'Age of Booty' game simple, but reasonably so - La Vida

'Age of Booty' game simple, but reasonably so - La Vida

War of the World - Part 2

This is Part II of a story I never actually intended to finish when I started it. But now it has a middle (which will be continued from here), and quite possibly even an ending. So, since it was asked of me, I'm going to continue and see where it takes me.

In case you missed it, Part I of "The War of the World" can be found here: http://www.brittonpeele.com/2008/09/war-of-world-part-1.html
You would do well to read it if you want to have any idea what's going on.

- Britton Peele

II

Ashes to ashes…

Dusk to dust.

As the sun rose higher, the world grew hotter. Maybe this was hell after all. We had been walking for what felt like hours at least, and seemed to be getting absolutely nowhere.

“Why won’t you just let me die?” I asked Dennis more than once.

“Because the man in charge ‘aint done with you yet,” he would reply.

“Where are we going?”

“Town,” Dennis replied simply.

The sword he had handed me seemed to weigh heavier in my hand with each passing step. “Why the hell am I carrying this damned thing?” I asked.

“There’s a brutish fellow causing a ruckus in town,” Dennis explained. “Drunkard, brawler, womanizer… You need to take care of him.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, planting my feet firmly in the sand. “I need to what?”

Dennis stopped when I did, walked a few steps back to me, and planted his arm firmly on my shoulder. “Think of it this way. If you can’t do it, there’s a good chance you’ll die. And that’s what you want, right?”

Touché… Sort of.

“Why me?” I asked. As if the things I was experiencing could get any weirder. Was I supposed to be some sort of hero now? That wouldn’t exactly fit in with my lifestyle.

“You’ll see,” came the reply. “But you’re the only one who can stop him.”

How helpful.

“So when we get to town…” I began.

“We’re here,” Dennis interrupted.

I don’t know how or when it happened, but I looked up from the sandy tops of my shoes to see that a small town (or would “village” be more accurate?) now occupied the once empty horizon.

“How…”

“This way,” Dennis said as he trudged onward toward the buildings.

The town seemed simple enough. Very old-fashioned – practically medieval – and mostly made of wood. People walked around in simple clothing, with most of the women in long dresses and the men garbed in tunics. They moved to-and-fro in the streets, occasionally jostling one another as they performed their duties. Their lives moved ever onward, not a care in the world.

What a perfect place to wage a war.

But the way Dennis described this place, this world between worlds, implied that the war was already going on. You could never guess that from the people here. Were they oblivious to the events around them, or was something else going on here?

I was about to ask about this when we apparently arrived at our destination. Dennis stopped in front of a large building with the word “Tavern” on the front. No clever name, no claim to ownership… It merely was what it was.

“He’s in there,” Dennis said, nodding toward the tavern door.

I stared at the door for several seconds before looking back at Dennis. “That’s it? No explanation, no advice, no guidance?”

“What do you think I am? An oracle?”

“I don’t know what the hell you are, or what this place is, or why I’m even convinced that any of this is really happening! How do I know that I didn’t really pull that trigger? Maybe I’m not quite dead, and this is all one big shock and drug induced fever dream.”

“Maybe.”

I almost wanted to strangle him.

“Doesn’t change what you have to do,” he continued. “This is your task, whether you’re awake or dreaming.” He opened the door and motioned for me to enter. “Come.”

What choice did I have?

The noise in the tavern was deafening in comparison to the silence of the desert – or the emptiness of my apartment. There were just so many people in that one place at once…

I was never a huge fan of people.

Dennis exchanged polite nods with several of the patrons, as well as someone who appeared to be the tavern master. He had obviously been here before. None of the same people even gave me a first glance, much less a second one.

We walked through a crowd of people who were talking, drinking, singing, and even dancing. The whole scene made me feel slightly uncomfortable.

“That’s him,” Dennis said after quickly scanning the room.

I followed his gaze to the man I could only assume was my apparent target. A large, muscular man who was quickly downing what must have been at least his seventh mug of beer or ale or… whatever they drank here. Two women in rather suggestive clothing hung on either side of him, rubbing their hands over every inch of his body.

Drunkard, check. Womanizer, check.

Brawler… Guess it was time to see.

“Recognize him?” Dennis asked.

I found the question odd. I had never seen anyone who looked like this man before. “No.”

A sad smile tugged at the side of his lips. “You will.”

“So am I supposed to just walk up and pick a fight or what?” I asked. If so, it would be good that I had the sword, despite not knowing a thing about how to use it. I would never stand a chance against the brute with fists alone.

“He needs to die,” Dennis answered.

He said it so casually and so callously that I was a bit taken aback. I lowered my voice, afraid that someone would hear us conspiring. They would have to pick out our conversation amidst what sounded like hundreds, but I was still worried. “He’ll tear me to pieces!”

Dennis shrugged. “Not if you’re smart about it. You may recall that Goliath was bigger than David. This is nothing in comparison.”

“What do you want me to do, throw a rock at the man and cut off his head in front of all these people?”

“You could.”

“Damn it, Dennis!” I said in as loud a whisper as I could manage. This was crazy. Insane, even. It wasn’t as much the idea of taking this man’s life – he may, indeed, have deserved it – as much as it was the thought of his blood being on my hands. I wanted to go unnoticed, uncared about. This would draw too much attention. “I’m not doing this!” I declared firmly.

Dennis frowned. “You’re scared?”

“That’s not the point, but yes.”

He sighed. “Fine. We’ll leave.”

That was it? We could just go? I could decide to walk away?

Immediately, the world grew quiet. The clinking of glasses stopped. Conversations ceased. Music refused to play.

The crowd to my right parted as someone made his way toward the brute I was supposed to kill. People looked upon the newcomer with confusion, with awe, with concern… With fear.

I was with the ones who were confused. Confused and shocked.

It wasn’t a monster or a warrior or even a woman who stepped through the crowd, but a boy. Young. Simply dressed. Short hair. Couldn’t have been more than thirteen, at oldest. Had a strange air of familiarity around him.

Yet he was walking right up to the brute, both determination and apprehension on his face.

“Mr. Hyde,” Dennis said barely above a whisper, “meet Dr. Jeckle.”

I looked from Dennis to the brute to the boy, trying to put the pieces together. Suddenly the realization of what was happening hit me like a brick. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Dennis didn’t look away from the silent confrontation in front of him. “If you won’t fight and kill him, the boy will.”

“That’s insane! He’ll be squashed like a bug!”

“He has to try. If he doesn’t, he’ll die.”

“If he does he’ll die!”

“He may win. You never know.”

I wanted to pull my hair out, but restrained myself. “I thought you said I was the only one who could kill him!”

Dennis gave one small, short chuckle before looking at me. “You still don’t see, do you?”

“See what?!?”

“He’s you, brother,” Dennis replied as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “The boy and the brute… They’re both you.”

War of the World - Part 1

Author's Note: I say "Part 1" in the title of this blog because this story hardly has an ending. However, that doesn't mean it will ever continue.

It's a story that told itself to me during a class today, but what you see is the entirety of what was told. As the story has stopped telling itself, I refuse to force it out, calling it forth from whatever depths it came. Whether or not it will continue and/or conclude is up to the story itself, as well as the One who tells these tales to me.

So you probably don't want to expect any more parts to this narrative. It is what it is, and that's all that it is.

- Britton Peele

I sat quiet in the darkness, the cold steel of the weapon pressing hard into my palm. My body was shaking ever so slightly, but I controlled it. I had become accustomed to controlling certain motions and expressions.

They wouldn’t know. They couldn’t know. No one would ever understand. I would only see the immense disappointment on their faces as their hearts sank, so ashamed they would be at what I had become.

So I hid it.

Maybe they’ll award me a posthumous Oscar.

This was it, then. No more pain, misery, confusion, doubt, or struggle. The millions upon millions of stray thoughts bounding incessantly on the inside of my head would finally stop. No more voices, no more manic laughter, no more uncontrollable desires… No more worries or obligations. I could finally get some rest. This would be the way my world ends.

Not with a whimper, but a bang.

Safety off. Finger on the trigger. Now or never. Time to bore the thoughts out.

Couldn’t control the shaking this time. So easy in theory, but so hard in practice.

Time to die. Pull the trigger.

Click.

Damn.

No bullet in the chamber. Just another thing for me to screw up.

I had originally intended to just wait until I died of other causes, but that was taking too long. Chaos was taking over far too quickly. Funny how most people don’t even see how quickly the world around them is falling apart.

But I do.

One more try. Nothing left to lose, nothing left to gain. There would just be…

Nothing.

I was sure I had pulled the trigger. Is this what death felt like? Was I dead before my brain had time to tell my body it should be writhing in agony?

That’s almost a disappointment. I really deserved the pain.

I opened my eyes slowly, not entirely sure what to expect. My apartment, probably. Damn gun probably didn’t fire.

All I could see was barren plain in every direction. It might have been purgatory, because it sure as hell wasn’t heaven.

Not that they’d want me in the pearly gates anyway. I’d only muddy up the streets of gold.

No, wherever this place was, it wasn’t heaven, and it wasn’t my apartment unless a nuke had gone off and someone forgot to warn me.

It was in this desert that I met Dennis.

“Nah, you’re not dead,” Dennis told me when I stumbled upon him. “Least not yet. You gotta learn a lot about yourself before you decide whether or not you really wanted to pull that trigger.”

The gun in my hand had been long gone. Vanished when I arrived wherever it was that I was. “Then where am I?”

“The war between the worlds,” he answered simply. “Or the war of the world, you might say. You’re not here, you’re not there… You don’t know what or where you are, which in your case might not be that different from the world you’re used to.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You tell me,” Dennis said, resting his foot up on a large rock in the middle of the expansive nothing. “Why are you here? What are you looking for?”

I didn’t answer. Dennis prodded me further.

“You got a job?”

“Not really.”

“A home?”

“Lonely.”

“A woman?”

This struck a nerve.

“Ah. Lost her, huh? That’s a common one.”

“Look, I,” I started, trying to defend myself.

Dennis raised his hands. “Hey, hey, it’s not really my place to know. Maybe you’re like most of the male population and screwed things up. Maybe you don’t really know what went wrong. Maybe this girl was just a bitch. There’s a whole host of possibilities. But what’s done is done. No use killing yourself over it.”

I clenched my fist. “I’m not killing myself over her. Even though she was…”

“What, your life? Your everything? That’s what they all say, brother, and it’s only true a bit of the time. To be honest, usually when it doesn’t work out like this, it wasn’t really meant to be. Especially for you. You’re young. The younger ones typically find someone that’s more suitable for them in a shorter amount of time than they expected. Or sometimes they give up the opposite sex all together.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask what this meant, but Dennis caught himself. “No! No! They aren’t gay, man. I mean single. Celibate. Unmarried and abstaining. Do try to keep up. That life isn’t for everyone anyway.”

He was silent for a minute before speaking again. “Ah, but the girl was just the catalyst, wasn’t she? This had been building for quite some time. Something up there,” he bounced over to me and tapped me hard on the head, “has gone wrong. Has been for awhile, building and building and building until BAM!” he slapped his hands together with force, “You burst.”

He knew a lot. More than any other random stranger who casually decides to strike up conversation about potential mental abnormalities.

“So,” he said lightly. “Did you come here to fix it?”

I blinked. He made it sound so simple. Like my only problem was that I just hadn’t tried. But I decided to bite. “Can I?”

Dennis shrugged. “Depends on whether or not you’re actually seeking.”

“Seeking what?”

“The truth, of course. How do you expect to fix your life if you don’t have basic knowledge of how life itself works? You need to seek truth, light, salvation… God.”

I scoffed. “God’s voice is faint at best.”

Dennis stroked his bare chin. “Well, now. How do you expect to find God if you don’t know what he sounds like?”

He lost me.

“Looks like you’ve got a lot to learn, man,” Dennis said to me. “But are you willing to try?”

There weren’t a lot of options. On one hand, if I just ignored him, there was the good chance that I would eventually just die. For real this time. Could I still die from starvation in this place?

On the other hand… If there was any hope…

“Yes,” I said. “I’m willing.”

Dennis grinned. With his left hand, he held out a sword in a sheath that I didn’t see him carrying before now. In his right hand, he offered to shake mine.

“Well then, brother,” he said. “Welcome to the war.”