Simon smiled at the desolation.

When he was a little boy, he used to daydream about touching things and turning them into ash. Tree? Ash. School desk? Ash. Neighbor’s mean dog? Ash. Teacher? Bullies? His Momma? Ash. Ash. Ash.

It was a silly childhood fantasy, one he’d outgrown when faced with the ugly head of reality and its terrible rules. Mostly. There was a part of him that always held onto it. There was a part of him that just knew it wasn’t a fantasy, that it was in his power. It was the same part that drove him to steal the guns from his uncle’s safe all those years ago. The same part that drove him to use those guns on his mother and all those children she loved more than him. He’d wanted to turn them to ash. He knew he could turn them to ash. Of course they hadn’t turned to ash. They’d turned to leaking wounds and twisted limbs. It wasn’t what he’d wanted.

But now…

What the Baba’ba’ksum—his friend—helped him do to this town… This was what he’d wanted. This was what he’d always wanted.

Ash.

For as far as he could see: charred, smoldering ash. Where the bookshelves had been were now mounds of ash. Where the library’s walls had been were now piles of ash. Where the houses of this stupid little town had stood were now hills of ash. Even the sky swirled with palls of gray ash beneath an enormous plume of black ash that blotted out the sun. Little fires burned. Heat radiated from the air itself. Simon stood amidst it, unharmed.

It was in his power. It always had been.

Mother’s children have been disciplined in the usual ways, the Baba’ba’ksum said.

“Yes,” Simon agreed.

But there are more. We must find them.

“We must…”

We must continue our reign of discipline.

“Our reign…” Simon squinted at a peculiar pillar of ash ten yards away. It was roughly man-sized, and roughly man-shaped. It stood out against the otherwise leveled landscape.

Mother will start to abandon hope, the Baba’ba’ksum said. As her children serve us, she is left with nothing.

The pillar of ash was weird. Simon admitted that. It was weird that it was there at all. It was weird that it was shaped like a person. It was weird that it was…

Moving.

Let us leave her with nothing.

The pillar started to dust itself off. Clumps of ash broke free and fell from it, revealing flesh beneath. Intact flesh. Healthy flesh. And a plain face.

The man from the library. The plain man who—for some reason—hadn’t leaked and twisted from Simon’s bullets. He wiped ash from his head and body, and shook his shoulders in a way that reminded Simon of a wet dog shaking out his coat. Then he stood there, completely naked, looking at Simon from plain eyes.

Unharmed.

“What do I do?” Simon asked, his voice cracking, and when the Baba’ba’ksum did not respond he looked over, expecting it to be lurching forward, its throat bulging, some magnificent weapon emerging from its mouth, a weapon that would strike this plain, naked man to ash.

But the Baba’ba’ksum was not lurching. It floated there, staring at the plain man from its empty eyes, its brittle lips twisted into some kind of alarm.

We should go from here, it said.

Simon wrinkled his nose. He and the Baba’ba’ksum were unstoppable. Together they had no one to fear. They didn’t need to run. Simon never had to run from anyone ever again.

“Why?” he asked.

Mother… the Baba’ba’ksum said. It is Mother…

The naked man, now holding a glass of whiskey to his lips, looked back at Simon over the rim.

Simon frowned. “That’s Mother?”

The Baba’ba’ksum said nothing.

The vapors of the Bad Mood crept up Simon’s spine. He stepped toward Mother. “I’m not afraid of you!” he said, his voice cracking again. “I’ll never go back in a cage!”

Mother dropped his empty glass, which vanished before hitting the charred ground. “Yeah I think you’re probably right about that,” he said in his plain voice.

Simon turned on the Baba’ba’ksum. “Give me something!” he shouted, holding out his hands. “Give me something to kill it with!”

But the Baba’ba’ksum was not at Simon’s side. It was overhead—ten, twenty, thirty feet—its pointy tails twitching, floating away from Simon.

It was abandoning him.

“Where are you going?!” Simon shrieked.

The Baba’ba’ksum’s empty eyes looked down the length of its shriveled snout with something like pity and derision.

“No!” Simon reached upward, willing his arms to lengthen, to seize the Baba’ba’ksum and pull him back. The Bad Mood widened in his head, straining his skull. “No!”

“You filthy little animal,” said a voice then that Simon knew more intimately than any sound on earth.

He looked over. Something moved behind Mother’s naked body. A shape emerging from the swirling ash. Even its silhouette was unmistakable, and as it neared, materializing as if from the thick air itself, Simon’s breath caught in his throat.

“How…” he whispered.

“A filthy little animal in need of a good cleaning,” she said, leveling one finger at Simon and fidgeting with the tie on her bathrobe with the other.

Simon’s lip quivered. “…Momma?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Get in the bath,” Momma hissed, stepping over charred mounds of ash with her bare feet. “Get in the bath so we can clean your filthy little animal parts.”

The Bad Mood deflated and retreated into Simon’s bones. In its place, the Big Badness crackled up into his teeth and sucked up all his saliva.

“I don’t need to take a bath, Momma,” Simon said. “I already took a bath today.”

“You’re filthy!” Momma seethed. “Peepeeing yourself at night. Playing with those dead mice. Filthy! Inside and out!”

“No, Momma…”

“That’s why your father left.” Momma stomped toward Simon, though she grew no closer. “Because you can’t control your peepees and you like to play with dead mice and you spy on your own Momma when she’s naked. A filthy little animal!”

“I don’t…”

“Is this what you want?” Momma pulled her robe aside, exposing a sagging, veiny breast. “Is this what the filthy little animal wants to see?”

Simon sobbed. “No, Momma!”

“It’s detached!” shouted a woman’s voice from somewhere nearby that Simon didn’t recognize. “Now, Isaac!”

There was movement to Simon’s left, but he didn’t bother to look. He glowered at his Momma. He could hear the bath running in the other room. He could smell the soap—the nauseating soap in the yellow bottle she forced him to use, that burned his skin. He hated baths. He hated his Momma. If only he could stop her. If only he could turn her to ash. But there was nothing he could do. He was only a little boy. A little boy filled with a Big Badness bigger than his little body could contain.

“Excuse me, buh…buddy.” Someone tapped Simon’s shoulder.

Simon looked over at a man with slicked-back hair, wearing a tracksuit, with a gold necklace peeking out from the collar.

Simon blinked. “…Yes?”

The man raised a palm, as if to offer Simon a high-five.

Simon looked at the palm. In that moment, despite his filthiness, despite the Big Badness sucking up all the liquid in his body—despite even the imminent bath—Simon felt a tinge of gratitude. Whoever this man was, with his oily hair and gold necklace, he was offering Simon a gesture. He was offering him a sliver of kindness. A high-five said a lot. It said: I see you. It said: Good job. It said: If just for this moment, we’re friends.

Simon had never really had any friends. The Baba’ba’ksum was the closest thing to that he’d ever experience, and the Baba’ba’ksum had abandoned him when he’d needed it most.

He raised his own palm and worked his face into what he hoped read as a gracious smile.

His friend slapped his hand. Simon’s smile didn’t falter as he watched his hand explode into a mess of red. He knew that wasn’t how high-fives were supposed to work, but there was no time to register a problem—and no time to feel pain—as his friend’s open palm continued forward and collided with his forehead, and that was it.

#

“It’s up there!” Helen shouted, one finger pointing overhead.

“It’s gonna jump!” Dante yelled, startling Benno, who hadn’t known he was standing right behind him.

Overhead, eighty feet in the air, a fleshy balloon pulsed and wriggled. Its stubby legs and numerous tails beat at the air, attempting to propel itself higher.

“Gemma, scramble the boundary!” Edda sprinted past Benno with a wash of blue, her mask closed over her face and her long phallus bobbing menacingly. Her armor—and the sword extending from her hand—reflected the gray wasteland.

BOUNDARY SCRAMBLE IMPLEMENTATION INITIATED.

HALF-LIFE RATE AT 4.4193 SECONDS… 3.2614 SECONDS…

Edda leapt.

Benno’s mouth fell open as she rose into the air—twenty, forty, seventy feet—her hair billowing, her sword outstretched toward the fleeing Baba’ba’ksum, which flailed and contracted like a beached squid, as if some enormous pressure bore down on it.

Edda reached the acme of her leap and from the point of her sword was a flash of purple light, and four transparent purple triangles appeared—all flared open like unfolded origami—before snapping shut around the Baba’ba’ksum, enclosing its writhing body in a purple pyramid of light.

“I got it!” Edda called from above, her usually carefully curated bravado replaced with the giddiness of a little girl. “I got it!”

The Baba’ba’ksum strained against its purple cage, clawing and gnashing with its grotty legs and carious teeth.

Edda—whether by some function of her suit or by merely weighing slightly more than the upward force of the Baba’ba’ksum’s futile attempts to fly away—floated slowly down, reminding Benno of Mary Poppins except far more terrifying, and with a terroristic parasite monster in a pyramid cage on the end of a sword instead of an umbrella.

“Got a little hairy there,” Dante said, slapping Benno on the back. “Edda had the good sense to get us the fuck out of the Realm as soon as you John McClaned the library. Good thing she did, too.” He gestured around at the rubble. “But all’s well that ends well.”

Benno placed a second hand over the first one already covering his crotch. “Was that you?” he asked. “The Momma thing?”

“Sure was.” Dante smiled proudly.

“Pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah, I mean…” Dante’s smile faltered. “Just working with what I had.”

Isaac joined them, unwrapping the bloody tape from his hands, and Helen sauntered up alongside. Together they watched as Edda alit softly to the charred ground near Simon’s body, a streak of bright blood all that was left of his head and neck.

“We did it,” she said, her mask dissolving to reveal dark green lips spread across white teeth that dazzled against the sooty landscape. “And it wasn’t even that hard.”

#

Edda placed the Baba’ba’ksum’s purple pyramid prison atop the table on the bridge.

“Mind your distance,” she said before stationing herself at the console.

Benno, in a fresh pair of clothes, gazed down at the black crater formerly known as the town of Middle Forest. From up here—three hundred feet at least—it appeared like an enormous bruise on the face of the earth. Everything that had been there was gone: The red brick buildings. The snow-covered cars. The 7-11. The library. All of it obliterated. Nothing had survived. Nothing but a vile, Realm-jumping god-monster…

And Benno.

“I know it’s unfortunate,” Edda said from the console, watching Benno from the corner of her eye. “Such a staggering loss of life is never optimal. But rest assured that without our intervention, the Baba’ba’ksum and its host would have caused far greater death.”

“It’s not that,” Benno’s voice was tight as tears fought to spring forth, and he looked at Edda. “Is the Gardens real?”

Edda frowned, her orange eyes dark. “This again?”

“Because if it’s not… If it’s not then… I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Benno’s hands trembled up the length of his chest and flitted around his mouth. “That explosion… Was it what I think it was?”

“That depends,” Hermann said. "If you think it was a highly enriched uranium fission weapon yielding 63 terajoules…”

Benno sobbed once, lurching forward, a tendril of saliva whipping from his mouth and dangling on his lip. “I was right there,” he said. “I was ten feet away when it exploded. If that didn’t do it then nothing will. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

Hermann, Isaac, Dante, Helen and Edda watched him.

“I’m stuck!” Snot ballooned from Benno’s nostril. “I’m stuck here! Everyone else gets to die. Everything else dies and in a billion years I’m going to be drifting through space all alone for eternity. Why is this happening to me? What did I do?” Benno fell to his knees and craned his head back to meet Edda’s eyes. “Why? Tell me. Why me?”

Edda looked down at him, piteous.

Benno clenched his fists. “I smelled his brain!”

The crew returned stupefied looks.

“After the accident…” Benno’s fists trembled. “He was out on the pavement. Knocked through the windshield, lying on a carpet of broken glass. I went to him. He looked like he was sleeping. I could hear his breath. His desperate breath… I picked him up and held him. His hair was damp with blood. I tried to wipe it off, but it came away. The hair, the skin, the skull… And there was a smell. Iron and fat. And something… something else. His thoughts, his soul—I don’t know. It came out and I smelled it and I didn’t want to but I did it before I could stop and… And it’s stuck in me now. The smell of my son’s brain is stuck in my mind. I wasn’t supposed to know that smell. No one is supposed to know that smell… He used to climb up my back like a tree. He used to giggle with his face in my hair…” Benno groaned and dropped his face into his hands, and for a few seconds the crew watched him weep.

Then, one by one, they turned away.

“Are we all accounted for?” Edda asked, facing the console.

“Without D’doak, the remaining six of us are here,” Hermann said.

Edda traced a shape on the console.

Benno lowered his hands from his face. Below him, the morose crater gawped, a stark symbol of the profound extent of his condition. His bloodshot eyes wandered upward, settling on the table atop which the purple pyramid sat. From inside it, the Baba’ba’ksum’s empty eye sockets stared back at him.

Death… the Baba’ba’ksum’s voice gnashed directly into Benno’s ears in the moments before the Shenandoah went dark. It was an ugly voice, a brittle voice like the wheezing of a sick dog. It was vile. But there was also understanding. Compassion. Tenderness.

I can give you death…