 
Disequilibria

By J.C Paris

Smashwords Edition

Disequilibria

All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2012 J.C Paris

Cover design by Joseph Bonnet

Book design by J.C Paris

Copyediting and Proofreading by Stephanie Vella (stephanievella0@gmail.com)

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

About the Author

J.C Paris is a writer and teacher from the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. Horror is the literary genre which suites best his palate, but one can expect a little philosophical afterthought to chew on and digest together with the atrocities that unravel on and in between his lines. J.C Paris blogs at http://www.jcparis.blogspot.com/where he regularly exorcises himself from his consternations, and posts updates about current and future literary projects.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues and friends Joseph Bonnet and Stephanie Vella, for their professional work on the cover design and proofreading respectively. I would also like to thank my friends and family who manage to restrain their laughter whenever I mention my book and take the effort to call me writer whenever I'm around . Most of all, I would like to thank Andrea, who knows me better than anyone, including myself, and who kept reading draft after draft and supplying that matter-of-fact, clever advice better than anyone else.

To Andrea, who still believes.

Contents

On Being

Clock and Heartbeat

The Excavator

On God

Of Widows and Devils

Noises in the Sky

On Tomorrow

La Résistance

The Age of Convergence

On Being

"He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being."

Jean Paul Sartre.

Clock and Heartbeat

When everything sleeps at night, clock and heartbeat give battle to silence, and sometimes, they dominate. At midnight, Ilona's sleep dissolved prematurely into the lightless reality of her room. She could hear them well: out of phase and relatively shrill, dialoguing with their respective ticks, creating improvised Morse codes. Waking up, she rubbed her eyes and instantly knew that nothing about that particular instant in her life was different, except everything.

She first monitored the tell-tale rhythm of her heart; it galloped, warning of knowledge she had already acquired, but not yet fathomed. Realisation came within seconds. As her eyes adjusted to the weak exterior light, not only the chest contractions of Joseph who slept beside her, not only the diminutive outline of her baby daughter sleeping safely in her cot, not only the carcasses of toys and dirty laundry, but, also, an unknown shadow, revealed itself. It stood motionless in a hidden corner of their bedroom. The projection, Ilona noted, had a texture which could pertain to no item of furniture. It was not the kind of shadow that loiters on your walls when a vehicle moves outside your house; nor the kind that one is likely to see when the wind seduces a leave and makes it dance for it at night. It was, surely, of the human kind. The shadow remained still, its source hidden between wall and wardrobe just opposite Ilona's wide-eyed gaze.

"Joseph? Joseph, wake up."

Nothing: her whisper crashed against his unconsciousness like waves against cliffs. Her breathing slowed and she savoured every gulp of it, with her hands holding her face which shook uncontrollably with palpitations.

"Joseph?"

She started shaking him, only to make him shift to a more comfortable position. Trembling, she found the courage to address the blackness in front of her.

"Who are you?"

Alas, on that rainy evening of December, clock and heartbeat stood as her only companions. She started crying. Not the kind of tears she had shed during that terrible week, when, her husband had that accident at work and her now sleeping baby was diagnosed with severe autism. These tears were different. She looked at Joseph; she thought of her baby.

"God..."

The shadow moved forward, pulling its deliverer behind it and shattering with its every step all notions of privacy and safety. The silhouette-blacker than the very shadow that had promoted it-sauntered into her den and in doing so, trampled over Joseph's clothes, trampled over her daughter's toys. Devoid of smell or any other recognizable trait, it demonized expectations. Ilona watched and listened as the soft brushing of its footsteps on the carpet blended with the baby's breathing. First it moved close to Joseph who still rested oblivious to it all. With features hidden behind a curtain of hair, it regarded him from its height with a hint of derision. Ilona raised her hand as if hope were tangible.

"Please... don't hurt him, please."

She could see herself waking up and attacking the intruder. She could see herself saving him, only she was paralysed. Tears resumed their course down her face. Again, they were not the same tears she had shed a month earlier, when she got the bill from her daughter's specialist, nor were they the same tears which trickled after her husband got fired because of his new disability. These, she could sense, were bittersweet, much more bittersweet.

She could see better now. The sound of violent regurgitations emanated from what she could sense as the most corrupt of throats. The trespasser's figure claimed no particular sexuality as a large black coat enveloped well its identity. Monstrous in demeanour yet human in its gait, it carved a paradox into the night.

"Who the hell are you? What do you want from us, from them?"

Her command over her own voice was gone. She forced more menace out of her.

"I am talking to you! Who are you? I want you to get out now!"

From the depths of her bed, beneath the warmth of her bedding, she trembled without acknowledgement. The figure seemed to be interested only in Joseph and, the baby of course.

Her daughter moaned and moved a little bit. The intruder moved accordingly. Ilona's hysteria intensified, gathering itself in lumps inside her throat.

"Joseph, wake up now!"

Cruelty and Innocence met. Their contrasting sizes stood out in the darkness: she sleeping, it staring. For a second Ilona waited, anticipating the horror which made promises, like a tempest on the horizon. Then it happened.

"Joseph!"

It was no whisper now: it was the most heart-breaking of screams.

"Ilona?"

Out from his sleep he came and reality divulged its contents mercilessly. Before both could react, the baby was raised from her cot and taken for a ride in the neighbourhoods of death. The baby lost her sleep and started crying. Joseph understood.

"Jesus Christ! The baby, Ilona!"

They first saw an index finger, then, it disappeared. The finger, which wasn't fit to caress the most infected of rodents, entered the baby's mouth and tested her toothless interior, perhaps enjoying the wetness of it.

"I can't look, Joseph! My God! I can't look. Please do something!"

With a second finger, it played with the baby's earlobe, perhaps, amusing itself with the charm of its flexibility. And as with Joseph, so with the baby: it was somehow mockery which fuelled its intentions.

Joseph tore from his bed and attacked the impostor. Ilona: Mother and lover, did nothing. 'Nothing': it was a word that echoed provocatively in every corner of her mind.

'Nothing'

She turned and buried her face in the pillow. Thereafter, just a couple of feet behind her back, the massacre started.

"Ilona!"

She could hear the baby being dropped back, thank God, in her cot. She could hear Joseph kicking to no avail and, from time to time, his head hitting the ground. She could hear him paint agony with the coarse brushes of his screams.

"I can't feel my eyes, Ilona! My eyes!"

On the soft fibres of her pillow, tears formed a new puddle. It was then that she finally understood. These were the tears she had cried every night after cheating on her incapacitated husband of ten years, with Joseph. These were the tears she had shed every morning during that last month, every time she had packed her bags and looking at her sleeping baby, resolved on abandoning her crumbling family.

These were, undoubtedly, the bittersweet tears of guilt.

"Ilona!"

But no, she would not help him; she would let him die, of course. It was better that way. His existence meant guilt; the lack of it, relief. To see Joseph dying was to feel herself lighter.

"Ilona!"

It was his last scream, then, she heard no more. Her husband, Michael, will now, never know.

She knew of course what was going to happen next. Every limb of her selfish body anticipated it. The evitable, as it so often does, became inevitable. The baby resumed its crying and a faint smell of her breast-milk befell the room. What were once soft, baby-lungs fuelled whimpers became shrieks. Ilona's eyes pressed against the guilt-drenched pillow. Behind her, suggestive sounds brought complete information. Yes the baby would die very soon. She could hear her child being raised and shaken and bitten and beaten and dropped; this time not in her cot. To pray to her fallen God felt fake and thus, she screamed faithlessly.

"Leave!"

She could hear the baby's crying becoming progressively quieter; slower; weaker.

"Leave! Leave! Leave!"

Ilona pleaded. But only part of her did so. The other part shone with hope. To think of her daughter perishing was to think of her freedom. To see her daughter dying was to see herself being born again.

"Leave her! Please, leave her!"

Think about how refreshing it would be, Ilona, she told herself stubbornly, to start all over again in life, to find a new husband, have a new baby. No disabilities, no bills to pay on pills and disease and pain. The unlocking, yes, the unlocking of the suffocating chains of a routine riddled with disability. The perpetual erosion of joy; the deflowering of simplicity, all would end when everyone was gone because yes, because this family had gone rotten and it needed changing.

Then, the baby's crying stopped. It was over.

In the lightless reality of her room, the man or beast or none or both walked away. Its presence faded, and with it, although still shivering in her bed between night and dawn, so did her crying, which slowly melted into sobs. And, as she had desired for quite some time, she was now lonely. No, she thought, not lonely but alone. She smiled appreciating the difference. Alone, she repeated, laying comfortably her head on the pillow again. She had always thought of herself as mother and a wife first, and only secondly as Ilona. But doesn't being Ilona come before everything else?

It was a reasonable question to ask.

Alone, yes, she liked the sound of that. This meant that nothing would dare define her anymore; she'd finally earned the freedom to define herself. All it took was courage, a desire to keep hoping, and, something sharp.

At exactly five minutes past midnight. Sleep returned and with arms wide open, she welcomed it. Closing her eyes, she slept and her sleep would have been serene, dreamless and perhaps most of all in complete silence, if it wasn't for the gentle din, of clock, and heartbeat.

The Excavator

Sally, my eternal wife, died a thousand times that week. It was only the first week after all; that first week when sleep is sparse and nights are long. She died loudest of all on Wednesday night; the next morning came early, far too early, and was drenched in din. My body divorced vulgarly from bed and for a tender moment, Sally's white tunic used my sweat to adhere to my chest. I placed it back gently atop the black leggings and pink scarf that still rested on her side of the bed. I almost smiled, but then, I heard the din again.

It was coming from outside. I waddled across my bedroom, swerving around her leather make-up bag and the pink tennis shoes she wore on that night they had found her body. Her perfume still lingered on this debris, racking me with remembrance. I regained my sense of factuality as soon as I gazed through my window. The construction works had begun again, denying tranquillity to the day. The excavator vomited forth a relentless throb which assured me that sleep would elude me for the rest of the morning. I grabbed my phone, to call in sick again, and left the apartment, wrapping a long black coat around my pyjamas.

#

The bare sun told me that life went on, irrespective. People jogged past me like speeding cars on a highway. Vendors clamoured on the pavements, letting everyone know that bargains are the true meaning of life. I stood paralysed at the entrance to my building, registering the proceedings of a random collage of loud, moving shapes. A woman: young, tall, slim, blue eyes, sharp features but frivolous smile, ran her pushchair into me. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, sir," she said, raising her left hand to her smiling mouth.

I fixated the ground and left; her smile scourged me. I had decided to walk along the coast to cleanse my eyes from urbanism, but didn't get far. Unidentified ululations possessed my intentions. I walked around my apartment block and came to a halt just as my bedroom window appeared above me. Before me, in front of a chain link fence, a female protester threw screams and dirty looks at the excavator which still pierced the ground in defiance. I moved closer to her eyes, to her hand gesticulations, to her tears. Her gaze met mine, briefly. I turned and left immediately, not heeding the sun's advice.

#

The roaring sea, on that clear-sky day, soothed me. It was as if Nature had laid everything down for me with the grace of a seraph, knowing well that I needed all the help I could get. Perhaps, yes, perhaps Nature knew that I only had one week at my disposal, one week to find her and make her mine. Whoever 'her' was, no one knew. But Sally had been very categorical the night before: one week, was all she was willing to give me to find her successor.

As I walked, with a pace that felt neither leisurely nor panic-inducing, I could see the waves crushing against the foot of the cliff and breaking into a sparkling rush of light reflecting specks. Autumn lingered on the foliage that rested wet on the steep slopes of the precipice. I thought of my Sally. She just loved the sea. Loved autumn, loved the cliffs and the sun and the waves. Her dead body was found with a broken jaw, stretching a tired smile.

I remembered my father, who had brought me, when I was six, to that stretch of coast to show me how neighbouring islands, most of them small like ours, came into view on a clear day. I gazed sadly at the white horses that galloped lonely on the empty horizon.

I shifted my attention back to the coast road that diverged progressively from the main road. A woman brushed past me from the opposite direction: short, slim, green eyes and freckled, heart-shaped face of which perfect smoothness spoke of frivolity. I doubled my pace.

At eight o'clock I called.

"Luca, you take your time alright, man. Everyone here at the ward is praying for your wife-" The word disgusted me; I hung up. I'll pray for you, too, I thought, when your wife is screaming with cancer pain.

The landscape changed a couple of hours later. The east-coast path curved inward and converged with the main road again. After a few hundred metres the main road narrowed, only to open up again into a small village behind which the sea hid from view. The sunlit houses nestled in silence and their proprietors, mostly old folk, busied themselves with their early morning tasks, disappearing and reappearing in between the alleys. I welcomed myself to the village where I grew up.

"You'll be happy, Luca, I know."

The playground, where I had spent most of my childhood, stared back at me. In its dust and silence, my father's words spun louder and louder until my eyes trembled, threatening me with tears. I held on. A couple, to my right, laughed. A man and a woman, young and happy, helped their daughter onto a swing. They sang and pushed her gently. Her dad took photos; her mother gave her candy. The girl smiled, chewed, and smiled some more. Then, her eyes froze and her head bobbed backwards. She opened her mouth and spewed forth the ghost of scream: a scream that had died prematurely as she choked. Her mother and father screamed and pulled open her mouth. She fell from their hands and hit the dirty playground turf, dead. I rubbed my eyes and shook my head as the young family faded from view, still singing, holding their little girl from both of her small hands. I knew I needed coffee.

#

'Sonia', was my first guess: brown eyes; brown hair; brown skin, probably tall, satisfactorily slim.

"No!" I said to the waitress who brought sugar packets.

I stared silently at Sonia who scribbled something five tables away from me, her back against the wall. I still couldn't decide whether she was tall enough though-I had to wait for her to stand up. I liked her skin very much.

I sipped.

Outside, a night-breeze stirred: the leaves told me so. I stared at the dizzying neon light and asked myself what churned inside me. I knew it was either something new or a depraved version of old emotions. At that moment I realised that everyone I ever loved was dead.

'Sonia' was tall enough. Her gait, as she rose to pay, was a feline one, spearheaded by slim, brown, adequately shaved legs that jutted out of a skimpy black skirt.

I approached her, pep talking myself into trying to act smooth. On a chair beside her, a large rubber band held a bundle. The front page was entitled 'Third Draft'.

"I'm a writer too," I lied, smiling. I glanced at my watch; it was nine, the week started now.

#

Irene clutched at my chest. I pushed her back and her head met savagely my pillow. She smiled: "come on, Ryan."

"Tell me more about you, Irene."

"Like what?"

She uncovered her breasts trying to dissuade me.

"Anything," I said, re-covering her with the sheets. "You're a writer no?" I began, "you must have a lot to say. What about your fears?"

It was spontaneous and I surprised myself.

"Sex with strangers," she said promptly, throwing her Lilith smile at me. "And you?"

"Sex with loved ones."

She burst out laughing and I just had to look away. The paroxysm must have made her feel lonely after a while and she quickly changed tone, realising that I wasn't amused.

"Well, probably boredom..."

I thought she would add something; make it sound genuine, like there was a heart which beat beneath her frame. But her useless reply faded from those full lips of hers which craved nothing but service. In retrospect, I think that it was her stern look, as she wrote in the cafeteria, which had me fooled.

I tried with sex. She moaned, overstressing the pleasure that I surely wasn't giving her. She twitched and contorted, fervent and sweaty, and I must say that I struggled to maintain some semblance of stiffness. She looked at me as if I were God, and it was that apparent despondency which helped me carry on.

She grabbed Sally's pillow and broke my rhythm. I snatched it from her and she smiled unknowingly. I decided to carry on, to be patient. I took her body in my hands and turned her face down. This new view helped. Not seeing her eyes made the view neutral. Five minutes later I was done.

"Will I see you again, Ryan?"

"Get dressed, Irene, please."

Her face showed hurt. She stopped near my door, asking me again with her eyes. I settled my face on the pillow; the door slammed behind me. Picking up Sally's pillow, I held it tight and slept dreamlessly.

#

Two-fifty a.m. and the moans woke me up, again. Grisly, irrepressible sex had exploded somewhere in my apartment. I sprang out from bed and followed the maniacal wails that assaulted the walls of my house with madness. It was as if the thrusts of passion were being performed with knife and nails and not with the body. I was led to the kitchen where the intensity grew, strangling further my sense of understanding. I switched on the lights, but the same oak furniture greeted me with silence.

A scream, from my bedroom. I retook the same path back and studied the pitch, which, at that moment, felt to be escalating beyond human capabilities. A faint smell of semen invaded my nostrils. The scream grew louder. It was a scream not spawned by passion, but by agony: it would have silenced the devil. The bedroom was quiet, of course. I opened my window and peered at the moonlight-forsaken streets. They were silent too, assuring me that it was all a dream. I knew they lied. I was awake, just as I had been on Wednesday. Only this time proceedings were even louder. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.

Three a.m. and my eyes scrolled their curtains open again. My room was black, silent. Something was amiss. It was then that I started to become slowly aware of the lump behind me in bed. Its movement was gentle; gentle and familiar.

"I'm lonely," I whispered, still staring at the darkness in front of me. "I need another week."

Silence replied feebly and tears escaped me.

"I'll go now, okay?"

I left my bed, sweat-drenched, and grabbed my phone to call in sick again, vaguely aware of the ginger hair reflection in the mirror facing my bed.

#

'Daphne' extinguished the cigarette with her stiletto. Her hoop earrings swayed almost audibly as she sauntered across the stray-dog-infested street. She joined her workmates who were gossiping in a bundle on the pavement. A red Honda accosted them. Its customized headlights screamed light at me and I could barely follow the ribald negotiations. A wild-breasted brunette got inside the car and they disappeared into the darkness. The remaining four, Daphne included, resumed their gossiping.

I drove closer to Daphne: tall, blonde curls, stern look, and a pallid face on which angst had proudly signed its name. The fishnets didn't suit her; the bright yellow miniskirt told lies. A workmate called her Janet. I found courage and opened my window.

"I'm Stephen," I said naively.

"Where to, sweetheart?"

She looked at me without seeing me.

"You're Janet right?"

Something in her compelled the question.

"Oh yeah, jeez, I am so very pleased to meet you."

Her colleagues laughed a few metres away from us.

A black Labrador barked from across the street whilst the moon was busy painting a circle of light around us as if setting a stage. Her mates continued to giggle backstage.

"I, ah, well..."

#

I was very careful in not making too much noise as I parked my car in a street adjacent to mine. I rushed to her side, but she had already stepped out. She kept looking away. The whole thirty minute trip had been silent and her eyes were still an enigma, sleeping beneath her bleached, frizzy hair. Walking to my apartment, we passed the chain link fence, beyond which, the excavator rested. I gave a passing glance at the large 'NO!!' posters that lay discarded in a trashcan. It's only four in the morning, I reminded myself.

Naked, she tore the condom packet with her teeth and moved across the bed to reach me. As she took hold of me, I looked into her eyes and the intense attraction I felt towards her hijacked my mental balance. Something in them churned and gave sporadic hints of pain. Her mouth, apparently in conspiracy with her eyes, refused to transmit anything, apart from the fees as we had entered my apartment.

"If you're comfy enough, sweetheart..."

She laid her back on my bed and spread, inviting me.

She was warm inside; much warmer than Irene. My mouth rested tangential to her neck on which a freshly made scar threatened the resumption of bleeding. Our eyes met from time to time. I wished she would speak more. Sally's pillow fell from the bed. She reached for it and picked it up and I went deeper and faster. I closed my eyes to imbibe every detail; to let my soul burn beneath the cages of skin and bones. I turned her face down; the scars on her back were wider, redder. I tried not to scream as ecstasy flooded my every orifice. I went faster, still.

Then her phone rang.

She picked it up and one minute later told me she had to leave. She smiled a little at me, perhaps because I had been polite.

"Listen," I said, midway her dressing up, "I'll give you a hundred if you let me help with that scar. I'm a nurse."

She touched her neck gently and smiled again.

"You could be done for the night, and I..." God knows what made me say it: "could enjoy your company longer."

She took my hands.

"Not tonight, sweetheart."

She stopped and looked at me. "Well, here's my number. I never do this."

As she was leaving, I grabbed her hand and stopped her.

"My name is Luca, Janet." Then, pausing, "I never do this either."

#

"Janet, I'd like to know more about those scars."

On Saturday of that same week I called her at around ten at night and there she was. She had arrived at my apartment approximately an hour later: a woman of solid promises.

"How much?"

"The usual, plus an extra fifty."

"Fine, whatever gets you boned up."

I wouldn't have put it that way. At first she didn't know how to start. She hesitated, rummaging through the old memories inside her. Then, softly, she started:

"I lost my father when I was six, my mother when I was ten, my first child, when I was thirteen."

On that second day I realised that she was the most beautiful woman I had spoken to since Sally. That moment, as she started, proved to be the initial stage of the most memorable five days.

"I had no family, no money or dignity. The nuns took me in and took care of me when I was fourteen. They were nice. They used to call me 'our sweet Jenny'"

Even in hindsight, it is still very difficult for me to understand how I knew that she was saying the truth. As cliché as it might sound, I think I just knew. Every day she would start the story from the very beginning, from how the nuns called her their sweet Jenny, and every day she would say the story of her life a little bit faster, just so she could give me that little bit more than she had given me on the previous day.

I think that it was infatuation at first. I always started with caresses; eventually kisses. My lips used to travel along the avenues of her thighs, exploring the ridges and fissures of her besieged body.

"Alonso discovered me three years later in a tiny grocer shop, three hundred metres from the nuns' convent where I was staying. I was seventeen and he was twenty nine. I left the nuns and went to live with him. It was then-"

She found it hard at first: to keep going as the intimacy escalated. It was not in our agreement, she had told me. I convinced her by throwing more money.

"...it was then when the horror started," she stammered, looking extremely fragile.

My body trembles as I remember the first time we did it, under the influence... Her voice would dissolve in a whisper as soon as I entered her. By day three, she had mastered the whole process.

"Alonso's parents would come every Sunday and they'd bring his six year old daughter, Charlene. In front of them, he would rape me."

Time passed and we became regulars. The infatuation, I now realise, had turned into affection by the third visit.

"Sometimes his father would join. Charlene was made to watch, sitting in her grandmother's lap. I escaped during one rainy night." She never cried; it made her even more beautiful.

"I ran barefooted through the wet east-coast road, but my lack of nutrients didn't let me get far. Everything became black and I fell. I just remember waking up, tied to a chair in Alonso's apartment, twenty men and a camera staring back at me."

One thing that was absolutely necessary for me at that time was to believe that she didn't fake as did most of those who shared her profession. It was all part of the general experience: to believe that everything was absolutely real. To this very day I like to think that some of it was.

On the fourth night, the bathroom door slammed shut behind us as we slept. She woke up, startled. But I think I told her that it was just the wind. We reached morning together for the first time.

But affection is simply foreplay to love. So I realised on the fifth and last night as I watched television while Janet slept on Sally's side of our bed.

"I love this man, because he knows my pain," a crying woman said on a repeat of a TV show I usually despised. "The world is divided in two," the middle aged woman continued: "those who have suffered and those who haven't. This man is my soul mate because he has suffered as I have."

For a while I stared at Janet as she slept, imbibing every word that that woman had expressed on TV. The shadows stirred irregularly around me. I moved close to her and knelt by her side, ignoring the shifting darkness in the bedroom. My resilience to leave her rest was frail, and so, I woke her up. That night was not over yet.

"You see, Luca, I'd almost wished for rape by the third month of living with Alonso." It was as if angels sang for us, and God, painted glimpses of heaven. Through her moans she created the visions.

"He made me wear his mother's clothes, made Charlene cut me with shards of glass. " I was breathing heavily, pounding her fragility with energy that I thought I never had.

"I prayed for death, every night, locked in the yard." I knew of the green eyes looking at us from the darkness and whispered to them often that night that I was in love.

"I escaped again, pregnant and bleeding..." If one has ever loved anyone as much as to want to get inside his skin; see what his eyes see; taste what his lips taste; than that very fortunate human being would know what I felt that night. "I lost my baby that night: my second baby, Luca." We were part of the same world: of those who suffer. We were at one in our pain.

Then, to my great horror, it happened.

"But that night I was successful in my escape and I never saw him again. Today, I think, I'm happy."

It was a wakeup call, loud and disorienting. My excitement dwindled and I sank limp beside her.

"What do you mean happy?" I asked more loudly than I'd planned.

"Well I..."

Her hair moved as she tilted her head questioningly. The only visible eye narrowed.

"I mean I'm happy. I met Stuart. He's nice. He'd never hurt me and pays me well." It was the smile that insulted me the most-after all those moments of beauty. My face collapsed on the pillow again, face swollen with disappointment.

"Luca?"

"I'm just tired."

"Then I'd better leave: it's almost five. Sleep tight."

Her kiss hurt even more.

At exactly seven a.m., the engine of the excavator roared to life. With the grapple still attached, it dug some more, driving back and forth around holes that grew deeper by the day. I watched it that same morning dig and dig, whilst sitting on a chair beside the window with Janet's number on a squashed piece of paper in my hands. A second excavator arrived, with a bucket, leveraging the debris the other left behind. But the holes just kept growing, as it spewed dust and specks of earth all over the innocent environs.

Its movement soothed me.

I wondered if it could dig forever. What would it find? If nothing, would it just leave the holes there? Enormous concrete slabs fell to the ground, collapsing under their own weight.

At eight, the protestor arrived punctually. I watched her from my window. What was her name? On which side of the world did she reside?

#

'Lisa' never looked at my window. She had eyes only for the Excavator. That day, as I greeted morning on the chair, I knew that it was the last chance I had before that eventful week came to a close. I must say that if it weren't for that one solitary day, my story would have already been over. It was Thursday and behind me the apartment grew ever more restless. Shadows inflated and danced to the tune of an invisible master; strange reflections marinated on the cautioning horizons of my mirrors.

"I am trying," I whispered, every second of that lonely morning. My eyes struggled to keep functioning. Three hours of sleep was the best I had managed that week; only one that night. I couldn't stay inside any longer.

The day was bright and clear, and the east coast was more beautiful than ever, but the horizon still refused to fulfil my father's promise.

Janet.

Even though she still haunted my thoughts, time had already begun the erosion. She was happy-as was Irene. By then I had begun to fear that people moved on in life; that there is, indeed, life after pain. I had always found this irrational. Who says that we should attach the highest value to happiness or pleasure? Surely, if asked, the whole happy wild world would tell you that these virtues are to be aspired to, but does this prove anything?

I think that this is a reasonable question to ask.

I've always believed that the world was wrong in the past couple of centuries to enthrone Hedonism as the queen of virtues. I have always been... a little bit like that excavator, shall we say. I dig for digging's sake; I make holes just to see them hollow with no particular aspiration to build. As if to agree with me, the sky had a change of heart and seemingly out of nowhere it started raining. The stench of dampness was soothing; the sensation of the rain upon my tired skin was engrossing.

#

I saw many women along the way, that morning. Most of them tall, with brown or green eyes, slim, pretty, but no, they looked too happy. I had come full circle. Another week was almost over and I still hadn't found her. I couldn't stop thinking about failure: how to tackle it; how to face my Sally empty handed; how to face a loveless future; these thoughts lolled inside my head and converged neatly in the form of an arrow that pointed unerringly at death - the self-inflicted sort, that is. Night was approaching and it carried with it that decision-making baggage I had always feared.

By three in the afternoon I completed my walk. The coast still had no answers for me. Would I die alone? Sally would be angry.

My apartment came into view and the street was dead as always; except for the excavator.

Lisa.

I never saw a smile on her face; never saw-. It was only then that I realised that I had never even looked at her body; only at her eyes. Lisa.

There she was again, her protests rocketing then fading onto the defiant metal of the excavator. She had chained herself to the fence and her paleness suggested that she hadn't eaten in a while. She was beautiful. Lisa. It was three thirty in the afternoon. I stood looking at her, drunk with empathy.

"You'll hurt yourself-" But my pleas fell short. I had given up. I knew that the darkness of my apartment awaited me and I had already accepted my fate. I was to walk in, empty handed.

#

Five in the afternoon and silence was all I had. I was expecting a warning: a scream; an orgy of death-wails, but nothing. If only it had worked with Janet. I was patrolling obsessively every corner of my apartment, walking in circles, and hitting every cupboard and cabinet with my head as desperation manoeuvred me like a play-thing. I needed a solution; I needed a way out. I couldn't possibly understand why in spite of my efforts love was still bent on eluding me. I knew Sally would be angry.

The first scream didn't come before six o'clock, and when it came, it was as soul-wrenching as ever. It was as if the apartment was dying from the inside. After the scream came the panting. They entwined, soaring in a diabolic crescendo. The sun outside bowed, reminding me that she had done her best; the white-ball-moon approached casually for the changing of the guards.

Seven o'clock and I peered from my window. Lisa was still there; the excavator motionless, as if resting beside her. She was a few metres away from the foot of my apartment, three storeys below me.

It was the same spot where they had found Sally's upper central incisors, all bloody and scattered on the piss-stained pavement.

Tears intensified in proportion to the apartment-screams behind me. Lisa was alone. Lisa was my only hope.

I darted down the stairs knowing well that I had no plan. The love needed to be true. I looked at my watch; it was almost half past seven. I had met Irene at nine.

Out in the darkness, I encircled my apartment and saw her kneeling against the fence as if praying. Her clothes were reduced to rags.

"Miss, are you okay? Miss talk to me, I'm a nurse."

Her body was so weak that it couldn't sustain consciousness. I picked her up from the floor, held her like a baby, and gave a good look around me. The place was deserted. The love had to be real. I looked at her, looked at my apartment window then back at her again. I will improvise, I told myself.

Back to my apartment and by now night had already settled itself inside. I switched on every light bulb I could find.

"Miss? Miss, can you hear me?"

Her closed eyes replied in the negative.

Love could never bloom without communication.

I laid her on the kitchen table, right where I had made love to Sally's body on that night she fell.

"Miss! Lisa!"

She had to wake up it was almost eight.

Then it occurred to me. I could speak, too; I could communicate my feelings, too. Sally had told me several times and only then did I really understand her. You could fall in love with a girl just by talking to her; by being sincere. Why was it always the woman who had to express herself? So I tried.

"Lisa...I've seen you often this week. I like you very much."

It felt nice. I tried again.

"I... I know you're in pain. I see your eyes."

Her body was drenched with sweat and rain and tears. Behind me, inside the apartment, dissatisfaction stirred. The living room light went off. I dared not look back.

"I lost my father when I was young. He made promises he never kept, Lisa. I know pain. We can live well together!"

But it was different. I could see it in her eyes. Her pain was different from mine. Maybe her pain was only of the environmental kind: the death of the sea, of the trees, of the leaves and the air we breathe. My pain was different: it was of the human kind. I wondered whether they could ever be equal in magnitude. Her face remained neutral. I picked her up like a bundle of clothes and hugged her tight to me.

"I will love her, in time!"

My house showed no sympathy towards my scream. The light in the bathroom went off.

"I will love her, damn it! I will be in love again!"

I hugged her tighter to me, tighter than I had ever hugged anyone, as if trying to squeeze the love out of her.

"Please wake up! Time's almost up. My Sally will be angry at me. I promised her!"

I was opening myself to Lisa. I was spreading my soul naked on her sleepy eyes. She had a pulse; she was breathing. I just needed to love her harder.

I dragged her to the bedroom, the only lighted room in the house besides the kitchen. I spread her body on the carpet and took off her dress; my clothes followed suit. We still had underwear on, lest she think badly of me. I thought that this extra intimacy would help, that the caressing together of skins would kindle something more - and it did.

I saw movement beneath her eyelids. Her fingers wriggled and her lips pushed open.

"Miss? Can you hear me? Lisa, it's me! The guy from the apartment you saw last time. Do you recognize me?"

The light in the kitchen went out. It was just us now, just a central stage floating in a pool of darkness. Only a few minutes left to keep my promise.

"Lisa, it's strange, yes. But I need your help!"

"What... who?"

I closed her mouth: her fear would ruin the moment.

"Lisa, we need to make love. It's almost time. My Sally will get angry."

Her agitation was negligible; her weakness decreed that she oblige to me. I kissed her forehead and smiled at her. I kissed her lips. I kissed her eyes. I kissed her neck. I kissed her tears. I am so sorry, I kept repeating. I was, indeed. If only it had worked with Janet. That decision making moment I feared had finally arrived. I looked at the window, that nightmare-inducing maw that vomited my Sally out onto the streets, and pondered my fate: I thought about mimicking her end, about taking the plunge; close my eyes, count to three, maybe to four, then wait until my body broke and Sally came to pick up the pieces. It was a beautiful idea, but perhaps, that would have made my Sally even angrier. It was a difficult moment for me, my head hurt as my mind floated from one alternative to the other. Love was playing hard to get; Death was playing easy.

Five to nine and the lights went out. In that darkness, the house wailed and Lisa screamed beneath me. Tears still flowed incessantly as I got closer to her and tried to physically explain to her how much I wanted to care. Then, enlightenment.

It was the Din.

Surely, I was wrong.

It was almost nine at night.

It couldn't have been possible.

But the roar of the excavator was unmistakable. I could hear it dig and shovel the debris, slabs of concrete slamming to the ground.

So I took the decision. And it was love. Always; everywhere; love triumphs over death. It was the way Sally would have wanted it. As a backdrop to the roar of the excavator, Lisa shrieked, time passed and necessity grew. I had to persist, I had to persuade Lisa. Sally would have been angry at me. So I pressed her mouth gently and punched her softly into sleep. Then I entered her; felt her; became her; made her mine: only so I could love her harder, and harder, and harder, and harder, and harder...

On God

"If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists. "

Blaise Pascal

Of Widows and Devils

The villa stood silent and stale, just like his body: the body of her young dead husband. It was the age of sunset worship and candle light banquets, when poems were read and promises entertained; the age of grey-less hair and hearts that ticked just fine. It had been that age in which God could, quite possibly, make sense. Not for Melanie. She pushed the gate and grimaced as it screamed, drenching the night with the sombre mould of ancientness.

Not for Melanie... She had seen her Mark's mouth gasp and eyes bleed. She had seen his left arm break and his genitals depart from his body. She had seen him drop and close his eyes, then leave, forever, in that nothingness that each human dares speculate about.

The smell of leaves after rain is usually responsible to lay the foundations for a smile on her face. But it wasn't going to happen that night. With her eyes stripped of hesitation, she trespassed, scanning the entire one thousand square metres property with intent. She knew that if her dead Mark could scream, then, like baying of hounds, his pleadings would haunt the property and coerce her exit. She begged for his forgiveness and proceeded.

Her bare, bleeding foot, shuffled through the debris and before her, the property gave birth to light. Little windows spewed forth yellow blotches which shined neglected against the dark backdrop of night. There was something deeply intimidating about them: their relatively small size with respect to the grandiosity of the building; the precise interval between them and the huge shadows that they seemed to cast. Melanie struggled against her own instincts to run away. She placed her finger on the long thoroughfare of a bloody scar that sloped down her torso. Mark's soft lips would have been nice and soothing upon that bleeding souvenir. She winced as she touched it and remembered how deeper it would have been if Mark hadn't intervened at a fatal cost. No, there would be no going back.

She was now at the epicentre of an infant woodland, on her way to the main entrance. There was no light to her aid and she could hear the rustle of leaves rising from the ground. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, she could outline silhouettes which were not at all humanlike. Her deep set eyes dissected the anatomy of the black that surrounded her, and realisation turned to certainty. She was being followed.

When she and Mark had made love for the last time, just a day before he was dismembered and buried still breathing by the cult, he had sung to her about stars that twinkled and little children that wondered. Just as she had reached her climax, he whispered in her ear that he adored her, and that he hoped that their children would be slim and have yellow curls, just like their mother, and not be plump, limply and bald like their dad. She whistled the tune and whispered: she adored his limp just fine.

Fuck the cult. Fuck the blackness of night. Fuck her gender. Fuck the loneliness. Fuck the noises, deep in the woods. Fuck the blood and bruises and bareness of her skin. Fuck her bitterness and broken heart. It is so easy to curse when you're a widow. She felt the knife in her pocket. It was still sharp. Let them come. Let their fucking Satan come if its heart so desires: lest devils try to fuck with widows- especially freshly made ones. She felt her heart ticking noisily in her chest and cleared her mind, the furnace of her hate. Melanie was ready to slide the fucking thing in God's eyes if need be. And for those who preach that vengeance isn't a solution: fuck them.

With these thoughts in mind, she braved on. Being followed became a secondary worry as her bare feet descended into something moist and of a coarse texture. A foul smell blasphemed through her nostrils. It was hard to tell what it really was but the smell reminded Melanie of genital fluids and burnt hair. The smell was so acute that her head started to ache. With her every step she could hear a suckling sort of sound that was coupled with a feeling of an almost frictionless stroll. Then, to her left, something shrieked. Perhaps it was laughter; at least she hoped it was. Someone was out there bent on scaring the living shit out of her and he, or whatever its nature was, was succeeding. She could hardly control her heart, now pumping deadly fear inside her brains. The things at her feet started moving. Her mind refused to derive explanations; yes of course it felt like a million rats copulating with her skin; yes of course the smell of decay had now become nauseous to the point of prompting her to lose consciousness. But an explanation would only make matters worse. She ran. Her eyes were focused and her body was on strict orders not to feel or smell anything and just concentrate all the circulation to her busy feet. She jumped over logs and dodged thistle and branches that patrolled the woods. A thicket of thorns proved one obstacle too many and she fell face down into the ungodly pond of blackness. For a few hellish seconds she froze into position as her body imbibed the abominations of the grounds. A deadly miasma surrounded her defeated body and seduced her death. As she inhaled it, her mind began to slow down; images of Mark and her combined against a backdrop of light and baby cots. Her heart thanked God without first getting permission from her mind. It was deceivingly peaceful, but it was clear that the gas she was inhaling was taking her to the doorstep of death. Before she could fall into a nightmarish coma, she gave as forceful a jerk as her tired body could provide and rose trembling to her feet. The thick jelly that constituted the ground stuck to her face as if not prepared to part ways with her; it did not take long for her to realise that its intentions were poisonous. Panicking, she brushed her face with her sleeves and the sensation was that of soap entering her eyes but magnified by ten. Melanie screamed with pain and just ran on and on, wiping her face and struggling to breathe. Perhaps she should have listened to her Mark who had pleaded with her not to go in, but the desire for blood drove her on, running semi-blind amidst shrieks, poisons and thorns with bruised legs and scratched arms. She ran out alive, screaming and panting a few seconds later.

The simplicity by which she had found her way out made her suspect that someone must have wanted her to live. This suspicion was reinforced when a subtly lighted porch appeared in front of her as if welcoming her. She wiped the last bit of that jelly which now appeared yellow and thick in the little light of the porch. Her face was still in agony and she was sure that a mirror would have no good news for her. But she had other matters to attend to. Behind a window at the western wing of the monstrous villa, a nondescript face appeared, fixed and motionless: a tautology which seemed profound during a strange second. At the other end, two silhouettes occupied an enormous terrace, both standing in a stillness that had a peculiar synchronicity. The night would have been silent, if it weren't for her sighs. A disproportionately wide door stood now between her and the entrails of the villa. She placed her bloody palms on the door and opened it.

#

Lisa would have been the name of their daughter and Jake, their son. She touched her stomach and for once felt disappointed about it being flat. She wished it round and full of life. Once, as she was falling asleep in Mark's arm, he had told her that she'd make a fine mother. She smiled and remembered how much she loved him. She touched the knife: it was the priest who would bestow upon her the sacrament of vengeance.

The door, just like the gate, screamed its welcome upon opening. Inside, obscurity escalated in pitch. There were no full moons or stars inside, just a blank, black canvass that could have hidden anything. She placed her right foot in, then, her left.

Then she cried.

Once inside, the fear and pressure that she'd been brave enough to counter became suddenly overwhelming. It was the place casting its spell on her; she was sure. There was an evil which bred in there and she had suddenly realised how small she was in comparison and how her vengeance had no plot. Hatred had driven her to the villa, blinded by pain and loss but sadly, bereft of ideas. She turned one three-sixty after the other, trying to catch a glimpse of a little trickle of light that could grant her some bearings. Her mouth was wide open as if she was having difficulty breathing. She heard a noise behind her, but it was only her body receding. She sensed movement, but it was only her eyes. The cold motion on her cheeks was simply tears.

There was a question that was suddenly troubling her more than anything. The cult had attacked them that night, just as they were returning home from the cinema. Melanie and her husband had delivered a fight which in the end proved futile. Mark was dead, and, as the saying goes, buried. She was still alive, however, and that was strange. The cult had not gifted her death. They had spared her, just at the last moment, and this pushed her into the pits of fury more violently than anything else.

Screaming was not an instinct, but a decision.

"I am here! You should've killed me when you had the chance!"

Even though the scream got instantly devoured by the house, it gave relief. To face that insurmountable darkness with pride and look through it as though you had answers; to appease your destructive thirst by spreading your throat over that black sky was, Melanie could argue, enlightening even. Silence asked for more, and she obliged.

"Come down, you miserable, murderous fucks! "

Of course, she knew she would die; that was a given. What she hadn't quite figured out was how far her appetite for vengeance would take her. She hoped that she could, at least, leave a tiny trail of pain behind her, just before they were to extinguish her and send her to her Mark. It was a soothing thought which eradicated the barricades of fear.

A light. In the left corner of what presumably was a lobby, a small spotlight ignited a patch with the merciless fires of factuality. The rebounding light had nothing sane to report. In front of Melanie, a young woman appeared. She sat on a rocking chair wearing a black veil that left a pale, perfect face uncovered. In her equally pale arms, she had a newborn. The newborn was crying. It was a high pitch moan that was awe-inspiring, considering the little lungs that did the fuelling. The young woman caressed the naked newborn and hummed lullabies that had a disturbing tinge of requiem. Still immersed in darkness, Melanie eyed the young mother and felt herself being dragged by the force of attraction towards her pale, but still beautiful motherhood.

"Lady...what are you doing here with that baby?"

But the mother sang on and the baby cried on and the darkness hung still, ever relentless.

"Madame... are you being kept against your will?"

Melanie's words came out in whispers. Her bones trembled, providing a warning. Her eyes, diluted and dry, attempted to look away, almost on their own whim. But Melanie's instincts were stronger. Holding the knife tighter, she moved closer and was now at touching distance. They were now a little island in that vast lightless ocean.

"Lady, I believe you need my help. This is no place for a mother."

The young woman, whose beauty increased inverse proportionally with distance, kissed the little one on his lips. It was a he, Melanie now realised.

"Madame, I-"

The woman looked at Melanie. It was a deep stare: one which could have caused vertigo if gazed at too keenly. A smile followed soon after. The young lady's eyes spoke with compassion but suggested neither faith nor hope. With her eyes, she transmitted motherhood onto Melanie like a perfume. The two women held hands and exchanged a smile which was a portent of friendship.

Then, she offered Melanie the newborn.

Melanie's instinct was to move back, recoiling by the magnitude of the offer before her. With her ashen hands, the young woman raised the now suddenly calm newborn to her and with her eyes coaxed Melanie into acceptance. Resist, she could not. With a smile that threatened to dislocate her jaw, Melanie took the petite jewel in her arms and locked, not only eyes, but also heart with him. The child's face had what Melanie liked to call a Mediterranean quality that inspired instant joy. His little hands formed a fist around her thumb and he was quite eager to place his beautiful bundle of yellow curls on top of her left arm.

Mark was dead.

#

Light exploded and darkness bled out. Doors opened and screams erupted. Realisation struck and death came punctual.

Out of the peripheries of the now visible enormous lobby, three dogs-black as the fabric of hell- stormed out of the openings and flung at the little baby like vultures ransacking a nest of its hatchling. The smiling baby disappeared from Melanie's arms and became canine fodder, just before her eyes. She looked away and could hear the teeth penetrating through the innocence, and the growls, that glorified their satisfaction. The dogs turned for seconds. They attacked the young mother who still sat immobile and secured their jaws around her face, corrupting everything that was human about it. The squealing of the mother and the stench of severed flesh melted into each other and punctured Melanie's sanity as she ran in circles around the lobby. Screaming was now an instinct.

"Oh, God why? Why? God, you fucking bastards, why?"

Her feet failed to fulfil their bounden duty of holding her and she collapsed into a sitting position on the cold floor. The sheltering courage was gone: it was as if the cult had bereaved her for the second time that night. She became hysteric.

"Come down here, you animals! You come down here now and look at me in the eye when you destroy me!"

Her voice broke and the lights abandoned the villa, once again. It was so dark that she could have slapped herself without knowing who did it. Even her screams sounded muffled as if the blackness had vacuumed the building. She knew that the dogs were real, even the woman and the baby were, and, of course, so was death.

She could still hear the dogs patrolling the lobby and sniffing for life; their growling restrained, presumably a sign of appeasement. She felt the knife in her pocket again: still there, still sharp.

After Melanie had miscarried for the first time, three years before, Mark had surprised her with a holiday aboard a cruise liner. During that vacation she had cried constantly and endured one sleepless night after the other. Not even the soft lolling of the vessel and the beautiful sceneries could grant her solace. But Mark did. It was surreal how the constant piling up of his love could build fortresses for her. He promised her a child, day after day. During the night, he kept his promise quite enthusiastically, Melanie recalled almost smiling. Her pregnancy did not come to fruition, however. Nine months later, a week before giving birth, they had the accident and she lost the second. The trauma was unbearable: she had condemned herself to a childless future. And when desperation thrives inside you like a parasite and feeds upon the volatile nebulas of your brain, the boarders that separate you and that other you collapse and self-harm and suicide will shine like Nordic stars in that dark night of your soul. It was only through Mark's undying love that she had climbed back from the bottom of insanity. The cult didn't just take his life away; they took her future.

She heard the dogs' growls moving closer to her floored body. Her breathing accelerated and her sweat froze on her skin. They were encircling her. She prepared the knife and thought about Mark. Wondered how his embrace would feel after death. Soon the lights will come on again. Then the dogs will attack: a perfect script that would result in a series of bloody banquets. She heard a scream behind her: it was the young woman. The woman's mouth, seemingly paralysed, formed screams and a disjointed collection of syllables that sounded like the word...God.

She had survived the attack! But the dogs returned to make amends. Melanie could hear them devour the last of her, one agonizing bite at a time. With each bone that crushed; with each incisor that tore through her skin and flailed her alive; with each blood-spray that released a foul stench of decay, Melanie got mental glimpses of her very own near future. Then praying came to a stop and the lady was gone.

A sigh escaped Melanie and the growls grew louder and closer. It was her turn now; she was sure. Counting the five senses, she realised that she could rely on none: not even on hearing; the beasts kept silent. Her sense of touch would come in handy, but that would be later: when it is too late.

She started counting silently, knowing well that by five something would occur. One, two, three: still alive, still breathing. They were moving closer. She knew this like she knew that Mark loved her and like she knew she would have made a good mother. Four: Mark was in heaven. That was also certain, even though she hated that fucking God and did not fucking believe in his fucking heaven. Five: nothing.

Six: light again. A bright eye engulfed her world and when a wet and infuriated maw tore open, her instinct made her draw the knife. A high pitch squeal followed as the dog fell lifeless to the floor bleeding from the eye. It was instinct: a widow's instinct. But before she could rejoice, she realised that that had been just one dog: she knew it was too late. From behind her, the second dog wrapped its oral blades around her jugular and the world went partially white. She fell to the floor with the black beast still wrapped around her. It growled and salivated on her, promising a painful end. But she could not allow this. She would die, yes, but only after getting her vengeance, or at least after trying.

With her back on the floor and her upper body completely hidden beneath the animal, she used what little strength she had left and placed the knife's handle to her chest, then pushed using every ounce of rage she had and she and the dog rotated in unison like lovers on a bed. Landing face down with the dog beneath her, the knife descended into the dog's neck smoothly, as if through butter. After a horrifying scream, it met a premature death.

She tried to rise to her feet, but the bleeding was disorienting her. Fortunately the dog had not inflicted a fatal wound, but the bleeding had to be tamed. She eyed the remaining dog which stood immobile in front of her as if planning its route. Like its dead friend, this one salivated profusely. She looked at it and it looked back as if they were the only living creatures on earth. She would not be intimidated; her knife was ready. To her delight, she could see the beast hesitate and recede. Groaning and panting, she managed to get on her feet. She took off her shirt which was torn to shreds and tied it around her bleeding neck. Blue jeans; bare feet; white bra: not exactly the right gear to attack a murderous cult, but it had to suffice. Then, of course, the lights went out.

#

Melanie smiled. She was not afraid of the dark anymore. She had survived serious wounds and had finally killed something. That was enough to inspire courage. She knew that the dog would not attack her, but almost wished it would. Another more serious threat was around the corner, however. To her left the last dog squealed in agony.

"These tricks with light. Are you afraid of facing me squarely?"

She heard faint breathing and knew it was a man.

"I demand to see your face!"

Her own voice startled her in that darkness. She speculated on the direction and the manner of his approach. Every breath she took, she savoured as if her last.

"Show yourself!"

Even though she was not shouting, her voice commanded attention. Footsteps moved closer. Whoever approached was scrutinising her from close range. She was feeling his breath against her face: it smelled like wine. But there was more to that smell: he was probably wearing an expensive perfume. Then he spoke.

"I, like it when you're scared, Melanie. You don't know how beautiful you look."

The voice provided a rich portrait of elegance, smartness and, paradoxically, even kind-heartedness.

"But, yes, it seems darkness does not scare you anymore. Might as well..."

As the light came back on, Melanie saw that the calm baritone voice belonged to a young man, elegantly dressed in a dark brown suit, with a red handkerchief in his left coat pocket. His face was white and wrinkle-less and his eyes sported a unique tone of green. His features were awkward: it was if they were hand painted with acrylic paint and then smeared slightly at the very end of the creation process, just to give a general feeling of skewness to his face. There was a seed of handsomeness, however, marinating on that almost sexless face, turning the anatomy of his skull into a riddle. In that wide, red-carpeted lobby, the young man approached her, carrying the dead dog in his right arm.

"You did well back there, Melanie. We're proud of you, dear."

"Did that woman and baby really die?"

The man caressed the dog, like the woman had caressed the newborn, and his face displayed a smile of tranquillity.

"I am really glad you managed to find us, Melanie. I see we're making a name for ourselves."

His body, Melanie observed, displayed no clues about his cult: there were no rings or necklaces or anything ornamental that symbolized pride or belonging. This was strange, given the myths surrounding the ancientness and pride of their order. News of deaths and disappearances had abounded in the months prior to Mark's death and, mostly through rumour, many of the anomalies had been linked to their family. No investigation had concluded anything and Melanie knew that justice was a maiden far too bourgeois to be allowed in the hands of an officer. Everyone knew that the cult had some sort of satanic legacy and that the numerous kidnappings had too closely coincided with their settlement in town. But, so far, they had been smart enough to cover every track. Melanie didn't care about proofs; as soon as the three hoodies had attacked them, she instantly knew that their family was responsible.

She took her eyes of the young man and gave a first good look at the lobby and studied the egregious paintings that adorned the circular vestibule. The impressive atrium also wore three large chandeliers like earrings and decorative black spheres all around the staircase like a pearl necklace. As she stared at that abnormal wealth, she knew that others were watching. She returned her gaze to him and spoke a tone or two louder.

"You killed my husband, you sick, fucking animal! I came for justice."

She wasn't sure if it was him because the hoodies had concealed their identity well, but she saw something in his demeanour that suggested that he was an accomplice, if not a direct offender.

"That's, understandable, dear."

"I don't know what sick fucking show you're running here. But you will die, just like your fucking dogs did. How can you sleep at night? You've destroyed my family, you vermin!"

He shifted his attention to her and his smile widened.

"I, manage."

"Motherfucking Satanists, I will tear your heart right out of your chest," she whispered, her eyes narrow, teary slits.

The man dropped the dead dog like a sack of shit and moved closer to her, leaving a trail of elegance behind him. He wiped his hands together as if purging them from death and scratched gently his clean shaved face.

"I hear you speaking, dear, with great intensity, which is admirable, but, ultimately disappointing. I do wonder what you're waiting for. "

She obliged. She made the run; knife pointed towards him, and for a second, even saw the blade reach his eyes. Then it stopped. His left hand broke the momentum of her arm with inexplicable strength and the knife could not get past that inch away from his face. His silence scared her more than anything. He tightened his grip on her wrist and she grimaced with pain. She did not cry, however. She would not grant him the satisfaction. With his right, free hand, he punched her, throwing her to the floor spitting blood, and disoriented.

From the ruins of herself, she saw his feet approaching. Melanie had no strength in her neck to bend it at just the right angle to see his face. When his feet stopped, she spoke feebly.

"Why? Why Mark? Why that woman? Why not me?"

He kneeled down and came face to face with her.

"I know your pain, dear. I've seen hundreds, like you, crying in despair. Just be a little patient, dear."

He grabbed her from her neck and she felt her body lift helplessly from the ground as he carried her and slammed her back to an adjacent wall.

"I can't br-"

"You can't breathe? Oh, dear me, I better bring you down. I don't suppose the baby appreciates lack of oxygen that much."

As she fell heavily on the floor, the last sentence amplified in volume and meaning. She had heard incorrectly, she was sure. She found the strength and brought her bleeding self up. Looking at him, her eyes inquired further.

"Well, I suppose I can consider further knowledge as your last request. Listen carefully!"

She felt tears flowing now down her cheeks. It was not a matter of pride anymore. The word baby had made her lachrymal glands weaken. The man walked in circles around her and spoke softly.

"You are, indeed, expectant, my dear. Deep inside you reside the seeds that will bloom into a little girl. "

She felt her legs go soft and her blood bubble and rush forth inside her veins. She had no idea how he could have possibly known even before her, but she had no doubts about his accuracy. There was something about him which went beyond earthly logic.

Mark had kept his promise. This wonderful realisation crooned like a war siren inside her head. Mark had kept his promise. He replied to her growing smile with a smile.

"Yes, dear, coitus works. You're pregnant. And, this time, I am afraid there will be no accidents and miscarriages. This time it's real."

The man knew everything about her. She was on her knees and crying: just like in the two other occasions. With both palms on the pristine floor, she conjured emotions that she had never imagined possible after Mark's death. Then, her world was shattered.

"There is, a problem, however."

With his index finger placed beneath her chin, he tilted her head gently and aligned her eyes with his.

"You see, dear, we can't leave it there, inside you: Its... against policy."

Her smile turned into a mask of horror.

"What the fuck are you talking about, you sick bastard?"

"Listen well, dear. My story was only half way through."

And listen she had to. He took hold of her hair and pulled her to her feet. With his hands pressing her cheeks, he continued.

"Like that woman, you'll have to part ways with your child. That, I'm afraid, is the only way."

Melanie's hands instinctively fetched for her tummy. He noticed her reaction and smiled, caressing her hair gently.

"Instinct...Instinct. They say that procreation is an instinct, Melanie. Why do you desire a child so much, dear?"

He let her go and she had to lean against the nearest wall to keep herself up. She was not about to have a conversation with that animal. She started to retrace backwards, then, she made the run: to hell with vengeance and her appetite for blood. She was a mother now; she had other priorities to attend to. Of course that hopeful moment of freedom proved short-lived. He caught up with her and once again slammed her against the wall.

"Oh come on, dear, don't be so rude. I was talking to you. Tell me, why do you desire a child so much?"

"You fuck!" she spat on his spotless face and he did nothing to wipe it; he just smiled and let the drop of saliva slide down his face.

"Dear, dear. What an attitude." He licked the trickle of saliva as it reached his lips and grabbed her face, pushing her more violently to the wall. He then formed a fist and brought it closer to her.

"Now, we either have a conversation or I'm going to punch your child dead, understand me? Poor little thing will die only a week old."

There was no escaping from him. He was too strong for her; probably too strong for anyone. She had to talk to him.

"What do you want from me?"

"For now... just a chat, dear. Tell me, why do you desire a child so much? Why would you ever bring such a poor child into this angry world?"

She surrendered in his arms and kept her answer brief.

"You'd never understand."

"Try me, Melanie. Please."

"It's... love."

"You had Mark..."

"It's different."

"This is intriguing. I'm going to need more elaboration from you, Melanie."

She sighed and inhaled deeply, trying to breathe as efficiently as possible.

"The love of a mother is different. A child is part of you."

"I see. And tell me, dear, don't you think it's a bit selfish for a mother to bring a child into this world?"

"If you..."

She coughed so violently that she was seconds away from vomiting. Melanie didn't know how much further she could resist.

"If you give love to your child, he's gonna be happy no matter what."

The vulgar laughter he emitted was torturous.

"Oh, I love this, dear. 'He'll be happy no matter what.' I see you all happy right now, dear. I saw Mark so happy back there as we dealt with him."

He continued his laughter and she just wanted to peel his skin off so badly, but what could she do?

"So tell me, dear. What makes you so sure about life? Is it faith? God?"

He pulled her from her hair and made for the royal-like staircase that led to a balcony overlooking the lobby.

"Let's go see the view, Melanie. Maybe it will inspire better answers from you."

No matter how much she tried to punch and kick, her attempts were negligible in comparison with his strength. It was as if his skin, bones and hair were just placed on his body for show: it was as if deep beneath his appearance there was more than mere human anatomy.

"Okay, here we are."

From the balcony, Melanie could see the aftermath of the dog-encounter. The lobby was blood-splattered and it was only the presence of a few bodily morsels here and there that gave any clues of a human struggle. The beautiful blue eyes of that toddler appeared in front of her and a chill spread all over her body.

"So tell me, Melanie. Is this what your God allows, eh?"

Melanie could see hooded spectators watching motionless and silent in various balconies that encircled the lobby in a theatre-like fashion. Each of these balconies had strange designs on their facades: irregular shapes were carved in the stones, creating inconsistent geometries that defied the mathematics of orientation.

"Talk to me!"

She was now at the very edge of the balcony, her tummy resting on the perilously low balustrade.

"I don't know!"

"Please, sweetness, you can do better than that! Answer me!"

There was a growl in his voice; he was not joking.

"Does God allow you to suffer like this eh? Do you have faith in him, eh?"

"No! Yes, No! I don't know, damn it!"

"You're making a mockery out of existence, dear." He pulled her back and threw her to the floor.

"Such a pity, dear. You don't even know what you believe in. You cursed and requested God's help in equal measure tonight. What kind of faith is that eh? Why did you pray in the woods if you don't believe in him? Why did you conjure his name as those dogs devoured that child? Do you realise, Melanie, how amusingly confused you are, dear?"

"Why don't you just kill me? Let's get it over with. Just fucking kill me, you animal." Her voice was now merely a whisper, lacking any of her female timber.

"I don't want to kill you!" It was a scream of rage that rocketed towards the painted ceiling and symbolized all that inhumanity that resided beneath his flesh. His tone softened as he kneeled next to her.

"I am going to try and explain to you. I just hope you have the intellect required to understand. "

He paused and slapped her face just enough to not let her lose consciousness.

"God is dead, as some have said. But for us, Melanie, he is not... dead enough."

She resumed her crying and rested her back against the wall. The man closed in on her and locked her in a cage of tight fists and sharp cologne.

"You should ask yourself, Melanie: did God dream Man or did Man dream God? I think it's a reasonable question to ask! My organization knows the answer to that question, and I am going to grant it to you, dear. Listen to me!"

He slapped her some more.

"Melanie, God, as you know it, is hope: a monolith engineered by humans to overcome pain, death, sickness, heartbreak, loss, poverty and all the ills that plague the world. God is your baby, her baby!"

He pointed to a mess of flesh and blood that stood rotting on the ground below. He looked downward at the mess, as if remembering.

"That poor woman had tried to save her child by giving it to you. Poor girl, she couldn't move. We gave her a drug that paralysed from her legs down. She was also deeply sedated so she could not form any proper words. When we knew you were coming, we left her there for you to see. You were a little guinea pig for us, Melanie. We wondered whether your current heartbreak would induce you to steal another woman's child. But you kept fondling that toddler and I let my dogs catch up. Your loss is our gain. In any case..."

He shoved her once again against the balustrade and pressed her neck to keep her face down.

"Melanie, let this be clear: what my society struggles to achieve is not murder but widespread demolition of hope. We do this, my dear, little by little: one widow at a time, one miscarriage at a time. Sometimes we leave a widow alive, sometimes an orphan, sometimes we just destroy everything. We are sporadic, Melanie. We attack randomly, suddenly and with no point of reference: just like God and his Nature, should you choose to believe. Then we let the wonderful forces of the media do the rest. In this way, we reach everyone."

"Why? Why?" The blood had rushed to her head and the dizziness was suffocating.

"Why? You see, dear, the more we eradicate hope, the less you procreate. The less you procreate, the more the populations dwindle. Soon, much sooner than you think, Melanie, society will wither and diffuse and in that vacuum of emotions, therein will lie the death of God. Only then can we accomplish our goals. "

Her eyes were losing focus. Having grabbed her by the neck, the bleeding resumed and the haemorrhage was leading her slowly to her death. She was sorry, most of all, for little Lisa.

"Just imagine, Melanie. If seven billion people were to instantly cease then all the mosques, synagogues and churches of the world would perish lightless, for the wolf needs the lamb to feed on!"

It was incredibly difficult to breathe. Her body was slowly going into shock due to the loss of blood and she was deeply dehydrated. The monster just rambled on and on...

"We killed your Mark because he was the source of your hope, of your want for life. Killing him, we have also killed your desire to have a child."

Tragically, he was right. She used the little specs of energy she had left to outline an inconsistency.

"If the world ceases... you will cease with it!"

"Oh, you accuse us unjustly of being mortal, dear. That's very rude indeed!"

He spoke in riddles, but she realised that in between the lines resided a truth she'd known but denied to herself from the first moment she'd seen him. He wasn't human.

He smiled at her and licked the blood off his fingers: probably a cocktail of the dog's and hers.

"I have decided to console you, dear. "

He pulled her again from her hair and dragged her away from the edge of the balcony. He had shoved her and moved her and pulled her throughout the entire fight-if that could even be considered a fight-like a negligent piece of meat in his arms. It was then that in his eyes she saw something which came close to empathy. He helped her in the most gentlemanly of conduct to a nearby chair that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

"A little trivia, if you will, Melanie, just because you seem like a genuinely nice person. Your blessed daughter would have sported a lifelong limp, just like her late father. "

He stroked her hair, now that she had become a replacement for the dog. He smiled at her.

"Don't you think that's a relief, Melanie? She would have been disabled!"

There was no point, Melanie told herself, as the man looked at her with genuine concern: there could be no conversation. He was broken. He was collateral, of a world that had become too brutal to lick its wounds.

"Well, I guess that's it. I've told you."

She felt her body being dragged further across the balcony, perhaps in the direction of the stairs; perhaps down to the lobby. But with her eyes closed it was impossible to tell. It was over; she and her husband had fought bravely.

Through foggy vision, she saw the man remove the knife and produce a pill out of his pocket.

"Now, I am willing to let you live; it doesn't make a difference to us. But you need to take this, dear. As I told you, it's policy."

Tell Mark that I'm coming, and sorry. Would God listen? She didn't know. But she sure knew that she wanted to believe again, especially in his heaven. The urge to speak with God was overwhelming. One thing was sure: the man's words did nothing to enfeeble her faith; on the contrary, they had almost revived it. Please tell Mark that I know I should've listened to him. The young man came close to her and showed her the knife.

"Take the pill, Melanie, or else I'll have to kill you too."

She could barely listen to his words anymore: a sharp throbbing had invaded her head and everything came muffled. His knife was at touching distance from her eyes. It was time and she smiled in realisation. Would little Lisa meet her and Mark? This thought filled her heart with love; with hope. He lifted the knife and from his eyes poured out all his words again:

God is hope;

God is dead;

God is an invention;

Your baby needs to die.

Procreation must be eradicated.

She attacked him.

She smiled and threw herself over him and off the balcony. At the edge of death she had found the strength for one last attack. She felt herself falling helplessly. She heard him laughing and chanting her name in mockery. But it was okay. Soon, very soon, she would hit the ground. It was all played in slow motion as death made its final call. It was her last breath on this earth...

But it was okay. She knew she would die on impact and he would never get the chance to touch their Lisa. In that way, she had won. In that fraction of a second she just hoped that Mark would think of this as a more honourable death for her and her daughter. She just hoped.... She was also happy, though. The manner of her voluntary death was to be her final ode to her Mark, to her Lisa and to the young woman and her child. That final assault, she knew in that instant before her death, was her final ode to life.

Noises in the Sky

1

"I think that if this ghost shit turns out to be true, it'd be great news for everyone."

I look away from his smile and a wide green signpost tells me that Richtown woods are five kilometres away. With this pace, we'll be there by ten tonight. I lower the back of my seat and sigh. The trip has been a pleasant one this far and the closing in of the forty metre cypress trees from both sides of the road assure me that rurality is here to stay.

Duncan turns off the AC and lowers both our windows. We're alone in the car so he sees no reason to ask if it's okay for everyone, especially since I'm 'just his little girl'- a term I allowed use of only to my late father. He knows I'm not amused.

"You're okay, babe?"

"I'm tired."

"Oh come on, Lisa, baby. We're ghost hunting, sweetheart. I need you fully lucid."

He squeezes my thigh with the free hand that does not handle the wheel and he calls me for the second time his baby, angel, or whatever the fuck. I tell him that I don't like it, quite unconvincingly.

This is supposed to be the epitome of my journalistic career: the greatest story in years. Everyone likes a good ghost story, but they like it even more when witnesses amass from all over the country, congregating in the backyard of Richtown: a God forsaken village with what is probably one part residential, three parts woods. No mayor has ever given a fuck about these poor people. No priest has ever gathered his flock here. Apparently these people either need no saving or have no souls at all.

#

Two kilometres. I raise the back of my seat once again. Duncan notices my indecisiveness.

"Come on, babe. Don't you like ghosts?"

My inward curling lip and narrowing eyes reveal that I'm indifferent. He picks on this and once again I find his hand taking a stroll on my thigh. To take it away angrily would be futile.

"The hype is already big. But what if it's true after all? It would rocket our asses, Lisa, to God knows what. Maybe feature editors, or who knows, perhaps managing editors."

I shrug, but he continues.

"We need this, babe. You can think about it as our search for treasure. Throw in it a little honeymoon if you like."

He hijacks my hand and imprints a kiss on it; it would have even looked even a tad romantic if you didn't know him. This almost forces a smile out of me. God I'm such a cunt.

#

I hear bells, church bells to be more precise- probably from some distant church in central Richtown. It is soothing to the heart. It also provides us with a welcome. A rope of light makes its way through the haughty arms of the trees as if to provide us with a link to the sky to where we can ascend and imbibe the reality of the place. As light and bells mingle, I find myself getting absorbed by the fecundity of my thoughts and drifting into an abyss to which Duncan's questions provide a violent swell.

#

Five hundred metres and we're there. What if it's true? He sees it as a search for gold, the reported two hundred thousand that have gathered from all over the country and I, see it as a search for truth. Two hundred thousand and counting: shit, it seems ghosts have taken over popes and politicians in the polls.

#

We've made it. Duncan pulls over, opens the glove compartment and takes out his cigarettes; I see he's also brought his Glock with him as usual. I look to my right, away from him: he still has that fucking smile on his face.

2

It's Ten in the evening and the village is fully awake. Duncan had to park his sedan at the back of a little dumping zone: all formal parking places are gone. Cars are double parked, triple parked, on zones which are supposed to be for busses, on lanes that are supposed to be for pedestrians. In the middle of the road, a procession of silent coaches and caravans await their proprietors. Everywhere's blocked, so we need to walk.

The moon cannot care less about clichés. It's only half naked and rests modestly behind voluptuous clouds which discuss the rain amongst themselves. From this distance, it's all deceivingly quiet. We see the dotted horizon approximately six hundred metres away from us, littered with the multicoloured tents of the curious. We get going.

As we get closer, I start to realise that things are not as I had imagined. An orchestrated drone of chatter and singing is ready to engulf us. Duncan walks equally stupefied by my side, perfectly fulfilling his macho role by carrying all the camera and light gear on his own. I decide not to help him.

"Holy shit, this place is fucking huge!"

We're halfway across the lawn that separates our car from the congregation. I can see spotlights towering high above what looks like five football grounds amalgamated at the back entrance of the woods. There's a gentle breeze, but nothing major. It is a typical summer night: hot and disgustingly sticky. What strikes me most, however, is that there is no... ghostly mood in this place, whatever that means. Every tree in this most glamorous courtyard of the world is coy about all ghost issues that are rumoured to hide behind its back. The stretch of lawn leading to the festivities is restful, apart from the occasional squirrel. So it's just me and Duncan who march along its width and breadth. Nothing dares give a clue.

As I walk towards the enormous campsite, I find myself returning to Duncan's words. Are ghosts really such good news? Two hundred thousand people seem to be quite sure of this thesis. I cannot stop myself from thinking that if this business turns out not to be true, nothing out worldly ever will. I don't exactly know why I attach such weight to this story; perhaps I am just overwhelmed by the sheer number of people present. I must admit that there's a little part inside me that desires all of this to be true. I look at Duncan who still manages to steal my hand to take it in his. He smiles at me. I wonder why that little 'ghost-loving' part of me keeps growing.

3.

Two hundred thousand people is a lot! I regain my composure and do some self-analysis, such that sight and mind can come to terms. Is it just me? This is supposed to be a ghost story, right? The clichéd spectre which haunts the midnight woods of this forsaken town should not, at least in my books, provide such atmosphere. It all reminds me of some hippie convention at Woodstock in'69 that I've watched with considerable envy over and over again on You Tube. Those concerts must have been a blast to cover, speaking as a reporter that is. But perhaps, as luck would have it, I might be able to cover our very own twenty first century version of a Woodstock party. I look at these masses who have convened here to await their Hendrix who is supposed to be holy or pious or whatever. Not that the old Jimmy wasn't, anyway. There is chanting and singing and eating and drinking, and most are semi-naked (although I think I spotted a couple who were less than semi) and scattered randomly around this vast woodland square: truly a sight.

Even Duncan is in awe. He laughs that laugh I hate so much and pats me on the back as if I were one of his drinking buddies.

"This is going to fucking eclipse everything we ever did, sweetness. Let's build our villa, baby!"

We set up camp on a little free patch we were lucky enough to find, right in between a Chinese elderly couple and a group of teenage-looking boys. The boys are busy playing around with their laptops, while the Chinese couple enjoy some rummy in front of their tents with the help of a little candle light as if they believe that they are still on their front porch at home.

"Bid you good evening, neighbours."

The boys just stare at Duncan who takes his hat off and lets his hair loose as a gesture of superiority. The Chinese couple nod silently after which they return the bidding showcasing perfect English. There is something quite amiss about this couple that I can't really point my finger at. Their eyes tell pleasant and welcoming tales, yet their demeanour seems to imply caution; caution which hangs tight lest it falls into fear. The boys seem nonchalant though, having regard only for their beer and laptops.

I nod politely before entering the tent that Duncan quickly sets up. I see that Duncan has already planned everything for us in matrimonial fashion. In my mind's eye I can see him wink and calling me babe.

As I return outside, for a deceiving second, my mind ponders the idea of sunlight. It's half past ten at night and as I look across the peopled landscape, wild light assaults me from everywhere. Duncan lays his gear ready on the floor.

"Time to get to work, sunshine." With a glance he reveals all the fire of his ambition.

SPIRITS NEVER SLEEP declares an enormous banner spread across the innocent facades of a couple of eucalyptus trees. A few drunks confirm this ethos beneath it. Journalists from all over the country shove their lights and mics in the faces of those who seek their fifteen minutes. There are vendors of wine, beer and coffee; of tens of different kinds of meat and salamis and cheeses. God the cheeses... in this heat! Ice cream trucks are around every corner, spreading the growling of their generators everywhere, and a thick stench of marijuana mingled with the soft creamy aroma of tourists' sun lotions roams the air. Moreover, there are singers and dancers and choirs and showmen. Magicians and puppeteers entertain the children with their multicoloured outfits and multi-layered hats. Comedians entertain the adults who laugh at insults probably directed at them. The spectre of consumerism has so far been the only ghost I've seen. There is also the occasional lunatic, and why not? Renfield lookalikes roam the place screaming at people; one even poses for some photos and screams that the master is coming, and that he has promised to make him immortal. There is a place for everyone it seems. From the families and tourists to the gangs and the druggies and the lunatics seeps a common thread of excitement and a peculiar form of unwarranted delight.

We make haste and let ourselves get swallowed full by the overbearing crowds. Many quickly recognize us as reporters and in a flash we have become the most beloved couple around. Hundreds flock around us, screaming their anecdotes at us and caressing the camera as if it were an instrument of self pleasure. I suddenly remember the words of a senior colleague of mine who covered a war-hit town in east Africa, describing a reception from the children of the town not too different from the one we're receiving here. Everything is happening fast and I barely have time to think. I find myself cutting and pasting images in my mind, mingling the images of giant eucalyptus and Sequoia trees that paint a perimeter with their vast foliage- as if to mock us in some kind of piggy in the middle scenario-with the flashes of cameras and smiles of this welcoming cabal of ghost hunters and divinity seekers. While they continuously shoot smiles and flashes I just cut and paste, cut and paste. Myriad languages tap at my ear relentlessly and my head spins round energetically in the direction of English. It starts getting overwhelming after a while.

I look at Duncan and I see that he feeds on this: he loves it, just loves it.

I hear some kind of bells knelling to my right. A priest, surrounded by lofty security guards and police cars, enters the fray accompanied by a tall man in a fine preen suit, and both salute their people in papal fashion. Why a priest would choose to come here at this hour is beyond me. They halt at roughly the centre of the square and the priest is handed a microphone.

"We need to see what the priest has to say, Duncan!"

I scream at the top of my lungs but it is hard to get any message across; the barking of the crowds is incessant. So I point to the priest and mimic the clicking of a camera with my thumb and forefinger.

"Haven't we already covered the lunatic?" At least that's what I think Duncan is saying. I signal to him that he should follow me and I head for the epicentre without waiting for his reply. Getting near the priest is truly a feat. We manage to bypass a few hundred bodies and find a bit of a clear spot approximately ten metres away from the white bearded priest who could pass for a Moses painting - minus the mic of course- as he addresses the crowd. His words are garbled and fight their way through static and cheers.

"We come here to celebrate God who, in all his might and infinite wisdom, has chosen to speak to us in what is admittedly a most peculiar manner. But in his wisdom, he has sought to unite us, and look at us! Praise the lord for his ways and wisdom!"

I can almost feel the ground shake as the thunder-clap of an applause strikes the arena.

"Never have I seen such an embracing of the spiritual! Never have I witnessed such a collective gasp of hope. Blessed are those who are touched by God!"

It's hard to write whilst being pulled and shoved from all directions. But I must say that his words have struck me so much that I write them down just for the sake of habit. They've struck me for all the wrong reasons. I can hardly understand how this could be the official stand of the church! It seems that all caution has been thrown to the wind and all they seek is to capitalise on the mere rumours of a ghostly presence. This is highly irrational to say the least. What if this turns out to be a hoax? Why the church has chosen to make leverage from this situation is beyond me. The priest is right on one thing though; these rumours have successfully managed to unite believers and non-believers alike. Richtown has become the capital city of belief.

"Let's praise God for giving us signals when we most needed them!"

"Let's praise him!" roars a packed to capacity arena.

"Let's praise God for reminding us that not even the most shameful behaviour of those in power can ever sever the ties we all have with him."

"Let's praise him!"

"He has chosen to send his child to us two thousand years ago. Now he has chosen to come himself two thousand years later. Let's praise him with tears of appreciation in our eyes!"

"Let's praise him!"

I tune out at this point. It's all a bit too much for me, even though my profession requires me to stay; I think I've seen enough. As I look around trying to capture the general feeling, I realise that the cultural spectrum of those present is remarkable. There are those with veils and collars and those with studs and Mohacs; those with black eyeliner on white skin, and those with green tattoos on large beer bellies. There are silver spoons and peasants; those who hold children and those who hold joints. The boundaries between black, white, brown and Asian have been thankfully broken, at least for a few days.

"Let's get some comments!"

Duncan smiles and clicks; I don't think he's understood me. I place myself at a junction where people rush by as if on a conveyor belt and fling ad hoc comments at the lens.

"We've heard God screaming at us! He's showing us his love!"

"He's coming down to save us!"

"The world's not dead yet!"

The tall man in the grey suit who arrived with the priest, is now at the mic providing a backdrop with his insights.

"When this is over, my friends, we shall go back to our offices and factories with new found hope! I understand your apathy, I always did. But this is the start of a new era!"

The masses cheer, even those who can't understand!"

God is good; God is great, even for the economy!"

To my right, I spot a lonely woman in a corner, marking the first exception of the day: she is not cheerful. She holds a young girl in her arms and sits quietly on a bench. Her child is still awake, even at this hour. She seems benign enough and I feel that her comments might provide a contrast with the over the top ones I've had so far.

I drag Duncan behind me out of the growing melee. We reach the woman and the little girl just in time before a hysteric tide of screams sweep us out. The woman smiles at us; she looks smart and in her thirties, and her eyes are intense as if she's ready to divulge all the contents of her post grad thesis to the ignorant world. Most importantly, she seems willing to talk. I reach for my notepad and Duncan sets his gear ready to immortalize her pretty face for tomorrow's front page.

"Miss, would you be kind enough to-"

"Oh yes, most assuredly. "

Rarely does one find such willingness. It's a day to celebrate rarities it seems. Having found a relatively quiet spot, I am hopeful that we can have our first fruitful interview.

"Have you been here long?"

"Oh, I was one of the very first, before most of them actually."

She points at the dancing world in front of us. Her statement comes with a bit of piquancy I must say.

"Do you approve of what's going on?"

"Approve? Oh dear! To watch them mock everything like this is unbearable. I wish someone would do something!"

"Do something about what, miss? I mean, they aren't harming anyone really..."

"I think this is utterly shameful, especially the church!"

I wait for her to elaborate.

"But then again, the church has always managed to be on the wrong side of history, hasn't it? I tell you lady, only those of us who are victims have the right to be here! Only we know the truth!"

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"Well, I hail from Richtown, that small village you probably came across as you were driving here. Nothing like this has ever happened here, in fact, nothing much ever happens really. But this summer changed everything."

She pauses and caresses her little girl.

"It was as if the change of season brought with it a climate of...I don't know, maybe 'spirituality' is the right term, whatever that means."

"Spirituality? You mean in the sense of religion?"

"Well..." She looks away from me; she looks away from the celebrations, and I can see her eyes lingering in the direction of the vast, clouded sky. A barren patch of sky allows some generous moonlight to pour over us.

"I knew something was stranger than usual two weeks ago. " Her eyes finally confront me.

"Does it sound that weird if I tell you that something made me suddenly attracted to churches?"

"I...well... it happens to a lot of people I guess, miss."

"Yeah... well, not really, no. You see I hadn't been to a church in ages. I've never even taken my daughter, not even to her holy communion, didn't baptize her, nothing. In fact, if I have to be entirely blunt, I must say that I hate churches and everything they represent."

"But that isn't-"

"There's more." I get my shorthand skills ready because I feel that this woman has a lot to say.

"I started to approach the peripheries of the church, shall we say, just looking at its structure, at the people flowing in and out. I didn't know at that time why this was happening to me. But, after three days, I realised that I wasn't alone. I recognised a bunch of people who live in my neighbourhood doing the same: just sitting on benches outside the church and watching, all accompanied by their children. No one was ceremonial about his visits. No one went inside to pray or anything. We just stood outside and comforted ourselves with the place. Of course when a neighbourhood turns into a whole town, you start realising that something is going on. But we took our time to acknowledge it. We were presumably embarrassed: Richtown is not known as a place of churchgoers: it's not in our culture. But then, the next set of events gave us no choice but to start some serious acknowledging."

I ask her to elaborate with my eyes.

"After a week, it hit the children."

I notice that Duncan has stopped fidgeting with his camera stuff and now offers his full attention. The little girl plays in her mother's arm with a soft toy.

"My daughter, Sarah, has always been a quiet, shy girl. She has never given me anything to worry about and I consider her the perfect girl. So you can understand that when she first started having sleepless nights and complaining about a persistent hum in her ear I became immediately worried.

"This was three days after you started having that church-sensation right?

"Something like that, yeah. At first I tried to dissuade her, telling her that it was probably her fear of sleeping alone. But then it got worse. I tried sleeping next to her at night, reassuring her that everything's safe, but what scared her was not coming from the outside. Hers was not an ordinary child's complaint. After it happened for the third night in a row I got extremely worried and decided to make an appointment with our doctor. I had heard a lot of scary stuff about children and their signs and symptoms and I wasn't going to risk my girl. "

"So this is six days after the initial feeling right?"

"Yes, and it was there when things started falling into place."

The woman is shivering and I notice that her pauses are increasing. She sips some water and then she remembers.

"I'm Emilia, by the way. This little lady as I said is Sarah. She's a big girl, she's a whole four years old. Aren't you, dear?"

The little beauty smiles and nods without uttering a word.

"We're Lisa and Duncan and.., well we're journalists."

She smiles.

"I... well. I am a single mother and a Biology teacher at a secondary school here in Richtown."

We all share a second smile, and then an uncomfortable silence settles amongst us. As awkward as it is to present oneself halfway through a conversation, I think she needed it badly. She is now comfortable enough to talk.

"All the people who calmly sat and waited outside the church, now sat and waited outside the office of our local GP, a little less calmly I must say. And, Lisa, if I may call you so, when I say all, I mean all! That day, we acknowledged everything. We were experiencing the same symptoms exactly: no one could stop thinking about the church and no child of ours could sleep that week. The same hum that haunted my child was haunting everyone else's. "

She pauses and I have time to catch up on my writing as I wasn't doing so in a while now. She starts talking again.

"I've been using the word 'haunted' a bit too loosely, I'm afraid. Visited could be a good substitute I guess."

"You seem to have given it quite some thought..." She smiles at me and there's no need for words.

"But I have to ask you, Emilia. When I first got the story briefing, they told me that what's actually going on in Richtown has to do with a ghost story that needs to be covered ASAP. I see nothing ghostly about anything out here tonight. I mean, how did it come to this? Why is everyone making such a fuss? There are many young people here who couldn't all possibly be from Richtown and who have no kids in the first place. And why come here in this forest?"

Had my boss been here to observe me, my ass would already be fired or sent back to college over that question. That was no journalist's question, more of a passionate rant by a broken hearted teenager. But I am getting increasingly annoyed with all of this. This is not what my paper set me up for.

Little Sarah continues to play with her soft toy and Emilia displays that same caution on her face expressed by the Chinese family. As I take a closer look at Sarah's soft toy I realise that it's a little Ghost-Soft toy.

"She bought it yesterday from a vendor who's been taunting the little ones with these toys for days."

This kind of reminds me of pre-gates-Lourdes where you can buy just any damn thing in the shape of a Madonna.

"Show the lady how the ghost talks to us, sweetie."

Little Sarah gives the first sign of a giggle and presses the stomach of her Casper. The toy releases a robotic sound which when properly listened to can be described as a sort of hum. From the toy's tiny speakers it sounds like the moo of a cow. It has a metallic quality to it though; it's as if there's some grating of metal going on in between the hum. Not really amusing, but the kids seem to like it.

"Well, she's a courageous little girl. It doesn't seem to scare her," I tell her mother: more of a passing remark really.

"She's learnt to live with it."

This is one reply I didn't expect from Emilia. She looked stern as she said it and I can definitely see some thoughts scrolling through those green eyes of her as pats the head of the girl gently.

"But then again, we all had to adapt to hearing that noise, dear."

She opens her arms as if to accommodate the two hundred thousand present in them. Me and Duncan move closer to her as a gesture clarification.

"The day after the clinic visit was a quiet one. My dear Sarah didn't complain about anything, so I approached the night with measured optimism. Little did I know..."

Her voice trails off and she accommodates the child on her lap to help her fall asleep.

"The poor thing is exhausted. I will finish quickly. "

She turns Sarah such that her head can rest on her shoulder. As she does so, her toy falls and I pick it up. I mistakenly press its stomach and that ominous hum re-ignites.

"Imagine that, Lisa, amplified by a thousand times and deluging from the sky. It started that very night when I thought it was safest. "

It is only Duncan's look which confirms to me that I did in fact hear her well.

"A sound across the sky?"

"Yes: a monstrous metallic hum, with a beat. That night was the first time we heard it. Sarah woke up immediately, crying and screaming and shouting that it was the same noise that had been ringing her ears. We went out of the house and found the entire neighbourhood staring at the sky, everyone still in their pyjamas."

"And let me guess, the noise was coming from this direction, right?"

"Yes. It was as if the woods were calling us. And that's how the fuss with this place started. People from all over the country learned about it quickly and came here to search. They camped here, made it their home. They drank and celebrated that finally something worth noticing was happening. The sky didn't disappoint either. It shrieked punctually almost every night, but none of the investigations yielded results. Then the ghost myth started. "

"It seems to me you don't really buy into this ghost business."

"I didn't say that. I'm just not as keen about it as they are. Look at them, celebrating something they don't even know about. They make me sick! The bishop should be ashamed of himself. The mayor, well, it's not his fault. He's only a politician."

She is now standing up and preparing to leave. I look at Duncan without knowing what to say.

"Whatever this is, be it a ghost or God screaming his rage at us, I did not come here to celebrate it. I came here to find out what it wants from my daughter, and I will not leave before it stops. If God thinks he's gonna scare our children then he has another thing coming!"

She leaves, just like that, and Duncan and I stare quietly at each other while the entire population dances the night away.

4.

The sex is always great, albeit loveless. I watch his naked body rise from me, and, with a cigarette in his mouth, he makes for some pants and an exit. All the men I've had were obsessed with 'exists'. I used to think that it's me: these days I know it's me. My wrist watch tells me that it's almost one in the morning. The quiet outside confirms it. If the sky has some screaming to do, it seems willing to keep us waiting tonight. I can hear some sporadic laughter and the occasional moan of passion from some nearby tent. I smile as I recall that nice Chinese couple. I ask God to bless them with a smile that's decidedly persistent and then wonder why I've asked God something in the first place. Listening to me pray, you'd believe that I believe. I turn to my right with my back facing the exit and my mind begins to wander around themes of God and the like. What if all this is true? Surely all of these people can't be mad and something must truly be going on. What if this is not a hoax? Maybe it's true that something is indeed visiting these people, to put it like Emilia did. Would this prove anything about God? Maybe that's what the world needs at the moment: a good ghost story to make them believe again. I wonder what dad would say about this. I haven't thought about him lately and I feel guilty and relieved in equal measures. It had to be a haunted village story to make me think about him again. Maybe Duncan was right. News of ghosts is good news for everyone, even if it is hard to associate this alleged demonic hum in the sky with something positive. If this thing is real, it will be the only real thing in my utterly useless and meaningless life.

So my thoughts wander: in circles, disjointed, personal, impersonal, hopeful, and at times verging on the suicidal.

"Jesus fucking Christ you really have to see this!"

Duncan storms inside the tent and he has 'scoop' written all over him. I find the first dress and put it on, not knowing if it's the good side up. I run outside where I find most things sleeping, except for a small group, hundred or so metres away from me. Duncan runs towards their light. From here it looks like a campfire.

As I approach the clamour, the outline of a group of teenagers coiled around the campfire starts to take shape. I get closer and understand that their stupefied looks point in the direction of their laptops. These are the same set of youngsters whose tent rests next to ours. I wonder how many computer batteries they've brought with them.

"Holy shit come look at this, Lisa!"

Four young boys and a thirty year old chauvinist pervert do not seem to notice that the only woman amongst them is wearing what I now realise to be a wrong side up summer dress with no underwear beneath. Something must surely be amiss.

"Let me see."

They turn their laptops and I can see some grey old buildings doing nothing, saying nothing, looking as normal as ever. It's You Tube. I hope this is not the reason that dragged me half naked in the middle of the night. From the caption I can see that it's in the Ukraine.

"Look at the date published, Lisa. Raise the volume, Jonathan!"

This video was published half an hour ago. The boy whom Duncan called Jonathan raises the volume and I suddenly realise what the commotion is all about. I feel my skin temperature falling.

"Jesus...."

"Maybe, it is."

A loud apocalyptic-sounding hum glides unseen above an unprivileged district in the Ukraine. It is, to my horror, exactly as Emilia had described: an amplified replica of that soft toy hum that little Sarah played with. Pulses of metallic blasts engross the Ukrainian sky with fury. There is a sudden jerking of the camera, perhaps it's the cameraman's reaction. It is the most horrific thing I've ever heard. Jonathan looks at me.

"Man I tell you, this is exactly the noise that we've been hearing in Richtown. There's more."

He politely takes the laptop from me and performs another You Tube search. Duncan and I stare at each other incredulously

"Look here."

It's Mexico. It's horrendous. It's as if enormous piles of metal were being dragged across the sky. Goosebumps crawl beneath the hair on my back as I hear the same hum roaring across the Mexican sky. This was published just an hour ago.

Now either these boys are great actors, or they really believe this is real because their excitement is almost comical. I put on my journalist hat and try to form an improvised interview, even though I'm half asleep.

"How did you find these?"

"Just google 'Strange noises in the sky' "

"Are there any online comments?"

"You bet! Look here! People are getting mind-fucked everywhere, I tell you, man."

Apart from the fact that he swears, spits when talking and calls me 'man', he seems to be a nice guy. In fact, his freckled face beneath a healthy bouquet of curls is rather charming.

"There are all sorts of theories circling around. Some mention that we should check the water, sewer and gas lines. Some mention the army conducting some military exercise. Some have talked about mining explosives and dams. There's one now who is saying that we should test methane levels at the landfills in case the gas was spontaneously exploding. But all this is of course bullshit, man. How could it be happening simultaneously there and here? A scientist, on the other hand, has posted that it could be caused by three things: 1) a meteor shower. Such a thing can produce very weird sounds, although this could not possibly account for all these widespread claims 2) it could be caused by 'Fracking', or high pressured gas being emitted from deep within the rocks or 3) it is the world's own way of readjusting itself harmonically after a reversal of the magnetic poles. What I know is that this cannot be a hoax. I mean, how would you make all these people from such long distances cooperate on such short notice?"

"Well, with Twitter or Facebook, it could be done in seconds, no?"

Jonathan shrugs, showing me that he is not convinced.

"Are there any exotic theories?"

I've never seen Duncan this intrigued.

"Oh, you bet, man. There are the SCI FI lovers who claim that there are legions who live beneath us and are now rising: too much War of the Worlds for them if you ask me. There are those who say that this is the beginning of the end and that the bloody Mayans were right. All this, they say, will realise itself on December 21st. The most charming of all are the religious cocksuckers, who say that we are hearing the trumpets in the sky as forecasted by the bible. That just cracks me up."

"And what about ghost theories?"

"Oh, that's hundred percent Richtown, man."

His heart must be pounding with all the excitement. I try to challenge him.

"Isn't it the most..."

"Ridiculous?"

"Yeah..."

"Yeah that's what I thought. Just before I came here, that is."

The four youngsters look at each other and nod in agreement. I fetch for my pen but, of course, I suddenly remember my current predicament. I'll have to rely on my recollection skills. Let's hope Duncan helps me with this.

"There's something totally unique in Richtown, perhaps triggered by that noise in the sky. I haven't read about it anywhere else. All I can say is that we've been brought here by that noise in the sky. But what's keeping us here is something beyond. I believe that there is something spiritual going on here: something which is uniting believer and non-believer alike. And it scares me as much as it excites me and fills me with hope. "

I have no doubt that this kid, Jonathan, is deadly serious. The way he uses the word 'spiritual' has the same intensity as Emilia's. I'm equally sure that what I hear behind me is the cry of a child.

We look behind us as we realise that it's moving towards us. It's Emilia, with her daughter Sarah crying in her arms. From a distance I can see her tapping her daughter's back gently and rocking her in a reassuring manner. She holds her as if she were a little baby. Emilia reaches us and I can see a desperate look in her eyes. She fears the worst.

"I don't know what's wrong with her. She's never cried this much."

Indeed, the crying is not that of a four year old. It is too reckless, too uncommunicative. At that age children can jolly well tell you what they please. Some sort of motherly instinct, that I would have sworn inexistent, takes the better of me and I move closer to little Sarah and stroke her hair gently. Without telling her mother I inspect her body briefly, fearing scars or inflammation, but there is none.

"Yeah, that's what I first thought, too."

I can see that nothing escapes a worried mom. The men stare at us with that stupid look on their face.

"What were you doing prior to the outburst?"

"Sleeping, of course." Her eyes glimmer as she tells me the obvious.

"What the fuck?"

I look at Duncan who stares at something in the opposite direction. That something is another mother with another crying child in her arms.

"Fuck me!"

I turn to Jonathan and I realise that this time he is looking at a father who's gone out of his tent to tend to a crying child.

"It's the children, man, always the bloody children."

I want to ask him what he means by that, but before I can do so the fourth consecutive parent ventures out of her tent with a crying child.

"Always the bloody children, "Jonathan reiterates. Emilia realises this and walks towards the closest mother. One by one they gather in a bundle, rocking their children as if they've just given birth to them. We pick our stuff and move closer.

Another ten minutes pass and I can now count about fifteen parents, mostly mothers, trying to comfort their crying children. All of them ask God for an explanation; all of them walk to and fro as if they could conjure a remedy. There's no expression on the little ones' faces. With their eyes closed they cry with an intensity that would suggest desperation; it's as if tragedy was thriving and breeding inside them.

"Is this the first time?" I ask a random mother.

She nods and Jonathan, who has remained glued to me, elaborates.

"Strange things have been happening to these children, but nothing of this sort."

"What sort?"

"I was going to tell you before. The children have started displaying urges, strong urges, to escape towards the centre of the woods."

Jonathan points towards a path that leads towards the heart of the woodland.

"Yesterday a five year old girl managed to escape. Can you believe that? A five year old who outwits all these adults? We set up a search party and spent the whole night looking. Her mother fainted with fear. We returned early morning, unsuccessful, only to find her here sleeping in her tent. She was perfectly healthy, just very tired and with her dress a little wet. Other than that, she was perfectly normal. "

More parents gather with their children, who cry and cry and make you wonder how such small lungs could fuel such tear shed. I can count around thirty or forty crying children now as hysteria intensifies. Others come out of their tents, awakened by the commotion. Whatever starts every night, is just about to start.

"Okay, my friends. We need to calm down. The children are healthy. They are just scared. We will find a reason, whether it's rational, or not."

Is this the same Duncan I know? His way of addressing the people seems to be succeeding in calming some of the panicking mothers. The gathering hundreds listen to him and look at each other as if eyes could grant solutions. Looking at him, you'd almost believe he's a good guy. Some are doubtful however.

"You've just arrived this evening. How can you possibly understand?"

"I don't think there is anyone here who understands! Why do you insist on staying here? I am finding it incredibly hard to understand! This place is scary, even for us adults, let alone for the kids. Why do you insist on keeping the kids in this ungodly place?"

A woman hugs her child tightly and laughs audibly.

"You really haven't understood anything, have you? It doesn't matter where we go! Whatever haunted our children in the village has followed us here. Whatever haunts them here will haunt them back home! Whatever haunts the sky haunts us. And we're staying here until we find out what it is! This place is the doorstep to truth!"

Duncan shrugs, letting some of his cockiness visible.

"But what could you possibly hope to achieve in this place that you couldn't achieve in your homes? Come on people, this is insane. We should all leave, now!"

"No, sir, we will not move from here."

A young man walks towards us with eyes that burn with intent. He has curls and charm that match Duncan's but more suitably wrapped in an aura of generosity and wit that usually weaves leaders.

"I'm Lucas, sir. I am one of the parents whose kid is sick. "

He addresses the crowd as if he were their new mayor.

"I say tonight we go looking again for whatever this is. I say tonight, we make an end to it."

An applause confirms everyone agrees.

"I also think that whoever does not have a legitimate place in here must leave! This is not a bloody party! There is nothing to celebrate here. Our children are unsafe! Only we parents can understand the fear. Not the bishop, not the mayor, not you journalists, or you bloody hippie, computer freaks. Only we know what pain our children feel and let me tell you that you're not welcome with us!"

There's a roar of applause that turns anyone who's not holding a child in his arms into an outlier. He looks at me peremptorily.

"I want you to write this in your column tomorrow. Whatever is going on here, might be a bloody feast for some, but let me tell you, it is not good news, not at all. People should know about this and they should fear it."

And before he could go on, a hammer strikes the sky.

5.

Motherly instinct decrees that they should press their children tight to their breasts and this is what they do. Human instinct, on the other hand, decrees that we bundle together so close we can lick each other's sweat. It also decrees that the hundred thousand or so that remained at the camp to brave the night, scurry out of their tents and come bundling with us. And when such an enormous choreography is executed in perfect synchronicity and in such dead silence, then you truly know that something quite out of the ordinary is taking place.

A second strike at the sky, this one more metallic-sounding. The enormous crowd gasps. I close my eyes and test my sanity. I open them again only to find everyone doing the same. Tragically, I am sane after all, or perhaps equally insane as the others. My job is to write words, I am a journalist, so it has to be something really profound which can deprive me of words and leave me speechless. This is something deeply profound. As I recompose myself, I analyse the sound and only then do I realise how absolutely petrifying it is.

I look at my hands; they tremble. I look at Duncan; he shivers. I look at the mothers; they cry, silently. I look at the crowd; it gasps. I remember the festive spirit I found when I came here; it's all gone. This is real and I am in it.

The third strike at the sky is a little bit more expected, so I can analyse it with more levelheadedness. Its grandiosity is its most terrifying aspect. It truly feels like something which only the Gods can conjure. And if all this is some sort of joke, then I find myself thinking that its architects have the use of science that none of the books you read in college would ever discuss. Nothing about it is human, and as its repercussions reverberate through all of us, I feel something being displaced inside me to make room for more fear. Every cell of my body screams for me to run. A hand takes mine.

"You understand me now? This is no festive matter, Lisa. Whatever is up there is in my child."

Emilia tries to keep a strong face whilst wiping the tears from her eyes.

"We must stay here, until we find what it is. I hope God is prepared to listen to us."

It is strange to realise how strange it is to hear the word 'God' in such, well, strange circumstances.

"All the children! Look at the children!"

Lucas points to his child, then at everyone else's. Our gazes shift from sky to the little ones. And then it hits me. They're no longer crying. They are not smiling either. They're just quiet and expressionless in a mannequin sort of way. I think I liked them better screaming. There is an aloofness about them which intoxicates my senses with fear.

"Okay. We were expecting this, my friends. This is the night we put an end to this. We must find the truth!"

Lucas stops abruptly. There's some laughter in the distance and music by those few cocky ones who think that they're above everything. Lucas erupts.

Listen to me!"

Those holding children in their arms cry in silence. The others laugh and take pictures.

"Listen to me, Goddamn it!"

It was of course futile. There are thousands spread randomly around the arena who now shout and sing and dance and laugh and are happy just because the sky has threatened to fall down on us; just because the laws of rationality seem to be in serious jeopardy.

Duncan looks at me and shakes his head disappointingly. Then I remember.

"Give me your gun!"

Duncan's eyes widen and he smiles with realisation.

"I never thought a little lady like-"

"Just give me the fucking gun, will ya?"

I grab the Glock, pull the slide back and shoot the thing at the now quiet sky. Silence regained. Several heads bow down in embarrassment, like school children caught in the act. I am quite sure that if I had to ask them one by one, most wouldn't have the slightest clue as to why they are singing or dancing: they are the archetypical rebels without a clue.

Jonathan approaches Lucas with a microphone and a couple of speakers attached to his laptop.

"It's not much, man."

"It's better than the naked voice." Lucas looks at me and nods in appreciation, then faces the crowd.

"Now that I have your attention, I think you are all ridiculous. Shame on all of you!"

The crying mothers and fathers applaud him.

"I am a father of a distraught child, a husband to a shaken wife, and a friend to equally worried parents. This is real, goddamn it!"

At this, the applause gets louder.

"This is no joke! You come here with your laptops and your Twitters and your Facebooks and disrupt what to us was a mission."

He shouts so loud that he makes up for what little audio power he has.

"You are not welcome here, alright? You've been here for a week and we're sick and tired of you. Leave! Just grab your things and Leave!"

I now feel like applauding too.

"This is not your backyard, asshole. Fuck you!"

There's always that drunken asshole who goes all the way. Lucas's eyes ignite and he violently grabs back the microphone he had begun to give back to Jonathan.

He climbs on a low wall next to us and prepares his lungs to scream.

"Of course this is ours, you insolent little shit!"

I haven't seen such a rapturous applause since election days. Well, forget election, this is much better. Shit.

"This is our village! Our story! Our problem! You have absolutely no place here!"

The paroxysm of laughter makes him shout louder.

"Are you going to heal our children? Are you going to help them sleep at night when they come crying to us? And at the end of this, are you or your useless friends gonna counsel them?"

The sky shrieks again with metal and chains and profanity. No one laughs. No one smiles. No one shouts anymore, except Lucas.

"Listen to that everyone! Listen! Is it God calling our children? Is this the end of us? We must try to understand. We owe it to our children! We owe it to the world! No one is immune to this monstrosity! No one will escape it! "

His voice is stern, his words sterner. His eyes tell tales of doom and, even though I cannot see them all, I would bet anything that not even one of the thousands present doubts him for a second. The sky has truly silenced everyone.

"We must act now! Those who have no children, leave now! Those who have, follow me at once! We must follow the trail and understand. There is no time to lose: our children are in danger! "

Indeed, I feel they are. Uncharacteristically silent, they have been staring at a fixed point for the past quarter of an hour now. Something is deeply amiss. Even Duncan has lost all his cockiness as he asks me if I am fine. Lucas stops near me and looks at us.

"You two can come. We need everyone to know about this. The world has to be at one."

Agreed.

I look around me impressed. The enormous stretch of land that had hosted the festivities is being slowly abandoned. Even Jonathan and his friends are packing: hastily, the frivolous young who had gathered to celebrate our incongruous world, now, probably ashamed, or scared, race hysterically to leave this horrible place in earnest.

Tents down, equipment dislodged, lights out.

I find myself standing still, torn between the need to imitate them and the need for truth. I look at the woods towards which the true participants of this story make and let my desire for truth take over. I reach Duncan who surprisingly still waits for me and then we move on, feeling myself disappear into the woods.

6.

Near a giant sequoia, we discuss what to do next. There are around fifty of us. Unsurprisingly, they've brought their children with them who are still unresponsive. They breathe normally; they accept drinks and little pieces of food. They don't look sleepy or tired notwithstanding the time, two in the morning to be exact, and are, more or less, perfectly still. I've covered car, train and even plane accidents; I've covered earthquakes, floods and shootings in my career as a journalist. This is, by far, the scariest scene I've ever been dragged into. I trust Duncan feels the same. I miss his manliness; not his cockiness though. I find myself looking at him for a little while, and then Lucas regains my attention.

"We need to stay together, at all times. "

"What are we looking for, Lucas?" Duncan asks with a tone of impatience.

"The truth. There must be something which can give us clues in these woods. It summoned us here after all. We need to look, with our eyes, minds and hearts. "

"What if we find nothing?" asks an incredibly exhausted Emilia.

"Then," he takes her hand in appreciation, "we go back to our homes and pray for it to stop."

Duncan approaches me and takes my hand.

"I don't fucking like this, Lisa. One foul step from him and I'm gone, you hear me? Stay close to me!" He kisses me on my right cheek and I hold back all my girly instincts which make me smile, cry, hug or any of that soppy, useless bullshit which made men fuck me and dump me for ever since I've been old enough to have some proper tits.

Strange are the thoughts that come to you in such times.

"If we walk in this direction, we should reach the centre of the woods in about half an hour."

Lucas points to a meagre path that fights hard to reveal itself beneath the offspring of a clan of sequoias. But he's generally being regarded as our leader, so I decide to trust him.

With pen and paper in my hands and an SLR in Duncan's, we start what I now feel will be a long night.

7.

The weight of silence makes you almost wish for something to happen. The expectations are sharp. The party holds tight together as if bounded by rope. The trees, as if to mock us, lower their branches to make us almost kneel down to pass through their grace. The moon gives us a little glimpse of light as the jealous clouds undress it for a little while. Only our breath can be heard and the polite thumps of our cautious feet on the increasingly insidious grounds. Towards what we are walking, no one knows except, I hope, Lucas. Shadows create doubts all around me; it is to be expected in so little light, with so little space and so much expectations. Every branch is a possible enemy; every patch of darkness holds a possible secret; and to think that I loved nature once upon a time.

The sky is quiet and so are the children.

I am positioned somewhere in the middle of the group with a terrified mommy behind me and an extremely reluctant Duncan in front of me. From time to time Duncan stops to declare his intention and that he's about to leave soon. I see neither Lucas nor the path. I follow, almost blindly. One strange thing I begin to realise is that there are no animals; no owls or spiders cross our torchlight, not even a rat. Shit, I even hope for a little rat at this point, but there's no sign. It's as if these woods are utterly devoid of life and my impression is that if it weren't for us, it would have gladly kept it this way.

Again, strange thoughts come to me. No not now, I order myself; not at a point when my fear is at its hilt. But who can command the mind? Perhaps it is my extreme sensitivity acquired through this ungodly fear that opens the door to the bowels of my essence. Duncan, as usual, is at the core of these thoughts. But I also think about God. In this darkness, in this uncertainty, I think about Duncan and God; Duncan and God. Is my body preparing for death? Has my mind deserted my heart by depriving it of Duncan? Or has my heart deserted my mind by depriving it of God? The clouds wrap themselves more religiously around the moon, depriving us of light; depriving us of dryness. I put on my hood as a gentle trickle becomes suddenly a downpour.

"People we have to keep on moving. We're almost there."

Yes, Lucas. Tell it to the children; tell it to the mothers who despair for their children and whose minds are crippled by God knows what. But he's so courageous, Lucas. It is easy to forget that he is a father too, that he suffers like everyone else. I look at Duncan drenched and cold and deeply pissed off. I fear he's gonna leave at any moment now. Does he still think of this as a search for a treasure?

'We're almost there' turns out to be true after all. So Lucas is also trustworthy.

At the centre of this hellhole, a patch devoid of vegetation welcomes us. It's almost a perfect circle, clear from trees or anything alive, with the ground that has a brownish tone of mud and clay. The smell is of dampness.

"We haven't heard it for a while, sir... maybe it will stop."

"Maybe, or maybe this is all bullshit" Duncan replies angrily to the young mother as he unzips his bag to fetch some water. "Follow my example, lady, and drink it's thirty four degrees! "

The rain has stopped for a while. It didn't last. In fact it stopped almost as soon as it started.

I look around me and every ornament of nature seems to be adorned with mystery. Every gap between the trees seems to hold room for speculation, both rational and irrational. I think everyone feels the same-it is the silence telling me so. Duncan is the first to sit on the floor, then, one by one, we follow him. A sigh of relief confirms that everyone is so bloody tired. We've walked for just twenty minutes, but the weight of expectation has taken its toll on us. This has also been the longest stretch of quiet. The sky seems restful. We give ourselves permission to breathe.

"How are the children?"

Everyone shakes his head with a demeanour of abandon. Lucas closes his eyes and lays his back against his rucksack.

"Let's turn off our torches."

"What are you talking about, Lucas? It's pitch black around here!" It was Emilia who spoke but, I bet, she did it for everyone else.

"Let's try. It will help us listen better. It will-". He pauses and looks at me for whatever the reason. "It will help us pray better, my friends."

"I don't think that praying is gonna be of a lot of help around here, Lucas!"

"Praying always helps, Martha..."

The woman, who's probably in her twenties is not convinced and makes it pretty obvious.

"My friends, we need to realise that our indifference to God is what has gotten us in this trouble in the first place. God is enraged with us."

Murmurs are flung everywhere and Lucas seems to realise that he's not selling anything. He tries again.

"Martha, let me ask you." He pauses and looks at the rough looking girl who posed the challenge, "how were you planning on defeating this... presence?"

Martha looks away with a defeated look.

"And what do you hope to achieve with your praying?" Duncan brings more scepticism to the table. But he's probably right.

"Who knows, my friend? How does praying help during funerals? How does praying help on deathbeds? I have no idea, my friend. All I know is that we need to do it more often and God is making this very clear to us."

"I don't fucking pray, mate, ever!"

"Suit yourself, my friend. Whoever wants to join me, praying is free."

He switches off his torch and I shudder. It's amazing how we attach our sanity to a little bit of light. The less there is of it, the more inclined to desperation I feel. Emilia follows and deprives the group of her light as well. Their voices mingle and their words cascade all over us.

They pray for salvation. They pray for their children; for themselves; for the world that's less and less understandable these days. Their prayers are soothing. Another light goes off. Then another. Soon we are in almost total darkness. It's just me, Duncan and Martha. But even Martha, surrenders after a few seconds and it's just us: the two non-parents. I signal to Duncan my intention of following suit as a gesture of solidarity, but he rises from the ground and, as I had expected, leaves with his usual pomposity and disregard to everyone. I say to myself that I have to stand up to him. Let him wander off in the woods alone. Let him get lost. I have put up with him for so long. He is not my boyfriend or fiancé. He is just someone I sleep with. I can find another one like him.

Let me pray to a God which does not convince me; saying words which mean nothing, with people who know nothing. I will find another one like Duncan, I always do. So I pray and take notes, even in this darkness. But who am I kidding? I fucking love him and that's the whole truth. I am supposed to be fucking praying to God. Whatever. Fuck God. What has he or she or, whatever, ever done for me? I am a fucking journalist with a shitty paper, with weird dreams of success and even weirder dreams of a fucking family. Fuck it. Fuck God for being unreal and making me believe. I am just Fucking Lisa.

And even though in my head, I am swearing too much. Why am I having this sudden violent reaction? The calmness around me irritates me even more. Their praying starts getting suffocating. I am in a pitch black fucking haunted forest with weird ass village folks praying for their stupid vegetable children and all I can fucking think of is Duncan. Fuck me, I'm desperate. Strange are the things you think off during such times.

The rest is inevitable. I elevate myself from my praying posture and leave them to their fucking rituals. Duncan went east. I switch on my torch and follow in the fucking darkness, alone. Fuck it. Two things I realise at once. One, I am swearing too much, and two, two or three minutes had elapsed since Duncan's departure so I am even lonelier than I thought. I promise myself not to panic. How far could he be? If I double my pace I may reach him. He is alone; he might have stopped; reconsidered; thought about me. Whatever. I do realise as I walk that my thoughts are becoming weirder; more desperate; more sporadic. It's as if my mind, ah well, it's as if I'm drunk in bed alone, seeing the ceiling fan spin above me, even though switched off. I let myself go on with a barrage of sporadic thoughts which have God knows what sources in the bowels of my demented self. And do I have to use the word God for every thought? I have just established-

Fuck.

"You looking for me?"

With his back against a rubble wall, Duncan looks at me, only with half a smile.

"You're late, Lisa."

"Jesus Christ, I didn't see you there."

"You're late!"

"Late for what?"

"For getting the hell out of there. Those fucking villagers are crazy!"

"I don't know, Duncan. Something does seem to be going on. "

"Why? Because their children are silent? Did you hear Emilia's girl talk today whilst we were interviewing her?"

"I...no. I did not."

"So how do you know if she is telling the truth? Maybe these children have a disability or something. Maybe these villagers are plain crazy. And who the hell goes out in the middle of the night with little children looking for a fucking spirit, Lisa? Are we really that dumb that we've left ourselves get involved in this? Where the hell are they seeing the fucking spirit, eh? You tell me that, Lisa!"

"That sound in the sky..."

"How do we know that it is not a hoax? How do we know that this is not a tourism stunt or even a religious one? Look how they got them praying. Yeah, you heard the priest: If it's a ghost story that's making you pray then so be it."

"I don't know, Duncan. My mind, shit, my mind is going fuck all!"

I sit down next to him and ponder his words carefully.

"Have we seen one real thing happening today, Lisa?"

"I..."

"Come on, babe, I've seen your eyes rolling around incredulously. What's rational about this? About people searching for ghosts? People usually shit themselves not make a fucking Jamboree out of it. What about these villagers, eh? Bringing their kids here, in the middle of a goddamn forest. If they are sick kids, their place is not here. Just a big publicity stunt if you ask me, courtesy of his holiness the bishop and that Bush-look alike of a mayor. No I don't like it."

He sniffs in his very sceptic ways and lights up a cigarette.

"Haunted my ass. Their minds are haunted, with bullshit, Lisa."

"But you seemed quite serious back then in front of those laptops."

"Yes I was, but that walk made me think. I was thinking about what I truly believe, babe. And I started to realise that I only believed in things that made sense, in stuff that's rational. Of course, when they started praying..."

He waves with his hands, signalling, knowing him, that enough is enough and exhales a blotch of cancerous smoke.

"I had that experience too, somehow."

"What?"

"Thinking, I guess. As I tried praying and as I looked for you, my mind went on overkill."

"And what did you conclude?"

"As an objective journalist, I've always written non-fiction. And I don't intend to change that."

He smiles and kisses my forehead.

"Okay, sweet thing. On that note, I suggest we get going. What do you say about finding our car, drive to a motel and take the day off tomorrow?"

"Sounds good to me, Duncan."

Another kiss, and in this God, I believe.

8.

"Okay, let's get going. I think I've seen a motel about three kilometres away from here. Maybe we can rest there for tonight. What do you think?"

I tie my laces and start walking with my torch guiding my way back. Even though I did not answer him, I acknowledge to myself that I have made the decision to trust Duncan. Perhaps, it was inevitable. I have no idea what happened back there, how my mind went on some sort of weird short circuit. But I am who I am and-

"Duncan?"

Duncan is not by my side.

"Duncan?" I return back to the tree where we'd met and I find him there, kneeling down, fidgeting with his rucksack.

"Duncan?"

As I approach him, I can see that he isn't really looking for something.

"There's... something strange, Lisa."

I look at the bag that he fiddles with as if it were a Rubick's cube and see nothing worth taking notice of.

"What's wrong?"

"The bag..." He looks at me with eyes that contain no lies. He is damn serious.

"What about it? Speak Duncan, you're scaring me."

"Take it."

He points towards the bag that still lies on the floor.

"What do you mean 'take it'? What made you think that I'd carry it for you, asshole?"

I try to lighten up a bit: usually 'asshole' works. But there is nothing light about his look. His eyes are still fixed on me and his hand-direction hasn't moved one bit.

"Take it, Lisa."

"Fine. Fine. If that's gonna take us out of here. "

I grab it by the handle and, as I try to raise it, I suddenly feel a shiver invading my spine. Duncan is right: something is amiss here.

"What the hell have you put inside it? It's a fucking boulder."

"Nothing... I"

"Oh Christ come one, Duncan. I am really tired. I need to get away from this place."

All was futile. The smile I was hoping to get from him isn't coming. This is not a joke. He suddenly, and violently, grabs me from the shoulder and shakes me hard.

"I swear on my mother's corpse, Lisa. That bag is half empty. It's not a fucking joke!"

This is impossible, impossible! I try to lift the bag up again with very little progress. I look at Duncan who paints hell with his eyes; he is not fucking kidding me. I unzip the bag and start taking things out. This is madness. There's a hat, a small bottle of water, a packet of cigarettes, car keys, lighter, phone, wallet, yesterday's newspaper... fuck. It's now empty. Panic grips me like a vice around my neck. Those things could never account for its weight. I check the empty bag; it weighs nothing, as it should. This is fucked up.

"Okay, leave the fucking things, Lisa. Let's get out of here! This is fucked up!"

"It sure is, Duncan." My voice comes out in an unexpected whisper.

I still cannot believe my eyes. I lift all the items one by one. Maybe the cigarettes have something in them; maybe the hat, or maybe I am fucking stupid. This is stupid, absolutely stupid of me. I feel tears trickling down my eyes: maybe I should take Duncan's advice and leave.

"Duncan there is something seriously fucked up here..."

"Hey, look at me."

"There might be something we're not seeing..."

"Look at me, Lisa!" But I try again. Maybe if I put everything back inside again. Maybe we were wrong.

"Lisa, stop!"

He tries to dissuade me, in vain. There it is: everything is inside once more. But terror escalates as I try to move the bag. I feel my heart shape shift in my chest and my eyes that disallow blinking and movement of any kind...only tears. This is real. Fucking real. I try to drag the bag, to lift it from the ground. Nothing. The mathematics does not make sense. Cigarettes, phone, hat and all other little shit cannot make up a fucking boulder. I try to drag again. "Lisa, stop!" Nothing. In vain. This is not what I'd signed up for when my boss sent me to cover this damned story.

"That's enough, goddamn it!"

He lifts me up and adjusts my head so that our eyes interlock.

"Maybe this is something we shouldn't cover. Maybe this story should be left untold. We need to leave, now! Not a second more. Now! If you're not coming with me, then I'm leaving you here, understand?"

There's my trust being repaid. I don't know what's scarier: this forest or my stupidity in trusting Duncan; probably the latter. But I do not feel like being left on my own.

"I'm coming, alright. I'm coming!"

"Good girl." He kisses me on the cheek and I feel like spitting on his face. But this is not the time to act the Wonder Woman. I need him; I need a man with me at this hour.

"Let's put my shit in your bag. I'll carry it for you."

I nod, my eyes red and inflated with tears. Thank goodness for the darkness: I'd hate for him to see me like this.

He puts his stuff in the upper compartment of my bag and kicks his empty bag away. Thank God mine is not playing any goddamn tricks on us. He takes the bag from me and I wonder again why the fuck I am thanking God.

"Follow me, Lisa."

But there will be no following. Not as I had intended anyway. Because now as I speak; as I think; as I cry, the sky is at it again; this time it's more drastic in its ungodliness.

"Shit..."

There is an orchestra in the sky and it brings tidings of doom. Whereas before the sound was a metallic one, of chains and hammers being dragged across the black tapestry of night, now it has turned into a cacophony; a baritone hum which blights believer and non-believer alike and drags the stakes as high as Christendom. If there is any God, then he must be seriously pissed off. My heart and mind are doubtless. This is no hoax; this is no delusion, nor dream, but a nightmare of sorts: a nightmare which cannot be supposed to hold any kind-hearted intensions of death. Even the wind is silent and the trees stand still as their God bellows from the heavens. It is not just this forest that is haunted, nor the children. It is the very spine of the earth that is riddled by this most uncaring of spectres.

I find myself running with my right hand holding Duncan's tight.

"God what is that, Duncan? What's that hum in the sky?"

My tears are free flowing now; once again my frail heart turns to Duncan.

"Shut up and run damn it! Run!"

The patch of light spewed forth by Duncan's torch bounces off the trees and rocks and leaves before us, creating little signals of pathways for us. As a backdrop to my hysteria, the sky screams its decree. Yes it's comparable to a scream now, one which has grown with impatience and turned the hum into something much more enraged. It is not a lady's high pitch scream; more of a leviathan that roars in a glacial abyss. It reverberates as if through water and expands its clout onto an unsuspecting forest.

But even in my current predicament I find strength to realise that it is not the only scream around. As we move in the direction where we've left our ex-companions, the scream gets louder as if acknowledging our arrival. It is female in its tone and, from the little I gather, it's a scream of pain.

"Emilia!"

As we pass through a short tunnel made of thistle, I can spot Emilia on the floor crying and holding her left leg. She is clearly in pain. I run to her and her face changes as she sees me, her eyes mixing an expression of relief and fear.

"What are you doing here on your own?"

"Oh thank God! Thank God, Thank God!"

She hugs me tightly as if I were the last human alive and cries even deeper than her daughter did about three quarters of an hour ago. And speaking about her daughter, I now realise that she's not here.

"Where's Sarah?"

Her crying intensifies and so does her hug.

"Oh God, it's terrible, Lisa. Terrible!"

I raise her head by her chin and invite her to tell me more.

"As soon as the noises started in the sky, the children started crying again and were very restless. Then they just ran away from us, Lisa! They ran away!"

"Ran away? How the hell can little children run away from a group of adults?"

But she is in no mood of explaining. She buries her face inside my shirt and discharges her pain onto me.

"Emilia, you need to talk to me. How did this happen?"

She finds the courage to look at me.

"They just ran and ran, Lisa. They were... possessed by something. That's the only word I can find. "

Through her tears and redness, her eyes tell the truth.

"Why are you here on your own?"

This seems to ignite further crying.

"Emilia, look at me."

I make a signal to Duncan and for once he understands me immediately and he lowers my bag to the ground and brings me some water.

"Emilia, drink. It's bloody hot and you need to drink, come on!"

To gather her strength for a drink requires visible effort. I can see it in her eyes: she is summoning all her energy. The poor lady must have given everything for her daughter.

"They left me."

Her statement startles me. It comes sudden and most unexpected. I help her for another few sips but she's had enough. Duncan intervenes.

"What do you mean they've left you, Emilia? I find it hard to believe."

She addresses me only, clearly irritated by his scepticism.

"I was giving chase, just like everyone else, Lisa. But I fell and hurt my leg. I couldn't get myself up again. I couldn't walk without help."

She looks at me and starts crying. I can see Duncan taking a couple of steps back.

"And I was shouting, Lisa. Shouting and hollering at them. They even stopped for a second, made me think that they would wait for me, but then kept on running."

"But why? Why would they act like this? You seemed pretty united..."

"It's not their fault, Lisa."

I don't like this, not the least bit. I try to follow but it's as if my mind refuses to collate and analyse what I am sure comes next. I know what she's going to say. I am suddenly sure. I am suddenly sure that she is saying the whole truth. I lift my hand and find it trembling.

"They couldn't see me, Lisa. It was as if I didn't exist. I was screaming at the top of my lungs but no one noticed. Lucas walked in my direction and even came at just a few steps away, but I was nonexistent to them; a ghost, Lisa. Am I alive? Please tell me I'm alive, Lisa, cause I'm going insane, Lisa. Insane!"

Again she hugs me and I pat her gently on her back and grant her a reassuring whisper, telling her that she's alive and well.

"Oh God I was so glad to see you coming, Lisa. I honestly thought I was dead and was in some kind of hell... It was terrible, Lisa."

I haven't seen an adult cry like this since my father's funeral. Emilia's cry is the unmistakable cry of death that I had seen that day coming from my mother.

"Let's get the fuck out of here! I am liking this less and less by the fucking second."

Duncan is already set in the runaway position, with his left foot following the right in the campsite direction.

"No, please, no don't leave me, Lisa. We have to find my daughter, Lisa. Please."

I look at Duncan, but he has absolutely no intention of staying another second in this wretched forest. To be honest, neither do I. But how can you abandon a crying mother?

"Duncan, we must help her find her child."

He snarls at me disappointingly, just like a teacher would do when cross with a misbehaving child.

"Are you fucking serious? There is the fucking apocalypse unravelling here and I've already spent much more time than I desire in its midst. Come with me, Lisa. You're my partner and my colleague. I shouldn't be asking you this twice!"

Typical of him, just typical.

"Please, Lisa. You're a woman. I'm sure you understand what it means to love a child. Please dear, please. "

She hauls herself up, pushing with all her might, and sits straight with her back against a nearby tree. She is holding my hand as if for dear life.

"Please, Lisa. I beg you with all my heart. Please."

"So what's it gonna be, Lisa? Are you going to run for safety with me or will you be spending the night with her? It's your call, babe."

I look at him and I'm sure he knows that this time it's going to be much harder with me.

"You were ready to abandon me, just a few minutes ago. I will not trust you!"

I feel Emilia's hand wrap itself tighter around mine.

"Oh come on, sweetheart, I was kidding. I wouldn't leave you here for a million bucks."

I hate that fucking smile. I hate his selfishness; his cockiness; his... well... his existence.

"I'm staying with Emilia!"

"Fine, silly bitch. Suit yourself. "

And just like that, he is gone. He abandons me here in this darkness with a crippled woman for company and with everything that's been going on today.

I smile and I think it's my first real smile in months.

9.

"So, in which direction?"

But she hugs me once again, visibly touched by my decision.

"You did the right thing, girl!"

"He's an asshole. He even left my bag here, with his car keys still inside."

And we both laugh mildly at this, just mildly, just enough to release ourselves of some pressure.

"Okay, I believe they went that way..." She pointed to one of the many paths ahead of us.

"Then we better get going. Let me help you walk."

The sky has been quiet for a while and I am grateful. Unless one is here to experience it, it is very hard to understand just how toxic to the brain that terrible sound is. It freezes you and makes you scared of your own heartbeat. I've never experienced anything as humbling.

Quiet, however, does not translate to restful.

The rustle of leaves of the enormous line of sequoias begets more terror. It's as if nature has its own conspiracy going on: with the clouds that time their runs perfectly just to deprive us of light; with the wind that rises peremptorily to meet the branches, just so that we won't make any mistake in thinking otherwise than its rule. Against this, against the night's blackness, we make forth.

The walk is not easy: Emilia struggles beside me as she holds on tight to my hand.

"It's not broken, Emilia. It's sprained."

"Fuck it. My child needs me."

"You know it's almost refreshing to hear you swear."

Some more mild laughter which gets things going.

Every junction is a decision that neither of us knows how to make. There are so many possible paths; so many possible directions the little ones could have taken.

"Let's just follow our instinct."

My wrist watch tells me that it's still half past two. Morning, and thus light, lie too far ahead for hope.

But we wander in a way which is too random to suit our emergency. Norths and Souths mingle, creating courses that often yield unwanted circles. You see, it is not always possible to follow a straight line in these woods. I feel the burden of time taking its toll on Emilia; she starts crying again.

"This place is just too big. We will never find her. Oh God, why is this happening, Lisa?"

"We must not give up, dear!" It has suddenly come to me that a possible rational solution exists. I stop suddenly and make Emilia look at me.

"Listen to me. I think there might be a way out of this. I need you to think."

She wipes her tears and her eyes focus on me to assure me that I have her full attention.

"Jonathan, one of those young boys with the laptop said that the girl who disappeared yesterday turned up with her dress which was a bit wet."

"What do you have in mind?" She grimaces with the pain as she rests her back against a rubble wall.

"Maybe there's a river or something. Perhaps we need to find water."

"But what makes you think that my little girl would be heading toward the same spot?"

"Do we have anything else to cling to?"

"No...."

"Emilia, I need your help. You're from here, dear. You'd know about a river or something, if there's one, right?

"I... yeah... I think so. "

She puts her hands in her hair to think. I calmly uncover her face and ask her gently.

"I need you to stay calm, Emilia. Do you know if there's a river around here?"

"There is a very small lake, somewhere northwest of the woods."

"We must head northwest then, it's the only lead we have. We just need to find our north."

"Jesus Christ this hurts so much. Look how red it is."

"Let me have a look at it."

It's red and swelling, but definitely not broken, otherwise she wouldn't be walking on it.

"You've sprained it, Emilia, but it's not broken. I know you're in pain, sweet."

"Fucking bitch. Lisa, as much as I want to, I can't walk with my foot like this. Go on without me. I'm just going to slow you down."

"I'm not going to leave you in this place on your own, Emilia. Not tonight. You're coming with me."

"No, no you listen to me, damn it. I know it's a lot to ask, sending you out alone. You don't even know me. But think of my daughter. She's out there alone. What if she fell in a ditch or something and she's hurt her leg like me and there's no one to watch her." Her voice breaks down and she fights a not easy battle with tears.

"My priority is to find my daughter, Lisa. You; is all I have. Will you help me?"

Second time tonight I get to make a difficult decision. The decision to walk in these woods alone is even harder than abandoning Duncan. But what can I say to a distressed mother?

"I'll go, aright."

"God bless you, dear. God bless your kind heart!" Her hug is the most genuine yet and I now realise that I too needed a great hug. It's been one hell of a night.

"Okay, you must leave now. It's late."

"I just need a way to find the north, Emilia. We need one of those fancy phones, one which has a compass in it."

"I'm just a biology teacher from Richtown, dear. I can barely afford myself a non-fancy one. What about you?"

"I am the techno-hater, as Duncan used to call me. Mine can barely send a decent SMS."

Emilia asks for my hand and with an audible groan she gets herself up and nearly falls over me.

"What do you intend to do?"

"I might be poor, dear. But I'm still a biology teacher."

I look at her as she directs me to a nearby tree.

"Now let's see if the crap I teach my kids can be useful. Let me teach you something. Give me your torch please."

She grabs my torch and inspects the tree carefully, only to look back at me disappointed.

"Not this one. Take me to that one up there."

"Yeah... why are we doing this?"

"You'll see. Just take me, please."

Again she inspects this one with the same thoroughness as before. This time her search seems to yield results.

"Come here, Lisa. Look at this. "

I follow the light which she points at the base of the tree but see nothing worth taking note of.

"Just moss, " I tell her, to which she replies with half a smile.

"Moss can be very revealing, dear. Moss needs light and nutrients, and thus it only grows on one side of the tree. That's the south side and so, that should be your north. Lisa, you should follow that direction." And with great determination, her right hands points to what her eyes swear to be north.

"Jesus, man, are you serious? "

"That's the crap I teach the kids at school. Let's hope it works."

She hugs me and I can feel her laughing through my chest just a little bit. She is indeed a great woman and I suddenly feel a little bit guilty for doubting her earlier on as we were doing the interview.

"Now go, please. I'll pray for you to bring my child back to me. "

"I'll do my best, Emilia. That, I promise."

I take the torch from her and hug her one last time. I do wonder if she too feels a little bit guilty for bringing her daughter to the camp and exposing her to this shit. Does she still think that it was worth it? But I turn and face the rank dark woods before me and realise that I have more important considerations at hand. For one, I have to do a night-crossing on my own under the most threatening of skies. Secondly, I might have to save a child who hasn't quite been herself tonight. I find myself, once again, inexplicably, asking God for help.

10.

At night, everything is louder; the breathing of a rodent echoes like the pant of a lion. I can't see Emilia behind me anymore and I suddenly realise how truly lonely I am. My footfalls startle me. The light of my torch gets harder and harder to control and focus; it is, of course, easy to speculate over what would happen should its batteries die out. I take a long deep breath and double my pace. The stench of dampness invades my nostrils relentlessly. Most terrifying is the terrain. North, South, East and West mingle, turning into replicas of each other. Everywhere I look becomes an endless series of tall dark silhouettes that stare upon me like voyeuristic entities, concealing shadows everywhere; movements everywhere; noises which attack me from a three-sixty degree span. I look around me constantly, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the search party. By now they would have found the children; maybe all I'm doing is futile. But how can I know? Besides, I made a promise to continue no matter what.

I hang on the wafer-thin promise of water.

I pause in order to establish my whereabouts. Let's try Emilia's trick. I search the trees one by one, looking for the saving grace of a little moss. This one doesn't have; this one neither. Despair makes its first attempt at my throat. My eyes are wet; my heart is restless. I find another one and another one, all shying away from help. Have I lost my way? It all looks the same and I've been walking for ten minutes, which is plenty enough to wander off in an unyielding tangent. I finally find one which has moss at its base, but I should be patient before indulging in thankful praises towards God. Either the moss on this one mocks me or Emilia did. If her theory is right then I am walking south; I am walking back towards the camp!

What would Dad do? I suddenly remember the mind games he used to play with me and how he would make me trust myself; trust what my mind tells me. I decide to try it again; I decide to trust my instincts. All the fear in the world couldn't have possibly made me turn backwards without noticing. I shall stick to my plans.

No more trees or moss or Norths and Souths. I shall trust myself and only myself. Besides, should something befall me, I am entirely on my own, so it is indeed fact that myself is all I have. I look at the sky as I move forth with headstrong pace. It has been quiet for a while. I know I should not think back at what happened, but the bag incident was entirely too weird for my liking; so was Emilia's peculiar case of unheeded cries. Everything about these fucking woods spells weird and there I go swearing again in a clear sign of panic.

#

I have been walking for another ten minutes now, quite successful in not generating any more thoughts. But this sudden feeling I have of a presence lingering beside me leaves me with little choice but to ponder. Classic, no? Out in the woods alone with a strong feeling that something is watching over you. But no, presence is the wrong word for it: it's more like a voice trailing behind me. Yes a whisper follows me; a whisper which brings no coherent message but which is unmistakably interested in my pursuit. A glacial chill possesses both spine and skin. What was damp got damper; what smelled like mould now smells of decay. It's as if, like my thoughts, the area around me is in a state of regression. There is surely something in this place; I have no doubts about it. And I am also starting to understand why the chosen word has been 'spiritual'. 'Spiritual' can mean ghostly; outwardly; un-dead, but perhaps it might have an extra meaning altogether here. I am starting to finally understand what they meant, but I refuse to try and put it into words. Language is structured, logical, and human. This is not. So is it futile to try to convey anything of this sort in words?

I think that it's a reasonable question to ask.

All I can think of now is that this haunting might not necessarily be a ghostly one, but maybe also a moral one. I am starting to doubt whether I'll be able to keep my promise to Emilia.

#

I am running now, running as fast as my weak, sleep-deprived bones allow. There is no water in sight; no clear pathway before me and no Duncan beside me. There I go again thinking about Duncan. The only good thing is that I haven't run into Emilia and this shows that I am indeed not heading south. I am short of breath, but my ear is now abounding with whispers. Whatever is behind these whispers has ill intentions. Now I know what the children heard. I understand their cries; their staring at a fixed point. To stop is to meet the conveyer of these voices and I am too scared to do so. So I run, come what may.

#

The sky roars above me again. It is a nightmare which unfolds one monstrosity at a time. I can't run anymore, but I run, fuelled by the combustions of fear. I ache terribly and my eyesight is hindered by my lack of eating. I almost fall but I don't. I almost give up, but I don't. I look at the sky to ask what it wants, but it just roars on, with that same peremptory roar.

#

But life is fond of Deus Ex Machina moments. Is that light penetrating the ungrateful foliage just a few yards in front of me? It is. It's an opening. It just might be the lake.

11.

And now that this seems over, what could I ever write about it? Is it even ethical to write anything about it, having no clear manner of confirming its factuality? No, being myself in the thick of it does not confirm it, not even to myself. They say that the age of grand theories is over, that modernity with all its attachment to reason has failed to provide us with an adequate state of living notwithstanding its grand claim over the immaterial. I think I'm a convert.

And if I decided to write, what could possibly convey what I've seen and see? Should I mention a sky that screams it's consternation upon a feasting lot? Should I write about those children sedated with whiffs of whispering divinity? What about a bag of which totality is greater than the sum of its few, and a silent scream that bounces off unheeding loved ones? And then, when I come to conclude my narration, how would I possibly explain that what I see right now before me is by far more terrible than anything experienced up to this point?

I feel my blood freezing inside my veins.

I try to describe to myself what my eyes see. The lake is small and circular, some hundred metres in diameter. The moon, now free from the enslaving clouds, inflicts its light upon it, and thus the lake shines with little pieces of light floating on its surface. The area is silent and enormous sequoias patrol the lake's perimeter lest their aquatic sibling be too visible to an uncaring earth. You can almost hear the earth breathe in here.

But although the silence adds much discomfiture, it is surely not the thing which scares me most.

Adorning the calm perimeter of the lake are little creatures, which, from a distance, would make you speculate forever their nature, because in that low light they could just be anything the mind dares imagine. But they are only children. They are the children, in fact, placed carefully at equal distances- as if only after mathematical considerations- around the paternal figure of the lake. I ask myself if what I see is in fact true. But there is nothing inside me which doubts it. There they are, the children of the sky, sitting still by the lake, exercising their divine right to be silent. They are alive, healthy, knowing, fearless, and expectant.

Amongst them I spot little Sarah. She stares at a fixed spot in the lake and fiddles with the green grass beneath her pretty pink dress. Maybe I'll get to keep my promise after all. I walk slowly towards her, passing by a couple of children who don't seem to be alerted by my presence at all. I almost wish for a little breeze, just to confirm that this is real. I reach her and sit in a dry, grass-less spot next to her. I try to follow her gaze but there seems to be nothing particular in the lake. Her eyes are covered by the sweetest of blonde hair and I keep my trembling hands to myself, undecided about whether I should make any contact with her. Looking at this little girl sitting quietly, one can expect anything.

I decide to take her hand in mine, try and communicate with her: let her know that she's safe. Her hand is icy. I fear for her health. It's a hot night and unless she's sick, her body temperature shouldn't be this low. I take off my shirt and wrap the young child with it. Even in just my bra, the heat and humidity are notable. Should I just grab the child and carry her to her mother? I could call for help once I'm there. Clearly, the search party had not been successful, which is quite curious actually. Surely I cannot be more than twenty minutes away from where I've left Emilia.

Just as I make up my mind and decide to grab the little girl and carry her, I hear a whimper.

"Sweetie, do you know where you are?"

With her beautiful blue eyes, she finally acknowledges my presence as she turns round to face me. I think she recognizes me from the interview. I smile at her and leave what little motherly instinct I have take over me and I hug her.

"Sarah, I am a friend of your mummy. I've come to take you to her."

I think she'd like to talk. Her lips move, trying to coordinate themselves to form speech. She starts shivering and I'm relieved: at least her body is reacting. I pull her towards me in the hope of sharing my body heat. I think she'll be fine, though. She is cold but she is not going into hypothermia. I let myself hug her some more.

"Why, sweetie? Why did you come here all by yourself?"

I now worry for the other children. I look at them, still motionless and equally spaced around the lake, and try to devise a plan to call for help. But something stops me.

"Sarah?"

She takes my arm, gently, and looks at me, forming an enquiry with her eyes. She finally speaks, but it is not what I expected.

"Are you happy, Lisa?"

The directness and intensity of the question do not belong to a four year old. My heart pounds in my chest as I freeze, quite startled, next to her; I'm fearful of her gaze that entraps me in its focus.

"I...well, I...why do you ask me, dear?"

But she will not have it. I feel her hold on me getting tighter.

"Are you happy, dear Lisa?"

At once I understand that it will be impossible to bypass the question. She watches me with intent and her eyes move with my lips.

"I... well I think so, honey. I am certainly happy that I have found you here safe and sound."

I think I detect a little disappointment in her as she looks back at the sleeping water. She reminds me of my late parents: their disappointed way in which they assessed my frivolous life. I'm suddenly not too comfortable without a shirt on as I start to shiver with a cold that's altogether absent.

"Sweetie, we need to get back to your mother and call for-"

"I don't think you're very happy, Lisa."

I do not understand why a sudden urge to cry grips me. Perhaps it's because she's right. But how can a little girl know so much? Could it be that she evaluated me in those few minutes during the interview? But she's just a child. I doubt whether children could have any clear conception of happiness or sadness at this tender age. Yet her way of looking at me does not represent her age. Her eyes are too...knowledgeable-it's about the only word which comes to me.

"Why are you thinking about these grown up things, dear?"

She looks at me again as if I've just offended her. She lets go of my arm and gives me back my shirt.

"Thank you, Lisa."

I am too cold to turn down her offer. As I get dressed, she looks at the other children and smiles. I try to pick up on this.

"Why are they here, Sarah?"

"We like it here."

"But why? It's dark and lonely and you have scared the grown-ups."

She shrugs and does not make any particular effort to give me an answer. I try to dig deeper.

"Does it have to do with those scary noises in the sky?" By asking this question I have now confirmed to myself that I do actually believe. Belief in what, I do not know as yet. Sarah looks at me as though reading my mind.

"Do you believe they're scary or not scary, Lisa?" It's as if she's always one step ahead of me and asking questions just to study my reaction rather than for any particular need to get answers.

"I...yeah. They scare me. A lot actually. Aren't you scared of them, Sarah?"

"No. I like it."

Her unhesitant way of answering is even more troubling than the answer itself. This has gone too far now. I just feel like grabbing the kid and run away. I have managed to mix myself in this thing deeper than I wanted to. Once again, little Sarah startles me with her question.

"Why do you care so much?"

"I care because your mother needed help and she asked me to come for you."

"Why do you care about my mummy?"

"Well I..." The strangest thing about the question is that it is a reasonable one.

"Well because she...." There is only one answer really.

"Because she is a person, Sarah. She is a person in need."

"Yes."

She starts fidgeting with the green grass again. I rise from the ground and extend my hand to her.

"Come on, darling. Your mother expects you. We need to find the mothers and fathers of these children too. Will you help me find them?"

My invitation doesn't seem interesting enough for her. Something inside me tells me to be a little bit patient, to sit next to her again and see what the little one has to say. Once again I follow that same instinct which led me here.

"I wanted to dance with those people today but my mummy didn't let me."

I remember what her mother had told me in the interview, about her dislike towards those who make fun of the whole situation; those who think that the event is something worth dancing about.

"Your mother doesn't like those people, she thinks-"

"She doesn't know them. They were happy, Lisa."

She turns to me adding the 'unlike you' part with her eyes. There is no doubt that this child is trying to tell me something important.

"You like to dance, dear?"

"I like to be happy. I like to smile with the other people. But you and my mummy do not like to smile."

I try to strike again.

"Does coming here make you happy, Sarah?"

"Yes." Again unhesitant. I feel my hand shivering again. All the other children are perfectly still.

"With whom do you speak when you come here, Sarah?"

She points at the sky and something gives way inside me. Tears trickle down my eyes. Something quite important is happening in front of me and I have neither knowledge, nor wit to comprehend it.

"What does he tell you, Sarah?" I hear my voice break.

"To be happy. Always. Everywhere."

I am now crying heavily and all my attempts to stop are in vain. Sarah kisses me on the cheek. What is it about me that made me come here? Why were those people dancing and singing? There's a connection which the little one is trying to lead me to, but I can't seem to grasp it. Maybe it's true what my mother used to say about me. I am frivolous. I am disrespectful to myself. Just look at the men that I manage to surround myself with. My dad never agreed though; he had faith in me- faith that I'd manage to find myself. It had to be a damn ghost story to make me realise just how sorely I miss him. But why am I thinking about this? Why does my mind keep playing over and over images of those thousands of people singing and dancing together? Sarah is right on one thing for sure. They were happier than me. What about those thoughts I had as I was running? That sense of spirituality engulfed me and made me suddenly understand everyone and everything. Did I forget everything? I have to ask myself once again that question that my lips have been longing to ask for all this time: have I started believing in God again? I have cursed and thanked him in equal proportions tonight, more than any other night of my life. Even to curse is to believe. I must acknowledge that. Why is this girl making me think about this stuff?

She suddenly and unexpectedly hugs me. And my crying is now unstoppable.

"It's okay, Lisa. We need to go to sleep now. Tomorrow we can dance and sing with those people."

"Is it over, Sarah?" To ask such a question is to acknowledge, once again, that I believe.

"Yes."

I believe her.

Her eyes are wide open and her smile is radiant. This is what a four year old should look like. This is what happiness should look like. Never in my life have I experienced such a violent change of seasons inside me. Happiness, loneliness, sadness, hopefulness, desperation, love: everything mingles, yet the fear of seeing all these children motionless by the lake still provides that understandable panache of menace.

I feel vulnerable.

"Mummy?"

Why is she calling me this...? But I suddenly realise that she does not address me. There are lights all around the forest now and they are moving closer and closer. Half crying, I begin to shout with all my lung capacity.

"We're here! This way! The little ones are here! They're safe!"

The more I shout the more my crying intensifies. Could my lachrymal glands have anything more to offer tonight? I feel the voices, ecstatic and loud. I shout louder, clearer: Sarah smiles beside me. All the children around the lake start moving and, behaving like children, of course, they start crying for their parents. It is the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. To watch the children cry under the shimmering moonlight and the calm lake is, I believe, to watch life. I believe I've been given a rough sketch by this kid tonight. It's now my job to join the dots and do the colouring. She whispers in my ear that I'm dearly loved. I do not know what to think, feel and make of it. I just continue my crying, as do the other children. Only brave little Sarah smiles and I must say that we have organized quite a concerto for us tonight.

Epilogue

The lights get closer; the voices get louder; Sarah's hug gets tighter. Just as I catch glimpse of the parents- including a struggling Emilia- running towards us, Sarah's lips come closer to my ear and she whispers. I don't know what to think; what to feel; what to make of it. What could I possibly think of a little girl who tells me as clear as crystal that I am also being sorely missed?

On Tomorrow

"Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."

David Hume

La Résistance

Through the moonlight coated highway, the Robinson's sedan rode. Parallel to lavish meadows and beneath a starlit sky, its headlights broke the monotonous darkness, and with every revolution of its wheels, the distance from home diminished. Through the murky window, the four of them could be seen: Jim driving, and Lorna at the back, with the kids.

"Is the little one sleeping?"

"Oh yeah, he didn't even get to see the countdown. You'll have to carry him to bed, Jim."

"How's our little lady?"

"Emma is awake, Jim. She is not tired."

"Lorna, I think your voice is changing."

A grey dot amid the country planes, the sedan devoured kilometre after the other, bookmarking the road with the rumble of its engine. It was around one in the morning, on that freezing New Year's night, when Lorna's yawning became too frequent to bear.

"Honey, do you mind if I join Paul and sleep?"

"No, sweetheart, go ahead..."

"Are you okay, Jim? You were rather quiet tonight."

"Yeah I'm fine, just go ahead and sleep. Besides, I have Emma to keep me company. Right, honey?"

"Righty right, daddy!"

"Thanks, Jim. You're a darling."

A grey dot amid the country planes, the sedan reached that part of the journey which took them parallel to the woods, leaving behind it the uniform meadows-"Daddy, can I kiss you?"- leaving behind it motels, gas stations, service areas and the dense aura of civilization-"Daddy, why are you looking at me?" Parallel to those woods, the night grew darker.

"Daddy... ?"

Emma would grow to remember glimpsing the moon last.

"Shit!"

"Jim!"

Inside the car, it rained. And the rain sprinkled and glistened and wherever it poured, there it bled; whichever eyes it hit, it blinded. Sky and asphalt entwined, blending their blacks and their stains and their grains of dust, rocks and stars.

"Jesus Christ, Paul!"

A tree. At sixty miles an hour, the mathematics is simple, yet merciless. The sedan overturned and its disfigurement commenced thereafter, releasing a foul stench of oil to commemorate the moment. Lorna fell on Emma and broke her little left arm; the scream that Emma let out would haunt Lorna forever. Windows broke and four became three. The noises of breakages and screams mingled, paralysing the faculty of thought, vision and remembrance. The sedan turned one last time and halted the dismemberment with one violent stop, coming to rest on its broken back. In their tangled world, the three of them stood silent, only for a while.

"Oh my God! My God, Paul! He is not in the car, Jim!"

"Mommy, it hurts!"

Not minding the broken glass, Lorna crawled outside making her way with her palms on a course of blood stained glass. She took off her jersey and with it carefully helped Emma slide on her back out of the car. From the other side, Jim got out, unscathed.

"Paul! Paul!"

Lorna looked and screamed obsessively. She could see her husband sitting on the floor next to the driver's door from where he had just come out. He was motionless.

"Mommy!"

Then, reality spread nude, pouring upon it the hot balm of tragedy: realisation murdered hope. Near the left rear wheel she saw a blue lump: the blue lump was wrapped in Bob the Builder pants and a Bob the Builder shirt.

"Paul!"

The two year old stood motionless like a taxidermic reproduction of himself.

She brought her lips to his ears

"Sweetie, it's your mommy, ans-"

It was as if an entire concrete slab had fallen over her chest.

"Jim! Oh my God, Jim! His eyes! He's not breathing! Call the ambulance!"

Her crying and screaming and panting and sobbing echoed through the surrounding woodland. Her husband watched, silent.

She knew she had to try CPR. She lifted his bleeding neck and tilted his head backwards. Her hands trembled uncontrollably and her fingers felt as if they were about to crack and drop like biscuit crumbs. She moistened her lips with her tongue, took off her child's shirt, put one hand on his breastbone directly above the nipple line, and started pushing two inches down his small fragile frame. One and two and three and four...

"Jim, call the ambulance, now! Now! Call! Call please!"

Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty. With thirty, she crawled over to his head, pinched his nose and blew into his mouth. She was supposed to see the chest rise; it would have meant air was getting in, it would have meant CPR was working. She did the second one. Again, his chest stood still.

"Jesus Christ, Jim, call the fucking ambulance!"

She knew from her one week training that she had to continue with the compressions no matter what. But she tried again. Again, she blew gently into his mouth. Again, his chest stood motionless. She knew she was doing something wrong.

"Oh God, Jim, Jesus Christ, I'm killing him!"

And for the first time, her husband moved. She went back to his chest and resumed the one hand compressions. One and two and three...She could hear her husband mumbling something and one quick glance revealed he was making the call.

" Jim! Help me, Jim..."

#

With his left index finger, he carefully hung up. It was a cold night. It was not snowing yet, but it was cold nonetheless. He could hear his foot crushing the broken glass as he walked around the scene, recording every pixel of the image in front of him. His eyes, it seemed, had forgotten how to blink. Lorna looked beautiful. He could see the tall, slim, screaming silhouette of his wife, curled on the floor, forming an agitated pool. Moving closer, he could see her bleeding freckled face, twitching in misery. A little bit further to her left, he could see his daughter, admirably quiet, tending to her yellow curls and her broken arm, and watching her mother, in awe. This, he saw in flashes of acidic doses of reality in a scene stripped of sounds and colour, thus registering the proceedings in front of him as a random collage of moving shapes. As the wind blew gently against his face, he found himself thinking that it was a night fit for home parties and love making, and not, as fate would soon confirm, to lose a child.

#

Lorna's bare bleeding foot rapped crudely against the asphalt as she ran in the middle of the street, arms open, ready to embrace the approaching tide of light.

"Help! Please, Help! Help!"

A loud horn befell the night and ordered the bleeding woman out of the way. She obliged and barely avoided being hit by the accelerating truck.

It would not have stopped.

Desperation strangled her senses, but not her thinking. She ran back to her child and as she ran, she tried again to pull her husband back up from the swamps of fear.

"Jim, my hands are getting tired. I will not be able to continue this much longer, Jim, you need to help me. I know you're in shock, honey, but you need to help me, Jim, I need you!"

One and two and three and four... She resumed the compressions. Jim walked over to his family. His eyes met with his daughter's and in them, he saw a stranger.

"I'll try," he said softly.

Lorna had even lost the strength to cry; her eyes swollen, almost threatening to jump out of their sockets. Jim put his hand on Paul's chest and continued from where his wife had left.

"My god, Jim, it's been three minutes already! Three minutes without breath! He is dying isn't he?" Jim persisted with silence.

"Mommy, what's wrong with my baby brother?"

For the first time, Lorna took her eyes off her son. She addressed her daughter who had now moved closer to the ordeal.

"Nothing, understand? Nothing, Emma! Nothing! Your brother-and God may mark my words-is going to be fine, understand? You're going to be playing with him again and fighting with him and stealing his candy again alright? Your brother will be fine, understand me?"

Emma hugged her mother with her good arm and cried and cried like she had never cried before in her young life. Suddenly she stopped.

"Mommy, what's wrong with daddy?"

Lorna looked back at her boy and found, to her great horror, that he was all alone on the floor, like a little clay figure in a dark puddle of blood. Her husband had gotten up and had started walking away from them. She called his name in disjointed explosions of screams.

"Jim! Don't leave me!"

She ran up to him and held his arm.

"Jim, we cannot stop the CPR! Our child is dying, understand me? Dying! I know you're terrified, I know you're under shock, honey, but we have to save our child! You need to come back and help me. We cannot stop the CPR cycle, Jim. We cannot! The ambulance will be here soon and until then, we must continue. We can still save him, damn it!"

But nothing. Talking to her husband was futile. He just stared at her, with eyes that declared neither pain nor happiness. His retina carved numbness out of him. Then, her world was shattered.

"There's no ambulance, Lorna."

She let go of his arm.

She started walking.

Slowly.

Backwards.

Eyes fixed.

On him.

"What are you saying, Jim? What do you mean there is no ambulance?"

Her voice was gentle: same tone she usually used when asking him to join her in bed. He looked at her and spoke, as if his words were commonplace.

"I hung up. They don't know we're here."

Lorna had now reached her son; her silence was spine-tingling. She resumed CPR. Thirty Compressions, twice mouth to mouth. Her husband stared at her from what felt to be afar. One and two and three...

"Lorna," Jim whispered.

Twenty nine, thirty. Two breaths. He could hear her loud sighs; sighs turning to sobs; sobs turning to moans. He could see her doing the compressions more frantically in a world which seemed to hold its breath; perhaps a one minute of silence for what was to come.

And then he knew there was no point in looking any more.

As he walked away, he heard her, and realised that it had happened.

"No! Paul Why? Why? Why? Paul Why? Oh, God! Why?"

"Mommy? Mommy!"

Paul was dead.

#

So he had done it. Jim's hands were trembling and his heart pumped anarchy in his chest. He had indeed done it. He rubbed his hands against each other and observed the vapour that came out of his mouth as he walked. Jim walked slowly and had to stop frequently to try and calm himself down.

He was now in the woods, repeating to himself that everything was going to be okay. Still rubbing his hands, he found a tree and sat with his back against it. For the first time, he saw that it was a full moon. Perhaps now was a good time to think about what had happened. They had crashed. His wife was bleeding from her head. His daughter was bleeding and her right arm was broken. His son was dead. That was the first batch of information that he managed to process; then came the second. His wife and daughter thought he was under shock. They thought his mind had gone off the railway and that he was marooned in his own pain. He looked at the leaves beneath his shoes, took one of them in his hands and, rotating it, wondered if they were right. He tried again. Lorna had a head injury; she was bleeding. Emma's right arm was broken; she too was bleeding. Baby Paul was dead. He and his family were stranded in the middle of nowhere and no one knew about them. He took out his phone and dialled.

"Hello? Is that you, Jimmy boy?"

"Yeah, Ritchie. It's me. Where are you?"

"Well, it's the middle of the night, it's New Year, so yeah, I have three Excel worksheets open in front of me, a bottle of Jack, and old Damien Rice for company. "

Richard's laughter sprayed through the phone's speakers.

"I'm guessing you're still at the office."

"Where else, man?"

"Yeah... where else. Well...can you come pick me up?"

"Come pick you- where the hell are you, man? Talk to me, Jimmy."

"San Martino woods."

"You're fucking with me, right?"

"No, man. I am alone."

"Jesus Christ, you're not kidding me."

"No, I'm not kidding you."

"And what brings you to such an exotic destination, dear sir?"

"Well... I think I did it man. I left..."

"You left? Oh my fucking God, man!"

"Yeah...I did it. I don't know..."

"Don't know what? What shit is this?"

"If it's correct...I..."

"Holy fucking shitballs of course it's damn correct. I'm coming with you man, worry not. I am taking you for your baptism."

Richard's laughter swallowed the conversation again.

"You're now ready for La Résistance, buddy. Say it man, I want you to say it: 'now finally I'm off, to La Résistance.' Come on, say it. "

"And now, finally, I'm off, to "La Résistance"! "

"You little Asian fuck, now see what you've done. I'll have to get off my ass and follow you."

"I'll be expecting you."

#

Amidst the fecund woodland, two kilometres off the highway, 'La Résistance', a plush bar known only to a selected few, stands firm and aloof in its naturally soundproofed environs, mingling light, sound and spirits and awaiting in its embrace the disgruntled white collars of the world. Jim and Richard were almost there.

It was as if the woods groaned and their wild din echoed everywhere, reflecting against the branches and the leaves, and bouncing back against Jim's personal world; his personal continents and lakes and meadows, mountains and rivers, where not even moonlight could penetrate, but only memories. Indeed, his Paul was dead.

Around forty minutes after parting from his family, Jim Robinson's feet marked his arrival as they shifted noisily through the welcoming gravel that adorned the solitary bar. Upon arriving, Jim and Richard Burke joined the familiar multitude that emerged eagerly out of their steel jewels, leaving behind them synchronised trails of car-lock bleeps.

They shook hands, smiled, offered Jack to each other and he remembered his son's bleeding eyes.

The door opened, and out spilled the ferocious laughter that escaped like flames from a blazing building. This was not simply a bar; it was a Victorian house: a high ceiling villa with a welcoming lobby that commemorated one's entrance with a majestic copy of the 'Prise De la Bastille'. The light was dim, and its subtlety seemed to blend together the ubiquitous parquet floor with the oak furniture, the light brown wallpaper with the dull suits of the incumbents. Jim was overwhelmed, as he shifted his gaze from left to right, his nostrils struggling to select oxygen out of the nicotine-stained air. It was as if the place was haunted, not by the dead, but by the past deeds of the living; the spectre of uncertainty roamed the place and its mark was universal.

They made their move, but found their journey inside a struggle. They squeezed past the men in suits who swung their heads left and right in unison at the decree of slow, musical memorabilia. Most of them sipped tawny alcohol of various makes, and weaved thick clouds of overly sharp cologne that enveloped the entire place with mendacity. Broad as it may be, the net of light cast by the numerous old style chandeliers failed to reach the entire population, leaving pockets of nondescript corners.

"This is growing, man."

"It sure is, Jim. It sure is. You need to stay close to me, man. Tonight is yours! "

Dividing the bar into four quadrants, one could make out each category neatly, from inside the seemingly random structure. On the northern left stood prominent members of the press, famous directors and producers, and other moguls who were busy scrutinizing the enticing D-cups on the blonde waitress on duty. Opposite, still in the north section, elected members of parliament stood in a circle as if simulating a Masonic meeting. Due southwest and loudest of all, union members made their claim by swinging one cocktail after the other and shout when they had to talk, and scream, when they had to laugh. Finally, perhaps most charming of all, high-altitude clergymen, as Richard had always referred to them, shared anecdotes and short pulses of dry laughter in the southeast quadrant, all sporting inch-thick rings and their trademark collarinos. The middle part was the miscellaneous section: many, like Jim and Richard, who belonged to various corporate creeds and occupied various roles, lingered semi-drunk and strived for acceptance.

Then cheers exploded, right at the epicentre.

"This is him, Jim! Come with me."

Richard's slim frame almost disappeared into the crowd. Jim could only catch glimpses of him by catching glimpses of his blonde, meticulously groomed curls that towered above the rest. When they reached the nucleus, a raspy, cigarette-strained voice began to make its way towards them: from the gathering crowd, a white beard, preened by scrutinizing, deep set eyes, emerged atop a subtle, elitist smile. The scrutinizing eyes met Richard, then Jim, then Richard again.

"Richard Burke, our most dear, Richard Burke. Who's this gentleman with you? Don't believe I have had the pleasure."

The crowd shape shifted: it dissolved, opening a path just in front of the boss and closing again behind Jim and Richard, forming a circle whose diameter spanned an entire lobby. The music stopped at once.

"This is my best friend and business associate: James Stewart Robinson," announced Richard, his voice reverberating through the quiet.

The boss walked towards an immobile Jim and stopped two inches before him. Jim resisted the temptation to raise his hands for shaking. Richard continued. The bar remained silent.

"James is a full professor of Political Science at the Royal University. He has written extensively on the recession-induced collapse of the western world in the early twenty first century. He has also won a Pulitzer prize for his book on the globalisation of-"

"So you're a West expert, I see," interrupted the heavy-breathing boss. Richard had stopped at once, lest his voice were to overlap the boss's.

"Pretty impressive for a what...thirty five year old?"

"Thirty three, sir."

"Thirty three, huh? Interesting! Good one, Richard."

A segment from the crowd opened again, letting the straight gazing boss pass and settle himself where everyone could see. Beneath the pictured revolutionaries, he licked his lips and scanned the populace before him who had mingled by now, realising that this was no place for divisions and cliques and that his words were unifying; his concepts, universal. In front of him, the subcultures dissolved, forming rivers of belief. It was time.

"This is 2050, my brothers. I bid you welcome."

The windows rattled as the cheers caught fire with his very first sentence.

"Another year has passed, but, alas, the clouds above us are thicker than ever. The quality of our lives has dwindled, and the hegemonic tide that seems set to destroy us has gotten even stronger last year. "

Jim noticed that the man used his pauses well, making sure he commanded everyone's attention at all times.

"Some might say: but you still have your villas, you still have your pools and your SUVs. But I say to them: you have no vision. For it is true that our plates are full, but the gates to our farms are closed, and we don't hold the keys any more. It is true that our cups are full, but our cups used to be bigger. "

A rapturous applause erupted once again.

There was a growing smile on Jim's face: his wife's scream had gotten quieter inside his head.

"And you stand before me today, brothers, at a great cost, I know. You have left your families. You have departed from your homes and, resettled, in spite of the tremendous effort it required. Like our new young man, today. Could you please tell us, very briefly, what you've been through to join us... of course, gentleman, not before we give him a warm applause as a gesture of heartfelt welcome!"

Jim felt calm, not in a comfortable way, he noticed, as he prepared himself to open his mouth. It was a very strange type of calm. The cheers around him had little effect.

"I am Jim Robinson."

Myriad faces amassed before him, spilling their judgmental gazes all over his forthcoming speech. The air felt dense and breathing was quickly becoming a feat. But he had made his decision; as soon as he had looked in his daughter's eyes, he had made the decision.

"Tonight, before coming here, I-"

He paused as if weighing the silence with his eyes.

"I abandoned my wife, my daughter and my son. I didn't look back once. "

Richard's eyes stretched in exclamation. Every smile had evaporated; most heads tilted southwards.

"I've left a dead child, today, in the highway, by the woods. I've left an injured daughter. I've left a screaming wife. " Jim's head rotated, scanning everyone. Many receded from him; many pulled their drinks away from their mouths.

From the sky, the bar would have appeared negligible amidst the surrounding woods, on that quiet icy night.

"Jesus Christ, I'll have to be careful: this guy is angling for my spot!" exclaimed the boss. The most vulgar laughter yet shattered the silence that had accumulated.

"I think this young man deserves a second applause, brothers."

It was loud and entirely devoted to him. Jim was untouched.

"I told you this was going to be your night, Jimmy boy."

All the faces were bent askew with smiles, gifting him an applause which he knew undeserving. He had killed his son, and it was as if he had saved him.

"Mr. Robinson has understood it, my brothers. And so have you. And so will the hundreds, the thousands and the millions that will follow us! "

"We are like Christ's disciples, son..." Jim looked to his right and found a short, stout young clergyman who still applauded vivaciously. The priest continued: "we leave everything behind us and follow our Sheppard." The boss finally looked away from Jim. The mass followed.

"There is no place for the traditional family any more. Look at what happened forty years ago. We have collapsed, my brothers. We were negligent. If we want our economy to grow, if we want our glorious societies to be back in pole position, we need to leave everything behind us and espouse our companies. The company is your family now. Your employers are your fathers and your colleagues, your brothers. Your overtime is every time. You eat with them, sleep with them, laugh, and make love, only to them. And they are, indeed, a very jealous lot."

Jim wondered how their hands were not yet bleeding with all the applauding. He had lost his smile again. The smile was coming and going and it was rather confusing, like his wife's scream inside his head.

"This is the only way we can become competitive again! And we are getting stronger. Look at us. We have people from the unions. Stop those vicious laws which give women their so called rights at work! The workplace is a man's world and let it be that way. Let us not confuse Adam with Eve. We also have people from the highest echelons of the church, whose wise guidance can surely inspire the outside communities. The Press is with us, too. Let it spread. Let everyone know who we are. When the day comes and people have to choose between hunger and old obsolete traditions, they'll choose us. Let it spread. We have never been this united, my brothers."

Then Jim was in the limelight again.

"Forget your family, James. They're dead. Dead! Half of the battle, you win it by forgetting. The other half, you win it by resisting. Look here!"

The boss moved towards a flat screen and switched it on. Jim could see everyone smiling with expectation.

"Now, let's see if they're still covering those bitches." Their chief shovelled through the various channels.

Jim looked questioningly at Richard who smiled beside him.

"Who is he talking about, Ritch?"

"You'll see, man. It's a fucking laughable disgrace. You'll see."

Finally, on the wide central flat screen, the 24/7 news channel came on. A blonde presenter seemed agitated as she discussed footage that unravelled on a studio big screen behind her; then Jim understood: hundreds, mainly women, had amassed in the main capital square, bringing with them protest boards, torches and their screams. One of them took the helm:

"These new collective agreements are unacceptable! They are driving our husbands away and the government hasn't lifted one of his filthy fingers. Where are the unions? What these corporations are demanding is simply unacceptable and the unions should have called dozens of strikes by now! But where are they? And what about the church? If it is true that the family is the pilaster of society, where the hell is his Excellency? They should be down here in this square, fighting with us! This is not just our battle as wives and as mothers! This is society's battle! They should be ashamed!"

"Do not laugh, brothers. Give the bitch some time to express herself."

"Go and make me a fucking peanut butter sandwich, bitch," hollered a unionist with a beer in his hand.

As a backdrop to drunken laughter, the scene on the television evolved under the early afternoon sky. On the bottom right of the screen, Jim noticed that it was repeat news and that that clip had been recorded earlier that evening: apparently those women had chosen the last day of the year to make their voices heard. Another young woman screamed with a toddler in her hands:

"We know where they meet, those animals!"

A wide angle shot of the square painted a large open space, littered with yellow dots that moved in unison. They numbered in hundreds now, marching under one banner with their heads held high. Nobody in La Résistance was laughing any more.

"Why all those gloomy faces, brothers? Jesus Christ, don't tell me you're letting that psychotic slut affect you?"

The boss lowered the volume, but let the scene on the television unravel.

"Look at them, Jesus Christ, they should be at home, cleaning, those bitches, let them scream, who gives a fuck!"

The heavy murmur was quickly turning into laughter.

"You see, James," continued the boss, building on the momentum of his hate, "the other half of the battle is won by resisting those bitches, and we will resist them!"

The laughter exploded, once again, into cheers.

"Who is your family, my brothers?"

It was an orchestra, loud and intimidating:

"The corporation is my family! The employers are our fathers! The employees are our brothers!"

Jim moved backwards, trying to pull away from the barmy crowd that pushed and pulled and more than once hit him with frantic elbows.

"What is our mission, my brothers?"

Again, in unison:

"To save the west! To see it rise again!"

"That's right brothers! That's right! And now, let's show our new friend that we're not 'all work and no play'!"

Two fine dressed strangers approached Jim and took him with them, one arm each. Richard winked at him and the entire building roared with applause and cheers. They dragged him to the bar and forced him to sit on a stool.

"Okay, kiddo. So we have a new tradition around here. The newbie gets the first lick at the pussy!"

Jim looked around helplessly like a corpse who's woken up halfway through an autopsy.

Richard, who never left his side, gave him a second reassuring wink. One of the men handling him swept the bar clean with his hands and counting to three, they shoved Jim onto its surface. All of this happened so suddenly that Jim had absolutely no time to react.

"Now just stay calm and enjoy it, man!" Jim's head was down touching the oak surface, so he could not see, but he knew it was Richard's voice. It was then that the pretty face of an Asian girl engulfed his vision. She was the D-cup waitress he'd seen before. Her face came at touching distance so much he could almost taste her lips. She smelt of liqueur and roses and her lipstick was so red that it almost strained his eyes. Her hair danced on his eyes.

"Come on, Yumi. Turn him into a man!"

As the curtain of hair opened, her pale bountiful breasts swung their nipples into his eyes. The perfect contours curved around his mouth and then she poured liquor on them: it descended like manna from the mount, gathering momentum with every tilt and kink. The cheers soared with every gulp he took and ribald music from decades before rose in volume to cheerfully soundtrack that most unexpected Asian encounter.

"You did the right thing, Jimmy boy."

"Yeah, man. I bet your missus didn't have them as big as those."

The crusty laughter of the boss was near: Jim could hear him clearly.

"Tell us Yumi," the boss said in his typical limelight-seeking way, "do you love your job so much, sweetheart?"

Her little thin voice barely made it through the laughter.

"Women best for suck!"

She sounded like a parrot that had lived for too many years in a cage inside a barber's shop.

"Jesus Christ, now I know why these fucking monkeys are getting better than us in everything. Look at the smart women they have!"

And so the night progressed in vulgar fits of laughter and generous helpings of liquor and tits. Jim was not to spend a dime tonight, or so they told him. Every troop had to provide him with a drink as a gesture of welcome. From every wallet, there came a coin that made him drunker; from each 'sibling' there came a smile which was supposed to make him prouder of his choice. He was even gifted with personal anecdotes later in the night.

"So my choice was between the bitch that had an enormous pregnant fucking belly ready to spit forth another unit and make me poorer and poorer by the day, and coming here and doing something legit for our society. Let me tell you, it was no choice at all, man!"

"Yeah, my folks did a lot for me, man. But they were too fucking thick to understand my ideas. They were seriously sick by then and they were fucking grumpy, so I just left. Just like that, man. I looked my mother in the eye and left. Yeah, I might say I miss them from time to time, but it will pass, man. You'll learn to let it pass. You'll learn that what we're doing here is bigger than everything, even bigger than your family."

"Fragmentation, man, that's the big word you professors like to use. Our societies are split into atoms called individuals. There's no common purpose, no unifying goal. That's why this project is fundamental, man. I too left my wife before our baby was born. Someday my child will thank me for this. "

"Yeah, I agree with Morison, man. I posed a big question to myself: which has the highest value: society or the family?

"I think that's a reasonable question to ask.

"I choose the former man and let me tell you, what we're doing here will go down in history. I left my fiancé almost at the altar for this, man! It has to work."

Hours passed and whilst Jim listened and drank and sucked and gobbled, his mind waved through all sorts of contradicting ideas.

Even when the giant orgy started a few minutes later, his innards still churned and his head still hurt. Would he ever snap out of it? He almost envied the guys for being so nonchalant. He could see his supposedly new comrades encircling poor Yumi and queuing for a free ride. Everyone, including the boss, including Richard-father of three and the eldest son of hardworking catholic parents: everyone indulged in shamelessness. The defilement was almost a ritual for them. They exhaled cigar smoke on her, spat on her genitals, drew vulgar symbols on her breasts with red and black markers and she just laughed and repeated her sucking intentions all the way through.

Jim started backing out slowly, but his retreat came to a stop as he bumped into a cleric who cheered and clapped from behind him. Jim looked at the old bishop whose eyes outshined the golden cross that swung around his neck. His face was rugged; clearly the stampede of time had taken its toll on him. Suddenly he took Jim's hands:

"I will pray for your son, Jim. God is already taking care of him for you."

The fucking and cheering fused to give birth to insanity.

"What world is this, my brothers?"

"This is a man's world! God bless the west!"

Jim did not even smile politely at the priest. He snuck out from the crowd and went quietly outside in search of fresher air.

#

It was already three in the morning, Jim noticed, as he sat down alone on a wooden table outside the villa. It had also been snowing for a while. He looked at the clouds that were busy patching up the sky to rid it from starlight. Jim realised that in a couple of hours dawn would kick off his first day as a single man. He looked at his mobile phone. No missed calls. Paul smiled in the background photo. Phone closed, back in his pocket, and he lighted the first cigarette. The smoke wafted off slowly in front of him. Through the smoke, he looked silently at the snow-covered vehicles that rested in the parking zone. He wondered why it was so difficult. Of course the way things had gone had made everything harder: the accident was strictly unplanned. But the decision to leave had been made days before. Emma's eyes only confirmed it: he didn't want to be with them anymore. Society needed him; greatness was his destiny, and they, were just an interruption. In any case, it surely would have been easier had things gone to plan. But, alas, it was natural to feel that way: after all he had loved them tremendously not so long before.

It was cold; he lighted a second cigarette. He exhaled, inhaled and exhaled again, as if creating a heartbeat for that soundless night. No missed calls, he said to himself, stubbing his cigarette.

He heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel.

"I see that Yumi's ass isn't to your palate."

Jim's feet pushed him up from sitting position.

"It's okay, son, stay comfortable," said the boss, with paradoxical warmth.

"May I join you, Jim?"

He still wore the tie, Jim noticed, even though his speech was over. Sitting next to him, he could smell no alcohol, only sweat.

"Yes sure, sir."

The boss did not look at him in the eye and, unbuttoning his cuffs, he spoke in what Jim perceived as a confessional tone.

"Let me tell you a story about my father, Jim. He worked all his life and even made it to top management in a small shipping company. Hard worker, on his feet by half past four every morning. He had, a theory, however. He would say to me that running a family was like running a business. You needed pure profits to keep it going. And for him, Jim, to lead a profitable family life, time spent with the family had to be greater than the time spent with the company. Only in that way, he would say, can you live your life at a profit. Then, when someone would tell him that life is all about striking a balance, he would say: does a company strive to achieve break-even? Then neither will I. "

Jim felt relieved that he had managed to hide his mobile phone before the boss had arrived.

"You know what happened to my father, Jim? He died poor and useless, like a miserable Asian fuck, with a heart attack, having lost his job and every penny in the early century recessions. I was an adolescent, but still remember my mother crying. Do you get my point, Jim?"

"I do, sir."

"Then why were you looking at your phone?"

Jim blushed.

"It's okay, kid. But you do have to understand. Everyone in there has made sacrifices, Jim. Some haven't seen their children since birth; some have let their fathers and mothers die alone in hospitals, just so that they could continue, uninterrupted, their work for their company. You are part of this family now, Jim. Everything else goes, including your personal phone. You'll be given another one by your company, I am sure.

Taking his Blackberry out of his pocket, Jim looked at his little boy.

"Can you give it to me, Jim? Everyone inside that villa has."

Jim looked questioningly.

"Yeah, Jim. They got rid of their phones as soon as they got rid of their loved ones. They thus severed the umbilical cord that held them tightly to their past.

Jim remained silent.

"Jim, can you let go?"

"Yes."

That was the last time Jim would see his two year old son.

#

They were walking back to the bar and Jim knew that the boss was looking at him.

"So was it really an accident, Jim?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, all's well that ends well, right?"

Jim stayed silent, but made his lack of appreciation evident with his eyes.

"My bluntness hurts you, I know. But you'll learn to think like me."

Jim didn't think so.

#

Inside, the atmosphere was no longer festive and he was trying to remember if Emma had broken her left, or her right arm.

A faint crust of murmur had possessed the innards of the villa, and it was as if both light and sound had retired, leaving the walls and the bottles and the stools awash with a growing sense of reality. At the heart of the proceedings stood the flat screen again, which leaked more news upon their worrisome, restless eyes.

Jim observed that the small dots of light had moved away from the capital, and were spreading like a wild fire through the woods.

"They are coming, sir! They know we're here!"

This was no 'repeat', Jim realised. This was breaking news.

The boss settled himself on one of the now vacated stools and remained silent, speaking loudly, however, with his calm demeanour.

"So? We jolly well knew it could happen," he said, almost with melody. Jim could see that same warm smile, never for once leaving his face.

The murmur intensified, embarrassed stares shifting southwards.

"Why all the commotion, eh? What can these, women, ever do to us? We are stronger than ever, my brothers. Remember who we are, what gives us strength and cour-"

Richard's phone started ringing. He made a sudden jerk as if someone had pointed a gun at him and started a frantic search for it in his pockets, struggling to extract it. Everyone stopped and looked at him. The boss looked too.

"Richard?"

The boss's brows had formed an arc that designed enquiry.

Richard took it out, not without a struggle, and rummaged through his phone menu, his fingers hopping from key to key as he attempted to turn it off. In the silence of the bar, the benign ring tone spun louder and louder as if it was bent on embarrassing Richard even more. He just couldn't turn the damn thing off. Jim could see his friend visibly agitated, his face forming streams of sweat.

"It's okay, son, perfectly understandable. " The boss's voice was soothing, reassuring.

Finally, Richard took the battery out. More than a hundred men gazed in silence, breathing slowly and modestly. The judgmental aura in their eyes was gone.

Then another phone took off. This time it was from a distant corner in the ministerial section of the bar. The gazes followed. It was Morrison, a stout, bald headed MP, who hid well behind his governmental friends, face buried beneath the umbrella of embarrassment. Their white bearded leader was serious now and as his eyes briefly met Jim's, Jim saw, for the first time, a faint sign of uncertainty, even humiliation. Jim touched his empty pocket as the boss spoke softly.

"I understand, gentleman. The temptation is too hard. At times, I almost did it myself. I empathize with you, my brothers."

It was a matter of time now: everyone felt it. It was a question of whose phone went next.

"It's going to be very hard to confront those women out there, my brothers. If you're still tied to them-and I am not pointing at anyone here-you will succumb. Everyone is guilty of attachment, me included."

The boss tightened his tie and walked slowly amongst his foot soldiers.

"They are coming, yes, I know. And they will play the emotional card. Yes, be prepared for that."

The sound of the ventilator could be heard in the distance, cutting through the silence like a harbinger of doom.

"Sir, what should we do?"

The boss approached the enquiring man and placed his palm on his shoulder.

"Let me ask you something, Peter."

Looking at Peter, Jim found it hard to believe that the cocky, middle aged attorney was a powerful junior partner at a prominent local law firm. There was sweat trickling all over his brown narrow eyes and his face was pale. And to believe that this was the same guy taking his turn loudly with Yumi.

"Tell me, sir," he stammered.

"Whom have you left behind?"

Peter recomposed himself.

"A wife, sir. A wife and two teenagers, both girls."

"What are their names, Peter?"

Looking carefully, Jim could have sworn that he'd seen the ghost of a smile on Peter's face.

"Marlene, my wife. Then Sarah, she's seventeen, the eldest, and Samantha, who has just turned fifteen."

"Well, my brother, Samantha hasn't turned fifteen. Samantha is dead. And so is Sarah. And so is your wife, Marlene. In your head at least, they are buried."

Jim felt someone moving next to him. He didn't look, but knew it was Richard. Richard touched his arm gently. They looked on. The circular configuration was slowly dissolving; the men's postures no longer straight.

"And so is your father Steve. He is dead. You don't need to worry about him anymore. He is gone." The six foot something giant lowered his head as if the utterance of his family names had rendered him a lamb.

"And so is your little son, Franco. Forget him. He'll find another father and yes your wife will fuck other men. And your wife, Morrison, is no longer pregnant. She has miscarried. The little bloody thing that was to be, well, isn't going to be any more. You, as it turns out, are not missing anything. You don't need your phone anymore." How deceiving, Jim thought, was the softness of the boss's voice and how incredibly remorseful everyone looked. The old man had pissed over their memories in a few strokes of a very venomous tongue.

Silence had kidnapped the night as the boss kept moving around, eyeing everyone, naming their wives and their mothers and daughters and sons and everyone they ever loved and reminding them that they were, quite simply, dead.

Richard and Jim looked into each other's eyes.

"Now you're gonna pack your belongings, and, we're gonna leave. If we don't run into them, well, well and good. If we do run into them, then you walk away, understand me? You walk away! "

Their feedback was muffled, as if their throats had clogged.

"Now, "continued the resilient boss, "should it happen that they persist..."

It was Jim's turn now. The boss's eyes were hovering above him.

"Well, then, "he continued with a whisper, "I am sure you all remember how to take care of your women, my brothers."

Everyone smiled, no one laughed, and, it was almost a funeral parade, that which left the building.

#

The woods were resting. The usual night sounds were absent and, in their stead, the soft caress of snowfall whispered its narration to the surroundings. The men's descend into the parking zone did little to perturb the quiet: one could only hear them breathe. Their sighs were the results of relief-relief at the sight of a still empty parking zone.

With their face down, they hurried into their cars, knowing that they had little time. No 'goodnight' or 'see you tomorrow', they simply hurried on, knowing that they had made it. For a few seconds, they were right. Then, they heard their boss speaking.

"Brothers..."

Jim, who was heading for Richard's Audi, looked into the woods and saw one or two specs of light. Then there were ten, then a hundred and so on, until it became a tide of yellow lights, approaching omnidirectional and swift.

They had arrived.

As the first strands of panic became apparent, Jim remained calm, reasoning that there was little chance that his wife would be amongst the protesters. Nearly three hours had passed since he had abandoned them on the highway and Jim felt sure that his wife would be in a hospital, nursing herself and her daughter.

She would hate him forever.

Quicker than anticipated, the women had arrived; their men still frozen into position.

"As agreed, my brothers, we keep going," said the boss, still calm, still focused.

But this was one command they would not heed. All the clapping and the cheering and the shouting and the screaming and the drinking and the laughing were past. In that terrible present, they were one sorry lot. The dots became silhouettes, then faces: all of which familiar. The women walked silently into the parking zone, spreading around it in search for their husbands. Everything was quiet; everyone was expectant.

It was a plump woman with a newborn in her arm who ignited the fire.

"This is your daughter, Morrison. She has your eyes."

After that, the storm began.

"Let's get the hell out of here, Jim."

In front of Jim's eyes, what had previously been little dots of lights, were now crying women, desperately trying to get their husbands back. Some men accelerated away in their Mercedes, leaving behind them a trail of screaming mothers. Others stayed for the fight. It was interesting, Jim noticed, how many of the women held toddlers in their arms - perhaps a direct result of the relatively young age of the men involved. A few metres away, a beautiful woman screamed.

"You're coming with me, Peter, now! You have two daughters at home. They need you!"

Even though she was pulling as hard as she could, her husband walked on. Like her, other women encircled their husbands, trying to block their entry inside their cars. Jim saw a woman in the distance who had succeeded in blocking her husband. To his horror, the man punched her to the floor and was not yet content. As she lay down, he kicked her and spat on her. A young boy watched from the side, motionless. The guy had listened to the boss, alright. Another woman, far off, ran to the villa and was stopped just in time before inflicting the little damage she could upon the building. It was the heroic boss himself who stopped her, pulling her from her hair and dragging her away from the building, screaming hoarse blasphemy and slapping her all the way through. No one intervened.

Amongst those bloated, wet eyes, Jim glimpsed something.

"Jim, why did you stop, man? Come with me, I'm taking you to your office!"

But Jim did not move. He stared directly in front of him, seeking recognition, out from the chaos.

"What's wrong, Jim?

Jim's eyes screamed fear. His body moved in slow motion, doing just enough to allow him breathing and circulation.

"Jim? What's wrong, man? What have you-?"

"I need to go, Richard. Don't follow me."

"Jim? Come back, man!"

But he was gone.

#

He was back in the woods again and running, with the trees flying past him as if torn from their roots by the force of his galloping. Running in the snow had become challenging to say the least. Jim did not stop; did not look behind. When he got tired, he merely waddled through the woods, his body flimsy and dangerously cold. The sound of commotion had also abated. Breathing was difficult and he had to hold on to a tree to recompose himself: his head tilted downwards as if attempting to touch his feet, with his eyes.

From behind him, footsteps came rolling apace.

"You fucking bastard!"

Nails dug deep in his face and tore layers of skin and hair. Jim fell helplessly, his face on fire. Head on the ground, Lorna's face came in view and Jim could see her bandaged head and stitched face clearly.

"You killed our child, you bastard! You killed our little child! You broke our daughter's arm! You destroyed our family, Jim, our family!"

He stood motionless on the ground and accepted the downpour of punches. He could feel her saliva bursting in volumes from her screaming mouth. "You sick bastard," she repeated. It only felt partially right. She grabbed him from the shirt collar and, with inexplicable strength, raised him from the ground.

"Why did you have to go and harm us all, now, why, Jim? Why?"

Her screams came with layers of groans.

Jim's face was driven violently against a tree branch and he felt some of his upper teeth give way. His shirt was soaked in blood; his left eye completely closed shut with the swelling.

"Now what am I to tell our daughter? You tell me that, you animal! What do I tell her? I had promised her, Jim. I had promised her to give her, her brother back!"

She picked a log. Jim knew this and, face against the blood splattered tree, he waited. The pain arrived punctually. She hit him and fires raged just above his Achilles tendon. His body toppled like a fallen castle, unable to hold its weight any longer. His back on the ground, Lorna stared at him, and her face became his sky; her eyes the shimmering comets that would crush him.

"You betrayed us! All of us!"

She was no longer screaming now. Her voice trembled with the pressure of her words, words which still came out rather fluently, however.

"Now what will I tell her?" She tried again, apparently unsatisfied.

His stomach; his hips; his ribs, then, worst of all, his knees: all crushed and bled as the log met them mercilessly. The pain got him dizzy. There was suddenly light all around and the sky above seemed to come down on him like a moving ceiling. Breathing abandoned him, and its departure designed circular forms in his mind of which intensity made him delusional. He could also feel his chest being stabbed as the broken ribs abandoned their default position, creating a deep coughing wheezing mess. Then, his saliva bled too.

The log fell from her hand and she collapsed on the ground next to him, discharging desperation all through her bleeding pores.

One, deep, long scream, rocketed towards the sky.

Few seconds had to pass before she could speak again. Then, softly:

"Why? Why? Oh god, he's dead. You destroyed us, Jim. You destroyed something perfectly beautiful."

He knew he had breakages; he knew he could bleed to death any moment now, but somehow, it was all irrelevant. He hadn't even attempted to protect himself. He didn't even scream with pain which, after all, would have been a perfectly natural reaction. But he was not crying. That was proof that everything was alright. Lorna stood up from the ground and brushed her skirt from the leaves. She walked next to her ex-husband who stood on the brink of incapacitation. Her bare foot came to a stop next to his face, her toe nails almost tangential to his eyes.

"I just want to know why, Jim?" She asked softly, yet stern. "Why did you try to kill us, Jim?" Their eyes locked and delivered those silent conversations that only married people can. Jim finally spoke feebly:

"I didn't try-" His body had to negotiate between talking and breathing. This made his speech agonizingly slow.

"It was an accident. I was-"

"You were looking at our daughter, she told me."

More saliva dripped and fell from her chin onto his scarred face.

"Yes, I-"

"You knew..."

"Yes."

"Your daughter's eyes were the last straw.

"Y-Yes."

"So you're not a murder. You're just a coward."

She knelt down to him, so that he would look her in the eye when he told her.

"Tell me, Jim. Do you miss Paul?" Her lips trembled uncontrollably as she struggled intensely to remain sober.

"I..." It was the same question that he'd been asking himself ever since. His very own blood was dead and he had spent the last hours trying to understand if he missed him. Was there any vestige of emotion inside him? With all the honesty in the world, he just told her as simply as he could:

"I don't know."

It was not saliva which fell on his face now; it was tears. She held on to a tree and stood straight. From down on the ground, Jim could see subtle lines on her still beautiful face. It was as if that night, she had aged by ten years. Then, she spoke and Jim listened well.

"Jim, let this be the last thing I ever tell you. I loved you so much. Know that, Jim. I loved you so much and perhaps, I still do, but, that will pass. But know that I, will never, ever... forgive you. Never!"

Then, she was gone.

Alone in the dark woods, somewhere in the regions of four in the morning, he lied lonely on the frozen foliage of winter and, even though he was in agony, he still couldn't cry. His family was extinct. Their love had wilted. Yet to his heart, that seemed to be no crying matter: the deadly poison of indifference had blighted his soul. He closed his eyes and welcomed the darkness. He wondered if one could die by simply closing his eyes. That would have been handy, although, he knew that the internal haemorrhage would do the job quicker. He re-tried and closed his eyes. At least, even though it wasn't death, sleep was better than nothing, if only for a little while.

But a little while passes quickly. Jim opened his eye - the good one - and through the curtain of blood that had settled on his retina, he thought he saw, like a mirage, his wife. He clutched to a tree adjacent to his right arm and, this not being broken, pulled as hard as he could. He managed to slide forward by a couple of inches, but not before investing immense effort. He pulled again and slid some more. It was going to be terribly hard getting somewhere, but he had to try. He shook his head to get rid of the blood in his eyes and tried to focus straight ahead. He was right. There she was: his beauty. From a distance, Jim observed. She had not left after all. It was peculiar, Jim thought, as he watched her beautiful bruised legs shuffling through the icy terrain, why she would choose to remain there.

At a distance that was enough to barricade sound, Jim could only observe as she walked around in circles. She was crying, holding her head, then crying some more. She sat, then woke up and walked, then sat again. Once in a while, Jim saw her raise her head and mime a silent scream. It was ironic, Jim thought, how those woods would provide a theatre where the final act of their marriage would unfold. It was a pity, however, that during that final act, he was mere audience. She seemed closer now, but he still couldn't make out any coherent words, only a rhythm. It was a crying rhythm. A melee of contradictory thoughts appeared to be haunting his wife. But don't all marriages come to such stage? Jim thought. Maybe it was not yet over. Maybe there was some other chapter left. Except that their son was dead.

Suddenly, Lorna stood up and her eyes displayed no intention of sitting down again. She stared in Jim's direction and started walking towards him. Jim waited breathlessly her approach-a few seconds which felt like hours. He pushed again with his right unbroken arm and fell on his back against a tree in semi-sitting position. Then, she was right beside him.

"Lorna, I'm-"

If she hadn't her beautiful eyes, her purple-black hair and the round freckled face that he had kissed so much, he would have doubted her identity. This seemingly doppelganger version of his wife stopped right beside him, eyes strained by the copious tear-shed. It was only the woods that spoke, only the snow that departed from the leaves and joined the ones on the ground. The sounds of the night were finally there. Jim held his breath, not to let the wheezing interrupt. She stared into his eyes. She remained immobile.

Suddenly, she wiped her eyes with her right hand and knelt beside him. She kissed him on his cheek.

Jim held his breath some more.

"That's from our little Emma, Jim. She wanted to give it to you before, but you...interrupted her." Her voice gave up under the pressure of crying.

"She asked me to come here and tell you that she forgives you and that she still loves you, Jim. She still loves you."

Then she kissed him again, on the other cheek.

"That one's from me."

And then she left, without looking back, without stopping. For the first time in years, James Stewart Robinson cried and it would be long, very long, before he would stop.

The Age of Convergence

"I'm ready to know."

"Indeed you are, dear Leverie."

"Your eyes confess doubts."

"I need you to trust me."

"I trust you, Rosario."

Leverie extended his hand, enforcing his affirmation, and together, they soared.

The starless night-sky welcomed them in its embrace and the wind was deft in decreeing its course. Altitude increased swiftly and it was as if the city receded, gradually turning into a three dimensional painting of itself. The sounds of cries and talk, of shrieks and horns and bells, mingled, creating a cacophony that acted as a retort to the wind's relentless croon.

Their wings shone, bookmarking the night with their flapping.

Unknowing, central city-life shimmered beneath them, basking proudly with its neon-lit heartbeats. The greater darkness thrived at the peripheries, however, in those areas where forests rested and lakes harboured fish, sediments and death. The darkness lay static, as if preparing to sneak in on life.

Leverie and Rosario always timed their pauses perfectly, savouring gulps of future-memories. At thirty thousand feet, their wings flexed fully and manufactured eddies that were designed to keep them afloat at constant height. Their golden hair danced with the current and vivacity dripped from them as if they were sweating fire. Looking east, they saw clouds gathering and inferred a rainy future for the west. Leverie squeezed Rosario's hand and mumbled a gentle prayer: at thirty thousand feet, prayers reached faster. Rosario observed quietly his praying companion and when his eyes narrowed he looked away.

"I am going lower, Rosario. I know it in my heart that tonight is a dark one." Before Rosario could reply, Leverie was gone.

They flew at six thousand feet above the port, where the rank mercenaries of night were at their busiest. Tens of vessels occupied the shambled harbour that brimmed with their freight and hostile labourers. Uncharacteristically silent, they carried boxed shipments which, to the trained eye, stank with armaments. Simultaneously, empty busses reversed slowly and parked conveniently close, so that the boxes could be heaved inside them. Leverie watched his companion as they flew silently.

Across the river, adorned with the Santa Maria Bridge, they reached Elton woods, beyond which, they knew the city's heart lay. This short, albeit pleasant flight, took them through a stretch of air, dyed with a soothing smell of autumn. It was merely the proverbial calm before the storm. Out from the woodland, plumes of smoke welcomed their arrival. The smoke rose in abundance: child of the vicious destruction that unravelled on the ground. In particular, the president's palace was being gorged by the flames of the raging protestors, who threw homemade explosives onto its already maimed façade.

"It's time. It's our bounden duty, Rosario."

"No..."

Leverie stared incredulously at his companion whose shivering frame had already begun to gain height.

"What do you mean no?"

"It's not time yet."

"People are dying!"

"They are dying everywhere!"

"This is outrageous!"

"You said you trusted me."

Leverie elevated himself just enough to come eye to eye with him.

"I trust you, but I need more."

They came to rest on a tree-branch and looked on. Through a window on the fifth floor, a middle aged man wearing a neat, brown suit and white, combed hair, could be seen tucking his children into bed, children whose late teens made them too old for tucking. Leverie and Rosario stared silently at the equally silent president whose smile struggled against the rough seas of tears.

An explosion.

The blast vomited fire and little stars of glass through a-same-building window, three storeys beneath the president's.

"We must do something, Rosario! We must help him! He has a family!"

"Unfortunately, it is over." Leverie took his hands and attacked him with his eyes.

"What are you trying to prove? What was your mission?"

Another room, now only one storey below the president's, spewed forward spittles of glass as it seemed to combust internally. The president was now on his knees praying; his children static, caught in a slumber which seemed deeper than was natural.

"Why? Why? Can't you hear him pray? Doesn't his desperation move you, Rosario? Have you become so heartless?"

But Rosario was still silent, just as he had been when they saw the infringements at the harbour; just as he had been when the streets of the city caught fire below them; just as he would be for most of that eventful evening. His white pristine figure was now receding, his eyes still fixed on a bemused Leverie.

"You still need to see something else, my dearest."

"Rosario?" But he was already gone.

It was clear from Rosario's eyes that the next revelation would prove to be the most painful for Leverie. Fully aware of this, he banked southward and sank fearfully behind Rosario, taking a path that seemed destined to lead them towards the awaiting alleys. Acceleration, in conspiracy with time, smoothened his progression as he followed Rosario, and when he had descended low enough, the conniving streets of Marlington came into view, baring their sins for witness. He reached Rosario midair a few seconds later.

"What's this?" Silence. "The trust I invest is in your honesty, not in your silence. Where are you taking me?"

"You will see, my dear Leverie."

The streets were dark, silent and forsaken by life. But it was a silence which was not meant to last long. As their padded feet touched the asphalt, a scream approached like the cautioning horns of a speeding train. The scream was female, young, and had that harsh crust akin to those spewed forth by the playmates of death. Fear quivered in the blue of Leverie's eyes. The colour on his face seemed to evaporate as realisation crept slowly into every pore of his fragile body.

"My heart trembles, Rosario. I fear the worst."

It was not a surprise now that neither Rosario's eyes, nor his lips, had any intention of divulging premature revelations. Then something silenced him.

The scream had revealed its face. From the backstage of the alley, two men dragged a young blonde who had little fight left in her, and shoved her bleeding body onto the ground. She landed in a bright patch of light: a yellow stage set by a most considerate moon. The impact with the ground strangled her scream; her plight dimming to a faint flicker.

"Please, I give you money and all. Money and all!" Her diminutive silhouette stretched a hand begging for mercy, only to be met by the most vulgar laughter. Rosario took Leverie's hand as if he knew he was in need.

"Maria! That's my Maria, Rosario! She needs me!" Sombre, was the replying look.

Her scream ascended towards an unheeding sky.

Leverie's gaze bled before the now naked female figure that swayed helplessly in throes of grudges and centuries-old hate. With their bare masculinity, they promised the most indecent of deaths.

"No! No! No!"

"I had saved her from Leukaemia when she was eight; from meningitis when she was fifteen. I had saved her father from cancer when she was eighteen. Now you ask me to abandon her! You ask me to leave her to their hate, Rosario! How? Why? What is happening to us?"

Proceedings intensified and so did her screams; and so did Leverie's cries. Rosario's hand wound itself tighter around Leverie's as if to transmit his compassion and his sympathies harder.

"Please...stop." Her pleads had now dissolved to barely a whisper as the bulging silhouettes held her. They trampled over her necklace, her golden rings and gleaming pearls; all over her diamond studded gala-wear that rested defeated on the ground. Their laughter escalated in proportion to the damage. Her nakedness was derided: "Underneath that diamond shit, your just sagging tits and tired bush," opined the hunchback, whose age could have made him her father. His grubbier partner nodded in agreement: "I've fucked tramps who kept neater." They kicked her and went for seconds. Leverie looked away.

Projected on the wall beside him, the three shadows moved with the groans and growls which slowly dissolved into gentle moans. With Rosario's hand on his shoulder, he suffered through the massacre and tilted his head to the sky as a cold diamond tear left a trail on his cheek. Why? Why? He could hear cries now; the shadows were getting tired and soon their taste for madness would be sated. A flurry of anger-anger which had Rosario as its architect-shook Leverie's fragile frame: he had guarded her since birth and now...

"It's over, dear."

There was little promise of life in Rosario's words. Leverie found the courage to turn and was soon greeted by the most pitiful of sights. The men had abandoned their prey, leaving her to fester on cleaner asphalt. All her belongings were gone. She trembled beneath a moon that had hid behind the clouds, denying her also that last wish of light. Leverie was led to her.

Her nakedness was negligent, with her body being no longer recognizable. Deflowering had not been enough it seemed: blood trickled from her every limb.

She was dying.

"Can she see us?"

"No, but... it's up to us really." Leverie's crying had melted into sorrowful sobs. What has become of us, he kept asking. Rosario, equally dismayed, shook his head and kept silent.

"We are supposed to guard them. That's our assignment. That's what we've done, Rosario, for millennia."

"Millennia passed: this is a new age." Before Leverie could protest, Rosario knelt beside the girl whose eyes gasped as if they'd forgotten how to blink. Her pupils moved in synch with his hand that rested on her bleeding forehead.

"What will you?-"

It was the sudden trickle of bright substance descending down Rosario's pale hands which halted Leverie's question. It was light, and it was gold-speckled.

"You're granting her-"

"Knowledge. Yes."

The stream of light laid itself on her eyes and possessed them. Her smile responded instantly, betraying for a joyous second her body's promise of death. Her lips, previously pursed, parted slightly, further emphasising the genuine nature of her smile. Through the small gap of her mouth, she released a sigh which seemed to restore peace. A soft breeze caught her hair and pushed it gently off her face, revealing a face engulfed in the light of understanding. "She can see us..." Their immobile bodies dialogued in that darkened alley, concluding unanimously that her death would be rewarded. She nodded appreciatively and they held her hands, both choosing a cheek for kissing. The kiss propelled tears from the three of them and with their mouths so close, they slid upward slightly so as to reach her ears, and prayed.

She died in their arms soon after, appeased.

#

"Leverie! Leverie, wait!"

The gathering wind assaulted Rosario's face as they gave chase across the rain-promising sky.

"Leverie! It's not in our hands anymore! Stop! I beg you..."

The rustle of Leverie's wings intensified and tilted to design a leftward bank.

"Leverie, we need to have faith! I suffer, too."

His invite was met only by the black fabric of night. A bright dot ahead of him, Leverie's satin, white gown swayed under the strain of acceleration, and Rosario was beginning to lose pace. He even lost him for a few seconds as they glided through a procession of clouds, his hopes of catching him impinged by the white foam.

Soon they were out again and the sky had stretched further between them, creating an almost tangible gulf of black void. Suddenly, Leverie's frame gained height swiftly and from an already considerable altitude of forty thousand feet, Rosario was left gazing skyward. "Why are you flying that high? Leverie, Stop! You're moving beyond, towards the threshold!" But Rosario feared that that was perhaps what Leverie's precise intensions were: to make for the twilit threshold that had been forbidden since the beginning of time.

Rosario reacted fast. His wings extended. His heart rumbled; his fists tightened. The mathematics of space-time decreed imminence. Summoning all his strength, he obliged. The vertical climb pressured his spine and it did not figure how Leverie, now a distant star, could climb so effortlessly. How could his consciousness subsist? An approaching thunderstorm had continued to knit the sky together, forming a patchwork of fecund clouds. Very soon, the sky would give birth to lightening, and conditions would conveniently converge, propelling Leverie's transcendence.

The first roar above them and the minute city-life trembled fifty thousand feet below. Leverie was close. "Stop! My dearest, you don't know what you're getting yourself into! I beg you..." His pleas reverberated through the raging black sky. But hurt Leverie, overcome with pain, flew on. The first drop of rain came as a warning; the second one, as a threat. Soon the sky deluged with rain that came from the elite clouds above: that place where Leverie had almost reached. Thunder struck and lit their path with madness."Leverie!" But the shrill storm devoured his pleas. Thicker clouds merged and the timer on Leverie's mission struck zero.

A wild thunderbolt later, he was gone.

A few seconds only and Rosario would step in that same abyss in which Leverie had entered; a few seconds and the black stains of sin would mark him eternally. His eyes narrowed and his lips parted in a silent apologetic scream. The threshold was close and the thick clouds obliged.

Then, of course, there was light.

#

A modest tick of water, like the lonesome single-notes of a piano, whispered its narration onto the surroundings, inviting Rosario to consciousness once again. Rosario helped himself up and was greeted by a landscape that had stopped in time and never bothered with its tick again. Ambassadors of life lay scattered randomly around the mountainous terrain which shone cloudless in a place hidden from the stormy realms of the world. The water he'd heard had belonged to a ten metre high Cyprus tree of which leaves had cried their pristine tears upon him. The turf beneath his feet cast a gentle smell of autumn, not entirely different from those he'd smelt on earth. In fact, in terms of difference from earth, little was, except for the progress of time.

Rosario's head tilted questioningly and then he smiled in understanding. Ahead of him, Leverie sat at the edge of the cliff in a ponderous fashion, eyeing silently the vivid rivers of light that streamed on the horizon far ahead. The barren moors between him and the rivers had thwarted his progress and little more could he have done other than sit and stare unsatisfied. Rosario approached him cautiously.

"I think...she was expecting us," he said gently, placing one hand on top of Leverie's shoulder.

"What is this place? I didn't expect this."

"I think we're caught somewhere in the middle: somewhere between the human world and hers."

"Why can't I go there? I need to see her. I need answers from her."

"It's not for us to trespass."

"Then for whom?"

"You'll see."

Leverie eyed Rosario with intent, his eyes carving suspicion out of him.

"You knew this would happen?"

"No. But now I realise that I should have."

"I gave you my trust."

"Now it's time for me to repay it."

Leverie's teary eyes followed Rosario as he lowered himself to sit next to him. Having settled down, Rosario took Leverie's hands and remained silent for a little while. His gaze reached far in front of him. He then spoke in a voice that was both soothing and stern.

"She had instructed me to show you everything... including Maria."

"You certainly made your point with my Maria."

"I know."

"I had guarded her since birth...why?"

"As I told you, my dear Leverie, this is a new era. An era characterized by suffering."

"Hasn't that always been the case? We've been down there with them for all these centuries. Why stop now? We could have saved that poor girl. She had her entire life ahead of her." Rosario looked at him with eyes that promised compassion, even though he didn't affirm this with a smile as he often did. He looked back at the empty stretch ahead of them and squeezed Leverie's hand tighter.

"She didn't, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean?"

"She had no life ahead of her, Leverie. No one has anymore."

Leverie rose suddenly to his feet, startling his companion with a swiftness that suggested rage.

"What do you know, Rosario? I demand an explanation."

Rosario rose and stood beside him and, looking at him in the eyes, stretched a pointing hand that supplied the answer.

"It has begun, my dear."

Leverie's gaze returned to the horizon, which was now not void and silent, but bustling with a hideous fog that rose like smoke above the murky virtual ground, expanding menacingly in the process. Leverie moved as far out on the edge of the cliff as he could. The birds halted their chirps; the trees commanded the wind not to loiter on their leaves. The turf straightened itself to accommodate the worrisome movement of observers. It was as if everything held its breath in a one minute of silence for what was to come. Leverie's confusion reached its hilt, and through his eyes he portrayed the barren land of hopelessness. Rosario paced forward, just so he would be close enough when it happened.

"What's that smoke? Why is it forming?"

"Not why, my dear, but what."

Leverie looked at the grey cloudy carpet that had spread itself uniformly across the crimson horizon. It brought with it a swelling roar: an orchestrated melody of despair that sound-tracked the expansion of the fog. As it progressed, it created spirals: gigantic rings of dust and specs of grinded clouds designed figures of eight across the velvet sky-like substance that capped the same regions that Leverie and Rosario occupied. As it rose, it moved forth. It picked up pace like a pubescent hurricane that floated above virtual legs with headstrong gait. The soothing smell of autumn lay dying.

Then it happened.

The spirals curled into themselves, forming familiar forms: teeth, hands, then chest and stomach and knees and legs and arms and head; finally, eyes. The creations were a strain to any believer's eyes. Something, far greater in strength and prowess than anything Leverie and Rosario could ever handle, seemed to be guiding the gargantuan transformation of atmosphere into these murky gargoyles: smoky parodies of mankind's excesses. And as if the sky and land were mirrors facing each other, the entities multiplied themselves to infinity in operatic synchronicity, growls of apparent joy escalating with every birth. As they came to life, they searched without looking and screamed without speaking. Then, the first moved and the others followed.

With every foot that charcoaled the neighbouring air as it landed in that vacuum between sky and land, promises of destruction rippled through the air. The footfalls were terrifying in their grandiosity, like the sound of mountains toppling from the sky and crushing against the earth. The stampede was slow, yet relentless. Their bulks flexed as the thick foamy biceps expanded, whilst the smoke-columns of their legs shifted forward, their eyes rotating like searchlights, boring the land with suspicion. Nothing dared intersect their paths. From an indeterminate distance, Leverie stared, frozen.

"I still don't understand."

"I think you do..."

Leverie looked only briefly at his companion. His eyes struggled to control tears.

"Your heart is hurt. You bleed still, copiously."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do..."

Nails made of dust slid across the surface of time-space, producing a screech that would have benighted the devil; the vacant moors yielded helpless to their advance. Leverie started crying.

"I cried too when she summoned me to explain."

"But why? Why?"

"You've seen the world, my dear. It is maimed beyond recognition; dead, beyond resurrection. Some of those who have seen us have called us angels, but I am afraid that can no longer be applied."

"So what was all the point of their existence if it had to end like this?"

"I think we must pose the dreadful question, my dear Leverie. Was there ever a point? I think it's a reasonable question to ask."

The infinite line of menace was now in front of them, beyond the twilit threshold, where destinies are conceived and time is tampered with. Their steady march divined a momentous change.

"It cannot end like this!" Leverie protested with tears flooding the peak of his lips. "This is irrational at best." Rosario took his hand and coaxed his gaze gently onto his eyes. He then spoke peremptorily.

"Anarchy reigns everywhere. Why do you think they murdered that poor girl?" Leverie's eyes betrayed the fact that he had already thought about this.

"Because she represents authority," Leverie replied, shifting his gaze back to the unravelling spectacle that passed before them.

"Exactly. She is rich. She is part of an entity that betrayed them." There was silence for a while until Rosario sighed and continued. "Presidents and ministers, popes and bishops, leaders of organizations: all slaughtered, in every region of the world, then buried in the rivers and the lakes at every periphery of the planet. In a way they are reaping what they've sown. But, alas, the men in the street insist on fighting fire with fire. Now the whole world is ablaze. There is no retribution now. I struggled to understand it, my dear. But the more I contemplate, the more I find myself agreeing. By ending them, we grant them a new start."

"That's why we've left my Maria to die..."

"Yes. You've seen her eyes, my dear. She was happy, happy and knowledgeable. The sooner they understand the sooner happiness will be restored to their frail soul."

Silence again, this time, deeper. Leverie closed his eyes for a little while, savouring the bitter taste of loss. Rosario encircled him calmly. After what seemed a while, Leverie posed the question.

"So what will happen to them now?"

Rosario sat down again tilting his head to the west as if the movements of the colossus reminded him. Leverie followed suit and together they followed the distant entities in awe. Then Rosario found the courage to reply.

"I suppose these monstrous entities have been moulded with their sins. I suppose life, as they know it, will end. I suppose no one will survive. "

"Walking parodies of human excess."

"That's quite precise, my dear."

"Grand like their ambitions."

"And murky, like the substance by which their ambitions are made of."

From west to east, as if in mockery of the sun, the infinite line of giants had now merged with the horizon, gifting it a foggy quality that seemed to give off ripples. It was as if the horizon was being exposed to a tremendous heat. Their pace was still loud, still steady; their intentions unforgiving. The birds still refused to chirp; the wind, still subdued its blowing. It was as if, even though everything and everyone had bowed to her unyielding will, little whispers of protests still leaked through. Her will, her will, the ubiquitous silence seemed to pronounce, as if to impose the symmetry of justice on destiny that still pushed its bulky, smoky self away from them-her will. Even though there were no sunsets or sunrises up there; even though time was a triviality left for mortals, something did indeed change, notwithstanding the concept of change is traditionally defined via the mathematics of time.

It was a goodnight of sorts; a goodnight with no promise of morning. Rosario embraced his companion, staving off the tears that still refused to cease. When Leverie no longer moved in his arms, he knew his mind was at work.

"Rosario?"

"Tell me."

"Will they suffer?"

It was cold and sudden; a question meant to conjure answers which in turn conjured more tears. He knew silence would not sate him, and so, to earn the trust Leverie had so gratuitously given him, he replied as clear as he possibly could.

"Yes."

The End

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