and seventeen hours—she had never managed to work up the courage . . . to write.
She squeezed the handle of her authentic, pineapple-leaf purse, tightly in both blue-veined fists. She stood in her ridiculously impractical, extremely uncomfortable, high-heeled boots, shaking, if not quaking. Her arthritic feet were screaming in agony. When she thought about how absurd she must look, her face flared in shame. The ‘Arrivals’ screen overhead suddenly flashed that the shuttle was delayed a few minutes and, although there were many groans and grumbles around her, she felt a wave of temporary relief.
A guilty reprieve of only a few more minutes!
A few more minutes for her to figure out how to say what she wanted to say—what should have been said a long time ago—though she had not figured out the right words, the right way, in over eighty-two years. She’d pay her weight in gold, right now, if those extra few minutes would help her get it right. To be honest, she knew that there was no right way to say what she had come to say. There was no going back, there was no chance to start over, there was no way to pick up where they had left off. Time was the final arbiter, wasn’t it?
Time always had the last laugh.
Why, oh why, did he want to see her after all of these years? Of course, for him, it was not that long ago. Perhaps it was to sneer and laugh at her, to show her what a mistake she had made. He would have every right. Still, he’d sent the notice—polite and yet sweet—letting her know where and when he would be arriving. That counted for something, didn’t it?
She bit her lip, fighting back tears, as she thought back to how it had been.
They had been in their late twenties, their birthdays only two months apart, when he had approached her with the crazy idea of enlisting and going off into space. They could get away from their dysfunctional families forever, and do what they wanted to do. Travel to the stars, visit the colonies in deep space, see the galaxy, be together throughout the future. It had sounded so romantic, so impulsive, so crazy and . . . irresponsible, leaving everyone and everything they knew, behind.
They had been so terribly in love.
Days spent always together, hand-in-hand, hardly bearing to be—even for a few minutes—apart. Nights had been deeply passionate, exciting and intense, full of promises of lifelong devotion and soulmates forever. She had adored him, had wors
hiped him, and loved him so deeply he meant more to her than life itself. To her, he had been the air that she breathed, the ground that she tread, the sustenance of her existence. When she stared into his dark brown eyes, she lost herself. There was nothing she would not do for him, or so she had believed, and so, when he had asked her to go to space with him, she had of course said ‘Yes.’
But when she’d said ‘yes’ to him, she hadn’t known about the child. She had not known that she would not be allowed to keep it, if she enlisted as a crew member on the colony ship. She found out later, on her own, that she would have to abort his child—their child—to go with him and how could she do that? She could not destroying the tiny fetus growing within her—his
child!—born of enthralling passion and innocent dreams and undying love. Could she have destroyed his baby—their passionate love child—without destroying who she was?
No.
Could she have told him about their child and destroyed his dreams of exploring the vastness of space, of tripping the light fantastic, of dancing among the stars?
No.
Could she have gotten on that ship anyway, carrying his child, exposing it to incredible gravitational stresses during takeoff, weightlessness in orbit, increased radiation in space, and cryogenic hibernation?
No.
They would not have let her do so, anyway. She would have been given an abortive drug whether she had consented to do so or not. So she had pretended to go along with the entire plan, to the bitter end, never telling him the truth, never letting him know that she would not be joining him. When she was not with him, she would spend hours crying out an ocean of salt and tears. How many times had she almost broken down and told him, almost begged him to give up his dreams, almost begged him to stay? But she had stayed quiet about his baby—their beautiful daughter—growing in her womb, because she would not take his dream away.