Caught Between

we hear the sounds of dust and sand.  Whirring insects found in the Australian outback are heard.  Then a crackle of lightning and flame, followed by a large ‘ARRIVAL’

Emea: My word

Odai: Dear gods on a gondola… 

Emea: Oh… I singed my hat.

Adelaide: I’m sorry, I’m still trying to work… on my… struggles for the word and comes up with gibberish preci-ousness.

Voncid: Pre-cision my dear.  But you are much improved in both your vocabulary recall and transportations.

Odai: There’s a few stories there I’d wager.

Voncid: A crevasse here, an occupied apartment there.  The inside of that cliff-face was the most troublesome.

Adelaide: and painful.  Sorry again.

Voncid: Not to worry, circumnavigating the globe is not supposed to be easy.  Never has been.

Emea:  Though travel by Enkindled is certainly much faster than most of the historic methods.

Odai: ok, old man, what did you bring us out here to see.

Voncid: You’ll have to break that habit in mixed company.  I look young enough to be your great grandson these days.

Odai: Right, I rarely look with my eyes since my current self started losing our sight.  So… yes… very young, it’s a fine face I suppose.

Voncid: You suppose?  I’m a handsome devil.

Odai: but that is the issue somewhat isn't it?

Voncid: What do you mean?
Emea: He means some very serious cruelty was done by that face.

Voncid: Oh this again, everyone understands.

Emea: They say they do and they might rationalize that they do… but what someone says and what they think are two things. The heart has no ears.

Adelaide: What's that?

Voncid: The heart has no ears.  She thinks it will sound more weighty if she says it in Russian.

Adelaide: Did it?

Voncid: Yes of course it did, but it's still ludicrous to bring it up, especially in the middle of a job. We are working here, yes?

Emea: You keep brushing this off.

Voncid: Because it’s silly.

Emea: You dragging that devil's smile around…

Voncid: Luca is fine, he’s damn well used to some weird don’t you think?

Emea: And Pip

Voncid: She can’t even see it!

Emea: Owen… the voice… you still have his voice.

Voncid: honestly I… I suppose I didn’t think of that.

Emea: But that’s just it, you should have.  You always think of the human details.  Your compassion is muted.  You need to face what’s happened.

Odai:  I do appreciate conversations about both faces and facing things, but we’ve got visitors.

Adelaide: These round animals are here… I didn’t know if I should be concerned.

Voncid: Wallabys… quite a few.

Adelaide: They feel sad.

Odai: Maybe they knew the victim.

Voncid: The animals are probably drawn to the outpouring of ether from the transportation.  It confuses animals sometimes, they shouldn’t be a problem, I’m all prepared.  Adelaide could you pull back that tarp there.

the sound of a tarp moving and sand falling off it

Odai: My word, it’s just as you said.

Emea: Poor man… looks painful.

Voncid: Sometimes when burned the tendons and ligaments of the jaw dry out and pull taught, can make it look more like they are screaming than they were… although in this case I don’t think so.

Odai: And this side frozen solid enough that parts of him shattered when he fell over… 

Emea:  Is that steam?

Voncid: Yes, the half of the body facing you is still extremely cold, the front here is extremely hot. I haven’t been able to make an ID… his fanny pack likely had his identification, see the burnt edges of the belt there?  No one has found him yet, luckily, I can’t imagine how the local rangers would deal with this body…

Odai: Observers found him?

Voncid: Yes, early this morning there was a large burst of outside energy reported between Yulara and Uluru. This gentleman was the epicenter.

Odai: Well, I suppose we should wake him up and hear what he has to say.

Voncid: I just have to ask, you are sure you won’t at least give a necromantic waking a try?

they start to walk away, volume fading down.

Odai: Cid I told you…

overlapping with Emea and Adelaide, in the background

Voncid: Let me just show you the forms at least!

Odai: Cid I won’t do it.

Voncid: You’re being a stubborn unreasonable old goat.

Odai: We are the same age.

Voncid: Look at this face, no one will believe you… now listen to your elders and do the necromancy!

Odai: You’re impossible. 

Emea: aside Adelaide?

Adelaide: Yes?

Emea: Have you heard him use the term necromantic waking before?

Adelaide: Yes, a few times… 

Emea: Has he called waking the dead anything else?

Adelaide: I think… recl- reclaim… reclaiming?

Emea: Thank you… at least he hasn’t totally abandoned it, Ida…

walking back, volume of voices raising

Voncid: We’re only trying to safeguard the Vessel, every tool should be at our fingertips.

Odai: I’m afraid I’m resolute.

Voncid: Well, shall we proceed?  Odai has turned down learning the nature of the fabric of life and death and weaving it to his liking.  Again.

Odai: I’ll give in and defile myself with necromancy if you’ll give up murdering and eating plants.

Voncid: you’ll take cinnamon from my cold dead tendrils.

Emea: At least your old man bickering hasn’t changed.

Voncid: Watch how easy it is Odai, you’re being a baby.

magical crackle as the corpse revives

We hear a horrible burned/melted gurgle scream

Emea: Gods, stop, put him back! 

Odai: He’s in agony, release him!

Voncid: No, no, remain calm, he’s in no pain… the front of the body is still extremely hot and while we have been waiting… the vocalizer I inserted seems to have melted… Adelaide… would you be a dear and pop me back to the Ardent to retrieve another?

Emea: While you’re there, the cards are done for Phillipa.

Voncid: Very well, and you two?

Emea: We shall take in some of this glorious scenery.

Odai: The red centre indeed it is…

click click

Voncid: There, our subject is awake, alert and ready to render his final testimony.  Woodford Manning?

Woody: dry, gathering himself My friends have always called me Woody… 

Voncid: We do hope to be your friends.  If you tell us how you came to be in this state, we will seek to avenge you.

Odai: And to protect others from the same fate.

Woody: I… no one can protect anyone from them.  I don’t know what the hell happened to me… why they picked me… but I don’t think anyone can stop them…

Voncid: We've had this sentiment expressed before, and we’ve managed.

Emea: Just stay calm, they can’t harm you any more.

Woody: I guess not… damage is done.  beat Got that adventure after all.  Adventure comes with danger stupid stupid she’ll be real impressed now.

Odai: What’s that?

Woody: She said I lacked a sense of adventure.

Odai: Well, my boy you are endeavoring on the most significant adventure you or anyone else can take, other than birth of course. Magic in his voice Tell us what happened. 

Woody: I remember water falling down my cheeks… It was so hot, my eyes… my eyes were melting… but… before that, before that at the start… my eyes watered then too.  I remember tears going down my cheeks but not because I was sad, I mean, I was sad but it was just exhaustion.  I’d been staring into the screen, Instagram burning my eyes dry.

I’d redownloaded it again, fifth fucking time, told myself I wouldn’t, but here I was again desperate searching clues on her travel magazine of an Instagram for where I’d gone wrong, how I could win her back… pathetic and I know it.  The sheen she’d managed to give her life, the gloss on it… all she’d had to do was kick me to the curb and she was living in a magazine… or more like an ad for some drug that fixes your colitis or some shit.  It had to be a put on.  White water rafting next to skiing next to tennis lessons like, three posts and three different biomes?!

She was like a dog straining at its leash and the second I’d let go… or rather she chewed loose, she had all this momentum and velocity and… I dunno VERVE for life.

Voncid: You have to be careful not to affect their speech patterns and word choice.

Emea: He could know and use the term verve?

Voncid: No one who talks casually about stalking their ex on Instagram uses the word verve. 

Odai: He’s right, being cheeky my bad, please go on.

Woody: She was right, of course.  I was a rock she’d been tied to.  She’d been so excited for me to take the job that worked from home, but I just let that mean I was always at work.  Carrying my slim black laptop overlord wherever she took me.  Everywhere had an internet connection and I always had a reason to turn any hotel on any of her adventures for two into an office.

It's just… I’m so behind… I was so behind.  I’d only just started making the kind of money that let us go on those vacations, and I know she wanted a house, a garden, our garden to table, won’t that be nice, well I gotta pay for my half and I’m way behind.  My sister’s place could be in home and garden and Doug is regional big shot who gives a fuck.  Mom did the “oh no, well you know, it’s not a competition Woodford.”

It was just as she said that I realized, oh yes, it was a fucking competition.

Everything was.

So I guess if it’s a competition I could give up or win right?

And I thought of the Colour Adventure.

I guess that needs some explanation… it was a thing I’d thought up when I was a kid… the thing she and I talked about that I think made her fall for me?  No, she never fell… she… tried? I guess?

I remember how her eyes lit up when I told her about it, and ever more when I showed her my notebook with the sketches.  I don’t remember what started it but I planned out an adventure, a place to go for every color. Purple were the lavender fields in Provence.  I’d seen them in a post card on my aunt's fridge.  I asked about this amazing picture, row after row of symmetrical, vivid purple flowers as far as the eye could see.  It was like another planet.  She sighed and said no, it was just a pretty picture she’d bought off a rack at a book store.  She sounded so sad… like she wished the flowers were real and she could really see them, but… they were… they were real.  So I started collecting colors after that.

Blue was the ice in a glacier.  It was a blue unlike anything I’d ever seen.  Like… a ghost glowing.  Yellow was the grass on the savannah.  Black was volcanic sand in Hawaii. And red… red was the rocks at the red centre in the outback.  

I wonder when I’d changed?  When the kind of person who would get excited about places with lots of color changed into someone who would stuff the sketches and post cards and pages cut out of picture books in the basement and only bring it out to impress a girl?

What did I get so distracted by? I just remember this… pressure… I just always felt someone standing on my chest telling me to hurry up, but where the fuck was I going?

Voncid: No where at all.  I’m so sorry your life was cut short before you had a chance to realize that. 

Woody: It really didn’t matter… did it.

Voncid: You mattered.

Woody: I came here out of spite.  Maybe I deserve it.  These places are sacred right?

Odai: everywhere is sacred.

Woody: Well I came here to take pictures of a wonder of the world to rub it in people’s face on a social media app, if that’s not cursed fucking behavior I don’t know what is.

I’m realizing I might have been a little unwell…  I looked at the trips, the expense, and I opted for the one farthest away.  I figured if I had the motivation I might as well go for the farthest trip.

The flight was insane.  I thought I’d lived my whole life on that plane by the time we landed.  And I couldn’t sleep.  The seat next to me was empty if you can believe it and so I thought, amazing, I’ll be able to spread out a little, get some serious sleep.  No fucking luck.

I would wake up just cooking, dreams of pressing up against the side of a black iron stove, gasp awake sheen of sweat head to toe, like I’d been in a sauna, that kind of even all over sweat you get… and then finally get myself back to sleep and wake up, so chilled I was stiff, achey. Dreams of licking a flag pole in winter and losing a layer of skin… staring at a film of your own taste buds…

I’d left a day to recover before heading in for the tour.  I was actually meeting a work associate of mine who’s from around here, loves to hike-I passed out in the hotel room, dead to the world and slept through an alarm and woke up in time to see Paul was bailing cause his kid had the flu and he was so sorry, mate.

I couldn’t get my socks on because my legs were so sweaty and my head was all stuffed up. I remember thinking I was having some kind of allergic reaction and added it to my list of things to be pissed about.  What was supposed to be a friendly meet up and casual breakfast turned into a rushed coffee shop reheated egg sandwich thing that I sat staring at realizing if I ate it I’d regret it on the hike… oh shit… that’s right, I forgot about her…

This woman.  How did I forget her, she was so striking.  She sat across from me and… she didn’t have an accent.  I thought she would.  She sat across from me and looked into my eyes and… huh, she had that thing, with the two different color eyes, hetero-chromia right?  Yeah.  She touched the back of my hand and I thought about pulling my hand away but I didn’t… why didn’t I?  I think we talked… I can’t remember.

Then she said this weird thing, I remember thinking, “Well weirdos exist on this side of the world too.”  She said, “You don’t have to be alone ever again.  They will love you.”

Voncid: The bulk of those memories just aren’t there.

Odai: Sounds like one of them, for sure.  Or a Curator?

Emea: How long has it been since we’ve seen signs of the Twins?

Voncid: Generations. There have been incidents but nothing like this.

Emea: How many would this make Ascendant at once?

Voncid: Four. Oversoul, The Rabbit Headed Prince, The Trumpet, and if this is true, the Twins.

Odai: Not. Good.  Hasn’t been this many since… 

Voncid: Adam.

Emea: Owen… 

Voncid: It’s fine.  We need to finish.

Woody: I don’t remember her leaving, but I do remember feeling really flushed at the same time a chill ran down my spine.  You know when some people walk behind you and you get that shudder?  I think she gave everyone in the restaurant that feeling.

I opted out of the egg thing and drank a protein  shake instead, hurried to the tour bus. It was really jarring to be alone.  I think what that woman said and the fact that literally no one else on this tour group was by themselves hit me pretty hard.

It started right when we saw that first red bluff, or I think that’s what they are called.  This huge shockingly red pillar came into view and my face started feeling hot.  I thought at first I was having some kind of emotional reaction.  This is what I wanted right?  I was fulfilling a childhood dream, here come those happy feelings, the relief of that pressure you can’t name… but I wasn’t here out of a sense of wonder I was here to prove a point to… to who?  No one cared, no one would give a shit if I posted pictures from the fucking moon and then this… surge of anger welled up.  

I was so so fucking mad.  I could feel my fingers tightening on the fabric of the seat ahead of me… and the heat just cranking up.  Was it sunburn?  How?  It was all over.  I realized sweat was rolling down my face.  Like… is it called a “flop sweat?” It was crazy.  I’d never experienced anything like it and it was getting worse.

The bus slowed and pulled over into a parking area and I could feel that crazy heat and the weird aimless anger that followed it stop getting worse, which made me think maybe it was some kind of motion sickness.  As soon as we were stopped I clambered out of the bus and I must have looked really fucked up because everyone got out of my way real quick.

The fresh air didn’t help at all.

If anything it was getting worse again.  Slowly.  Slowly this time but definitely worse.

The tour guide asked the other people on the bus to stay there, and I remember thinking he was scared… was he scared for me?  Of me?  I’m having some kind of an attack and he’s scared OF me?  It made me really mad.

He asked me something and… I just hit him.  I don’t even know what he asked.  He opened his mouth and suddenly all that pressure, that neverending pressure shoving down on me was his fault and I smashed my palm into his mouth.  I heard this chorus of gasps from the bus.  The tour guide didn’t make any noise at all.

One of his teeth was stuck in my palm.

The heat was getting worse.  The people on the bus were staring.  I started to run.  I just started running down the road.  In the middle of nowhere.

My feet slipped around wetly in my shoes full of sweat and now it was my back that felt like it was on a grill and I just ran and ran… I’m not in, like, good shape or anything but I ran until I couldn’t see the bus, couldn’t see the parking lot… and… and the heat started to go.  The farther I ran the more the heat subsided.

Then this… this rush of thoughts.  Fuck.  Did I really hit that man?  Why did my palm hurt?  Oh shit is that a tooth… it was like life caught up with me suddenly and I hadn’t even known who I was… I must be sick, am I having a stroke or a heart attack or a psychotic break?

I didn’t notice the car rolling next to me at first.  They must have called out “hey are you ok” a few times.  I looked up and saw this older couple, big smiles, soft eyes of sympathy.  “You have an accident dear?” the woman asked.  “You need help,” she said it, half question, half statement.

“There’s a town up ahead, let us take you.  Can you tell us what happened?”

I couldn’t.  I couldn’t tell them anything, but I knew I needed help so when they popped the back door of the car open I got in.

They were blasting AC. The lady was fanning me off.  Kept saying I had sunstroke, kept asking what happened.  The guy was on his phone, maybe not getting service because he kept shaking it. I started to feel better almost immediately.

The sweat dried up and my heart slowed down and the scalding frustration seeped away.

I kept cooling and cooling.  I could breathe.

But… it kept going.  I kept getting cooler and then colder.  I had just started to explain I’d been on a tour group and had some kind of attack when another attack, even stranger started.

As I was talking to her, the lady was turned around in the seat, big kind eyes, sad smile… my teeth started chattering.

Her big, kind eyes started to look nervous.  Started to flit to the man in the driver's seat.

She told me my lips were turning blue.  Said John we need medical attention for this man immediately, then told me to stay calm.

Icewater started running out of my eyes.  

Nothing mattered.  No one cared.

Bitter bitter sadness and resentment started crystalizing where the anger had been.  

The cold kept getting worse and worse and then… I breathed out… and my face and the lady’s face both just dropped because… we could see my breath.

Right then the driver, John, said “well who’s this then?”

Out the front window, off in the distance, we could see someone on the road.  There was someone in the middle of this road in the middle of red dust and scrub plants and distant red pillar mountains.  It was hard to tell at the distance we were at, but they seemed to be walking towards us.

I’ve never been so scared.  I guess people like me don’t know what to do when they are that scared.  I just knew I couldn’t go any closer, any closer to whatever that was.

My arms were shaking and my face was hardening and my nose and ears and fingers were numb… and I just… I didn’t care, I hated even breathing and… oh god I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean it… 

I lurched forward, wrapped my numb fingers around the steering wheel and jerked.

Light and glass and freezing cold and then blood and bone that used to be kind eyes and concerned smiles turned into a tumbling cascade of crushing horrible noise.

When it all stopped I crawled over what was left of the lady and out where the passenger door used to be.  My fingers kept sticking to the blood pooling in the dirt.  I had ice crystals made of that nice lady all over my hands.

I ran.

I ran back the other way, spitting frosted breath and pink ice.

I warmed up really quickly.

I felt myself thawing and the desolate sadness was joined with frustration, anger and then by pure aimless hate.  I hated life, I hated the world, I hated everything that walked or crawled or breathed, myself most of all.

I must have been in shock or had nerve damage because I didn’t notice just how hot I’d gotten until the first blister popped on my cheek.

I felt the water in my skin run down into my lips and tasted this sudden salt and blood.  I ran my tongue over it, suddenly thirsty enough that even that seemed appetizing. My lip split. The wind blew and a sheet of my skin flaked off and flew into my eye.

When I finished clearing my eyes I looked up and saw him.

There was a man.  Naked.  Long hair whipping around his muscular shoulders.  He was still a long way off, but I could see him clearly through the heat haze… everything is so flat here…

He was walking towards me.

And every step.  I got hotter.

I turned, I couldn’t see a road or anything I recognized, but away was screaming in my head so I ran that way.  I ran away.

The sweet relief of cold hit me like a wall.

My sigh caught like a strangle in my throat.

She was about the same distance off.  A woman, nude, long hair whipping around her slender shoulders.

She was walking towards me.

And every step.  I got colder.

I’ve heard freezing to death is peaceful, that you kinda go numb and fall asleep.

The cold she brought wasn’t like that.

This horrible cramp started, twisting my muscles under my skin enough that my fingers clutched into fists I couldn’t open.  I could feel parts of me dying as my body abandoned them to save its core systems.

But it was my fault… I deserved it.

She got close enough that I could see her eyes and the fear shot back like a knife in my mind.  Blue.  An alien blue.  Like ice in a glacier.  Otherworldly, unknowable blue.

I screamed and ran away, but away was towards now.  It was towards him.

He had yellow hair… like the grass in the savannah…

I tried going sideways, I tried to run away down a line between them, but space wasn’t right.  No matter where I turned, no matter what I did,  I was always running towards one, away from the other.

She was closer and I could see her skin had strange veins running in odd spirals and swirls all over her stomach and legs, purple, purple as the lavender fields in Provence. 

I spun around and around burning and freezing.  

My hair caught fire.

My chin froze solid and fell off, rolling in the dirt.

He was so close, I could see his shoulder was cracked open, like a piece of him was missing.  Ebony black crystals and ash blew about within him.  He looked like a tree struck by lightning… black inside, black as volcanic sand…

They stood and stared at me.

Like I was a particularly interesting bug.

But then… right there in that moment when they were close enough to reach out and touch and I was burning and freezing… I felt the pressure go.

It felt as good as the pain was horrid.

The vice between me and what I was supposed to be let go.

And relief… this amazing, otherworldly relief washed in at the same time my eyes melted and my spinal cord froze solid and snapped.

Voncid: That's enough.  You may go.  Off to a proper adventure.

Emea: The Twins.  Certainly.

Voncid: No doubt.  And they manifest.  Whoever that woman was she conjured them.  How?  How in the FUCK did she conjure them in?

Odai: It was only for a moment… only for this poor man.

Voncid: Don’t minimize it.  We’ve been chasing our tails, can’t find a trace, can’t catch any alive… and now this?  They are sidestepping us.  

Adelaide: There are cars coming.

Emea: Rangers or police.

Voncid: The body is still dangerous… we’ll have to take it until we can nullify it.

Odai: Might be better to do that here, transporting it is likely only going to make it worse.

Emea: Stay calm Owen, I’ll delay them, you dispel this.

Adelaide: Can I keep this one… I think he understands me…

Voncid: Gods dammit get all these fucking wallabys out of here!