with a question as if inebriated.
“My brother,” I reply. “He was with us on the plane and yesterday at the beach. He took to the open cargo bed of Lucy with all our surfboards. Where is he?”
“Dude, you don’t have a brother?” he says impassively, contra the knowledge I have.
I turn towards the back seat to look out the back window. To my astonishment there’re only three boards. Kosta’s surfboard is gone.
We continue driving without a pitch of sound. I reach out to the radio and unplug my cellphone from the auxiliary cord. After that I stiffen, tapping my feet on the car floor till they slip into my sandals. My back sinks into the car seat and I unstrap my seatbelt. I bend forward to stretch. At the same time, I shuffle through some clothes on the car floor and grab a random black tee to put on.
No one’s supposed to mind as it’s our nature being traveling friends that we share clothes every now and again. The shirt’s a size medium but it fits me by a whisker. Lucas is the smallest in the group, so this shirt is definitely his. There’s a Jolly Rogers sign on the front of the shirt—a white skull at the chest and under it, two crossed white swords shape an X.
Silence can be heard from miles away.
What an uncomfortable situation.
I want to get out of this vehicle and run without stopping, not permitting my breath the liability it has to my lungs to catch up to me. If I stay, then I risk endangering a timeline of events which are all upheld in the past. My being here has made the very thought of living immoral.
If I did die at the wedding so be it. It’s not safe for me to be messing with time. Especially if the occurrences that follow due to my living again are the disappearances of my loved ones. I know my brother. He is as real as the very blood that courses through my veins. He is my blood brother and the disregard Lucas and Ramze have towards him having been here previously is probably my fault.
Yesterday Kosta was in the back of Lucy. Today he’s nonexistent. Forgive me brother. I will find you and get us home in time. It’s not I who is crazy but rather my friends who are in a world of illusion. This is a separate universe in the multiverse sprouting from the timeline following my death.
Just a moment ago, this life I’m leading now was in correlation to the previous one. They were each aligned with near perfection from what I remember up to this point at which everything’s due to change. From the subtle alterations scattered throughout my past, like the coin I inadvertently crushed at the beach, an interesting find from my brother, and the cones of purple goop Lucas was given at Fundy’s, I sense I’m being primed to plummet into a cascade of misfortunes.
I sit there staring into the blank space of an empty road ahead. From the corner of my eye, I catch Lucas giving Ramze a heads up on something. They exchange nods. Lucas turns on the headlights to Lucy in defiance of broad daylight. I turn to look back at Ramze sitting upright and acting particularly uptight, clenching his fists. He takes his right hand and strokes his beard as if he’s in the middle of a deep thought. He’s looking straight at me, yet he says nothing. Finally, Lucas speaks up and asks if I’m going to finish my second sandwich.
“No, I’m fine,” I say undeterred. “I’m suddenly not hungry anymore.”
My suspicions arise the minute I no longer recognize the road. We make a turn up a steep rocky path. The dirt road is quenched by several adjoining waterfalls that fan out in segments. The track feels as if it’s sinking. Some parts of land farthest of the waterfalls are covered in dried mud, protected by natural rock formations that lead the streams in different directions.
The path is devoid of life with no chance of locals or wildlife nearby. I get skittish as we’re confined in a tight space hardly big enough for Lucy to drive on. There’s a strong unspoken gospel in my heart that, though vague, makes me surmise something’s seriously wrong.
Staring out the window on my side there’s nowhere to go but down. Endless apple green and yellowish–green rock piles fill the bottom of the mountain in trenchant layers, like a reservoir of piranha teeth actively folding over each other. The brush of a ruthless wind, visible through the black dust it carries, is the spectral presence aiding the rocks make their journey.
Lucas’ side faces the mossy cragged wall of a mountainside. I begin to realize what the headlights are for. The bumpy road. Altogether it fades behind this thick fog that comes rolling down the mountain’s cap.
We’re driving on a single mountain covered in inches of what appears to be snow. An elusive path made so by a mirage. It’s the absurd thickness of this fog that compels me to see snow where there isn’t. The higher we ascend, the more the low–hanging clouds swell, their ghostly pallor intensifying. The sound of waterfalls is cutback.
A series of lopsided leafless trees that’ve sloughed their bitter chocolate skin to turn white, with only patches of gray left behind, are now in place of the waterfalls. Silver dew starts to form on the car windows. The headlights come as two beams scuffling with the fog to pave a way for our sight. I can see mere feet in front of where this car’s headed. The road is so faintly perceptible that even squinting doesn’t help sharpen things.
The rocks we drive over get instantaneously larger in mass. Lucy begins to tremble and the whole interior starts to shake. Passing through mountains with this pickup truck is proving a gamble with our lives, giving me the sensation we’re defying an overt unwelcome from the road we’re crossing. I’m trying hard to remember where we’re at but there’s a vortex that’s sucking everything I’m visualizing away for the simple reason that this didn’t occur. It never did.
After Playa Hermosa we left for Jacobi. The first forbidden beach on our journey. A beach up in the mountains with an active volcano sunken at the pure depths of its waters. A beach with the impression it’s stranded in midair. I can’t pinpoint how a beach is suspended at such a high altitude. At least from my experience, that was the first time I’d seen access to the ocean from a mountain summit. The mountain drive to get there was on a slim road but there were no major rocks or untraversable fog packaged in that ride.
Perhaps Lucas found a shortcut while at Fundy’s a few miles back. Or perhaps I’m about to be drowned at the pit of Davy Jones’ Locker where the remembrances of Kosta are now at. I get trounced with auditory distortions of tame buzzing.
Guided by instinct rather than prolonged contemplation, I reach for the wheel with no hesitation or remorse for the lives that could be lost. I get brushed aside by Lucas’ elbow. “The fuck are you doing man?” Lucas asks, shifting uneasily in his seat.
Both my hands attach themselves to the steering wheel like a rancorous magnet taking firm possession of its polarity for the first time. One leg mechanically flies from my seat and fixes itself on the driver’s side. I’m straddling the truck’s center compartment. I will guide Lucy off track. With all this obstinacy rising in me, that end is absolute. The pickup truck drifts upon an upcoming curve in the course of the road. It manages to evade the damage it would’ve obtained from hitting some larger than life rocks.
After the turn, Lucy is impacted by a big bump on the road. The pickup truck hikes five feet off the ground. The hood flies straight up as soon as Lucy strikes the ground, blocking our view of what’s ahead. Everyone but I is mandated into oblivion. Lucas yells out for Ramze. “Help!” he screams. “Help me you buffoon!”
Ramze jitters behind me, trying to unbuckle his seatbelt and unwittingly kneeing my seat. I let go of the wheel and dive to the forefront. Grabbing the screwdriver that was used to pin our fins to our surfboards, I quickly do a one–eighty, still bent ahead, and penetrate the screwdriver into Ramze’s good leg. Ramze upbraids me for my bizarre actions, leading to his Olympic twister dive into a tangent of whys: why’d you stab me, why are you flipping out, why’s this happening, why go berserk in a moving vehicle?!
An uncontrolled throng of screams commences as blood oozes from his leg. Overwhelmed with shock, Lucas becomes tight–lipped, keeping hold of the wheel in a quaking manner. Ramze detaches the screwdriver from his leg and lets it bounce off the car floor.
Struggling to cope with the upset of my actions, Lucas unfastens his seatbelt with fumbling fingers and pulls the handle to the driver seat door. He jumps out and I hear a splash of water a couple seconds thereafter. The car keeps moving without its driver.
The coarse spruce green wall Lucas was once facing is now on my side. The whole mountain seems to have flip–flopped from one side to the next. I’m dazed and jittery in my efforts to keep steady, trying to take back control of the wheel. I forcibly pull my leg from the passenger side to join its brother. Now fully in the driver seat, I close the swinging door.
“Where is he?!” I demand to know as I establish some sort of control over Lucy. The pickup truck, now being driven at a slant, begins just slightly tipping over the dirt road on the driver’s side. Lucy’s on the right side of a mighty drop with the left back wheel suspended in the air.
“Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ramze hollers.
“My brother. What did you do to him Ramze? Tell me! Or I swear to god I’ll bear witness to your finale. All you’ll soon hear are the sounds of this truck filling up with water and the bubbles from you retching trying to get out.”
“I...I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeats. “Are you insane?!” he vociferates with an intense cry. “Please don’t do what you’re about to do! This is a surefire way to get ourselves killed!” Ramze closes his eyes and finds sustenance in prayer. “O God, you know that with all my folly and wrongs I’m plain spoken. Why forsake me?! I’ve been aiming for change to the highest degree. Listen to my heart…it’s open to you. I will change!” His mind buzzes with thoughts of regret in his final moments. “He jumped.” Ramze’s voice cracks. He opens his eyes—stunned like leftists hearing free speech—making a real doozy of a mind game in his head as he tries to work out what’s happening. His eyes briefly pour themselves a cup of grief for Lucas in the rearview mirror before an ice–cold stare overtakes them.
My fear mongering isn’t getting to him. I stare at the left wing mirror with the hood of the pickup truck still blocking my advanced view. Out of the mist comes a strange apparition. It’s a mulatto boy, about five feet tall with curly black hair draped over his eyes. He’s clothed in a white ascot wing collar at the neck. Below that garment, a Spanish bistre–colored dress shirt is worn. The shirt is tucked into his loose–fitting trousers, matched in color, with the ends of them tucked into beige over–the–knee–boots. Layered over his dress shirt, he wears an unbuttoned dark olive green greatcoat. Its length reaching down to his knees.
Floating above the low clouds, beyond the veiling of the ground he lifts his hands. Both arms stretch afar in front of him as if to get me. I aggressively turn the wheel to my right getting the pickup truck’s back left wheel onto the road again. The car balances itself out as I hit my right shoulder on the passenger seat. Unable to stop turning the wheel fully to the right, Lucy slams straight into a shelf from the mountain. The shelf crushes the right side doors. I experience a brief lapse of consciousness.
A searing pain pierces through my neck. Glass shatters like heavy rain burst from a dark cloud. The jaguar’s spit. Acting as a syringe fitted with a hollow needle, Ramze’s injected me with the acid. I quickly floor my foot on the brake. The hood is yanked off from the head of the pickup truck by the force of the stop, detaching from its loosened bolts and breaking the front windshield into tons of disproportional pieces that persist in being intact.
Again, the drastically white haze is in full view. Within its stir, per the running car, I see the boy’s image split by every fragment of the windshield. He’s in front of the pickup truck. Right away, I put the car in reverse. The boy starts to fly closer toward us. Between me and him appears in front of us a falling white tree limb and the boy vanishes.
The truck is bound to keep reversing. Even if I prolong my foot on the brake pedal, the mud will continue to slide the vehicle backwards. In an effort to dodge the edge of an invisible road, I turn the wheel having the pickup truck shift to one side. We crash into a pile of bucked logs littering the side of the road, causing one tire to erupt and the pickup truck to tilt on its side. We break through a cloud, down a steep hill, tumbling like a die.
There’s no hesitancy from Lucy about where she wants to go. We’re tossed like numbered balls in a wire bingo cage, and I briefly see the transition from rough terrain to fast–approaching ocean. The pickup truck dives off the mountain, plummeting top first. Gravity takes possession of us and slams our bodies on the car headliner.
Ramze’s head’s under the middle seat in the back. He crawls dizzily behind the driver’s seat and opens the passenger door. Exiting the car, he disappears and then reappears shirtless at the window to my left. Full–fledged, expansive burnt umber eagle wings span from the lengths of Ramze’s large muscular back. There’s a lucent buttercup yellow fire melting the chocolate in his eyes; so bright it blinds me for a split second. I see him rip the car door right off its hinges and throw it behind him like a frisbee. My line of sight is tilted.
He wraps an arm around my waist and flies me out of Lucy as it falls into an unclear, shadowy ocean. My defective vision realigns itself. I try and squeeze out of his tight grip, kicking the air and pushing his face away from mine. I manage to get loose but flip upside down in my success. He catches me by the ankle, raising me high enough so that I’m facing his feet. My other leg kicks. My foot skims the side of his chin. This shirt is tight enough so that gravity doesn’t pull it down over my eyes.
Ramze ducks, using his other hand to clench the skin past the shirt on my chest. Once he gets a good, painful grip he lets go of my ankle and flips me over. Once more his arm’s around my waist so that I’m facing him. Everything turns right side up. I see the 17th–century–styled boy at the rim of the mountain where I bungled my attempt to crash maneuver. His black hair is pushed to the side to show a potential scowl aimed at me—terrorizing me. Yet uncertainty lingers, as the height may be playing tricks on my interpretation.
He has electric green eyes that’re brutally intensified on me. They’re weighing me down. I look away nauseated and notice I’m alone in midair. My sandals are whisked away from my feet by the force of a wave.
It topples over me and drags me into an unfathomable abyss. I see here the car sinking. I swim back up but in the brief moment I resurface, another wave rushes to me. Before I’m able to get an adequate amount of air in my system, I choke on salt water. The unbearable lack of air takes its toll, impairing my lungs. I look around the cloudy water but the salty keen feeling of it in my eyes is so irritating that I’m unable to keep them open for long.
My heart’s thumping, I’m lacking nerve, and I begin turning a bluish–purple in reaction to the icy temperatures I’ve been forced down upon. The murkiness steadily clears. Down here, in the bottomless pit, I’m amazed. Angels swimming in the ocean. There’re hundreds, maybe even a thousand down here. Are my eyes willfully deceiving me?
In their pursuit for such beauty, they’ve launched their own.
Man and woman in the buff. All with sculpted physiques and the striking wingspan of a prehistoric white feathered bird. The longer I stare, the more that appear in sight. Not all have their eyes open but the ones that do have theirs blaze fiery orange burmite amber like exploding stars under a microscope. All are purposeless in their way of hovering in the water as if vast asleep. Under me comes a whole heap of them swirling in the water high and low.
The many faces of angelic peoples are crossed with the frigid expressions that come in being suspended within a wintry coral reef. To my sides are white exotic underwater plants. Below me is a crater of the darkest blue. Upon the stony bends of this reef are the reflections of beaming suns. The flashing array of ethereal light touches the angels. I trace the source of light that gleams upon the white coral and fish. It comes from the solid gold armor that sheathes the breasts of some of the rare clothed angels.
I swirl around and I’m in direct contact with an armored female angel. The lure of gold is clear cut, but this gold’s seductive charm is even more so. Beyond its physical attributes is an enchanting mystique that pulls me in. Hard to resist, its worth supersedes that of the breath of life. The feel in my bones tells me one touch will drag me down somewhere darker than the pits of Hades. Should I engage the call, I’ll no longer get the chance to weigh gold against life.
The angel’s golden medieval cuirass shone like torches onto every curve of my body before it precipitously sank below, revealing a slew of clones behind it. All are gold at the chest with the centered clean–cut emblem of a peculiar cross elevated an inch off the front piece of their cuirasses.
Where have I seen this cross before?
A rod with three horizontal bars that vary in length, diminishing in order the closer to the top. If not armored with silver elsewhere, this clique of golden battle angels are robed in white and red mulberry silk.
On the reflection of one angel’s golden chest plate, I notice a creature moving erratically. It could be a whale having a seizure but too many times have I mistaken flowing coral reef anatomy for marine life. I pivot like a figure skater, one leg extended behind me, and my arms swept back like a plane, toward a great black enigma. There’s a strong purple fizz rising from its body as it convulses. It strains to move forward, seeming partly paralyzed.
If it’s injured, I deem myself worthless to save it, but it isn’t. It’s one of them. It must be one of the shadows that brought me to the gray hall. I recognize it from the feeling of my stiffening limbs that’d happened upon my first encounter with them. An unmistakable feeling of defenselessness. No amount of weak mindedness will make me succumb to a pasting.