The Spaces in Between

by Chase Henderson

  The castle was barren and would be in horrible disrepair if things here actually needed to be repaired. Cameron found Adam sitting in the middle of the floor locked in meditation. He was in every way the perfect man at least physically, but to assume that the first being was actually human is a major hubris. Adam and Lilith were the archetypes for the first man and woman for any species.

  The story was always the same, too. Lilith refused to lie under him and Adam refused to view her as an equal. She ate the Fruit and left, and after two more wives God got fed up with Adam. While Cameron was an extraordinary human he was still a human regardless. So in this scenario Adam was also human.

  “I slew a monster in your realm,” Cameron said and definitely threw it at Adam’s feet. “It’s customary for the King to bestow the Knight a reward.”

  “It’s not dead and you can’t control it, because it lies outside of God’s plan.” Adam didn’t open his eyes. “Just like you, Blasphemer. It will only be a matter of time before Creation puts you back in your place so savor these moments, because you’ve made a lot of enemies.”

  “Or so you keep saying.” Cameron put another dosage of antimatter to the disease spirit. “You know what I want Adam, and I’ll take this thing off your hands if you help me.”

  “Do you think I care about these pissant Pagan spirits?” Adam replied, “They are trash in the eyes of my God. I try to stay out of their business, but they keep insisting that I am their king.” Three failed marriages and one estranged creator had made Adam very cynical. His first choose suffering and death over an eternity with him. He left the second because watching her creation disgusted him so much. The third used her knowledge from the Forbidden Fruit to regain the relationship with God that he used to have.

  “I saw Lilith on the way here. She said I was the only man that could make her laugh. Name this thing, and I’ll be on my way.” Cameron loaded another shell into his flintlock. Adam had a skill that was very unique to him – he was fluent in the Logos or True Language. The True Language was a Hebrew dialect spoken by God. Hebrew was the language that repeated itself the most across Creation. One of the goals of Kabbalah, the Kosher one, was to discover this dialect.

  There were few fluent speakers, but Adam was charged by God to name all things in creation. Unless Adam had named it, it was not part of Creation. He could not go an entire minute without reminding someone.

  “I really hate you Cameron Styles. So much that I’m willing to make a deal with you – if you can make it interesting.”

  “How about a year’s servitude?” Adam didn’t flinch. “Alright, my left hand. Your own access to the physical world.”

  “There are many people trying to find you, Cameron Styles, but there is only one of them that you fear. I want the flutter of butterflies put back in your stomach. For you to feel what it’s like to be an insignificant again. I want you to remember your place.” Adam opened his eyes. “I want you to remove the wards that prevent Lam from finding you.”

  “You have three seconds.” Cameron put the barrel of his flintlock to Adam’s forehead. “Make it a good name. Something masculine.”

  “I told you my terms,” Adam said, “I am not a mere Elemental you can threaten. Pulling that trigger would be the worse mistake of your existence.”

  “One!”

  Adam closed his eyes.

  “Two!”

  The Fillipre disease made a run for the door.

  “Three!”

  It became splattered across the walls of Adam’s barren throne room. Cameron inhaled deeply.

  “Alright, Lam can find me.” The Fillipre strand quickly reformed and spilled towards one of the broken windows. Adam stepped out in front of it and whispered in its ear.

  “Xibulba.” The writhing black mass jerked and took the form of rotting and fetid Cameron. Xibulba stared back at Cameron with a sullen and sunken green eye. Dirty red dreadlocks draped over a contorted face, and he let out a horrible scream. Cameron pierced Xibulba through the torso, and the screaming creature thrashed as he said the words of power over it.

  Adam looked smug and very pleased with himself.

  9

  Cameron shoveled four sugar cubes into his glass of pale green liquor. It quickly shifted to a cloudy color. He sipped his absinthe and held a bag of ice against his head. The tablets he rescued from Fillipre lie in his lap, but they were written in the Logos. He had a starship full of corpses that have finally stopped moving in tow. Xibulba thrashed and screamed from the room beside him.

  “Come and get me you sons of bitches.”

  The entire bridge was filled with little gray men. Their black eyes were all focused on Cameron. He raised a toast to them.

  Intermission: Six Shooter Samurai

  Sakamoto Ryoma meditated upon his impending demise. Only moments before he was enjoying a meal with colleague and friend Nakaoka Shintarou in the basement of the Omi Inn. It had been a month since Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu accepted Ryoma’s Eight Point Plan, which would peacefully return rule of Japan into the hands of the Emperor.

  The Ronin from Tosa was to remain in hiding until the Tokugawa abdicated the throne in the next month. Despite turning down a position in the new government both sides were deeply threatened by him. This was not the first attempt on his life, but it would be the last.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.” Ryoma grasped the sandalwood handle concealed in his kimono. With a flick of this thumb Shinta loosened his sword from its scabbard.

  “Oyasumi nasai,” a man in a nondescript kimono stepped through the door. He wore only one katana and his hair was uncut in the front, which told Ryoma this man was a Ronin. The man was strikingly familiar. “Hajimemashite. Watashi no Yamaguchi Jiro desu. I’ve been sent by Saigo-sama. He has heard rumors that the Shingengumi plan to the take your life in hopes that the Meiji Restoration dies with it.”

  “Fools. It’s far out of my hands now,” Ryoma said. “Or even Saigo-san’s. This is far more the united clan of Satsuma and Choschu rebelling against the Bakufu. Sonno-joi is now the will of Nihon. Repel the barbarians, revere the Emperor.”

  Ryoma stood on Edo Bay nearly a master of the sword when US Commodore Perry sailed in upon his three black ships fifteen years ago. It was a stern message. “Open your ports or we’ll blow them open.” And what were foreign goods? The foreigners would surely flood the country with Opium and Christ to overthrow the Emperor in order place the American President in his place. This may seem like the paranoid theories of a xenophobic people, but they’d already seen it happen with the British in China. The West had used their technology to rule Africa, and now had set their sights on Asia.

  “But you’re a national treasure.”

  Jiro’s katana jumped from its scabbard, cut a silver arc through the air, and split Ryoma’s skull. Ryoma had drawn his weapon out of reflex. It slid from his numb fingers, but he kicked it aside from trying to retrieve it before tripping over his own feet. He cursed himself while watching from the floor on his stomach like a dog. Shinta drew his katana, but Jiro had moved his to his left hand.

  The tip of Jiro’s sword flew through the air past Shinta’s guard that did not know how to compensate for a left hand strike, then between his ribs, and through his lung. Ryoma bellowed for the owners of the inn to come. He recognized that style – the style of former spymaster and third Captain of the Shinsengumi Hajime Saito. Saito turned his sword and the ribs cracked under the strain then snapped.

  He pulled the sword out and slung the blood. Ryoma was morbidly reminded of a Sumi-e painter cleaning the excess ink from his brush. In this light Shinta’s blood looked like splatters of ink. Ryoma screamed again and scrambled for his gun, but he couldn’t find it. Saito sheathed his katana and walked out the same way he came.

  “Somebody! Help!” Ryoma screamed. “Shinta, we’re going to get you through this. We just got to hold out. If I could find my gun…shit, they’d hear that.”

  “Ryoma…”
Shinta wheezed. “Y-your face.”

  Ryoma touched his face and looked down at his hand. It was filled with deep crimson and gray matter

  “I’m not going to make it…they’ve killed me, but now it’s all so God damn meaningless.”

  ****

  Karma is a hell of a thing.

  The Tokugawa government has been trying to kill him ever since he mediated the meeting that brought the Choschu and Satsuma clans together. The Bakufu with their swords and bamboo armor would be no match for the Ishin Shishi’s Winchesters and Howitzers, but it would never come to that. Ryoma had already made sure that Japan will not be torn apart by Civil War. Words had changed the world – not bloodshed. Not even his death would stop the words put into motion. While war within Japan came much later it was never on the scale that it could have been.

  The Tokugawa Shogunate sent twenty men to arrest him the very night after the meeting, and he still managed to get away. He stayed in Kyoto to celebrate his great victory. Sonno-joi was changing – it was becoming more than just Ronin randomly killing officials or destroying Tokugawa property. Between Choschu and Satsuma a modern, industrial army and navy would rise with the capabilities of obliterating the antiquated and lethargic samurai like the Western militaries could.

  He and his bodyguard Miyoshi stayed the night in the Terada Inn’s Plum Room. The Terada Inn was a favorite amongst young samurai, and Ryoma found one of the waitresses quite fetching. They had been drinking earlier, because the Japanese seal deals like Norse Gods. Just substitute mead with sake. He said a few things that some might find unbecoming of a samurai, but in samurai rankings he was nobody.

  Now many samurai abused their rankings to be downright rude or worse to women. He had every intention of a traditional courtship, but just wanted to get the ball rolling since that could sometimes take centuries. There was a knocking at their door, and he really hoped that he would be asking Miyoshi to get another room tonight.

  Ryoma slid open the door, and it was far better than he could have hoped. Standing in the doorway was the waitress Oryu clothed only in the light of the moon. She was soaking wet, the heat was steaming off her, and it was quite obviously cold. He had absolutely no idea what to say.

  “Sakamoto-sama!” she cried, “I saw the military from the bath house. Twenty of them came in front door – surely for you.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “No, the backyard is empty.”

  “Arigato gozaimashita.” Ryoma took off his outer kimono and lay it across her shoulders despite how much it pained him to do so. “Go back the way you came. Quickly. We’ll get out once we know they can’t trace you to this.”

  “Demo-“

  “Now! Quickly!”

  “Wakarimashita!”

  He prayed a moment that those soldiers would not find her on their way to his room as he watched Oryu run off. He slid his door closed again. “We’re in for fight, Miyoshi.” Miyoshi smiled and uncovered the bundle he carried with him – a naginata. The katana was essentially a three-foot long razor blade. Now attach this to a five-foot pole and you have the naginata.

  They stood side-by-side and waited. Ryoma relaxed his mind and body into the Zen calm, and entered the now state where great swordsmanship dwelt. He was a master of the sword, but he used those techniques to control an even greater destructive power. He reached into his kimono and loosened his weapon from its holster.

  “Vagrant and Ronin Sakamoto Ryoma from Tosa!” cried the fully armored man that just kicked in the door with sword drawn. “You are under arrest by order of the Shogun for suspicious behavior and treason against the Empire.” The wooden support column beside the man exploded into a cloud of splinters.

  A smoking Smith and Wesson .45 smoldered from his hip. He was a master shot with the pistol and did not miss. His bullets always went where he intended. He wanted the man to know three things: (1) he had a gun, (2) you cannot possibly dodge a bullet (this was an important lesson since Ryoma was sure none of these men had ever seen a proper gun), and (3) they should be afraid.

  It was because of warning shots like this that Ryoma would later get the reputation of never taking a life. Ryoma thought this was an unlikely claim. He’d shot a few people in his career, and was bound to have killed at least one of them. He pulled back the hammer on his revolver.

  “I treason only against the Bakufu. Now the Emperor has always had my full support.” Calmly Miyoshi and Ryoma held the doorway with only the threat of their superior reach. “I think you should retreat. We hold the terrain and you’re numbers are pointless.” He was reminded of the Sparta at Termipoli pass he had read in military histories while founding the naval academy.

  One of the samurai in the back charged them both before he was cut down with a flash of gunfire. Now the real fighting would begin. His palm fanned the Smith and Wesson’s hammer and gunfire dropped the first row of men. Ryoma then slipped behind the large man Miyoshi and replaced the spent shells while Miyoshi dispersed any organized charge of soldiers a slash of with his great spear. Ryoma snapped the cylinder of his revolver back in place and circled around Miyoshi to mow down anyone in the front row he deemed too close.

  Ryoma held his calm watch of the door only pulling the trigger when he saw one of the soldiers move. Suddenly they surged forth and Miyoshi cut down their front line with a slash of the naginata. Ryoma squeezed his last three rounds into the charge.

  Six shell casings hit the ground after he opened the Smith and Wesson’s cylinder. He dumped another six shells into his hand from a pouch concealed in his sleeve. His highly trained fingers dropped them into the cylinder. When he snapped it back in place one of the samurai dived under Miyoshi’s spear and came at Ryoma. He put a bullet to the bold man, but the samurai’s sword still raked across his fingers.

  Miyoshi ran through the last man in the door and paused. “More are coming through the front.” Ryoma heard them too. He looked down at his hands. They were bloody lumps with five digits attached, each one cut to the bone. His revolver remained clutched in his hand. He willed his fingers to move, but they were unresponsive.

  “We need to go! Out the back door!” Ryoma and Miyoshi slipped down the back staircase, but they were amazed that no soldiers stood in the backyard. They heard the soldiers crashing in the upstairs room then crept around the lawn as silent as ninja. It is a common misconception that stealth was the primary tool of the ninja. Mostly ninjas kill with infection by swords they left in the latrine for a week. Ryoma often referred to the smaller swords used by ninjas as ‘shit-blades’.

  Two soldiers peeked through the backyard and looked around. Miyoshi and Ryoma could not find a door to the neighbor’s home. The Makoto family was in bed and reported what happened to police the next morning. Two Ronin covered in blood crashed through the walls, out the door, and into history. Within the week Ryoma would marry Oryu and under Saigo’s insistence they went away while his hands healed.

  It would be called the first Japanese honeymoon.

  ***

  There was no Oryu strutting in as the Venus de Milo to warn him this time. He had seen her for the last time.

  The owners of the Omi Inn found Ryoma dead and Shintarou dying. Once he had wrote to his sister shortly after his exile from the Tosa Han. “Men like me don’t live very long, but we accomplish the most. Japan could use a lot more men like me.” He died at the age of thirty-three and a month later the rule of Japan passed from the Shogun to the Emperor. But the irony of this would not be lost to Ryoma.

  ***

  He watched as his body was carried away. He watched for three days as Shintarou lay dying in a doctor’s bed singing the praises of Sakamoto Ryoma. He refused to see Oryu receiving his corpse for their first anniversary. He saw the peaceful exchange of power to the Emperor. He saw the assassination of each Ishin and the corruption of the Senate that took the power from the Emperor and the swords from the samurai. He saw the civil war he died to prevent happen, and it was an absolute bloodbath.


  Japan became corrupt and far from the course of Ryoma’s eight-point plan. He stood in smoldering rubble surrounded by thousands of confused and frightened ghosts. A single US plane flew over Hiroshima. There was a flash of light and it all happened so fast none of them realized they were dead. At the pressure of the Americans the Emperor relinquished any claims of divinity.

  When Ryoma’s view of the world expanded he wondered: why didn’t they make the Pope relinquish his title when Italy was defeated? Times changed, but he could not leave. He was anchored to Japan by some task he could not comprehend or simply could not remember. Ryoma began to ride people whenever possible going with them to arcades and movies.

  But he would later stop going to the movies. There was a movie about a hairy foreigner going to Japan to whip the Japanese army into technological shape. This was not the portion of the movie that bothered Ryoma. So far this was a movie that he could get behind, and he loved the main character’s choice in revolvers. The part that bothered him was when the man was taken prisoner by samurai rebels, learned their ways, gave up his gun, and fought in the Boshin War as the last samurai.

  The bloodless revolution he brought about was vilified on screen by the corrupt senators manipulating Emperor Meiji. The samurai way of life was praised. Ryoma could remember the samurai way of life – pure bureaucracy. The men with two swords bullying townspeople, killing on a whim, and raping on less- all out of frustration of no longer being needed ever since the clans had stopped warring.