Chapter 2 - The Cuban Missile Crisis

Rodrigues awoke with a start. The first he felt was a brush of cold air come from within a small window crudely carved into the stone wall before him. He saw the night sky from there, distant stars twinkling as if the world were at peace.

It was at peace, though, wasn't it? The war was over, and the Dark Lord defeated and… wait…

Rodrigues rolled over, groaning. He found himself stripped to his plain clothes and locked away in a rectangular room with very solid seeming walls on three sides. The fourth side had iron bars. He felt at the cold stone floor with a start, choking on his own spittle.

This was a jail cell, he realized. The headache hit him then and he touched the side of his face, finding a splotch of dried blood where he remembered being struck by…

By my grandmother.

No. That surely couldn't be right. It'd been an illusion, and Rodrigues had fallen for it. In the final moment, he'd been defeated by the Dark Lord, and now, surely, the allied forces had, too, been defeated.

A thousand thoughts went through his head at that moment, but none of them could correctly define the guilt he felt at having failed everyone's hopes. Everyone who'd relied upon him, upon their chosen hero. He put his head in his hands and squeezed shut his eyes. It isn't over, he tried convincing himself. It isn't over until I'm dead.

Tap, tap, tap.

Rodrigues straightened at the sound of footsteps. This wasn't a first. He'd been jailed before, though for a very different reason, and not by any evil forces. Regardless, he felt no fear in this moment. There was nothing they could torture him for. Nothing he had that they could want.

Tap, tap… tap.

The pace of the approaching person slowed to a crawl. Rodrigues checked his belongings. No weapon. No armor. Not even a pair of boots or socks to go with. Just a shirt and a pair of worn pants with threads coming out from their ends. Only my bare fists, he thought with resignation. They would have to do.

Tap… tap…

"Oh will you fucking get on with it already?" Rodrigues snapped. "Cut the melodramatic bullshit and show yourself. I'm not afraid of you, you piece of-"

His mouth snapped shut as his grandmother appeared on the opposite side of the cell, hobbling with the aid of a cane. A pair of small goblins no higher than her waist trailed behind her, dragging a plain, red oak rocking chair, with a third goblin stumbling along behind holding what appeared to be a sewing kit.

"Damn arthritis," the woman said. "The legendary black armor can only stave off so much paid."

She stopped halfway down past Rodrigues' cell, glaring at him through the bars. "I did not raise you to have such a foul mouth," she said. She sounded so much like Roberta. Looked so much like her. Dressed just like her too, with a long and plain gown bearing flowery hems along the sleeves and a bonnet over her grey and mop-like head of hair.

"No," Rodrigues breathed. "No. This is an illusion. I will not-"

"Oh, illusion is it?" Roberta cut in. That slightly nasally tone of hers could not be mistaken. "Maybe I'll make a scarlet baboon's rump out of your sorry little rear with these slippers here and you can look yourself in the mirror and call it an illusion while you weep!"

Rodrigues looked down. She was indeed wearing slippers again. Rodrigues, the demon slayer, and chosen hero of the peoples of Fantasia, feared no man or beast that roamed the vast lands. But those things, those slippers, they terrified him.

"But abuelita," he began as his mind raced through yet a thousand more thoughts -each and all completely contrary to his previous ones. All this time, all these years of fighting and it'd been his grandmother who'd been behind the pillaging of villages and the massacres of small towns?

"Don't abuelita me, you naughty little rascal. Who taught you to swear like them puta Americanos? Not me, no. I raised you like a proper boy."

There she went again, saying words he did not understand. Rodrigues had always chalked that up to senility, but his grandmother clearly had her marbles straight. Or maybe not. She was the Dark Lord after all.

I picked my swearing habits up from you, he wanted to say. But saying that aloud would surely end in getting beat by those slippers.

The scrawny and greenish skinned goblins by Roberta set the rocking chair down. They then bowed their heads in what appeared some form of respect and backed away. Roberta seated herself, taking the sewing kit from the third green creature, and began working on what appeared an ugly sweater the likes she always made for winter festivals.

Roberta's eyes touched the little window in the cell and she stared up in the sky as if lost in thought. She started humming a tune she liked to call the 'national anthem', though of what specifically, she'd never said.

Rodrigues was almost reminded of fond childhood memories. Of times when his grandmother would read him strange stories of distant lands before bedtime. Only this time they sat on opposite ends of a jail cell, and his grandmother was, apparently, a mass murderer commanding thieving goblins as her servants.

Roberta suddenly thwacked her slipper against the cell's iron bars. Her wrinkly face twisted into a frown. "Don't think I can't read your thoughts, boy. You never could hide them from me. You're thinking I'm some kind of demon, aren't you? Well, why don't you sit there and listen. Listen to how your dear abuelita came into this position. It began with-"

"Really?" Rodrigues asked. "We're doing this now? Here? You're really going into story time now?"

Roberta slapped her slipper against the bars again and this time it made a far sharper sound. Grandchild and goblins alike jumped. "Don't you interrupt me again," she said. "Or you'll be sitting on a reddened rear while I tell you this tale."

"But what about the battle? My friends? The people? The kingdoms? What of-"

Roberta waved her hands. "Oh I won the battle," she said flippantly, as if it hadn't mattered at all. A battle with hundreds of thousands of lives on the line. "You're friends… they went running back to their fancy castillos and fortresses just like how Batista went running after mi amor Castro thrashed his forces and them American mercenaries."

"Who and who?" Rodrigues wondered aloud.

Roberta grinned. "Oh yes, your dear abuelita was once a guerilla fighter in Castro's prized FAR. Or I guess in this language it would be the RAF. Now, let grandma tell you the tale of how it was she ended up on Fantasia. It began with what those Americanos call the Cuban Missile Crisis…"

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

***

It was the year 1962, and Fidel Castro-

"The what crisis and who? Grandma, its year 6969 of the Fantasia Golden-Shower Calendar."

***

Roberta stood from her rocking chair and struck the jail cell's bars again. This time, the goblins shrieked and went running. "Cobardes," she muttered, shaking her head. She then turned to Rodrigues. "Did you not see the scene break markers?" she snapped. "The three stars? I swear to Jesus boy… Look what you've done now. You've made me break the fourth wall! If I suffer one more interruption out of you-"

Rodrigues threw up his hands. "It won't happen again," he cried. "Promise. I swear it on the goddess' good name." The more he thought, the less fond his memories of the past became. Those slippers had always been the bane of his existence. Although sometimes they'd been substituted with a belt.

"Swear it on Jesus you fool boy!"

"I do, I do!" Rodrigues pleaded. He didn't know any deity figure in Fantasia by that name but he swore anyway. He had too many foul memories of ending a day marked by Roberta's slippers to risk her anger right now. Besides, I'm her prisoner in a fortress teeming with monsters. And he was unarmed. Fists were no good against this enemy. He could not consciously raise his hands against his grandmother, even if she were a villain.

Roberta sat back down in her rocking chair. She took several deep breaths, enthralling herself with her sewing work. Then she leaned forward again just as she used to before beginning a tale, eyes still caught on that ugly sweater she was working on. "It began with the Cuban Missile Crisis," she started.

***

The year was 1962, and Castro had just struck a deal with the Soviets to place nuclear armed missiles in Cuba. My squad was made to watch over construction of the missile launch facilities. Our job was to hunt any rats that came prowling by. A pity for them. No rat knew the tactics of dirty warfare better than us.

So it was that I was returning to our command post during a change of shifts one night, when suddenly the national anthem began playing on the speakers. Like the proper patriot that I was, I stopped in the middle of a lot and closed my eyes to sing along as loud as I could. Horns started playing in the middle of the anthem, beeping louder and louder. I matched my voice to overpower them, but the horn only grew louder. I opened my eyes to glare only to find myself face to face with the headlights of a speeding truck, and that is all I remember of Cuba.

When next my eyes opened, I found myself in a place I did not understand. All was white as far as my eyes could see. I had no sense of distance or time. When I called out, my voice was devoured by the vast emptiness. I was alone in this place. Alone to roam an infinity.

"Ah," I muttered to no one in particular. "This is death."

I came to terms with that fact. I had died, but here I was in some form of afterlife. There was no heaven or hell that I could see. There was just me, standing bare in the middle of nowhere.

It was all as blunt as that. I knew things, but they inspired no feeling. I had no emotion in this space. I was not scared. Nor did I have any anger for having died in such a foolish manner. My love for my country did not exist either. "So what do I do now?" I wondered aloud.

As if my thoughts had been heard, three angels fell in around me, descending down from far above on their lofty wings. Pure beings of shining garments and silken hair, they came bearing a glorious light, the light of Christ I thought. They were beautiful, each and all, with smiles to melt the coldest of hearts, and mouths more foul than the toilet bowl of an army barracks.

"Fuck," said the first winged angel that touched the white floor. "This one's out of schedule. How'd she die?"

"Stood in the middle of the road with her eyes closed like some blind hobo," said another.

It was then that my emotions trickled back into my body, anger being the first of them. "Excuse me?" I demanded. "And who the fuck are you lot? Dressing with your white clothes and white skin! Is this some American joke?"

The angels looked down at me as if I were a pet in a cage. Not a one of the three had the decorum to introduce themselves. I could have called them Gabriel, Michael, and Azrael, but their foul tongues did not suit those names.

"Pardon… uh," one of them began, flipping through sheets of pages in his hand. "Ah, Roberta. Yes. Roberta. Pardon, Roberta. You weren't supposed to die just yet."

"Then send me back!" I demanded. "I must serve mi amor Castro!"

"No can do. You're as good as dead, and that, too, because you're a fucking moron. I mean who stands in the middle of the road at night with their eyes closed?"

"The national anthem was playing!" I retorted.

The other two angels shook their heads. "Yup," said one. "She's stupid alright. Oh, don't look at us like that, dear Roberta. Your Castro guy lives to ninety. He died in 08. 08… Terrible year for Wall Street. Or good year depending which side you were on."

I scowled up at all three of them. These were not the angels I had in mind when I used to attend church. Of course, that Fidel Castro ruled Cuba to such a late stage in his life was something to calm me down. Until of course the emotion of death hit me like another speeding truck in the face.

"Speaking of trucks," said the first angel, as if it'd read my mind, "I think we have no problems here. She was run over by a truck as is classic in these stories, so we can ship her off to… let's see here… ah, yes. Fantasia, the generic fantasy land. She might have been an accident but this lines up well."

Another of the winged beings put its hands on my shoulders. "Lucky you! You get another chance at life! Don't worry, it'll be simple. All you have to do is defeat the Dark Lord of the world of Fantasia with the cheat powers you have. You know? Just like in a game!"

My mind was racing at this point. Second life? Game? I couldn't make sense of this insanity. There was too much to process. My death. The revolution. These angels who were only pure in appearance. I had questions. Too many. But somehow, the first to spill from my mouth was "Game? You mean like football?"

"No, no, like videogames!" said the angel with a strange air of enthusiasm. "You know, Zelda, Mario, Call of Duty."

One of the angels gagged. "Dude, you play CoD? What a fucking loser."

"At least I don't whale on mobile gacha trash, fishing for tramps dressed in swimwear!"

"Hey guys," the third angel cut in. "Check the records again. Its 1962 where she's from. That shit doesn't exist yet."

The first angel stood up straight. "Oh," it said. "Oh fuck. Uh… Fuck. God's going to kill us for this. You mean nothing? She had nothing? No reference point? No Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings or…"

"Well she had Lord of the Rings, but I don't think it was as widely known at 62," said the second angel.

The first angel began pacing. "Shit. Fuck. So the whole genre that this author is writing about doesn't even exist yet. And Roberta from the Black Lagoon anime who this character is based on also doesn't exist… Ah, fuck me. I just broke the fourth wall, didn't I? Well, what now?"

"We could still throw her into Fantasia," the third angel suggested. "Cover it up before God finds out. What could possibly go wrong? She's a Cuban revolutionary. She'll have no problems fighting the Dark Lord with the cheats we give her."

"Fighting who?" I ask. I'm hardly bothered by the fact that I'm being ignored right now. My mind is still racing with thoughts. Second chance. Another life…

The first angel smiled at me. The kind of oily smile mischievous pendejos give when they're trying to sell you a miracle cure for all diseases and aging. "Look here, Roberta. You're getting a second chance at life in a different world. But see, there's a bit of a problem. You see, uh, the Americanos as you call them, they've colonized this world and are spreading evil through it! Yes, evil! They slander the good name of Fidel Castro!"

"What!?" I demand. Those fucking Americans had colonized another planet and kept it secret from the world? How dare they!

"Yes," the first angel went on. "They use these little green men called goblins as their minions. You must defeat them, and the Dark Lord working for the Americans! Then spread the word of Castro!"

I frown. My eyes narrow in suspicion. "So God sides with Cuba?" I ask.

"Yes, yes!" the angel says eagerly. "God sides with Cuba!"

Now, I'm no mind reader like most women happen to be, but I know a liar when I see one. And I'd sooner not trust any God that employed dirty mouthed angels like these. But a second life was a second life, and if there were Americans to be fought than that was that.

The first angel smiled. He could read my mind, I realized. But before I'd gotten another word in, I was picked up by the ankle like a bag of trash and thrown across the white expanse while the angels grinned and waved at me from afar. "Don't worry!" the first angel called. "I'll fill in details in your head once you get there!"

"Enjoy your second life!" the other two called in unison.

They hadn't been angels at all, I figured. They were demons in disguise. I stuck up my middle fingers at them as I flew through the expanse. "Fuck you, you fucking pendejos. Puta! Perro! Mie-"

My voice cut off as I shattered through a barrier like grass. The white expanse faded away and a blue sky appeared before my eyes. The angel-demons were gone, and I'd come to in this strange land they called Fantasia. There I lay, in my deep green military uniform, in a field of grass. In a world I did not recognize.