THE GLASS PLAGUE

By Costi Gurgu

Illustrations by Costi Gurgu

Published in 2016, in the “Dark Horizons” Anthology, edited by Charles P. Zaglanis

 

THE CELESTIAL DRAIN

Everybody called it the Glass Plague because of the way the glassy alien substance spread and infected the city street by street, house by house.

It started one night when it stroked the tower of the Manulife Center right out of a liquid eye opened in the heavens. A white wave of foamy lava gushed through all its windows and ran down its walls. Within minutes, the white matter had covered the tower and began spreading and coagulating. The building looked like a melted candle.

And then it crawled so slow that sometimes people thought it finally stopped. It crept along the main arteries and then drained through the small streets in between, turning Toronto into an international center and a dying city all the same.

 

PLAGUE’S CHILDREN

Their feet crunched through dry leaves and carried them past empty benches. Sax remembered the park in the spring, when everything was fresh and green and blooming. Through the summer it had matured into a more leafy aspect, and now it was turning yellow and bald. By winter it would be only a swarthy skeleton.

The three friends stopped in an alley. Kiss and Trompi pulled the earphones from their right ears and looked at each other. A sadistic smile widened on Kiss’s face. He shook his head in time with the music’s rhythm. Trompi, made one of his biting, smart remarks, and rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows.

Sax increased his Deep-V’s volume. He was listening to Judas Priest’s Heavy Duty, remixed in a cryo-punk sound. The drums beat in rhythm with the blood flowing in his veins. The bass and the drums quickened his pulse and gave his steps weight. Yes, he thought, music turned him into an armored warrior. He too pulled the earphone from his right ear.

The washrooms in Allan Gardens were foul-smelling and remote—the preferred meeting place for the Xenorphine addicts. The law forbade harvesting, trafficking, possessing or consumption of Xenorphine. So, when the three attacked the addicts in the Allan toilets, the law was, in some ways, on their side. They ran down the stairs and kicked open the door. They found only one of their usual targets popping a glassy bud over a sink.

“Xenofuck, wanna fly?” said Kiss.

Trompi began checking stalls, one by one, while Sax and Kiss moved closer to the guy. He was small and thin, with a nervous manner. His eyes were milky from the using. He tucked the bud into a plastic bag, zipped up, and watched them, offering a wide, toothless smile. They had taken care of his teeth in previous sessions.

“Why do you think the xeno’s smiling?” Sax wondered.

“The fuck’s gotten it so many times he thinks we’re bored already,” said Kiss with a hint of humor that was uncharacteristic for him.

Sax’s fist wiped the smile from their happy target’s face. The guy fell against the wall like a rag doll. When he raised his bloody face to them, his smile was back. A moment later they heard police sirens.

“That’s why the motherfucker’s happy!” Kiss kicked him and ran up the stairs, followed by the other two.

The police sirens were closer—their cars closing on the park. The three friends ran down the first street they encountered. Sax looked back as two cars stopped in front of Jarvis Street Baptist Church. Cops emerged from the cars and ran after them. He suspected that the other vehicles were moving to cover all intersections around the park in order to cut them off, no matter what direction they chose.

Life had brought the trio together. They weren’t the kind of gang normally pursued by the police. Everything had started when Kiss’s parents, vacationing in France, had postponed their return home after the Glass Plague had attacked Toronto. They’d kept in touch with their only child through phone calls. At the same time, Sax’s mother had fallen gravely ill and his father couldn’t adjust to the idea that her illness was fatal, instead opting for divorce.

Life had also pushed them forward. Who knew when they’d taken their first misstep? Maybe it had started when they had abandoned their given names and adopted nicknames. James had a Saxon t-shirt. He didn’t really like them, but the t-shirt was cool and it was a present from his parents, before the divorce, the illness, the fights—from the times when everything was good and music was simply energizing. It had seemed natural to call himself Sax. And Larry had decided, after careful measurements taken during a night of drinking, that his tongue was as long as Gene Simmons’ of Kiss fame, and therefore that he would bear their name. Although antique, he’d reasoned, they’d been a dangerous band, which inspired him to turn against everything strange in his life, especially the alienness the xenos addicts had brought to his city.

Or maybe the misstep had happened even before all these things, when the two of them had inadvertently shared the same girlfriend and then, when they’d discovered her two-timing, they had decided that their relationship was more important, even though they couldn’t stop teasing and insulting each other.

In a few minutes the gang was on Church Street. They wouldn’t stand a chance going south, or west of Yonge Street. The sirens were getting closer. They ran up Church Street, then entered a narrow side street, and continued running toward the Affected Zone—in the direction the police seemed to be driving them, in order to force them to surrender. They cut down Carlton Street just before the police cars appeared, and went on to Wellesley by way of the side streets and the intersecting parking lots and back alleys. Any time they thought to detour, even more cops ran after them.

“It’s obvious, what they want!” panted Sax.

“So what? Force our way back on Church?” Kiss asked.

“No, we hide somewhere,” Trompi calculated, stopping them. He leaned over, bracing his palms against his knees, and looked at them questioningly: where?

“In the Zone,” offered Sax.

“They’re driving us toward the Zone. They think we’ll stop at its border,” said Trompi.

“In the Zone,” Sax insisted, and started running again. Behind them, twenty meters back, the rest of the police cruisers halted and their occupants emerged for the final move.

At the end of the street, the asphalt was cracked and traversed by thick, white veins. The remains of the last barricade around the Affected Zone still stood on Wellesley, abandoned and frozen within a milky white tendril, one of many radiating like the rays of a sun from the core in the Manulife Centre and Yonge and Bloor intersection. They were already a few kilometers long and getting thicker and wider daily.

They entered the Plague area and ran up to the first intersection, then looked back. The cops were still following, but now with caution. They were afraid of the Zone. Lately, the crystal-like walls of the affected buildings had started to bud. Soft, leafy, fist-sized clusters protected cores the size of a nut. Gummy and dirty yellow when they reached maturity, the cores slipped outside the buds and hung suspended by what looked like pinkish umbilical cords.

The homeless had been the first to sample the fruits. Their juice—xenorphine, had quickly become the main merchandise of the drug dealers. Powerful cartels had formed around the Zone and the area had been split into sectors won through grim battles and political pacts. The Native Indians owned the biggest slice, snatched in a bloodbath from the Russians and the Chinese. The police usually avoided interfering with their activity. Only the military moved unhindered through the sectors in their tanks and bulletproof cars, shuttling and protecting the research teams, and sometimes pretending to impose the United Nations’ new regulations concerning the Plague drug. Officially, though, the offer to use the Peace Corps to free the Zone from the cartels had been rejected.

“We go in through the blocks on Isabella,” Sax told them. He had lived in the area before the Plague. He’d been forced to abandon his apartment along with all the other tenants in the first week of the event, when the white lava had started solidifying on the steps of his building. “I know one that has an entrance to the undercity. It’s not exactly the Path, but it’s connected to it. If we hide there, we might lose them.”

“What about the Russians?” Trompi asked.

“It’s in the Native sector. They only prowl at night, and I don’t think they go into the buildings. Yet.”

They passed by one of the Glass Plague’s victims—the old man imprisoned outside of time. He was famous, the way he was immobilized in the glassy substance, like some prehistoric insect in amber, but still alive, still moving his eyes. Videos with him clattered the Internet and were shared on every social media. His eyes followed them. Less than a minute later, his eyes stared at a group of frightened cops. The three boys turned a corner and looked for the entrance.

The door to the underground opened with a sigh. The white stairs seemed coated by limestone deposits. The phosphorescence of the translucent walls diluted the darkness. The three boys looked at each other with clumsy smiles.

“Are they still after us?” asked Trompi.

“What’s the matter?” Kiss demanded. “You wet your pants?” He turned to Sax. “Ever been down there?”

“A few times, before the Plague. There was a power generator, and a gym for kids on the block.”

“What do you say we pay a visit?” Kiss said defiantly, eyeing Trompi. “Who’s got the glassy buds to come with me?”

“That’s not a smart idea,” Sax said, then caught Kiss’s look and shrugged. “Why not?”

“Guys,” said Trompi. “What the fuck is wrong with you? It’s dark—there’s no power. In a few hours the area will be crawling with gangsters—”

“You know, you’re right,” Sax interjected. “Wait here, and if we’re not back in an hour, go to the hospital and tell my sister to stay overnight.”

“James, don’t be stupid!” Trompi caught Sax’s arm. “Your mother needs you. Chris—”

“Don’t pull my mother into this.” Sax pushed him brutally. “And don’t James me!”

Normally, Trompi would have turned on the spot and left the Zone. But Sax knew he didn’t want to do it alone—that made it even more unpleasant. Normally, he and Kiss would have given up and returned to the light too. But not in front of each other.

Trompi was Mister Wise-guy—at least, he sounded more intelligent than his age. He was fascinated by the brute force and animal attraction that Kiss exerted over not only the beautiful sex, but also all the kids who listened with mouths agape to his heroic tales. Kiss was an endless source of urban youth history—the battle on Queen West, the ambush from the beer plant, the guerilla from Queen against the Chinese from Spadina . . .

Kiss always secretly appreciated Trompi’s opinion, but in their relationship he liked to defy the others and raise the stakes every time. It was the only way he could face the other personalities, by overshadowing them. Sax was the catalyst, the medium through which the two forces, the physical and the psychic, fused. He was the oil that greased the gang’s wheels, the one who suggested, then imposed the action, using Trompi’s brain and Kiss’s lust for adventure.

Sax pushed his earphones into his ears and changed the playlist. He chose Iron Maiden’s 666. The guitar kneaded his nerves as if they were dough. Sax felt the nerves in his legs itching, in his arms and in his chest. He pumped up the volume and turned his back to Trompi.

Contrary to the first impression, the steps weren’t slippery. They felt like a split bone, almost adherent to their boot soles. The walls shone with a faint, silvery shimmer. Dark meanderings and sudden convulsions under the translucent skin occasionally startled them.

The floor of the underground passage was also limestone-white. Gray light cascaded from long, latticed windows up near the ceiling, at street level. The whole space under the street was lined with large rooms, pipes snaking along the ceiling.

The walls were different from the ones outside. The translucent crust gave way here and there to matte-white reliefs. Expanses of wall were covered in swellings the size of melons. Most were static, but some throbbed in violent convulsions. Sax felt the hair on his arms rise as if electrified, and a shiver trembled from his chest to his navel. Iron Maiden cried in his left ear about the number of the beast. He moved closer to one of the walls and noticed that on some of the swellings, the matte layer had open pores, like human skin with goose bumps. They resembled breasts. Entire walls of breasts, some hanging inert, others aroused and pulsing nervously.

He drew back and bumped into his two friends. They had stopped in the middle of the room and were staring around. From the ceiling hung hundreds of what appeared to be long, gnarled, dull pink umbilical cords. Some of them coiled along the overhead pipes. What looked like whitish icicles hung from the points of contact.

Trompi jumped violently as one of the cords above them spurted a sticky fluid onto his jean jacket.

“It jerked off on you!” Kiss blurted, and dissolved into laughter.

They helped Trompi out of his jacket and threw it on the floor. The fluid quickly soaked into the material, leaving behind gray foam.

Trompi swore, long and dirty. Sweat shone on his forehead and his hands were shaking.

“Who’s there?” a shrill voice quavered, startling them. The question had come from the second room. They advanced cautiously, keeping quiet.

“I asked, who’s there?” This time the voice sounded a little more authoritative.

They entered the second room. It was illuminated by the same gray light and appeared to have a similar decor draping its walls. Sax recognized where they were; it had been the generator room. The generator itself now looked like a massive limestone deposit, overflowing with the pale, translucent matter coating everything else. It was perforated in many places, revealing the liquid under the protective layer, bubbling in slow expirations and inhalations. The pipes radiating from the plant were completely covered in a dirty, scabby skin, which was pulsing like a muscle in spasm.

Trompi retched.

“Shh!” Kiss interrupted. “Do you see something in that shadow next to the generator? It’s moving fast and it’s dark.”

They all stared in that direction. An indistinct shape withdrew even more into the shadows, then for a few seconds they couldn’t see anything. A hiss near the opposite wall drew their attention. They turned in time to see the shape detach itself from the wall and disappear again, much too fast for them to follow it.

The three boys stood rooted in the middle of the room, not breathing, waiting for the thing to show up again. When nothing moved, Sax and Kiss looked at each other, agreeing with that look on a direction. Kiss grabbed Trompi’s arm and pulled him along.

“I know you!” the thin voice called from nearby.

They all stopped, startled, and turned toward the voice. A naked girl stood a step away from them. Her skin was translucent. Beneath its surface, a dirty white liquid bubbled. Sax glimpsed small shapes winding within it. She had long, dark hair that swayed with her nervous movements. Her eyes looked odd, although Sax couldn’t tell just what made them odd; the details were lost in the dimness. Thin, overlapping layers of whitish deposits, like lace flounces, ran from her temples behind her ears and down her neck. Her feet were buried up to the ankles in the crystalline matter covering the floor and the walls. When she moved, the solidified layer opened in front of her like water, and she advanced without actually moving her feet, as if she were on an escalator; as if the Glass Plague was walking her from one place to another.

“Fuck me . . . ” Kiss murmured and stared, mouth agape.

“I don’t exactly remember, but I saw you before,” she continued, looking at Sax. Her voice sounded familiar.

“I seem to know you too, although you’re . . . ”

“A little changed?” Trompi offered, still looking at her.

She moved into the light. “Probably. Not even my mother would recognize me now.”

Sax turned off the Deep-V and the silence of the place thrilled him. Without music he was vulnerable.

“My name is Julie. I lived in the building above before the—”

“Yeah. Now I remember you. Julie. You were friends with a guy, Gabe, a few years older than you.”

“Yes,” she admitted and looked down. “Gabriel died at impact. We couldn’t save him.” She looked up. “And you are?”

“Jam—uh, Sax. You can call me Sax. They’re Kiss and Trompi.” He jerked a thumb at his friends.

Julie didn’t laugh. She watched them seriously and acknowledged their names. There was an awkward moment of silence, and then she resumed. “You’re the first to come this far. I wonder, what made you try it?”

“Yeah, that’s a good one,” said Trompi. “I asked them the same question before we entered.”

“Is it widespread now?” she asked.

“The Plague?” asked Kiss.

“Plague? Who called it that?”

“You mean you didn’t know?”

“I’ve been here since the beginning. It would’ve been my first time with Gabriel. We came here in the evening, we had dinner, drinks, music.” She paused and stared into space. Eventually, she continued. “I don’t know how it felt outside, but here, it was like an earthquake. Afterwards I didn’t dare go out. You can see how I look. And He told me that the world isn’t ready for me yet.”

“Gabe told you?” Sax asked.

“No, the angel.”

“So, Gabe died and turned into—”

“No, Sax, Gabe died and he’s dead. The angel is real. He fell here by accident.”

“Oh, the Fallen Angel,” Trompi supplied, his tone ironic.

“He says He’s not that angel.”

“So, where is He now?” asked Kiss, and looked around.

“He’s under Manulife. There He can stay in contact with His kind. He opened all the ways from this basement up to the Path under Manulife and Yonge and Bloor.”

“We can get you to a medical campus,” Kiss offered, extending a hand toward her, but her violent reaction stopped him. She withdrew several meters at lightning speed and watched them, looking scared.

She breathed deeply, then answered in a calm voice,  “My skin is kind of special right now; it’s more sensitive than it was. Any touch gives me . . . sensations, mostly painful ones. A strong draft makes me tremble with pleasure, but a real wind makes me scream in pain. He is the only one who knows how to protect me and how to touch me.”

“You mean to say that any touch is sexual?” asked Sax, bewildered.

“No, not any touch. Only He knows how to touch me that way.”

Sax frowned, troubled. “That’s nuts! Do you think we could see the angel?”

“Fuck, no!” Trompi groaned. The other three ignored him.

“I’d like to talk to Him first. But you could come and visit again. We’ll leave the door open for you. Anytime.”

The three boys turned to leave. They heard Julie’s voice behind them, hesitantly, “I wanted to ask you if you by any chance have a book, a magazine, a newspaper—anything of the sort.”

Sax turned back toward her. “No, we don’t, but we’ll bring some next time.”

“Well, it is something, but I don’t know if it suits your taste,” Kiss announced, stopping them all. He grinned and pulled out of his jacket’s inner pocket a sex magazine—Canadiana.

Julie burst into laughter. “Does it have articles, or only pictures?”

“Take it and see for yourself. I didn’t look for articles.”

The girl took the magazine and vanished into the darkness. They moved back into the first room. An odd writhing on their left caught their attention. They approached it cautiously.

“Good God!” Trompi withdrew a few steps.

The jacket he had abandoned during their arrival was splitting, unwinding into little snakes with denim skin that slithered toward the dark corners of the room. The Plague was reproducing. It had made an inanimate object multiply. The explanation sounded absurd and yet, at that moment, Sax couldn’t think of anything else.

In the sudden silence he heard drips from the ceiling splashing on the glassy floor and being absorbed with quiet slurps. He shook with disgust. It was difficult to imagine what would happen to a living being impregnated by the Plague. Carefully eyeing the umbilical cords hanging from the ceiling, pink and elongated and swollen, ready to ejaculate, he made his way back to the exit.

 

CARMEN

The building’s lobby was dirty and derelict. Carmen lounged on the stairs, smoking. Sax wasn’t surprised to find her there, waiting for him. He unlocked the door to his apartment and invited her inside.

He felt tired after running earlier. He pulled off his denim jacket and threw it on the sofa, then took off the Saxon t-shirt and carefully arranged it on a chair. He remained dressed in a white t-shirt with long sleeves.

“You fought again,” he noticed with a lack of interest.

“Mmm.”

Carmen sat down on the sofa and took off her jacket. She’d stubbed out the cigarette in the hall and now she was rolling it nervously in her hand. “Actually, it wasn’t a fight, but I’m tired of all his crap. He’s the big shot and we’re the fools. He thinks that . . . ”

The story went on while Sax made sandwiches. He offered one to her and when she refused, he ate it slowly, forcing himself to look like he was listening.

He went to the fridge for a beer. He offered her one. She refused again. The story of Kiss and Carmen’s relationship unfolded, the events the same as the previous twenty times in the last year.

He put on some music: Jimmy Owl and the Bad Mice, for atmosphere—dark, depraved, depressing, and sexual, it was a shift in mood after the rush he’d just experienced. Anyway, Carmen was bored with listening to metal all day long; it was part of the diet Kiss had imposed on her, accompanied by punches and kicks. On the other hand, Sax knew, she still held the same sexual allure for him he’d felt from the beginning; that vicious attraction wrapped in the fragrance of snowdrops that had always fascinated him.

He wondered how his sister was doing at the hospital, then he checked for email messages. Jimmy Owl wailed, “Darling you’re the punishment / For all my former dreams” in the middle of Carmen’s story, the words slicing through the usual description of violence and abuses.

The request came out of nowhere, as always: “Kiss me, James.”

He looked at her. “Why do you do it, Carmen?”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“What’s that got to do with this?”

She threw her arms around his neck. “Do you think anybody cares?” she asked him and kissed him right when he opened his mouth to reply.

There was the snowdrops fragrance in her hair and the fatigue of experience in her kiss. They lay down on the sofa and made love slowly, tenderly, with the habit of old lovers.

“How long have we been together, Carmen?”

“A bit more than a year, why?” She rose on her elbow to watch him curiously.

Sax tried to feel the girl’s essence, to catch again that sweet-familiar-dusty aroma, imagining it in a shop window, inside a small bottle with a golden label: CARMEN, written in capitals.

“You didn’t leave anything behind,” he said.

“That’s shit and you know it!”

“No, shit is what you’re doing now with me, behind Larry’s back. I’m only asking for a little something because I’m nice to you.”

Carmen had withdrawn to the edge of the sofa and leaned over for her t-shirt. “You never used to talk like that. You were a sweet boy when I met you and I’ve always had the impression you stayed the same.”

“But I didn’t. Give me that amulet you’re wearing around your neck.”

She clutched it. “I can’t. I’ll give you a tress of hair, or something else, but not this.”

“No, I want that because it means something to me.”

“What could it mean to you? You’re being mean.”

He watched her stretching the silk stocking up her leg. “The amulet is the only thing I want from you. And if you don’t give it to me, we’re finished. I don’t want to see you here anymore. Don’t look for me. Stay away from me even when we’re with the gang.”

“Why? What’s this about?”

“This is not fair for me or Kiss. Once in a while you should pay the fare.”

“Fuck you, and all your requests!” Her cheeks burned red. She looked unsure, ready to leave but still not knowing what the limit was, or the price. She swayed between surprise and anger.

“A few months before we split, you got that amulet from Larry. After he fucked you for the first time.”

Carmen swallowed hard. She opened her mouth as if to talk, but no words left her mouth. Her face turned from red to purple and in that moment she was almost ugly, Sax surprised himself by thinking. Why are you doing this? He had no answer. He just felt the need to do it.

“In our last month together, Larry told me about you two, how he’d given you the amulet to draw my attention. You fascinated him all the more because you were my girlfriend. Anyway, I believe I’ve earned the right to it. I’m the one who brought you two together.”

“Why, James?” she moaned. “He’ll kill me. Please!”

She was crying. Her carefully styled hair sagged now, and Sax noticed for the second time that she looked ugly. The spell was broken. The subtle fragrance had clotted and he was fed up. He rose from the sofa and pulled on his trousers.

He felt something warm touch his arm. Fine curves on a polished surface. Carmen was offering the amulet to him. A charge passed from the small wooden figurine to his skin and he shook.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. She’d stopped crying, but tears the size of small pearls were still rolling down her cheeks. Sax felt that something had broken inside him and the past, like a shadow, had slipped into forgetfulness. He didn’t care anymore about Carmen’s present, but he took it nonetheless, like it was a trophy, and passed its chain over his head. He didn’t say a word while he dressed.

 

MAMA

They were silent on the way to the hospital. Everything had been said and their relationship had been destroyed in a single act. But this happened to Sax every night—on his way to the hospital, he fell utterly silent.

Carmen stayed in the reception area to wait for Christine. The hospital was still busy. Dinner had just finished and the patients were settling into their beds, or crowding into the lounges to watch TV.

Sax knocked quietly on the door and someone opened it from the other side. Christine hugged him and kept her arms around his neck for a few seconds as she stared at the wall behind him. She didn’t say a word, just picked up her bag and left. She would go to Kiss’s place with Carmen and spend the evening there. Trompi should be there too; they would drink beer, listen to some music. Around midnight, Christine and Trompi would go to Sax’s and her apartment, now only a place to sleep and eat in between changing places at their mother’s bedside at the hospital.

Their mother was staring at the ceiling. She lay on the bed, covered by a blue hospital blanket. Her body had grown small and weak, aged fifteen years in the last two. Besides her incurable illness, her potassium levels had fallen, the doctor told them as simply as he could. She couldn’t move on her own; most of her muscles had atrophied. And she had forgotten almost everything about herself and all those dear to her.

Sax went to her, knelt next to the bed, and stroked her hair. “Hi, Mama. It’s me, James.” He swallowed, his mouth dry at her lack of reaction, and kissed her on her forehead. He helped her rise to sit on the edge of the bed. Her chin rested on her chest. She didn’t have the strength to raise her head and hold it upright. He took her arm and put it around his neck and she leaned on him. Then he pulled her gently to her feet. All her weight was on him now.

She started moving her feet, shuffling with great effort, every step lasting an eternity. She’d developed the reflex that, exactly at this hour every evening, she had to walk to the bathroom at the end of the hall, where Sax had more room to help her.

They crossed the twenty meters of corridor in half an hour. He sat her on a stool beside one of the bathtubs and washed her face and neck, her arms and feet. He brushed her hair and changed her nightdress. Then he moved her along the same twenty meters of corridor for the next half-hour. He didn’t care how long it took. His every step was in rhythm with hers, his every movement was synchronized with her movements; for that interval, they moved as if they were one body. He didn’t sigh, he didn’t look at his watch, he didn’t think of anything else but the next step. He wasn’t interested in how much time was passing in the world, what fascinating events occurred outside the hospital, what he could have been doing out on the streets with his friends. What mattered for him was spending as much time as possible with his mother, taking advantage of every moment spent next to her to feel her living, breathing, fighting, still loving him in her subconscious.

Back in the room, he gave her her medication, then fed her dinner, mostly liquids that were easy to swallow and digest. Afterward he wiped her hands and brushed her teeth and put her to bed. She looked at the ceiling, her arms stretched alongside her body, the blue blanket covering her up to her neck.

He pulled the Deep-V out of his jacket pocket, placed the earphones in his mother’s ears, and pressed Play. Old romances, as she’d called them, wafted through the tiny speakers; sweet and aged, but specially remixed to inject freshness.

He switched off the light and lay down next to her. Taking her in his arms as if she were his little sister, he placed his head on the pillow and listened to her breathing.

PLAGUE’S CHILDREN

The morning dawned sunny and mild. Kiss and Trompi were waiting for him in front of the hospital’s main entrance. Christine had replaced him immediately after breakfast, ready to take over the daily routine of caring for their mother.

They strolled away from the hospital, the two friends respecting his silence. Stopping as usual at the Tim Hortons on the corner, they bought coffee, then settled on a bench in a small green space between buildings. They chose the same playlist—an old one featuring Beggars’ Inheritance to fit the mood while they drank their coffee and told each other what they’d done since they had parted. Sax saw Kiss looking at the amulet’s shape beneath his Saxon t-shirt, but he said nothing. In a way, the problem had been solved between them long ago.

They wandered the deserted streets around the Zone. South of Dundas, the Plague hadn’t yet touched the city and people still spent time there, in the square or the Eaton Centre. They crossed Yonge and headed toward Church Street. Passing Church, they stopped at St. James high school’s basketball court. Although summer vacation wasn’t over and it was early morning, four kids had already been playing. Now they stood, one with the basketball under one arm, confronting two guys who had interrupted their game.

“Barbarians cross the road / The road is full of smoke . . .” the Beggars chanted in Sax’s ear. He touched Kiss’s arm to stop him as he and Trompi started moving away. “Kiss, man, isn’t that Rat?”

Kiss turned and looked. “Which one, man?”

“The small, stocky one. That one is Rat and the other one is Stub.”

Rat was insistently requesting the ball from the kids, his demands peppered with expletives and slobber. Stub stood to one side, glaring threats at them, grinning with malicious anticipation. Suddenly Rat’s hand shot out, he swung a thorny silver chain over the kid’s hand. The boy holding the ball dropped it and clutched his hand.

In Sax’s ear, the rhythm intensified, the Beggars obsessively chanting, the music pummeling the blood. Sax started trembling and absently touched his left hand. An old scar stretched from his wrist down to his thumb. He’d been only nine years old when Rat had acquainted him with the famous silver chain, in the elementary school courtyard.

“Kiss, man, these guys are looking for trouble.”

“Sax, fuck them.”

“Do you know the two gentlemen?” Trompi tried a slide toward humor, but Sax was already through the gate. Trompi swore nervously and followed.

Sax strode over to his old acquaintance and caught the free end of the chain. He kicked the other bully in the solar plexus, taking him by surprise, and then aimed another kick between his legs.

“Do you remember me, Rat dick?” Sax growled.

Trompi caught Stub from behind and Kiss joined Sax as he went for Rat, both punching and kicking him viciously. Rat crumpled to the ground, but produced a knife and tried to cut Sax’s tendon. Avoiding the blow, Sax stomped on the hand clutching the knife, still yanking on the silver chain. It was attached somehow to the guy’s sleeve and he couldn’t let go. Again Sax stepped on Rat’s hand, then kicked him twice in his mouth, sending him back down to the ground.

“Remember me, motherfucker?” Sax yelled as he jumped on Rat. He launched a furious series of punches at his face. “Remember me?”

They heard shouts—the police had arrived. Trompi and Kiss grabbed Sax and dragged him off Rat, who lay there, almost unconscious. The trio ran toward the fence at the back of the  schoolyard, scaled it, and jumped into the garden of a private house. They ran through two more gardens before exiting behind some Cabbagetown apartment blocks.

Trompi stopped for a second, then noticed a few cops still following them. “Fuck, man, they’re still after us!”

“Where now?” Kiss asked. “Into the Zone again?”

“Again,” Sax said.

They ran for Bloor, taking shortcut after shortcut, but the cops followed. They entered the Zone without looking back, although they could still hear the footsteps of pursuers a few dozen meters behind them. A few observers and a research group turned puzzled looks on them as they passed. The soldiers grabbed their weapons, but they were too far away, and the three friends easily avoided them. The police had not yet reached the corner, and didn’t see the trio vanish into the same building they’d visited the night before.

They ran down the stairs to the basement and stopped at the bottom. They moved into the first room and listened carefully for a few minutes. Their playlists had ended while they were being chased. It was quiet. They heard only their own panting breaths. We lost them, Sax thought. Lucky two times so far with these basements.

On the way to the power plant, they stopped in shock. In the wall, beneath the translucent protective layer, three apparently human bodies were visible. They had penetrated the wall and entered the bubbling fluid, but they hadn’t detached themselves completely; they were still half captured in the crystalline layer. Their gray skin looked petrified. Winding shapes had fused directly to their skin, especially on their necks and heads. Enormous bubbles rolled along the three bodies.

Trompi edged closer to the wall, screamed in terror, and bent over, spraying vomit. Sax realized why. The bodies bore crude renditions of their own faces. It was as if the Plague had duplicated the three friends.  They stared in disbelief at the Plague’s creation of their own features and only when Sax felt the gurgle of vomit in his throat he turned and left stumbling. He and Kiss drew Trompi after them as they entered the second room.

“Julie,” shouted Kiss. “Julie!”

Like a draft, the whisper licked their ears: “I’m coming!”

The voice startled them. Sax felt a cold sweat break out on his back. He looked toward the narrow window near the ceiling, wanting to glimpse the familiar, the usual light of day. The sun was climbing higher and its rays crept through the metallic grid on the window.

“Morning,” the voice chirped next to them.

They jumped as if electrocuted, then turned. Sax hadn’t sensed her coming at all. When he saw her, he exhaled in relief. Her appearance, however inhuman, relaxed him simply because he knew her.

“You seem a little bit tense,” she observed.

Sax watched a snake wave around her ankles. It had an . . . exotic aspect. It coiled around her leg and with a few movements it slithered onto her shoulder.

“Fuck me . . . !” Kiss blurted.

On her vividly colored skin, one could read articles and admire nude pictures, all in small sections on her skin, like a patchwork  quilt. The creature’s head wasn’t that of a snake, but of a woman—rich, curly blonde hair, fine features that were almost beautiful. Everything was in miniature, in scale with the small, tubular body.

“Don’t be scared,” Julie soothed. “She’s Sue. That was her name in the magazine, so I gave her the same name. She won’t hurt you—in fact, nothing here is dangerous. You may see the other models from the magazine swarming through the area. Although I think by now, they’re in who-knows-what corner, flirting with the denim snakes left in the other room yesterday.”

“Fuck me . . . ” Kiss murmured again.

“I hope you didn’t bring anything else,” Julie said, ignoring him, “because I don’t intend to open a zoo here.”

Trompi gestured, although no words came out of his mouth. All three followed Julie’s pointing finger. The sun’s rays had reached the window’s lip and, as if in response to some sign, they spilled inside, snatching the basement from the darkness. On the wall behind them, under the translucent crust, now visible in full sunlight, five women had grown from the concrete into the Plague’s liquid.

“I believe you’ve already seen yourselves in the other room,” said Julie when the silence stretched, punctuated only by labored breathing. “The girls here”, she pointed to the five women in the wall, “are the models from the magazine you left me. It seems that this being that has invaded Toronto is trying to learn about us and wishes to communicate.”

“Are they alive?” Trompi managed to mumble. “Are we alive in the other room? What are these… things?”

“I don’t know. But I believe it would be better if you meet the angel. Come with me.”

They followed. Sax put his earphone back into his right ear and, like Kiss and Trompi, changed the playlist to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” He’d heard it said that that song was more than just music, that it reached sublime levels which made otherwise untouchable cords in people’s souls vibrate. That, if indeed there was something above this world, or after death, “Stairway to Heaven” was in reality a step toward enlightenment, toward divine knowledge. It was a blasphemy with pretensions of holiness, or a holiness with a blasphemous appearance.

Julie led them through the subterranean world to Manulife. After only ten minutes, they passed into full light. Artificial, but strong, almost blinding by contrast to what they’d left. The three stopped, shocked. Trompi fell on his knees, shaking. Zeppelin’s spellbinding guitars tore through their brains.

Beneath the Manulife Centre, the subterranean passage had collapsed under the weight of fallen floors above, following the initial impact of the Glass Plague. A few of the pillars that had supported the central body of the building hung above the emptiness, their steel roots twisted in the air. The hole underneath them was tens of meters deep. On the interior walls of the ruin, the whitish liquid of the Plague still drained like a thick sap through the hollow trunk of a tree. It then split into myriad rivulets flowing underground in all the directions that the Plague had spread on the surface.

From somewhere—from the sky, from above the ruins—a stream of silver light with an almost metallic consistency whistled through the subterranean air. In the middle of that light, suspended above the hole, hung a gray body, its muscles tensed under shiny skin, its arms outstretched as if in crucifixion. The position revealed a giant pair of metal-gray wings, stretched along an extremely fine, skeletal silver nerve net. The still body floated as if the light stream upheld it.

It really was an angel! Sax wanted to throw himself to the ground in front of its majesty. He wanted to run in fear and hide. He wanted, he felt, he trembled; a knot of nerves tightened in his solar plexus. He would have screamed if he’d had the strength; he would have said a prayer if he’d known any. He would have prayed to Him, if he had known how.

“Isn’t He beautiful?” asked Julie in a whisper, looking at them triumphantly.

Only now did Sax realize that there was a tomb-like silence in the hole under the Manulife Centre, punctuated by the dripping Plague, the whistle of light, and Led Zeppelin battering their brains.

“Isn’t He beautiful?” Julie’s voice sounded like church bells. She smiled, radiating happiness. Even the inhuman aspect of her appearance shone, beautified by an internal glow.

The angel turned and looked at them.

They went back to the power plant room where the proportions and the aspect were somehow bearable. The angel was taller than any of them, thinner, although seemingly vigorous. He looked young and yet mature, with a piercing, determined expression. His irises were silver, gleaming against his bluish-gray skin. He’d kept his four wings folded on his back like a velvety mantle.

“Yes, I am an angel,” he told them, looking at each in turn.

They stood silent. They were much too shocked by everything they’d seen to think of a smart reply, or to behave belligerently. They sat down around the creature called Angel, stroking their now quiet Deep-Vs as if they were kittens. They were the engines keeping them on the road, still running, still fighting, still swearing and spitting.

 

A CIRCLE OF THOUGHTS

Queen’s Park, quiet as always, now without the bustle of the squirrels that had abandoned it months ago, and its dozens of empty benches, was resisting the turmoil of a city in ascendance, yet a step away from total collapse. The Affected Zone had creeped less than a hundred meters away, still munching on the university. Queen’s Park was beautiful and dumb, preening its colors in the Plague’s path.

Sax stretched, leaned his head against the bench, and closed his eyes for inspiration. He needed quiet, meditation, time for his decision. Time! As yet he still needed time. He was stuck.

Sax slowly raised his head and spat to his right, then froze.

“That was a big mistake.” Doll smiled widely. That was what his friends called him, in the hoarse tone that the xenos used. In the fall sunlight, Sax’s phlegm shone on one of the guy’s patent leather shoes. Three other xenos had silently surrounded the bench while he’d had his eyes closed.

“Are we lonely?” asked a fifth from behind him. Sax could smell his strong perfume and feel his moist breath on his ear.

He tried to get up, but Doll’s kick pushed him back. “That’s for you, my teacher, for your precious visits in Allan Gardens,” the leader said maliciously.

Sax bent over for a few seconds, panting, then a hand grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. He was surprised by the excited looks on his aggressors’ faces, but then he relaxed. The numbness drained from his bones as if by magic. He became alert, watching their every move. Two fists knocked his head from one side to the other. He saw his blood flying through the air and grinned.

Sax slammed his head back into the neck of the guy behind him. As his captor released his grip on his hair, Sax sprang forward, reflexively catching Doll’s ankle as his leg shot out again to kick Sax in the stomach. He twisted the foot until Doll lost his balance and landed, bewildered, on his belly. The other three pounced on Sax and brought him down. They were all over him, kicking and punching him. But everything lasted only a few seconds; as fast as they’d overpowered him, they disappeared. Doll was still struggling to free his leg and run too, but Sax gripped his ankle like a bulldog.

A policeman pulled them from the ground and took them to the closest station. Sax complied immediately when the officer shoved him toward a chair in the interrogation room. Doll resisted, still protesting the treatment and his innocence, as he’d done during the ride over.

“You will speak when I tell you!” the policeman snapped, brandishing his nightstick. Doll stopped struggling and sat down.

The officer turned to Sax and smiled. “So, what happened?”

“I don’t know why, but they wanted me to take some xenorphine,” Sax began. “When I tried to get away, they decided to force it on me… probably looking to make some new customers for their merchandise.”

“Do you know them?”

“No,” Sax lied, looking innocently at Doll.

“Motherfucker—”

The xeno didn’t finish. The cop caught him by his nose and pulled him toward them. “It’s possible you two will meet again,” the officer said to Sax as he pulled him to his feet. “So, I don’t want any quarrels in my area. Punch him and you’re even.”

“Excuse me?” Sax blurted, surprised by the offer.

“It’s a brave new world. I don’t want war on my turf. Punch him once and you’re even,” the cop repeated, slower.

He didn’t wait for a third invitation; he hit Doll as hard as he could. Doll fell to the floor near the table, so red in the face that he looked as if he’d have a stroke. He started to cry. The cop pushed Sax toward the door, smiling broadly, then he turned and heaved the xeno onto a chair, on his knees, with the thin leather soles of his shoes facing outward. Sax saw only the first blow the officer delivered to the soles with his nightstick, heard the painful scream, and then closed the door respectfully.

Jaw clenched, he walked through the station to the washrooms, where he washed his face, then outside onto the street, where he started laughing until tears came. It was good, it was perfect, life was beautiful!

He stopped laughing and sauntered away, toward St. George. Yes, life was beautiful. But, to what good? Now he didn’t know what to believe anymore. With all this sun, the brilliant colors of fall, and so many college girls with their tempting curves walking around the Law School, and then to the east—the Plague! As real as the sun or the college girls. The angel had spoken to them. What he’d said seemed absurd now in daylight, but had sounded credible in the glassy darkness of the basement.

He entered the campus social club, plugged his earphones into his ears—“It rained infernally / Through the window eye”—ordered a Bloody Mary, and then turned the tall glass on the table while watching the bare thighs of the girl in front of him, the diffuse light throwing clumsy shadows on the abstract paintings on the walls.

Clearly, it was a special day. There were signs everywhere. Yes, sometimes happiness can make you high, like xenorphine—if he could only fly.

Sax stretched happily, and then came back to reality. He was supposed to be at the hospital in two hours. And connected to that, he couldn’t keep from thinking about the angel. He had wished to know so many things, but he hadn’t had the courage.

And what about Trompi? Why hadn’t he even breathed? He, who usually had a big mouth and wouldn’t hesitate to pose some deep questions and play the wise guy role, had just kept silent, his mouth hanging open. He’d lost his wise guy face too, the face that was always ready to catch you saying or doing something stupid, with its sidelong look, half-shut eyes, and a cunning smile twisting its lips while his right hand stroked his chin. He hadn’t done anything but stare at the angel.

Sax remembered that night in the parking lot near High Park. He had seen the shadows performing the ritual on a bench and had smiled, knowing what he would discover—two kids sucking the xenorphine buds in the bushes. He’d crept closer, stopping a few steps away, close enough to see them. One kept sucking greedily. The other had frozen with his hands above his head, looking at him in shock. It was Trompi with a bud hanging in his mouth.

Sax too had frozen in shock, then lowered his eyes and quietly left. For a week, they had avoided each other. He’d tried to tell his sister Christine, Stupid girl, your boyfriend is a xeno. How can you touch him? Trompi is a fucking xeno. He’s tainted. He might not even be human any more.” But he hadn’t found the right moment, and gave up.

When finally they had been alone one day, Trompi had asked him, “Why didn’t you tell? Why didn’t you turn against me?” He had only shrugged. “Why do you attack the xenos in the washrooms and not me?”

Sax had answered calmly, “If there weren’t xenos, it would be something else. Why did you do it?”

Trompi’s voice was steady: “It gives you hope. You dream of flying and you see worlds of unimaginable beauty. It tells you there’s still a future to look for.” In time, almost everything went back to normal, and nobody found out. Almost everything. But who can tell exactly what everything and nothing mean.

Sax got up, left the club, changed the music on the Deep-V, and started walking to the hospital. He needed some exercise. He looked along the avenue, guarded by skyscrapers on both sides, and tried to imagine the immortal world from whence the angel had come—the sky full of wings, the roads full of slim, sculptural gray bodies with young, composed faces, cool but tough, hiding centuries of experience behind their calm demeanors.

God, it was impossible to imagine a timeless world, without death, sickness, suffering. It was too much for the denizens of University Avenue to behold. On the other hand, if time was indeed, as the angel had revealed to them, only a virus, an infection altering the texture of the universe, then the problem narrowed down to the antidote.

Sax knocked quietly on the hospital room door. Christine went out like a shadow. His mother was staring at the ceiling. She lay on the bed, covered with the blue blanket. Sax knelt next to the bed and stroked her hair.

“Hi, Mama. It’s me, James.” He swallowed at her lack of reaction and kissed her on her forehead.

 

SOFT PETALS

The angel took his hands and pressed them against the concrete. “Enter the wall. Don’t be afraid.”

Sax was afraid and trembled, but the angel’s presence and his big palms—guiding him, pushing him forward—stole his will to resist. He didn’t feel anything but terror. No pride, no bravery, not even the noble spirit of sacrifice. Two fears writhed in his chest: the fear of touching the Plague, and another one, even more terrible that pushed him forward, one he couldn’t explain or control. His mouth was dry. He would have closed his eyes, but the second fear kept them open, awakening his curiosity to see what would happen. It was like an animal inside him, gnawing his guts, whirling frantically in his stomach.

The Plague’s surface was like a paste, but even softer, and lukewarm, massaging his hands as they dove inside it. In a few moments he was sucked into the wall, into the warm and protective yellow-gray fluid. It twirled him, stirring his blood, flowing through his lungs and out through his mouth. He felt easy, floating there.

Images flooded his mind in a colorful stream, bearing familiar fragrances . . . the aroma of cologne, Armani, his father smiling like a fox from the corner of his mouth . . . God, how he’d missed Dad!

And the smell of walnuts and cake, his mother—tall, fit, with a confident air and a peaceful face, made happy by the presence of her family, by their requests that made her feel useful, busy, loved.

In the end he had agreed to the angel’s proposal. He was the one to do it.

“The Glass Plague is only the predator that hunts and feeds on Time,” the Angel’s voice was seductive and confusing. “But people slow it down and transform it through their very existence. People are Aspects of Time. We need an Agent to cure the Aspects. We need you to be our Agent.”

“To cure the Aspects?” he’d asked circumspect.

“Yes, an Agent to spread the cure against Time among people, to soften their resistance to the Glass Plague and allow it to kill the time once and for all.”

“Immortality”, had whispered Sax.

“We are, indeed, immortal”, had said the Angel.

He woke up suddenly. He was breathing, whistling with the force of it. He lay on the former Ping-Pong table in the power plant room. Julie leaned over him. The angel was nowhere in sight.

“Where is He?” he asked hoarsely.

“In the Manulife Centre,” she answered and stepped back. She smiled. “Since last night you’ve been in a very deep sleep. You shouldn’t have awakened yet. Your organism was supposed to slowly get back to work. Anyway, the inoculation has been a success. If you wait a little bit, He’ll join us.”

Inoculation? His head felt heavy, his mouth dry. Yet he only had to think about these and the problems were solved instantly. He felt good, only a little bit lighter than usual. He was normally tall and solid, with some weight, as his father used to say. Now though, he felt like a feather. He sat up, then jumped down from the table. He looked at his hands, then stared in shock.

Julie turned him toward one of the glass walls. At her touch its surface became mirror-like. A shiver crept from his belly and burnt into his brain. He looked like a dandelion—no, more, like a carnival! His skin had wrinkled into yellow puffs, or flowered into soft and silky petals; his eyes were two miniature sunflowers; his whole body rustled in the draft. He was naked, his clothes lying in a heap next to the table. He felt somehow erotic—completely strange, alien, terrifying, and yet attractive. And his penis—oh Lord, he was ashamed to look at it, but he couldn’t stop his fascination. Which he was also surprised to see in Julie’s eyes.

“Every puff is a spore carrying an antidote,” she whispered, running her fingers from the softness on his shoulders to his chest, “every touch, a mortal touch for time.” She blew softly on the nape of his neck, while the tips of her fingers walked slowly over the petals of his shoulder blades, then downward, toward his hips. “Every kiss, a deadly kiss against death!”

She turned him toward her and kissed him voluptuously. Her tongue slid like a long snake through his lips and down his throat. His hands were knotty branches caressing her translucent abdomen, stirring the lightning life under her skin, sliding toward her vagina. His penis was a stem with curly, yellow petals, penetrating her and thrusting upward, toward her abdomen, chest, throat.

She groaned, panted, withdrawing her tongue from him to gasp with pleasure. Bracing her palms against the table behind her, she leaned back, spreading her legs even more. The organisms beneath her skin became madly agitated. He had thrust into her up to her chest. Her breasts were swollen. She groaned, howled with pleasure, and his penis opened into a flower that spread its pollen inside her. Julie jerked violently as fireworks spread under her skin, then she convulsed with her mouth agape, a whitish-yellow fluid dribbling over her lower lip. Looking at him with glassy eyes, she stroked his shining, corn silk hair and his face, breathed once more, then fell back on the table and lay still.

Scared, Sax withdrew, took two steps back, and fell to his knees. “Julie?” He was trembling so badly, his whole body shook. “Julie?” Fear strangled his guts.

An Agent to spread the cure against the Aspects of Time, he remembered the angel saying.

He rose and lifted her in his arms, then laid her carefully back on the table. She was dead. The lights under her skin had gone out, the yellowish liquid had lost its color, her skin had become like a marble crossed by blue veins. He had killed her! He was a poison, not a cure. And the Aspects were Time’s children. People were Time’s children and he was supposed to kill them.

The snakes with magazine page-skins and women’s heads scattered in panic, disappearing into the subterranean gloom. He wanted to puke, but his nausea immediately passed. Despite everything, he felt good.

I’m not even allowed to feel remorse. My new form will always bring me back to serenity, he realized with a pang of horror in his heart. I’ll kill and destroy and I won’t be able to mourn and suffer.

He turned his back on Julie’s body and walked away. When he reached the stairs leading to the exit, he heard the vigorous flutter of the angel’s wings. He froze on the first step, undecided, ready to run up to the street—running, as he always did lately, after doing something stupid.

But now he was the Cure. He turned back, waiting for the angel.

That one’s silhouette filled the tunnel, massive and friendly. “You look wonderful, my friend! Where’s Julie?”

Sax swallowed dryly. He lowered his head, then raised it again. With an effort, he looked the angel in the face, gazed into His big silvery eyes, disoriented now. The angel’s smile slowly vanished. He knew. He knew but didn’t believe it could happen, didn’t believe that Julie would . . . that Sax could . . .

Avoiding him now, the angel went straight to the power plant room, to the Ping-Pong table, to the body. He stared, frozen in place, for minutes. For a being from a timeless world, the difference between a second and a few minutes, a few hours, probably didn’t mean anything. Sax joined him and waited. Another ten minutes, twenty. His chest was moving rhythmically, the eyes peering into Julie’s face were unblinking but animate. There was no other sign of life. Sax took Him by His shoulders and the angel collapsed. Suddenly, as if cut by an invisible sickle. Sax bent to support Him, then lay down on the floor.

He was crying noiselessly, His whole body shaking. He withdrew to the wall. His wings stretched on the concrete like spiderwebs, He pulled His knees to His mouth and hiccuped as tears rolled like pebbles down His gray skin.

“What have you done?” Sax finally managed to say. “I didn’t fully realize what You told me—that I am the Cure. I couldn’t stop. I killed Julie!”

“You’re like a lamp that attracts moths. Nobody will be able to resist you. You’re an erotic magnet. You ravage all instincts in a mortal. Nobody will oppose you.”

“How could you do that to me?” he asked, bewildered.

“You weren’t supposed to wake so soon.” The words came strangled. He trembled.

“I killed Julie,” Sax repeated, horrified. “And I would kill all of them, wouldn’t I? I won’t save them, I’ll kill them!”

He knelt next to the Angel and took His chin, raising His face, eyes on His eyes, pollen on cold silver. Mercury drops tangled on the Stranger’s cheeks, fell to burn His chest. “Tell me . . . ”

“Take your hands off me! Don’t touch me!” The Angel shoved him away and scrabbled away on his elbows.

“What did you do to me?” Sax demanded. “What’s running through my veins? Why did I kill Julie?”

Sax rose and breathed deeply. He felt the fury swelling his chest. He needed music, his armor, to protect him from the repercussions of his anger, the responsibility. He needed to strike without feeling guilty. Then he remembered his mother, all the unfulfilled promises, and a tear trickled down his cheek. Even before it fell away from his chin, vividly colored petals wrapped it and it floated through the air.

His friends. They were supposed to arrive any minute and he’ll kill them unwillingly.

The Angel grinned at that, and rose. “You see, there’s nothing else to be said. You should have asked me before the transformation. Now, willingly or not, you’ll follow your destiny.”

“Which is?”

“You’ll kill time and all the monstrosities it has created!”

“Wow! What’s this?” Kiss blurted, appearing unexpectedly, Trompi beside him.

“Sax?” Trompi asked uncertainly.

“Don’t let Him run away!” Sax shouted as the Angel moved slowly backward.

Their instincts, trained for years to strike first, run next, and reason after, kicked in. In a few steps they caught the Angel and slammed Him to the floor. Flinging up the wing Kiss had grabbed, the Angel slammed Kiss against the wall, then flung Himself against a wall to loosen Trompi, who had jumped on His back and wrapped his arms around His neck. Trompi released Him, sagging as he fought for breath.

Before He could get away again, Sax was in front of Him. He punched Him in the solar plexus, then shoved Him brutally against the wall. Palms still on the Angel’s chest, Sax saw the pain in His face and the panic in His eyes. Putting all of his weight behind the push, he leaned on his palms; the Angel fell to His knees, screaming, His hands scrabbling for a hold on Sax’s arms, then falling away. Sax noticed that the metallic gray around his palms had lost its shine.

“How can I reverse the transformation?” he asked the Angel.

“It’s irreversible.”

“How can I prevent the spread of the virus?”

“There’s no way. Anything you touch will die and it will spread . . . ” The Angel started to shake. Mercury drops streamed in rivers down His cheeks. His chest had lost its metallic sheen and was paling from gray to white.

“How can I close the passage to your world?” Sax demanded.

“You can’t close it from here.” The Angel managed a tormented smile. “Even if I die, there’ll be others . . . ”

“I’ll be here, waiting for them,” Sax growled.

“After summer comes fall, and then winter,” the Angel gasped. “Isn’t it like that with time, monstrosity? All plants wither in the fall and die in the winter. If you’ve seen yourself, you realize what you are and that you’ll wither like any other plant.”

Sax pushed violently on the Angel’s already white chest. The Angel’s eyes drooped shut and He lay still and colorless in the Plague’s liquid, a white body with a pair of withered wings.

“Sax . . . ” Trompi began.

“Don’t touch me. Keep away from me.”

“What’s happened? I don’t get it!” said Kiss.

“I’ll tell you outside,” Trompi said, then turned to ask, “Sax, can we help?”

“Go and tell Chris that . . . ” He fell silent, not knowing what to say, then he nodded, “Trompi, I left my Deep-V on the Ping-Pong table. I have some romantic music on it. For my mother. Give it to Chris.” It seemed a long time before Trompi nodded approvingly.

“Don’t ever come back here. And if people start to die, that means I couldn’t hold them back. You must leave the city. Get as far away as possible . . . it will buy you some… time.”

He turned and walked away, deep into the basement complex, heading toward what remained of the Manulife building, where the passage stayed open and the white light whistled menacingly.

“After winter comes spring,” he said to the stream of light. “I’ll still be here in the spring.”

 

– END –