Matilda Vess awoke to a drumming inside her head. With one
eye open, she rolled over to see the clock and saw it was 5:45 in
the morning. The pain was right between her eyes. A throbbing pain
that extended to the bridge of her nose. That was bad enough, but
that horrible drumming noise was intolerable.
She saw the sun barely rising. But there were no birds
singing. Yesterday there were birds singing. Two days ago there were
birds singing. She knew it was spring---
Something was wrong.
Matilda sniffed the air. Something was burning. She
leaped out of bed and threw her robe over her gown, still smelling
the air. She slipped into the furry slippers, the ones her sister
Jenny gave her for Christmas, still smelling the air.
Something is definitely burning, Matilda thought as she
ran her bedroom to the kitchen, to the living room, to the bathroom,
back to the kitchen. Nothing in her house was on fire.
“Then what the hell is that burning smell?” Matilda asked
herself. She put up her curly blond hair in a bun and closed her
eyes. She smelled the air again.
She heard a loud crash. She jumped, looked around, then ran to the
window. She heard sirens. Out the window she could see a row of
houses across the street burning. Smolder and ash filled the sky.
Large orange and red flames were consuming her neighbors houses, one
by one. Mrs. Tolkas was out on her lawn screaming in horrible pain.
She fell to the her nicely cut green lawn and rolled to end the
flames torment. An ETM stopped along the curb of her driveway and two
men jumped out of their vehicle with a blanket to cover Mrs. Tolkas.
“What in God 's name is going on?” Matilda flung open her front
door.
A powerful wind uprooted a tree from the Blackwells yard, flying
past Matilda in a funnel and carried it in the dark sky. Matilda
found herself being blown back inside her house. She watched her
front door open and close several times by another gust of wind
before she pushed the shut and even turned the bolt on the top lock
for safety sake.
“That's why the birds weren't singing,” She sighed, rested on the
floor for a few minutes.
There was a buzzing sound. Her phone was lying on the coffee table
next to the latest Dan brown novel. Matilda crawled across the thin
layered shag carpet, the fibers pinching her legs. It reminded her of
the time she had sex with jenny's date at a friends wedding. Jenny
thinks to this day the guy left with a bridesmaid. He wasn't even
attractive or interesting, with his bald head and fat red nose. She
always thought she did it with W.C. Fields. Sometimes she was turned
on by that idea, but mostly it made her wretch.
Matilda didn't get to her phone in time. She pressed the alotted
buttons to listen to the voice mail. It was Jenny.
“I don't know what is happening,” Jenny sounded hurried, nervous.
“Everything is being destroyed. Matilda...I want you to know I---”
That's where the message ended.
Matilda hit the callback button. No cell phone signal. She tried for
five minutes before frustration caused her to throw the phone across
the room, slamming against a wall and splintering in several parts.
Matilda felt the house shake. The furniture moved to the left,
walls expanded. All the knickknacks she had on a shelf seemed to leap
forward, collaborating on pile of broken ceramics. She saw the floor
to her kitchen sink in.
Matilda fought her balance to get to her feet. She ran to the
front door, flung it open. In the middle of her street was a wide
crack, swallowing people and their houses and cars.
“It's a dream,” Matilda mumbled. She felt the ground under
her bubble up. Matilda screamed, ran the opposite direction.
She ran down her street, past debris and the dead lying in
that debris. She looked up and saw the skies clearing up. The sun
showed a few rays of light through passing black clouds. The earth
was still. Matilda was too tired to run anymore.
She found herself in front of a bank with windows
shattered and the ceiling had caved in. She sat on the edge of a
curb, placed her head in her hands. Matilda wept. Sobbing loudly, she
had not noticed the footsteps on the pavement in front of her.
The man had fallen to his knees, blood dribbling from the
corners of his mouth. Matilda raised her head up. She was face to
face with a dying man, a large chunk of glass piercing his chest. He
fell on his face, at her feet. Matilda squealed, sprung from the
curb.
A circle of light appeared, nearly blinding Matilda. She held
a hand in front of her eyes. Out of the light a glowing woman with
red eyes and in robes materialized. The woman placed both hands
inside the dead man and took from him a warm blue rotating particles.
The glowing woman hovered above the dead man, stared at Matilda.
Then she was gone.
Matilda staggered backwards, eyes wide, mouth gaping open.
“What the hell...” She said.
“Don't be afraid...” Matilda heard a familiar voice.
She
looked behind her. She saw Reverend Michaels. The gray, ashen man
looked as if he was in a daze. He held out one hand to her, holding
the other behind his back. His eyes were tired, empty. He was
wearing his collar. His black short sleeve shirt had burn marks and
holes in it.
“Reverend, What is going on?” She asked him.
He motioned for her to come him. He had this fixated grin on his
face. “Don't be afraid. My child...” Matilda walked to him
quickly, nervously.
“I don't understand...everything was fine when I went to sleep last
night...now I see these...beings taking this...this energy...I don't
know---”
“Don't be afraid, my child...it is God 's work. Take my hand.”
He showed Matilda the .45 he was hiding behind his back.
“No,” She backed away from him.
“It is alright, my child. Take my hand...we will see god
together---”
“No!” She screamed at Reverend Michaels.
He put the barrel of the gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger. The
top of his head exploded in a cloud of thick red. Matilda screamed
until her voice gave out. Reverend Michaels body fell limp on the
hard pavement.
She closed her eyes, tried to control her breathing. She opened
them again, saw the glowing women surrounding the Reverend 's body,
caressing he blue particles in their hands.
Matilda ran. She was running to the apartment complex where her
sister lived.
Matilda never made it to the apartments. A line of cars on the
bridge leading to the four lane were ravaged. She walked through
broken glass, avoiding cars just barely hanging on the side of the
bridge. Matilda tried in vain not to look at broken bodies either
inside the vehicles, or scattered on the bridge.
She saw the glowing women extracting the blue particles from
the dead. They held the particles ever so gentle in their hands, then
slip into nothingness.
Matilda recognized Jenny 's Escort, entangled with a Ram
pick up. The front end of the car was like an accordion folded
together with truck 's back end. She hesitated, knowing it was best
to know if Jenny was alive. She rounded the rider 's side, peeked in
through shattered window.
Jenny was no longer with the living. Her head was tilted
back, lower part of her body had become part of the interior of the
car.
Matilda felt the car become warmer, as if it had become a
human with blood flowing through the body of the car. She removed her
hand from the door handle, backed away. She examined her hand, seeing
there was large red circle on her palm. Out of the corner of her eye,
she saw a glowing woman taking blue particles from Jenny.
“No!” Matilda screamed, rushing around the back end of the car to
the driver 's side.”Get away from her! Don't touch Jenny!” She
waived her hands angrily at the glowing woman hovering over the
vehicles.
The glowing woman looked confused at first, then fierce. The eyes
had grown bigger, the pupils smaller, blacker. The glowing woman
opened her mouth and bared long sharpened teeth that opened like a
Venus flytrap. Matilda heard a growl from the glowing woman and felt
a gush of ice cold force of some kind knock her on her backside.
Before Matilda could regain her balance, the glowing woman was
gone.
A deep sea of sadness consumed Matilda. She understood Reverend
Michaels despair. She climbed the rail of the bridge, looked down,
decided to jump. Everything went black.
Matilda regained something of a consciousness, but it was all
fuzzy—dreamlike. She felt hands enter her. It was warm—gooey...like
a nice warm calm, bath running over body. She saw a glowing woman
hovering over her, holding blue particles in her hands.
She
heard the glowing woman speak with her mouth closed. “I am Talos,”
She said. “I am here with other Talos, to gather essence from you,
so your kind can continue. It is the nature of the cycle. I shall
carry this to a distant place where humanity with thrive, hopefully
fulfilled and in peace.”
Matilda smiled at that notion. Then she was no more.
G
as it did with THE MIGHTY BOOSH.
?
JESCO WHITE
s.
I'm
not endorsing the man's views, but he is definitely an outcast in which
he has never floundered on those views no matter how fashion or
political views change. His art remained consistently on par with some
of the best cartoonist over the years.