Authors: Paul Hughes
He took the ring off his finger, looked at it closely, so happy that he had finally found the one. Or perhaps she had found him... Silver on silver.
Leaves clawing a path around the park bench, that shivering noise of dry and decaying organic scraping along concrete. A black car came down the street, pulling into the entrance of the complex on the other side of the road, waiting for the palpable departure of wrought-iron gate and the ineffable snap of the phase shield before passing through the fence. Windham did not know whose house that was, but they were obviously of some importance if phase tech was being wasted on their protection.
Three identical women came out of the front door of the complex. One opened the car’s back passenger door and bowed subserviently to the salt-and-pepper man who got out. Windham knew that the identical women had to be angels, and the man from the car must be a member of the creature’s newly-created government. Windham squinted and saw the man hand one of the angels a metallic cylinder.
“Move along.”
Windham
jumped up at the voice, and spun around to see a fourth woman, identical to the three inside of the complex, standing behind the park bench.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Your time to serve her will come, Joseph Windham.” The angel’s eyes tore into his mind, a slow-burning tug. He stumbled back a few steps, dropping his silver ring to the ground, where it started to roll away.
The angel reached out and the ring gently lifted from the ground into its hand. It walked over to the silent Windham and placed the ring in his hand.
“Move along, Joseph Windham. Go home to your young bride. We will come for you when it is time.”
He turned away from the angel and walked away, but felt her gaze on his back.
“Mother?”
[what is it?]
“He knows... Or at least suspects.”
[then perhaps it is time for an immaculate conception. it begins.]
Nan
turned away from Windham, who had just turned the corner and continued walking down the sidewalk. This man would be a focal point of history, and he couldn’t even hold on to his engagement ring tightly. Nan smiled to herself.
it begins.
“What?”
“How does it begin?”
He laughed in the firelight of Room 4, still stroking Hope’s hair, still snuggling, although there had been no sex, two soulmates brought together by technology and hating every minute of it, now sharing a moment of tender quiet in the plush fireplace bedroom of the university’s alumni house.
“How does what begin?”
“The new book. ‘The Stillness Between.’”
He stroked her hair. “Well, it starts with a sad little girl who loves chocolate milk.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah? And how does it end?”
Paul stopped stroking Hope’s hair. she turned and looked into his eyes, which reflected the fire beside the bed.
“Paul?”
“It doesn’t end. It’ll never end.”
“Won’t you run out of paper?”
A pause, not a pregnant pause, impossibility of pregnant pause because they were
just friends
, but there it was,
pregnant
pause, and they both broke out laughing in the firelight. Laughter ebbed, silence again held sway, save crack of knot in firewood.
Her gaze was tangible as it swept through oranged visibility. He felt but did not look, could not look, wanted to look. That sound of mouth opening, liquid sound of mouth opening, and he looked, saw that smile.
In the silence of so many nights, that smile was conveyed more through the liquid opening of her lips heard in the black than the actual viewing of the adorable act.
I will use that line someday. I will remember this night.
“Thinking too much?”
“Maybe.”
“About what?”
A blush concealed by night. “The new book.”
“What’s the little girl’s name?”
“Who?”
“The chocolate milk girl. What’s her name?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Hope sat up in bed, playfully shook his shoulders as she leaned over him. “You know, you bastard.” Hair swaying back, hair swaying forth. She took left hand and smoothed hair behind her ear in reflex gesture. “What is it?”
“Hope.”
She laughed, snuggled back down beside him. “My mother loves that name.”
“She has good taste.”
“I like the name Arianna. Ariel. Erica. Something like that.”
something like that
Such stillness in that room... The stillness between them. Sound muted, vision obscured, the only sensation the warmth of her body snuggled down next to him on a bed that was probably more expensive than his car had been, the faint smell of herbal shampoo,
peaches?
smell of peaches from smooth skin, no guarantee of smooth skin yet but an overwhelming suspicion indeed. Peaches.
the stillness between
Hope turned toward him, eyes blinked, faint wetness flickered from iris as if those eyes were made of the fire, of the silver. Glint of silver in a room shimmering crimson.
He closed his eyes, placed his hands on either side of her face, verifying the smoothness of skin with rough and scarred hands, bridging the terror of the distance. Not a kiss, not yet... A kiss would ruin something so beautiful. A kiss would break a heart, break a possibility. No kiss. Stillness. Forehead to forehead, cheek to cheek, tip of nose to tip of nose.
Stillness
.
“Hope...” A whisper into the between.
That smile, that liquid signal of parted lips, that distance between shattered. Fighting no longer.
it’s late night and you’re driving me
crazy.
what if you find—
Reynald?
Eyes open to white ceiling, nurses, soldiers. Early morning contrast in sterile room. Arms restrained. Chest restrained. Legs
“Reynald?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve been requested.”
Nurse unfastening restraints, not meeting resistance. Reynald was too tired to resist, too horrified of his near future. Nurses lifted him out of bed, placed him on stretcher.
An angel walked into the room, stood over the old man.
“This is your Reynald?”
“He’s your Reynald now.”
The angel leaned down, pulled Reynald’s eyelids apart.
“Silver progress on target. Time to descend.”
Jean Reynald lay motionless, unblinking.
time to descend
descending, floating free, ejected from the vessel, crushed and liquid, phased into
genetic material, trace of humanity in that void, in the only void, blood crystallized and shattering and
broken globe falling, enemy force barely pausing to investigate contents before striking out at the Teller, chasing it to
scrape
Windham’s blood, his flesh, unrecognizable, detectable only as human pattern, ice and black, dissolution
into the night
into the
fighting starlight
fighting
against the urge to pick up a piece of that sharp gravel, dig it into her wrists, tear it upward to her elbows, as she would have years ago, a confused, lonely young girl with glasses and frizzy hair.
The weapon had fully retracted into the ocean, but apparently the threat had not been eliminated. Warships tore through the sky, dainty little blackbirds, single-pilot slithers, great awkward lifting-bodies of the destroyers. Something was coming. Somethings were coming.
Helen looked at Hunter, who calmly stared into the sky. No tears.
“Mommy, we need to go.”
Helen nodded.
Hunter took his mother’s hand as she stood up. She picked him up, pausing for a brief moment to squeeze him in a weak embrace, frail form embracing frail form.
“You know where we have to go.”
“Hunter, I—”
He looked directly into her eyes, silver eyes of the catalyzed woman, windows into the soul of a race robbed of the ability to create daughters. And now, Helen’s only son had to leave.
“Don’t cry, Mommy.”
She nodded, feigned a smile. Holding Hunter tightly, she walked over gravel that lacerated more than her feet. The sky was becoming fire.
No stars in that expanse, but pinpoints of light nonetheless as the combat began over the planet. The fighting
starlight always has this effect on me.”
“Yeah.”
Complete understanding conveyed in that one word. That was just the kind of relationship they had, the kind of finishing each other’s sentences relationship that was not a relationship but it was, and it was something, for sure, especially under starlight, fighting starlight, trying to make sense of the indescribable nothing, the enormity of their unimportance.
The sun threatened to taint the horizon with pink, but for now, the ether was black with the white pinpoints of other systems, other stars, other planets. The moon was hiding.
“Do you believe?”
“In what?”
“Other worlds, aliens?”
“No.”
Hope regarded him with some disbelief. “You’re a science fiction author who doesn’t believe in aliens?”
“Nope.”
“What do you believe in, then?”
He grinned. “I, dear Ms. Benton, believe I need more wine.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Resonances. Past lives. We diverge and converge and find them again, like I found you.”
She exhaled, breath visible in the cold night air. Paul put his arms around her, looked up at the multitudes.
“We’re out there, somewhere. People just like us. No little green men, no flying saucers. Just us.”
He bent down, touched forehead to forehead. A dream.
“Somewhere out there, fighting the starlight... That’s what I believe. Just people like us, thinking too much, trying to figure out why we float through the night. Trying to find that sunrise.”