A DARKNESS PALE
Hope
…Margot was at her favorite dumpster, looking for rats to eat. She found a bum and went after him instead. What was odd was he seemed hip to what was coming…
Hope
Margot opened herself like a beach umbrella and spread out over the man and began to absorb him. I think it’s coming. I think it’s already here. Did he know about the disturbance in the other world? Could he connect the other world? She could see glimpses from the past of her flat time line, people she’d run into who could connect. Crazy people. Drug addicts.
She adjusted herself, allowing her pores to suck him up.
And thrown backwards. Backwards to fourteen, in the kitchen of the family mansion. The slap and thud of her father beating Toby somewhere on the second floor. The chatter and laughter of her mother watching Beverly Hillbillies in the den. Toby screaming as he was knocked into the floor and into a wall. Not being able to do anything about it and pretty sure she was losing her mind. She fled across the back lawn to their dock and stole the Zodiac. Not the first time. As soon as she powered up the engine she couldn’t hear the screaming anymore. She propelled out to Protection Island, a place where she could calm down and breathe. Birds, so many different kinds of birds. If she defocused her eyes, the beach became speckled sheets, agitated by the breeze.
Margot was thrown against the dumpster, feeling the man inside her now, warm and thick like custard. She cupped what was left of his gushy head in her flabby hands, the pores in her palms and fingers finishing him off.
Ten minutes later, with her skin tightening, she heard a bur, a whiny whistle accompanying a hum she could feel in her toothless gums. When she was congealed enough to look around she saw a twisting spiral lit in silty predawn light. A tornado, heading her way. Oklahoma was tornado country, but had she summoned it? She always felt such responsibility. She held powers in both worlds and she never knew what she might be deploying.
No, it was part of the disturbance, a piece of it.
It was time to go. Go fast, go now.
Her flat time line showed her grabbing her double’s casket. Margot tried to gulp but her throat wasn’t completely formed. Surging wind and gusts of heat. The tornado couldn’t kill her because she couldn’t die, but it could throw her onto a road that was a fast track toward oblivion and immeasurable pain.
Her flat time line showed confusion, roads deconstructing and merging together. The tornado roared closer, chewing the world apart. She couldn’t believe the speed. Margot tried swallowing again. The tornado destroyed earth and sky. The air around her came alive, ignited with moisture and ozone. The ground began to rattle and buckle.
Margot successfully gulped and slipped into the other world. She flew out of her double and pulled the casket free and flew away.
Exhaustion forced her stop in a forest. Flying any distance was extremely taxing, especially on a full stomach. The other world still felt charged up. She buried the casket and returned to her first world. Moving the double more than three miles moved her and she found herself in a similar forest. Western Larch trees. She spread herself out on a cushion of pine needles. She could taste the pine. Icy rain slithered down through the evergreen branches.
She was thrown far into the future, where the darkness was, the agonizing pain and suffering. And no… This the future was completely different. There was light instead of darkness. There was lifting away and complete freedom.
Margot returned to the present. She inspected her flat life line. It was true. Somehow, some way, she was now on a new road. A road to salvation. She couldn’t see it from where she was but because of the bump she’d just experienced she knew it was there. Margot felt light and fluffy. She felt young. She began to laugh, a horrible noise, even to her. She could stay on this road if she was careful and deliberate. She could make it to the light.
…Margot heads home to Washington to try to destroy it once and for all…