Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  “That.” Samuel jerks his head to the stairs. “Is why family’s for sitcoms only.”

  Atlas frowns. “I don’t understand.”

  “Because no one has ever loved you.”

  “Why—”

  “No one has loved you,” Samuel stoops down, slows his words, and exaggerates mouth movement, “and no one ever will.”

  “What are we to do now that Gene is occupied?”

  Samuel steps around Atlas. “Go to a bar.”

  “How are we,” Atlas grabs his arm, pulls him back, “to find Eden? If this day wasn’t the day of her planned event, what horrors could such event entail? She doubtless searches for us.”

  Samuel glares centimeters past Atlas’s head. Atlas veers into his line of vision. Samuel blurts a noise and leans around him, squinting over Atlas’s shoulder.

  Atlas would turn; instead, he imagines the woods beyond the closest unlit streetlamp and the black lump that quiets its croaking, steadies its beak, glistens the liquid ebony of one watching bead sewn into its profile. It’s been there, behind backs, above eyes, in the tangle of branch webs since they left the hospital and Atlas surfaces these imaginings. Breeze pricks his neck.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Samuel says.

  He pivots, stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, and strolls toward the woods. Atlas follows him through the parking lot before he acknowledges his legs move. They step over outskirts of asphalt, up soil’s ramp, past ferns on the right, rocks on the left, under the first branches snagging their hair, through a scent damp and earthy. Atlas keeps his eyes down. A hunk of shadow crosses his foot and his heart jumps. He keeps his eyes down.

  A drop hits Atlas’s eyebrow. He cringes and looks up; in glow of gray, migrating, rumbled cloud seethings that peek through the canopies, another breaks on his cheek. Rain. Water droplets pitter on leaves and roll drumming down tree trunks, the few luckiest splattering softening soil milliseconds delayed. Atlas’s hair droops and growingly translucent spots glue his tunic to skin where his jacket doesn’t cover.

  Tree patches steep in warm dew, leaves weeping vibrancy while dirt muddies. A branch scratches Atlas’s cheek and a second, one Samuel snapped, smacks a stain across his arm. Rain trickling down his temple, Atlas rubs his arm and lifts his gaze to sky’s asymmetric geometry between leaves, limbs, climbing bushes, to overcast’s last closing sunbeam.

  The raven—any raven is absent. He whips his head around. Only branches within which silent finches nestle. His nerves shoot a charge to his hands that feeds on their dampness. He thinks of Gene. Glances behind himself, down the trail of his footprints deepening by the drop. Breath accelerating, Atlas sprawls his hands, slows his pace, and glances again toward her apartment complex, where the raven—some raven could remain, glaring into her front door. He looks to Samuel.

  Samuel is the big, fat liar.

  And Atlas again follows him into the woods. He stares into the back of Samuel’s head and squeezes the wind between his fingers until his fists ache.

  Samuel stops.

  Atlas jolts. Samuel swings around and holds a finger to his lips.

  Rain drowns sound as it does their profiles, but Samuel angles an ear to the trees on his left. Patters. Thunder kilometers distant. Atlas shallows his breathing.

  His left foot dragging mud, Samuel hops right; and Atlas hops backward and snaps his hands to Samuel’s chest level; but a glimmer diverts his gaze and thrusts the space Samuel’s back was a heartbeat past. A blade, forearm-long, held by—rain splashes Atlas’s eye and he blinks. Green and black blur. Silver flashes. Dark sleeve, dark figure through leaves and a man—

  Atlas flicks the water from his face. He sees:

  Samuel seizes some man by his arm, the forearm-long blade extending from it, and yanks him from the foliage. The slim, young male, a symbol shaved from the hair of his head’s side, staggers toward Atlas. An Accend.

  The Accend twists on a foot and hurls his unarmed hand at Samuel. Flames jet off his fingers. Samuel throws back his shoulder and the fire stream brushes his chest, slips past, explodes on a sodden tree trunk meters away. Tapered, orange licks scattering behind his silhouette, Samuel straightens himself. The Accend lunges with the blade.

  Samuel rotates his body, one step, one breath, and the Accend leaps past him. His front to the Accend’s outstretched arm, Samuel grabs the Accend’s wrist and upper arm. He wrings them. The Accend cries out, drops his blade, crumples into Samuel. Samuel then thrusts the Accend’s arm upward and backward, bending the Accend’s hand behind his own back, and something pops.

  Atlas shifts forward—

  Samuel crouches, pivots, slips his shoulder under the Accend’s, still gripping his arm, and, back to back, pulls on the Accend. Samuel curves his spine to the Accend’s and heaves him overhead. The Accend slams the soil before Samuel. He coughs on mud, or his own breath.

  Wet bangs clung to his forehead, Samuel whips his revolver from his jacket and points it at the Accend. Atlas stares. Samuel gives him a look.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing,” Atlas says.

  “Yeah,” Samuel jerks the bangs from his eyes; “I’m humanish,” he gasps, “but I’m not a cream puff.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  Samuel exhales and, wiping the rain from his cheek, clenching his weapon, glares at the grounded Accend. He purses his lips. He jerks back to Atlas.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Samuel says.

  “ ‘Humanish’ and ‘cream puff’ perturb me but I mean that you are fully able to defend your own self.”

  Samuel scoffs. “Oh, now, don’t say it so snidely. You’re the creamiest puff there is so don’t get me started.”

  Atlas says, “I wasn’t being snide.”

  “Will you stop?”

  “I don’t know what it is you want me to cease doing.”

  “Just stop.”

  Samuel and Atlas scowl and look past the revolver’s barrel; the Accend doesn’t lie under it. Two feet kick up mud seven—eight meters down their clearing, back bobbing, arms flailing. Samuel shoots. Atlas grabs his ears, jolts to the jolt of his heart, and Samuel lowers his weapon.

  Pulse pounding, Atlas glares at Samuel’s target. The Accend, intact, eyes wide, stops and stumbles over his own ankle, catches himself on a branch. The slightest smoke streak wisps from a trunk to his right.

  “I’m having an important conversation and you,” Samuel flourishes his revolver, “decide to bolt for it? Come on.”

  The Accend picks at one of the black circles in his earlobes and mumbles, “Sorry.”

  “You know, I think I’ve seen you around Elisium. Jeremy, right?”

  “Brian?”

  “Brian. Give me a minute, Brian?”

  He nods.

  Samuel aims his revolver at Brian and turns to Atlas. “All I was saying is that you’re frilly and cocky about it too.”

  “Yes,” Atlas rolls his eyes, “very horrendous compared to your dishonesty.”

  “Huh?”

  Atlas groans and turns from Samuel.

  “What dishonesty?” Samuel angles after him. “If it’s sour, spit it out, Attie. Let’s all hear what I’m lying about. Lay it on me.”

  He spins around and narrows his eyes. “Your dishonesty isn’t in what has been said. It’s your silence that lies.”

  “Uh,” Samuel skews his jaw, “huh.”

  “I wish for you to explain.”

  “Since when do I, your life-saver, girlfriend-saver, back-watcher, eyes and ears, entertainment and transportation and information, owe you anything?”

  “Since—” Atlas exhales.

  “Yeah, precious?”

  “I simply wish to know—you should have it discerned by now.” Atlas glances at Brian and raises his voice over the rain. “Why do you remain with Gene and me?”

  “Here we go. Join an online forum, Baby Bumpkins, and get your grrs out elsewhere.”

  “This is the dishonesty you leave to imag
ination.”

  “Yeah, I don’t,” Samuel jerks his revolver; Brian flinches, “say all I think. But for the love of—”

  “The answer is simple.”

  “—don’t give me your lectures. ’Cause when you step off the soapbox, you’re this tall.”

  “Why, Samuel?”

  “Did you look at my fingers? This tall, Attie. Why do you—”

  “Why are you—”

  “—only ever care about that neurotic, self-righteous, human omelet in a soggy paper towel and yourself?”

  “—still with us if you believe such things?”

  Chin dipped, Brian smirks a millimeter’s lip curve at Samuel, who points at Atlas with his free hand. Samuel says, “I don’t—”

  The wind swallows his words and blasts his hair back, Atlas’s forward, tips them on their toes and heels. It crashes against their ears and fills their lungs. The trees roar. Water slams their sides and pounds pellets verging on the width of fingertips into their shoulders and scalps dripping distortion down their faces.

  “You remember the hospital—the lake—my words against you,” Atlas yells, “and still—”

  “I’ve never told anyone—”

  “That’s apparent.”

  “Will you shut it?”

  “What?”

  “SHUT IT.”

  The rain quiets, pitters of binaural beats; Atlas and Samuel follow suit.

  “I’ve never told anyone, save Eden, more about me than you,” Samuel says.

  Atlas inhales.

  “So if you think my silence condemns me to liar-ville or hell or whatever,” Samuel flips water from his hand, “then take this to the jury: I’m here because I’ve told you too much I swore I’d never say. And, good—” he rubs an eye, “it’s been hard.”

  Atlas straightens an armband through his jacket sleeve. He stares at trembling puddles.

  “Eden took rusty scissors to my gut and now—and I say way more than you, buddy. You don’t know why I keep leading?” Samuel shakes his head, chews his cheek. “Don’t know why you keep following.”

  Shifting his feet, Atlas swallows a tightness in his throat.

  Samuel re-aims his revolver and peers through its sights. “So, Brian—”

  “For earlier, for now—sorry,” Atlas whispers.

  Samuel twitches.

  “For much, I’m,” Atlas rubs the water between his fingers, “apologize. I am—I intend—sorry.”

  Stretching his right hand over his left, Samuel squeezes his pistol grip and, looking into Brian, budges his head side to side, up and down, in a warped, small circle that lives for two seconds.

  “ ’Kay. Brian!” Samuel half-smiles. “Bri-Bri. Brianna. I’m gonna call you Brianna. Come over here.”

  Brian shuffles, fractions of steps, wobbling knees, toward Samuel and Atlas. He grips the ends of his leather jacket sleeves. Water glints its highlights and washes the skin peeking through his shaved symbol, the rest of his hair combed to one side in a flat, slick swoop.

  “Why ya here, Bri?” Samuel asks.

  Brian points to Atlas. “Eden wants him.”

  “How many are woods-sitting? Please tell me Eden didn’t poop you out for the purpose of coming at me all lonesome.”

  “There are like ten of us. I don’t know. Over a dozen. On and off, we’ve been here for days and haven’t gotten any new orders so I just thought—”

  “Orders?” Samuel drags a hand down his face. He mumbles into it. “You’re Accenda, you limbless kittens.”

  Brian lifts his chin. “I do what I want.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “I’m calling your mom.”

  “Some of us might actually have the sense to work together to stop universal enslavement.” Brian clenches his jaw and turns purple. He glances at the sky, at Atlas. “We’re not them. Are you?”

  Samuel taps his revolver. “What’s Eden waiting for, Brianna?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You feeling all right, Bri-Bri?”

  Brian stares.

  Samuel points his revolver between Brian’s feet and shoots. Earsplitting thunder nearer than the sky’s unhinges Atlas’s spine. Brian leaps a meter into the air; his face contorts and his purple shade pales to white.

  “Do you have anxiety? Breathe, Brianna,” Samuel says.

  Brian clutches the sides of his head.

  “Hey, listen. Why does Eden want this one,” Samuel nods to Atlas, “so bad?”

  “She needs the Sideran.”

  “Why does Eden need Attie?”

  “What d’you mean? You don’t—” Brian blurts a manic laugh. “Because he’s predestined.”

  Atlas angles his head and steps forward. “Predestined?”

  Brian’s bottom lip trembles, his brow furrowed, forehead glistening with a substance other than rain. Atlas strides between him and Samuel’s revolver. Launching a charge down his arm, he grabs Brian’s jacket lapel, shoves him into the nearest tree trunk, and raises his free hand. Brian’s breath opposes Sideran breeze as it bursts from his mouth, and Atlas leans into it, cuts his pupils into the Accend’s, deepens tone.

  “How,” Atlas flexes his fingers around his jacket, “am I predestined?”

  “The Presage.”

  “What of it?”

  Brian exhales an earthquake and says, “The Presage is your prophecy.”

  XXVI

  Yours

  “Mine?”

  Atlas tightens his grip and Brian lifts halfway off the ground, tiptoeing in mud.

  “Yeah.” Brian cringes. “Thought you knew. Let me go.”

  Right hand clutching Brian’s jacket, Atlas streams a breeze from his left. “What makes The Presage mine?”

  “It was written for and about you, the Sideran who escapes to Earth. The dimension traveler. You’re supposed to open doors and—” Brian cusses. “That’s all I know.”

  Samuel lowers his revolver. “Brianna, does Eden talk about me?”

  “Everyone does.” Brian leans around Atlas. “Most want to rip your intestines out and play tug-o-war with them.”

  Atlas jolts Brian into his line of sight. “And Eden said this?”

  “Other people. You know, practice their scout knots, wear his intestines like how Marilyn Monroe wears those feather things.”

  Atlas shakes him. “Eden said The Presage is written for and about the escaped Sideran?”

  Brian nods.

  “And of the walker to open Pylon? Is he not included more heavily?”

  Brian glares.

  “Wait a sec.” Samuel’s jaw drops. “Eden told you that Atlas is the headliner of the infamous, dimension-splitting omen lost in Skyland?”

  Brian nods.

  Samuel groans. “She told you, Brianna, the eleven-year-old, bed-wetting crony, super exclusive secrets of the prophecy that could destroy Earth? We were together for twelve years and she told me squat—not her age, her favorite color, not if she did actually watch the original Star Trek series without me bugging her too much about it. I hope that babe dies while giving birth to a litter of giant squid that also dies. I won’t speak at their funerals.”

  “She didn’t tell me,” Brian says. “I overheard her talking to some skinhead.”

  Samuel squints. “Minkar?”

  “Eden called him ‘Sovereign’ once and ‘Pater’ another time.” Brian glares at Atlas. “Please don’t put your wind fingers in my eyes.”

  Atlas releases his grasp and, exhaling, Brian settles his sneakers on solid ground.

  “Minkar can’t really be Eden’s boss. No. No. I’d rather have a fat tumor than this sucking day,” Samuel says.

  Atlas says, “ ‘Pater’?”

  “If twelve years of listening to Eden’s Latin got me anything, I think that’s ‘Father,’ Attie. Shouldn’t you know that?”

  “I’ve never heard of such a—”<
br />
  “Oh, boy.” Samuel looks over his shoulder and lowers his voice. “We gotta go.”

  A faint rustle rides drumming of rain ten or twenty meters from where Atlas, Brian, and Samuel stand. It intensifies. Atlas’s heart spasms. Bursting wind from his free palm, the leather of Brian’s jacket trembling under it, Atlas grabs a branch to Brian’s left and leans into him.

  “You will exhibit the obedience of your childhood and persuade your associates to redirect.” Atlas peers nails into the swollen black of Brian’s pupils. “To some place far from here. Kilometers far. A couple thousand would be an adequate start.”

  Brian stares.

  Atlas grabs Brian’s ear and channels wind into his canal. Brian squirms, yelps.

  “Yes?”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  Atlas drops his hand, hushes his wind, and Brian pushes off his tree and sprints into the woods. His back disappears behind foliage. Samuel runs the opposite way for Gene’s apartment, throwing dew and shoving Atlas’s shoulder as he passes. Atlas chases, heels heavy with leaves and mud.

  “Really?” Samuel says.

  Atlas watches the back of his head and ducks his own under a branch.

  “You really think baby’s gonna goo-goo at the other anarchists and help us out? We should’ve shot him.”

  “His eyes were genuine,” Atlas says.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The rain ebbs but canopies retract their cover; and Samuel and Atlas stagger from the woods’ threshold onto asphalt suffering sky’s volley. They slosh to the apartment staircase. Gene sits at its foot, her face in her hands. Her hair drips streaks down her shirt.

  Atlas stops, gasps, and bends toward her. “Is something wrong?”

  Gene lifts her face and her eyes hold the glisten that quivers puddles underfoot. Samuel folds his arms and gives Atlas a look.

  “Dad’s gone.” Samuel gestures to Gene. “She’s sitting, thinking about downtown, Helena, her torture session, having no idea where we went off to, imagining where her fuming dad went off to, debating if she should go off too, and she’s feeling frustrated Dad didn’t scrape the hug-it-out stage, living in a dissociated nightmare made lucid by painkillers and the pain they’re not killing, feeling guilty for everything already mentioned because she’s the worst daughter and human being in the universe for choosing us over the law, her job, dignity, and own flesh and blood and worrying, because of it all, we don’t like her. Also, she hasn’t worn makeup in a week.”