by L.C. Barlow
Chapter 29
THE MASTER
I remember the lemon tasted particularly sweet that day.
I remember just how the curtains parted to let the sunshine through, into the white bedroom.
How delicious the sounds of my footsteps were, going down the hall.
How the greenhouse's flowers collided like paints.
There were saints in every breath.
What I mean is, I knew exactly what I would do.
It was noon when I made my way back through the forest with the thin trees, taking the same path as the one I had treaded under Cyrus's command.
This time, I carried things with me - things that I knew the bright man might want.
When I made it to the porch of the Victorian-looking home, I saw it for what it was, not what it was made to appear, and when I stepped into the empty living area, with its one chair and the one being residing in it, I recognized that the man with lightning in his body was not sick. He was trapped.
He turned his head to look at me and smiled. "Back, are we?"
"Of course," I said.
"Come to try and kill me again?"
"Never."
I dropped my backpack on the floor, and a metallic clunk! resounded.
"I was wrong about you," I whispered.
The man peered at the bag on the floor and began uncurling himself from the soft chair. "You are not the only one who is surprised."
I told him, walking just a few steps about the empty den, "I asked myself, why doesn't that man do something? Why doesn't he fly out into the night and destroy Cyrus and all of his followers and save me? Why does he cut pieces of himself off and send them out into the world in people that are sent his way? And then I realized..."
But I did not finish the thought. Instead, I returned to my bag, stooped, and opened it. I brought out an urn and set it before him. "Roland," I said.
The man with stars in his body stood from his chair, and he dropped his blanket into the seat. He strode to me with a determined step, his body looking strong and lithe suddenly, the lightning in his veins burning brilliantly.
He touched the urn slowly, held it gracefully, and brought it to himself. He twisted the lid off and peered within. His black eyes darted to me and stared.
"They kept me in the basement until his body was dust. I couldn't bring him back. I tried.
"But at least now Roland isn't there to die Cyrus's deaths for him anymore. He is finally at peace."
I pulled the second object out of the bag. "I realized, though, long after I had left, long after I had resurrected the first ones with what you gave me, that these rooms are white." I looked about me. "All of them are as white as the rooms in Cyrus's."
I shook my head. "The box has been here before... or one like it. And this place... it isn't your home. It's your prison." Within my palms, I held the red velvet creature - Cyrus's prized possession. I had stolen it from him easily, for he had over-estimated my weakness, my depression at losing Roland; he had also under-estimated my sex. As soon as he told me he never thought of me as a woman, I knew it was a lie.
As I stood in the room with the brilliant stranger, I could have sworn I felt the box breathe.
"I do not think," I continued, "that this is the only box in the world. I do not think Cyrus is the only man who believes he's God. But I do believe you do away with them - all these monstrous things and people." I looked at the brilliant strikes in his flesh, the fire that smoldered inside him. "If there's anyone in the world that can burn the damned thing, it's you. If there ever was a place where these things were destroyed," I looked about the white home again, "this is it."
I stood from the bag on the floor and took a step towards him, so that we were only a foot apart. "And if I were Cyrus, and had managed to find a way to lock up something like you inside a place like this, if that is indeed what he has done, I'd make sure I left the key where no other person in the world could look without going insane."
I placed the box in the brilliantine stranger's warm hands. "I cannot do it on my own," I whispered. "I cannot kill him."
"I know," he said, and I thought I saw a smile begin at the edge of his lips.
"That is why I started searching my mind for anyone I knew who could and would be willing to do what I cannot. All I could think of was you.
"I realized it made no sense why you had not killed him. I was trapped from seeing the truth. You were trapped from making me see."
The man eyed the box and set it, as well as the urn in his right hand, on the floor gently. When he righted himself, I promised him, "I will do whatever you ask."
He placed a hand on either of my shoulders and brought me close. "After this ends, you are not going to be on this island anymore. Where you will be, there are no men who can resurrect themselves, there are none who can kill people with a word, none who can use boxes to destroy people's minds. There are no men with lightning in their veins. Most likely, we will never cross paths again. Where we are is a quilting point beyond the norms of humanity. But you will never lose what I gave you."
I nodded to him as he spoke, and I could feel a warmth and tenderness enter me as he touched my arms. "Even while you are out there, and a normality sinks in far kinder and simpler than anything you have ever experienced, you will carry a piece of this with you, into that normal world. I want that this should help you.
"You were not wrong about me. I can and will kill him. I will destroy all of them. But only on the condition that you will never try to bring it back. I must know you can let it be, and that when you do resurrect souls from death, it will never be to revive such a world as where you have lived. You must promise me."
"I swear," I said. "I would never want this again."
"And above all, you must not become like him."
"You mean Cyrus?" I asked. He nodded. I almost laughed. "Never."
"Because you are not wrong," he said. "There are other boxes, and they offer the most wondrous of things. It is too easy to lose oneself in this world. It is too easy to be trapped."
I assented and swallowed hard as he gave one curt nod, stepped away from me, and picked up Cyrus's box from the floor. "You should go now," he said. I did as he asked, only looking back once.
He was inspecting the box, his body beginning to shine.
Before I went to the police station, before I confessed it all and stood in their simple cream hallways with my bruises and scars, I stopped at the edge of Cyrus's property to see if things had changed. For the longest time, it looked no different to me, and I feared that it never would be.
Then, in one of the windows, like the smallest flake of a beginning snow, I saw one brief flash of light. Then in all the windows there were flashes, like a lightning storm had broken out inside, and then finally fire could be seen from the roof.
They are dying, I thought, all of them, finally. I was correct, for the most part... except that, as I would later discover, there was one important person missing. Alex was not there and would escape it all.
Where I sat in the car, there was the faint smell of blood, a little bone. But on that property, near these woods, that was not unusual. Not a soul could have understood the difference.
If one had cared to listen, though, just the right distance away, he would have heard it. The high-pitched squeal, not unlike that of a drill, but just heightened somehow, as though it belonged in a slaughterhouse. But then again, on that property, near those woods, in that city, not a soul may have understood the difference.
But I understood. And my heart was warmed.