The Veil

by Stuart Meczes

  Things started out innocently enough, but after a while Del and me started to get a reputation for the wrong reasons. Like I said we was good at the game, but the problem was we knew how good, and that arrogance went to our heads…especially mine. We’d use our status on campus to get away with everythin’. We’d slack off classes n’ assignments, go to underage drinkin’ parties, get hammered and do stupid things like sleep with other guys’ girls, get into brawls, oversleep and miss practice the next day – that kind of thing. Being honest we became real little shits, but we were just kids and we were havin’ the time of our lives.

  My real problems began when I started to choose partyin’ over practice. Del wised up after a while and sorted his act out. He became the one to leave at the right time – trying to get me to head back with him and grab some sleep – but I’d be the one who always wanted to stay for that extra couple beers, or to seal the deal with the gal I’d been chattin’ to. He became the voice of reason, trying real hard to bring me back to reality, but I was having none of it, and after a while he stopped botherin’.

  Without my best bud there to help guide me, I fell in deep with a bad crowd, doin’ a ton of drugs and partyin’ far too hard. I’d come back to our dorm room later and more messed up each time, and wake up the next day in a bad way. I didn’t care about my grades all too much – I’d never been much of an academic, but it was also affectin’ my game, and that hurt. Delagio did his best to cover for me with the coach, but it was obvious to everyone what was going on.

  By then I had developed a serious drink and drug problem.

  It started to affect my friendship with Del. I was always irritable from the constant comedowns and hangovers, n’ I began to take it out on him, chewin’ him out for the smallest thing. The worst part was that Del never gave me crap back. He would just sit there on his bed and take the abuse I hurled at him, staring down at the floor and lookin’ like each harsh word was carvin’ a piece out of him. Each time I got after him, I knew at the back of my mind that I was bein’ an asshole, but I was just too damn moody to stop myself. At some point he finally tired of my bullshit attitude and requested a dorm transfer. I remember the day that he moved out, I was lying in bed with a hangover so serious it felt like a Longhorn was sittin’ on my head. Del was packin’ up his stuff and trying his best to avoid my stares, and I was trying my best to think of something to say to make things better, but I couldn’t find the right words in my scrambled brain. So then he was gone and the wall opposite mine that had always been full of posters of the greats – Mantle, Cobb, Koufax and Ruth – was suddenly bare.

  In place of my best bud, I got lumbered with an exchange student called Yegor, who couldn’t speak more than a handful of English, but would shout down the phone at his parents in Russian pretty much every evenin’. Del and me would still text from time ta time, but it just wan’t the same. We didn’t hang out with the same people anymore and we didn’t have the same connection on the field.

  I’d broken our friendship.

  *

  My Awakening was caused by a bad slug during a conference game with the Rams. If I hadn’t been hungover I probably would’ve been able to get out the way, or at least protect myself in time. But instead, I just stood there like some kind of idiot and the ball hit me right in the forehead. Bam! Lights out.

  My concussion was severe enough that I was held in hospital overnight. By the time I was discharged I was full swing into my Awakening – obviously without me having a clue. When I got back to campus there was a girl called Lisa – who I’d been trying to get into for a few weeks – just waitin’ in my dorm room. Turned out she was actually an infiltratin’ Guardian called Tara. She asked me to go with her and I agreed, mainly I think because I was still too out of it to argue. Tara took me to an underground base called Blackwall, where I met the leader, who introduced himself as Sage Navarro. I think you met him at your joining ceremony? Anyway, he tried to give me the whole bit about Pandemonia, the Ageless War and the role of the HASEA. While he was talkin’, I was barely listenin.’ I was somewhere in my own mind, terrified that that the ball had knocked somethin’ real loose in my head – either that or I was havin’ one hell of a hallucination due to the hospital meds mixing with the uppers I’d taken the day before. I mean you know from experience man, it’s a pretty crazy thing to be told. Plus at that point none of my abilities had come into play yet, so to me his explanation that I was some kind of superhuman didn’t hold water. The Sage could tell that I wasn’t in much of a state to listen to what he had to stay, so he told me to go back to college and gave me a number to call when I started to ‘experience things I couldn’t explain’.

  Two days later I discovered I could move things with my mind.

  Against the doc’s orders to get a few days’ rest, I arranged to meet up with mah ‘friends’ the next evenin’ after I was discharged from hospital. We all did a bunch of drugs and downed a few bottles of bourbon under the bleachers of the college baseball stadium. I didn’t mention anythin’ that had happened to anyone I was hangin’ with, for fear of them thinkin’ I was crazy…they weren’t exactly the understandin’ type. So when my Awakening kicked in full scale and ah started convulsin,’ the assholes thought I was having some kind of bad reaction to the drugs and bolted – leaving me thrashing about in my own piss and vomit – just so that they could cover their own hides.

  I woke up in the morning in my own dormitory bed, soakin’ with sweat and confused as hell. I was also sporting somethin’ close to a 9.8 on the headache Richter scale. I kept a bottle of water and Advil on the bedside table for those types of emergencies.

  When I reached out for the bottle, it flew right into my hand by itself.

  I remember my heart beatin’ a million miles a minute as I stared down at this pill bottle, my mind replayin’ the stories that we’ve all heard or read about some nameless person who finally did too many drugs and broke their mind. I chucked the bottle across the room, the pills spilled everywhere and I started cryin’.

  It took me a long time to calm myself down. I reassured myself that I wasn’t losing my mind, that it was just a combination of all the things I’d done to my body over the last few days taking their toll. I was tired and I was fed up with my shit behaviour. So right then and there, I vowed that I was gonna clean myself up and get back to doing what I loved most…baseball. Plus I was gonna bite the bullet and admit to Del that I’d messed up, and beg his forgiveness.

  Bu first I had to get better.

  I didn’t move from my bed the whole day and night, just lay there feelin’ sorry for myself and sufferin’ from the worst case of fever I’d ever faced. Of course now I know that it was just my soul goin’ through the Awakening, but at the time I thought it was a bad case of cold turkey. I was glad it hurt, I knew that I had messed everythin’ up bad and had no one to blame but myself.

  When daylight hit the next mornin’ I woke to find that I felt like someone had slipped me into a new body overnight. For most my life I’d been physically fit and slim, but the months of partyin’ had started to take a toll on my body. You know how this goes man, but I practically jumped out of bed n’ when I checked myself in the mirror, the person starin’ back at me was younger and healthier than I’d been in ages. I couldn’t explain how I looked, but most of all I couldn’t explain how I felt. For the first time in months I felt clear headed and focused.

  Baseball practice was that day, n’ I was already late. I grabbed my kit and literally ran all the way to the field. The coach was pissed at me but I managed to convince him to let me play. As soon as I stepped up to the mound I knew that it was going to be a good day. When I pitched, the baseballs screamed into Delagio’s mitt at well over a hundred miles an hour, I could actually see that it hurt his wrist to catch ‘em. But beyond that, it was like I had some kind of mental control over the balls. When it looked like the batter was about to connect, the ball would curve at the last possible second and they’d strike out. No one could
believe what they were seeing, most of all me. The rest of the team were going nuts, and even Del was giving me thumbs up.

  During that Saturday mornin’ training session everythin’ finally started to fall into place for me. It was just so painfully obvious that Del had made the right choice in givin’ up the bullshit and I’d made the wrong one. I realised I’d been wastin’ my time getting messed up with people who honestly didn’t give two craps about me. It just reinforced what I’d felt in my dorm room. It wasn’t about gettin’ wrecked, it was about making somethin’ of my life. That’s all that mattered…it had just taken me a lot longer to realise it than my friend. I remember that day so clearly. Standing on that mound with the baseball in my hand and the mornin’ sun on my back, Del crouching behind the batters and signalling the pitch. It was the day I got my pride back.

  The coach drug tested me that afternoon.

  Apparently the test was ‘random’ but I knew that was bull. Like I said, everyone knew what a train wreck I was, and the fact that I hadn’t been tested before had surprised me to be honest. I guess that playin’ badly wasn’t too much of a cause of concern beyond spending more time on the bench, but doing an overnight reversal and suddenly playin’ out of my skin. Well that was somethin’ that couldn’t go ignored.

  I tested positive for traces of coke, molly, pot and speed. Maybe I could have gotten away with the weed, or maybe even the coke, but the ecstasy and speed was a definite no. The worst part of it was seein’ the disappointment on my coaches’ face. He’d been hopin’ as much as I had that the results would somehow miraculously come back clean – he didn’t want to get rid of me as much as I didn’t want to leave, but the rules are the rules. As quick as spit I was dropped from the team.

  I was broken. The same day I had finally realised what I wanted from life was the day it was taken away from me.

  I went back to bed and didn’t speak to anyone for two days. I ignored Yegor when he started mouthin’ off at me in Russian and pointin’ at the pills which were still scattered all over the carpet, and I ignored the seven calls and four text messages from Del, as well as the knocks on my dorm door. I was too busy feelin’ sorry for myself.

  I kept a bottle of Jack’s underneath my bed. I knew it was a bad idea, but I pulled it out and just started drinkin. It might sound stupid, but without baseball I felt like I had no purpose left – it had been mine and Delagio’s dream since we were tots, and now I had a blemished record, there was no way that I would ever make it into the professional league.

  I got drunk and then I got angry. Started trashing my dorm room hard. I mean like yankin’ books off shelves, smashing my TV, rippin’ the blinds down, throwin’ my mattress off the bed, that kind of thing. When there wasn’t much of anythin’ left to break, I started on the furniture. I threw the desk chair against the wall where it smashed into like fifty pieces – which was pretty odd considerin’ it was made from solid wood. But it was when I yanked at the wardrobe door and it tore off right into my hand like a fold of cardboard, that I started to get weirded out. I snapped it in half without a second thought…this door that was made from solid wood two inches thick. It was then that I remembered the words of that Sage, which I’d thought was all a part of my imagination.

  ‘Call us when you experience things you can’t explain.’

  My strength was somethin’ I sure as hell couldn’t explain. Nor could I explain why it seemed like I’d been given a new body overnight…or the way that I’d managed to get a bottle of Advil to float into my hands when I’d reached for them, and controlled the angle of a baseball just by thinkin’ about it. It might have been to test myself, or maybe to prove to myself that I wasn’t actually going bananas, but either way, I reached out my hand again right there in the middle of the room and willed all the pills from the spilled bottle to come to me. The pills didn’t move an inch, but the bottle went zipping right into my hand again, followed by a Russian-to-English phrasebook and DVD player – which smacked into me so hard it knocked me right off my drunken feet and into my open wardrobe.

  I started freakin’ out again, crying hysterically as I scrambled out of the mess of hangers n’ clothes and stood back up. Still trembling and sobbin’ like a little girl, I held out my hand again, petrified of what would happen. Long story short, by the time I called the number that Sage Navarro had given me, I had a broken lamp, a smashed TV, two glasses, a poster, and an American History textbook flying around the room.

  The Guardian – Tara – came again, and when I finally let her in the room she assured me that I wasn’t losing my grip on reality. That just as the Sage had tried to explain, I was a Chosen and that meant I had abilities no normal human could explain. I returned to Blackwall, and this time when the Sage spoke, I was all ears.

  *

  I didn’t see Kieran Delagio again for another three years.

  I’m not really sure why I didn’t call him. I told myself it was because my new world was dangerous and that it would be safer if I kept him at arms length. But if I’m being honest, I think its because I was still ashamed of the way I’d acted durin’ college, as well as jealous of his success with the Longhorns – which I never stopped followin’. It just reminded me of all the ways that I’d let him and myself down.

  I joined the Alliance almost straight away, and found my second callin’ in life. Discoverin’ that there was this whole other world out there, full of all these dangerous species, and that it was up to Guardians like me to keep them in check…it gave me something to be proud of again.

  Not to mention, I felt like an absolute badass.

  I was real good at telekinesis. In fact I was one of the best the Alliance had. It made me happy to naturally excel at somethin’ again, and I worked hard practicing the skill day and night, just like I had with baseball, ‘til I’d honed it to a level that hadn’t been seen before.

  I started my career with the HASEA as a recruit Guardian for a unit called Gladiator. They were a second response team, used as backup for the primary Hunter squads in big missions. But it wasn’t long before my hard work and dedication to the Alliance was noticed by Sage Navarro. Within two years I’d worked my way up to a primary squad, and in my third year the Sage made me second in command for a stealth Hunter unit called Silence. It was our task to take on the jobs that required a bit more finesse, the ones that would have us in and out without anyone ever knowing that we’d been there.

  Guns were out of the question…too loud for the sensitive ears of Pandemonians – even with silencers – so beyond learning close combat to a ridiculously high level, we all had to learn how to use our skills to be most effective in covert operations. For me that meant learnin’ how to become deadly at range with telekinesis. At first I thought about using a baseball to honour my old passion, but that would have been too big and clumsy, so that’s when I came up with the idea of the apotrope marbles. Yep that super popular weapon among us Kinesists was the brainchild of yours truly. How’s that for glory.

  I loved being a Guardian. Just when everythin’ I cared about had been taken away from me, these strangers had come along and given me a renewed sense of purpose. I was part of this amazin’ oddball family – some of them previously wealthy and successful, others lost souls, dropouts, rejects and outcasts, and some just completely average in every way…the wallflowers no one noticed. This massive group of complete misfits, who in another life wouldn’t have had more than one word to say to each other, but had become brothers and sisters through a universal callin’ to a higher purpose. It was awe inspirin’.

  My slide back into addiction was slow.

  It started with women. I’d never made any secret of the fact that I loved the company of the fairer sex, and I used my new skills and improved intellect to win them over at bars and clubs. Pretty sleazy I know, but I never confessed to be an angel. I’d never had much trouble gettin’ them before, but it became so easy that I grew frustrated. I think if I’m being honest, I just wanted to meet someone who was pa
rt of the same world as me, who could relate. Someone I could actually love.

  Someone like Rachel I guess.

  Anyway, I was lookin’ in all the wrong places – findin’ a perfect match rarely happens in a bar or a club. I should have looked within the Alliance itself, but we were told that relationships between Guardians were frowned upon and I didn’t want to jeopardize my callin’ like I had with my baseball.

  So I kept hookin’ up with all these girls and feelin’ worse and worse about myself each time. Thinkin’ back, I guess it also didn’t feel the same without Del at my side. We’d always chatted to gals together…we’d been a team, and although I’d found this new group of people I really cared about, there was a void in my life that I knew only my closest friend could fill. I remember the exact point I popped a drink – I’d been teetotal from the moment I’d trashed my dorm room. It was during a joinin’ ceremony about six months after I’d become part of Silence. As usual I’d asked for water in favour of champagne. No one ever questioned why I didn’t drink – there could have been a variety of reasons – the most obvious being that I was part of an important execution and exfiltration unit, which required a serious level of focus.

  But as I looked around at all these smiling, happy Guardians in the Feasting Hall of Blackwall, the void inside me grew so big that I needed to numb the depression. I asked for a glass of champagne, which turned into four, which ended up as three bottles and me passed out on my bed. You know as well as I do that because of the enhanced senses of a Chosen, we’re more susceptible to intoxication than most humans, a lesson I learned the hard way.

  The drugs came soon afterwards. There was never any danger of being caught in an official capacity. In the early naughties the Alliance didn’t – and still don’t – drugs test. I knew that I was not only riskin’ my position in the HASEA, but also the lives of the other members of Silence with my habits, so I always managed to keep it to a controllable level. I kept my addictions a secret – going off-base to meet party girls, drink and do drugs with them – n’ then slip back in before anyone noticed I’d gone off the reservation…in more ways than one. Chosen get drunk quickly, but we also recover fast – especially if we need to. I was always up n’ relatively level-headed by the time a mission rolled around. So no one noticed that I was an alcoholic, drug and sex addict…’n because no one noticed, I kept doing it.