If I am lost, let it be forever. I am an abomination, embodiment of the word. I should not be. I was made by ignorant men from the stuff of miraculous being I can’t conceive. What did he call it? It feels like so long ago now. What was it? Planetary? Plutarch. Maybe it was Plutarch.
If I am lost, I should fall into a sun. That is the only thing that could kill me. Apparently I don’t need to breathe. I do, but the damage that the lack of oxygen is doing to my body is being repaired and I am in this state, slowly freezing. Freezing over.
I am lost, let it be forever.
I can’t make you proud Plutarch, I can’t honor your sacrifice. I will die here, in pursuit of you, my secret mission. I have failed. We are both lost to this cold.
I am not dead. I am frozen through and through, the cold like a bed of nails that impale me completely, through and through.
Why can I know this? Why can I feel this? When do I get to die? This is my hell. Eternal, torturous life and the distant memory of a bliss so absolute that I’m convinced of the existence of a heaven that I’m being denied.
I’m stuck. I’m so cold that I’ve lost all concept of the word. Maybe I’m on fire? Maybe I’ve always been fire, a spark in something bigger. I am just this raging, flaming sensation.
– – –
He would eventually be drawn into the gravity of the planet Vwrawl and then he is rocketing toward its surface. As he gains speed and is met with the increasing resistance of the Vwrawlian atmosphere, he quickly disintegrates into a persistent dust that stays loosely together due to the presence of his undying consciousness that is lost in memory, and strong enough to maintain the dust of his remains as they drift to a small island in the disputed northern territory of the Equatorial Oceans. He is indistinguishable from grains of sand, and yet he reconstitutes, his physical body is repaired to house the consciousness that is tethered to the remains, no matter how minute. He grows from his ashes, very slowly, his body fills out from seemingly nothing, and all the while he recesses into his experience.
The Vwrawlian skyline from the surface of a small island in the northern region of the planet is desolate. Water for miles in every direction. The sky is hazy with clouds that ride the surface of the sea and the light from the sun is mostly obscured. There are many avian creatures, known collectively as bouren, who make homes on islands that are the tips of enormous undersea mountains. The environment below the water’s surface is teeming with life and civilization. There is an ice cap on the Vwrawlian north pole and miles long glaciers in the extreme north, and as a result, islands dot the oceans in the mid to southern portions of the northern region.
There is a company of bouren-krogs, Krognians who hunt the various species of bouren of the northern region islands, who claim the exclusive permit for hunting the wiqpaul bouren that is a culinary delicacy of all Krognians. The members of the company are known as Wiq-Krogs and they have a long and proud tradition of superior hunting methods that have influenced hunters of various game planet-wide. The wiqpaul are native to the north, though they have been spotted in Equatorial regions on islands claimed by bouren-krog companies of that region. This has led to disputes in territorial demarcations between the Northern and Equatorial queendoms that are impossible to solve because of the whims of the wiqpaul that likes cold weather, but not too cold, which can be found within the most northern tip of Equatorial territory, or the most southern regions of the Northern territory depending on perspective.
The Wiq-Krogs have observation submarines that float just below the surface of the water and monitor the movements of the wiqpaul flock. It is usually manned by two krogs who are well educated in biology and the bouren species of Vwrawl.
Currently there is one man in the Wiq-Krog observation sub, Quiruhl, and he is relatively new to the job, though he was an enthusiastic trainee who has been looking forward to working with the company and being part of its tradition. Quiruhl spends a lot of time on or near the surface of the northern regions and he likes to experience the relatively primitive creatures that thrive in the environment that is foreign to the average Krognian who has no need to or interest in dwelling on the surface. Krognians can exist outside of the water, but generally prefer life under the sea. Quiruhl has always been interested in the exotic life on Vwrawl and he spent a lot of his youth hunting bouren on the islands. Even before he entered the Wiq-Krog training program, Quiruhl was comfortable dwelling in the dry above the surface of the oceans.
In all of his years hunting and studying the dry above the vast seas, he has never laid eyes on anything like the sight through his periscope. There appears to be something glowing, a ball of light illuminating a small island. It is a yellow-white glow and from a distance Quiruhl wonders if there is a fire that usually happened when storms raged the dry and bolts of electricity struck the plants of the islands. There is no storm and Quirul knows that it is not a fire as he approaches the island. When he has a clear view of the island, close enough that the clouds don’t obscure too much, he doesn’t believe the view through his periscope. He engages the controls and the submarine surfaces. He flips open the top hatch and he leaves the inside to stand on top of the submarine that is a slick and shiny black under the veneer of the water. He can’t believe his eyes as he stares at the island that is crowded with low plants and tall ones that have leaves that sprout from the top. Amidst the vegetation, a mysterious being is floating and surrounded by the incredible glow.
“It is a star,” Quiruhl says out loud in wonder. The being floating before him is unfamiliar and he assumes that it is naked; Krognians wear tight fitting clothing that does not slow them down in the water but can be protective against hazards that might be floating nearby. It has dark skin, a small round face and no eyes are apparent. It could be sleeping, Quiruhl thinks. He should radio for help, get more eyes on this to decide what it is and what to do with it. But Quiruhl just wants to stare and he does, almost frozen in his awe.
– – –
He isn’t laid up for long after the accident and he is back to it because he would need the cover of a legitimate job. It isn’t hard for Darker to find a drug dealer who can use his talents, and he uses his bike to complete deliveries that are very different from the office mail he normally delivers. He doesn’t have to rush; sure he has to be at certain places by certain times, but it’s an easy ride and he can enjoy the city that he passes. In uptown Manhattan, he goes 160th to Riverside and he passes large trees in circles of dirt along the concrete walkway next to the large brick wall that you could stand at and stare at the Hudson. And he takes Riverside down long enough to avoid the busiest sidewalks on Broadway, and he hooks a left at 150th, then onto Broadway, across the avenue, to the rows of buildings there that are no more than ten floors high. He passes the Dominican restaurant and takes in the smell of the chickens slow roasting, he passes the laundromat that seemed to be a floor down from the sidewalk and he imagined it was a pain to carry large loads down there, and the shoe store on the corner where the owner was determined to sell him a fancy shirt he knew he would never wear but the owner had stopped him last time and chatted him up and he keeps his head forward now to avoid the brightly colored wares he is pushing. Luckily no cars are coming and he makes another left and prepares himself for the steep incline of the sidewalk on the sidestreet, pasing big black bags of garbage that sag to look like they have breached the surface of the sidewalk, and the metal bars of the low fence separating the sidewalk from the first floor of mostly apartment homes. He stops at a busy stoop, a young man who is probably much older than he looks, with his frizzy hair in a puff at the back of his head that Darker can see from the front, and the large iguana clinging to his black tank top that exposes his brown skin to the sun. The young man smiles to see him and they shake hands in the elaborate way the man with the iguana demands; Darker is familiar enough, though the people on his block in the Bronx have a considerably simpler handshake that doesn’t involve snapping fingers.
“Yo, you tell ya man this shit is fire, yo. Fiends going crazy out here!”
It’s their second conversation but the young man with the iguana seems to like Darker a lot and he is happy that so far, his job selling drugs hasn’t been nearly as dangerous as he thought it would be.
As soon as he thinks it, he sees the young man in a sudden rage, lift his shirt, Darker notices the smooth skin underneath and the muscles of his lower abdomen accentuated by short curly hairs, and then the gun that the young man grabs quickly as shots blast behind him. Darker sees the young man suddenly filled with holes, red holes and it takes a moment to process amidst all of the chaos; as the young man falls and there are other men with guns now aiming at a target that moves away.
Darker drops his bike, there is the young man’s gun. Darker stoops to grab it and sees the young man staring at him, eyes wide and dead. Darker thinks that he is beautiful. He yells, and he sees young men shooting each other, hears innocents screaming and running for cover, sees cars riddled with holes and their windows spewing glass when they are hit. Men in defense of the downed young man and his poor iguana that is shot too, line up behind cars on the side of the street and return fire on a car that is stopped, too much damage from enemy bullets.
Darker approaches the car, steadily firing with the dead young man’s gun like he had practiced in the dark at an abandoned warehouse with his new coworkers, and he hits three of them. The men shooting from the trenches behind cars take notice and then Darker ends everyone in the car. He wipes the handle and the trigger with his shirt, tosses it, and hops back on his bike. He is getting accolades as the sirens approach, as he stares at the young man and his iguana on the street, and then he peddles like the wind.
He learns later that he killed a lot of men associated with a bitter rival of his boss and he is promoted, which means more dangerous encounters, more shootouts, and Darker emerging unscathed on his bike, peddling between police who see him as a scared boy, one of the good ones.
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