A Dyad in Time Read online

  “When the skin starts going a little golden brown, then you know it’s ready. Grab the rest of the smore layers and gently place the ‘mallow in the middle being very careful not to damage it. Then, take your first bite and wait for the ‘mallow to pop in your mouth. All that prep time is totally worth it when the molten insides of the ‘mallow explode sugary goodness into your mouth. Delicious.”

  Gerard stayed still, hands paused in mid-air for a moment, then his eyes turned sharply to meet Sylvane’s wide-eyed gaze with a fierce glare. “Fire does the same thing to eyes as it does to marshmallows... Did you know that?”

  CHAPTER THREE - THE FOG

  “Miss are you okay?”

  She couldn’t hear the barista properly. The question sounded like it was being asked by a person in a muzzle, trapped behind a thick curtain of soiled material in another room. The room being down the corridor and locked with a heavy door. She wanted to hear it, and knew where it was coming from, but for some reason it came through like a muffled collection of grunts, like a tired, dying animal. She felt sorry for it and wondered what kind of life it had had, hoping it was full of light and joy. Dredging through these wistful thoughts took effort this morning and when she finally visualised the existence she wished for the animal, she was only saddened by its early departure. The animal she was pitying was actually a kid in his early twenties that stood behind the counter, wearing too-skinny jeans and an ironic tee-shirt. All he was doing was trying to cheer her up, most likely trying to do the same for himself, so he just chirped on without hesitation. He was overly used to seeing people with pre-caffeine malaise, a recognisable foggy expression cast across faces and so, with an annoyingly upbeat, and practised demeanour, he followed up with more grating niceties she was really struggling to bear on this particular morning.

  “Excuse me miss, are you okay? Can I get you a coffee?”

  For some reason, the idea that someone was actually interested in how she was feeling, briefly snapped her out of her foggy existence, bringing her to the present with a crash and a warm smile. It was a well-worn look she liked to employ when not wanting anyone to enquire any further about her day and what she was going through. Specifically designed to shut a conversation down politely it said, thanks for your interest but no need to worry or ask any more of me.

  “I’ll take a skinny latte please.” Fake brightness chirped from her.

  “Sure, soya or regular?”

  “Regular please.” The brightness dimmed.

  “Size?”

  The brightness was gone. In a few seconds of them talking, the deadening routine of their interaction had allowed the fog to return and she had drifted off again. Even this small exchange was proving particularly difficult today and she couldn’t place where it was coming from. Excuses started rushing to the top of her thought pile and she couldn’t keep track of what was going on. She worked through the stack of ideas, quickly analysing; her sleep patterns, dreams, what she ate and drank before bed, what conversations jogged alongside her consciousness yesterday and everything in between. Nothing stuck. She kept trying to grab hold of the true reason for her unsettled thoughts, it slipping through her fingers over and over again. She was walking through the fog, seeing shadows or remnants of what she was trying to find but just as she got there, it was gone, time and time again. Nothing could explain why she was feeling this way and she couldn’t figure out where this fog had come from.

  “Miss?”

  “Huh?” Dullness drowning her.

  “Size? What size coffee?”

  “Oh, um… Large.”

  “Cool.” The barista bit his lip and more gently than earlier pressed, on politely. “Are you okay? You seem miles away today. Doesn’t seem like you.”

  This animal-kid hadn’t noticed her. He hadn’t noticed her before and talked with her enough to see that something was going on. She’d talked with her friends over wine and tortured loneliness about being seen in the city and how rare it was. They had agreed that every single person frowning in the street seemed to selfishly go about their business, absorbed in whatever trivial tasks were demanded of them, caring for no one, but themselves. Then here she was, in the same café she went to every day, apparently talking to a person who had seen her, and she wasn’t sure how to react. Her eyes welled up, the water threatening to expose her feelings before she regained control. She couldn’t believe an almost complete stranger was talking to her like a normal human being and it pulled her back to the present again with a jerk, the fog temporarily lifting for her to see clearly.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Think I really need the coffee this morning. Work’s pretty intense at the moment so I’m a little tired is all.” A smile formed, part real, part fake.

  “If you say so.” He paused again, plucking up courage from somewhere. “Your name?”

  “Anne.”

  Normally, she would dread where this was going, but the fog had returned, and she was wondering through it as aimlessly as before. The muffled voice explained her name was required for the order, some kind of new initiative at the café to try and make people feel more welcome. She nodded, or at least she thought she did, the fog confusing her and mixing her reality with imagined thoughts and actions. She said her name, or thought she did, slurring from her like she had been drinking. She tried again, forcing it out with fake confidence that felt awkward, like some kind of exotic word she had read in a magazine, having never pronounced it. What the hell was going on? Her mind flashed back to countless memories of her mum using her name, lovers saying it with passion and sorrow, friends announcing it with love and judgement, but the name Anne, felt incongruous. She focused on a particular person from a long dead relationship and how he used to say her name. How it used to create a warm feeling in her chest. She used to be able to feel that warmth trickle down her torso and towards her centre, sparking fire and lust. The intensity of it was familiar and strange, the fog trying to take away the sharpness of basking in the swells of energy and flames burning deeply in her. Those moments of complete presence pulled at her intensely as she recalled the heat from her chest cascading over her, through her and towards her newly uncovered inferno.

  When she thought about those charged situations full of warmth, desire and hunger she welcomed how it felt, but when she imagined her name being said it was like being plunged into a freezing pool of ice. And what was his name? Feelings were easy to grasp and remember with absolute clarity, but the details of who he was, what he looked like, what other things they did together seemed to flicker in and out of recognition. Like she was watching something she’d lost, breaking the surface of a river, and disappearing again before she could recognise it. Watching it float away, past her, and out of reach. Out of sight.

  “Anne?”

  She actually jumped at the sound of her own name. Something that could feel so odd managed to drag her through the confusion into the now, but when she reached for the coffee, she felt like she was reaching back into the fog; an unfamiliar place, an unknown thing full of mystery and danger that seemed alive, hungering for chaos and despair. She had managed to create a tiny protective bubble around her body that kept the invasive, confusing entity at bay and venturing out past its perimeter carried dread and uncertainty. When parts of her broke the comfort of her invisible shroud, she almost couldn’t control what happened and today the pervasive gloom was particularly aggressive, requiring immense efforts of self-control and superhuman resolve to keep moving forward.

  As she was mechanically instructing her arm and hand to receive the coffee she could sense the all-encompassing presence wanting to get closer to her, wanting to feed on her, wanting to ruin her. She recognised everything that she was going through though, albeit more intensely than usual, so did her best to deploy her defence mechanisms and regain control. But, why was ordering coffee so hard today? Why did she feel like she was wading through treacle? Why was the dark being particularly oppressive? Why was the barista and his attitude particularly irritatin
g today? Why was she so tired and full of anxiety? Question after question. Non-answer after non-answer. Shadows and remnants whispered to her through the fog, ready to tell the truths they held and unwilling to yield just yet.

  “I love you Tor.” She uttered out of nowhere, one of the truths breaking through. After recalling his name, and whispering it aloud, her heart stopped. Her fingers brushed the barista’s and as he passed her the steaming hot liquid, her knees began to buckle. She welcomed what was happening as she realised she’d been wanting this for years. A rush of relief came over her as she embraced what was happening. Maybe this was it. maybe it was finally over. The fog cleared, and she smiled.

  From across the room an onlooker watched with fascination at the young woman's strange exchange at the counter. He was fascinated by how distant she seemed to be during the conversation, chuckling at the stilted few minutes it took to hand over some money for the hot brown liquid. But his amusement was short-lived. The silliness of the woman's strange behaviour switched to horror as he saw her body contort strangely as the coffee was handed over. He gripped his chair fiercely, white knuckles expressing themselves instantly as he inhaled sharply. It only took a second, but in his mind, it seemed to take eons for her body to fall, then fly. As the coffee changed hands all the air in the room was sucked out of it and an inescapable silence descended. The kind of silence that forced you to hear the flow of blood in your veins and the growing of your hair. The kind of maddening silence that draws you in with the promise of peace, but only reveals terror and truth. As he embraced the quiet, the woman’s hips shot backwards, leaving her head, arms and legs trailing. They all hung there, comically stationary in the sudden, unnatural movement of her body, refusing to move. Then, in what seemed like slow motion, he watched as the rest of her body gave up resisting and followed her hips towards the back of the café at a frightening pace.

  He partially expected what would happen next but the reality of her hitting the back wall caused him to nearly lose consciousness. The trendy exposed brick wall depressed easily as she created a huge crater and almost folded double in its recess. The impact was sudden and dreadful, his mind not recognising the scene and blocking out some of what he saw. After a few seconds, his mind allowed him to see the aftermath, just as some pieces of mortar fell away innocently and the dust that had flown out in all directions on impact, settled.

  Later, when he reflected on what he saw, trying to process the living nightmare he witnessed, it wasn’t how her body moved, or even the sounds that she made that upset him. Not even the damage and violence of the contact caused him to pass out. The sound of flesh and bone hitting a hard surface seemed inconsequential. The squelching of fat and muscle, of bones grinding forcefully against themselves and the bricks were drops in the red ocean. The slow drip, drip, drip, of a young woman's blood on the floor meant nothing to him. It wasn’t even seeing the wreckage of the encounter that haunted his thoughts for years to come. When he drew his mind towards the bodily fluids leaking out of her, mixing with the blood on the floor, it caused no reaction. Seeing one of her eyes bulging out of its socket and bones protruding from places that didn’t make any sense to him, didn’t matter. What truly disturbed him and sticks in his brain in the dead of night, was her face whilst she moved through the air. Her eyes and mouth are etched into his psyche with a beguiling permanence that only the ending of his life will remove. They saw each other. At least, he saw her, and it sends him towards a paralysing darkness he wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Her hair was beautiful. Dark, rich, thick and shimmering in the light with an unnatural glow. The light seemed to dance off each individual strand whilst moving in perfect synchronicity, like a flock of starlings set against the morning sun. The sides and top of her face were partially covered, but not due to the force of her flying backwards. It was like her head was caught in water and her hair flowed about her without urgency, at complete odds to the rest of her body moving through the air.

  When he saw past her hair he couldn’t help noticing the odd distortion of her eyes and mouth. She looked like she was screaming with and untold agony, but no sound escaped her lips. And her eyes. They were completely black and silent, like the deepest of oceans. Still. Lifeless. Dead.

  The strange mix of reactions across her face were disturbing on their own but not what causes the sleepless nights. A single tear ran down her face and in that moment a connection formed between them. He saw anguish, rage and a destructive darkness that he only knew a part of. As soon as he recognised these things he frowned deeply and focused harder on her face because something else was happening. Her eyes and mouth started leaking a viscous, lumpy, black liquid that looked like tar. Various sized pieces of detritus and waste were caught in its slow, unceasing progress down her face and neck. When he looked closer, he realised that the things caught in the fluid were remains of people. Fractured bones, scratched and damaged skulls, fleshy masses of rotting meat and maggots. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the unending procession of maggots that eventually replaced the black liquid, and he started to slip into his own darkness. The last thing he remembered was even more unnatural than what came before. Slowly, at first, he could see arms forcing their way out from her mouth. Riddled with; scars, bruises beyond comprehension, blood, and oozing holes, they were aggressively grabbing at the flesh of her mouth and face. Making their way out of her with an inhuman strength and purpose. It looked like something was trying to escape from another place. Another world. Another reality. Then he fell from his chair, exhausted and unconscious.

  As Anne was cast backwards by an unknown, unseen, all-powerful force she was calm, because she was thinking about him. There was a particular moment that was fuzzy, out of focus and lost to her, but not anymore. She’d just come home from an awful day at work, furious at her colleagues and bewildered after receiving some terrible news. She walked in the front door, sight blurred by tears and her home feeling like a foreign, faraway place. Nothing felt right. The furniture, which she hated all of a sudden, wasn’t where it should be. The flat felt cold, even though it had never been cold before. Her things seemed to be scattered around carelessly and without thought. But she was hallucinating. Everything was exactly as it was when she left earlier, even him. He’d been calling her name, but she hadn’t heard him. The noise sounded like it was coming from another world, the word uttered in another tongue. Then she saw him at the end of the corridor, leaning around the corner with a concerned look on his face.

  Through wet eyes and a dry mouth, she managed to gasp three words. “My mum died.” At hearing this, she could see the pain, suffering and despair she was feeling echoed in his face. But it was very quickly, almost unnoticeably followed by an unconditional love, warmth and light that emanated from all around him. As he walked towards her, her eyes dried momentarily so that she could see him. The corridor came into sharp focus and a beautiful silver aura seemed to surround him as he walked. Her eyes cleared a little more and as he got closer, she could see every part of him. Every wrinkle and pore on his face. Every hair follicle and detail in his iris’. He walked with purpose and she thought she could actually see his soul as he reached out with both arms and gently pulled her towards him. He kissed both her closed eyes with an infinite softness, slowly and purposefully, before pulling her into his solid, unflinching arms. They wrapped her in so closely that she felt untouchable and completely at peace, even though the world around her was evil and full of suffering. He whispered that he loved her into her ear and that broke her resolve. She completely melted into him and cried freely, knowing that she could take anything on with this man and be whoever she needed to be; vulnerable, strong, real, at sea, focused or even childish and silly. She was his, and he was hers.

  She snapped back to the now, air rushing past her as she flew, and fully embraced what was coming. It came and brought with it a deep and blissful peace that washed over her. Her breathing slowed and filled her chest with life. Her heartbeat slowed, settling her muscles, thoughts an
d anxiety to imbue her with a drive and contentment she hadn’t felt in years. The past became clear. Her future seemed to be built of stone, irrefutable and known. Unchanging. She had direction. She had purpose. She must find him. Then everything faded away.

  CHAPTER FOUR - DISTURBANCE

  “Khar?” A panicked voice was saying from behind a door. “Khar, are you okay?” The voice was getting more anxious before finally shouting, “KHAR!”.

  Khar snapped up into a sitting position on his bed, glanced at where the voice was coming from before realising he was covered in sweat and shaking uncontrollably. He dragged his eyes away from the door and looked at his hands to see the physical impact the dream had had on his nerves. Trembling he tried to compose himself, incapable of stopping them from moving with the fear of what he’d just experienced.

  “Where is The Master?” Khar managed in unsure tones, not even sure he’d be heard.

  “It is the dead of night, where do you think?” A hint of obvious sarcasm replaced the anxiety from earlier.

  “We must wake him.” Khar said with resolve, before whispering partially to himself and the room, “I need to tell him something important.” He whipped his sodden bed sheets away and got dressed. He impatiently spoke to the door saying he was moving as fast as he could before he walked over to open it. He knew who would be waiting for him on the other side and most of him looked forward to seeing K’Chool.