The world ended on an August Sunday. This is the story of some who survived the end of everything.
Fifteen
Seamus was the only one perched near the gate when I arrived, my bow in hand and a quiver of arrows at my hip. Paul was up in the watch-tower with Davon; Rory and Greg were securing the gates, layering the second heavy bar into place. I could see the Wild Hunt starting to assume positions up on the walls, but none of them were terribly close to the gate—only Seamus, whose back was to me as he stared out over the field beyond the walls.
A chill crept down my spine.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I swallowed my unease and jogged the last few steps to the wall. “Seamus!”
He tore his gaze from the field to look toward me, blinking rapidly for a few seconds before he straightened from his crouch. “What are you doing here?”
“Defending my home,” I said as I started to climb up to the top of the wall. Rory broke away from the gates to give me a hand up and Seamus reached down to pull me the last little bit up onto the wall. I didn’t want to let on, but I was still more than a little sore from Lin’s birth. “Where the hell else would I be?”
“With my sister and your son and Tala and the kids?”
I’d left Hecate and my son with Neve, headed for the tunnels and safety, reassured by both me—and Neve—that everything would be fine. Tala had told me that she wasn’t going to stay hidden, though, not now. She was coming, too—she couldn’t justify hiding anymore, not to herself even if the rest of us would have let her hide forever if she’d wanted to.
“Even Tala’s coming to the wall,” I said quietly. “The last time Menhit came, she was able to call the camazotzi and control them like Cariocecus used to do. We’re going to need all the hands we can muster out here on the wall.”
Seamus wasn’t paying attention to my answer, though. He was gazing out over the field again, his brow furrowed, expression grim. I stared at him for a second, then followed his sight-line.
My stomach dropped. “What the hell is she doing?”
“Playing the hero,” Seamus said grimly. “Or at least trying.”
“She’s going to get herself killed.”
Seamus exhaled. “Déithe agus arrachtaigh. I hope not, Marin. I hope not.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
Seamus shook his head. “How could I and why would I? If anyone’s got any chance in hell of getting them to talk before they attack, it’s going to be her. She can offer the bastard his life—she can tell him that he’ll live if he turns back and he might actually believe it.” He sighed. “And if that doesn’t work, I’m sure she’s got a plan. She usually does and I’m sure she’s playing things ridiculously close to the vest.”
I stared at him, jaw tightening. “You should have gone with her.”
“Someone had to stay on the wall and make sure Thordin didn’t go off after her.”
“Congratulations. You still have that job and you get to convince him that this was a good idea.”
He winced but didn’t say anything, turning his attention back to the field. I got myself situated next to him, readying my bow.
The line of clouds heralding the storm had slowed slightly, though it hadn’t stopped moving. I could see the figure leading it now, a broad-shouldered man in a dark cloak, a shadow on the landscape. “Who was he then?” I asked Seamus, my eyes narrowing slightly, as if that would give me a better view of the enemy.
At least it looks like he’s alone—but that squall-line is following him. That’s never a good sign.
His being alone also made me wonder where his backup was lurking. On wings, in the storm? Hidden to our eye like the Greys could be?
Or something worse, something more horrifying than either of those possibilities?
“He was from Aegyptus,” Seamus said quietly. “One of the southern groups.”
“Southrons?”
The ghost of a smile curved Seamus’s lips and then vanished in the space of a few heartbeats. “Yes and no. We didn’t tangle with them so much as some of the others did. They were a southern group without falling into the term. Does that...does that make sense? They warred with the Southrons as much as we did, sometimes.”
It did and it didn’t, but I was willing to let that much go—it was thousands of miles and thousands of years away by now. “Right. Keep going.”
Seamus took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “He was one of the mid-level powers there—not in charge, but not a peon, either. A hunting god, which is how I think he ran afoul of Thordin in the first place—ranging too far afield of territory and a lot of rot like that. I don’t know. There was a lot going on during the wars and I couldn’t track all of it.”
“Well, you guys had your own problems to keep track of.”
“There is that.” Seamus shifted his weight slightly, repositioning next to me at the top of the wall. “There was the matter of a little war we were fighting.”
“Little,” I said, then snorted. “Right. Master of understatement right here next to me.” I swallowed, tasting bile at the back of my throat. “Give me the short answer, since she’s almost reached him. How dangerous is he?”
“As dangerous as a hunter gets, especially when backed into a corner.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Just great.”
Out on the field before the wall, Sif had slowed—but so had the figure ahead of her. My stomach sank.
“What the hell is going on out here?”
A chill shot through me as I heard the annoyance—and an undercurrent of fear—in my brother’s voice. My jaw tightened and I didn’t dare glance back to see the expression on his face. I already knew what it looked like, anyway.
He wasn’t happy, but neither was I. I didn’t answer him, either, knowing that he’d be on top of the wall with me soon enough—he and Thom both, probably, with Thordin and J.T. likely taking the other side. I’d be surprised if it turned out any different.
Seamus glanced sidelong at me—I caught his gaze out of the corner of my eye—and grimaced. “You’d better get up here fast,” he called, half twisting back to look behind him, down to the ground on the other side of the wall. “There’s not much time.”
“Where’s Sif?” Thordin asked.
This time, both of us ignored the question. My brother climbed up onto the wall, taking up a position next to me, his eyes narrowed, gaze focused first on me and then shifting out to the field. “Is that him?”
“That’s him,” I confirmed. My hand tightened around my bow. Sif and Anhur hadn’t quite met up out there in the field, but they were getting close enough that I didn’t dare tear my gaze away.
This feels too familiar. I don’t like it.
“Why is he here?” Matt asked.
“Not sure, but we’re certainly going to find out soon,” Seamus said quietly. “Running theory is that it has to do with Menhit coming back for another bite at the apple.”
Matt went rigid next to me. “No.”
“What are we saying no to?” Thom took up a position on the other side of Matt, perching nearest to the gate, his brow furrowing.
“He can’t be here because of her,” Matt said, staring at me. I could feel the weight of his stare, his voice laced less with fear and more with horror. “She was working for Hecate the last time she showed up here. Then, after I went with Hecate, she told her to back off, to leave us alone, that we weren’t a concern anymore. Whoever that guy is out there, he’s not here because of her.”
“That assumes that Menhit’s not hiring out to the highest bidder—or worse, gone freelance.” Seamus took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. A shiver crept down my spine. There was a ring of rightness to his words, as if I knew he’d grasped the truth of it.
Behind me, I could hear Thordin clambering up onto the wall.
I held my breath.
Out on the field, Sif had stopped walking.
Awakenings is a fiction serial written by Erin M. Klitzke. It updates three times a week at http://awakenings.embklitzke.com. Full chapters will be released here on Tumblr once a week.
Copyright 2008-2017 Erin M. Klitzke.
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It’s been quite a while since I posted about a Wolf, Owl, & Black Apple update, but we’ve been chugging along this whole time!
Here we get a glimpse of a man unseen. Might he be important? Probably. Is the oh-so-informed Gerty Gee mentioning literally any of this to our heroes? Most certainly not.
If you’re new to the serial, start at the beginning!
Or hit the Table of Contents to continue where you left off!
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One Very Strange Neighbor And MY Very Unsightly Back! (Part 4)
The neighbor, Keenie helps me into her filthy apartment and she’s bent me over an exam table of sorts, probably some rummage she found in her alley scavenging trips. She puts me down like I was just delicate laundry, folded and neat. How she got me upstairs ill leave to the imagination, but I'll add that I've been using a new diet recently, of applecores and boiled plum pits and chicken broth. So when you imagine this, picture me lithe and skinny and easy to carry.
She replaced her large spectacles with a set of high powered goggles, which extended from her eyeballs like disgusting antennae. She had tools as well, waiting on an old, plastic fast-food tray. Points to prod & clubs to bludgeon, thats what she had there, and edges to slice with and edges to cut with and trim if need be I suppose.
When I pulled up the quartertail bottoms of my shirt, she peered in real close and began poking and prodding with shivering cold instruments. I could feel my unsightly back and the extra skin that formed outside my notice, to hide its unlawful descent from the rest of my body. But now, as Keenie went to work examining it, that flesh did curl, the mound of it resting at the small of my traitorous, retreating, unsightly back. The flesh all but got up to leave when those frigid metal instruments were brought into bare. But that wasn't the end of it, no sir!
That strange dirty, singing, grime clad and encrusted neighbor of mine began to giggle. “Oh my”, she said, “oh indeed”. Like she was marveled by the lump of flesh that quirked and dipped and retracted from her poking and prodding advances.
“Whats going on back there?” I asked, but it did me no good as the investigating woman just continued to caw and to coo. It was as if she was tickled, it was as if she’d been finked. And then when I though that I had just enough of this whole ordeal...SHE BIT ME!
Yes, she bit me, her teeth sunk in deep. She fastened large moist lips around what was the flesh on my unsightly back. I swear it was like kissing, that was the sound, the noise that alerted me that something beyond my comprehension was in fact happening! Her mouth was quite warm, her tongue was quite wet and I could feel her trace circles all over that lump of my flesh. But none of those sensations were arousing, none of it prepared me for what came next, when her straight, perfect lip stick stained teeth sunk deep into my skin. She was testing me or testing the flesh more likely. Biting and chewing and grinding her molars back and forth over and over. Like it was fat, like it was gristle, like it was savory and delicious. But why? Was this her therapy that the other neighbor had spoken of so affordably positive, such that I couldn’t resist calling up to her? I had to know, so I stayed to find out, but it wasn't as if I could leave. In the way that I was now flattened out and sprawling, with the gurgling folds of my unsightly back logged in her throat so much and so far down that it seemed as if she might start gagging. Not stopping until tears formed at the crests of her eyes and slid down the sides of her cheek.
Around the pain, I felt it should stop, but not before I could reconcile the simple absurdity of what was happening. But by then it was too late, for what I felt next was her releasing the biting hold. My flesh went numb and cold and If I could but turn and look, I’de find her perched over me with a large syringe now poised from fingers covered in oversized yellow rubber gloves. The needle of which pressed firmly into my unsightly back, just above where it started and centered straight on my spine! Between the folds of my skin the needle sunk, and in reaction began to puff out, like filling a ball with an air pump.
The story continues next monday!
One Very Strange Neighbor And MY Very Unsightly Back! (Part 4) by. Matt Herzberg
One Very Strange Neighbor And MY Very Unsightly Back! (Part 3)
So this very strange neighbor of mine, who's quest to be clean has never been answered. This neighbor who's apartment is covered in straps and lashes and old garbage bags. Who dresses in splotchy, stained sweaters and patched up slacks. Whom balances the end of a long, thin, needle like nose, with a pair of oversized black framed glasses. She hears me down here, crashing around while I knock things over. It’s really from all of the twisting and contorting, my attempts to be certain that my bulging, fleshy, corpulent lower back was what it was and what I thought it might be!
Thats when I hurt myself, the unsightly back wins and I am caught mid spasm and in pain. It started with a CRIK! A CRIK and a CRACK that surely sent me sprawling down to the old wood floor that smelled faintly like rotting and of old oil soap. There I would lay, all flat on my face and practically paralyzed with stiffness and pain. It felt as though there were a thousand bald bogglers standing on each others shoulders, with the bottom one planting the bare bottoms of his rough surfaced bunions directly into my lower back.
I laid there in mid spasm for the better part of a day, until the afternoon, when by chance my neighbor came by to find me. This is a different neighbor, one that I don't care to talk much about. That neighbor came by to borrow some sweet, and anyways found me when I asked that particular individual to open the door.
"You should see Keelie", said the other neighbor that I refuse to describe. "She's good with backs and joints and stuff like that."
"Good how exactly?", I wanted to know. "Is she licensed, is she practiced, is she refutable?"
"I don't know anything about those kinds of things", scoffed this other neighbor of mine after helping me to my feet. "But if you want to feel better", they told me, "you'll call up to her."
Which is exactly what I had to do, call up to her, because I was miserable and ridden and couldn't move or do much. So I opened up my faucets and pulled out all the stuffing from all of the pipes. I bared to listen to her insufferable howling that would be called singing, waiting for her to stop between breaths, so that I might start a calling.
"What's that??", I hear her say when she hears what I have to tell her. I've been hunched over the sink, serenading with painful groans and echoes. Into my scummy old faucet head, like it was a starlight microphone, and like I was a mangled lounge crooner lamenting the end of a revived career. "I like it", she says, "I like it very much, I'll be down there at once!" Her exuberance probably comes from a dire need to gain my approval, as I can't imagine someone so horridly filthy gets many social calls.
The story continues next monday!
One Very Strange Neighbor And MY Very Unsightly Back! (Part 3) by. Matt Herzberg
One Very Strange Neighbor And MY Very Unsightly Back! (Part 2)
She always dressed disheveled and mussed, wearing old worn out and faded clothing, and sporting a pair of large glasses that took up way too much of her face. She always seemed to look as if she had just climbed out of a dumpster, and maybe thats where she found them, the creatures that must be living in her hair. That must be micturating down her neck and defecating across her cheeks as she sleeps. So much and so often that she could never get clean. Not even if she were to shower twenty-four seven. Which is what I thought she was always doing anyway, because she was always singing, singing like she was always taking a shower. I assure you however, that she most certainly never gained ground on her struggle with cleanliness.
Her tunes always sounded like they came from the bathroom, bouncing from tiled floors and walls and then bounding down into the pipes somehow. And all I could hear was this shrill, nasally chanting, and shrieking, and screeching. Not something pleasant, not something for birds to match with chirps and songs. It happened whenever I turned on the faucets, the sound increased as I twisted those old spiral heads from left to right. All of the other neighbors said that it was “just old pipes”, but I knew better. Better, because I could hear it coming from directly above me.
This was my neighbor by the way, in which I am currently speaking of, the one I would eventually rely upon for help, if you can believe it. That one strange, filthy chick, the one with the shit on her face.
Anyways, it was my unsightly back that just wouldn't quit, the means that brought us together. Thats right, my unsightly lower back, which just seemed to stretch on forever somehow. A real emergency if you ask me, and it had to be dealt with and quickly! The problem was that it just wouldn’t quit, my back had twisted and stretched and elongated...albeit slowly and when I wasn't paying attention.
I am not sure how it happened exactly. One day It seemed like, whenever I looked over my shoulder, that my back didn’t come to a full and honest completion. Instead, as it appeared to me, if I tried to turn quickly while examining myself in the mirror of course, it seemed as though, just for a moment, that it took a little bit longer for my bottom to catch up to my top.
It was as if it, my unsightly back, had grown a mound of extra flesh. It felt like spare cartilage, fat, and muscle had formed. Perhaps some pus as well, to give it just the right jiggle when I attempted to poke it aplenty. With the dull head of a dried up ball point pen, I gave it a solemn and honest near scientific test. A series of pokes, a regiment of jabs, and even a couple of squirming pinches with the help of two fingers.
In bed, laying up, I swear I was partially raised, practically hovering, as if there might be an extra pillow caught underneath me. Or that my clothes felt like there was a bunch or a knot, during the day when I was moving about. One that grew innocuously at first without my notice. Until it got so big that I noticed in the mirror while I was engaged deeply into my morning flexing. I nearly swallowed my tongue, the shock was so great. When I turned with my arms up in the air, and there it was my unsightly back that just wouldn't quit.
Sure I know that I still got my legs, that my feet still stay on the ground, nice and flat. But my back, my back, my unsightly back is simply too much, I swear that it is!
The story continues next monday!
One Very Strange Neighbor And MY Very Unsightly Back! (Part 2) by. Matt Herzberg
The Very Small and Often Awkward Living Arrangements of Most People (Part 3)
The absolute worst was when I got used to it and the whole rest of the world started going...wrong. When I left to go outside, it seemed as though the whole universe needed to be righted. LIke everything was slightly off kilter and needed to be pushed back into place. But only so slightly, the least bit of a nudge...and I tried to put things right when there would have been no reason to do otherwise.
Dogs walked with their heads slightly off to the side and their owners sluggishly followed behind slacked leashes. The tires on most automobiles seemed low and depressed causing one side to sink even further then the other. Birds on a lower tree brach sung their bird songs a bit deeper then the ones on branches above them. All of the chairs at my neighborhood pub wobbled just enough so that I could rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth....
Needless to say, it was impossible for me to find comfort as I had no proper sense of upright and regular. If there was a slant in the sidewalk I found myself sideways. Any hill or bump or incline reduced me to profound confusion. Any potholes open and gaping, and I would fall into it despite my best intentions not to.
I resolved that my apartment up in Pars Piece was to blame, but what could be done about it?
A NEW story starts next monday!
The Very Small and Often Awkward Living Arrangements of Most People (Part 3) by. Matt Herzberg
