“Yeah, it didn't hurt, per se, but it startled me. That was the worst part, I think.”
As usual, I was laughing at a loud volume and with an intensity that seemed to shake my bones. He always seemed to entertain me even when he tried just barely.
I pulled his face closer to mine and planted a soft kiss on his lips.
“You need to shave.” I rubbed the stubble on his face that was getting longer every day he chose to ignore it.
“I know.”
“Did you win the bet?”
“I remember that game. All of us old guys did, so we all won.”
“What was the prize?”
“Bragging rights.”
“Well, that should be enough, I suppose.” I grasped his upper-arms and furrowed my brows slightly in surprise; his biceps seemed to have grown. I remembered him as being slightly thinner than most men when we had met. Now, as I observed his body shrouded only in a tight black T-shirt and jeans, I found that his muscles had hardened slightly and toned themselves.
“Have you been working out?” I asked him suddenly.
“No. Well, some of the other guys and I lifted some weights the other day. Then, we realized quite suddenly that we're not twenty anymore so we went to the Rec Room and watched Rocky.”
“That did not inspire all of you to work out some more?”
“It did, but we would have looked ridiculous running up both sides of the steps in the Atrium.”
“Yes.” I replied as laughed at the mental picture. “I would have found that most entertaining. It would have opened you up to much public ridicule.”
“Well, no one could ridicule me better than you, my dear.”
“That is very true.” We both laughed and kissed again, this time for even longer and with even more passion erupting between us. After we pulled away, I rubbed his arms to feel his tight muscles again. I had to admit, his newly enhanced physique was erotically stimulating.
To distract myself from those thoughts, I changed the subject.
“Did you talk to the pilot today?”
“I did. Two more days and we’re there.”
“Can I ask you something serious?”
“Please do.”
“What are we going to do once we’re there?” I looked at him, having put off this question for the three days that had passed since we had kissed in the hallway. “Am I jumping the gun asking you that? Am I getting ahead of myself? Not that I care, but you’re disturbed, aren’t you? You think that I am taking this too seriously?”
“No. I don’t.” He replied as he grasped my hand. “We’ve come this far. Of course you’d ask that question. But I think I should be asking you that, Brynna. If we’re being honest, you and I both know that you’re the one that’s going to pull away.”
“Have I pulled away thus far?”
“Several times.”
“I mean since the other night.”
“No. You’ve gotten close, but you’ve stuck it out. Obviously, I'm happy about that. What do you want to do once we’re there?”
I sat up and looked at him, studying his handsome features as I contemplated how to phrase what I needed to say. The topic was on a high emotional level that I was not comfortable with but for his sake, I would tread the dangerous waters of a discussion on feelings.
“It is going to take a long time for me to reach the point that you need me to reach.”
“Which point is that?” He prodded me gently.
“In relationships, one is supposed to let their guard down. They are supposed to give themselves over to the other person completely. That is what occurs in those ridiculous movies Violet is watching. Isn’t that how it works?”
“In best case scenarios, yes.”
“I do not know if I will ever be at that point. You going to get frustrated. You going to want to run for the hills eventually, James. I know you will. I will change, even if you do leave. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Of course I do.”
“We just have to see how it goes in that regard.” I linked my fingers with his as I spoke. “But when we get to Pangea, I do want you to stay with me.”
“And I want to stay with you. That’s all we need right now. That’s all either of us has to hear at this point. Everything else we’re going to play by ear, okay?”
I nodded, assured by that and comforted by what I sensed to be absolute certainty in him that one day, I would come around. His faith in me was, in my opinion, unwarranted and sure to lead directly to a disappointment and a resentment so venomous that it would wreck him after it destroyed whatever semblance of a love we had built.
Plus, we weren’t engaging in less-than-moral behaviors, if one catches my drift. I had always been told by Maura that all men wanted was a physical relationship and nothing else. I knew from personal experience that they would take what they wanted without warning, not caring to look back and view the damage. I was horrified, if I am being entirely frank, at the idea of participating in such activities, even with James. Though I found myself smiling at the thought of him (quite ridiculously) and feeling a vivid joy in every minute spent in his company (quite immaturely), I couldn’t bring myself to do that.
It was only a matter of time until that reluctance drove him away.
“I’m in no rush.” He told me, as though he had read my mind. I had looked away from him, falling into a reverie on the very subject he was discreetly commenting on.
“That is strange.” I looked up at him in genuine confusion.
“No. Don’t believe the stereotype. We’re not all like that, believe it or not. Once you get to be my age, you realize that there are more important things.”
“But you’re a man…”
“Gender profiling.” He shook his head at me. “That’s blatant discrimination and I don't appreciate it in the slightest.”
“Oh, I do apologize.” I told him with another grin after leaning forward to wrap my arms around his middle.
“I have been calmer since you and I began this tryst that defies all definition.” I informed him softly. “Things do not seem as dire. Up until my conversation with Maura, I did not feel the need to be overly nasty to anyone.”
“Well, Maura deserved it.”
“Maura does not approve of us. She suspects something. Once she suspects something, she thinks she can force a confession out of anyone.”
“But she just doesn’t know who she’s dealing with, right?”
“After all of these years, one would think she would realize that if I do not want to share something, it will not be shared.” I sighed slightly and shook my head to clear my mind of those irritating thoughts. “If things are still going well, we’ll tell them when we get there.”
James nodded and we laid down, both exhausted from the long day of doing absolutely nothing. Boredom was quite taxing on one’s level of energy, if that can be believed.
“Just stay here with me for a few more minutes.” I rested my head on his chest and held his arm over me. “They shouldn’t be back for a little while longer.”
He kissed my head and held me tighter, his eyes closed.
“I will kick you off the bed if I see them coming.” I warned him after closing my own eyes. “Seriously. Right onto the floor, James.”
He laughed softly and I smiled, too.
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”
“Goodnight, James.”
XXX
Maura and I didn’t speak a word to one another for the remaining days on the ship. One morning, as we all lounged around on the couches in the Atrium, others began to run to the window, exclaiming about being able to see “it.”
Just as we all stood to see the spectacularly colored orb that was Pangea outside of the window, the intercom beeped twice, signifying an announcement from the pilot.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your housing compartments. We will be arriving on Pangea in fifteen minutes.”
There was a m
ad rush for the door. Maura went to grab Penny but I lifted her myself.
“Do you think there are horses on Pangea? And dogs?” Penny asked me excitedly. “Maybe Kingsley and Sheba and Jack and Lucy will have other dogs to play with now besides each other!” Penny gasped as another thought took hold of her. “Do you think there are turtles and dolphins?!”
“I’ll bet there are.” I replied cheerfully, though I sincerely doubted that we would ever be seeing an animal we were used to. We would be the only living creatures on Pangea, I was sure.
“Can you believe it? We’re seriously going to be on another planet!” Violet exclaimed behind me as she clapped her hands like an obnoxiously overexcited tween viewing her high-pitched singing, hair-flipping, sexuality-questioning idol for the first and last time ever.
“Really? I thought we were jokingly going to be on another planet.” Elijah grinned in satisfaction at his horrible joke.
I looked back at him, rolled my eyes and drawled, “Lame…”
“Come on, I can’t be expected to make good jokes right now!”
“Just because you are excited, little boy, does not mean that your standards of humor can fall. I will not allow such nonsense.”
I had to admit, I was excited, as well. My heart was fluttering in my chest and I found myself biting my lip to suppress the smile that was trying to emerge. Because Elijah and Violet had moved in front of us, James knew it was temporarily safe to put his arm around my waist as we walked. When I looked at him, I could not fight the smile anymore. When I looked at Penny’s face to find such childlike wonder there, my smile grew even bigger and a chuckle of pure merriment escaped me.
Once we were back down in our housing compartment and the ship workers were strapping people in, I felt a dismal drop in my mood.
“It’s alright.” James told me softly in my ear. “I'm going to be right next to you, baby.”
“James, I can't do this.” I muttered to him as I turned away from Maura's ever-watchful eyes. “You know that I can't stand it.”
“Hey…” James said and the worker closest to us looked up. “Can you strap us both in on her bed?”
The man nodded and adjusted the straps so that they were longer. James, with his arms around me, laid us both down. At that point, I did not care which members of my family saw or what they thought of it. I would explain it away later, saying that James was able to calm my anxieties better than anyone else, therefore I allowed his closeness to keep from succumbing to a panic attack. They would buy that.
I kept my face buried in James’s neck as we were strapped down to the cot.
“This isn't so bad, is it? Besides the fact that you haven't broken this cot in at all, this is alright.”
“Pardon me for being light.” I muttered with only half the amount of sass I normally would have utilized. “James, I don't want to do this...”
“The pilot has done this before, ma’am,” The worker assured me gently, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I don’t like this.” I whispered to James again. “I think I would probably take that pill again to avoid experiencing this.”
“There’s no way in hell I’d let you take that pill again. We’re going to get through this, baby. I promise. Fifteen more minutes and we’re there.”
I nodded and looked up at him. He craned his neck so could hold his lips to mine for one long, calming moment. In the corner of my eye, I saw Maura watching us still.
“Your upper extremities are probably going to lose all feeling because I am going to be squeezing you until this beastly contraption is on the ground,” I warned him, “All circulation is going to get cut off.”
“That’s okay. I’m tough. I can handle it.”
I nodded, squeezed my eyes shut, and burrowed further against his chest.
A faint shutter that caused people to mutter softly all around us passed through the ship. Before we could fully recover from the shock of feeling the ship move so strangely, it flew up into the air and crashed back down to the path it had been flying on before. When the ship jerked into the air again and plummeted into an even larger drop, the lights flickered, went out, and everyone in our housing compartment screamed in pure, heart-stopping terror.
I heard Penny crying out for me from the bed beside mine. My first instinct was to jump up and go to her but the straps and James’s arms held me firmly in place.
“Penny! Penny!” I was screaming over everyone else.
“Oh my God, we’re going to die!” I heard Violet shrieking.
The ship was falling. We had broken through Pangea's atmosphere and were falling to the hard ground too quickly to fathom. The whole ship would break apart on impact and our bodies would split with it. We had made it into space, flown so far from where we were from, and now, we were going to die in what was essentially a glorified plane crash.
“Penny, you’re okay! Penny, listen to me!” I was struggling to break free of the restraints so I could get to her. When I managed to maneuver one arm out, James held me to him even more tightly. I would have been able to squeeze out of the other restraints if he had slackened his grip on me. It was a good thing he was holding me, though, because the ship rose and fell abruptly again. The force sent us hurtling upwards again but the restraints, thankfully, kept us from flying right off of our beds.
“She’ll be okay.” James was assuring me calmly. “She’s fine. We’re all okay.”
He hadn’t realized it yet. He hadn’t realized that we were going to die. Everyone in the room was screeching in the dark, knowing that the end was near for all of us. The survivors of the human race were going to become extinct with the rest. A simple, terrifying fact stored in some deep corridor of my mind through which I never traveled shouted its message of despair and hopelessness to me at an eardrum-shattering volume: We had simply outrun the inevitable. We were meant to die with the others as the Earth burned. Death had caught up to us, knowing that a brutal higher power had demanded the eradication of the entire race. Death could not fail He or She or They who had created him...
No. I could not believe all of that. I could not believe that we had traveled so far only to die just as we reached Pangea.
The ship gave another almighty lurch upwards and my hands locked onto James. I held onto him with the last bit of strength left in my body. My eyes squeezed shut as I braced for the crash that would surely be my demise. I thought of what I would say to my parents upon seeing them. I could not think of any words but the three I had written on the paper.
It had been a lie.
We were falling again, our stomachs dropping as though we were on a thrill ride at an amusement park.
I heard a deafening screech that rattled everything, including our insides.
I could not breathe. I could not breathe.
I blinked in the total darkness.
Everything went black.
Quinn
We couldn’t even be sure if the ship was going to crash land on Pangea or if we were falling into open space. Would we ever land? What was below us? What was above? There was no way to know.
The thought of falling forever in space, of being stuck in that stomach-churning drop for all eternity, made me want to close my eyes and beg for death. I wouldn’t be able to stand it for long. To fall forever, in my opinion, would be the absolute worst way to die.
Alice was crying, begging God to spare us. She rambled on and on, praying through her tears. I stared up into the thick darkness, widening my eyes in hopes of being able to see something. I hoped to see some indication that we had not reached the end yet. But even if the lights were on, all that would have been seen above me was the iron ceiling. There would be no angels assuring me that all would be calm in mere minutes. I didn’t have to decipher whether the tranquility they were promising would be achieved in death or in just a few moments when the ship miraculously evened itself out.
These are the thoughts that I had when facing my death. The animalistic instinct to get up a
nd run was strong, yet I knew it was useless. There was no safe place to run if the ship truly was falling. The crash would be the end of everything. My heart pounded against my chest as I struggled to take a breath that would allow me to calm Alice. I didn’t know what I would say, but it would surely be empty promises that I couldn’t keep. Telling her that everything was going to be alright would be a lie. There is no way I could have known that for sure.
Is this how Alice’s parents felt while their souls were stuck inside of those creatures? Were they falling forever?
No, they were burning.
That thought certainly wasn’t soothing.
My parents had been killed trying to protect me. It was my fault. I should have been there.
I chose Alice.
Was that right?
I should have been there.
How had that thing killed them? There had been so much blood.
What had those things wanted? Why were they there?
Demons? I didn’t believe in them.
But if I had to picture a demon, those things came pretty close to the description.
We’re falling.
Falling…
Falling…
Where is the crash?
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for it, begging the higher power I didn’t believe in to gift me with a swift destruction where I felt no pain. But don’t all people pray for that? I wasn’t special. I had been lucky once and now, I would feel every last second of agony that the people we had left behind had suffered.
Silence. People had stopped screaming, including Alice.
“Allie?” I choked out. My mouth was dry and my heart was still beating strongly in my chest.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was still quivering with the tears I couldn’t see falling from her eyes. “Are we dead?”
“No. We’re not dead.”
People were beginning to mutter amongst themselves, trying to decide exactly what had just happened.
“Did you feel a crash? Are we still in the air?”
“I don’t know.” I replied as I struggled to sit up. The restraints on the bed held me down as they were supposed to.
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 22