The Enlightened

by Dima Zales

  No fucking way, I think as he launches himself into the air.

  At the last moment, I dodge.

  Caleb lands next to me, but I’m already flying through the doorway.

  I smack the door in his face—literally. I think I hit his nose. Not caring what happens to Caleb, I instantly lock the door.

  I hear banging behind me as I run for the plane. When I find my seat, I feel real hope. Bert looks at me with no expression whatsoever. Ignoring my friend and my full bladder, I phase into the Quiet again.

  I make my way to the pilots. I’m lucky the boarding isn’t officially over as far as the pilots are concerned, or else this door would be locked. Once inside the cabin, I get inside their minds. My Guiding command is simplicity itself:

  Get in the air as soon as safely possible.

  Chapter 14

  It’s only when the plane is rolling down the runway that I allow myself a sigh of relief.

  “What the hell?” Bert says in confusion when I sit down next to him. “How did I get here?”

  Ignoring my friend, I phase in.

  The plane stops moving, along with the rest of the world. I make my way to the door and exit the plane using the inflatable evacuation slide. Luckily, this thing seems to run off compressed air and not fancy electronics.

  Monks aren’t climbing up the wheels of the plane, action-movie style. Good. No one is running after us. Even better. I think I actually escaped them.

  I just need to find out whether my friends are okay.

  I find a way back into the airport. It’s easy to navigate high-security places in the Quiet, since I don’t have to worry about security guards and can take ‘personnel only’ pathways—at least the ones that are not important enough to require keycard entry.

  I make my way to the closed gate. Caleb is frozen in the midst of a passionate argument with the mousy-looking boss.

  “Good luck with that,” I say to frozen Caleb. “There’s no fucking way you’re stopping a flight that’s already en route.”

  Gloating done, I find Eugene. He got up from where he’d been holding Caleb and looks to be walking away. He actually got farther than I’d expect given what just happened to him. I take that as a good sign. His eye is swelling, but I don’t see any other damage. I touch his forehead to bring him in.

  “Darren,” he says. “What the hell happened now?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I made it. I’m on the plane.”

  “Good. Now come, let me show you something.”

  I follow Eugene as he leads me toward the gate. Two cops are heading in Caleb’s direction.

  “Hillary’s work,” Eugene says. “Caleb is about to be apprehended. Not sure how long it will last, but there’s no way he can strong-arm his way onto your plane now.”

  “I doubt he had a chance to begin with.”

  “I guess we’ll have to wait for another flight,” Eugene says.

  “Sorry about that. As soon as I land, if you haven’t gotten onto another flight already, I’ll get Bert to help you.”

  “Thanks.

  “Where’s your sister? I want to say goodbye.”

  Without another word, Eugene briskly walks to the opposite side of the floor.

  Standing by the ice cream shop, Mira is making a makeshift splint for her arm. Hillary is standing a little to the side of her. Eugene touches them in turn.

  “Darren,” Mira says, concerned. “Your plane is already in motion.”

  “I came back to check on you guys. What happened?”

  “She tried to stop Caleb before the people I controlled got the chance to help,” Hillary says. “She’s lucky her arm is not broken.”

  “That fucking bastard,” I say. “To hit a girl...”

  “Shut up,” Mira says and walks over to me. Without warning, she kisses me with a ferocity that surprises me. She doesn’t let go, and the kiss goes on for a while.

  “Should we give you kids some privacy?” Hillary asks drily. “I can Split.”

  “No,” Mira says, releasing me. “He needs to get to New York.”

  “That was some crazy Guiding, Aunt,” I say. “As usual.”

  “She’s dangerous,” Mira says with begrudging respect. “I’m glad she’s on our side.”

  We say our goodbyes, and I make my way back onto the plane, which is a hell of a lot harder than getting off was. The evacuation slide was not designed for somebody to go up. I manage, though, and returning to my seat, I phase out.

  “You’re here because your new girlfriend wished it,” I say in response to Bert’s earlier question. “She Pushed or Guided you. You can decide what term you prefer.”

  I let him think about it as I finally go to the bathroom. On my way, I have to Guide a stewardess to stop her from bugging me with her safety mumbo jumbo. Then, as the turbulence shakes me, I realize they have those rules for a reason. It doesn’t matter, though; at this point, I’d gladly hit my head to relieve my poor bladder.

  When I return to my seat, Bert still looks like he’s processing data, not unlike those computers he’s so good at abusing. Then he snaps out of it and says, “The last thing I remember is asking her to promise me she wouldn’t use her powers to make me do things.”

  “That’s pretty ironic,” I say. “But trust me when I say she did it for your own good.” And then I tell him what happened at the airport.

  When I’m done, he says, “All right, I can see why she did it. I’m grateful even.”

  “Oh?” I buckle my seat belt. “I have to say, you’re taking this whole ‘my girlfriend can control my thoughts’ thing surprisingly well.”

  “I guess so.” Bert shrugs. “I learned a few things from watching my parents over the years. Women get men to do what they want anyway. This way, Hillary and I get to skip the unpleasant guilting, and pouting, and fighting, and screaming, and all the general manipulation people use to get their way. So in a way, this might make our relationship go smoother.”

  “Sure,” I say, and resist adding, “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “I’ve been dying to ask you something,” Bert says as the plane takes off. “What was it like the first time you ‘phased into the Quiet’?”

  “Remember how I told you I almost died falling off a bike?”

  “Yeah, also from a roof and into a manhole.” He smirks.

  “Well, I didn’t tell you the nitty-gritty details about those falls,” I say, ignoring the jibe. “Like how time slowed down as I somersaulted through the air off my bike.”

  “Doesn’t time always seem to slow down in situations like that?”

  “Maybe. But I imagine my experience was different from most normal people’s, because it got really slow. I’m talking like bullet mode from movies and video games. I was flying at an inch per second. It was terrifying.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, after I imagined what would happen when I hit the ground—from dying to becoming paralyzed—and reached a threshold of sorts, everything stopped entirely. I was on the ground looking at a copy of me still sailing through the air. Had I known about the concept of having a soul then, I probably would’ve thought that mine had left my body. As it was, I thought I was having a strange dream. When I walked over and touched my flying self to make sure he was real, I was back in the air, and shortly after that, on the ground and in agonizing pain that proved I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “There are always two of you?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “And when Hillary does it, there’s two of her?”

  “Correct.”

  “Is that why she calls it Splitting?”

  “I think it has more to do with the Split of reality, but hey, you have a point,” I say. “In any case, the first few times were like that. I experienced a severe slowing of time before phasing into a time-stopped mode. Later, the slow-down stage happened less and less until it went away altogether and everything just instantly stopped when I phased in.”

  “Fascinating,” he
says, “but I have more questions.”

  For the next half hour, I tell Bert about the Quiet, trying to ignore my growing drowsiness. When I begin yawning after every other sentence, I stop, and we agree to try to sleep for the rest of the flight.

  * * *

  “Dude, wake up,” a voice tells me from far away. “We’ve landed, and they’re finally letting us off this plane. We’ve been stuck at the gate for a freaking hour.”

  “Let me fucking sleep,” I mumble.

  “We’re in New York,” the voice says. I vaguely recognize it as Bert’s. “And you need to get to your mom, remember?”

  The reminder wakes me up enough for me to exit the plane.

  As we walk though JFK International Airport, I wake up some more and decide to call Mira.

  “Darren, do you know what time it is?” her sleepy voice says from the other end.

  I look at the top of my phone and hit myself on the forehead. “Sorry, Mira. I didn’t realize it was three in the morning.”

  “Fuck,” she says. “I didn’t realize that either.”

  “I was just calling to check on you guys. Do you need Bert to do his magic and get you tickets?”

  “No,” she says. “Your aunt worked hers. We have first-class tickets on the first flight out. Now let me sleep.”

  “Wait. Caleb didn’t give you any more shit, did he?”

  “No,” she says. “He was arrested, and the monks split incredibly fast. Your aunt didn’t exactly create a friendly welcome for them.”

  “Okay, sorry again. Go back to sleep.”

  “Bye. And next time, text me.” She hangs up.

  Aware of my faux pas, I decide not to call Lucy this early. I have a set of keys to the house, so I think it would be better to let myself in and snooze in the guestroom than wake them so late at night. I’ll just have to make sure not to accidentally spook my moms in the morning.

  I feel reassured until we get outside. The weather is horrible, and not just compared to Miami’s. It’s raining and cold.

  It takes us a horrendous half hour to get the first cab, which Bert graciously gives up for me.

  “Stay in touch, dude,” he says, closing the cab door almost in my face.

  I give the cab driver two instructions: take me to Staten Island and do not wake me up for any reason.

  That done, I fall asleep.

  * * *

  I wake up and look around. I’m still in the cab. We’re on the highway. The red digital clock under the taxi meter reads 5:35.

  “Sir,” I say to get the cab driver’s attention. “Are we far from Staten Island?”

  “I’m sorry, friend,” the driver says with an accent I can’t place. “We’re just entering Brooklyn. There’s a big accident on the road ahead.”

  All remnants of sleep gone, I watch the road.

  We’re barely moving at five miles per hour. The accident must’ve shut down one or more of the lanes, driving traffic, like a current, into a tight funnel. Only unlike water molecules, cars have drivers inside them, and when in traffic jams like these, people shortsightedly make matters worse by switching lanes over and over. I know they’re trying to pick the one that’s moving faster, but all they’re doing is slowing everyone down, more so than if they’d followed the path of least resistance like water does.

  Have you boarded yet? I text Mira.

  In about an hour, she replies. But not a direct flight. Fucking Caleb and his fucking monks.

  Don’t get me started, I type. Hope you at least got a little sleep.

  I tried. Did you get to your mom’s?

  Not yet. Stuck in traffic.

  Okay. GTG. Eugene is hungry again.

  Ttyl, I send.

  Having done the only thing I could to kill time, I’m ready for alternative ideas. With this in mind, I phase into the Quiet and exit the stopped cab.

  The sounds of rain, traffic, and thunder are gone. Despite the early hour and the weather, the highway is fairly well lit, thanks to all the cars. In the bright light of the high beams from the car behind me, I observe the stuck-in-time rain droplets with awe. Then I walk through them, and my appreciation for the wonders of nature drastically declines as these same droplets soak my clothes. Every time my body connects with the floating raindrops, they react like regular liquid. I swear I get wetter in the Quiet than when the rain isn’t frozen. The only consolation is that I’ll be dry once I get back to reality.

  I touch the idiot in a Honda who’s about to switch into our lane. I make it so that for the next few miles, he’ll be content with driving in his own lane. I provide the same Guidance to a few more nearby drivers, and then it hits me.

  Instead of trying to improve the flow of traffic, I should take a more selfish approach. As soon as the idea comes, I begin executing it. I choose a few drivers who are in our lane, Read them, and if they’re the asshole types who change lanes at every opportunity, I Guide them to do so now, even though I know it won’t improve their progress at all.

  I return to the cab and phase out. I’m dry and amused to see the cars in question get out of our way without anyone veering in to take their place, even though our lane is now moving faster. Despite this progress, all the work I did barely gains us a few extra feet.

  “Is there any way to get us to Staten Island faster?” I ask. “I’ll double the fare.”

  “I can take the next exit and go through city streets.” The cabby makes eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. “But other people might have the same idea, and reaching the exit, with the traffic as it is, will be pretty difficult.”

  “Let’s try it.”

  I phase into the Quiet and walk around in the frozen rain, making sure the other drivers around us don’t get the same idea to take the next exit. I then clear our path toward it. When I return to the real world, I let the driver handle the rest.

  “That was very strange,” the cabby mumbles to himself as we turn off the highway after a half hour of driving at a snail’s pace.

  I know what he means. As slow as our progress was, it must’ve been strange for him to see so many cars making stupid decisions by switching lanes in front of us. And it must’ve been even weirder when everyone forgot about the exit. Thanks to my meddling, even those who live off this exit missed their turn. I wonder how much they’ll be cursing themselves when this fact registers.

  I pretend not to notice the cab driver’s confusion and doze off. After about an hour of driving through Brooklyn side streets, we finally get back on the same highway. Only here, it’s nearly empty as we’re clearly past the accident.

  The rest of the way takes fifteen minutes as the cabby goes double the speed limit. He must be determined to get his double fare.

  “Here, by this townhouse,” I instruct him. I give him three hundred, which is more than double the fare, but he earned it. “Keep the change.”

  Only Lucy’s car is in the driveway, which makes sense. Sara would’ve already left for work. Which means Lucy is awake, since they always eat breakfast together.

  Approaching the door, I ring the bell.

  Nothing.

  I ring it again.

  Still no reply.

  I try calling Lucy’s phone. It goes to voicemail.

  This is odd.

  I search my pockets for my keys. Once I locate them, I grab the door handle—which, to my surprise, turns in my hand.

  Okay, this is even weirder. The door was already unlocked. Did Sara forget to lock it when she left for work?

  Walking in, I yell, “Mom? It’s me. Don’t shoot.”

  I don’t hear a response. In general, the house is very quiet.

  Shit.

  I have a bad feeling about this.

  Chapter 15

  As I make my way to the second floor of their three-story townhouse, I try to dispel my sense of foreboding. Lucy must be taking a nap, or maybe she’s in the shower.

  When I get to the second floor, it’s still quiet. This is where the living room and kit
chen are. I smell coffee and bacon, so I was right. They must’ve eaten breakfast together, and it wasn’t too long ago since the coffeemaker is still hot to the touch.

  There’s another smell, the smell that every former pyromaniac kid such as me recognizes with ease. The smell of burned paper. I look around and find the source. The usually decorative fireplace has just been used. Ash and little bits of burned paper are inside it. What’s that about?

  “Mom!” I yell as I run up to the third floor.

  No response.

  I approach the master bedroom and knock. “Mom, are you in here?”

  Nothing.

  I open the door.

  Empty.

  She can’t be far, though. The bed isn’t made, and Lucy’s OCD wouldn’t allow her to leave things in disarray for long. Leaving the bedroom, I go into the office across the hall.

  No one here either. But there’s a note on the desk.

  I am sorry, it says in Lucy’s super-neat handwriting.

  My heart starts beating faster, and I run for the bathroom.

  It’s closed.

  I knock on the door. “Mom, are you in there?” She has to be. The door is locked, and it only locks from the inside.

  No answer. When I put my ear to the door, I hear the trickle of running water. It’s not loud enough to muffle my voice the way a shower might.

  “Mom,” I say again and bang on the door in earnest. Even if she had music on and was showering, the noise I’m making would be impossible to ignore. When I still don’t get an answer, I kick the bottom of the door. “Mom, let me in, or I’m breaking down this door!”

  Still no response.

  I don’t actually break down the door as I threatened, as doing that might just injure her or me. Instead, I run back into the office and grab the letter opener from the desk. Using the blunt top of the knife-like device, I manage to unscrew the bathroom’s door handle. Taking the thing apart, I push open the door.

  The first thing that registers is that the bathtub is full of water—but something’s wrong with this water.