MIERKE

A warning comes from far away.

MIERKE

A breeze was playing with the trash in the alley. Broken glass glittered among the newspaper pages and soda cans in the starlight that penetrated the narrow defile. The drunk was trying to sleep. He was also trying to forget that his last bottle of whiskey was empty out on the street. To make things worse, some girl was yelling and it hurt his head.

“GO” she hollered.

“Go yourself” he murmured.

He wore the absolute finest to be had from the local YMCA lost and found, his latest acquisition, a red Forty-niner’s hoodie with the front pocket torn and dangling and about ten holes you could put a finger through. Bright blue sweatpants and flip flops finished out the look and shaggy long blonde locks covered his face.

He did not grow a beard and this often bothered him because he did not like to feel left out when congregating with other indigents. They saw his smooth pale face and bright green eyes and felt that he had not really joined them yet at the bottom of life, and would not truly be one of them unless he could weather up a bit. For this drunk, that was just not in the cards. As usual the alcohol was wearing off far too fast and the sound of some sobbing woman only a dozen feet away was not doing much to maintain his buzz.

It was a rare day that found him without a bottle in reserve, but something had happened a few days before that had interrupted his life's easy rhythm. Something that had not happened in a long time. What it was he could not really recall but it had him on edge. Somewhere in the muddy waters of his memory floated an image of a woman with wide eyes and an astonishing shock of red hair holding a radio antenna of all things. This made him very uncomfortable. He actively tried to avoid remembering things whenever possible. There was nothing for it but to go and find another bottle or three to thoroughly bury whatever was causing all this unnecessary thinking immediately.

The drunk started to stand but something tickled his perception and he grew very still. In the normal course of events he may never have noticed. But in his agitated and uncommonly sober state he was irritatingly sensitive. He knelt and placed his fingertips against the dirty pavement, eyes closed. Through the ground he felt a pulse, a vibration so faint that it was like a caress to the tips of his fingers. It ran through him in waves, first soft then stronger. The pulse grew until he could feel it through the soles of his cheap rubber sandals. He stood and let his hands rise up outstretched at shoulder level now feeling the pulse in the air. It came from the earth, within the earth. People passed by on the street walking a few feet from him but they did not feel it, they moved along their way hardly noticing the sobbing woman. They could not perceive the waves of energy that coursed through all things. They were blind to the message that rang through the world around them. The pulse came through the earth but the earth was not its origin. The drunk cast his mind’s eye through the kaleidoscopic patterns of energy that carried the waves. He followed them to the molten core of the earth and rode the altered waves back to what he thought must be the source. For a moment he saw a waterfall and a small pool beneath a willow tree and shapes beneath the water that pulsed with pink light painting the trees pink then dark, pink then dark like a heartbeat.

“I know what you are” the drunk said. But the dread shapes under the waterfall only reflected the pulse. Following it up through the sky he rode its waves until his consciousness was flung into the infinity of space, rushing though the light scattered void....and suddenly he recoiled like a rubber band pulled to its limit he snapped back into himself. The vague perception of some dark mass among the nebula glimpsed for only an instant quickly fading from his mind leaving only waterfall and willow and the pink tattoo that beat in light against the shadowed trees.

The pulse was gone. The drunk kept his eyes tight shut listening for the faintest sign but there was nothing. The message had ended too soon to find the source, and he could not find his way through the heavens without it to guide him. He opened his eyes.

The drunk dropped lightly to the ground to land kneeling, face only inches from the street. He had been suspended above the pavement and smoke was rising form the burned newspapers that lay where his feet had left the ground. The brick of the buildings flanking the alley ran molten from rough circles ten feet from the ground.

For a long moment the drunk knelt and breathed. He longed for a fresh bottle of whiskey to put him back to the stupor he had clung to for so long. Change was coming again and the others would sense him moving and call him by his name. Already he felt their gazes, the ones that remained. They stopped where they were all around the world, reaching out through the waves to search for him. He felt their fear of him. He had given them reason to fear.

Standing he felt the rags of his burned clothing falling away from his flesh. His body still throbbed with energy, a beacon to those who could perceive it. Focusing his hazy mind he suppressed his disturbance of the fabric of all things, stilling his resonance. It was a clumsy thing at first, like flexing muscles long unused. In the last moment before he closed himself to the waves a name came to him from the other side of earth. His name.

“Yes,” he whispered, “I am Mierke, and I am awake.”

A gasp at the mouth of the alley disturbed his reverie. His head turned. A young woman stood framed in the lights from the street, both hands covered her mouth. Black streaks ran from her eyes and fresh tears welled there. Her wavy hair was spiked and clipped short with a blonde streak that ran across her forehead. She looked sad frightened and beautiful. Mierke grieved that she would have to die.