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The organization that I belonged to liked boast of their air-tight secrecy, and information was kept firmly in small circles. But still, secrets of the magnitude we dealt in were nearly impossible to keep. There were always leaks.
For a long time, these little breaches were never a problem, just snatches of blurry info sold to tabloids. The public remained mercifully oblivious to the Other World, their own stubborn nature refusing to accept the signs. Thousands of generations kept our secrets safe, suspicion and questions never escalating into anything more.
Then along came little old me, and our organization was nearly torn apart at the seams.
I was the new atomic bomb, the new level of power that everyone needed to get a piece of. People that were supposed to keep me safe suddenly had their own agendas. I couldn’t count the number of people that tried to lure me to them, or tried to force me against my will.
Somehow, word of my existence spread through dark alleys like wildfire. Suddenly everyone knew about me, from local mobs to back rooms of the government. There was nowhere I was safe.
It was crazy. Years and years of unflinching loyalty and secrecy had suddenly burst into flames over this shiny new toy. People from within the organization were taking bribes, or trying to snatch me up for themselves. We were quickly falling apart.
The government – or some part of it – came to us once, with an unfathomable sum of money on a ready-to-sign check. It took a lot of willpower to refuse, but the Boss has always made the right choices. We all knew that this kind of power was never meant to be loose in the world.
The suits left with neutral faces, but we knew they weren’t happy with losing their prize.
I never knew if it was them that returned later, they that set off the... the carnage... the genocide.
But I suppose that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it happened.
March 7th, 2082. 7:10 pm.
The woman sat in the corner of the white room, legs crossed, briefcase of her lap, face miserable. What had she expected? That Joel would cross an impossible mental barrier at just the sound of her voice?
Yes, she thought. That’s exactly what she expected, and she was an idiot for that. She’d gambled everything on her foolish fairytale idea. She shouldn’t have come.
She’d tried to talk to him. She’d tried to remember everything she’d written down. But then she’d looked into those lifeless, unseeing eyes, and couldn’t find her voice again.
The woman slumped there, feeling utterly sorry for herself. She’d come here full of resolve, but that had crumbled in an instant, seeing Joel again, seeing the state he was in.
She’d aged while he was gone, slower than the average person, but faster than he’d ever. He was still young, and man barely out of his teens, while she was a decade beyond. The chance they might have had was gone... even if he’d ever return to normal.
Looking at him now, she knew he wouldn’t. Not with her help, anyway.
She glanced at her watch, and a pang of panic shook her out of her thoughts. She had less than two hours before her chance was up, and the Boss would take over. For Joel’s sake, she couldn’t let that happen.
The woman scrambled to her feet, cursing and shaking herself out of her slump. How had she gotten so weak so fast? If the Boss could see her now... her cheeks burned.
Composing herself, rewriting her appearance, she gathered up her bag and strode over to Joel's cot. Face business-like, she pulled out a glossy image from her case. She held it out in front of his face, took a deep breath, and began.
“The dark magic uprising of 2014. Two years after you left.” She placed the photo beside Joel on the cot. “You know the state you left the world in. Those were difficult times... the organization was already at the breaking point. We could barely keep order in the streets. We tried to get help from the white Wiccans, but no one trusted us anymore... not without reason, I suppose.”
The woman pulled out another photo, feeling stupid, but unwilling to give up again. “June, 2017. The Leeches... or vampires, as the public prefers... joined in the anarchy. Absolute nightmare. We were able to bribe the sovereign bloodsucker in the area into controlling his group, but there are still feral vampires out there. We don’t have enough night watch to control them all.”
The next photo. “Fire demons didn’t like the vampires running free all over their streets. They decided that our authority was lax, so they took law into their own hands, none too discreetly.” She pointed at the picture – a three block downtown area, in ashes. “This is what happened when civilians get in the way.
“After that, it was complete chaos. We were struggling to maintain any sort of order, and the public were crying Apocalypse. Any kind of creature you can imagine – everything we tried to keep from the human world... they all rushed into the fray like it was the hell-demon fourth of July. Sewer dwellers, night spirits, poltergeists, the shade, the Fae... all kinds of demons, ghouls, gargoyles, furies, behemoths, harpies, imps... a nasty Lilith in Europe that nearly wiped out a country – she was dealt with, thank God. There was even a dragon sighting in Brazil. Hell on earth, complete disbelief, leaders good for nothing but pissing their pants. It’s a miracle that we survived those years at all.”
The woman spread the two photos out on top of the first. She fumbled in her bag for the next image, and paused, biting her lip. Finally, she pulled it out.
“And then, twenty years ago, it stopped. All of it. People were coming out of their homes in the morning to find demons and night creatures strewn all over the streets. Dead – without explanation. We took them into our labs and studied them for months, with no avail. All we could tell was that all the creatures' major organs had just... failed. Just like that, en masse.
“We were scared, but the public saw it as some glorious miracle. They didn’t care what had happened – just that the creatures were gone. Everyone was happy. Religious belief rose. There were prayers and parades in the streets, for Christsakes.
“But still, we kept looking. Even the underground demons, the ones who hadn’t caused any trouble. Dead. Even the white witches were...” The woman’s voice caught. “Slaughtered. Only a dozen or so of the elders across the globe survived. Tania... do you remember Tania? She was a friend of mine. She was... I found… she didn’t escape it.” Tears suddenly rose, and the woman fought hard to force them down again. She hated crying in front of him, even if he wasn't listening.
The woman forced herself to move on. “And then, after a full year of silence. After a full year of peace. The breach.”
The woman stopped. She put a hand to her face, and closed her eyes. Without thinking, the hand left her face and found Joel’s shoulder, giving it a soft squeeze. A flash of memory shot through her head – a sunny field, and blue sky. Joel, cupping the head of a small withered flower in his hands, grinning softly as it returned to life.
The woman opened her eyes, and took a deep rattling breath. “Oh, God. We really need you now. Wake up. Please.”
There’s something wrong. I can feel it. A prickling unease oozing through the nothing of my mind.
The earthy woman comes to me. She smiles, beckoning me forward. “Wake up, Joel.”
I hear a gasp, in my voice. My mind jolts. Lights spreads through my head.
“Wake up, Joel.” She’d fading away as the blinding white takes over. I try to call out to her, to tell her to stay, but I can’t.
I feel something on my shoulder. A hand.
My shoulder? My body... I...
“Wake up, Joel.”
 Twisted Black Roses · Sat Sep 19, 2009 @ 08:46pm · 0 Comments |
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