WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE - [3 OF 4] - (Revised on 6/21/24)
She peered ahead, squinting and trying to focus on the distorted figures in the distance. It looked as though a warped pane of frosted glass had popped up between her and the clearing. Everything in the clearing appeared frozen, as if time had halted.
Whatever came down in front of Dahl and Eve also came down behind them. Dahl looked around. It trapped them in a translucent bubble, and an eerie, disconnected silence expanded outward. Dahl got the impression the center of the sphere was behind them.
She extended a hand, slowly uncurling her slender fingers, and touched the obstruction. Its frigid surface sent a convulsive jolt up her arm. She yanked her hand away, grabbed it with the other, and cradled it against her chest. For a fleeting moment, she could see through her hand as if made of smoke. Then, another jolt rocked her body and her hand became solid again.
A voice deep in her head, and nothing like her own, said, "If you would like to keep that hand, I suggest you don't do that again." déjà vu overcame Dahl. She did not know who the speaker was while simultaneously knowing exactly who the speaker was.
Undaunted by the strange warning, Dahl took out her knife and used the butt to rap against the surface of the bubble. This time there was no sound, no electric shock and no knife. It was gone. The orb absorbed the blow, muffled the sound and… and what? Made her knife vanish without a trace. But that wasn't quite right either, because she could still feel it in her grasp. She just couldn't see it.
"Drop it now," the strange voice commanded, and her hand opened involuntarily. She more felt the blade fall than saw it, and when it struck the ground, an explosion sent up a soundless cloud of dirt and debris as if a hand grenade had gone off. When she uncovered her face, she found the blade sticking straight up in the bottom of a burned-out crater.
"Dahlia Johns, you are as much a pain in my ass in the past as you are in the future."
She made a soundless off-color statement that made the voice laugh, picked up the knife and put it back in its scabbard.
Dahl studied its shimmering surface for a moment and then, peering out, had a thought. It looked as if time on the other side had stopped. She turned to Eve, saw she was unaffected, and decided time had stopped outside, not inside the bubble. Either way, the danger of being discovered had paused for the time being. And so too, had the entire world outside.
The air inside the bubble prickled with an uncomfortable static charge that brought the tiny hairs on Dahl's body to attention. For a moment, her golden hair stood on end, and she looked like a dandelion readying itself to release its seed into a strong wind. But then her hair fell back into place as the charge slowly ebbed away. She stepped out of the bush, rubbing her tingling forearms as if they had fallen asleep. Then, as if the bubble had filled with even more energy than before, every nerve in her body came to life, stinging and vibrating. Again, as before, the energy abated without warning. It was coming in rhythmic waves, just like when the Hunter Gratzner toppled over.
A sudden feeling of being watched came over Dahl, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she said, "Eve."
When Dahl turned to see why Eve had not answered, she saw a cloaked figure similar to the man in the clearing. The only difference was this person wore a hood to conceal their identity. Dahl turned back, squinted through the barrier, and was certain the cloaked man was still in the clearing. So, who is this person? When Dahl turned back to where Eve was earlier, she found Eve walking straight for the cloaked figure with outstretched arms, as if offering a warm greeting.
"No," Dahl shouted, darting through the underbrush and hauling her back. "What are you doing?" she demanded, paying no attention to the sound of her own voice. She whipped Eve around and shook her as if trying to snap her out of some strange trance. "Can't you see? He's one of them."
Eve shook her head, gently pulled her arm free from Dahl's grasp, and said, "No, he isn't, Dahl. Kearyn hasn't been one of them for a very long time."
"He is," Dahl stressed, thumbing a gesture over her shoulder at the blurry figure no longer standing in the center of the clearing. "Just look. He's right there." After hearing herself say the words, she felt a little foolish. Because if he was indeed still in the clearing, how could he possibly be over there at the same time?
Dahl drew her knife, pointed it at the man, and punctuated each word with a jabbing motion. "How'd you get behind us? And what is this thing?"
"This thing,... As you put it." Kearyn said, waving around at the orb concealing them. "Is how I get around. Although, rarely has it ever been the size it is now. But under the current circumstances, I thought it best to expand it to a size large enough to cloak the three of us."
"Let us out." Dahl demanded.
"I think not," Kearyn replied, turning to Eve. "Perhaps you could explain to Dahlia that there are far worse things outside this orb than there are inside."
"Hah," Dahl said, in a coughing croak. "There's no us in this equation."
Eve looked at Dahl, rolled her eyes and turned to Kearyn with an apologetic shrug and shook her head doubtfully. "Probably not."
Dahl glimpsed a smile pass from Keary to Eve and realized they knew each other well. She stepped away from Eve warily and asked, "Exactly what is going on with you two?"
"From your reaction, I thought it obvious," he replied, gesturing to the man in the clearing. "I used to be him."
"Don't say that," Eve said.
"Never fear the truth, my child. Even if it is difficult to hear. The truth shall set you free."
"Not you two," Dahl snapped, gesturing between him and the much closer figure in the clearing. She pointed from him to Eve and added, "I mean, you two?"
"Quite a lot," he replied. "But as that is personal, I suggest you ask Eve. Although, considering your recent behavior, I doubt she would explain, either. You have always been quick to assume."
"You know nothing about me," Dahl said, flipping the knife from her left hand to her right as if readying for action.
Kearyn laughed. The idea of her hurting him with a knife, or anyone hurting him with a knife, amused him greatly. Not because he was a great fighter. He was not. Nor had he ever been a man of great physical prowess. The implied threat did not scare him, because he was beyond such physical threats.
Kearyn smiled at Dahl as if she were a toddler holding a toy. It made her blood boil and face flush, and she said, "Try me."
"I often forget how the projection I wear affects people, even today," he said, opening his arms wide. "Without ever having met me before, most can spot the underlying evil festering within me after only being in my presence for a short time. I suppose it helps little to be in the presence of my greatest sins." He gestured at the cloaked figure considerably closer.
"Projection," Dahl repeated.
Kearyn ignored her and went on. "As I have already alluded, I have not always tried to be a good man. I have been selfish, more than a little arrogant and hypocritical. And those were only a few of my more endearing qualities."
"If you're trying to win me over," Dahl said. "You're doing a shit job."
Kearyn nodded, shrugged, and sighed. But he did not argue or try to defend himself. Eve looked like she was going to say something to Dahl, but he waved her down and nodded don't. "Because of battling my many faults," he continued. "I became the piteous creature that now stands before you."
Dahl turned, threw a told-you-so glare in her direction and then added a see he admitted he's a shit look just in case she missed the first one.
"Just listen." Eve said, shaking her head at Dahl. The tone of her voice carried a subtle but unmistakable warning.
"Those scarce few who I call friends defend my abominable actions by saying I was a misguided youth and the path I walked was not of my creation. While they are not entirely mistaken, those are only feeble excuses for my genocidal behaviors. As a boy, I was angry, easily manipulated, and cursed with powers I neither understood nor knew how to control. Even so, my choices… all of my choices… were my own. And they were always..." Kearyn paused, fixing Dahl in his riveting gaze. "selfish, to say the least."
"Oh, boo-hoo," Dahl replied, glaring at him as if he were a bug to be squashed under her heel. "I'll feel sorry for your ass just as soon as you return my friends and get us all the hell outta here alive and safe."
"Perhaps alive," he replied, gesturing over Dahl's shoulder. "But no one in this universe will ever be safe as long as he lives."
Dahl assumed Kearyn was lying because she knew he couldn't do that because Moss and Lockspur had long since died. One from stomach injuries, the other from falling over a cliff. She was alone in a world she did not understand and never wanted to come to. She only took the job because it was a cushy intel run and not a retrieval job. It was supposed to be safe and easy. But everything had gone to shit in a hurry. She fixed Kearyn in a stare of her own and said, "Until then, sell your bullshit stories of heartache and regrets to someone else. Because I ain't buying 'em."
Kearyn ignored her, choosing to go on as if Dahl had said nothing. "After my unexpected transformation, I was ashamed of my appearance. It was then I had to decide. Do I hide the monster beneath the man I was in the past, or do I present my true form to the galaxy? As you can see, I choose to hide. Yet another terrible choice in a long succession of bad choices. I believed then, altering my appearance would help me feign normalcy. In the end, it didn't work. My glamor was no more effective at hiding the real me than dousing a bloated corpse in perfume is at concealing the ripe stench of the decomposition inside a putrid belly."
"How sad it must be for those around you," Dahl snapped. "Every time your mask slips, they glimpse the real you." She did not know what he was going on about. He looked normal to her. A slender, blonde guy in his mid thirties.
"Exactly," he agreed, pausing long enough to gesture at himself before going on. "It didn't take long to realize no one would accept my true form or the mask I hid behind. So, I disappeared. I have certain gifts to help me evade detection. How should I put it? I walk between the land of the dead and the world of the living." He gestured around, and added, "In fact, you find yourself there right now. Inside this bubble you are in my world, and therefore, capable of seeing through my glamor if you choose to."
Dahl looked around, offering an expression of sarcasm, and said, "As for seeing the real you," she said, rolling her eyes doubtfully, "I care less. And while your world seems like a nice place to visit, I'd like to get out now."
"And yet here you will remain until we have concluded what we came for."
"And just what did we come for?" Dahl asked, giving out an explosive laugh. "I only came, hoping to find a missing family member, not to follow a bunch of nut-job-strangers to some long forgotten artifact of doom."
"But you did," Kearyn countered, throwing up a hand to silence Dahl. "You came all this way because you are an integral piece in a clock that began ticking down long before this galaxy even came into existence. You came here because it is your destiny to be here to witness what is to come. To be part of it. Like it or not."
"How 'bout not." Dahl snapped. "And why are you here?"
"Because I am the monster that set the clock in motion. Thus, it falls to me to stop it before we are all damned," he answered, holding up a gloved hand to wave off Eve's growing need to protest his self-deprecation.
But Eve would not have it. She would have her say no matter what he wanted. "You can't change what happened in the past. None of that was your fault. You say we're pieces in a clock. Well, fine. So are you. You cannot have it both ways."
"I am not a piece of the clockwork. I am the clock and the fault of who and what I became rests solely with me. Without the myriad of choices I made as a young man, there would be no ticking clock over our heads or a monster standing here before you now. Let alone the monster now standing at the outer edge of this time bubble."
Dahl reeled around and came face to face with the cloaked man who should stand frozen in the center of the clearing and jumped back.
Kearyn walked to the edge of the bubble and stood facing the man. It looked as if he stood in front of a full-length mirror. "Admitting that here and now means I must finally concede there is only one of me. Even a coin with two sides is still a single thing. And whichever side the coin presents itself as, it is still just the coin."
Dahl stared dumbly at Kearyn, thinking his mask looked and sounded familiar. And that growing realization made her uneasy. She wasn't really sure where she knew him from, but she was certain she knew him from somewhere.
"Once," Kearyn said.
"What?" Dahl asked.
"You were wondering where you knew me from. It will come to you. But I warn you now. You will never speak to me about this."
"Why's that?"
"Because if you alter my future. It will undoubtedly destroy us all."
Dahl shook her head at Kearyn as if he were utterly insane. She grinned and made a sarcastic, spooky ghost sound. That's when a screeching metal on metal sound like a rusted lock being forced open filled her mind and Dahl fell on her hands and knees, seizing her head in both hands. When she looked up, she watched Kearyn's ancient glamor peel away one thinly veiled layer at a time. As Dahl rose from the ground, fumbling for her knife and wanting him to get out of her head, the image of death bore its way into her splitting skull.
At first, it looked as if time had sped up around Kearyn. Although, he aged slowly and then faster as passing seconds became hours, weeks, years, eons, millennia. His once smooth blonde hair grayed, became coarse and kinky, then thinned and finally fell out. The skin on his bald head became blotchy and spider veined, then finally darkened into a withered shoe leather helmet. A few moments later, a frail, pallid corpse, shriveled by the not so slow passage of time, stood before her. But that's not where the transformation ended. With every passing moment, his once beautiful and vibrant cloak faded to a careworn, filthy gray. What was once majestic fabric looked as if the wind could blow it into tattered shreds. Then, when Dahl's brilliant blue eyes met his milky white, lifeless gaze, she shrieked in horror and turned away. She could not look at the corpse standing in front of her. It was ancient and dead and decrepit as all the pharaohs of Egypt combined.
The lifeless, desiccated thing standing in the spot where a young, handsome man had been only moments earlier. This piteous thing was no man at all. It was only pretending to be a man. It was the embodiment of death. Kearyn was the grim reaper incarnate.
"Dahl," Eve said, turning to her with no sign of concern or fear.
At first, Dahl thought Eve couldn't see him for what he was, but then, it became obvious; she saw him. Dahl wondered why Eve didn't shrink away from it in terror and thought of screaming to get away. Can't you see it? But Eve was under this mummy's spell.
"I'd like to introduce you to my creator." Eve said. "This is Kearyn Fry."
Dahl's mouth fell open in shock and she thought, this is way worse than a spell. Disbelief forced out the fear, taking her ability to speak, and Kearyn corrected Eve. "I believe you meant to say, my recreator."
"Sure. That too." Eve replied cordially, gesturing for Dahl to come closer.
Dahl held both her ground and her knife at the ready. Maybe she couldn't kill this unholy abomination, but she could still spill his guts. Then she looked at the withered husk standing before her and doubted that in his current state of total desecration, she couldn't even do that much damage. She shuddered when she thought of what he looked like under his cloak.
"Dahl," Eve said, giving her a look that said, get over here and stop behaving rudely.
"This is the guy?" Dahl blurted, still staring in utter disbelief. Her sudden shock turned to an instant and unexpected rage none of them saw coming. "He's the one who rescued you from the Necromongers? Rebuilt your wrecked body? Gave you a new life? This guy?" Dahl lowered her knife, took an angry, I'm gonna drive this blade into your genitals step forward, and added, "And I suppose he's the one with all the Goddamn answers why half the people I love are dead? He's that guy? Right? Aren't you? Are you that fucking guy?"
Kearyn said nothing.
"Dahl," Eve said, looking at her as if she were embarrassing her. "This is Kearyn, and he's-"
"I don't give a fuck who he is, Eve." Dahl shouted, cutting her off. "I've had enough of this happy horseshit. And I'm sick of not knowing what's going on. And what pisses me off most is that all this shit is happening because some undead asshole made a few bad life choices when he was a kid," she raged, brandishing her knife in Kearyn's direction again.
Kearyn laughed. He couldn't help it. He didn't want to laugh and knew it would only infuriate her more, but Dahl had always made him laugh when she got mad. It was sort of her go to move; he remembered. Anger over fear. It's what kept her sane when it hit the fan. And right now, he rightly figured, it was hitting the fan pretty damn hard.
"You think this is funny?" she screamed, and hurled her knife at his face. It tumbled once, straightened out, and then just before it sank home. Drilling into the dried flesh between his eyes. Kearyn vanished, leaving behind nothing but a faint popping noise followed by the sound of air rushing in to fill a void. The knife flew into the dense bushes behind him and a savage, guttural scream of frustration escaped Dahl's lungs.
"Boo," he said, suddenly popping up behind her.
She reeled around, fist barely missing the side of his head as a pop/whoosh sound signaled he was probably standing 20 feet further away. She was right.
"Don't worry," Kearyn said, tossing her knife at her feet and gesturing over her shoulder at the figure impatiently standing on the other side of the bubble. "If you were wondering. He can't hear us. We're cloaked. I've seen to that."
"Listen, asshole." Dahl snapped, her red face burning in Kearyn's dead eyes. "Do I look like I give a ripe shit if he can hear us? Or anything other than kicking you in the nuts?"
After a quick moment, Dahl sensed Kearyn was grinning at her. He wasn't, of course. There was no way he could with a petrified mouth. A mouth she desperately wanted to punch. In actuality, what Dahl sensed was his thoughts. He was thinking about grinning.
Dahl bent down, maintaining eye contact with Kearyn the entire way. She picked up her knife, slid it back in its sheath and said, "Has anyone ever told you that you're a dick?"
The sensation of Kearyn's invisible grin intensified, and he said, "Like many, I too am a product of my environment."
"Then I suggest you find a new environment to live in," she said.
"You are a smart ass, Dahlia Jane Johns. There's no denying that. You always have been," he said, shaking his head at her as if she were a petulant child throwing a tantrum.
Dahl matched Kearn's grin and said, "It's a family thing."
"No doubt," Kearyn said, leaning to the side to see something behind her.
The sound of ripping cloth came from behind Dahl. She reeled to see what was making the noise. But before Dahl knew what was happening, Eve had transformed, run over, thrown Dahl over her shoulder and raced to a spot behind Kearyn. As Eve plopped her down, the tearing sound stopped. A deep slash formed in the bubble and the cloaked man in the clearing stepped inside. The slash sealed up behind him. Everyone else in the clearing remained frozen in time.
Kearyn looked back over his shoulder, saw Dahl pull out her knife and said, "You have about ten seconds to choose a side. His or mine."
"I thought you said you were just different sides of the same evil coin."
"I did," he admitted, stepping between her and his alter ego. "What you have to decide is which side is the lesser of two evils."
"Those are my only options?"
"For the moment."
"Kearyn." the other Kearyn said, in a sickly sweet voice. "I see you look… the same."
"Purifier." Kearyn returned the greeting, in the same sickly sweet tone."And I see you are still his bitch."
Have a story idea? Comment it and let me know.
Like it ? Add to library！
Rate and share!
Thanks!