Long-term Apples and The Cycle of Fate

A Story by kealan

The Importance of Acausality

But why would she even reply? Adrian thought. Amusement? Or something much worse?

And what if she does miraculously respond? What then? If I come right out and tell her everything what can I honestly expect?

The phone rang. His father was in the hospital again.

By the time Adrian made his way out, it was past dark and Zoe, his father's girlfriend, was smoking outside the auto-doors, her wrecked hair tumbling in the wind.

“What happened?” asked Adrian, haggard from the walk. The spiral whites of his eyes seemed to pierce the black air. Zoe's hands were trembling, even more than usual.

“Another attack,” she said.

Alarmed, Adrian asked, “Is it bad?”

The young, worn woman took a long time to reply.

(I)

Yesterday, the hints and incidents had been especially fantastic: Registration plates roamed in meaningful sequences, several sources of technology whispered advice, and the general public elaborated, unaware. Adrian had gotten to the stage now where it didn't instil total terror, and the short journeys to his agent's office had become nearly normal.

Twelve quick strides from Emmet Street brought you to the fairly respectable office of Alan Dolan.

As soon as Adrian seated himself on one of the swivel chairs spread around the broad office-floor, Dolan said, “You have to do a performance.”

Adrian simply stared.

“I wasn't joking when I asked you for something,” said Dolan. The intense green eyes seemed uneasy, his egg in the nest bone-dry in the light.

“None of the grants this year are guaranteed, believe me.”

“What do you want?” asked Adrian.

“What do you have?”

“Jesus.” Adrian leaned forward, small, gaunt eyes beading.

“What do you want?”

“I'll take whatever you have at this stage,” sighed his agent, conferring with the laptop on the table.

“All right,” said Adrian, “You can have my B*****d Sonata.” He burst out laughing.

Pitifully, Dolan said, “Would you mind not getting mashed before our meetings. It's not that hard.”

The words were almost a mantra at this stage. “Now seriously, I need something; something serious.”

Frowning, Adrian said “I know.”

From his pocket he took a neatly folded sheet of paper, the bones of a concerto, and handed it over. Dolan donned his glasses and set about studying the straight lines and squiggles. Within seconds he was engrossed.

“Right,” he said after finishing, “this will do for now, but it's not much. I mean it's good. But it's hardly a symphony.”

“I know it's not a f*****g symphony,” said Adrian. “There are no symphonies any more.”

“I know a few people, Rihm for one, who'd disagree.”

“Yeah, they would wouldn't they.” said Adrian leaning away from the sun which had just popped out of a cloud. A scooter shrieked past the window at top speed.

“Why do you keep annoying me about this anyway,” said Adrian, “aren't there six or seven of those grants?”

“Twelve,” said Dolan.

Adrian snorted.

He then asked about the royalty situation. After hearing the reply he then asked for a small loan, which he was given, and then set off humming angrily.

(II)

Frankie's flat was stale with smoke and laughter when Adrian arrived in the toy-spotted sitting-room. His dealer's sultry girlfriend was having her routine bottle of wine watching a soap-opera on a huge plasma television.

“What are you after?” asked Frankie. Adrian paused, frowning at the screen where Lizzy Kalpana had just manifested, her messy blonde hair and remarkable blue eyes staggering as always.

“Thirty of amnesia, if the bags are not as s**t as last time” said Adrian, smiling.

Frankie chuckled politely and his girlfriend hissed a warning. Adrian held up his hands.

“Right,” said Frankie, “hang on there.” He pointed toward a slick black armchair before stepping out of the room.

When Adrian took a seat he registered the woman's short shift, anticipating the pleasantries. However, no words were uttered. Adrian could only glare at the vast plasma television, enjoying what was an incredibly long scene with his long-term apple. Soon he was actually glowering, something he had thought fictional until the glorious day Lizzy Kalpana came into his life.

Frankie had to croak twice before Adrian snapped out of the trance.

“Don't tell me you're into this s**t,” he said, hopelessly.

Adrian returned his gaze back to the screen.

“She's just so f*****g amazing,” he said, embarrassingly.

“Ssshhh,” said Frankie's girlfriend, unimpressed.

“She's a heartless b***h in real life,” she said.

Adrian sighed defensively. “Because she runs that information campaign?” he asked.

Nobody answered; the sound from the screen seemed to elevate.

“.....we've been over this twelve times. There's no way Beck would steal from you. Where would she even have the time? With Larry locked up and Gemma getting suspended from school, she-”

“I don't care how many times you tell me, 12 or 12,000, you're wrong.”

“This is all just because Darren kissed Riley at Danny's party isn't it? If he had never-”

“Right man,” said Frankie, bidding farewell with his eyes as he handed over three small, bulging bags. Adrian clawed his gaze away from the screen, said his goodbyes, and left.

On the short walk home through the centre of town his phone rang. When he answered, his father's slurring voice made him cringe inside.

“Are you not coming over to congratulate us?” his father asked, slowly but loudly.

“S**t, is it you're birthday or something?”

His father burst out laughing. “No,” he said. “It's me and Zoe's anniversary.”

Adrian knew what was coming next before his father said, “12 years today. I can't bel-”

“Look fair play to you dad, but what are you ringing me for? That has nothing to do with me.”

“Ah right,” said his father, darkly. “I just thought with everything going on in you're head lately, you could do with a few drinks.”

“No, f**k that,” said Adrian, “thanks, though.”

“No problem, can you do me a favour? Will you run down to your man Frank and get us an eighth? I'll give you a decent joint out of it.”

The cold breeze cut Adrian's skin. He heard Zoe whispering commands in the background and it made the decision for him.

“No,” he said. “Sorry, but he's gone to buy a cat in Kilkenny.”

Adrian cursed his own stonedness. His father paused, said, “Why is he going all the way to Kilkenny just to buy a cat?”

“Because,” sighed Adrian, “he liked the look of it or something.”

“But how did he even-”

“Anyway, sorry about that da, give Liam or Derek a bell, they'll sort you out, all right, bye.”

“Right, bye,” sulked his father, and hung up.

Adrian got home, smoked a six-skinner, downed seven Clonazepam, and fell into a hard, dream-drenched sleep.

(a)

Far away whispers deep in the internal distance. A slow mist of colour thrifts and ruffles the sludge-like posterior of the experience. A face manifests, rotates, and dissolves. Two cats stand upright on thin hind legs talking in sign-language, making little knawing noise to each other. They turn to Adrian, as if to ask him something, but neither of their mouths move.

(b)

The feeling of immanent take-off. Upside down, strapped in, ready to burst into the earth. Underground astronauts posing for pre-flight photographs, falling blissfully into the sacred sync-hole.

(c)

“You only believe in things without examples. Listen to your Brahm-daddy and ask yourself......”

Voice contorted, face crisp and twisted with burns, squashed to the centre; a disfigured being with calm, unwavering hatred glowing in the caves of his eyes.

“Ovid liked his yoghurt, Hemingway his lemonade, For Kafka it was stamps, so don't come out here in your little Tesla bikini thinking your the s**t's dinner.”

(the blonde dog got her bone of hair. Queen of moons, massaged by multi-coloured spirits, beneath the secret sun, limp and laid out in a Saturn-scented acre of d****s)

“Knives and neurons, little niggly norks, a nook or two? In the afternoon? You have a choice to make, and I wish you the best of fluke you, you green, you mindless brain-rapist. You have no fates left to trade, the numbers are up, you see them cats make licks fashionable in the east. Ohman Ohman Oman you have to see sexy Ovid yoghurt, Brahm-daddy, laughing knives waltz among Roses of the South Pole, last chance to knife, it will hurt when it happens, you have to stop fate now start fate last again...”

The deformed apparition squints and the small radius of his face sucks inwards, yet the bland cube of skin twitches when he speaks. “You'll know it when it happens.”

(III)

He woke up late in the morning with only glimpsing memories of the outlandish dream. However, the impression these left on his mood was grim. He threw the cup on the counter with so much force it slid at an angle and chipped against the back-wall.

“F**k-off,” he advised himself, and flicked down the kettle with force. The slight recollection of a freakish being made him insane with rage for some reason. He wanted to get stoned; he checked the clock and saw that it was exactly twelve in the afternoon.

“Course, it f*****g is,” he said bitterly.

After making a coffee, gulping six customary Clonazepam, and lighting a joint, he put on the news. The Twelve o'clock news.

Halfway through the smoke, the Clonazepam took their sweet little hold and he lay with his feet up on the couch watching the local news through a lens of calm joy. Towards the end of the presentation there was a short showbiz section covering the regional scene and as soon as Lizzy Kalpana's face came on the screen Adrian's mood lightened.

How could someone be so beautiful and yet still exist plausibly in such a vile society?

The feeling he got at the mere sight of her, coupled with her thick northern accent, made him feel-

What did she just say?

By the time he found the remote and turned up the volume, her glorious image had been replaced by an upbeat Scottish woman and a cloudy green-screen. But Adrian was positive she had just said 'I have twelve influences for my twelve selves.......and had said it between side-long glances toward the camera, toward.........

He didn't think she was communicating with him personally, but she was definitely communicating.

After all the intricate coincidences connected to Lizzy, Adrian had no doubts she could see 'it' too. In fact, he knew there were thousands, probably even millions of people who could perceive this fantastic interactive display but for whatever reasons, willing or forced, they had lost the ability to observe and translate them. Lizzy Kalpana seemed highly intelligent, so she must be aware.

With this in mind he reasoned she was acting as some sort of beacon. The more he thought about it, the surer he became. Out of all the correlations, the ones surrounding her were the strongest and most persistent. There was just something familiar, something authentic, about her efforts at dialogue.

Lying there on the couch, feet up, oblivious and serene, Adrian decided to make contact. He just had to figure out how.

He had once typed her name into Facebook �" just out of curiosity �" and 12 profiles of Lizzy Kalpana claimed to be the real Kalpana. When he looked into it, he found a web-interview in which she clearly stated her abstinence from most social media, so facebook was a dead end.

In a moment of cosmic confidence, he realized that if they were supposed to meet then the subtle order and bizarre pattern of this physical reality would surely have a way carved through the unseen mountains of their lives to ensure contact.

In that instant, an idea was conveyed to him that seemed to come from outside himself, and he was on the phone within minutes, having spontaneously acquired charm from this invisible force.

After he had obtained her personal e-mail with ease, he had to think of a way to proceed.

The message he composed had a dozen rewrites by three in the afternoon, and it was closer to four when he finally sent it.

But why would she even reply? Adrian thought. Amusement? Or something much worse?

And what if she does miraculously respond? What then? If I come right out and tell her everything what can I honestly expect?

He didn't plan on sitting around waiting; he intended on popping a few Clonazies and heading round to Frankie's to ask for a 'bag on book', but he had barely made it to the cookie jar of pills when his phone rang.

Something had happened to his father.

No chance of a loan now, he thought miserably, and prepared for a long, starry slink to the hospital.

(IV)

“What happened?” he asked, taking a seat.

His father was sitting on his elbows, his bald head nestled on his chest. The expensive television hissed, the blinds dimmed and honeyed the sunlight. The expression on the gaunt man in the bed was jovial; a thick smile followed Adrian across to the bedside seat by the window.

“Just the usual 'noggin trouble,'” said his father, looking the other way. His breathing was harsh and worn, like the slow scratch of a rake.

“Sorry about yesterday,” he said in a low throaty husk. “I don't even remember talking to you on the phone.”

“You only asked me to get you some green,” said Adrian.

“Yeah, Zoe told me.” He leaned up higher in the bed, his friendly expression strained.

“How are you feeling?” asked Adrian, dully concerned. His father shrugged.

“The doctor said I should be all right to go home tomorrow or the day after.”

Adrian gave a melodramatic sigh of relief. “Hows the head?” asked his father.

Adrian stammered. His father said, “Still seeing the numbers?”

“I'm not in the mood to talk about it now, da. Just......f**k it.”

“Yeah,” said his father, with an odd tone of anger, “f**k it, just f**k it....”

The light from the blinds darkened rapidly, and the man in the bed began to change.

The transition was swift and ugly. Adrian watched, traumatized, as the texture of the face began to morph and distort, bubbling hideously. The room was utterly silent; not even the clicks of machines or clacking of nurses could be heard; just the booming resonance of discoloured lungs wheezing for sustenance.

The face then sucked inward so that the tiny eyes seemed to be facing down, beneath the ridge of the forehead. When the deranged gaze glared upwardly, the result was the most grotesque and terrifying expression Adrian had ever seen in his life.

“You,” said the creature, “You're nothing but a dirty little knife...when you get your hands on you....you're going to wish you were born alive.”

The bottom half of the face began to slide back toward its original position but the face remained at that unnatural angle.

“You know what you did you little prick, and when you're good and ready you're going to show yourself how its done.....”

If it weren't for the vivid visuals before him, Adrian would have laughed it off as drunken madness or pain-killer rage, but the sight before him was undeniable proof. The insane animal in the bed seemed to vibrate with discomfort, yet the minute silver eyes glowed with sick cunning.

“Now get the f**k out of my sight before you think something I'll regret.”

Adrian was still in the early stages of comprehension; it took him a while before he could even move. When he did, he found the air freezing cold, like he had just come out of an Arctic lake.

He had no idea how he came to be standing outside in the corridor.

Visitors filed about each other, some chatting, others eyeing the ground gravely. Adrian stood there, rubbing his sweat-soaked forehead with his trembling thumb and index finger.

Zoe came around the corner, startled, a bottle of suspiciously dark lemonade in her hand.

“How is he?” she asked. Adrian gave a short sullen nod, eyes wandering.

“Sorry,” she said moving past him.

When she opened the door to enter, Adrian could see inside the private room. It was pristine; no bleak vortex or sniggering monster. His father was lying down, sleeping, and the light was restored in full.

“You hanging around?” asked Zoe, holding the door. Adrian shook his head.

Zoe gave a weak smile, but it returned to a malicious leer before the door was even closed.

(V)

The dark was thick and the stars were nowhere in sight. Adrian stood outside the automatic doors trying to roll a cigarette, but the wind bickered his fingers. Tobacco blew high into the air as the half-spun rollie broke with the breeze. He flung the attempt at the frosty concrete.

His mind searched desperately for a positive interpretation of the encounter with his father, but found none. Everything was transforming beyond recognition. Nothing was true any more, nothing was real, and Adrian didn't think it could ever have been real. So what the hell was it?

Simulated Reality? The vicious threats of a sentient universe?

One theory entered the arena and dwarfed all others; it was so deformed an idea he almost disowned it on the spot.

Yet his thinking persisted, long enough to red-light the fractal connections of scenarios, both past and present. Was it really possible? Could he-

The plastic antique in his pocket interrupted the thought with the beep of an e-mail.

The sender's identity read L. Kepler 1212, but the content of the message validated her identity. It was definitely Lizzy Kalpana, and the response was emphatic.

At the bottom of the message in big bold characters: her home telephone number.

He didn't even have to add up the digits to know what they amounted to.

His joy and relief was shadowed by suspicion, though, and he decided to wait until he had freshened up on some Clonazepam before replying.

Events at the hospital had tainted the unexpected reply. The surreal and disturbing encounter with his father had disheartened him, had showed him how cruel the numbers could be.

When he finally got home to his flat the incredible quiet calmed him. He took a few tablets, rolled a smoke, and sat down to the task.

The message he sent was no less cryptic or outrageous than the first, but he chose the words carefully, never editing a single one, working out each character with obsessive efficiency. The e-mail was sent 12 minutes past one in the morning. He assumed the busy actress wouldn't respond for a few days or weeks, if at all. He didn't know she had been eyeing her I-Pad incessantly ever since she had sent her own e-mail, and would reply to his message within minutes.

In that time, Adrian had fallen asleep on his two-seater bed, lost in a hybrid nightmare, and, though it was his last, he would only remember fragments.

(VI)

(c)

A black rainbow clouds out the sun. Twelve quintillion voices kick, scratch and murmur in the earless hole of the observer. A low sense of acceleration, colours trading places.

Lizzy is below him, her shining legs parted, pulling him toward her, moaning. Erection immaterial, throbs and stabs the air. His father standing behind him, hands around his neck, laughing mouths for eyes.

(c)

“.........and the branches are diseased, unwanted but not cut down; saved for deservers, forms and beings..........they climb the rotting stalks of the multiverse, they never fall because there's nowhere to land, some don't even know they exist. But you, son.....you're not even.....”

A face now stretched beyond recognition, like a child’s mask on an old man; a disproportional sphere with one huge, elongated eye covering one half of the head and a small twig nose poking out the other side where the ear usually sits. The mouth is unseen, lying atop the skull, facing up.

“......the Law of Distraction, the Killdalunie awakening, GJ3379....”

The face thins further, making a sound like a sheet of plastic tightening over a bust.

“.....you're not even ready to acknowledge the tree.”

(c)

Put it in me like you used to in the future, and leave the body behind to tend for itself. “she said,” the music here sounds like a burning orchestra or something. “Her bleeding hair glistens and the watery flames rise up, her planetesimal gaze deranged with passion.”

Don't, she says, “with the tone of an old corpse.” Please don't........why are you looking at me like that. This music is like a burning orchestra or something. Want to buy some fate off me, it's good s**t, had some half an hour ago; it's a creeper. “The fleshless tube of vision is thrown into erratic despair, a midnight bandstand, painted with limbs, slowly surrounded by snarling deer, saddled and ridden by vicious sloths with spears in their hands, jaws chopping as they near.”

(b)

The black rainbow begins to clear, he finds himself as a visible entity, a moving object, filled with rage. Knives fly through the sky miles above like ominous drones toward a massacre. Clones of indifference, just mutts of the matrix, click and tut as he flicks and files between them. She screams.

Her hot flesh receives the warm blade silently, once, twice, and again and again, and a final time in the heart, an epic strike.

The area is a platform of screeches, the black rainbow fails to clear.

(a)

A frying sound, balloons blooming silently from the vast, open field. Sunshine.

(VII)

The 129 bus was six stops away from the 102 which in turn brought him six stops further to his penultimate destination. It was a nice, clear day, bright and breezy, and the bus reeked of sweat. Adrian had been in another world long before he had woken up, and barely felt the jolts and coughs around him. All his attention was focused on the upcoming encounter with Lizzy Kalpana.

There was no excitement or joyful anticipation; the sections of the nightmare he could remember had, for some reason, convinced him of immanent finality, The hoped-for quest alongside his obsession was never going to happen, but something was. Today.

He had no idea if it was going to be brutal or beautiful, all he knew was that it was happening, whether he wanted it to or not.

He left the bus and made his way down the busy, glistering street and into the packed park.

The sun was at zenith in the cloudless ocean above, buggies and ball-games peppered the vast inner-city garden. One area in particular seemed busy; a multi-coloured mist of clothes and faces ebbed and simmered amid the blues and greens of the environment. Adrian assumed this was the demonstration he and Lizzy had agreed to meet at, and began to make his way there.

Everything seemed so.....familiar. With an enormous sense of unease, Adrian knew it had nothing to do with the upcoming encounter with his long-term apple; there was something ancient in the feeling, something much more important than physical or even spiritual attraction. On he walked.

As he made his way down the pocked pathway, Adrian passed by a busy bench where an old man sat with a clan of his younger relatives including three children. He had a child's mask stretched over his face, awkwardly, and the children were giggling. One huge eye gawked at Adrian and he turned away, frowning. He didn't know why that image disturbed him so much. Thankfully, the path that led to the protest spread out before him.

The event itself was centred around a bandstand with four patches of grassland, two benches a piece. There didn't seem to be any children in the vicinity, and the atmosphere was surrounded by a micro-environment of gloom. An underlying tension fumed from the crowd, contrasting the summer surroundings. Adrian noticed the emergence of a meek rainbow, and a horrendous sense of belonging tore through him, like he had been here a quintillion times. He never thought a rainbow could be so ominous, so recognisable, so-

“Adrian?”

She was standing right in front of him and the light mythologised her.

In that timeline she was an apparition beneath the burning bulb of the sun, her hair in accordance with the light, her pale eyes stunning as she waited.

“I actually don't believe it,” said Adrian, smiling for the first time that day. “It's actually you.”

Lizzy Kalpana smiled.

“Thanks for meeting me,” said Adrian, hiding the quiver in his throat. “Do you smoke?”

They journeyed to the parallel spot of greenery �" Lizzy had since donned her sunglasses - and took a seat on one of the empty benches.

There was no awkward silence.

“So what do you think it's about?” she asked first.

Adrian was relieved to find no inhibitions whatsoever (apart from the pre-cognitive certainty of destruction), and gave a long speech in which he explained how little he knew. Afterwards, Lizzy appeared disappointed. Adrian saw it in the way her eyes fell through the air.

“Whatever it is,” he said with more heart. “it's the greatest thing of all time. Or, one of them anyway.”

Lizzy seemed relieved.

“It's proof of cosmic intelligence,” she said with a mysterious tone of nostalgia. “It means we're part of something far more amazing than most people realize. The universe knows we're here.”

“Yeah,” said Adrian disdainfully, “I can feel it watching me.”

He didn't intend for it to be a joke, but he was relieved when she laughed.

“I know what you mean,” said Lizzy. “The co-incidences and communications are terrifying at first.”

“Schizophrenic-terrifing,” said Adrian, dismally.

His suspicious interpretations of the experience had seeped through for a moment, and he knew they'd have to be kept in check. He really didn't want this dialogue to end, not yet.

“But it's good though, isn't it?” he said, squinting from the sky. A football came bouncing toward their bench. Without getting up Adrian thrust a leg forward like some vicious pelican and sent the ball careering toward the kids with the outstretched arms.

“I don't know,” said Lizzy. “Anything this powerful can go either way. I think it depends on the perceiver. It can be amazing or devastating.......it's Heaven and Hell on Earth, depending who you are......and what you deserve.”

She took off the sunglasses and turned fully toward him. Unprepared for the epic sight of her face, Adrian darted his eyes to the bland grass.

“I think it's more conscious than you'd think was possible,” he said in a small voice. “If it can talk then there's no reason why it can't think as well. So it knows what's happening here, everywhere.....and it's not doing anything.”

He scorned himself for his pessimism.

“The suffering is not aimed at the people who suffer,” said Lizzy. “It's aimed at those who watch.”

Adrian glanced over, then back to the green, thinking.

“Yeah,” he said, beginning to realize. “And the misery on the planet..........suffering on that scale......despite cosmic intelligence.......it only makes sense if it's not real.”

He waited for the awkwardness to begin. Lizzy only smiled, her shoddy blonde hair jostling to strands on the wind.

“Even if that is the case,” she said. “The pain is real to people who suffer, and everybody who's learned to take guidance from the signs has a responsibility to those people.”

“Yeah,” said Adrian, guiltily.

Feedback screeched from the stage in the bandstand, and then went silent. Two side-fringed Europeans laughed from their blankets on the grass. The area had become swamped with people in a very short time, and Adrian found himself alert, expectant. A fat trio with a guitar, a cello, and a violin, started up a misinformed original composition.

“Jesus,” said Lizzy, wide-eyed and grinning toward the stage.

“This music is like a burning orchestra or something.” She stood up. “C'mon, the speeches will come after this, and I want to be able to hear them.”

She rose from the bench and set off. Adrian, stuck in a dark deja vu and baffled by her natural warmth toward him, could only hop from the bench and scurry after her.

Once inside the mass of bodies things became even eerier. The music had stopped and the chats and murmurs had a delirious dread attached to them; the anticipation itself was sinister. After settling alongside a slim tree in a large concrete pot, Adrian allowed himself to examine the scene.

The indifferent crowd was of some consolation. But then, if they had been conditioned or programmed to be unaware of everything then this would be standard, so the consolation was obsolete. In the sky to the east, air-traffic had dipped into the rainbow, leaving a dark trail along the arc. Something about this deeply disturbed Adrian but his ignorance left him defenceless. The speech began.

A young surgeon began to speak, and from that moment Lizzy was totally focused on the stage. Adrian, however, couldn't stop darting his eyes around the crowd. He had no doubts at all that something was about to happen; he just didn't know if it would be good or bad. Based on his medicinal intuition, it was heading toward the negative.

Time sped up �" not down �" and the sound of the crowd did not drown out but instead intensified. That's when he saw the man with the black eyes, the man he had known all his life.

Already advancing, he shrugged past people with ease, never taking his gaze away from his target.

Stuttering, Adrian tried to get the target's attention, but she seemed to be in a trance of some sort, fixated at the stage. The determined yet terrified-looking man with the black eyes was closing quickly, now just meters away, and Adrian automatically stepped in front of Lizzy.

It was in no way heroic; he felt like he had no control. The action appeared to have been orchestrated from a remote location. The attacker's hands came into view. He clearly had a knife, more like a ceremonial dagger, and was heading straight toward Adrian. There was no doubt or conflict when the attacker saw the obstacle; it was as if Adrian had been the target all along. He sped up, mere feet away, the blade now brandished at chest level.

The sun caught Adrian in the eye, blinding him for a moment, and the extreme fear left him rattling. He tried to get Lizzy's attention again with a series of gagging murmurs and windless chokes, but she might as well have been sleeping. The black-eyed man moved as if independent from the laws of motion. There seemed to be no exertion; he drifted swiftly, one effortless stride at a time, closer, closer...

There was no struggle; Adrian's hot flesh received the warm blade silently, once, twice, and again and again, and a final time in the heart, an epic strike...

Squeals ensued all around them, Lizzy's the loudest. Against mortal logic, Adrian survived the slash through his vital organ long enough to tear the assailant away from Lizzy, who was shrieking, backing away.

Nobody intervened.

The black-eyed figure crashed to the ground, and continued falling........

The concrete liquefied and swallowed him.

Stunned, agonised, Adrian glanced over and saw that Lizzy had aged almost to the point of death, smiling so serenely. Wrinkles now lined her tranquil expression. The crowd around them made a soft humming noise, inflating their skin from inside, rising like balloons toward the sun.

Pink hues burst into being, showering the scene with colour. The air was sweet and moist, a cool wind blowing. Lizzy looked angelic as she knelt by the dead, dying man's side. Her face and hair were fluttering away as petals of flesh, her soft hands quietly disassembling.

Alone, Adrian watched as nature dispersed and silence thickened, as physical reality shimmered, cracked, dissolved...... and time turn to stone. With delirious understanding, and dread on an unseen scale, Adrian Byrne descended yet again.

END 26/11/14

Kealan Coady 2014