The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  I pretended to be asleep when Janna and Adam came out of the bathroom. He got her dressed and bandaged her wounds as he had done for me, and then tucked her into bed beside me. The bed was large enough for all three of us, but perhaps because he was no longer married to Janna, and because he wanted to be gentlemanly with me, he chose to sleep with his huge frame half hanging off of the chaise lounge by the window. The room was freezing, and he had no blanket, so I dropped my feigned sleep and sat up.

  “Surprise, I was not actually sleeping.”

  “I am so surprised.” He replied in gentle sarcasm.

  “You are not sleeping there. It is cold in here, and your six foot nine self looks ridiculous trying to sleep on a daybed. Seriously, that thing looks like something a dainty Victorian would fan herself on after she fainted. Get over here and sleep in bed with your wives.”

  He had a hearty chuckle at that, but stayed where he was.

  “I am nowhere near six foot nine inches tall, though I appreciate the exaggeration. My six foot six inch self will remain here, so that my wives may have full reign of that large king-sized bed, and so they may sleep peacefully.”

  “Adam, I am issuing you a wifely order to get into bed with me.”

  “But we are in the Old Spirit camp. It is their creed that I must ignore all wifely orders you give me and promptly show you your proper place.”

  “Do I need to punch you again?”

  He sighed heavily and stood up, shedding his shirt as he went.

  “Shall I sleep in the middle so I may feel like the luckiest man to ever live?”

  “Shh… She is already sleeping.” I said, “And if it will make you happy.”

  “I am only joking. Move into the middle, and I will sleep here on the end.” He got under the covers next to me, and for some reason, I was suddenly gripped by an undeniable urge to laugh. It was so inappropriate of me to chuckle after all we had suffered, and I was certainly still being held tightly by how terribly I missed and ached for James, but it was so ridiculous that I was lying there in bed with the formerly married King and Queen of Pangaea, when the former and I had spent the last two years fighting, making peace, and then fighting again, and the latter and I had always just fought.

  “Believe me, the irony of all this is not lost on me.” Adam told me, “I would laugh, but I am very busily trying to keep my thoughts pure and Old Spirit-like.”

  “Oh, please. One Old Spirit probably has dirtier thoughts than all of us Red Anarchy folks combined. Well, all of us Red Anarchy folks except Don. And on the subject of Don, I cannot believe I just referred to us by his ridiculous name…”

  “You did so satirically, so it is alright. And I do not know about them having impure thoughts. I believe that if they do, they immediately force them away. Only when they are inflicting their punishments do they get to indulge their dark, impure fantasies. Say what you will about Donald, but him allowing his people to indulge their fantasies is not wrong. Yes, he let it run rampant, because as intelligent as he is, he is also an idiot, but…”

  I laughed rather hard at that, and he smiled and moved closer to my back so he could gently run his hand up and down my arm. Considering that it was a rather simple movement, I was surprised by how good it felt and how calming it was.

  “…His ideas are not wrong. They are just poorly executed.”

  “I’ll say.” I replied. “You could say the same thing about the Old Spirits, strangely enough. Well, about the foundational faith on which they have built their lives. The ideas are fine, they are just used in practice poorly.”

  “Well, that foundational faith is my faith, as well. Tyre and I have just chosen to use it in practice differently.”

  We were quiet for a moment, and he stopped rubbing my arm.

  “Don’t stop.” I said, “That feels good.”

  “I know it does. I can tell. I was not stopping, I am just moving closer.”

  “Alright. How can you tell that it feels good?”

  “Brynna, after my thousands of years in this realm, I have learned many things, and one area of expertise in which I excel is the area of pleasure. I know how a woman’s body reacts when I am pleasing her, and how it reacts when I am not. Though I have not experienced the latter in several thousand years.”

  “Oh, I am sure. Listen to you. Are you trying to seduce me right now?”

  “No, because I know that I have a very low chance of successfully doing so. I know that I should not be trying, and even if you were to consent, I would be unable to act upon my great desire for you…”

  “Oh, really?” I asked.

  “Yes. Because I know that you are not ready, and the guilt you would feel afterwards when you thought about James would be too much.”

  “You are right about all of that. So, here is what we are going to do: You will stop talking all that sexy talk, and I will not look at your abs, and you will keep rubbing my arm that way because it feels very good, and because that physical contact could easily just be a platonic comforting technique done between friends.”

  “Alright.”

  That heavy silence that always seemed to be lying dormant in the corners of the room descended upon us. His hand ran up and down my arm, and every time it came up to my shoulder, he massaged the tension he found there slowly with his thumbs. I felt him lie down, and eventually, his hand stopped moving, and I was suddenly the only one left awake. I had not slept deeply in well over five days, and still, I could not slow my heartbeat down or turn my thoughts off in order to sleep. I tried to close my eyes, but then all I could hear was James’s voice, shouting that he would never touch me again, it was over, he wouldn’t even look at me… I remembered the look in his eyes, that look of pain, his voice apologizing as he put his hands on me. I remembered the way my vision blacked out and my body was taken from my control as I convulsed violently. I remembered watching him do the same. I remembered the awful pain, how it spread through every part of me but was at its worst wherever his hands were rested on me. I lamented that I would never again feel that gentle warmth that flowed through me every time he touched me and kissed me. I would never make love to him again. We would never be us again.

  It was irreversible. We would never be together again. It was all so sad and ironic, because wasn’t it justice? I had entertained my feelings for Adam while I had been with James, and now I had Adam, but I had lost James irreversibly. Was that the universe’s justice for me coveting another man?

  No, I told myself, That is Old Spirit thinking, and I will not allow it. I will not turn into one of them. There is no divine meaning behind any of this. There is no irony, and there are no tricks of fate. It is just a terrible thing that happened. It is just an evil act perpetrated by evil people.

  The tears restarted for the hundredth time, it seemed, and I turned my face into the pillow so Adam and Janna would not be awoken by my sobs. What if it all was a punishment, though? What if it was all cosmic justice? I had wanted Adam and James, but all the while, I should have been appreciating my time with just James, because he was lost to me irreversibly now, and all I wanted, more than anything else in the world, even more so than my freedom, was for him to hold me just one more time. Not to kiss me, not to make love to me, just to hold me. I had told him once that sometimes, I was sieged by an uncontrollable urge to have sex with him, and that was true; obviously, considering I had only been in a relationship with a woman, I had never experienced such violent sexual desire for a man before I had met him. To put it far too simply, I was so passionately in love with James, and that passion made me want him all the time. But it was not just an uncontrollable, constant urge to have sex. Sometimes, as cheesy as this sounds, and as weak as it makes me sound, I was sieged by the need to feel his arms around me. Sometimes, that was all I needed to feel happy and fulfilled. I just needed to feel him embracing me.

  But it would never happen again. He would never touch me again, and I would never touch him. That insidious n
ostalgia crept over me as a slideshow of our memories played before my closed eyes. Every night over the previous two years when he had held me, or when I had sat perched on his middle as we talked, or when we had had the house to ourselves in Janna’s village or the room to ourselves in Adam’s house in the woods and we would make love for hours… I remembered how Penny had loved him so much, how he was the father she had never had. I remembered how he had always been so patient with Violet, and how she had loved him, too. I remembered how Alice and Quinn always came to us with their problems and questions. Our little, unconventional family had broken at the seams, and that shattering was more than likely irreversible, too.

  I cried harder but still managed to keep myself silent. At the same time that I was trying to keep myself quiet, I was trying to keep my body from moving too abruptly with each of my sobs.

  “Come here.” Adam whispered sleepily behind me, and I turned over and moved into his arms so I could cuddle up against his chest. I held onto him tightly and let the tears and sobs flow unchecked, and he held me, all the while gently rubbing my back.

  “I know, my love.” He whispered, “I know.”

  “Everything is broken, Adam. Everything we knew is over.”

  “I know. But we will survive this, and we will fix all those broken things. I promise you.”

  “We can never fix him.”

  “No.” He whispered, and my sobs deepened slightly. He kissed my forehead, “We cannot, you are right. But we will find a way to make him at least a little bit better, and then, if you want, we will keep him with us, and if not, then we will see him off.”

  That only made me cry harder, because I pictured my life without him in it at all, and that picture made me literally sick to my stomach.

  “In the meantime, we just have to stay alive. We just have to bide our time. You are so strong, Brynna. You are a survivor, through and through. You just have to survive this.”

  I nodded.

  “What if something happens to you, too?”

  “You will survive that as well.”

  “I know. But I don’t want to be alone here, either. I don’t want to have to grieve for both of you.”

  “And with all of my power, Brynna, I will prevent that from happening. I will not be separated from you, nor will I let them separate you from me. Alright?”

  I nodded again.

  “Alright.” He said, “Now you must rest. Your body and mind have suffered terribly, and you must allow them a chance to restore themselves.”

  “Okay.” I said, “Just don’t let go of me. Do you promise?”

  His lips held to my forehead for several seconds, and then he kissed it again before whispering, “From the bottom of my heart. Now, rest, my beauty.”

  Quinn

  “Our gooses are cooked.” Don told me. We had been sitting in silence for so long that I had almost forgotten he was there. Just as I went to tell him not to talk to me, because I was still so disgusted that he had tried to abandon his people to save his own ass, I found myself wondering where exactly he was going with his proclamation.

  “What?” I asked, because even though silence had fallen between us right after he had spoken, he had not continued.

  “We’re dead, Quinn. Toast. Worm fodder.” He said, “That’s funny, when you think about it. When people talk about death, and they say, ‘Oh, we’re toast,’ are they talking about cremation?”

  “I don’t know, Don. It’s a question for Brynna.”

  “Yeah, it is. But when people talk about death, and they say you’ll be worm fodder, we get it, except it’s inaccurate. You’re buried in a coffin, so how do the worms get in?”

  “How the hell should I know? But they do. And you know that here, people are buried right in the ground, without a coffin. So what does it matter about some damn worms?”

  “Or do the maggots eat you?”

  A shudder passed through me, and I was glad that he was not looking at me to see it. Picture yourself rotting in the ground, with maggots and worms crawling through your empty eye sockets, your skin being eaten by them… And where are you? If your consciousness somehow stays with your physical body, do you feel yourself being eaten? Do you feel yourself locked away in a pine box for all eternity, remembering your life and your loves? Do you remember being alive?

  I guess this is why religious people love the idea of Heaven. Actually, I guess this is why all people love the idea of Heaven.

  “It doesn’t matter, Don. What are you getting at? Make your point, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, Brynna never told you? The subject came up as a viable solution to overpopulation almost once a week in Town Hall. The Old Spirits have figured out how to curb it, and they do, but we were too weak, too sympathetic to do the same thing. Granted, I never suggested it first. That was Janna’s detractors who always brought up doing a lottery. I didn’t suggest it first, but I always argued logically in its favor.”

  “Don.” I dragged out his name because I was getting genuinely frustrated at how he always spoke in riddles and took forever to speak their answers out loud.

  “I’m sorry that you can’t get it just from the limited information I’m giving you.”

  “I’m sorry that you think giving limited information is the correct way to answer a question.”

  “They kill people, Quinn. Last time we checked with our people in their camps, it was once every three months. They call it The Sacrifice. People actually volunteer themselves sometimes. It’s for the good of the community, and Tyre proclaims that volunteers will be made saints here in this realm, and put on thrones in Heaven, and all of that nonsense.”

  “People volunteer probably because it’s legalized suicide. Or it’s suicide that’s approved by God. They want out, and they can’t do it themselves without spending an eternity in Hell, allegedly, so they volunteer to be sacrificed.”

  “That’s a cynical way of looking at it.”

  “I’m sorry, do you have an idealistic way of looking at ritualized suicide?”

  “I don’t know if you can call it optimistic, but I think that they actually believe they are helping their people. Maybe they care more about the Sainthood—one of our Deep Cover Agents said that every man or woman who sacrifices himself or herself gets their name chiseled into this black marble statue of God in their capital city. Their family gets a small piece of black marble with the sacrificed person’s name on it, and it is their highest honor. A piece of black marble for the life of a loved one.”

  “They don’t get extra crops, or more water, or something useful?” I asked, and honestly, I was so horrified that my stomach felt queasy.

  “No.” Don replied, and he laughed softly, “Awful, isn’t it? What do you think they’ll give out when it’s us that’s sacrificed, Quinn? Do you think they’ll give Alice a slab of black marble with your name on it?”

  “No, because Paul just said that she’s eligible for a high marriage, so they’ll give her nothing. They’ll make her watch, I’m sure.” I said, and now, the queasy feeling in my stomach was replaced by a sudden density that burned, and I knew that it was rage. Even in the darkness, Don could see that my eyes had turned red. “But if she reacted to it all, if she cried or made any kind of a fuss, they’d hurt her. I don’t want to think about this.”

  “Oh, young love.” Don sighed, “I remember it.”

  “Really? I would have sworn that the only thing you could possibly remember about your relationships with women is the tying, choking, cutting, burning…”

  “I never burnt anybody. I hate fire.”

  I actually laughed. I laughed so hard that I doubled over. He was being completely serious when he had objected to that, and he was totally unaware of how ridiculous he sounded. He didn’t object to any of the other awful things I had listed, so clearly, they did not turn his stomach at all, but he drew the line at fire. Say what you want about Don Abba, but he was an interesting, albeit totally disgusting, character back then.

&nbs
p; “And I know it’s hard for you young’ins to appreciate, but I was your age once.”

  “Was that ‘young’ins’ racist? Don’t think I won’t kick your ass because you’re my only companion in here until they let us out. I might actually find you more tolerable if you were unconscious.”

  “Of course it wasn’t racist. If that word is racist, then I don’t know about it. Shut up and let me talk. I was like you once. I would have feared the love of my life’s reaction to my death more than I feared my own death when I was young. I would have worried more over her broken heart than over my broken neck. Knowing she’d feel pain for me, significant pain, would absolutely destroy me. But that doesn’t last, Quinn. As you inch closer to a natural death, you start worrying more about yourself. About your own demise. Your own lack of immortality.”

  “We’re immortal now, so what are you—”

  “You have a serious interrupting problem. Just let me talk, and just listen, okay? This might be my last chance to tell someone all of this. Would you deny a dying man his chance to make all his confessions? To tie up all his loose ends?”

  “I guess not, Don. Even though I really don’t think you’re going to die.”

  “Oh, I am going to die. You are going to die. My death will be done to shame our people, to show them that my immoral reign is over and that I paid a price for that immoral reign. Your death will be because you are expendable. They have no purpose for you. They already have enough able-bodied men. Not to mention, you were very close to Brynna. So close that you were like family to her, and if she is out there, still alive, the news of your death will hurt her.”

  I didn’t doubt that it would, and that is a sign of how far mine and Brynna’s relationship had come, believe me.

  “When I was young,” He said, “Around your physical age. How old are you actually now?”

  “Well, I was eighteen when we left Earth, and it’s been two years, so 20. Whoa. New decade.” I said, and I was shocked that I had never acknowledged it before. It’s amazing how once the idea of death creeping closer with each passing year is erased how you stop keeping track. And when you’re never going to age, what does it matter when you’ve entered a new decade?

  “Congratulations.” Don said, and he meant it genuinely. “Well, when I was eighteen, I was in love with a girl. Really in love. We never dated, and we only spoke a few times when our social circles overlapped, or when we had a class together at school, but I was in love with her. Her hair was blonde, and I had never seen any blonde hair that was so bright. Her eyes were blue, and I had never seen any blue eyes that were so blue. All of that ridiculous romance novel crap. When I talked to her, I fumbled over my words. When I was around her, I spilled drinks, tripped over my own feet, all that stuff. My friends would always joke that I had a bad case of awkward.”

  A bad case of awkward that had never cured.

  “But she seemed to find it endearing. She was always kind to me, and I always thought, ‘God, if she were my girl, I would worship her.’ Which she needed, because she dated jerks, Quinn. Like, real jerks. Once or twice, my friends who were actually able to work out and gain some muscle mass unlike some people we know…” He pointed at himself, and despite my vast disliking of him, I chuckled very slightly, “…had to chase these guys down, ‘cuz they’d hit her or worse. And whose shoulder did she cry on? Mine.”

  “Of course. This is one of the oldest stories ever told, Don.”

  “Trust me, I know. Beautiful girl sticks the little guy with the heart of gold in what you kids call ‘the friendzone’ and keeps him there, and after she gets her heart broken, or worse, her bones broken, by the assholes she dates, she cries on that little guy’s shoulder. Then, they fall in love, and all works out as the universe intended, and they live happily ever after, or maybe she dies, and the little guy goes on perpetually damaged. But that’s not how this story ended up. We graduated from college, and went off into the world, and our group swore we would keep in contact, but we didn’t. When I was teaching, I ran into a million girls like her. ‘Professor Abba, he just doesn’t listen!’ ‘Professor Abba, I just want to die!’ I never touched them. Believe me. But every time they came to my office to explain why they were suddenly so withdrawn, or worse, to explain away the bruises, I thought about her. I thought about how if I had been with her, I would have worshipped her. And I thought about touching those girls, and if you think about it, even I could have done it then, what with the power dynamic. You know, teacher-student. It’s a powerful thing. They were already confiding in me, I could have made a move and gotten with them. I’m sure of it. But I didn’t.”

  “My, what a nice guy you are, for not sleeping with your students when they were vulnerable.”

  “I know that was sarcasm, and you’re right. I’m not a nice guy. I’m not a nice guy, even though I didn’t do it. If I were a nice guy, I wouldn’t have thought so seriously about it. So, I got married, ten years later, I got divorced, and I was in a dark place. Like, really dark. I hadn’t loved my wife, per se, but she was a practical means to an end. With the thoughts that were constantly flying around in my head, I had to appear as normal as possible. Because even though I’m short, and therefore relatively unintimidating, if I were to ever snap and hurt someone while I was a bachelor, everyone would say that I fit the archetype of the intellectual loner who finally goes off the deep end, and I didn’t want to fit any archetypes.”

  “So, if you snapped and hurt someone while you were an intellectual with a wife, you would just be the archetype of the guy next door who snapped and hurt someone. Like John Wayne Gacy. Congratulations, you’re a serial killer who cut up little boys and buried them under his house.”

  “I am not a serial killer.” He said, “And I had no kids, so I couldn’t be the guy next door. The image doesn’t fit.”

  “You don’t need kids to be the guy next door. You don’t even really need a wife. You just need houses on either side of you so you can be next door to someone. And honestly, if we’re talking about archetypes, we’re talking about an abstract, so you don’t even need to literally live next door to someone. You fit the archetype just by being relatable and unassuming, and seeming like a really nice, normal person. Which we all know you’re not.”

  “Yes.” He replied, “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I was in a really dark place. You told me once that your area didn’t get hit hard after The Cleanse, and that you never saw the cities that did get hit hard. Well, believe me, I saw those areas, and one thing that always struck me was how the whores and bums that were walking around looked like they could have been wearing Armani before everything went to shit. They just looked like they had been well-off, because they had been. So I was out, looking for a blonde, because I was thinking about that stupid girl from college.”

  “And who should you find, but that stupid blonde girl from college?”

  “No. I never saw her again, I told you. I found a stupid blonde hooker who, as she was getting into my car, said she felt safer already. This woman was getting into a car with a strange man, and she felt safer inside the car than out. Look at the social significance of that if you want to, but look at it from my perspective. She didn’t fear me at all.”

  “I would have taken that as a compliment, Don.”

  “Well, I didn’t! I was so sick of being the guy no one was afraid of! I was sick of having these thoughts about all the things I wanted to do to stupid blondes like her and not acting on them. I was so sick of seeing it, and wanting it, and only being able to… you know… when I thought about it, and never being able to act it out! So, goddamn it, I was going to act it out, because my wife and I were getting divorced, and I couldn’t get that stupid blonde girl from college out of my head for the life of me, so I was going to act it out. Goddamn it, I was going to finally do it.”

  My disgust was only rivaled by my absolute, totally riveted attention and my curiosity. I was leaned forward, my eyes stuck on him, as his huge, blue eyes stayed glued to the f
loor as he spoke. He was not ashamed of his tale, and that was worrisome and disgusting in and of itself; he was looking at the floor only because he was lost in the memory.

  “So, what did you do, Don?”

  “For the record, I was going to ask her permission first, even though I knew she’d say no. They’re smart enough to know not to give up that much control to a stranger, who could easily kill you and leave your body, and as long as you wore a condom, no one would know.”

  “So, what did you do, Don?” I asked, and for some reason, my hands were shaking. Maybe it was rage. Maybe it was fear. I still don’t know.

  “Nothing.” He said, and he looked up at me. I was genuinely surprised to see tears in his eyes. “I never could have done it against her will. Maybe I’m a coward.”

  Or a decent person, I thought, but I didn’t say it. It is a strange day when I could even unsurely speculate that he was possibly a decent person.

  “But she looked up at me, and she said, ‘You look so familiar. Your eyes are so beautiful,’ and the strangest thing, Quinn, is that the blonde from college used to say that. Not the part of me looking familiar, obviously, but the part about my eyes being so beautiful. And this girl was a blonde, and even though she was clearly on something, and bone skinny, and had blood in the corner of her mouth because she was infected with what I prayed at the time was not the contagious form of the Blood Plague, she was so beautiful. It could have been her, even though it wasn’t. God, after all the shit she went through, with those awful guys, she might have gotten hooked on drugs, infected with the BP, and ended up selling her body on the street. One of those awful guys could have talked her into it, or maybe she did it herself, because together, they had made her think that that life was all she deserved. Or maybe when the world went to shit, she lost everything. She had been a rich girl, from a good family. But you know what happened to those rich girls, and those good families after everything went to shit. They ended up right where this girl was, beneath strangers, or out on the street, begging for money or stealing it. I told you, all the whores and bums looked like they had been well-off once. Affluence stays on the skin even after it’s gone. But I was looking down at this girl, keeping in mind not to touch her mouth with mine, because I knew that even if she was making money hooking, she wasn’t making enough to buy the medication that would keep her non-contagious, and I was praying that the condom was on right, because you could get it that way, too, and when I was looking at her, even though she was mewling all these nice things at me, I could see that she was so sad, Quinn, and for all the world, she looked like that blonde girl from college. Maybe it was her. ‘Your eyes are so beautiful,’ she had said. ‘You look so familiar.’ It might have been her, and I just didn’t know it. Can you think how ironic that would have been? If it was her? I finally had her, and not only was I thinking of hurting her the way those guys had hurt her, but she was totally broken. Over the years, I had gotten angry at her for only dating jerks when I was so kind to her, and that was when all those thoughts started about hurting people. Maybe it’s because I saw how she loved them even though they hurt her. Maybe I thought girls like her would love me, too, if I did that, which obviously, is complete and utter bullshit. But I was looking down at this girl, and maybe it was the blonde from college, or maybe it wasn’t, and she looked so sad, and I thought how I had wanted to ask her if she’d let me hurt her, and I felt like the worst person in the entire world. And I wept, Quinn. I paid this girl more than she was charging, and apologized, except I wasn’t apologizing for breaking down on her, I was apologizing for what I had wanted to do, and I was apologizing for her life, and I was apologizing to the beautiful blonde from college, and I was just apologizing for whatever it was that was my problem.”

  “And then you came here, and you were finally powerful enough that beautiful blondes wanted to sleep with you, and would let you do to them whatever you wanted, and you got your happy ending, no pun intended.”

  He chuckled at that.

  “That was raunchy.” He said, “I like it. And sure. I guess we can say I got my happy ending, though it’s hard for me to say it now that you’ve made it a double-entendre. I got to finally fulfill those fantasies that were more than likely the direct result of watching the one love of my life love men who hurt her. Draw curtain. Applause and tears and roses thrown. So ends my Greek tragedy.”

  I rolled my eyes at his self-pity and his arrogance, calling his strange and disturbing life story a Greek tragedy.

  “Pangaea was the start of my life, Quinn. It was the new start for some, but for me, it was the actual start. Here, I was everything that I had ever wanted to be, and while you find who I wanted to be disgusting, it is who I am. So, I don’t care what you think.”

  “It is what it is.” I told him, “I’m always going to look at you like you’re a total psycho, but fine. Whatever. It is what it is. As long as you don’t do it against their will, then fine, I guess.”

  “I don’t. I can’t.”

  “Good. That doesn’t make you a coward. It means you still have some shred of decency.”

  There. I had said it out loud. Maybe it would encourage him to hold onto that shred of decency.

  “Brynna thought that I had raped Maura, and I hadn’t. The Old Spirits did that. But I did try to rape Savannah, but still, I don’t think I would have done it.”

  “Trying is bad enough.” I spat at him.

  “I know. But the fact that I wouldn’t have done it has to count for something, doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” He said.

  Silence fell between us again, and after hearing his tale, I hated that I now had to sit in that quiet space and think about what it all meant. I hated that I had to rethink my judgments of him, even though I knew the spinning wheel of judgments would end where they had begun: with me believing him to be a sick, disgusting psychopath, albeit a decent leader.

  And isn’t that funny? A psychopathic man who is a good leader.

  “You were a professor?” I asked.

  He chuckled.

  “I love how that’s the question you ask.”

  “Well, it’s the question I’m asking.”

  “Yeah. I was a professor.”

  “What did you teach?”

  He sighed heavily again, and looked over at me, grinning.

  “Poli Sci.”

  I laughed again.

  “Ironic.”

  “Yup. The proxy of King Adam, the leader of half the Earthean survivors, was a political science teacher on Earth. I am living in my field. Which, I guess it isn’t that ironic, because I’m sure political science teachers became politicians on Earth.”

  “But none became as powerful as you. Your life is full of irony, Don.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  “You were a political science teacher who became the second-most powerful politician on Pangaea. You were the crying-shoulder of a girl who loved guys who hurt her, so you turned into a guy who gets off on hurting women. You were in love with that girl, and you might have run into her years later when she was a drug-addicted prostitute sick with the BP, when she was finally broken, you proclaim, by all that she had suffered over the years.”

  “Yup. The girl I loved more than I had ever loved or would ever love anyone else. The love of my life. That beautiful blonde from college. Want to hear the most ironic part?”

  “Sure.”

  His grin lessened slightly, but did not disappear completely.

  “I don’t even remember her name.”

  Violet

  Something close to sleep took hold of me, but at random times throughout the night, a cry would escape me, and my knees would pull into my chest, and in my sleep, the tears would start. Sometimes, I would even cry his name. From behind me, Dr. Miletus would sit up, and one of her arms would come underneath of my shoulder, while the other would drape over my side so she could hold me, and in my sleep, both of my hands would grip her arms tightly as
I cried. She would shush me, and sometimes, she would use the tips of her fingers to brush my hair back out of my face, and even though my mind was playing through the memories of Nick and me, or it was tormenting me by projecting images of how I thought he must have looked when he died, or wondering what his last thoughts must have been, my cries calmed, and empty darkness took hold of my mind, allowing me to sleep something close to peacefully but not quite there.

  I don’t think Dr. Miletus slept at all that night, because she was on alert, listening for my cries. Or maybe she had her own dark thoughts that she did not want to see in nightmares but would rather face head-on while she was awake. While I would find out later what exactly was keeping her up that night, I knew that part of the reason for her remaining conscious was so she could keep watch over me.

  In my sleep, I traveled distances far and wide. My unconscious mind was searching for Brynna and James again, even though the last time I had seen them, I had woken up feeling sick and traumatized. But I had to know where they were. I had to know if they were all right.

  But I was not like Brynna. I could not find her. She had to find me. The reason why I had been able to see was because she was vulnerable and therefore unable to stop herself from throwing her mind’s reel out until she got a bite, so to speak, from someone she loved. Her power was endless in what it could do. In this case, I was relying on her ability to flit in between people’s minds until she found someone with whom she could telepathically communicate. If I said that I was open to her entering my mind, would it make it easier for her to connect? I didn’t know, but in my sleep, I thought it was possible. In my sleep, I thought anything was possible.

  “Brynn?” I asked, “Brynna, I need you.”

  I’m here.

  Her voice was there, but not even a second later, it was like it had never been. My unconscious mind wondered if I had even heard it. It was like she had flipped a light-switch to let me see her but flipped it back off before I could. She had disappeared while I was blinking.

  “Nick is gone.” I said, and there was a long silence.

  Her voice still had that quality of coming and going in a blink, leaving me doubtful that it had ever been there at all, but in the second it took for me to hear her before her voice disappeared, I heard such genuine remorse. I heard such pity for me.

  So sorry, baby.

  She had never called me ‘baby’ before; it was a pet name she reserved for James and Penny. But it fit in this instance, and for some reason, it comforted me.

  “I don’t know what to do.” I told her. “Where are you, Brynna? Where is James?”

  Gone.

  “Both of you?”

  James is gone.

  I had known what the Old Spirits were doing just from the brief snippet I had seen. It was classic conditioning: He touched her, they injected something into her that made her feel terrible pain wherever his hands were placed on her body. She touched him, and he experienced the same pain. I knew that it had gone on for days, and it had been relentless. The fact that they had lasted days was amazing, considering how terrible the pain must have been and how weak their bodies and minds must have become. One of them was bound to break, or else they both would have died. I am sure that by the end of the torture, they were both standing with one foot on each side of the line between the living and the dead. So, James’s mind and body gave out, and he and Brynna could never be together again, in the same way that Nick and I could never be together again. I pitied us both. I shed more tears in my sleep on both of our behalves.

  “I’m so sorry, Brynnie.”

  Just want to make it all go away. For both of us. For you and me.

  “Me, too. I wish I could reverse it all for us.”

  It is going to be a very long time before I see you again.

  “Don’t say that. Just tell me where you are, and I will find a way to escape from here, and I will find you. I promise.”

  Don’t know where I am. But it is going to be so long before I see you and Penny. My Penny… My little girl. It is going to years, Violet. Years upon years upon years…

  “No.” I said firmly, “You are going to find out where you are, and then you will tell me, and then I am going to find you. And…” My heart plummeted into my stomach, and I suddenly wanted to vomit.

  Penny wasn’t with her. I had dropped her in the woods, and I had prayed so hard in what I thought were my final moments that she would make it back to the forest village, back to Brynna and James. But she had not.

  She ran. When they were going to kill us, I made sure she got away. She’s there with you, Violet. She’s there. Please tell me she’s there.

  She had heard my thoughts. She had felt my fear. She knew.

  VIOLET. Tell me that she’s there!

  “Brynna, I’m so sorry… Oh, my God, where is she?! Where could she have gone?! Brynna?”

  But her voice was gone, and I felt the connection between her mind and mine disengage. I awoke with a start, and across the world, she did the same, I knew. Together, we awoke with a unanimous gasp. Penny was missing, and Brynna had said that it would be years before she saw Penny and me again. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t lose her for that long. I wouldn’t survive for that long without her. And Penny… She was only six years old, and she was alone. She was lost and alone in the Shadow Forest, or she had been captured by Tyre’s people, who had wanted to sacrifice her when they had first found her… Oh, God, I couldn’t fathom it all. Nick was gone. Penny was missing. Brynna would be gone for years, she had said, and James was lost to us all forever.

  Dr. Miletus was behind me, shushing me as I cried so hard that my hands had to wrap around my stomach, and I had to bury my face in her chest to stifle the sound. She was stroking my hair, her hands running smoothly down the back of it, and her thumbs coming up to wipe my tears away.

  “Alright, now.” She whispered soothingly, “It is alright.”

  After a few deep breaths, I was able to calm my cries enough to speak.

  “Dr. Miletus,” I said, “We have to get out of here now.”