Five - Oblivion

“It’s overloading!” My voice was shocked, terrified; distant.

                “Where?” Susan’s voice was disbelieving, also distant.

                “Everywhere!” I heard objects falling over. A heavy wooden object landed on the carpet with a thick thump. My footfalls sounded heavy and sloppy, speed-walking over a cluttered floor. “We need to leave!”

 

A sharp stabbing pain hurled me into consciousness. The acrid smell of thick black smoke attacked my nostrils. I coughed and felt my shattered ribs slice through my insides. My eyes were open " at least, I thought they were. I saw light and shapes, but my brain couldn’t seem to make sense of any of them.

                “Help me pull him!” I heard Natalie, inches in front of me. Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been yelling for some time. A coughing fit stopped her from saying anything for several seconds. “Norman, over here!”

                I felt a hand grab my left arm, and invading feelings of panic, fright, and pain shot through my brain. It was too much to handle; my own pain and fear compounded with the alien feelings. My brain seemed to decide that it had had enough. The unlimited pain living in my arm melted away. I could no longer feel the heat of the fire suffocating my skin. As if a numbing blanket had been draped over me, I was only vaguely aware of anything, as if I was only dreaming it.

                “But…where’s the source?” I heard Susan’s voice again, as hazy splashes of light danced just beyond my vision. Maybe I was still dreaming after all. Susan’s voice had shifted to worried, uneasy.

                 I could hear the muffled sound of glass shattering, and Natalie yelped in surprise. Thick footfalls sounded all around me, yet they seemed so far away. Then, very suddenly, a new set of heavy footsteps, clear as a bell, filled my ears.

“Everywhere!” It was me speaking, yet I was so sure that I wasn’t " that I was lying on the floor, unable to move. And yet, the voice that was mine continued speaking. “Susan, that’s the way the energy fold works: it’s communal. There’s no way to isolate it!”

                There was a long pause. The sharp, clear footfalls had stopped. Only the groaning of expanding floorboards buzzed in my head. Then a muffled police siren climbed over the dull noises, and then back into silence. When Susan finally spoke again, it was little more than a whisper. “Then how can we…Where are we supposed to go? Where can we go?”

                The sharp, clear sound of my footfalls " because, I realized, they must be mine " restarted, joined by another set " Susan’s. “There’s nowhere to go that won’t be affected.” My voice filled the burning room again. “The only thing we can do is get away from the coast; as far away as possible.”

                I was aware " but only just so " of the crackling of the flames growing fainter. They were being overpowered by the crashing waves. But like the flames, the ocean surf sounded as if it were miles away, far beyond any concern of mine. I felt a cold breeze brush past my face.

I tried to concentrate on the muffled, distant world of swirling colors and ocean surf. I could feel the faintest sensation of cold, hard rocks sliding down my back. Natalie’s voice entered my head mid-sentence. “…this would happen! You just got…”

My concentration wavered. Her voice faded away, along with the scraping rocks on my back. Like trying to grasp at water, my senses dulled and softened against my will, until they were gone; a white noise in a dark chamber of my mind.

                I could hear the TV on in the other room. The volume had suddenly flared up: “…says we could soon use energy fold technology as a foRM OF SUSTENANCE, EFFECTIVELY "“ The news program cut off and I heard the TV blow out.

                “It’s starting.” My voice resumed playing in my head. It had turned bleak, hopeless.

                “Jim, let’s go!”

                Heavy footfalls ran from carpet to hardwood floor. I could hear the hum of the overhead lights, becoming brighter and brighter as more energy than was ever intended flowed through them. The squeak of the front door was immediately drowned out by more response sirens.

                The sirens became broken, crumpled. They lost their rhythm and became static. A window shattered, and my back once again felt cold stone, which now rested in place. The static found a new rhythm, crashing against rocks.

                “Jim, I love you…” Susan whimpered over the calamity.

                I forced my lips to move. “I love you, Susan”

                “I think he’s OK.” I was pretty sure I heard Natalie, several feet away.

                “No, he’s not,” Someone else spoke. I didn’t recognize the voice, though it was definitely male. “And neither are you.”

                The cool breeze gently washed over me. My face became speckled with drops of salt water. It felt refreshing, even pleasant. I could hear the ever present waves washing over each other. My chest rose and fell, matching the slow, patient crash of ocean waves.

                “He’ll be fine; his cells regenerate when he sleeps.”

                Hold on…My brain tried in vain to make sense of everything…Why can’t I see the people talking? Why am I outside? Outside of where? Where is here?

                “Daddy?”

                Pain so intense I could taste it ran up my arm. My eyes snapped open, but all I could see was blackness. I sat up quickly and felt my ribs crumble. The cool breeze blew over my face, but my skin felt burned. Sweat climbed out of my skin, mingling with the salty mist of the ocean. Inside my splintered chest, my heart beat furiously, like an angry child with a tantrum. Each furious beat was a hammer against my ribcage.

                “Jim, calm down, it’s OK!” A hazy image of Natalie appeared before me. She knelt down at my side and slowly lowered me back to the ground. My neck prickled with pain, as well as my lower back and legs. My ribs weren’t happy about moving again, but when my head rested back against the cool rocks, the pain slowly retreated, like some chained beast, just waiting for its next chance to break free.

Natalie’s face hovered in the sky above me, her hair tickling my face. As I stared into her deep green eyes, her face became sharper, more detailed, until I was no longer looking at a hazy illusion, but the real thing. Stars slowly came into being behind her head, a cosmic halo around her dark hair. She looked scared, or maybe anxious. She gave me a shaky smile, and I felt myself fully return to my body.

As my vision completely returned, I saw two figures standing over to my right, illuminated in the night by the burning lighthouse forty feet in the other direction. I instantly recognized the short blonde figure as Zoey. She looked scared, and I could tell she was trying hard not to cry. My broken, battered chest swelled at the sight of her, and I felt my eyes water with tears; tears of joy that she was OK, tears of woe that she saw me in such a state, and tears of relief that she was back to normal.

I held my left arm in the air. “Come here, honey.” She immediately ran to me, her feet slapping loudly on the rock. She took my hand, and I steered her around to my left, away from my injured hand, which was but a pin prick now that I was back with Zoey.

“Daddy, you’re hurt,” she croaked, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. “Are you gonna die?”

I smiled at her, gazing into her beautiful eyes. “No, sweety, Daddy just has a really big boo boo.” She didn’t look very convinced. “Hey,” I pulled on her arm, and she lowered herself to her knees. Her face dominated my field of vision.

“Boop. Boop. Boop.”

I poked her nose three times, her tiny hand still cradled in my clenched fist. Her freckles disappeared as her nose crinkled, and her mouth stretched in a wonderful smile. And for several seconds, everything was OK. The crackling of the burning lighthouse mixed with the crashing waves, and we were alone in paradise, locked into each other’s gaze.

“Excuse me,” came the male voice I had heard earlier. The walls of our paradise slowly blotted away, and Zoey and I were again on the cold, hard stone, next to our crumbling home. I heard the shattering sound of glass as one of the lighthouse’s windows burst. “What the f**k just happened?”

I tried to cover Zoey’s ears, but that was pretty impossible with only one hand. It seemed to take all the willpower I currently had to turn my gaze away from her and look at the man, who Natalie was now standing next to.

He looked to be in his early-thirties, like me. Unlike me, his hair was very short and thin. In the glow of the fire, I could see his scalp through the tiny dark bristles. He stared at me with an unreadable expression. His mouth was closed tight, a thin line above his chin. His eyes were wide and, I suddenly realized, pitch black, as if two marbles sat below his eyebrows.

“Watch your mouth,” I said automatically.

He laughed. His head tilted back and his shoulders bounced up and down, but his eyes, those black alien eyes, remained wide open. It made me very uncomfortable; I absentmindedly pulled Zoey closer to me.

“Watch my mouth?” His face had returned to stone; unreadable. His voice, however, reeked of mockery. “Because of what? The kid? That’s not a kid; it’s a monster.”

“Or a god,” I heard Natalie murmur. I realized she was staring at Zoey with what looked like fear. Or maybe awe. Whichever emotion I saw, I didn’t like it. And I hated the man standing next to her.

“Déjà f*****g vu, eh, Jim? How many times has this scene played through?”

“I said, watch your mouth,” There was acid in my voice that I didn’t recognize.

“That many times, huh? And what, you thought someday it’d all click? She’d just wake up and control it? Something like that can’t be controlled; it needs to be destroyed!”

“Norman!” Natalie gasped at the man who I wanted nothing else than to harm.

I moved to get up, to do exactly that, but the beast of pain lashed out at my effort, and I quickly abandoned the attempt. I resigned to stare daggers into the eyes that made my stomach squirm.

“I make you uncomfortable, Jim? You live with that, and I make you uncomfortable?”

Zoey began to cry. The heat in my face was no longer just from the burns. The only sanctuary I could have sent Zoey to was now a smoldering skeleton, waiting to collapse. I myself was immobile and unable to shield her or stop this man’s attack. I had never felt so frustrated, so helpless before.

“Who are you?” Pain was creeping back into being. My adrenalin was slowing. It felt like hot pokers were grating their way along my ribs. My right hand felt as if it was resting in an oven, slowly growing hotter.

“He’s with me,” Natalie answered. “I’m sorry; I lied about being alone. But we really weren’t there to hurt either of you.”

“Turns out it was the other way around,” the man named Norman spat.

Zoey continued to cry at my side, her blue eyes blurry pools leaking down her face. I stroked her long hair with my left hand. I was sure it wasn’t doing any good, but it was the only thing I could think to do.

“I told you it wasn’t safe.” My voice was quiet, resigned. Every syllable sent fire through my chest.

“So did I, Natalie,” Norman said. It was becoming harder to hear either of them over Zoey’s sobs. The ocean waves added to the noise, muffling everything around us. Then I realized that they were each pointedly keeping their distance from me. No, not me; from Zoey. “And now we have to leave. It’s the middle of the night " this fire’s going to be visible for miles.”

Natalie turned her gaze to the burning lighthouse, as if seeing it for the first time. Her eyes widened with awe. Or maybe shock. “But no one will be able to get out here. We should be safe.”

Norman kept staring at me as he responded to Natalie. “We got out here. And even if no one can reach the island, this place is no longer inconspicuous. We can’t stay out here forever, and the longer we try to wait out anyone on the mainland, the more time they have to set up traps. Not that it matters, but Jim agrees.”

I stared at Norman. I was thinking along the same lines as that when Natalie suggested staying. “No, Jim, I can’t read your mind, just your face.” I was feeling more and more vulnerable; every word Norman had said was personal and insulting. But what was most intolerable was that he wasn’t wrong.

Norman scoffed. “Let’s get off this island before Jim pisses himself.”

Zoey was crying harder than ever. She dropped to the ground, sitting next to me. I turned to look at her. She was staring at the burning lighthouse. Even as we both watched, a section of wall crumbled to the ground, a flaming amalgamation of stone, plaster and wood. Through the gaping hole teetered the bed that I had tucked Zoey into not an hour earlier. Flames shredded the blankets asunder before the bed frame cracked and, like the wall moments before it, plummeted to the rocks below.

For a whole year, it had been our home, our sanctuary, our tiny piece of normalcy. And now it was gone, and she had no idea she had caused it. No, I caused it. I could have stopped her; I should have stopped her. She didn’t understand what she was doing. The responsibility fell to me and I failed.

Norman was right: this had been inevitable. But how did he know? What made him think this wasn’t an isolated incident? His grasp of the situation, both immediate and consequential, was spot on. One thing I was sure of was that out of every person I had met in the past year " every thief, murderer and cannibal " Norman was the worst.

My thoughts were interrupted by a hollow scraping sound. Norman had unchained the rowboat and was dragging it toward the shore. He picked up one of the oars. “Get in,” he said to Natalie.

Natalie, who looked as though she had been entranced by the burning building, suddenly snapped out of her gaze. She aimed a firm look at Norman. “If you think we’re just going to leave them-“

“Yeah, Natalie,” Norman’s voice elevated so quickly, Zoey’s sobs paused, startled from the sudden rise in volume. He took several steps toward Natalie, dragging the wooden oar, until they were face-to-face. His black eyes reflected the firelight as though they were made of glass. “We’re NOT bringing them back to base, she will kill us all!” He held a forceful finger out at Zoey, who began crying again, staring at him.

“You don’t know that!” Natalie’s voice rose in turn, yet not quite as impressively as Norman’s. “And you know how important she is for us, don’t pretend you don’t!” Her eyes flickered toward Zoey. “And Jim can help Izuho more than any of us possibly could!”

“Don’t even think about it, Natalie.” This seemed like a strange retort to me, but a second later, Natalie’s right hand had shot up from her side, as if to slap Norman.

Norman lifted his arm holding the oar, and Natalie’s hand was blocked by it. She gripped the oar where her hand had made contact, and lunged with her left. Norman twisted the oar until the handle was aiming straight up, and, miraculously, blocked her other hand. She slid her hands along the oar shaft, toward both of Norman’s hands, and he released his grip. Natalie did the same, and the oar fell only an inch before Norman had caught it again, his right hand grasping the handle. His left hand grabbed the oar halfway down the shaft, and he spun it ninety degrees, and blocked both of Natalie’s hands, which had lunged at him again after she had released the oar.

I watched in shock as they continued to grapple with the oar. It was hard to focus, for my hand was beginning to hurt so bad, I found myself holding back moans of pain. It was hard to believe that it wasn’t being ground into paste right under my nose. Through my disoriented state, though, I realized what I was watching: Natalie was trying to touch Norman to use her powers of empathy, and Norman was using the rowing oar as a shield. He seemed to be doing so with very little effort " as if Natalie was moving in slow motion.

Finally, the oar juggling stopped, and Natalie and Norman both held it between them, pushing against each other. After a few seconds, this too ceased. Natalie released the oar.

“Fine!” Her voice was shrill, bordering hysterics. “Go, then!” She turned to face me, and I saw with shock that tears were flowing from her eyes. Her shoulders quavered with her sobs. She walked toward Zoey and me, pausing halfway and turning toward Norman again. “Those f*****g eyes can’t see everything, you b*****d!”

She sat down next to Zoey and me, hugging her knees, and for the first time, Norman seemed to be speechless. He fixed his unwavering, doll-like stare at us, his mouth but a thin line again. Natalie wasn’t looking at anyone; she was staring out at the ocean, her breathing coming in quick, sharp gasps.

It was hard to look away from her; I couldn’t tell if she was livid or about to cry. Her lip quivered ever so slightly. Her eyes had sunk into shadow, the glowing flames to her back. Her fingers were grasping her knees so tightly, they were in danger of breaking the skin.

Finally, I jerked my head away, instead looking at Zoey. To my surprise, she had stopped crying. She was looking at Natalie. Her head was tilted to the side, her long blonde hair dangling at an angle, straight down.

Without looking away, Zoey climbed to her feet, and walked toward Natalie. Natalie saw Zoey approaching her and seemed to recoil slightly. She didn’t move away, however, and Zoey stopped inches in front of her. For what seemed like a full minute, they stared at each other; Zoey as if she’d never seen another human before; and Natalie, who, like me, seemed to be waiting with bated breath for what Zoey would do next. Even the crashing waves seemed to subside as they waited for something to happen.

Finally, Zoey raised two tiny hands and placed them on Natalie’s face. Then, with more concentration in her eyes than I’d ever seen, Zoey wiped the trails of tears from Natalie’s cheeks. Natalie’s mouth hung open, speechless. Zoey finished drying Natalie’s eyes, and poked her on the nose three times.

“Boop. Boop. Boop.”

Zoey took a step back, as if to take in every inch of Natalie, and watched with unparalleled anticipation, her blue eyes, simply sparkling in the firelight, wide open. For several seconds, Natalie held her gaze, mouth agape. Then, slowly, it widened in a smile, and Zoey smiled in turn, and for good measure, I smiled too.

 “Cute,” Norman said in an unamused voice. I pulled my gaze away from Zoey and Natalie. Norman was not smiling. In fact, his face hadn’t budged. He was standing differently, though; less stiff, shoulders sagged, like someone who had resigned. “So how the hell are we getting him into the boat?”

Author's Note

One of my writing goals for this book is to include as little exposition as possible. I want the reader to get a vast majority of the information they need through dialogue, or through the active thoughts of the narrator. My hope is to accomplish this in an organic fashion that doesn't also leave the reader constantly back-tracking for missed information. Instead, I want the reader to be able to say "Aha! this explains that thing from earlier! And I figured it out by myself." Anytime this happened to me while reading (or even with TV and movies), it made the discovery mean so much more than if I simply had it all told to me in exposition. Being told "this is important" always felt like I was being told what I had to take away from it, which defeats the purpose, in my opinion.