Verse 12:

Rainy Dreams the Bad Omen (feat. Chromatic Downpour)

“Peace is a drug to forget who we really are,

Someday I hope to be rid of it…”

Dasodaha’s calloused feet pressed off against the coarse earth with each step. How funny it was, he thought, that the world could be as soft as grass and rough as sand. “Nature cannot be a kind force,” he’d said. “And living with peace and love is to deny nature, it disgusts me.”

“Oh?”  Warren had replied. “And why do you think living naturally is the right way to be?”

“I have no thoughts on it,” Daso had muttered. “I have no choice, no one does. Where you come from, in the cities, you lie about civility, because you think if you ignore nature, you can change it. We have no choice, we are beasts in the end. I know it.”

Warren’s mouth had widened into a faraway smile. “That’s your limit, Daso. What you can’t see past… What if you could change it?”

For a moment, a silence hung in the air between them. “If you can change the nature of the world, then you would be a God.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “Do you think you can do it?”

“Of course; it is in my own nature.”

Now, Warren was riding up ahead. At his suggestion, Daso had relinquished his horse to Bleech, who was now leading it with a carrot. Daso considered that if he had more of a sense of humor, he might find this funny.

Bleech’s father wasn’t around much, off working the railway, and it was his job to chase stray dogs off the property. He’d often created little illusions of meat and treats to do so.

Malvado, the last in the procession, watched the boy’s head sway back and forth with his ride. He thought how strange it was, that he would just leave everything behind for someone who’d just destroyed his life. He couldn’t answer this question. Perhaps someone with nothing left had nothing to leave behind, but of course, Malvado couldn’t carry the thought far enough to articulate the idea.

—

The town of Newfellow was practically nonexistent to anyone not in the lumber business. Nestled deep in the lush Northwest of Andeidra, blessed by moist soil and thick forests, it was home to a major sector of the lumber business.

Malvado grew up here, among the tall pines. Genetics had dealt him a below-average muscle mass for the only type of work available to him.

After a back-breaking day of work, and many demeaning looks behind his back, he often decided to go out drinking by himself. There was a bar close to the logging depot, whether it was the cause of the workers’ alcoholism or the response to it was up in the air. It was a popular spot, however, so he always skipped it in favor of a smaller bar across town, where few of his coworkers would bother walking.

It was here that Malvado first met Warren Roseraid.

The Springtime rains doused the area on the regular, and while it was traditionally a good thing that the soil was being refreshed, this year marked the first time it was an inconvenience.

A few months earlier, a fire had killed five teenage girls working in an upholstery factory in the East; the parents had sued the company for almost a million in damages, and the story made national headlines. The lawsuit prompted the government to form new labor laws which would apply to all jobs; President Cartwright had even made a public appearance to assure the nation’s families that their children would not be killed in the line of labor.

“This’ll kill the business!” Malvado had overheard. “They only care if it’s a buncha’ broads! I say if you go to work to survive, you should be ready to die anyway!”

He himself had no opinion, a lot of it went over his head. He couldn’t carry the thought far enough to articulate the idea.

This was one such evening, when the worksite was being pounded with rain, that management called everyone off for the day. They had deemed it too unsafe to keep working away in the slick darkness, where equipment could be damaged or, worse, another lawsuit-heralding accident.

“That’s all they care about!” A disgruntled, broad-shouldered lumberjack had grumbled, putting away his gloves. “A lawsuit…” The word slithered from his mouth.

The Black Badger’s sign was bolted across a wood backing board above a single door Malvado nearly threw open. He stumbled inside, soaking wet, his hair stuck together and dripping.

The inside wasn’t much warmer. It wasn’t much more populated either. For a few minutes, he sat at a stool, only one other patron all the way down the line, and shivered.

The bartender shone the same glass for the second time that night.

“He’ll order something,” he thought. “He’s a regular.”

Indeed, after a few moments of wringing his shirt and jacket out, Malvado called for a drink. The bartender promptly set a shot glass in front of him and raised his eyebrows, smiling.

“Somethin’ to warm you up.”

“Thanks,” Malvado mumbled, pulling out a few cents. “Here ya’ go.”

If you asked Malvado what he was drinking away, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Something like “my sorrows” or “my loneliness” was the cliché answer, but in truth, he didn’t feel very sorrowful or lonely at all. He was a simple man, without many pains. At least, none that he knew of. It was possible he was drinking away a sadness that didn’t belong to him, one that fell on every square inch of this backwater town like the rain that was now slashing the sky. If he’d given it some thought, maybe he would have realized that it was just like the rain, you could see it reflecting sunlight, hear it pounding the roofs, but when you reached out to touch it, it slipped between your fingers. Of course, Malvado couldn’t carry the thought far enough to articulate the idea.

He wasn’t even halfway through his drink when he heard the doors open behind him. Immediately, something changed in the room, something no one else quite noticed. Malvado could pick up on it, but he couldn’t take it far enough to really understand what was going on; it manifested as a twitch of anxiety, that one of his coworkers had decided on The Black Badger that evening.

It was not a coworker, he would soon learn.

A man sat beside him. With every other stool open, he sat beside him. Malvado knew from just his periphery that this was a stranger, and the knot of tension in his stomach loosened.

“A glass of water, please,” the stranger gestured to the bartender.

“Water?” Malvado couldn’t help but grin to himself. “You just came in, shouldn’t you have gotten your fill of-”

It took a split second for him to take his eyes out of his drink and glance at the stranger next to him. A young man, intriguingly handsome, wearing little more than a long gray coat stitched with golden floral patterns. His eyes stared off into space, but were nonetheless focused on something Malvado couldn’t see. His hair tousled over his back, long and blond, with burnt black ends.

“But he’s… dry…”

The bartender set the glass down in front of the stranger and, for the first time, got a full view of him, head-on. He visibly recoiled, catching Malvado’s attention.

“Huh?” he wondered. “Did he give him a look or something?”

His drink wet his lips, and after refreshing himself, the stranger set the glass down and stared at the rest of it.

“Excuse me, sir,” the stranger began, making it clear to whom he was talking to. “Are you a religious man?”

Malvado perked up. What kind of a question was that?

“What’s it to you?”

The stranger tilted his head to the side as if contemplating something. “I was just curious, how well you knew the Holy Texts.”

“You some kind of evangelist?” Malvado closed his arms around his glass.

For the first time, the stranger laughed. “No, no, not an evangelist. I just want to know…” He turned his head to look at him straight-on. Malvado sucked in air in instinctive shock. In place of a right eye, a bright red rose was blossoming from the stranger’s socket. His face was bizarre, disgusting, complete.

“They’re really beautiful books,” he continued. “I just don’t think they’re finished yet.”

And then, all of the strength in Malvado’s muscles vanished, an invisible force took hold of him and wrapped all of his faculties into focusing purely on this stranger, this man-

“Warren Roseraid,” he smiled. “Nice to meet you, I should say.” His tone, so casual. “I’m just curious.”

“Well I-” Malvado stumbled over his words. “I grew up religious, but I don’t really go to church anymore. I don’t remember much, I know the Lord’s Promise, and the End of History…” He reached back into his mind. “Eh… I remember a few songs. That’s all. Nothing from the books.”

“A shame,” Warren replied. “There are so many stories that we still need to hear, even today. You know, when I came in, there was a cockroach laying on the ground outside. Its shell was smashed and its legs were just twitching around. It was really sad, I think, especially because cockroaches are so hardy, they’re very survivable, you know?”

“Uh huh…” Malvado droned, just listening.

“Its body was being carried away in the rain, too. It was really sad; I think if it were just dead it wouldn’t have been as dreary, but it was still alive. It knew what was happening, but it was already too late.”

“Mm… Mhm…” Malvado wanted to have as small a presence as possible, to just let him speak.

“There’s actually a story about it,” Warren almost hummed as he talked. “When the Saviour recruited the first prince; his name was Goliad, and he was a carpenter. At that point, everyone knew that the world was doomed, but no one could admit it. They just went about their lives the same way that was ruining them, because they all believed they wouldn’t be the last ones, that it might be their children or their grandchildren to deal with the calamity.”

Warren took a sip from his water, sighing with relief before continuing.

“But then the Saviour appeared to Goliad and told him the famous line, I’m sure you know it,” Warren looked to Malvado to recite it, and lo and behold–

“You will not be the one to face the calamity, it will not be your children, nor your children’s children, for the Word of God will arm you against the beasts of genesis, and hold you fast against the sands of time. Come with me, and be forever.”

A moment of pure silence, when the bar around them didn’t exist, when the pitter patter of raindrops went quiet, when Malvado’s muscles weren’t empty because they weren’t there. A world of pure thought.

“Don’t you think we’re like that cockroach?” Warren asked. “Are you afraid? I’m sure you can feel it, just like everyone else here.”

It took everything in his power for Malvado to keep his teeth from chattering when he replied. “Why are you asking me that?”

Warren’s mouth widened into a knowing smile. “Because I believe you couldn’t have carried the thought far enough to articulate that idea.”

—

Beads of sweat turned icy in the night air. Gallow propped himself up off the plain mattress, anything to expend his adrenaline; his heart felt like it was in a knot, pumping more blood than he could move so that his veins felt close to bursting.

He wheezed in long, deep breaths in an attempt to stabilize his body.

“Holy…” he whispered. “What the…”

When his head last hit the pillow, he was thinking about his days in the military. He had not yet grown enough to look back on that time with nostalgia, and so they were nothing but memories, rotten memories.

Gallow swung his feet over the side of the mattress, leaning against the wall as he stretched his legs across the floorboards. For a patient moment, he rubbed his shoulders, waiting for his heart to calm down, and he was finally able to relax the knot in his chest. The moon was visible through the window opposite him, casting a cold glow over his body and the musty room, where particles of dust and sand shimmered.

He’d had a dream that he was standing upright, though his feet weren’t touching the ground. He was high up, seeing the world through patches of clouds, and as this image settled, he pulled back further and further away, until he saw that he was looking through a glass window.

For some reason he could not understand, this was a terrifying revelation. He could see it below him, every different life going about their days. Many days, every day; it fluttered past, every second, too much, it was too much. And there, on the edge of the window, just out of sight, something bright and orange– or red? It pulsed with light, and he understood immediately that it was evil. The window was no longer a clear pane of glass-

“No, it had never been…”

It was warped and mountainous, like the texture of stained glass, and everything blurred together. It was terrible, on the horizon, just beyond what he could see.

—

Gideon’s eyes snapped open at the sound of knocking at his room’s door.

“Ahh… What the…” He muttered some indistinct curses under his breath. He was no stranger to waking up early, but this was beyond early.

With all the pep of a good soldier, he cracked his knuckles and flicked on the gas lamp by his bedside, grabbing the sheathed blade at his feet. Hopping out of bed, he moved for the door a little sluggishly in the dark. Finding the door handle, he pressed his ear up to the old wood and called,

“Who-” he stopped to clear his throat upon hearing his own gurgling voice. “Who is it?” he asked, much clearer.

“It’s Gallow,” came the voice on the other side.

Gideon ground some anger between his teeth. “What is it?”

“I just need to tell you something, I don’t know how to explain it without seeing you.”

“Do it through the door.”

From the other side, he heard the nervous shifting of floorboards. “I’m sorry; just open the door for a second, I need to talk to you.”

Gallow stared at the number two screwed into the door for a moment before hearing the squeak of an old handle turning. It opened ajar, and in the span of a few seconds he felt an immense energy, a tension, swell up from what was inside the room. It built like a raging wind, and then escaped the way thin air does from a popped balloon. And standing in the sliver of the doorway, staring at him, was Gideon Jepta, whose hand now relaxed from the handle of his sword.

“It’s okay,” the captain was now assured. “There’s no violence in his demeanor.”

“What is it?”

Gallow huffed with a pensive stare at the floor; he wiped some sweat off of his forehead. “I had a bad dream.”

Jepta’s eyes were like solid black coals.

“I know it’s stupid, but I don’t know who else I could tell,” Gallow struggled to keep his voice solid. “It was a bad dream, and after I woke up, I had this feeling, like something terrible is going to happen.”

Jepta spent a moment in silence, the only sound being the creak of the floorboards as Gallow shifted his feet ever so slightly.

“And what do you want me to do with that information?”

Clear cut as ever.

Gallow stuffed his hand in his pocket. “I don’t know, I just thought that if something really bad does go down, you would be the best person to handle it.”

For the first time, Jepta got close to laughing at him. “Kff!” It took Gallow aback. “Aren’t you the sheriff in this town? I think you’ve had plenty terrible happen to you already, so you should get used to it, either tough up or walk into the ocean.”

Those black coals had softened, somehow.

“I’m tired, Clarke, I don’t know why I bother. Get to sleep.”

Jepta closed the door and stumbled back to bed with a loose, drunken gait. Gallow just stood there in the empty hallway. The only light was the same moon, whose rays were cast through the grimy window at the end of the hall.

It hadn’t even hurt to hear his name, Jepta had served him enough on a plate to occupy his mind. Taking one last look at the door, he turned away, his long coat swishing, and headed for the stairs.

The pillow was cool again, and was quite refreshing for Gideon’s head to rest on. His usual nightly routine to prepare for bed wouldn’t do to repeat, so he merely lay there, trying to flush what had just happened out of his mind. It was too much of a distraction, and it was best to just empty his head. Every now and again, in his restless turning below the sheets, his eyes would wander out of the window at his bedside, and take in the sky swelling with stars.

“A bad omen?”

Something about the look on Clarke’s face, the sincerity with which he came to him, it was unsettling. Perhaps the feeling swirling in his stomach was just his half-slept consciousness not thinking things through hard enough to realize that Clarke was talking nonsense. Perhaps… 

“What a weird kid…”