“That fucking bitch!” Imagination yelled. “Don’t let any of it touch you!”
Instinct pulled Marigold up and they ran. They dodged the golden gunk that leaked and put holes in the floor.
Imagination pointed his hand to the ground and shot a blue bolt from his finger. A trapdoor emerged in the wood.
“Downstairs!” Instinct shouted. “Now!”
They rushed down the trapdoor and found a hallway of stairs below. Imagination went down first. He didn’t wait for anybody. Haunt was the last one down and when he went to close the trap door over him, the substance landed on it and it dissolved right above him.
“Move!” Instinct shouted, already bounding down the stairs. He was right behind Imagination, his entire body pulsing.
As they rushed down the first flight, Haunt could hear the golden goop landing behind him. It sounded like water swirling down a drain. Haunt looked over his shoulder. The substance was fast approaching, landing on the walls and stairs and making them disappear. All that was left in its wake was the sky. The goop was swallowing up the entire building and it was gaining.
“Come on! Hurry!” Instinct yelled as he dodged a drip of golden ooze that narrowly missed his shoulder. He turned at the landing of the staircase and headed down the next flight as Haunt and Marigold followed. Aiden didn’t move inside the oval in her hands.
The stairs behind them wobbled like Jell-O, and on the next flight down, Imagination shot a blue beam at the next landing. It formed another trap door. He climbed down inside it and Instinct followed.
Haunt helped his wife pass through the open trapdoor. The ceiling got closer and closer.
Once again, Haunt was the last to clamber through. He reached over his head and pulled the door shut with a slam. When he reached the bottom of the next flight of stairs he looked up. The trapdoor was still entirely visible. They were ostensibly safe for now.
Haunt and Marigold continued down the stairs. Instinct and Imagination stood on the landing.
“What happened back there?” Haunt asked.
Imagination trembled with rage. Instinct matched his anger. Both of them looked ready to kill, each surrounded by flaming light, their eyes fully dilated and glowing.
“I sent us down a few floors ahead of it,” Imagination said, huffing and puffing. He looked much older now. His hair was as white as clouds.
“What IS that stuff?” Instinct asked, and Haunt had to catch his breath.
“Pure logic!” Imagination snarled. “That’s the only thing that can destroy pure imagination. That bitch used everything she is to tear down my creation. That whore.”
Haunt rubbed his wife’s back. He looked in her face and didn’t see any life in it. He then looked at Aiden. The child was sound asleep. As he looked at them, he knew he would do anything for them now that he was here. He would see this to the end.
“She must be extremely weak now,” Instinct said, referring back to Logic.
“I’ll be just as weak as her if I keep using magic like this,” Imagination said.
A golden drop splattered onto the floor nearby and Instinct looked up.
“Come on,” he said. Imagination fired another beam.
Haunt looked up. The ceiling looked like a sieve, covered in tiny holes. He could hear his heart beating in his chest and everything around him moved in slow-motion. A single drop glittered on its downward path, bound for the oval that held his son. Without even thinking, he forced Marigold’s head down and wrapped his body around hers.
Haunt felt something cold, like a rain drop, land on his nape. As soon as it hit him, he felt light-headed. A shade, like that of a cloud passing in front of the sun, slid over his eyes and he heard his wife screaming. It was shrill and he wished it would stop. And then it did.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Instinct caught Marigold around the waist, his arm helping to secure Aiden’s oval in her hands.
Marigold could hear Instinct yelling and even saw his lips moving, but none of it made any sense. Nothing did. One moment, she felt her husband covering her, and the next, he was melting. He didn’t even scream.
She saw Imagination fire a blue beam at the next landing, and it formed another trap door, but it didn’t register with her. Her legs moved but she felt light. Instinct held Aiden with one arm and grabbed her hand with the other as they ran into the trapdoor, the golden dots drizzling from the ceiling.
They went down the door, and this time, they ended up outside. The dissolving building sounded like somebody slurping spaghetti, but she ignored the sound. She still felt her husband’s arms around her.
“Let’s go,” Imagination growled, his body was frail and hunched over in his immediate aging process.
“We have to get away from the building, Marigold!” Instinct shouted.
Marigold’s legs refused to move.
Instinct tightened his grip around her and dragged her away from the crumbling structure. The sky was ash gray and the air smelled of tar.
Marigold looked back at the corrugated outline of the building that once soared so high and majestic. The building was disappearing completely. All that remained was a jagged outline that grew fainter by the second.
Imagination gave a shrill whistle.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Instinct shouted.
Imagination whipped his hand back and fired his energy. The shock, like electricity, sent Instinct and Marigold flying to the ground. Instinct took the brunt of the hit.
As Instinct struggled to get up, an enormous shadow descended over them. One of the storks grabbed Imagination and flew upward with him in its clutches. Soaring skyward, Imagination released a whip like beam that latched onto Aiden. With a swift tug, he hoisted the oval up into his hands.
“Hey!” Instinct yelled. Imagination’s small legs dangled in the wind. Instinct fired his shotgun at the bird, but it was no good. It was too high. Imagination had gotten away.
Wherever her husband was, Marigold wanted to be with him. She never even got to apologize or tell him that she loved him more than anything else in the world. She looked back toward the decaying building and saw her answer.
She ran toward the building to join her husband in death. Instinct followed close behind.
Part III
March to the Future
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Instinct tackled Marigold. She turned over and struggled underneath him.
“Let me go!”
“Shh shh shh shh shh,” he said. “Calm down, Marigold. Please, just calm down.”
Behind her, she heard the sickly, slurping sounds as the building continued its journey into oblivion. All she could think about was Jeffrey melting inside the building, his flesh melding in with the skyscraper’s iridescent metal, disappearing forever.
“Let me go! I want to be with him.”
“I know, Marigold, I know, but please, that’s not going to help us right now.”
“Oh, what’s the fucking point, Instinct?” She said, rolling her head on the grass. “Jeff’s gone.”
“Yes, but your son is not. He’s still alive, Marigold. The Messiah is still alive! And he needs you more than ever.”
Marigold stopped squirming.
“He’s gone, too,” she said.
Instinct saw the slack lines in her face and the hopelessness in her eyes. She acquiesced. After all they’ve gone through together, she had given up.
“No,” Instinct said, pressing down on her wrists but releasing pressure. “Don’t tell me YOU’VE given up on me. Not after everything I’ve gone through for you.”
“Instinct,” Marigold said, searching his eyes for strength and only finding despair, “Aiden’s gone.”
“No,” he said, releasing her and shaking his head violently, “Not gone. Taken. And we’re going to get him back.”
He got up, the green flames burning around him. He pointed at her. “And if you give up now, Marigold, then Jeff’s death will be meaningless. Absolutely meaningless!�
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“It’s meaningless now,” Marigold shouted before the sobs came on full force. Instinct knelt down beside her and rubbed her hair. His anger turned back into commiseration.
She thought about her last moments with him before entering the tower. All he wanted was for her to accept his apology. That’s all he fucking wanted. Jeff was not only a loving husband, but also someone she could depend on, financially and spiritually. He always supported her, even when she left nursing to write silly little captions on greeting cards because it had always been her dream. He knew it would take a huge chunk out of their combined income, but he told her to go for it anyway. “Shoot for the stars, baby,” he always said. And that man was now gone, dissolved in a single golden tear drop.
“It isn’t fair,” she said.
“I know, Marigold. But we have to keep moving.”
“I was so cruel to him.”
“He knew you still loved him. He did.”
“But he’s gone now.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ever see him again?”
“No,” he said, closing his eyes. Coming from what looked like her brother’s thin lips, it hurt her even more so.
“Is he in the darkness?” she asked, blinking through tears.
“Yes,” he said. “I can’t bring him back this time.”
“What IS that place?” she asked with disgust and fear.
“The eternal death. But you would know better than I. You saw glimpses of it.”
“Yes,” she said, shivering. “It was horrible.”
“I can imagine.”
She shook her head and felt sick. She wanted to sit up and he let her.
They sat on the grass together and she turned her head away from the sinking building. She couldn’t stand to look at it a second longer.
About a mile away in the other direction was another huge tower. It was crystal and perfectly chiseled, like sculptured ice. Its phallic shape ascended powerfully into the sky and shimmered in the sunlight. It gleamed orange and twinkled, just like Logic had when she stepped out of the vortex.
Marigold got up and stormed toward it, Instinct was right beside her.
“Hold on a minute. We can’t go in there without a plan. She may be weakened, but she’s not dead.”
“Fine,” Marigold said, trudging forward. “Then we’ll make her dead.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. She killed Jeff, so we kill her.”
“But I can’t, Marigold,” Instinct said, almost pleadingly.
“You can’t, or you won’t?” She said, stopping.
“Can’t,” he said. “Mankind needs Logic. Killing her will set the world of man in disarray.”
“You were willing to die and you’re mankind’s instincts.”
“Yes, well,” he said, at a loss. “Those weren’t the original plans. I went with my gut when I made the change. I should have thought things through. But that’s not my nature.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not doing anything until that woman’s dead in her grave.”
“But she’s not a woman, Marigold, and I’m not a man. You’re internalizing this too much. We can’t go and—”
“So what, Instinct? She kills my husband and we just move on? Is that what we’re supposed to do?”
The tears overtook her eyes completely. All she saw was a wiggling, green blob in front of her. She brought her fists into his chest and wished he was dead. She wished everyone was dead. Just like her husband. The one she couldn’t even bring herself to say she was sorry to.
“I thought the whole fucking point of him being here was so we could convince my son to be born. But how’s that going to happen now with Jeff gone?”
“I don’t know, Marigold. I honestly don’t know. But if it were up to me,” he said, raising his face to her, his eyes shimmering green. “We head to Purpose’s Castle.”
“And who’s Purpose?”
“He’s another Archetype, and our final destination. Or at least, he was. He sits in front of a door that leads out of the Landscape, which is where we were supposed to take your son.”
“Why?”
“Because Imagination—”
“I don’t want to hear about Imagination right now.”
“Well,” Instinct said, weighing his words. “The ultimate goal, once we had persuaded your son to be born, was to take him out of the Landscape.”
“Why? What’s outside the Landscape?”
“The universal mind.”
“What?”
“The plan was this: Once we had persuaded your son to be born, we were going to enter the universal brain. Upon doing so, we would speak to the whole of mankind directly and introduce them to the notion of your son as a messiah. It would be subtle and in no way intrusive. But it would plant the seed, and that seed would grow. Eventually, when Aiden grew into an adult, people would begin searching for an answer to the catastrophes of the world, and Aiden would be that answer. He would be their guide, saving the world from all the disastrous events that I sense arising. Without him, I feel a complete collapse in mankind. That is why we need him.”
Marigold weighed everything he said.
“So, wait. You want to brainwash people to believe in my son?”
“No, not brainwash. Bring comfort to. We seek to comfort people. I do, at least.”
“But that’s insane,” Marigold shouted. “You would be creating a messiah.”
“I felt it in him and Imagination saw it in him, too. But the thing is, a messiah can only reach so far on their own. For something of this magnitude, mankind as a whole would have to believe in him. The only way that’s possible is if we give them a little nudge in advance by going through the door. We’d have to—”
Marigold started walking toward Logic’s tower again.
“Wait, where are you going?”
She spun around and pointed.
“Look, apparently, you still need me, right?”
“Absolutely. We can’t go into the universal mind with your son having the attitude he has now. He’d poison mankind rather than help them.”
“Well, if you really need me, then you’re going to kill Logic.”
Instinct exhaled and looked down. He was quiet for a long time before he answered.
“And that’s the only way you’ll finish what we started?” Instinct asked.
“It is. I won’t allow my husband to die without retribution.”
“Marigold, please reconsider this. Logic is key to mankind’s existence. Without her, the world—”
“Look, she was ready to kill both you and Imagination, so obviously, she felt strongly about this, and I do, too. If we’re going to proceed, and I will if you help me, then you have to kill Logic. I won’t go with you if you don’t.”
Instinct sighed and simply nodded. The blade and the shotgun appeared on his back again.
She took off toward the crystal tower. It was a slightly uphill climb, but she walked with her head held high. The sun was in her eyes. Her husband was in her heart.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
For the first time in mankind’s existence, Purpose got up from his throne. Although it went against his entire being to open any of the doors in this room, he had felt something so incredibly off balance with the Landscape that he couldn’t stay seated any longer. He rushed to the glass door in front of him and opened it. What he thought he saw just couldn’t be possible.
But once on the glass balcony, he saw that his eyes weren’t deceiving him. Imagination’s tower was…Well, it was…
Melting.
“What has she done?”
Below his floor, the storks he had never seen but always heard continued dropping off babies as if the end of the Landscape wasn’t happening. Down at the bottom of his castle, a huge crowd of people in the Landscape looked past Logic’s tower and at the skyscraper beyond it. The sphere in his chest raced and shot out lightning. Some people looked up. But most couldn’t detach themselves
from watching Imagination’s tower dissolve. He couldn’t either.
“God behind the wooden door,” he whispered as he watched the Landscape lose one of its mainstays. He needed an update from Logic now.
He opened his robe and prepared to contact Logic, but something glistened in the sunlight. His thin lips trembled. A stork came toward him, and beneath its claws was a thick, bulbous blue light. It could only be one thing.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he groaned, backing up. “Stay away.”
It took them only a few seconds to get to the castle, but Purpose composed himself before they arrived. The stork carried Imagination, and Imagination carried the “Messiah.” They landed on the glass balcony right in front of him. Imagination, in this form, was an old, dark man with a bald head and wrinkles beneath his eyes. The baby he held was engulfed in a blue aura. Purpose refused to show fear. Everything was at stake.
“Imagination,” he said, poking out his chest.
“Move aside,” Imagination said, stiff arming him and walking past.
“Excuse me—”
Imagination walked over to the wooden door and held the golden doorknob with his free hand, the baby held tightly in his other arm.
“Imagination, no!”
“Call her,” Imagination ordered, squeezing the knob. “Call her, or so help me, I’ll do it.”
“Instinct, think about what—”
“Shut up and do it,” Imagination demanded. “I don’t care if you’re more powerful than me. Call her or I’m opening this door!”
Purpose opened his robe and shot his beam on the floor. He didn’t have a choice.
Chapter Forty
The inside of Logic’s tower wasn’t anything special. There wasn’t a grand painting on the roof that showcased the birth of Logic, nor was there a special entrance. It was merely a crystal door, no different from the rest of the tower.
The Darkness of the Womb Page 14