Apathetic God

by Ian Withrow

  He struggled to respond, but finally croaked out an answer.

  “Th-thirty-six thirty-seven mountain terrace road, that’s where we meet.”

  Lauren was draining his life before he could even finish his sentence.

  “Thanks.”

  Finally, the answer to the question she’d been asking all day. Unfortunately, she had no clue where Mountain Terrace was. She pondered a moment before a compelling idea came to mind, and caused her to burst out laughing.

  Lauren stepped out into the street in front of a passing taxi and motioned for the man to stop. He slammed on his brakes a few moments too late and crashed headlong into her hip. Lauren grunted softly from the blow, but remained largely unmoved. The front end of the car was crumpled like an accordion and the engine was making a high-pitched keening noise that irritated her ears.

  Lauren walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle and ripped the door off.

  “I need directions to 3637 Mountain terrace.”

  The babbling cabbie blinked at her, then feverishly jammed the address into his dashboard GPS.

  The tiny computer announced that it had found the most direct route a few moments later.

  “Is that battery powered?”

  He nodded.

  “Good.”

  Lauren reached past the cowering man and ripped the device from it’s mount before leaping into the air. A thin robotic voice rose above the winds.

  “Recalculating.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes and dropped back down to a few dozen feet above street level before proceeding. It took less than 15 minutes for Lauren to arrive. When she did, she was surprised at how nice the neighborhood was.

  The white, three storey home she found had a pair large of unattached garages, a medium sized yard, even a pool in the back. The entire property was clearly in good repair and well taken care of. The only unusual feature was a tall chain link fence that enclosed the property.

  Lauren wondered for a moment if she’d been lied to, but a gunshot from within the house confirmed that she was in the right place.

  She heard the bullet whizz past like an angry bee, missing her head by a few feet at most. The single shot was followed by a dozen more as the windows of the home lit up from within.

  Lauren didn’t even bother to move, opting to hover nonchalantly above the street. The small caliber weapons barely ruffled her feathers, and felt like raindrops against her skin.

  Within moments the gunfire sputtered to a stop as the people within realized the futility of their assault. Lauren, with her bullet-riddled clothes, touched down lightly on the grass and took a deep breath, relishing the fear she could smell from the house.

  She would enjoy this, the hunger within her promised.

  It was right.

  Lauren turned and gripped the handle of the gate in the fence behind her, she gently squeezed the metal together enough to make it inoperable, trapping her prey within the confines of the property.

  she spent the next twenty minutes or so playfully tracking down and draining the unfortunate inhabitants of the house.

  Unsurprisingly there were people that were clearly not members of the actual gang there as well. A number of hysterical, scantily clad women, for example. But it didn’t bother Lauren, their lives tasted just as sweet.

  They made their choices.

  Lauren burst into the last room of the house with a grin only to be confronted by a young woman standing in front of a huddled pair of children. The woman let loose two slugs from a shaking 12-gauge shotgun, eliciting screams from the youngsters behind her.The rounds hit her leg, ripping Lauren’s jeans in the middle of her thigh before ricocheting off into the wall.

  Valerie’s phone slipped from her torn pocket and dropped to the floor beside Lauren’s foot, jarring her as much as the sight of the children had.

  Slowly, unthinkingly, she bent to retrieve the fallen device. But she couldn't look away from the children.

  The crying woman was speaking, but Lauren’s ears had stopped working. She was lost in the piercing blue eyes of the blonde, curly-haired kids behind her. Their terror cut her to the bone, pierced her heart as surely as a blade.

  “...don’t hurt them. I’ll do anything. Please just take me instead.”

  The woman was on her knees, begging.

  Lauren’s stomach churned and her vision swam. She shook her head violently, trying to clear the thumping from her ears or the bile from her throat. She turned and rushed from the room, barely keeping herself from being sick. The house was suddenly claustrophobic, the walls crushing in around her.

  When she finally burst out into the yard she could see the house was surrounded by police. Dozens of officers leveled a variety of firearms at her from behind the hoods of their parked vehicles. The flashing lights made her nausea worse, so she shut her eyes and tried to breathe as slowly and carefully as she could.

  The officers were screaming at her, instructing her to lay down with her hands in the air, but she knew she had nothing to fear. Instead she stood clutching her stomach, trying to calm herself. She could feel the inky blackness struggling to regain its grip on her heart, but the wound from seeing the children would not be sealed.

  She’d nearly succeeded in returning her breathing to normal when a loud explosion shook the yard. A blast of hot air and ash announced Weyland’s arrival like a trumpet, and Lauren’s stomach flipped again. She gagged, but managed to keep her composure.

  Weyland was wearing a tailored suit, charcoal grey with ruby cufflinks and a silver tie. Beside him Lauren could see Natalie. She’d changed considerably since Lauren had seen her months ago. For one thing, she was wearing a smart black skirt and a loose salmon blouse and heels, rather than the archaic garments she’d had on before. The only accessory that hadn’t changed was the golden choker around her neck.

  In her hands, Natalie held an exquisite wooden box wrapped in a silver bow.

  “Lauren, my love. I’ve brought you a gift.”

  Weyland motioned for Natalie to move forward, and she did so, bowing low and presenting Lauren with the box.

  It was all Lauren could do to remain standing. She scrunched her eyes shut.

  When Lauren didn’t react, Natalie glanced nervously at her master. He had a strange half-scowl on his face. Natalie improvised and opened the box for Lauren, revealing an exquisite gold circlet. The thin crown was shaped to resemble a string of feathers and was studded with dozens of small, sparkling diamonds.

  Natalie lifted the circlet out of the box and held it up to Lauren.

  Weyland took a few steps towards Lauren, his hands out to his sides.

  “Lauren by now you must realize your place is-”

  He froze.

  Lauren cracked one eye open, taking in the sight of the crown and the half-frightened, half-wild look on Weyland’s face. The slack-jawed expression on his face drew her attention and she gazed at him in alarm. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, so she followed his line of sight. At first she thought he was staring at her chest, after all it was fairly exposed from the bullet holes in her clothing. But she realized his gaze was lower, firmly fixed on her stomach.

  Aside from her normally flat stomach being a little puffy, Lauren could see nothing that would have so captured his attention.

  Slowly his eyes tracked back upwards until they locked with hers.

  “You’re pregnant? Why didn’t you tell me!”

  Lauren’s eyes opened impossibly wide. Her stomach would be silenced no longer and she heaved the last of her dignity out onto the yard.

  Weyland stepped towards her but she managed to hold a hand out, motioning for him to stay back. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and straightened up as best she could.

  She wanted to speak, to deny it, but all she could hear was her heartbeat in her ears. The same two-step she’d been listening to for days. Only now did she realize it was more than just her own heartbeat she was hearing.

  She heard a snap and looked down at
her fist. The screen of the cell phone she was carrying had a large crack down the center. The black mirror of the phone showed her pale reflection and Lauren hardly recognized herself.

  Her ebony hair soaked in the afternoon sunlight and provided contrast for her pale skin and the radiant silver veins crisscrossing her skin.

  “Lauren, this changes everything. You have to come home now.”

  Weyland was unusually soft-spoken, but this kinder, gentler mask was just as ugly as the monster Lauren knew lurked beneath.

  When she didn’t respond his voice rose and was tinged with the familiar violence she knew he was capable of.

  “Lauren, enough of this! You are carrying my child now, you have a duty to me. I don’t want to be angry, so why do you insist on testing me like this? I have been more than patient, enduring your little… vacation. Your absurd denial of your place, of my place.”

  His swelling anger manifested as waves of heat billowing outward from his body, driving the onlooking law enforcement back and forcing Natalie to kneel and shield herself as best she could.

  Lauren ignored him, both of her hands resting gently on her stomach. She willed her heart to calm, mesmerized by the second beat. How could she have missed it before? It occurred to her that only by virtue of her empowered senses could she hear it at all. Sure enough, the more she focused the more clearly she could hear the rapid pitter-patter of the life inside her.

  Weyland had continued speaking but she’d tuned him out, so when he roughly grabbed her arm and shook her it startled her.

  “You will listen to me, I demand it.”

  The truth of her situation hit Lauren like a meteor, unfiltered by the wild surprise of Weyland’s revelation. She was pregnant. She was pregnant with Weyland’s child. She could no longer deny what she knew had been done to her while she slumbered under his spell.

  Lauren locked eyes with Weyland, an act that he mistook for obedience.

  “Better. Now, you will return with me to London and we will be bonded before the eyes of Gods and men-”

  She jerked her arms free of his rough grasp, causing him to pause in disbelief.

  “You still defy me?”

  Lauren opened her mouth to speak but before she could utter a single syllable Weyland backhanded her with such incredible force that it drove her to her knees. Lauren felt her jaw crack and several of her teeth loosen from the blow, but in an instant the damage was repaired. The ringing in her ears and the spots dancing before her eyes took a few moments longer to resolve.

  She looked up at him, her vision still swimming a bit. She stood unsteadily and spit a mouthful of blood into his hate-filled face. Weyland took a surprised step backward, wiping the sizzling fluid off of his face.

  “How dare you, you ungrateful-”

  Lauren’s anger burned as brightly as her rival’s and she shouted over him.

  “How dare I? How dare I? What in your perverse, sick mind makes you think I should be grateful to you?”

  Lauren shoved him and took a great deal of pleasure in seeing him stumble. Her strength emboldened her further and the look on his face as he realized how strong she had become was priceless.

  “You think I want your child inside me? Did I ask you to do this to me? To… to violate me?”

  “I have no need to ask! I took what was mine,” he roared back at her.

  The grass around them crumbled to ashes and the paint on the house started to peel, but still Lauren stood her ground.

  “You, this world, these mortals? This is mine, all mine-”

  With every word Weyland jammed his finger downward, gesturing to the blackened and cracked ground beneath their feet.

  “I am not a thing to be owned!”

  Lauren’s voice shook as she unreservedly declared her freedom. Her breathing grew heavier and she could feel energy pulling into her body from the ground beneath her.

  “You,” she pointed menacingly at him, taking note that her arm up to her elbow was engulfed in bright silver.

  “You stole my innocence, you took something irreplaceable from me. Something that was mine to give, and no one’s to take, and you… you stole it.”

  Hot tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision. This would be the first time she said it out loud, made it real.

  “You raped me.”

  Her accusation hung like an ax above the yard, casting it into silence but for the roaring flames from the now burning buildings and the wailing of sirens.

  Was that… fear in Weyland’s eyes? Lauren couldn’t be sure through her tears.

  “If it is true that I will live forever, and worse, that I am trapped in this hell with you, then know this. I will never be yours. I will never love you, or care about you. I could walk this earth until the sun burned out and you would still be nothing to me. Less than nothing.”

  Lauren cast her eyes upward, to the freedom of the skies, and took to the air.

  “Lauren.”

  She hovered, staring down at him.

  “This isn’t over.”

  Lauren turned away again and headed south.

  “Yes, it is.”

  As she gained altitude and more of the city revealed itself to her, she felt… wrong.

  Something was different, but it took her a moment to place it. Every yard, every tree and bush, every errant blade of grass between sidewalk cracks had turned black and dead. Worse, the streets were littered with hollow, drained corpses. Men, women, pets still tethered by leashes to their lifeless owners. The devastation stretched for block after block, all radiating from the house she’d just left. It was several minutes before she again saw signs of life. Her resolve threatened to break, but there again was the darkness to comfort her. She gladly let it wrap itself back around her heart and pushed herself further, faster, and higher into the skies.

  With weather as ugly as this, Caroline was glad to be indoors. The unseasonably cold thunderstorm that engulfed Southern Illinois had sprung from nowhere and had steadily worsened throughout the day.

  Caroline was working her way towards the kitchen of her church. She could hear the tea kettle just starting to boil and was glad for the promise of warmth on this chilly summer night. The tiny whistle barely pierced the pounding of the driving rain that had been dousing the area for most of the afternoon.

  Her depth perception had not yet fully recovered, particularly in the dim twilight, so it was difficult for her to pour sugar in her drink without spilling it on the counter.

  Then again, she chuckled to herself, with only one good eye I only see half the mess, I suppose. Beverage in hand, she retired to her small bedroom. The television remained off, she’d had quite enough of the circus that was the news cycle, and instead she reached to retrieve a blank-covered black leather book and a small pen from her bedside table.

  She’d just started writing when she heard a faint knock at the back door.

  It was awfully late to be a parishioner, and besides the doors to The Lady’s House were always unlocked, even in these troubling times. No, it must be a guest then. Someone unwilling to enter uninvited. Well, she would not keep them waiting. Caroline slid her feet into a pair of soft house slippers and shuffled to the door.

  “Hello? Please come in it’s unlocked. All are welcome here.”

  Her aging heart skipped a beat when the door swung softly open to reveal that last person she thought she’d ever see again.

  “Oh my Lord in Heaven, Lauren! Oh how I have prayed for your return.”

  Something in Lauren’s face seemed different, broken and defeated. Caroline wasn’t sure she’d ever seen someone look so… crushed.

  “My lady, a-are you ok?”

  Lauren shook her head no, and Caroline could see her face was wet from more than rain. She was clutching something small in both her hands against her chest, and her clothes were ragged and torn, hanging off her body like an afterthought. Even her sleek black wings hung low and dejected.

  Caroline stepped aside to let Lauren in, bu
t was instead engulfed in a soaking wet hug. Lauren gripped her tightly, almost to the point that it hurt, but she was sobbing so hard the Caroline couldn't bring herself to say anything at all.

  After a tense few moments, Caroline managed to reach a hand around behind Lauren and push the door shut. She guided her weeping friend further into the church, a trail of water following them across the dull linoleum flooring.

  Loathe though she was to admit it, her own quarters were a bit of a mess, so she opted to bring her charge into the worship hall to sit a moment while she straightened up. Caroline sat Lauren down on the furthest back pew and moved to retrieve a few towels.

  “D-don’t go, please. Please don’t leave me alone.”

  Lauren wrapped her arms tighter around Caroline, who acquiesced and sat beside her. Lauren cried for more than an hour, her head buried in Caroline’s shoulder and her arms tightly around her. Caroline ran her fingers gently through Lauren’s sopping hair and tried as best she could to comfort her. She knew that when she was ready, Lauren would speak.

  It was only after Lauren started shivering that Caroline broke their shared silence.

  “Let me get you a towel dear, and some dry clothes.”

  Lauren nodded with a sniffle and finally revealed her tear-streaked face, complete with runny nose and puffy red eyes. The change in her features was so startlingly clear, so close to Caroline that she couldn't help but gasp. Lauren’s eyes were black pools streaked with bright silver threads. That same silver seemed to radiate from the veins around her eyes, giving her a look somewhere between angelic and menacing.

  Lauren looked up into Caroline’s face, afraid of the judgment she expected to find. All she found was grace and concern, and ugly scars running down one half of her face.

  She didn’t have to ask how they’d gotten there. She’d seen enough of Kent’s memories to remember Sigurd’s cruel boot grinding her face into the rough Chicago pavement.

  Her throat felt tight, and her eyes were still blurry as she struggled to thank the woman cradling her so gently. She gently reach a hand out and brushed Caroline’s face, her scars disappearing under Lauren’s fingertips.

  “Caroline, I am so, so sorr-”