31
Cody
On our way to the castle, we could all notice that some of the natural beauty of Somewhere Else had a feeling of being under attack. The branches on the usually pristine and perfect trees were broken. Farms we passed had great swaths of crops chewed and worked over by the massive army of fairies that Morgan commanded. Christian was right, this world was beautiful, and if Morgan was going to destroy somewhere so beautiful, we had to stop her.
I just didn’t want to stop her the way Christian chose to. Susie was right, maybe we should have kept our real clothes on, give Morgan a reminder of a world she had in all likelihood forgotten and left behind as soon as she made the decision to abandon it in favor of somewhere else.
We crested over a hill, and we saw it. A great tornado of dark fairies swirling around. So large it carried a shadow around it that somehow casted into every direction.
“Sweet god,” Susie’s jaw dropped. Brad and I were stunned. Christian didn’t stop, didn’t take a moment to assess just how harrowing this looked.
“It’s not as scary as it looks, just fairies,” Christian said continuing to march towards the great black storm. I turned to Susie, “You should go back to the lake,” I told her.
Susie bit her lip, I felt for a minute she probably thought about taking my advice, “No,” she said, clenching her fists and taking a step past me, I reached to grab her wrist, “Listen, I don’t know what’s about to happen, but things could get ugly, if something happened to you-”
She cut me off, “And if something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself either, so don’t try to play that card,” she said, wrestling her wrist from my grip.
Brad stepped to us, “We better keep going, Christian looks like he’s ready to change into the wolf’s den single handedly if he has to,” he said as we saw Christian continue to make his way to the cloud of fairies.
We started moving to catch up with him, “If things look to be getting dangerous, don’t feel bad about running,” I said, not brave enough to look at Susie as I said it, “Just get away, I’ll protect you,” I gulped as we came closer to the cloud. The buzzing and humming of the endless number of fairies swirling around and around each other.
“Morgan!” Christian roared as he pulled out his sword. He really was ready to do battle if it came to it. This shy, meek boy was ready to charge into this insane danger with courage no one in the real world would ever think he could have.
The fairies began to shift, separate, folding out in a great arc that surrounded us. Our eyes went up the great wall of black wings and chirping creatures, atop the wall resting in a bed of fairies was Morgan. The fairies flapped their wings and she slowly descended to the ground.
“I’ve heard of you,” she said, raising her hands in the air, commanding the fairies to disperse into the air. They followed the motion of her hand like a conductor that had been playing her symphony. They flew into the air and formed a great and threatening circle around us, leaving us standing face to face with the dreaded terror Morgan LeFaye, face to face with the lost and nigh-forgotten girl Morgan Lafayette.
She was dressed in all black, an elegant dress on her slim pale body. A low-cut neckline, a short lace black skit, black silk gloves and black thigh high leather boots. On her head, she wore a black iron tiara with a mesh veil that came down over her face. Her raven black hair flowed almost halfway down her back, it fluttered in the air behind her with otherworldly radiance and elegance.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, her face straight as she gave Christian a once over and then proceeded to size up the rest of us. I drew my axe from my belt and Brad held his hammer up as Susie clung to her dress, her hands wringing it just as much as ours were on our weapons. Christian had no nerve in his voice at all though, ready to attack. His chest was out, and his shoulders were straight as he held his sword up and ready to attack.
“Morgan, please we don’t want to fight you,” Susie spoke up. Morgan shot her a look and I could see Susie almost jump back from pure intimidation.
“Fight me,” she laughed, “I wouldn’t fight you,” she raised her hands and commanded the great swarm of fairies to move around the sky, “I would destroy you if it would be my pleasure,” she said.
“Morgan Lafayette,” Christian said, “It’s true isn’t it? You found the lake,” Christian said, both hands on his sword, ready to defend himself.
“Yes, it’s true, I was chosen to seek my destiny in this world much the same as you all were,” she held her hand out and a fairy landed on it, she gently stroked it’s wings before flicking her wrist and sending it back into the flock, “You haven’t been here long enough, not long enough to see the kind of true power we can wield here,” she said, she was smiling but her eyes carried this look of a killer instinct, she knew at any moment she could sick her army of fairies on us.
“What do you mean, destiny?” Brad said, I could see the look on his face, his heart was likely pounding as hard as mine.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed, I know you’ve had too, I’ve heard stories of the great deeds of a new band of travelers from the far-off kingdom of Nebraska. The amazing things we can do here, the amazing wonders we can find,” Morgan raised her arms, and fairies above us continued to swirl. “You think your combat prowess, your bravery, your heroics were mere luck? people who travel here are gifted,” she looked up, “After all, just look at what I’ve been able to do in just a scant few years with some proper tutelage of the ways of this world's magic,” she turned to face us again, “I’ve been here for so long, I was wondering when someone else would find the gateway, part of me thought it may never happen, but here you are, you’re finally here,” her laughter carried this twisted and almost horrifying power behind it.
“I don’t care what kind of power you think we would want here,” Christian said, “Why did you do this? You’re ruining the world. Don’t you love this place? Isn’t that why you escaped to it?” he asked.
“I do, I do love this place,” she smiled, and sighed, “But think of the things someone with our knowledge could do if we could take charge of it. Think of the advancements we could bring them, I do not seek to destroy this world, I want to remake it. Using the power I’ve acquired, I can make this world even better, and you could help me,” she lit up, “If we combined our powers we could take castles, and kingdoms, rid this world of anything that could threaten it,” she said, turning to Christian.
“You’re what’s threatening this world, this world was perfect enough before you came along. What you’ve been doing, it’s wrong, you’ve hurt people, you threatened people, you’ve made this world terrified of you, how can you say you’re helping it?” Christian begged.
“I can see you’re a true believer in the beauty of this world, I can sense it in you,” she reached up and ran her pale hand up Christian’s chest, she then moved her hand to his sword and lowered it as she stepped closer to him, “You’re the one, aren’t you? I know you are,” she said, smiling this devilish and seductive smile.
“I’m the one what?” Christian asked, lowering his sword at Morgan’s beckoning. Power seemed to be radiating from her.
“You’re the great hero, the kind of man spoken about in the newest batch of legends, slayer of the Big Bad Wolf, the great warrior from the far-off kingdom of Nebraska, the kind of man who makes maidens swoon and men laugh over drinks sharing stories of your bravery,” she smiled, reached up and caressed his face.
Say what you will about her actions and motives, but Morgan was quite beautiful in her unique way.
“Yeah, yeah maybe I am a hero,” Christian lowered his sword and reached up to put his hand over Morgan’s, “I don’t know if I am, if I’m worthy of being one, I’m just trying to be the man I’m supposed to be here,” he shook his head. I saw what I didn’t know at the time, a look of reluctance on his face. A look of a man weighing options even though he already knew the choice he was ready to make.
“It’s fun, isn’t it? Playing the hero, saving the day,” Morgan put her palms towards the ground and raised them in the air. The cloud of dark fairies swarmed around her, moving up against her like a kind of throne and lifting her off the ground, where she could bear down on Christian and the rest of us.
“I played the hero for a while, for a few years actually,” her mouth smiled but her eyes were still carried a look as deadly and ready strike as they had in their entire conversation.
“I slayed a Dragon, helped broker peace between kingdoms, I even rescued a princess,” she laughed, “When I rescued that little girl, the one they called the fairest of them all, I thought who on earth thinks a girl who’s no older than twelve the fairest of them all,” Morgan laughed, “Just another truth of this world I guess,” her smile widened, “This world values the things of value, it values youth, beauty, and heroism,” she turned to Christian again, then continued her speech, “You should have seen how flustered her father was when he found it was a humble woman who reunited him with his enchanting ash haired daughter, couldn’t exactly have given me her hand in marriage so he gave me quite a bit of gold, enough to retire at eighteen in luxury were I to take it back to the other world,” the fairies began to carry her around the four of us, again they formed a cone encircling us. A display of her power, not that she needed to show us any more proof that she could kill us in an instant.
Morgan rose higher over us, “Not that I would ever want to go back there. Why would you ever go back there? Just look at what I can do here, look at what people like us can do here,” she began to laugh harder, “Why do you even bother going back? This place is a paradise,” she said.
“Little did the king know that after the rescue I tracked down that so-called evil queen. Knowing she was defeated she hid in the form of an old crone outside an apple farm somewhere close to the lake. Well, somewhere as close as everything of importance to the destiny of people like us seems to be. I was going to seek her out to arrest her, I was still playing the hero after all. However, when I met her. When I met her in a place so defeated and pathetic, she saw my power. So, she bargained with me,” Morgan’s rosy, red lips curved into an even wider smile as she lowered her eyes. “In our travels together, she taught me many things, not just magic, not just how to look in her enchanted mirror and find the information and answers I would need when on my journey to greatness, but how to seek its guidance to fulfill my desires. She was a miser with that mirror. In my training I was never allowed to look upon it with my many, many, questions without her behind my shoulder, lording over me. One day, after I realized that my power had grown as far as that old crone could bring it, I gave her the justice she had coming. I didn’t do it as a means to punish her, I did it because she was holding me back. I still have her mirror, it’s somewhere in my lair, but I can’t remember where. It too outlived its usefulness. That last useful bit of information it gave me was that someday soon you would be arriving. That was three years ago,” she said, “That mirror now lives with a crack, and the face of wisdom inside it knows when to hold its tongue and knows how to stay useful to me, less it be burdened with another crack or even worse the shattering it most assuredly deserves,” she said.
The fairies were still swarming around us as Morgan spoke. I looked up and could see them moving in this kind of pattern, they formed a figure eight above us. If they were moving on their own, or of Morgan even when distracted by giving us her backstory, still commanded her awesome sway over her armies of dark and malignant creatures I don’t know.
“Her last act, before I realized that I had no more need for her, was to introduce me to a sorceress, a woman who could brew a potion that could make one immortal if consumed for long enough. She kept the source of her power, a certain princess I’m sure you know about, what with all the time the mirror told me you spent in her tower. As you know source of this power was captured.” Morgan turned to Christian raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes so playfully, “That pesky Prince charming strikes again,” she said, “The princess was captured by another prince, another prince who got there just a bit before you did, who was able to conquer a tower thought impenetrable, and conquer it before you had your chance to,” she said, mocking Christian’s devotion to his schoolboy heroics.
The fairies dove down and spun their figure eight around us, the center of it separating our group from Morgan. Most likely another show that she was still in complete control of the situation, that she was not distracted by the recount of her tale, that she wasn’t lost in her memories.
“The sorceress, knowing that she only had so much of her precious potion left, again became a miser, I, still thinking there was some shred of the hero inside me doing this action, dispatched of her,” she took a deep breath, “I took from what was left of her supply enough to keep me young and beautiful for even centuries to come, I took enough to ensure I could even give someone else that pleasure, were I to find a companion suitable to rule with me,” the fairies moved in another great torrent up into the air as Morgan, her feet on the ground, taking a step towards Christian. She reached out a pale, black-painted finger nail hand towards Christian, and gently rubbed his neck, her nails scratching him. God, I hoped that Christian didn’t share my affinity for the feeling of a woman’s fingernails scratching your skin.
“It’s been ten years here, and we’re the same age still, I figure that I have enough potion to stay this age for as long as I want. Though he’s not a figure in this particular world, I would imagine even Peter Pan would be so jealous of me,” she laughed.
“However, I feel once I take this world,” she threw her hand up and the Dark fairies began to circle and form a cone concentrated to a point right above her hand, “I may abstain from the potion for a while, let myself grow naturally, so as this worlds ruler I can look more mature, more dignified. I’m thinking I’ll let myself age up to thirty, thirty-two maybe, but not all the way to thirty-five,” she said.
The way she spoke, as if she was already so sure of her conquering of this world, she was already planning out the next thousand years of her reign.
I met another sorceress in my travels. Here I am, a clueless little girl with a magic mirror wondering how to guide its new master, and a potion that would give me all the time I need to figure out just where I needed to be. I wandered a forest for a while. I met a woman who had constructed her own paradise within paradise. She had a home covered in decadent pleasures I couldn’t help but enjoy. She wanted to take me, take my youth and beauty for herself, but being that I had a sword with me, and the cursory growing knowledge of the dark arts powerful enough to rebuff her, she decided to take me in as an apprentice of sorts. This is where I learned the ultimate power in this world, your world, and any other world,” Morgan sighed, and the Fairies returned to their circle formation above us. Her magic was so powerful, and it brought her food so abundant that only the most artisan and delicious of cuisine could satisfy someone after enjoying what her magics could provide,” She smiled, but her eyes looked as though they carried a tinge of, dare I say it, guilt?
“She taught me so much, and yet she taught me nothing,” Morgan said, “She would have me tend to her home, have me boil water for tea, have me go to the market to fetch the spices for this great meal of meat that she kept promising me she was going to make. Four months,” Morgan said, “Four months of being told to never go to the basement, to never find out how she was preparing our great feast. The hero in me said to find out what this witch was planning, but the realist in me, the part of me that said the role of hero was far behind me, kept me diligent in my service to her. I learned no magic, I didn’t reach for my magic mirror, I didn’t take a drink of my magic potion, I just worked. I swept her floors, I prepared the witch’s baths, and in little moments I learned what I could from her, what she was trying to teach me,” the smile seemed to fade from Morgan’s face for a moment. She shook her head and corrected herself, “The day of the meal came, coincidentally after the witch asked me to dispatch of a clumsy woodsman with a sharp axe stalking the forest, it was an easy task, I had killed before and it was easy to kill again,” she said, the smile coming back to her face. “I didn’t even see the look on his face,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I just did it, it was so easy,” she shook her head, “it was so easy,” she paused for a second.
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“We had our meal the next day. The meat was oddly shaped, it didn’t look like beef, chicken, or even pork. It looked close to pork, and it was well seasoned, all that work I had been doing gathering spices and doing other various busy work had certainly paid off. The taste of it, I can’t even describe it. There were two plates, one batch of meat was well marbled, fat, and sweet, it melted like butter on my tongue, so tender I barely had to chew it. Smoking in an oven for eight hours could do that to any cut of meat, regardless of its origin,” she said, “The other plate had tougher meat, but no less delicious. There was less of it, far less, as if the animal slaughtered to bring us this meal was far smaller and more stringy than its counterpart. Not every pig could be forced to be fed it would seem,” Morgan looked up, and contemplated for a moment, “Is that supposed to be some kind of parable I wonder?” she brought her finger to her lip and sensually and slowly slid it over them, then looked to us, looked to Christian, “I’m sure in your travels here, you’ve taken comfort in the lessons and sense made by the stories of this world I haven’t interfered too much in, they’re so amazing aren’t they? The rules of this world? They just make so much sense, well they used to make sense,” Morgan grinned, “Before I came along,” Morgan reached up and twisted her hand and the fairies, following their Sorceress came down and twisted themselves around her, forming a circle around us, “I understand the intoxication the simplicity of this world offers,” she said as the fairies formed an ever moving throne for her to lean back on and sit upon, “I know because I loved the way this world worked as well, when I was young,” she said, “But I can see something better,” she said.
I was able to piece it together. And I’m sure Brad and Susie and Christian were as well. It may not be one of the Mouse’s movies, but it’s a story all children are told when they’re young. Hansel and Gretel, and if what Morgan was saying was true, if anything she was saying was true, she just confessed to cannibalism. She ate Hansel and Gretel. Christian was right, she needed to be stopped, and he was right in thinking she needed to be stopped at any cost. That cost, however, was richer than Brad, Susie, and I could have ever imagined trying to pay.
“So, now that you know my tale, my legend, the legend I’ve entrenched for myself here. I ask you, people from that other world, what reason is there to go back? We can have everything here, youth, beauty, power, respect, love, everything anyone would want, what point is there trudging through that other world and relegating this place to just a visit on a day off, an occasional trip, or a stolen weekend, what I ask you, what?”
“You ask why you would want to go back, why we would go back, it’s because we have families, we have friends, we have lives,” Susie said, stepping forward next to Christian and looking up at Morgan as she clinched her fists and tried to stay strong in front of the Queen of Air and Darkness.
The fairies carried Morgan down, face to face with Susie, “Family,” she said with scorn in her voice, she gave Susie a once over, “I bet your parents are so proud of you, you don’t even have to tell me, you’re a cheerleader, aren’t you?” she asked.
Susie bit her lip, I saw her draw her courage as she looked back up to Morgan, standing toe to toe with her, “Yes, I am a cheerleader, I’m in the middle of the pyramid,” she said, “And my family loves me,” she said, “My family loves me like your family loved you, they put a billboard up for you, it still stands today,” Susie said, “It’s been two years in the real world, they are still looking for you, they’re still desperate for any sign of you, you’re missed, Morgan,” Susie said.
“Oh, a billboard, oh that changes my mind,” the fairies raised Morgan back up over us, “Who put it up? My mother? My stepfather? Some concerned law enforcement entity? They’re all doing so much better without me, I was a wedge in my mother’s marriage, I could see how much my stepfather despised my existence, I could hear it in his voice. With me gone, they can be happier if they just let go of their sad pretend of missing me,” she said.
“What about your friends, Steven, knew you loved stories, Sandra knew you loved to escape to your own world, Morgan,” Susie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and thought of how to try and argue with such an adversary, “I know that escaping here is fun, I admit I’ve had my own joys here as well, but you can’t just abandon the real world,” she said.
“The real world, you still call it that?” Morgan said, slowly circling us, “Let me ask you a question, Cheerleader,” she said that last bit with some scorn in her voice as the fairies rose and pushed her face to face with Susie.
“Step back,” I said, jumping to Susie’s side.
Morgan rolled her eyes, “Oh, who is this, your football player boyfriend?” she asked.
“He’s not,” Susie shook her head, I thought for a moment she was shaking away thoughts of that drunken night we shared together, “Cody, it’s fine,” she said.
“Cody,” Morgan scowled, “Typical,” she said as the fairies rose her back up, away from Susie. “You call the world we’re from the real world, what makes that world more real than this one? The simple notion that it’s real because we happened to have been born there?” she laughed, “Or is it real because it lacks the magic and wonderment that this amazing place can offer?” she asked as a Fairy ran up her arm and rested in her palm. She smiled and kissed it on the head before sending it back into the great cloud around us.
“What makes it real is the people who love us, people love you there Morgan. They think you’re dead, you were in the yearbooks in-memoriam page, you had a ton of dedications to you,” Susie said.
“How do you know they even knew me?” Morgan said, “No one knew me over there. I had friends, sure, friends who would pretend not to know me in front of people who mattered, I had family sure, family who pretended I didn’t exist when I got in the way of them getting what they wanted. You may have some simple and sad pleasures in that world that latch you to it, but here I was able to finally become free,” she said, reaching her hand out to us, “I’m offering you the same chance,” she said. I will admit I did see an honest plea in her eyes, a wish to make allies, a wish to finally have friends.
“Morgan, this place is a fantasy, a fun fantasy, but you can’t stay here. Come back with us, let your family know you’re all right, you can join us,” Susie said, “We come here every weekend, that’s almost a week here,” Susie had admitted that she was the last of us to truly come around and see the appeal of Somewhere else.
“No, it’s too late for me,” Morgan sighed, her face turned from a smile of someone who knew she had total dominance over her threats to a forlorn look of one who had already made their choice, “This is where I belong,” she said, “This is my real world, this is the world that’s given me everything I could desire, nothing in the other world could come close to giving me what I’ve gotten here,” she lowered herself towards Christian.
“I see the look on your face,” Morgan said, “You understand, don’t you? You understand more than your friends,” she sighed, “You’re a true believer, you’re the kind of person who sees the beauty in this world, aren’t you? You see how much better it is over here,” she said, reaching up and running her pale white hand over Christian’s cheek.
“I am, and I do,” Christian said, “I see the beauty in this world, but you, you’re destroying it, you’re destroying everything that makes this world amazing,” Christian reached up and put his hand on Morgan’s, closing his eyes as he held it to his face before she slipped it away.
“I know my methods may seem, too strong, barbaric even, but I have the opportunity to make this world everything it can be, and what I know it can be is a world for us,” she looked to Christian, “A world for the outcasts of that other world to come and find things that it would never give them. Power, respect, authority… and dare I say, love? Please, let me continue my work, I can make a haven for people like us,” she was talking only to Christian. She had written Susie off as a cheerleader, and Brad and I off as typical jocks that didn’t need the social approval her power was able to earn her Somewhere else.
“I don’t want to change this world, this world is fine as it is,” Christian said, he sighed, and I saw his eyes change. I saw him confirm his decision. I didn’t know he had made this decision at the time, but looking back, I could see he made his decision long before we entered the lake that day.
“People like us, people who don’t fit in what your friends call the real world, people like us belong here in this world,” Morgan said, she put her hand to his shoulder, “Think of all the glory you’ve already had in this world, and then exponite that, that’s what I can show you. If we work together,” she said, “As amazing as this world is, they still aren’t as corrupted by feminism as the other world is. Fortunate for them, but a bit unfortunate for me,” she tilted her head, “If I had a man with me, a man beside me, oh the things we could do together,” she shook her head, her hand moving up to Christian’s collarbone, “Work with me, I have developed powers in this world and I can teach them to you. I sense a kindred spirit in you, you great hero. You and me, the two of us together, just the two of us,” she looked towards Susie, Brad, and me, “Let them run off to be insurance salesmen and medical billing specialists in that other world. You can stay here, you’ve thought about staying here, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, I have,” Christian brought his hand up to rest on Morgan’s, “But I want to stay in the world I’ve found, not the world that you’re making,” he said. He closed his eyes for a moment, the thoughts that had to have been running through his head I can’t even imagine.
“Living in this world would be great, but you and me together, we can do more than live here,” Morgan smiled, “If we work together, we can rule this world,” she said, a beaming and proud smile coming across her lips.
“I don’t want to rule this world,” Christian reached to the back of his pants.
None of us had any idea he would do this. We had no idea he was capable of this.
Christian pulled out a gun, an old twenty-two. God, I would bet this was the first time he had ever held a gun in his life. Even in the instant it all happened it felt like time and slowed down. I would think that Christian, someone like Christian, at least someone like the person I thought Christian was, I would think someone like that’s hand would be trembling. That his whole body would be trembling, the weight of a decision that no human being should ever have a reason to make weighing on his shoulders. But he was dead still, a look of determination and resolve in his eyes. I hate to say this about him, about my friend, but I think that deep down, it was easy for him. That’s the scariest part about it to me, the fact it was probably so easy for him.
He put it right to Morgan’s chest, “I don’t want to rule this world, I just want to live in it,” he said as he pulled the trigger, shooting Morgan in the heart before he brought it up under her chin and pulled the trigger again, blowing her brains out in a pink and crimson spray.
There wasn’t as much blood as there was in movies. It just kind of happened, there was blood, of course, but it’s surprising how little blood you see when someone gets shot. To any concerned parent who’s afraid of violent R-rated movies and video games desensitizing kids to violence. I can tell you that even lacking the gallons of blood movies add for shock value, no matter what you’ve seen before, you are not ready to see someone get shot. I played Grand Theft Auto and call of duty since they were on PlayStation 2, my favorite movie is Scarface, and I saw Robocop when I was eight, I was not desensitized to anything. This was easily the most horrifying thing I had ever seen, and I was only seventeen, I hadn’t seen much by then. This was so bad, I could go as far as to say this was truly, the only horrifying thing I had ever seen in my young life.
Morgan’s body fell over. It fell over so fast, again I thought it would be like the movies. I thought she would stumble. Put her hand to her wound and have that moment of realization that her empire had crumbled. That she would have a moment to accept the comeuppance for the evils she had committed. She didn’t have any of that, she just died. She just fell to the ground motionless. No death rattle, no use of her last breath to cure Christian for foiling her. She just…died. Fell to the ground as the Black fairies under her command scattered in every direction imaginable. No two fairies flew in the same direction.
Fairies after this became a common household nuisance. A scant one of them, one alone, would be something that the people of Somewhere Else would swat away with the same attitude we would have for a common housefly.
With the Fairies gone, we were all left just standing there. My first instinct was to turn to Susie, her face was a kind of white I don’t even think they sell at Sherman Williams.
Then I turned to Christian, he was just standing there over Morgan’s dead body, he turned to us, “She was dangerous, unhinged,” he said, his voice desperate, his breathing becoming faster and harder, “I had to do it, I didn’t want to do it, I just brought this in the case I would have to,” he said, his hand trembling as he dropped the gun. “You heard what she said. Her whole story, she’s even more evil than I thought she was, and you saw what she had, the power she had behind her, she was too powerful, she wouldn’t have listened to reason, she wouldn’t have listened to anything we had to say,” He tried desperately to list reasons for his innocence. Innocence for what in the real world he would have to argue as a “Stand Your Ground” case at best. He turned to Susie, “Susie, Susie I’m so sorry, but she was too far gone,” he said, then turned to Brad and me, “She was too far gone, she was too dangerous,” he said, gulping. While calm and collected when making the decision. The mental fallout he probably had once realizing what he had done made him start to shake. I could see every effect that taking another person’s life had come over him. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking to Morgan’s dead body. The air around us was silent, what with no swarm of Dark Fairies anymore. “I’m sorry,” he brought his hand to his face as tears welled in his eyes.
“Christian,” I took a step forward, I didn’t know if I wanted to comfort or scold him, I didn’t know what to do, so I just gave him a hug again. He buried his face in my shoulder.
“I had to, I had to,” he said, over and over, I just held him, holding my friend as he let it all out. He began to weep. Susie, as I’m sure she’s made clear in her chapters, always thought Christian was pathetic. She probably thinks this moment was pathetic. A unhinged man crying crocodile tears in a desperate attempt to show a humanity he no longer had. I haven’t read her chapters yet, but she probably is going to tell you that he was a weak man. I’m not going to edit anyone’s work. We all deserve to have our voices heard. I know that it seems what Christian did was terrible to some of you, you readers, but this man didn’t see any other option. Maybe he brought the gun just for the worst case scenario, and maybe he brought it to kill Morgan on sight. I don’t know the answer to that question, no one can. But Christian wasn’t weak when he did it. In my opinion it took a great deal of strength to do what he did. Christian was always so strong in that world, and a moment came where he had to choose to be just a pretender or really prove that he was a champion dedicated to saving Somewhere Else from any threat that came over it. Say what you will about the act, but it took strength to commit it. If it was good or evil as I’m sure we’ve all contemplated, it must have taken every bit of Christian’s strength to make that choice.
Susie will probably call him a coward, and I heard right from her mouth later several other things she could call him, say what you will about this awful turn of events, but I was the one holding him, I was the one feeling him almost scream into my shoulder as he held his arms around me, holding onto me for support, almost collapsing. It was real, all of it was so real. Christian knew what he had done, he knew the mortal sin he had just committed. And he knew that despite any reasoning or logical approach he had when he had first came to the decision to do what he had done, he knew what he did was wrong.
I tried to wrestle this moral argument in my head, Morgan was destroying Somewhere else, she had killed countless people, maybe, probably, ate someone. She had killed more than enough people to earn her the death penalty in our world.
“We need to go home, to our home,” I said. I looked over to Susie, then I looked to Brad, both of them had seem traumatized. Be strong for them, I said to myself. “Back to the lake,” I said, accepting the role of leader that by default had fallen to me in this moment. The three of them followed me, desperate for some rock to cling too.
We said nothing on the way back to the lake. Brad jumped in first. Susie went to the edge of the lake, I reached out for her wrist, “Susie, Morgan was-”
“No, don’t you defend this,” she hissed at me in a whisper that hopefully Christian couldn’t hear, “He…He,” Susie was at a loss for words. I mostly thought she was angry at me about what had just happened, but part of me thought some of her anger towards me was residual from that stupid and amazing drunken night.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything,” I said.
“Can’t get worse than this, but Christian can surprise me,” Susie said, with a bite on her voice before she jumped in the lake.
Christian and I were left together, “Christian,” I said to him, “Do you even understand what you did today?” I asked him.
“I know what I did,” Christian said, steeling himself. The time for tears was over. In such a short time he was able to internalize what he did, process it after falling completely apart in my arms, and compartmentalize it in that part of your brain where we all excuse our personal sins, where we all justify the evils we commit in this world or that and run them through a processor that justifies our actions just enough to let us keep getting a good night’s worth of sleep, “I saved the world,” he said before jumping into the lake.
I stayed behind somewhere else for a few minutes. Hopefully everyone continued to say nothing to each other before they got in their cars. I didn’t want to have to face the threat of a conversation about what we just saw. I took a deep breath, and jumped into the lake to return to the real world.
