“Stand Down” Week 38 – the world is on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel
Geoul looks at Angosin quizzically as he lumps the head-sized TV, on which he and his mother watch films and cable, onto a chair opposite his and Angosin. He has a tad more trouble with it than one might think, seeing as how one of his fingers have been cut.
He brings the device’s power-cable over to a far wall’s plug, handling it delicately for fear of it being too short.
“So,” Geoul says, carefully. “You say god’s given you some special seeing-power.”
“Yes,” Angosin says, matter-of-factly. “I can see through the eyes of others, and in this way I’ve learnt a great deal. For example, I don’t exactly talk like someone my age should, do I?”
“No,” Geoul concedes, continuing: “you don’t look like you should, either.”
Angosin is made acutely aware of this as he catches his reflection in the tiny television’s powered-off screen.
He felt healthy enough, with even the pain in his chest having subsided. However, he looked as if he had been starved. His eyes were sunken deep, and the rest of his face seemed the same, somehow. His arms and legs seemed too long, even in the device’s convex reflection, which should have made them appear shorter. In accordance with this, his clothes seemed, and felt, he noticed, as if they were a few sizes too small.
Looking his reflection in the eyes, he draws a deep breath and sighs.
“That doesn’t matter.” he whispers. “Put on any channel playing newsplace fifteen, if you have it.”
“Uh, sure.” Geoul says, sitting down next to Angosin. “You’re being awful bossy, though. My house, remember?”
“Right. I’m sorry, Geoul.”
Geoul switches the TV on. He punches 1-8-7 in on the TV’s remote, pressing select.
The screen lights up to the scene of a woman of tan skin and long, silvery hair standing upon a podium. Her suit is sharp, and her beaded spectacles catch the open sky’s sunlight like mirrors. Before her, it can be assumed that a large crowd has gathered from the noise behind the shot, and the flashing of many cameras.
“That,” Angosin started, looking to Geoul whilst pointing at the screen, “is Maria Anton Walterẻs, member of Unicef’s leadership and hidden operative for the Manna Charitable Organization.”
“The what?”, Geoul questions, raising an eyebrow.
“Exactly.” Angosin answers succinctly, his voice carrying no expression.
Coughing can be heard from behind whatever implement is filming Maria, though her strong, purpose-drenched words carry well over it.
“With your continued backing and words of encouragement, my friends, HIV will soon be a thing of the past!”
As she ceases for a moment, allowing the crowd its applause, Angosin speaks.
“Very soon,” Angosin sighs, “a man’s going to walk up on that podium and attempt to shoot this nice woman in the head.”
“What?” Geoul says, in overt disbelief. “Why?”
“Because, they’re angry at her for her public denouncement for a certain instance of terrorism in Turkey.”
“No,” Geoul asserts, leaning forward, “I mean why do you think that’s gonna happen?”
“Because.” Angosin says. Thin, nearly invisible streaks of white mist can be seen drifting from his eyes. Geoul, at least, doesn’t see them.
“Whereas you’ve been watching from the television, I’ve been watching from the man’s own eyes.”
Geoul’s mouth hangs open just a bit, in an expression of his being unimpressed.
Angosin closes his eyes.
“He’s loading his gun, now. It’s the kind police use.”
Geoul squints at Angosin, and is about to say something when Angosin speaks again.
“He’s coming out from back-stage.”
Geoul whips his head to the screen. Angosin’s eyes are still closed, yet at the edge of the shot’s focus Geoul sees the curtain behind the podium rustle, as if pushed aside.
“He’s making his way up–the gun’s hidden behind a sheaf of papers he’s holding on his chest.”
Geoul sees the man approaching now– his dark shades seeming to consume light more than catch them– his all-black coat-and-hat getup making him look undeniably like a security guard.
Geoul feels himself rising somewhat from his chair. He can’t believe it, but he feels his lips moving, and hears himself whispering something:
“Stop him.”
It couldn’t be true, Angosin couldn’t be right about this. Geoul had just been entertaining him, worrying that he was delirious
Even so, he’s turning his gaze to Angosin, hearing himself whisper again. He’s certainly not hissing loud enough for Angosin to hear, for fear that he was wrong in his fears, and letting Angosin know he’d gotten to him.
“Stop him. You can see it, you’re magic, so stop him.”
Geoul whips back to face the television as soon as he hears the crack of a gunshot.
Maria is already falling, the man not even having exited the stance from which he’d shot her.
A moment later, security guards are rushing on-stage, and Geoul is catching glimpses of his own horrified expression in the black of their suits.
There is a long moment of silence between Angosin and Geoul, as the sounds of the panicking crowd overwhelms the scene. During this time, Angosin opens his eyes, and looks to Geoul.
Finally, Geoul grabs for the TV’s remote, shutting the machine off. A thin sweat has broken out on his forehead.
He struggles to face Angosin, dragging his eyes along the ground before meeting those of the boy.
Angosin is looking at him with his usual, flat expression.
“What– what was that? Is this some kind of a prank?”
Geoul’s worry shines through his panicked voice, as well as through his actions, as he is now looking around in a paranoid fashion.
“This, Geoul, was me trying firstly to prove to you that everything I’ve been telling you is indeed possible–” Angosin says, looking down at his lap, where the arrow-shard rests speckled with blood, “as well as that the world is going insane.”
Geoul, pursing his lips, stands from his seat.
“No– I know things are bad, with the Coronavirus and– that, but you’ve got to be exaggerating.”
But the tiny, spectral wisps of mist are still flowing from Angosin’s eyes.
“No, I suppose that isn’t enough to convince you.”
Angosin looks far, even while his eyes are fixed on the floor of Geoul’s residence.
He looks out all the way to a tall building. There, he sees through the eyes of a stout man, laying on the ground.
The man’s eyes are barely open, as if he were winking in and out of consciousness, by the time the front door of the building’s lobby opens.
There, nearly dropping the colorfully-labelled box in his hands from shock, is what is unmistakably a pizza-delivery man.
His thick-rimmed glasses and short, tied beard, not to mention the piercings in his ears, do nothing to distract from the “Galaxy Crust” logo on his shirt and cap.
Following the delivery man as he makes his way through the room, the fat man sees many other people, of varying ages, unconscious on the ground. All of them have stylistic pieces characteristic of a gang member (ex. Bandanas, white tees), intermingling with bruises about their bodies; one of them, an older man, even has burn scars on his face and hands.
Angosin preaches over the scene: “You can’t see it, Geoul, but the world has always been just on the edge of destruction. It has always been brimming with strange and, perhaps, unexplainable things– and they are only now surfacing to a point where they are starting to meet with one another. It can only be by God’s own will that the world hasn’t been consumed by these things before, as it is soon to be now. Something so destructive and mad as a raging dragon, in a world of faithless, broken and desperate people, can lead only to disaster.”
The fat man’s eyelids droop again.
Angosin is, in the next second, seeing out of the perspective of a large man in heavy riot-gear. He is in some lower section of a brick house, furnished for a full family.
The man looks over his shoulder to glance towards the family; they are tied up, and every one of them is bloodied: the father, the mother, and both little girls.
As he looks this way, a familiar symbol is visible on his shoulder-plate: a circle pierced in three places by arrows. The symbol of the foundation, as Angosin recognized it.
The man raises a large implement, one which he had been holding with both hands. It is a long nozzle, starting in a grip not unlike that of a gun’s. and a tube near the nozzle’s base which bends around to meet something on the man’s back.
The man turns to face the family, the nozzle held aloft towards them, at which point the entire family (save one of the girls, who is unconscious), begins struggling against their ropes and screaming against their gags.
With a hard squeeze of the trigger, a jet of flame leaps to them, spreading quickly across their bodies as the implement’s wielder waves the nozzle side-to-side.
The sound of the flamethrower almost drowns out the family’s screams, unleashed as they are as their gags burn, wherein it’s obvious the other little girl has woken up.
After a time, each member of the family ceases their struggle.
The fire has already spread to the floor’s rug, and the window’s curtains, as the man bends down to pick a large burlap sack off the ground.
Still handling the implement, the man moves towards the house’s door.
“What has been proven to me in person, too, is that man’s attempts to stop this wave of abnormality will lead, are leading, and have led to further pain, corruption and suffering.”
Angosin sees into the facility, where two lab-coated gentlemen are poring over what seems to be a scheduling sheet within a dimly-lit room.
The first, sat at the table whereupon the sheet rests, looks up to the other, who is sat on the table itself.
“So, I’m guessing we’ll not have their funerals all at once.”
“No, we want to keep morale ‘s high as possible. Give em’ each a ten-minute-long epitaph, and do only one or two a day. ”
“That’ll take ages! Not only to write all that shit up, but to listen to! It’s not efficient!”
“But what if we hold the speeches when the guys’re suiting up? ‘Takes ‘em about ten minutes.”
“What about the ones who we don’t– really know much about?”
“You mean like that Ronnie character? Skip ‘em! She, in particular, didn’t even have any friends here, anyway.”
“All right,” says the one at the desk, with an air of finality. “That’s settled, but–”
“But what?”
“What about– us? What do we tell researchers, women and men of the labs? This stuff is getting to us, too, and we usually don’t have that ten minutes to spare.”
“Buddy.” the desk-mounted researcher says, almost mockingly. “Just pop back those antidepressants like they’re candy.”
Angosin winces.
“The violence arising from one, or the other,”, he continues to Geoul, “can be bureaucratic or violent in nature. It can be complex, or brutally simple. It may have already been happening, even before this rapture that only I can see. No one will be able to tell, once it all collapses on itself, in a maelstrom of magic and logic-defying panic.”
A ways below the facility, in a jagged valley of snow and stone flanked by grand mountains, Angosin sees through the eyes of a man struggling to breathe through the frost.
The man stands hunched, but planted sturdily, and wheezes some in each breath, as if he were exhausted.
He peers hard, straight forward, at the nigh-opaque layer of snow hiding his enemy.
The low, forceful sound of something large flapping to and fro can be heard, there.
Slowly, as if pushed by a giant fan, the wall of snow-fog is pushed apart, revealing the gargantuan mass of gleaming majesty.
It takes the form of a wingless, golden-scaled Japanese dragon, just as before; the lower part of its tail, which sports a massive, fan-like fin, can be compared in size to the crushing wheel of a road roller.
The man raises a weapon towards the beast as smoke billows from its nostrils. What was formerly a katana, now broken like a piece of glass, is caked with a steaming, golden ichor.
“Or rather,” Angosin says, allowing a subtle smile to youngen his face, “if it does.”
Wounds can be seen on the dragon. The impassible walls of frost parting, more humanoid forms become visible, all with weapons pointed towards the thing.
They all sport the armor of ancient samurai, though some sets seem to have been wrecked, with one bow-wielding man being left entirely topless in the searing cold.
“You’re rambling, man.” Geoul interrupts. “You’re talking about a lot of big stuff– but not making much sense.”
Angosin rubs his eyes. “Right. Let me try to rephrase that.”
When Angosin opens his eyes, again, he is seeing through the eyes of a young man.
“The world has been beset by a great many strange things, like the arrow. At the same time, strange things just happen more often, now.”
The young man is twiddling his thumbs, sat down on a mat in what seems to be a dark sewer-tunnel.
“I don’t need you to believe me,” Angosin continues.
The young man’s legs are misshapen, though hidden underneath a small blanket. His space is lit only by a lantern.
“since you’ll be seeing it for yourself soon. I’m sure.”
The young man’s gaze is drawn to the tunnel to his right; there is a low growl, sounding somewhat alike to the dying groan of a toilet’s flush, coming to Jordan’s ears from there.
“These strange things are closer than you may think, or want to believe.”
A pair of eyes, glistening in the light shed by the lantern, glare up at Jordan from behind narrow slits and a long, scaled snout.
Jordan soon sees, as the thing is making its way straight towards him, that he’s facing a crocodile.
“Maybe things aren’t quite going insane, just yet, but they are leaning towards chaos. Nature herself is joining the dance.”
Angosin is in the next moment seeing through the eyes of a woman in her car, driving through a tree-littered brick neighborhood.
The radio is on in her car; some weather network has just begun reporting.
“Global warming is an expected cause, today,” an enthusiastic male reporter starts, “as winds plaguing the halton region have been, for at least a week now, stronger than ever before! As if you needed another excuse to stay indoors.”
The woman looks out her window, seeing trees billowing wildly in the forceful gale; they all seem to be bending dangerously far. Somewhere past the trees, she can see the shingles flying off a house’s roof.
Angosin blinks, and is again seeing the interior of Geoul’s home.
He sees that Geoul is sat back in his chair, his chin in his hand as if he were bored.
Angosin squints at the ground, frustrated at his inability to explain his point.
“Soon, you’ll see it.” Angosin says. “And then, you’ll see that we can, and must, save the world.”
“I’m waiting.” Geoul says, trying not to sound sarcastic.
Angosin purses his lips for a moment before talking, now.
“There’s a different name for it that most use,” Angosin starts.
“but I call it a plague. A plague sent from god, to punish us.”
“I’ve been given the power to use those carrying this plague as doors. I can move through them, see, hear and even displace objects through them.”
“Are you talking about–” Geoul trails off.
“Yes.” Angosin catches. “This plague is the Coronavirus.”
“It’s like I said, Geoul,” Angosin continues.
“the strangeness is much closer than you think. I was in the La Cloche mountains, just a matter of hours ago. How do you think I got here, Geoul?”
Geoul is looking at the ground, clearly in distressed consideration.
Angosin’s eyes are drawn from Geoul as he hears something from down the hallway. Further into Geoul’s home, the sound of a subtle dripping onto the floor, as if water were falling from a recently-shut tap, can be heard.
“When I first realised I had this ability, Geoul, I found that I’d been using it unconsciously– without temperance.”
Now, Geoul looks up, Joining Angosin in looking at his mother, standing upright and looking as healthy as ever.
Her skin is flush with color, and a lively blue sweater has taken the place of the thin gown she had been wearing in bed.
“Mom, why aren’t you in bed?” Geoul says, repressing his surprise.
His mother does not reply, smiling pleasantly. The dripping sound persists.
“I’m sorry, Geoul.” Angosin mutters, twiddling the arrow-shard between his fingers.
Geoul stands, once more, walking forward somewhat from his chair.
Now, with the television no longer between them, he sees what is present by his mother’s lower body.
Here, her sweater’s blue sky is detailed with red clouds. In one hand, she carries a large kitchen-knife, blood drenching it from the tip of the blade, to the handle, to the fingers around it.
In the other, carrying it by it’s long hair, she has the severed head of a woman that looks very much like her. Blood drips from the torn-open neck to the floor, trailing back to the hallway.
Geoul, his surprise returning and evolving into shock, sees that the face of this head reminds him much more of his mother as he’d seen her last. The markings of her un-health are still there, though her skin has gone even paler.
“It seems that– you’ve been doing the same.” Angosin finishes, looking troubled as he peers at Geoul’s cut finger.