by Gary Sapp
were countless other officers on the other side of the door, down the hall, and guarding the sides of the building. The FBI wanted to guarantee that no one would try to extract her from the courthouse and no one was getting in either.
At last, a blessed sleep threatened to pull her up into its bosom, she prayed it would be without nightmare…or visions…
Serena Tennyson was wrong.
She was so very wrong…
The light that greeted her on the other side of sleep, or wherever this was, nearly blinded her. She had to shield her eyes from the brightness as she walked towards the lone figure that she saw. Someone…it looked like a man, was sitting cross legged on a wooden bench in a park. There were no birds humming or flying, no bees buzzing about, there didn’t even so seem to be ants crawling in the dirt. Outside of Serena and this man, there didn’t look to be anything living in the park besides the trees and bushes and flowers scattered about.
She walked up to the bench.
Thomas Pepper looked back over his shoulder at her.
“Hello.” He said. “I thought you would never get here.”
“What are you doing here?” Serena asked. She would not panic the way a non-believer would. The Dragon had exposed to her to an abundance of stimuli since she had accepted his calling after her parents death. Visions and prophecy had been introduced her in dreams before…this was no different.
“Your contact with Pepper at his home, that intimacy you experienced with that man led to this. I am but a shadow, an echo of that man you know on the other side.” He beckoned her to sit next to him. After she obeyed, he said, “Serena, I’m here today…tonight in your world, to offer you the opportunity to turn away from the path you are walking. This is your last chance to avoid disaster. This is your last chance to avoid The Whirlwind.”
“The Whirlwind,” She laughed the sound of it foreign in her own ears. “The Whirlwind is something that Caretaker conjured up, something that I will implement of my enemies if it—“
“The Whirlwind is something a great deal more personal than that, Serena.” Thomas Pepper or this entity that wore his guise said. “Serena, every human being, even those who follow the teachings of the Dragon like you do, potentially suffer from their own Whirlwind if they are pushing too hard…if they are reckless. You have been reckless, Serena.”
She sat back on her heels. “I have followed the teachings of The Dragon. I have followed the wishes of the Caretaker.”
“You have not exercised free will. Your recklessness will result in destruction beyond repair and the death of a great many people. From this point forward you will bring out the bad in good men. And bring out the worse in bad men. Yet, if you turn away right now, then your Dragon is little more than a metaphor…your Caretaker in error, or a liar.”
Serena had no response for what Thomas Pepper said. He was on his feet; a big man dressed in one of the other’s signature tailored suits and extended a big left hand to her. She avoided human contact as often as he could…but he wasn’t quite human was he? And until Thomas Pepper, the real Thomas Pepper had seen my nakedness as I undressed in front of him at his townhouse before the Feds arrived…no man had ever seen all of her. Serena had kept herself pure as the teachings of the Dragon had expected of her. She accepted his hand and walked with him.
One minute all of the light in the entire world was behind them, while darkness ruled the realm in front of them. After another minute, three doors appeared out of the nothingness. Serena waited on Thomas to explain…but all he did was squeeze her hand…touch her unlike she had ever allowed a man on the other side to touch her before.
He wore a tired, sad look on his squared jaw. “As you can see, Serena there is three doors in front of you. Behind each one is a point that you can avoid your Whirlwind, here and now. If you choose not to…if you choose unwisely, then you risk the probable outcome of what you see evolve from behind each door.” He said. She nodded in understanding, but did not interrupt.
“When you are exposed to each scenario, I will ask you to turn away and that door will close to you forever. Again, if you choose not to…again, if you choose unwisely, we will move to the next door and so on. If you have not turned way back the time the third and final door shuts, I will simply ask you to turn around, so you may continue you’re walking your path towards your own personal Whirlwind.” He paused for a very long time. “Do you understand, Serena?”
“I do.”
Thomas released her hand and she let it fall to her side.
The first door opened and a tiger…albeit it a paper tiger leaped out. She drew back, fearing at first that she would be the object of its attention. It swerved around her, lay on its stomach for an instant, snarled and let out a mighty roar. Then it repeated the same action, but when it opened its fanged mouth this time it purred like a common housecat would. In fact, Serena took notice of its stripes and how the stripes altered color and shape and number with each blink of her eye, as if the thing didn’t know what type of tiger it actually was.Finally, the darker stripes remained, the snarl intense, and Serena imagined the roar would be frightening when it decided to unleash it again.
Six chocolate covered paper children began walking hand and hand down a paper street. Serena watched the snarl from the paper tiger intensify. At the right moment he pounced on the children…one…and then another…and another, until he was standing with all of his weight on top of them. The chocolate children flapped their arms and legs but the tiger was too heavy, too powerful to remove. Their mouths opened to scream and either Serena couldn’t hear them or the sound wasn’t coming out.
Another minute passed. In the second minute, one of the paper chocolate children stopped waving his arms and legs…he stopped moving at all. The next minute saw another child repeat the action or inaction of the first one. The remaining children opened their mouths wider, but again Serena heard nothing ushering out.
Thomas Pepper said, “What is your decision, Serena?”
She folded her arms and stood flatfooted in defiance. “I understand the symbolism here, Thomas.” She said in a confident voice. “The Paper Tiger is Louis/Hugh Keaton. Those children are caricatures of Black children in Atlanta. Although the two deaths are unfortunate, Operation Where are our Children looks as if it succeeded as I planned it.”
So Serena nodded her head, no.
The first door closed, she heard an audible click of a lock bolting and second door opened immediately thereafter behind her.
Thomas Pepper said, “You should turn away.”
And Serena was surrounded by flames.
The Whirlwind was all around her. Thomas looked unfazed. She fanned the flames as best she could, but they only seemed to grow in intensity and heat. She ran back into the light and seemed to find some relief from the inferno there. Thomas was standing next to her at this point as if he’d always been by her side.
In the distance, Serena saw a small scaled replica of Atlanta. The flames had encompassed the city from the sides and from areas both front and behind it. Paper people ran one way and then another. She could hear them screaming this time. The shrieks of fear and pain nearly overwhelmed her. Some of the cries cascaded from people that she knew.
Am I signally responsible for all of this death and destruction, Serena thought, but dared not say aloud.
“You are,” Thomas voiced the answer to her thought. He turned to her but never lost his eye for the flames. “Turn away from your path here, turn away right now and this destruction stops before it ever begins.”
Serena neared tears. Her father had sacrificed so much. The Caretaker had sacrificed so much more.
“No.” She said again.
The second door closed, and once again she heard an audible click of a lock bolting and the third and final door opened immediately thereafter behind her.
Thomas Pepper said, “You should turn away.”
There was a huge paper chocolate man stomping about. What Serena noticed most about him is that he wore
a crown on his brow that grew larger and larger…and larger as the minutes passed them by. He had a flock of paper people walking behind him. And there numbers grew so big, so fast that Serena quit trying to count them all.
Across a street, a group of paper pasty white people were marching towards to where the huge chocolate man with the oversized crown and his flock were standing.
The crown eventually grew too large for the chocolate king and Serena heard it rattle as it fell around his ankles. He clumsily marched on and tripped over his own crown. If he was dead or injured from his fall, Serena could not tell.
Both the chocolate colored paper people and the pasty white paper people paused for only a minute as if they were honoring the fallen, drew out paper sticks and charged each other.
Many of the chocolate covered people fell from what…some type of an illness or disorder …even before the battle had been engaged.
When the combat had ended there were scores on both sides who had been slaughtered. Serena saw such much red paint…so much blood, that she felt the same sensations in her gut, chest, head and face as she did when The FBI rushed her into the side entrance of the courthouse.
She hugged herself, and felt her body trembling.
Thomas had to stop himself for reaching out to comfort her. He bore a look mixed of frustration, disbelief, anger and sadness.
He said to her, “You should turn