Hindered Souls: Dark Tales for Dark Nights, page 11
“Have they developed any ability to influence the environment with their minds?”
“No telepathic powers are present.”
“How unfortunate.” said Marque. “They haven’t developed the physical strength or the mental powers to compete with us on an even level and the other races would overwhelm them in days.”
“Our report will insist this solar system be kept off limits. These creatures aren’t worthy adversaries. It’ll be no challenge to fight them,” continued Marque.
“They need more time to develop,” one son replied. “How shall we proceed?”
“Every good breeder knows tempered iron produces the strongest steel. The unraced horse doesn’t run faster. The sweetest fruit grows in the harshest conditions. We’ll give them more time. It’s our responsibility to devise conditions which force them to improve physically and mentally, becoming worthy competitors.”
“Father, have you a plan?” said the second son.
“Yes,” said Marque. “We gave them an ice age. Let’s warm them up and see how much sweeter that makes this fruit.”
“Father, let’s change the composition of their food. We’ll modify the planet’s vegetables to provide nutrients to cause these candidates to grow bigger, stronger, and smarter.”
“No,” Marque replied. “Artificial nutrients will taint the species. More efficient food will make their lives to easier and less combative. The well-fed pig doesn’t wander from the trough, it grows fat and lazy if it doesn’t need to fight or forage for food. We’ll stay with what we know.”
The breeders adjusted the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels upward. They made some adjustments in the prevailing winds to modify rain levels and locations. There would be no more El Nino weather patterns. They decided to return and check the progress after the planet completed two hundred thousand revolutions around its star.
Marque said, “Hopefully, this will be enough time for this candidate race to grow strong enough for our wargames. These deprivations should encourage improvements in their physical strength and mental powers. Only the strong and the smart survive. If they don’t make sufficient progress, I’ve overestimated their potential. In that case, we will cleanse this planet and start over.”
The next day the rain stopped at Mario’s vineyard. It didn’t rain for two months. Mario’s ancestors were no strangers to dryland farming. He and his workers made the necessary adjustments, including pruning the vines shorter and covering the freshly water soil with new mulch to hold in moisture. With proper care, this year’s grapes would be the sweetest crop he ever produced.
Tonight Forever
by William Marchese
Static.
A spark of lightning displaces the air.
A homeless man awakens from his slumber. He pushes out from beneath a cardboard box and watches as sparks erupt from the street. Some hit his ragged shoes.
He runs a shaking hand through his dirty beard, smoothing the rough hairs.
An opaque ball of light erupts from a crack in the street. It grows until a humanoid figure takes shape from within.
The figure can be considered unisex, with flowing platinum hair cascading down its back. This being has the complexion of a doll; similar to a doll the homeless man had once bought his daughter.
This correlation connects the homeless man--Jim, he remembers--to this being in a way Jim doesn't understand.
Jim is scared, yet can't take his eyes away from the being. He wants to look, to remember.
When the being stands, Jim sees a long coat cloaking a tall body. This coat pools around the ankles of thick, black boots. The eyes are sunken in shadows.
Jim kicks back away from the looming figure until he bumps into a trash can. He opens his mouth to scream when he sees the white eyes looking at him, through him.
No pupils.
Just white.
Remember.
With the flashes of lightning, Jim sees flashes of a little girl. A woman.
So familiar.
Remember.
Jim, your name is Jim.
He is suddenly embarrassed of his surroundings and what he has become.
If you ask, Jim will say he hears a faint singing on the wind; but then again, he doesn't really know where he is, or why he's here. Up until a moment ago he couldn't even remember his name.
"I—" He begins, but then the light—
—shown through the window. Jim squinted as the smell of summer hung heavy in the air.
A woman stood at the door—his wife.
"Daddy, Daddy!" cried a girl who had to be no more than five. She pushed past her mother and ran up to daddy, jumping onto his lap. Jim wanted nothing more than to be exactly in this moment forever.
With the scent of his little girl's hair filling his nose, Jim turned to the window. He squinted at the bright summer sun and realized he no longer held his daughter in his arms—
—Jim sat in an office with a newspaper strewn before him. It was his office.
One of the articles in big letters said BAILOUT FAILS; STOCKS PLUNGE.
A picture of his daughter sat on his desk.
Jim wiped a tear from his cheek. Things had been rough at home, and he didn't think his wife would stick around after this one. Not after she'd told him over and over this was all just high-class gambling, and she was right. He lost just about everything.
The light from the window became unbearable until he—
—opened his eyes on a garbage can.
Looking for food.
He had a cart of his things beside him. Moving aside a sweater, his daughter's picture came into view.
Fresh tears plopped onto the glass.
How fast it all happened. It—
—is like the man's eyes were a portal into Jim's thoughts.
The faint song Jim hears fades into a howl in the wind as the man turns his gaze away (Jim doesn't know if the man has even been looking at him) and continues to walk. Jim—
—saw the security guard down the hall, running for him. He pushed on the door to his office where he saw someone else sitting in his chair.
Lifting his arm, Jim aimed a pistol and squeezed. The man jerked back and slowly slumped off the chair.
Jim slammed the door behind and locked it, the guard banging from the other side in an instant.
Jim bounced a chair off the window, picked it up and swung it a second time. This time the glass cracked just as the guard broke down the door.
Jim pointed the gun at the guard, who raised his hands immediately.
He trained the gun on the window and fired.
The sound was deafening in the small space, but the window cracked just enough that the chair burst through it with the third impact.
The guard was immediately at Jim, his hand around his arm, but Jim had already tilted out the window and the guard's hand released when he realized the imminent danger.
Fifty stories—
—Jim sits back against the garbage can, which slides and grates along the rough sidewalk. He lowers awkwardly to the cement sidewalk where he puts both hands to his face and starts crying.
The being in black is now on the next block, appearing to be the size of the dolls Jim once bought his daughter.
****
The streets are torn and pocked with holes and cracks. Garbage is strewn everywhere.
Slow, steady and confident, the being in black walks toward the sound of the song.
Some call this being the Angel of Death, Azrael. The archangel, Michael. Different religions, different beliefs. Yet there is one thing it knows and does and that is to guide souls who are lost. We shall call this being the Messenger, as its presence seems to bring a sort of realization to those who happen by.
People in the street and on sidewalks stare as the Messenger passes, turning their heads in surprise or amazement, unsure if the being ever looks at them.
One might catch the light in the right way and see the clear eyes, perfect orbs of white, before going insane with fear. They don't understand why they are here.
They fear what the Messenger has to show. Yet they don't realize they are afraid of what lurks within their own minds.
The song only he can hear reverberates between buildings, off windows and through alleyways of this crumbling parody of the real world.
The song vibrates the air and splashes off cars and mail boxes and light poles. Others may think they hear, but never like the Messenger.
The souls aren’t ready to sing, though it isn't always a song that draws him.
****
An emaciated female traipses down the road. Her eyes shoot everywhere, mostly to see if anyone is looking—perhaps needing her expertise—so she can buy her next fix.
She constantly feels their hands: all over her body, squeezing and pulling, around her throat as the hands clamp hard. Then that rush as the drugs enter her blood stream.
She saunters past the Messenger, catching a glimpse with one of those rapid eye movements.
Her next trick? Instantly she shudders, overcome with a feeling that brings her to her scarred, knobby knees.
They all react differently; all have a story. Their last thoughts.
Remember.
No matter how tough, how resistant, they recall.
The woman holds herself, crossing her arms over her chest, falling backwards onto her bony bottom. She curls into a ball and buries her head into skeletal hands; convulsions with each ragged breath. She—
—saw a man above her, looking down. She was taught to make sure her eyes were locked to the John's eyes. She felt dirty, but knew this was the only way to get that sweet goodness from her dealer. This is the John's time, later will be hers.
He finished, then zipped up, and for good measure he brought his hand to her face. Sometimes they got violent, but something felt wrong.
He must have seen something he liked, because he smirked and brought down his hand again.
She took blow after blow, until he stopped. His eyes focused on something before turning to run.
He disappeared down an alley as she hitched for air.
A moment later a black man is standing over her.
"Damn… what did he do?"
The man looked up then back down again. "Look at this shit."
He brought a hand to the side of her vision. When he brought it up, she saw blood. Something had gone wrong, but she couldn't think. She was in shock. And slowly, as the man stood up, she closed her eyes and—
—sees the Messenger continuing down the block.
She reaches out, wanting to be saved.
Eventually her hand lowers to the cement and goes limp.
****
A man with a blade steps out from an alleyway and pauses as the Messenger passes by. This man is staring hard at him from below a bandana. He lowers his weapon and covers his eyes with his other hand—
—as bullets pummel him continuously. With each one he felt a piece of him ripped away.
He watched as his crew repeatedly pull the triggers of their weapons, unloading bullet after bullet into flesh and bone.
The man reached forward to them and watched as a bullet ripped through his hand, then another.
When it stopped, they were running away.
One remained.
His homeboy. How could he have betrayed him?
“I’m sorry, man…”
And with that he lifted his gun to Bandana's head and—
—Bandana sees the Messenger walking away.
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Then—
"I didn't do it! I didn't do anything, man!"
But the Messenger doesn't acknowledge him. The marble eyes seem to look, to accuse from within their bed of shadows, but in reality they never turn away from the song.
"I can hear it! I can hear it, man! Yo, come back my dude! Please!" Bandana falls to his knees. "Please my dude, I didn't do anything, I'm not guilty, come ba-ack!"
The Messenger continues on.
****
The Messenger hears the singing closer now. He must hurry.
Down a narrow alley is a man, woman, boy and girl.
The woman is embarrassed and the man looks over the children. They look up to him, yet the boy's eyes wander to the being with the long black coat.
They have been repeating themselves, as though in a continual dream, locked in a moving portrait--over and over.
Yet this boy's eyes wander to the Messenger. Something—
—was wrong when he came home one afternoon from school. His father was lying on the couch, usually he got home around dinner.
The TV played loud, blasting some infomercial. His mother stood over his father saying, "Why? I just don't understand? Make me understand!"
The boy's father didn't react until mother took the TV remote and flung it across the room.
The boy didn't understand, but it hit home when they were in a shelter later.
The shelter was very dangerous, so many strange eyes staring back in a scary way. And when one of the scary men threatened to do bad things to his sister of only four, they left, and were forced to live on the street.
They probably could have gotten back in, but the boy's father said they were safer on the streets.
They found a decent place in a rundown building, in a room the father barricaded from the inside with a thick iron pipe stuck through handles of the double doors—so they could sleep better at night, he said. He called it his security system.
His father was doing drugs again; his mother fought with Daddy a lot now, and more often the boy noticed a small handle to a gun sticking out of his father's pants.
One night he finally came back to the room and locked it off, the boy noticed something different in how he was acting. It was this crazy way he got after he was doing the drugs. He started looking at the boy's sister in a way the man at the shelter had been looking at her and this alarmed the boy.
"Don't touch her!" he said.
"Oh, big man, wanna grow up fast? I can help with that." The grin made the boy's stomach sink. This wasn't like his father—so much worse than he ever was.
The father pushed the boy into a pile of blankets, where the boy's mother was sleeping. She did that most of the time now since they were in this place. She had once said she was depressed, but things would get better.
The boy waited until his father shook his head and went back out into the run-down building lobby.
The boy fell asleep—
"Where is it!"
He heard his father yelling and a strange noise, the pipe, swinging, hitting something.
"I-" A hollow thunk. "UH!"
Movement.
"I don't--UH!" And no more. It sounded like his mother. But the last sounds he heard sounded like when heard his neighbor beat their dog.
The boy moved a little, reaching under a pile of blankets close by.
He heard his sister whimpering again, and that same swoosh sound. Clank. Then she went silent.
He reached under the pile and grabbed something, turning to see his father standing over his mother with the aluminum bat in hand. Blood was everywhere. The father turned to him.
"I… I didn't. Wait, YOU!"
Father started forward.
The boy pulled his arm out from under the blankets. He aimed the small pistol at his father.
He pulled the trigger, sending his father back and through the door leading onto the ruined grounds of this condemned building.
The boy walked over his father and pointed the gun at his head. His father shifted, wincing. "I'm sorry."
The boy pulled the trigger, then again, and a third time, and kept pulling it until the gun could only click on an empty chamber.
Fifteen minutes later, when the sirens could be heard at the front of the building, the boy ran out waving his arms wildly. The gun still clutched in hand.
The cops commanded him to drop the weapon. He didn't. They shot and shot and he—
—looks at the Messenger, who keeps walking. His father is knelt beside the boy's mother, weeping, back hitching in uncontrolled emotion at what they all just relived.
A hypodermic syringe clinks to the ground.
The boy's mother is crying, too, clutching the father and daughter. She reaches out for the boy.
The boy looks back at the Messenger and nods before rushing to his family.
While they embrace, the boy sees his father reaching back for the needle. He stops his father's hand.
****
Tonight it is Nina's night.
The Messenger comes upon two large beings. These beings are wrinkled with thick, black and red mottled skin. Their ripped clothes hang from muscular bodies.
They stand before the rubble of a building not much different than where the boy and his family had stayed—a replica formed in this in-between place. It represents pain and suffering.
Yet there is fortitude.
The singing comes from within the brick walls.
The Messenger stands before the two demonic beings.
From behind the Messenger, the lost souls are coming. Their songs build even now as the Messenger is on this mission.
The two demonic entities contort their faces in rage. Dumbfound expressions paint their misshapen faces.
A peal of lightning opens the cloudy sky, rushing down to strike a street lamp, which explodes into sparks and glass. Rain follows immediately after.
The Messenger turns, spinning on his feet, as he descends into the ground, dust and debris floating and swirling.
A moment later he appears behind the demons, reemerging from the concrete rubble.
The two demons turn to him, eyes rolling, teeth gnashing, and then they stop—almost comically. They look at each other, then at what has formed behind them.
The group of lost souls descend upon the evil beings, ripping and punching. The demons are pulled apart as they scream, though a smile has formed on one of their faces.
The Messenger continues on into the building, never looking back.
The boy smiles.
Soon he will sing his song.
****
Maria sat beside her daughter's hospital bed, reading a paper back novel. She had dozed, but now she stirred from a nightmare. It was of her daughter.
