TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3)

by Steve Windsor

  — CLVIII —

  THE COLONEL’S AND my first trip down our frozen river after ducks was just like the second one. But back then the Colonel and I, Max by my side again … or then, if you’re keeping track of the time lapses… We crawled our way through the cold hard mud and up the side of the dike. Freezing rain pelted down on the backs of our necks like little tiny marbles.

  I took special care to keep the barrels of my little twenty-gauge out of the mud. Another lesson—a clogged barrel will get you killed by your own itchy trigger finger, not to mention that you couldn’t use the weapon to defend yourself. Never let it be said that the Colonel missed an opportunity to utter an “ism.” Crawling in the freezing rain and the crusted mud was no different.

  When we got to the top of the dike and peered over, I could see that the mallards—the beautiful iridescent-forest-green-headed drakes and their mottled brown hen companions—were enjoying the freezing rain droplets bouncing off of their tucked-tight wings and feathers about as much as we were liking it stinging into the backs of our necks.

  Max whimpered.

  We used the same strategy the Colonel wanted to use on this current day, but this time—back then… For the longest time I believed that the Colonel’s plan had never bore fruit. Later, much later, I figured out that the ducks had never been the point.

  Max had waited patiently like he was supposed to do. On his belly next to me, whimpering barely loud enough that we could hear him. Steam billowed out of every breath that any of the three of us took.

  Over the smacking torrents of half-frozen rain droplets, impacting and bouncing off of the iced-over river, the mallards would never hear us. They were hunkered down, enduring God’s wrath. And we were on our bellies preparing to give them some of Man’s.

  The setup was perfect. Only later would the Colonel inform me that perfect was an illusion and just when you thought things were perfect, God would rain down death and damnation on everything in sight. If you haven’t guessed, the Colonel is not a faithful fan of the Word. How he and my mother got…? I’m sidetracking again, excuse me.

  The Colonel liked simple plans—less to go wrong. Max’s job was to scare those ducks up so we could shoot them, and trust me, they weren’t going anywhere in that hard rain unless someone forced them to fly. A big brown dog, running across the ice toward them would probably do the trick.

  That was the Colonel’s thinking, and before we plunged into it, I agreed with him. Looking back on the trajectory of the outcome … I probably still do. At the time though—I don’t want to spoil the story.

  “Back” is the command for a well-trained water-dog to retrieve something that you’ve shot down, so I made my glove-covered hand into the shape of a flat knife—pointed all my fingers straight at those ducks—and I looked at Max and said, “Back.”

  Max was wired tight most days, and he rocketed from his lying position and in two bounds he was on the ice, racing across the top of the frozen river. He would be on those ducks in a few seconds. Not that we wanted that, but you can only give a dog a task and point him to it. How he gets it done after that is up to him. Yep, Colonel-ism number… I have no idea which one.

  And the far side of the river’s bank erupted in wings and quacking. The Colonel and I both stood up fast and got our shotguns to our shoulders. The freezing rain pelted down on my gun barrel and things went into slow motion. I could see the droplets of ice bouncing off my barrel, and I heard the muffled report of the Colonel’s semi-automatic twelve-gauge. A spent plastic shell casing spun and arced across my face. I only glanced at it for a second—a slow-motion red hull of spent fury.

  Two drakes—he only shot drakes—clawed their wings, flailing for altitude, but they fell faster as they did.

  I shook my head at him. Two in one shot. The Colonel was lucky like that.

  He caught my glance out of the corner of his eye and smiled. “Gawking’s how you get shot,” he said with no more concern than that. “Get to it!”

  I picked out a flapping figure and—boom! My little twenty-gauge bucked into my shoulder. Anyone who really hunts will tell you that you never feel that when you are shooting at game. And that duck folded—stone cold dead in mid-air—and I followed his fall like watching a football arc across a field until it smacked down on the iced-over river. The duck bounced twice and landed right in front of Max, stone cold dead.

  Max ran at it, but that duck was going nowhere, and—boom-boom! The Colonel’s twelve-gauge ended another drake, and I watched it fall in slow motion and bounce on the far bank.

  And then things sped up and I shouldered my little twenty again, found a straggler just coming off the ice and—boom!—a clean miss. I thought at the time that I’d said, “Dammit!” As it turned out, it was my father.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I got … excited.”

  But he was down the river-side of the dike, cursing at Max. “Nail rain to a tree, that dog is your damnation.”

  Bad things don’t happen the way you think. Most of them you never see coming. You think you are rushing to solve a problem—fix the thing in front of you—and then that thing becomes irrelevant and you make things ten times worse.

  “Pause, assess, then react like lightning,” was my Shandian training at the seminary. The way my father told it went a little more like, “React before you think—she’ll send lightning right up your ass.”

  The only problem with that wisdom was that all of it came after the fact. Too late for me to make good use of it on that day. It was certainly too late when I looked down at the frozen river and saw Max frantically dog-paddling, bobbing up and down, his muscles quickly freezing and the expression on his face clearly one of panic, as he tried desperately not to get sucked under the ice … and drowned.

  I ran down the dike toward the ice. Fell on my face and tumbled halfway down. I remember thinking that it was a miracle that my gun didn’t go off. Now that I think about it—double-barreled twenty—there was nothing but empty shell casings in it. When I got back up, Max was underwater.

  And I ran right past the Colonel, standing at the edge of the ice—he didn’t try to stop me—and I was out on the ice and almost to Max, and then I slid on my stomach and grabbed Max’s collar as I went past him, and then I just jerked him right out of that frozen waterhole and he went sliding across the ice.

  I’m aware, I had no idea how I did it then either. One second, I saw Max drowning, and the next thing I knew, he was standing up on the ice next to me shaking freezing spray off of his coat. And ice sprinkles showered down on my smiling face and then he dropped the duck—he never let the darned thing go. Unbelievable.

  Then the ice underneath me broke in a huge crack that sounded like lightning to me, and I went down like I had rocks in my pockets. It happened that fast.

  Most of the ice on top of God’s angry river was frozen stiff, the surface as motionless as a painting of snow, but the water under it was rushing like it always did. I got sucked under and down, and I could feel the ice-cold water filling my mouth and lungs. And then my lungs burned like liquid hot lava and not the icy river water that was smothering them.

  I panicked and tried to take a breath—that’s what my body knew to do—and water filled my mouth and then my lungs and then there was acid burning in my chest and that just made me gasp harder and in the middle of my panic, I think I might have begged God to save me … right before I went black.

  I woke up to the brightest and whitest woman I had ever seen. She just stared at me from the light that seemed to be coming from inside her. I should have been scared, because she had these big black marbles for eyes and her hair was just… I can only describe her as light, but she had a weird way about her. Not like my mother’s firm but protective manner. She looked at me with a scowl, as if I was annoying her by simply showing up. Though where we were, I had no idea. I was drowning, last I remembered. But now—then—I wasn’t. And I was… I’m dead? I thought at the time.

  The white woman had see-throu
gh wings, and I knew she was an angel and I also knew I wasn’t drowning. I figured I had already drowned and died, and this was the angel come to take me to … to where? I had only read about this in my mom’s Bible. But it wasn’t quite how that book described God’s messengers. The wings were enough for me, however. This angel had come for my soul.

  “You arrive early, father faith,” my angel said. It was about all the concern she had for my drowning. “How fares your father?” she asked.

  It seemed a peculiar question at the time, given that I was the one who had drowned. And how did she know my father? Well, I guessed that angels knew everyone, and I had a few dreams before, but never like this one. Was it a vision? I knew about visions from my mother’s book. Or was it a dream? At the time, I was speechless, but I don’t think she cared.

  “Has he finished trifling with his bitch?” she asked. I knew right then that this woman couldn’t be an angel.

  Profanity? I thought. My mother warned me constantly that it led straight to Hell. And angels…? Angels certainly didn’t talk like that … did they?

  She cocked her head to the side a little and blinked her black eyes. “Inform him that dalliances with the devil’s bastards shall prove pointless,” she said. “No miracle he performs will bring precious plot to salvation.”

  That kind of language scared me—I had heard it in church. Damnation and punishment and stuff like that. “God help me,” I have no idea why I said it.

  Then she laughed. It sounded like a bird cawing or clucking or something. Not what I expected at all. Then her voice… It sounded like moaning when she spoke this time, “Maybe my concern is misplaced? … You have far to fall to discover your true faith, Benito. So I shall send you back to him.” She smiled at me, but that downturned grin… I don’t think it was a friendly one. “A boy among butchers—what excitement your future holds. Tomorrow, Benito”—her smile went away and she barely nodded her head—“we shall speak tomorrow.” Then her hand came up.

  A bright light blasted my eyes and a spike of pain shot through the right side of my chest. Then the black-eyed flying witch with her warning was gone.

  I’ll never forget hearing my father’s voice in my head, God’s not saving you, he said. That’s not the way life works. There’s no miracles, Benito. You are your salvation.

  The Colonel picked the worst times to try and teach me stuff, even if it was in the middle of my own hallucination. But it was a miracle when I popped up through a thin section of ice downstream and rolled myself back on top of the frozen river. Then I pulled my way back to the safety of the bank—my near frozen fingers and legs clawing me out of the cold of the river … and the confusion of the white witch’s warning.

  Once I made it to the riverbank, the Colonel stared down at me with the indifference of a man who had surely seen enough dead people in his life for it not to concern him. But his own son? Forget that I wasn’t dead, the point was I could’ve died. “You lost your shotgun,” was all he said to me. Then he reached down, jerked me to my feet with his three-fingered hand, and then he handed me the little double-barreled twenty-gauge he bought me when I was seven.

  I just stared at my shotgun.

  “Don’t lose your weapon when you are fighting for your life,” he said. “Come on. We better get you home and warm you back up. Hell to pay from your mother.”

  I shivered, but held my shotgun like I was supposed to—barrel pointed in a safe direction. I had no idea how he got my gun—I distinctly remember clutching my little twenty when I went under the ice. Maybe I didn’t. That little beauty, I still know where it’s buried.

  I hunched over and coughed and spit the last bits of freezing, burning bile mixed with river water out of my lungs. Then I looked up at the Colonel.

  “And don’t go rushing into a shitstorm,” he said, “until you know how you’re coming back out.”

  I just looked at him—no idea what to say. I was alive. I figured that was pretty good. And he didn’t seem too concerned that I might not have been, so I wasn’t scared or anything like that. Kids are like that—you freak out and they know something should be wrong, even if it isn’t. You stay calm and they could be missing a finger, but never make a peep. And that is not a Colonel-ism. But the woman…

  “Thirty-three minutes,” the Colonel muttered, as we walked toward home on the top of the dike. “Not bad. Now … what did she say?”

  That was the first time I realized the truth of the Colonel’s warning to be careful about “standing on thin ice.” You don’t realize the meanings of meaningless sayings until you experience the truth of them firsthand. Most people don’t know what “starving” really means until they are actually out of food. So, warning someone that the future is a precarious place is about as effective as telling a fat person that they are not actually hungry.

  Someone you already know put it to me that way. I’m sure there was some profanity sprinkled in his statement to spice it up a little, but it wasn’t the Colonel, I’ll tell you that.

  So … there you have it—that was the first time I died. Max never left my side after I broke through the thin ice of my delusions. I guess he fell through his own “ice” on that hunt.

  “Trajectory,” was what my dad called it. And he wasn’t talking about the way a bullet travels. Most of the time life is just little things that happen that you think are big. But the important things, the big things that happen that seem insignificant at the time, are what shape you through eternity.

  If Max had never found me, would he have died sooner? If I wasn’t who I was, would I have died later? It still twists me up to think about it.

  Certainly, we are all going to die. You and I both know that. But how are you going to live? That’s the only choice you have. Though the way the Colonel put it was that you had to live in spite of Life, not because of her. Isn’t that the obvious truth?

  That God was a woman? That should’ve been more … obvious to me. But like I said, beliefs are powerful. Staring you right in the face or not, sometimes the truth just isn’t enough.

  — CLIX —

  YES, WE HAVE to get back to the truth. I’ve vowed to tell you nothing but, no matter how crazy or uncomfortable it sounds. So, I’ll tell you that as a matter of historical fact, Max did leave my side, because he did not get to go with us to Sunday church. But outside of that, the only other time he was away from me for more than to go down the steps of our stilt-house and do his business … was when he died.

  That day on the river was bad for us both, and I know Max trusted me with his life after it. But I think that somehow he knew I actually saved his life when he chewed up the legs on my mother’s china hutch. I never knew the owner of that hutch, so calling her “grandma” was a little too weird for me. The only thing I knew of that lady was that china hutch and how my own mother swooned over it.

  So when she screamed one morning and both me and Max’s heads bolted up from our shared sleeping bag, I knew one or the other, or both of us, were in deep trouble. I didn’t know how deep until I saw that hutch.

  The Colonel was the one who took the belt to him. And Max yipped and yelped his way around the living room trying to get away from it. At first, I screamed and chased right behind them both, but my mother caught me on the first lap and held me while the Colonel whipped my dog.

  She was the one who finally ended it, because if she would have left that up to… I think he would still be whipping that dog in Hell.

  Max got his revenge though. He was like that. In fact, now that I remember, I think that there was some kind of harsh exchange between my mom and Max the day before her hutch got chewed up.

  Whatever caused Max to take revenge on my mom by chewing up her hutch, the belt was the reason that he crawled under the sheets on the Colonel’s side of their bed … and peed.

  The Colonel wasn’t a cruel man. There was just the way things should be and the way they actually were. And when a dog chews up your wife’s hutch and you know there will be no end to
her complaining about it afterward, the way things had to be, was it could never happen again. So Max got the belt.

  My dad said I should watch things and make sure I knew the difference between should, was, and had to be. And I thought I knew then that the way things had to be was that Max was going to get the belt again for his pee stunt … but he never did. Some things still confuse me.

  Now, looking back on it, somehow I think the Colonel knew that Max would force him into more trouble than it was worth to get revenge back on him for peeing in his bed. Because he never took his belt or even smacked that dog on the butt again. And Max never chewed up anything or offered to do anything but whimper at the back door when he had to relieve himself.

  I’m not sure what happened, but I know the Colonel always respected a man who wouldn’t let another beat on him without figuring out how to, eventually at least, repay him for the favor. They each drew their line in the sand, and the other never crossed it again.

  But maybe they each just had bigger things to worry about. At least I knew my father did. Max? Who knows what he was thinking most days. What I do know now that I didn’t know then, dirty dogs don’t think like people.

  — CLX —

  THE COLONEL’S “BIGGER” things to worry about were one thing, really—the State. Only back then I think I remember that he called them the Government or authority, or something like that. Changing their name? I never understood that either, so I asked. I was always more curious than afraid, if you haven’t noticed. So my dad explained it to me.

  “Government,” he said, “implies that there are those that govern by the consent of the people—we let them tell us what to do as long as it continues to make sense.”

  That sounded pretty reasonable to me, so I asked why they had changed their name.

  “Calling themselves the State,” the Colonel said as dry and as cold as he had handed me my shotgun at the river, “lets you know that when you are dealing with them, it’s as if you are talking to God. Because they want you to understand that there is no higher authority that grants them the power to do what they do … and they damned sure don’t need your permission to do it anymore.”