How the Other Half Lives…

Even evil from beyond the stars occasionally spends the day at the beach.

“Devon, put your brother down this instant!”

My embodied sand dragon construct attacked Ken’s sand human form and was about to start shaking him before her timely interruption.

Both of our constructs fell apart and we walked out of the piles of sand. My younger brother was already stirring up sand with his feet and preparing to create a sand tsunami as soon as she looked back into her trans-dimensional reader. Paul was lying asleep on the beach still unaware of where we truly were.

My mother’s voice rang out over what would have been an otherwise deserted beach in what would have been Texas, if we were at home. Instead it was a shard realm where humanity hadn’t developed. To disguise our journey she had traveled to several shards that resembled ours, slowly moving further and further away until there was no sign of any human habitation.

She had told us on previous journeys to this beach about the incompatible physical parameters in the biome of this Earth. While humanity didn’t develop, there was plenty of wildlife here and we could see the fins of prehistoric beasts still swimming around off the coast.

We would swim out later and tackle a few of them after lunch. She said we would be fine as long as we wore our actuators.

Our family was not your typical one. Yes, we have one mortgage, two point three pets, two point one kids, and one semi-decent car. We live in a quiet suburb in some unassuming town in the middle of nowhere named Desolation, Arkansas. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Our father, whom we were going to meet today for the first time, was not from Earth. It was from his line our powers are descended. Though we had been using our abilities for years, my mother didn’t explain how we came by them until I was sixteen. It came at the end of her birds and the bees lecture.

“All of this conversation about sex is important but only half as important as what I am about to reveal to you. The man you have been calling Daddy, is not your father. Paul is my husband and he is helping me to raise you. But your father is someone else.”

“Is this where we got our powers?”

“Patents. They are not magic, per se. They’re a genetic technology woven into your DNA. His people call them patents. Without getting into detail, suffice it to say, you and your brother have several patents your father thought would help you survive childhood and your eventual return home.”

It was then many of the strange things about our childhood began to make sense. The fast healing even when we were really hurt. Not going to the doctor. Paul was our doctor and made sure we had whatever we needed medically. Our diet, which we were never allowed to share with anyone. And the one time I did, I nearly killed my best friend.

She looked at me and told me I was a man now and I would be able to keep my own actuator. She opened the lock box and handed me what looked like an ordinary, if stylish, wristwatch.

“Devon, I’m no longer going to tell you how to use your gifts. But know if you choose to use them while you are on Earth, you will attract the attention of beings who want nothing more than our utter destruction. If you decide to use your powers on Earth after you meet your father, you have our blessing.”

I snapped the actuator onto my wrist. I could feel the swirling energies within me suddenly align, and become able to be reached. It was like having cookies on the top of the refrigerator and no ladders or chairs in sight. “When are we going to meet him?”

She gave me the most curious look. One mixed with a multitude of emotions, sadness, regret and I think now that I was able to touch my inner sight, a measured dose of fear. “Today. But we will have to go on a picnic.” Picnic was the code word we used for a trip beyond our shard.

“Why can’t he just come here?”

“He is a rather unique being. He is from a shard so far removed from our Earth our physics could barely explain him, let alone contain him.”

With that mysterious musing, she packed up our picnic basket and took my brother Ken and I on a road trip. Today was also different in another way. Paul was with us. He had never come with us before on any of our special outings. Mother had given him a watch as a present that day and I could see its specialized technology protecting him as we moved from shard to shard.

When we reached our destination via the Way, we did all the things people do when they go to the beach. Swim, make sand castles, and after Paul went to sleep, we made larger sand castles that towered over the beach.

Around six, when the sun was heading into the west, mother signaled to us. She waved her hand and our sand castles which had run the length of the beach vanished in a tidal wave, she summoned to wash them away. Not a drop of water touched us. Once the beach was returned to normal, she woke Paul and made dinner.

It was then I noticed Ken looking around. Ken was far more in tune with his gifts, especially with his senses. He was able to see things beyond the realm of sight. He could hear people across a room as if they were right next to him. He could read the writing on a airplane five miles in the sky. He was only eleven and mother said his sensory powers would grow even greater by the time he was my age.

“Something’s out there,” he said pointing toward the sun.

“Finish your food.” Mother didn’t look up, she just finished plating our salads and sandwiches.

“Paul, I know you’ve wondered why I never took the boys to see their father. I am happy you were willing to take care of them just like your own sons. You will never know just how much I appreciated your help.”

Paul looked up and smiled. “It was my pleasure. They’re great boys.”

“Paul, walk with me. Boys, finish your food.”

It took the two of them a few minutes to walk to the water’s edge. It was then a noticeable wind began to grow stronger.

“Paul, it is that love you have for the boys that I have to do this.”

“Marilyn, what are you talking about?”

I watched my mother kiss Paul deeply and passionately. He seemed momentarily surprised and then settled into it. Ken had turned to look into the sun again, this time with an intensity that bordered on mania. I knew staring at the sun wouldn’t hurt him (he’d done it before) but I couldn’t see what he was seeing.

But I could feel it. An overwhelming sense of wrong. The kind of wrong I felt when I traveled to a new shard. It told me I didn’t belong here. What I was feeling was that same kind of wrong, except it was moving toward me. Fast.

I wanted to tell mother, but she and Paul had walked into the surf and were waist deep in the water. There was something in this moment that felt strangely private and I looked away.

“It’s here.” Ken intoned and then fell back onto the beach as if he had been hit in the head with an ax.

The wrong was all around me. A crushing sensation as if the very air had become liquid lead pressing onto me from every part of my being. I summoned my energy and filled myself with it. For a moment I could move again, and looked sunward. I saw what appeared to be a ball of night cross the setting sun. The sky blackened and it became instantly night.

It stayed night and when I looked up I saw no stars at all. A new shard had come to us.

A fireball fell into the ocean and a great wave began to build as the surf fell away. I called my power to me and ordered the sand to create a bulwark to protect my brother and I against the wave I knew would be coming. My mother stood over Paul, who had fallen still on the beach.

She seemed unconcerned. I layered the sand, compressed it, made it as strong as concrete, as stone, I visualized it as granite, completely impenetrable. I shaped it so the wave would break and split, diverting its force.

My mother’s power over water was legendary. I assumed she had her reasons for staying there.

I felt water drawing closer. it was a tsunami. A half mile high moving at almost four hundred miles an hour. Sitting within the castle of my will, I realized I could not stop it.

Only a few seconds left. I hugged Ken’s sleeping form to me and closed my eyes.

The force of the wave tore through my sand as if it were little more than cardboard. I felt the waves scour my flesh, stripping it from my bones.

“This is my progeny? You didn’t tell me they would be so weak.”

“Against one such as you, did you truly expect him to be able to survive? Consider his work before you cast him aside.”

I felt the presence rewind the flow of time and study my sand turned stone structure. It allowed time to move forward slowly and watched the castle resist, ablate, resist further. It took twelve minutes to destroy my structure permanently. During that time, the laws of physics changed three times and in my fugue state, I compensated without thought.

I could feel the growing admiration of the distant sentience. “And the other? What did he contribute?”

“Nothing to the defense, but he sensed you when you were completely in a different shard. He watched you as you dipped out of the gravity well of the star. He penetrated your private shard of darkness and was struck numb by his ability to see you as you are. And he is still alive.”

“Impressive. You have done well. What of this world? Will it offer resistance?”

“Yes. There are powerful beings there who protect this reality from encroachment. None as strong as you are here, but you will lose almost all of your capabilities once you arrive. Hence our plan to create progeny.”

“And my vessel?”

“It lay upon the beach, awaiting your possession of it.” Marilyn sounded just a bit sad.

“Dress the children in their flesh, while I acquaint myself with my new home.”

Marilyn gathered the energy of her dark master and wove it around the skeletons of her children. She reformed their flesh, this time, with an added bit of darkness. They would no longer need their actuators, clumsy tools at best.

Their powers would now be part of what they were.

She had protected Paul’s body when her master arrived. She had drowned him, seconds before he arrived, hoping to spare Paul from any unnecessary torture. It didn’t matter. He brought him back to life to break him.

He had to. Just like he broke her.

She could hear the screams as Paul died again, and again, until he was unable, unwilling to resist.

It was the only way the Great Old Ones could possess us. We had to allow it.

It was never said we couldn’t be coerced into accepting them.

She finished dressing the boys in their new flesh, folding it down, tucking it in like clay as she allowed the Dark Master’s power to fade from them. With a kiss, she revived both of them.

Paul strode up from the beach, looking none the worse for the wear, except his watch was broken. “Must have hit this damn thing against a rock.” Striding up to Marilyn, he gave her a peck on the lips and continued what he was saying. “Sorry about breaking your present honey.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Marilyn helped the boys to their feet and she saw Paul walking around a sand dune apparently to a car she was sure wasn’t there before.

“Mom, wasn’t the car, blue?” Ken had an eye for that kind of thing. I hadn’t realized it until he said it. It was currently a smoky grey.

“So it was. You’ll get used to stuff like that happening from time to time.”

Ken was asleep the entire time. He didn’t see what I saw. Feel what I felt. I was absolutely terrified.

I had met my father. He was a force of nature.

And the tiny sliver that left with us was exactly that. A sliver of all that he was. As we drove away from the beach and the shard which had consumed us, I realized he hadn’t moved us.

He had engulfed us within himself.

What was he? The more terrifying question was: What was I?

Paul’s voice rang out as we crossed the boundary to what looked like our Texas in a matter of minutes. It had taken us hours to get here when my mother drove. “Who wants ice cream?”

Naturally, we all did. It’s what we did every time we came from the beach. This time, our father ate the staff as well. Looks like its time for some new traditions.

How the Other Half Lives… © Thaddeus Howze 2014. All Rights Reserved