by R. E. Vance
The tentacle moved toward Tiamat’s mouth, and what met me was an open maw that looked more like a tunnel than a throat. In the early dawn, only the first three steps were illuminated. I stepped in, expecting a hard surface, but under my weight my foot sunk down a few inches and it drove home this was no tunnel, no cave, but the soft insides of a monster that planned on digesting me for an eternity.
I took a step inside, feeling the slime and mucus from Tiamat’s mouth seep through my shoes. From what little light lit my way, I knew I only needed to take another few steps before the slope of her throat would grow too steep and I’d slide in—the worst water slide imaginable.
From the beach I heard Astarte’s voice cry out, “Stop!” At first, I assumed that she meant for me to stop. But when powerful hands pulled me out of the monster’s mouth and back into the light, I knew I was wrong.
Enkidu had somehow clambered up Tiamat’s body to get to me before I could be swallowed. The speed with which he had reached me was unnatural. Impossible, even. He grabbed me and threw me out of Tiamat and to the earth several hundred feet below, thus trading one form of death for another.
Except death from falling would not come, because angelic arms caught me as I fell. Miral had saved me.
“No,” I said. “Let me go.” I scrambled back toward Tiamat, back toward Enkidu, back toward the Champion who sacrificed himself not once, but twice. I was determined to save him. I was determined to meet my end. But how could I do either when I had no magic to burn, no time to spare? I possessed neither wings to carry me nor legs powerful enough for me to leap up and do what I intended.
All I could do was stare helplessly at Enkidu, who sat crouched on the lips of Tiamat. He gave me that wild grin of his. I cried out, “What you are doing? This was my choice. You have no right to—”
But it was too late. Without hesitation or fear, Enkidu jumped into Tiamat, and into whatever fate which would meet him beyond.
Miral lowered us to the beach, where we watched Tiamat reel back in pain—the Earth-ending monster shook and twisted, cried and roared, and although I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, Atargatis would tell me later that, just as the Children of Assyria were forbidden to hurt their deities, so too was Tiamat forbidden to hurt one of Chaos’s avatars. And Enkidu was exactly that—an avatar of Chaos who was once-upon-a-time sent to kill a king who chose reason and science over miracles and curses. To do so was an offense that was punishable by death. Except, what could kill Tiamat but Tiamat? Such was the battle that took place, a near-invincible creature trying to kill itself. It could not. Tiamat pulled back into the ocean, struggling with what she had consumed, and sunk underwater in a rush of waves and bubbles and whirlpools that gradually dissipated.
Astarte and Atargatis watched Tiamat submerge, united in their grief for losing someone they loved—they just weren’t crying for the same creature.
“What happened?” I asked.
Astarte wrapped her arms around herself. “Enkidu chose.”
↔↔
With their mother gone, the army of FrogMen retreated to the depths below water. The apocalypse retreated, the End of Days was not to be. We won, and I couldn’t have been more miserable.
I trudged to where The BisMark stood over the head of Stewart. Apparently being smashed into a thousand pieces did not kill a gargoyle.
Stewart’s eyes followed my approach. “I was promised,” Stewart’s head said as soon as I was close.
“What?” I said. “What were you promised? Who promised you?”
“Free the Tiamat and dream …” he said, his diamond eyes distant.
“Who promised you?” I asked. “Pan?”
Stewart scoffed, displaying more emotion than I had seen him do the entire evening. “Pan is but a pawn.”
“Then who? Who promised you? Chaos? Is it trying to return?” The BisMark asked, his voice filled with the first sign of fear since I’d known him.
Diamond eyes trained on me, and a devilish smile crossed Stewart’s face. “Chaos is a concept no more interested in power than a star is interested in shining. It is what it is. No, he’s not Chaos. He’s so much more …” His voice trailed off and he turned solid. Whatever little life animating Stewart left him, and he became what I always believed him to be—a statue, and nothing more. Well, the head of a statue, at least.
I picked up Stewart’s head. “Is he dead?”
“In a way … He has turned himself from a being into a non-being,” The BisMark said.
“So that’s it. A cryptic message about impending doom, and we’re done? No more questioning him about what happened and why?”
“We can try—but my experience with gargoyles is that once they turn solid, they can only wake if they want to wake. After all, how do you torture a statue?” The BisMark said, with far too much cheer than the situation warranted. He pointed at the cameras and bowed. “Come. Stand tall. We are heroes, now, and the world needs us to be strong. If you are broken, be so in private. But here and now, be the Champion this world so desperately needs—”
“No.”
“Be the hero you are meant to be.”
“No,” I said again, turning my back on the cameras—not that it mattered. I was seen, and there was no way around that now. “I am no hero. No ‘Champion.’ And if you think the world will see us as heroes after all this, then you’re a fool. There will be repercussions. Life will get much harder for Others.”
The BisMark nodded in understanding. But if he understood my point about life getting more difficult or how I was no hero, he didn’t let on. “Perhaps. But we’re at the point of crisis. History has taught us that true change can only be affected when the world is in chaos. Whether it shall be for better or worse remains to be seen.”
“If you believe that this could lead to something better, then you’re definitely a fool. Life was hard enough without—”
But before I could finish my sentence, Astarte ran up to The BisMark with supernatural speed and slapped him across the face. “You bastard!” she cried. “Twice you’ve hurt me. Twice.” She sought to strike him again, but Atargatis came to her sister’s side, pulling her away from the peacock-suited being.
The BisMark dabbed at a droplet of blood beading in the corner of his lips.
“I thought you said nothing could hurt you,” I said.
“No … I said I’d never allow anything to hurt me.” He nodded at Astarte. “She was destined to be a goddess, but sacrificed her position for something—or rather, someone—she believed in. And now she has sacrificed again. Just as you have sacrificed again. Take care of her, Jean-Luc. She’ll need you in the days to come, and you’ll need her for what’s coming. Before all this is over, you’ll both sacrifice once more.”
I thought about saying something sarcastic or witty—some rebuttal to show my anger—but at that moment I felt no anger, only sorrow. Medusa was gone. Bella was gone. And judging from how the Army was getting into formation around us, life in Paradise Lot was about to get harder. There was no way they’d let this go unpunished. I could feel Paradise Lot devolving from a slum to an island prison. The weight of it all was just too much to bear. I simply couldn’t summon the will to take one last jab at this once-upon-a-time consultant to the gods.
The BisMark eyed me with disappointment. I guess I wasn’t the fierce, endless warrior he thought I was. So be it … In a sad and twisted way that was a tiny bit of my revenge.
Hellelu … oh, fuck it. I was done.
Epilogue –
I may have been done with Paradise Lot, but it wasn’t done with me.
There were investigations to be done, arrests to be made … and I was at the center of it all.
The way I saw it, my options were simple: either the Paradise Lot Police would charge me with resisting arrest and throw me in jail, or the Army would put me in the stockade for going AWOL all those years ago. Or, most likely, I’d get both—which was fine with me. I actually looked forward to a small c
oncrete cell.
That would be later. Right now I was stuck on the beach as the Army and police went about cleaning up the mess and restoring order. The cops cleared the beach, and the soldiers bagged and tagged everything they could find—which meant a lot of body bags. It also meant removing hundreds upon hundreds of the FrogMan statues that Medusa had left behind in the wake of her destructive flashing. I watched them cart the statues away and thought about how each one had cost her dearly.
Decades burned to save us all.
Two soldiers grabbed Medusa. She was gray and stiff, her stone body shining against the morning light. They tilted her back onto a trolley and passed by where I stood, and as they did I saw her face—her two perfect dimples and her wondrous, forever-frozen smile.
I don’t know why I let the soldiers handle her. Maybe I was too overwhelmed to stop them or just stunned with grief. Whatever it was, my paralysis broke when one soldier let her body fall into a cart with a thud. He wiped his brow, as if to say, “Job well done.” Like she was another piece of heavy cargo to ship, a trivial sculpture to move, and not the Queen of the Gorgons, the police officer, the amazing woman that she was. How dare he? I thought, and flew into a rage, determined to give him two fist-sized dimples of his own.
Luckily for the soldier, Michael anticipated my reaction. I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. He pulled me behind a nearby flashing police van.
“Let me go!” I protested.
The archangel forced me into the back of the van, wrapped his wings around his shoulders like a self-swaddling infant, and squeezed in after me. “They’ll return her as soon as the investigation is complete. It’ll be then that we’ll give her a proper departure.” His voice was soft—a low, comforting hum. “Until then, we must speak.”
I grunted. “Let me guess. I’m under arrest?”
Michael shook his head. “No. I recall that I deputized you earlier this day.”
“What?”
“At the gala … When this tragedy began, I deputized you.”
“You did no—”
Michael’s eyes widened. The air grew heavy. “I understand you may not remember … given the stress of the situation,” he said, and his words seemed to usher an invisible, suppressive fog into the van. “But I did, in fact, deputize you. Understand?”
I was starting to. Michael, the play-it-by-the-book, follow-every-rule ultimate Boy Scout, was bending a rule by retroactively deputizing me. If he didn’t, then there would be no excuse for what I did. It was the only recourse he had not to arrest me. I would’ve smiled at his little infraction had I not planned to never smile again.
So it seemed I wasn’t going to be arrested after all. Oh well, at least I still had the stockade to look forward to.
“OK, you deputized me,” I said. “And I’m no longer deputized. Thank you.”
“No, you’re still a deputy. Your duty has yet to expire.”
My head felt like it was going to pop. I rubbed my temples in an effort to calm down just enough to not actually explode. “I don’t know what—”
“This is an ongoing investigation—an investigation that you’re an instrumental part of. Your duty will expire when this case is closed. Until then …” He handed me a badge. It was a circular gold shield with a safety pin on the back. It looked to me like one of those toy insignias you gave kids to play Cops.
Michael opened the van door and squeezed out. “I’ll need you in the precinct in the coming days. Until then.” He patted the van’s roof, and the engine roared to life. “Go home.”
↔↔
For the next few days, I sat in my room. I may have been off the hook with Michael, but not with the Army. I was sure they were coming, so I waited, staging battles between WWF stars and green plastic soldiers and eating Cup Noodles.
The first two days passed, and no one came. I figured that they were watching me, checking if I was up to something like planning another apocalypse or making deals with more skyscraper-sized monsters.
When they didn’t come on the third day, I decided they were just sloppy. But I had been on national TV, my name was well-known in Paradise Lot … It would just be a matter of time. So I staged more battles and waited. What else was I to do?
↔
On the fifth morning there was a knock on my door, and I thought, Finally! I got to my feet, wrists together, ready for the handcuffs. No one burst through the door. Instead, I heard a cautious voice say, “Ahhh, hello?”
EightBall.
I didn’t want to speak to anyone, let alone someone from the hotel. I sat back down, ignoring him.
The knock came again, louder this time.
“Go away,” I cried out.
“Ahhh, there’s something you should see,” he said.
“Go away,” I repeated.
“I really think you should see it,” a second voice said. It was squeaky and unsure. Brian. I guess the little fellow stuck around.
“Go away,” I said again.
There was murmuring, then I heard something rustle. I looked over to see an iPad slide through the gap under the door. “Just watch, OK?” Brian said. “Oh … and slide it back under when you’re done.” I heard two sets of footsteps walk away.
I stared at the iPad. Lights and noise emanated from it. I could hear news reports about the “failed” apocalypse. I picked it up, determined to shut it off, and the screen switched to the gala. I saw Medusa in her red dress. It was the footage from before the dinner started. We had just arrived, standing arm in arm, except Medusa wasn’t holding onto me. She was holding onto … nothing.
Then the lights dimmed and the gala began, just like it had five nights ago, with The BisMark’s, or rather, Pan’s dramatic entrance. Then Atargatis went onstage, bit into the fish, and the earthquake started. In the confusion, the camera panned to my table. I remembered that moment. I was standing on the table, telling everyone to get under—but in the replay I simply wasn’t there.
I watched the news feed, looking for any sign of myself. Nothing. I watched it again, and a third time. Absolutely nothing, except for one word I yelled on the beach just after Medusa died. “Enough!” A single word that could’ve been cried out by anyone. Whoever edited me out must’ve missed that one word.
I had been erased. There would be no Army breaking down my door. There would be no court-martialing by a military tribunal. There would be no escape.
The realization that I wasn’t going to be arrested hit me with crippling anxiety. I had planned on taking myself out of the equation. No better place to do that than behind bars. Being free from incarceration meant that I was still here, in Paradise Lot, in the thick of Other drama. Nothing was going to change for me.
I paced my room and wrung my hands. The weight of still being here caused my chest to constrict. My breathing went shallow, and the world started to blur. I was still here.
I was still here.
Except, I wasn’t. My body, sure, but my heart left this place when Medusa’s heart stopped beating. It was then that I had a revolutionary thought: I didn’t need to be arrested to get out of Paradise Lot. I could just leave.
Just pack up and leave. What would I take? A few of my favorite pieces from my 1980s collection and some clothes. I’d leave the rest behind, including my black, collarless jacket. That piece of wardrobe belonged to this place.
I planned on leaving like a thief in the night. No goodbyes. No explanations. I guessed some of them would come up to see me, but I’d be resolute in my decision. After a few days they’d leave me alone.
Tonight, I thought.
I started giggling when my mobile phone rang. The caller ID flashed: Paradise Lot Police. Michael was calling at the exact moment I decided on leaving. This was the complete opposite of an auspicious event. I was beginning to wonder if the Universe was listening in on my plans and was countering them with its own.
Well, two could play at that game. I ignored my phone.
It rang again, and this time I rejected the
call.
It rang a third time. Before I could reject it, my phone’s screen lit up as if I answered. A low baritone voice spoke from the phone’s speaker. “Jean-Luc.”
“What? Michael, how are you speaking to me? I didn’t answer my phone.”
“I know. I burned seven minutes to answer it for you. I need you to come to the station immediately.”
“No,” I said flatly.
“You’re my deputy. It’s your duty to—”
“No,” I repeated.
Michael sighed, which sounded more like a baritone opera singer warming up. “Hear me, human. Deputy or not, duty or not—what I require of you and what your heart desires are one and the same.”
I rolled my eyes. More Other esoteric crap. “Fine,” I groaned. “I’m listening.”
Michael sighed again and told me why he wanted me at the station. Before he could finish, I was grabbing my black collarless jacket and heading for the door.
↔↔
Pan sat in front of me, his hands in handcuffs that were intertwined with the thread from Rumpelstiltskin’s spindle, to prevent him from burning time. Up-close he looked small and weak—a scrawny teenager’s torso on the legs of a goat. His face was youthful, devoid of blemishes or wrinkles.
He put his hands on the steel table. “I wanted to talk to you … give you a chance to thank me. After all, I was true to my word. No camera recorded you that night.” He winked at me.
I ignored the bait. “Give it back,” I said. “The time you took. All of it.” Michael had instructed me to finesse Pan. This was me finessing.
Pan’s smile widened. “Take these cuffs off, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“No more tricks. No more jokes. Give it back.”
“I can’t. But you know that already. That giant talking pigeon of a police chief already told you that. Time is a one-way thing.”
It was true. Without the Creation Crystal, time could not be returned to those it was taken from. Michael—and by extension, the entire Otherworld—was looking for another Crystal. But Creation Crystals were what the gods used to form the world. Think of them as funnels that let you focus your magic. A typical Other could make a continent in their image with a single shard, but a god … a god could use the focused energy to build universes. It was believed that they had taken all the Crystals with them. After all, they would need the Crystals to build their new home. But then Pan showed up with a large piece of one and, well, all bets were off.