(Most often, I will throw down some flash fiction, making it up as I go along, then reread it once for glaring errors, and hit publish. Generally, that’s all most of my ideas warrant. But, once in a while, I’ll reread a story, and get an uncomfortable feeling that there’s a much better story trying to get out, and I just fumbled it. I’m probably wrong, but this once, I’m going to try again…)
He wished he could fly. The small waves licked the tide pools. He sprawled on a sea-carved rock, his crooked feet next to several anemones in a filling puddle.
He wished he could walk. He could barely move. Some memory, half-grasped and slippery, suggested he once could run like the wind and fly like no bird. He thought he remembered stars effortlessly approached, then vanishing in the distance. He would look at some twinkling light, then simply be there. Then, be gone.
Whatever that was, he wished he could do it.
“What is it?” John stared at the screen. The viewsys showed – nothing, really. At the edges of vision, disappearing as soon as attention was paid to it, was – something. Maybe.
A metallic groan filled the ship.
“I get no readings.” William, John’s son, stood at the comm. The ship shook with a jerk. No lights flashed, no claxons blared.
“I am filled with dread,” Mary flatly stated. “This is wrong.” She stood motionless, then pulled a rosary from her pocket.
“Sweetheart, let’s stay calm,” John addressed his wife, and forced a smile. “If it weren’t for the unknown, there wouldn’t be much of anything out here.”
“There are stories,” mumbled William.
The waves now lapped his feet. The water was cold. The sun reddened the thin clouds on the horizon as it sped to touch the sea. He tried to draw himself up, away from the water’s edge, but his twisted, broken form would not comply.
What had happened? He could not remember clearly. Jagged shards of memory refused to be reassembled into anything clear. He realized that his mind mirrored the state of his body. Nothing worked. But he could not shake the vague idea that it should, that his mind and body once worked very well.
Something like a battle, in the same way that a bird’s flight was something like how he used to move among the stars. He was defending something….
William leapt to his feet. Reality shifted. The entire frame of reference leaned and stretched. The ship groaned, yet no alarms registered on the instruments. Mary staggered into her husbands arms as he fell to his knees.
William stumbled toward the view screen. “…care for my soul and body…” he whispered. He stood leaning at an impossible angle between the screen and his parents, and clutched the small crucifix that hung around his neck. “Hey, you!” he yelled at the Nothing on the screen, “Take this!”
A shaft of light from the setting sun broke through the red clouds and fell upon him. He found he could move a little and inched up the rocks. He could think a little better.
The light was warming against all expectation. With a start, some pieces fell into place. He had been defending a star – no, something small and fragile near the star. Something immeasurably huge and evil was trying to swallow it up, crush it, consume it. He simply could not let it.
He had thrown himself around the ship – for it was a ship – and the 3 passengers inside. He knew he could not defeat the evil, but he held on nonetheless.
Inside, a man and a woman held their dead son, a young man, a hero. He found himself swaddling the minds and souls of the passengers, protecting them, calming their fear. The immense evil had snuffed out the young man when he had dared stand up to it. Now, his soul was being drawn out, pulled, rent – by an invitation to despair.
He joined the parents in fighting back. He mingled with them, warmed them, comforted them in mind and body. He wasn’t sure how he did it, but it seemed both natural and demanded. He could not let them be destroyed, not so long as he had any strength.
The price was horrible. A cold dankness enveloped him, full of hate and fury.
He took it, blow after blow. He had the strange sensation that he was taking on the suffering of these human bodies, that the physical beating was not something he should feel.
The ship crumpled about him. The human passengers were being crushed. He knew this violence was unimaginably beyond what the humans could have withstood for a second. He knew it was his duty to defend them.
Wrapped in his protection, their souls clung to hope. He was mixed with them, shielding them, taking a beating for them, until the ship and those within it were crushed. The ship’s drive blew the three humans to dust. He persisted. The evil swelled, its hatred burned, all its force turned on him.
Somehow, in his pain, he knew that he had won. The souls of the human passengers were free. He lost consciousness, knowing he had won – the three human souls were free! The evil raged, and flung what was left of him down…
A brilliant light shone on the shore just as the sunlight faded over the ocean. He opened his eyes. “Well done!”
No words were spoken. Ideas formed directly in his head. “A Guardian standing up to a Principality?” He felt his body dissolving. “You willingly took on suffering intended for others.”
“I could not let them suffer the Second Death!”
“So you took their place.”
“I took on their form, so that I could take on their pain.”
“And saved them. The Master is pleased. His mother will comfort you. For they, too, willingly accepted the suffering of others. Be made whole.”
All was light. His body gone, he rose, and flew.
_____
Yard Sale of the Mind 