Chapter 5.2: Judgement (continued)

It’s a monster!

Dead Boy’s mind is racing, trying to make sense of what he now sees. The first thing he realizes is that this thing is not made of ice like all the monstrosities he’s seen before—it’s alive. The second thing he instantly understands is that it isn’t a mindless beast like the wraiths that haunt the streets. It’s watching him with deep, hidden intelligence.

The being is well over twenty feet tall and very slender. Dead Boy gets the impression that it is very old. Its body is covered with some kind of hard blue-grey carapace sucked in close over its many ribs like flaking cardboard. It has six long bug-like arms and two legs, all with multiple joints that bend at odd angles and long clawed fingers that repetitively open and close as if it can’t wait to wring every last ounce of life out of Dead Boy’s neck.

But its gaze is what sends a shivery chill down Dead Boy’s spine more than anything else. Its head is large and bulbous, devoid of hair, with a cranium that extends back behind its shoulders like an oversized helmet. It’s mouth is a narrow slit that looks too small for its massive face, which is covered in wrinkly ridges that lead up to impossibly large, pitch black eyes so devoid of color that when it leans in close to examine its captive more closely, Dead Boy can see himself in their shiny beetle-shell surface. His face is so badly battered and bruised that he can’t even recognize himself save for the tattoos.

I’ve been watching you, a voice booms inside Dead Boy’s head. It’s somehow speaking to him without moving its mouth at all. I’ve been following you for a long time now.

“Whaa?” is all Dead Boy can muster, but what he’s trying to say is Who the hell are you? and somehow Dead Boy knows his question is heard and perfectly understood.

The being spreads its six arms wide, motioning to a huge, round, gunmetal room strung all over with wispy, web-like cables, four of which Dead Boy now realizes he is hanging from the ceiling by.

Welcome to my dream, human. Your entire world, all of it, is mine.

Dead Boy feels woozy and isn’t sure how much longer he can keep going for. He’s certain that any moment now he might pass out, and he’ll never wake again. But then, one clawed finger tenderly carresses his cheek and Dead Boy’s eyes snap back open, wide and alert.

Dead Boy screams: “Why?!” He has no idea what kind of answer he seeks; it’s a primal question of unadulterated unknowingness that sums up the entirety of swirling confusion raging within his mind.

Look, and I will show you.

The claw tip slips under Dead Boy’s chin and intimately tilts his head back up, and then he is once again staring into the entity’s massive eyes, which are now rapidly glazing over with rivulets of fractalized frost like a wintery window on which a child has just sighed a hot breath.

And suddenly, Dead Boy can feel a darkness crawling over his eye sockets as his psyche starts to fall into that all-to-familiar black hole he’s been down one too many times before. His entire being snuffs out, just like that, and is replaced in a blinding flash by a vision so completely unexpected that he completely forgets himself and marvels in utter awe at the enormity of what he now sees.

Stars. So many stars, more than he’s ever seen before, fill his vision. A million white pinpricks are scattered in clusters across the deep black canvas of space—a canvas so wide that he knows he isn’t star-gazing atop a scraper or mountaintop, but is actually viewing this spectacle from deep in space himself, soaring somewhere outside the bounds of his planetary home.

The stars slide to the right, or rather he feels his own view is shifting to the left, and something new comes into view: a small blue dot that is slowly growing bigger and bigger. Gradually, the blue sphere grows to fill the majority of his vision, and now he can see white and green splotches on it and he realizes from his lessons with Miss Tin Pan that he is looking at the Earth itself.

Then there is a loud crash and a massive jolt that shakes everything he can see. The being’s voice roars out audibly and its six-clawed indigo hand slams forward into view in a flare of rage. Sparks fly and the image of the Earth shimmers then refocuses, and Dead Boy realizes he must be looking at some sort of display from within … a spacecraft?

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And then, more rapidly than anything Dead Boy’s ever experienced, the view lurches forward and curves around the Earth’s horizon, bringing the night side of the planet into sight with a million yellow pinpricks of light mirroring the stars above. There’s another shuddering jolt, and the craft bursts through the Earth’s atmosphere in a firey blaze, and then it’s streaking across the sky like a shooting star.

Down, down, down Dead Boy falls, straight toward one of the largest clusters of light. The shining brilliance converges to form shapes, lines and patterns that closely resemble the San Francisco street maps Dead Boy’s studied so many times. And then the craft zooms straight down between the lights, slams into a large dark spot and everything goes black.

Dead Boy feels his psyche whipping back into his own head with a force so strong his entire body rocks back and sways dizzyingly. He blinks and is once again staring into the frosty gaze of this gigantic entity holding him captive. This … alien being that came to Earth and destroyed it, he realizes.

Yes. My world now. The alien’s face betrays no emotion, but Dead Boy senses it is pleased with his understanding.

Soon, this all comes to an end. And so, we dream.

With that, everything fades to black once again and Dead Boy dreams, too.

###

Carlita shifts anxiously from one foot to the other at the front of the stage, staring at a dirty spot on the floor as she waits for her worst nightmare to come true. Kicked down to the Crypts to live the remainder of her life as a beggar. She looks up at the ceiling. Back down again. Anything to avoid the gaze of the Committee members as they question aunt Maya about the juicy specifics of what happened.

It’s bad enough she had to wait over two hours for the Committee and NBAZ reps to discuss Raz’s revelation—without coming to any sort of constructive decision, of course. Then once they moved on to the small claims hearings, Carlita’s name was almost at the very end of the list for some reason.

And now her crime has been laid bare for over a hundred people to hear—Carlita had ‘attacked’ the kitchen manager and skipped out on work duties for an entire day. The community’s eldest and most crotchety members will decide her fate without giving her any say in the matter. They won’t even ask for her side of the story! She’s not even permitted to speak!

She wishes her friends weren’t here to witness her being expelled. What terrible luck is that? Youths are almost never allowed into City Hall meetings, and yet here are Raz and Soda both in attendance. She looks at Raz in distress, and receives a reassuring nod. She returns a sheepish frown.

Before Maya can finish her story, Burger, Carlita’s detestable co-worker in the kitchens, trots up to the stage and offers an unprompted interjection: “Your honor, I have much more damning evidence against that lazy brat, Carlita. You really need to hear this!”

The Chairwoman looks like she wants to berate Burger for speaking out of turn, but at the tail end of such a long Committee meeting, she seems to have lost a bit of her spark. She raises an eyebrow in irritation instead. “Well?”

“This morning, I overheard Carlita consorting with Garden, who admitted wholeheartedly that she’s the entire reason we got attacked last night!”

The entire room erupts in a a chaotic mess of screaming and shouting, some of which comes from Carlita and her friends. That traitor, Burger! Carlita feels her hatred seething, like her blood is on fire. The Committee’d better exile her to the Crypts now, because she’ll kill Burger for sure if she has to go back to work with her again one more day!

The Chairwoman does berate Burger now (“Why the hell didn’t you bring this up when we were all discussing the attack?” the Chairwoman screams, to which Burger just says something stupid about Carlita consorting with criminals) but she is finally given a chance to tell her story: Garden’s story, which she relates in extremely close detail. Before she finishes, the double doors at the back of the room swing open again and Garden is ushered into the great audience chamber with two armed guards at her back.

When Burger wraps up her story, the old Chairwoman stands back up and addresses Garden: “You are Sunshine’s youngest, are you not? Is this true, what has been said about you?”

Garden’s eyes are wide and scared. Carlita’s are blurred with fat wet tears that silently streak down her face.

“Well?”

Garden looks at her feet and nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Wait!” Raz shouts suddenly and strides forward to interrupt the meeting for the second time today. “I … I was with both Carlita and Garden the day of the attack. They didn’t do anything wrong!”

The gavel bangs down hard on the table twice more and the Chairwoman declares with very evident exhasperation, “They both clearly did do wrong, young man, we already have the testimonies. Out!”

The two guards jerk Raz bodily out the door like a criminal. Carlita moans in despair.

The Chairwoman whispers with the nearest two Committee members for a few moments and then addresses the room once again with a tone of finality about this entire mess:

“Carlita! You will return to the kitchens this afternoon. The NBAZ’s food needs come first.”

Carlita’s heart leaps and drops at the same time. She can do nothing but stare in horror as the inevitable plays out.

“Garden! Based on the testimony we have received, you are hereby declared a traitor. Your continued presence here puts the entire North Bay Autonomous Zone at risk. You are hereby sentenced to exile from the entire North Bay community, permanently!”

Carlita’s heart hits the floor as she cries out. “Nooo!”

###