Chris VII
July 4th
Tonight is when everything ends. The invisible chain that binds us all will be broken and we will all be set free. The poison that is slowly decaying our lives will be cured. The world will be set right, once more.
Andrew impatiently taps his foot while he leans on the barren wall of the room. He's annoyed as if he wasn't the one who kept us waiting. I almost thought he wasn't going to show up. Marina was certain he wasn't.
Marina sits behind me, petting her cat, the only thing she says she owns. She's nervous, rightfully so. I've been making her wait longer than she wanted. She's anxious that it won't go the way I've seen. Part of her believes that everything she's done up to this point will be for nothing.
“I’m ready," I say.
“About time,” Andrew sighs and walks over to me. “You hit send, then what happens? We pray, no? He's been hiding ever since he killed that guy, we don’t even know where he is.”
“He hasn't gone far.” Marina signs. I translate for Andrew. “He'll come out."
“So why are we doing it this way? What in those files? What's there that's so important to him?"
“Nothing,” Marina admits. "This is just to destroy everything he's built. It'll set me free from the chains he stole from my father."
We're back in the abandoned house where our lives changed. Andrew found this place towards the end of last summer. It's on the far southeast edge end of town. It's away from any other house and was the perfect place to throw parties. This is where everything started and it's where the ending begins. It was Marina's idea to hide here. She said Lyle would never think about this place.
Everything is organized and ready to be sent out. It was taking Marina a long time to collect everything we needed. At one point we gathered everything to accomplish our goal, but when Lyle went after the other two like us, Marina wanted to include the shadow of the present. Lyle's organization is a rebuilt remnant of Golden Hearts. Marina asked for more time so she could gather the files of what she was once the core of. What I read went beyond anything possible or sane. It couldn't be real.
Azul Amadeus, the leader, his goal was to unite the world and bring universal understanding and love to each other; to end the suffering we inflict on each other. He built his organization, gang, terrorist group, revolution, or whatever for that purpose. He wanted to expose the corruption and greed in the government, uniting the world under the idea that peace and grace come from the individual and not a governing body. He had his hand in the very corruption he wanted to get rid of to build it up. What better way to destroy it than from the inside? He always planned for his organization to fall. Everyone under his corruption was supposed to fall with him. It was supposed to be the necessary self-sacrifice.
Everyone who knew him only had good things to say about him. They say he had the power to bring people under his influence. He created Winter as a tool. The world believes that's how he had so many people believing his ideas. It was deemed the most dangerous substance in the world. But that's not what it does. Winter is a gateway to opening the soul. It allows someone to meet themselves. Azul needed it as a bridge for his other tools to achieve his plan.
Marina,
the girl who shows the past and the pain that they hide from.
And the woman who can connect souls to one another.
Supposedly with those three together, all of humanity could be connected and with themselves to change the world.
But it failed.
It's insane. The whole thing was insane.
Azul failed and Lyle picked up what was left over. Lyle is just a crude knock-off. Lyle doesn't share the same goal. Lyle knows of humans different like Marina. He finds the abnormalities to be exotic and wants more like her. From what I read, he believes one of them can create the pure form of Winter. I'm the only one who has come close.
Winter is the gateway to the soul, Lyle uses it for his sick and selfish desire.
In my curiosity, I also tried Winter. It showed me salvation from myself. I was able to understand why it is so dangerous.
Lyle gives the last remaining doses of pure Winter to those who are at their lowest, almost always women. He feeds them a promise of power and control and once they take the drug, they believe his words from what they experience and see inside themselves.
They're victims. Slaves to a madman.
We're all slaves to him.
"Then why bother?" Andrew asks.
"There's only one thing he cares about," Marina signs. "He'll do anything not to lose that. He'll be desperate."
Marina sets her cat down from her lap and stands. She pulls a pocket knife out, entering the bathroom across the empty room. She doesn’t bother closing the door and Andrew and I see what she does. Andrew becomes confused and then shocked when she takes off her shirt and sees her scars. His eyes widen when Marina digs the knife into the upper back of her shoulder. She drives the knife deeper until she finds what she digs around for and pops it out.
In her hand, she brings us what she means. It’s a tracking device.
“What the fuck?!”
"This is where he'll go.”
I take the bloody little chip from her palm, "I guess it's time."
Marina nods.
Andrew laughs. “This is some fake-ass movie-level plot.”
"Do you understand what you have to do, Andrew?" Marina signs. "It's not too late to back out. You don't have to do this. I'm more than willing to sacrifice myself."
"You're right," Andrew snickers, taking the tracking chip from me. "I need to do this."
"Even if you don't want to anymore?"
"Listen, I don't give a fuck why you're doing this. I don't give a fuck about the details. You saved my sister, yeah? This will stop Lyle, right? That's good enough for me."
People like me, like Marina, aren't supposed to exist. Marina said we're a gift from the Goddess. She thinks we're here to fulfill some grand purpose. I can see the paths of the people destined to help achieve it. That's the reason why I can see mine and I can see Marina's. Most of the time, the fated threads I see don't hold much weight. Sometimes I come across someone with a much more important destiny, like Elizabeth. Whenever something happens that isn't supposed to, it's my job to correct it. I've been ignoring that responsibility. I’ve been running my entire life from the gift I was given. I just wanted to be a normal kid. I wasn't too fond that I find it hard to talk to people. I hated that I struggled with empathy. I hated that I was born different. Just like Marina was born with her deformities, I was born with a deformity in exchange for my power.
I think I’m starting to get comfortable with the idea of being okay with it.
“But you’re still just a fish.”
I failed Elizabeth.
I won't fail again.
-
It took me too long to act upon it and now this is the only way I see that will make everything right now. Doing it today just happens to give everyone the best possible ending. This is the only option I had when I decided that I wasn't going to run away anymore. Everything that happened has been leading up to this. It'll break the corruption that haunts us. It'll stop the suffocation that plagues us all. It'll set us free from the evil that we never deserved.
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It'll stop her from losing her smile.
-
I hit send.
The world doesn’t change. It won’t ever change, not immediately. It'll take years for that to happen. Even after it's all exposed, a few will still get away with it. Other people will just take the empty seats. That's just how the world works. Greed and Power only corrupt. But the seed was already planted years ago and this will only reaffirm it. It'll be a start to the future Marina was always told about. I don't care if the world will change. I only care that the present is the right shadow of the future.
Nothing happens at first. All three of us watch a news broadcast on the laptop waiting for something to happen, or text from Lyle, anything. Andrew switches tabs to Twitter because public opinion always comes first. It takes a while but someone notices and the documents are spread. They all think it's a hoax. It's too out there for it to be believable. Then people share the videos and the evidence. More and more people start talking about it until it can no longer be ignored.
The world begins to listen.
It'll become the biggest story on all the news channels. It’s all they will talk about for weeks then It'll be suppressed and brushed aside with distractions. It'll take days or even weeks for anyone to be properly charged.
I don't expect Lyle's identity to become public. He's too protected. He went by the name of Sessions once, and all Sessions have their name wiped clean. Sessions are ghosts. Lyle has to be arrested or killed before he gets the chance to disappear. We won't be safe until he's gone.
"It's time to finish this," Marina stands.
Andrew jumps out of his seat and knocks it down. "Let's fucking do this!"
"You won't have long."
Andrew smirks, "Leave it all to me. I've been waiting for this."
He jolts out of the house before I can tell him where he needs to go.
“Will you be okay?” I ask, taking one last look at the woman that defies the logic of existence.
She nods with a smile, “This is the last place he would look.” she signs. "You're going too, right?"
"Yeah," I nod and take off my parka to hand it over to her, "Here."
"Are you sure?" She signs and I nod. "Then I have something else to show you."
Marina lifts her bangs,
and then I see.
“She shouldn’t exist. The only thing that exists is you, just you. Nothing else is real. This is proof, Fish.”
-
“You coming with?” Andrew asks, worried, the second I get in his car. "You know what this means, yeah?"
“I have to make sure it plays out how I see it. He has to be where I want him to be.”
"And where's that?"
"The fair."
“Are you fucking crazy? Everyone’s there. I know Lyle, he’s not gonna give a shit who he kills when he finds out we’re not Sessions.”
“I never thought you would consider others,” I almost laugh. I don’t think I ever laughed. “We’ll be right outside, no one’s going to get hurt. It will just be us three.”
“Why there? What makes it so important?” Andrew starts the car and drives us forward. “Fuck, do we even know if the feds will come?”
“Just trust me, this is our best option.”
"Sara's there."
"I promise you she won't be in danger."
Andrew scoffs. “I always wondered if you can see the future. Shit, with what Sessions did, I’ll believe anything now. She’s why you even agreed to work with her, huh? Cuz you have a lame-ass superpower? Finally found a girl weird enough to like. It’s cute. You act like a normal person around her. I don’t think you know that.”
“It’s not like that.”
"Do I come out alive at the end?"
"Do you want to know?"
Andrew laughs, starting the engine. "I already made my choice," he says as we leave for the finale.
-
“You’re insane.”
-
"I gave Elizabeth the vial of Winter that was meant for me. She said it was the greatest thing she ever experienced. She wanted more. You tried it, yeah? Do you crave it again?" Andrew speaks, quietly. He's been silent. He's been focused. He's scared.
"No."
"You think she'll forgive me?"
"She already has."
"I hope so too."
There are only a few things I left out from the files. I left out the things to protect us. I left out Marina's existence. I left out Elizabeth's involvement.
I never expected to find the secrets she kept.
Elizabeth drank Winter too, not just the toxic impure one.
She met the Woman in the White Dress too.
Not Marina.
Was she shown what I saw too?
-
"Of course, after all, it's all you."
-
The water begins to rise up from the road. It’s okay, I know it’s not real. It’s a delusion from a mind that lingers on the edge of madness. I and I alone can change the future. I can help my friends. I no longer have to hide from the world. I don’t have to pretend that I’m not the main character of my story. I no longer have to pretend free will cannot coexist with predetermination. It was my choices that got me here. It was my choice to believe I couldn't change the shadow of the present. Now it's my choice to change the shadow of tomorrow.
I can now finally forgive myself for never stopping Elizabeth.
I’m sorry that I didn’t stop her from ending her life. I was afraid. I didn’t think what I was seeing was real. I thought it was just a delusion, that I was going crazy. I’m sorry that I wanted to see what happens when a person doesn't follow any of the threads of time I see.
You’re asking me, God, the observer, why not do this anywhere else? Why so close to the people I want to protect?
There's only been one thread that I've been following. It's the only one that makes everything right. It's the only one that protects her.
-
"It's all in your head. It's not real."
-
The fated moment arrives
“Except you’re just a fish, like the rest of humanity.”
Destiny is never binary. Fate is just a construct of our actions. A permanent outcome doesn’t exist. All it is the collective choices everyone has made. It’s the collective consciousness that binds it all together. It flows in any direction at any given moment without hesitation. I alone cannot stop the threads from becoming static. People can always change their thread at a whim and outside my influence. The past is yesterday and only the dead belong to the past. Yesterday is the shadow of today. Today is the shadow of tomorrow. Today is the present to the infinity of tomorrow. And eternity is decided by its shadows. It's these shadows that have shadows. These shadows were never mine to play with.
I watch this truth unfold with my eyes. There isn’t anything else I can do. There wasn’t anything I could do, to begin with. The key for all this to turn out okay isn’t even here. Without it, the thread I was following breaks. Without it, things will just fall apart. The cycle will continue to repeat itself. I can no longer see the shadows of tomorrow. All I see is the shadows of the present that came from the shadows of the past.
None of this is supposed to happen. I don’t understand. I'm helpless. I can't do anything.
Why is everyone here except the only one who matters?
Where did I mess up?
Is this all just pointless then?
"Did you really think the supernatural exists?"
Is life just one big joke?
"Did you really think it was real?"
I’m just trapped in this glass box. I can’t leave it. It’s all I know. It’s all I’ve been given. I don’t have anything else. I’m just a fish. I’m just a fish. I’m just a fish.
Like the rest of humanity.
It’s all pointless.
It’s all pointless.
"You were never sane to begin with."
It’s all for naught. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s nothing. I am everything. I am nothing. I exist. I don’t exist. I am the universe. I can never escape it. I am Eternity. I won’t ever rest. I won’t ever rest. I won’t ever die. I die and be reborn. I die and be reborn. It’s an eternal cycle. I am infinity.
Reality was never real.
All of this is just my mind making it up to keep me entertained.
Oh right. What happens when you discover an answer to a question never asked? What happens when you find out you are just you and there is nothing else? It’s just you, alone, forever and always will be.
What happens when you find out that existence is a myth?
This Universe. Existence. Life. Space. Time. Death.
My friends. My parents. Pleasure. Pain. Anger. Joy. Love. Hate. Consciousness.
All of it isn’t real.
It’s all in my head.
It’s all there just to stop myself from finding the truth.
Existence is just a construct and it's all made up because I'm alone. I am the universe and I am God.
Why can't I remember what the Woman in the White Dress told me?
Then the shot is fired.
A lightbulb above my head.
“Oh yeah!” a grin on my face. “I’m insane!”
Infinity.
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I FIGURED IT OUT!
The twin flame
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