Chapter 11

Grandma told us to be careful with what we wished for, and I wished I took her advice.

  Two hours before sunset, the wind picked up from the south, and thick storm clouds darkened the sky. The flattened forest provided little cover, but after finding a hole under a fallen tree large enough to squeeze into, I stacked dried branches on either side to create a roof.

  The sky opened, dumping buckets of rain, and dropped pea-sized hail that stung in the driving wind. Soon, even my shelter filled with water. The sticks and leaves did nothing to keep me from the rising mud, and the frigid water left my hands numb and body shivering. I wished for it to pour, and so it did.

  I, Amy Sullivan, became a modern-day rainmaker.

  Icy drops trickled through the gaps between my stick roof, which the wind destroyed from time to time, and bursts of lightning created monsters in the corners of my eyes. Every tree root in the distance and rock by its side wanted to attack, wanted to make their way into my shelter. But after enough flashes, I wasn’t sure they were just shadows.

  With each passing minute, with each lightning strike, the creatures grew bolder. Each burst of light created a better picture, a different angle, sometimes nearer, and sometimes further away. The beasts moved closer. They threatened to enter. But they couldn’t. As long as I stayed awake, they couldn’t.

  Whatever they were, whatever watched me kept its distance. However, if they entered, I didn’t know how many I could take before they overran me—before they stripped me of my safety.

  As the rain continued, my shelter shrunk. It might have been the wood absorbing the water, or the ground rising, but my hovel tightened around me with every passing moment. Every second, the walls constricted. The walls encased me in a tomb and made each breath harder than the last.

  A bolt struck the ground nearby, and the earth shook beneath me. I jammed my rear deep into the hole and dug at the ground to bury myself further. It was no use. The thick tree roots snaked under the soil like a spider’s web. I had no way to escape. I needed to calm down.

  The vice around my heart loosened, allowing it to pump again, and my jaw relaxed. They couldn’t be real. Real beasts wouldn’t circle without eventually attacking. No, they had to be imaginary.

  My nest flooded, making it impossible to dry off. But the storm flooded everything with water—there were no dry areas. I was sitting in a mud puddle without a raincoat. Only my feet and head stayed dry.

  The icy water made my hands purple, and I couldn’t keep them warm. I didn’t know when hypothermia set in; it didn’t take much. I spread essence throughout my body, hoping to fight the chills. Unfortunately, the moment I stopped, the cold seeped through my skin and drilled into my core.

  Another bolt fell from the sky and kicked mud towards the creeping shadows. I placed my hands under my armpits and rocked, then swayed, back and forth, side to side. The motion settled my mind and removed me from the stormy weather. Whistles in the wind drifted from my ears, and the freezing water evaporated beneath the warmth of my blanket.

  Mom hummed in my ears, a lullaby she sang to Lia and me. I never remembered the lyrics, and Lia didn’t either. Mom had a soft voice that matched her eyes. Her hums filled my helmet, and I was in my room.

  Mom sang next to the dolphin lamp on the nightstand. Light from the shade sparkled on the ceiling and mimicked the night sky. She combed her fingers through our hair on the white headboard covered with cupcake stickers, and she sang. The Frozen snow globe sat on the windowsill, and cocoa, the stuffed bunny Lia and I shared lay between us.

  Lia held cocoa; she was with me. I hadn’t felt her since I stitched the priest, but she was with me again. Mom continued to sing, and I wrapped my arms around Lia. She wasn’t allowed to leave again; I wouldn’t let her go. Lia was mine.

  Mom’s voice became a whisper, and she kissed us on our foreheads. Mom always kissed us before we fell asleep. She pulled me into a hug, and her warm bosom purged the fears from my heart. Mom held me tight, and placed her lips next to my ear, then roared until the ballerina’s dancing on the wall liquified.

  The alert in my helmet screamed; the ground vibrated, a pulse, and a wave rippled through the world.

  Beneath me, the floor dropped and bounced like Earth became an elastic band. Another deep roar wrinkled the ground, and I didn’t dare to look. Something wasn’t right. The next breach was months away. Creatures like that should be in their holes, hibernating. Real essence beasts hibernated and fed on the world after the breach’s opened, not before.

  The pounding grew stronger; each bounce grew until I thought the planet’s foundation would crumble.

  One more bellow and two explosions went off in my ears. Everything turned silent.

  I think I screamed, but I didn’t know for sure. My mouth opened, my chest vibrated, and I heaved, but the hot liquid pouring from my ears blocked any sounds, and I lost any sense of direction.

  My head landed on the ground, and water filled one side of my helmet. Regrettably, my stick barrier became a floor to ceiling window. I switched to night vision and saw a wall—an unmoving wall of green and nothing else. I removed my helmet and touched my ears, painful and wet, then turned the vision to essence view.

  The world transformed into a blaze of white and burned my eyes as if I stared into the sun. A monster walked past and paid as much attention to me as I would an ant. I blinked until my eyesight returned and looked at the energy output of the beast.

  Essence-Particle Mass: 29278.733g

  What a joke. The scanner had to be wrong. There was no way a moving power-plant 20,000 times stronger than me would pass by during a rainstorm. I didn’t want to think about it any longer. I tried to rest, but I didn’t dare close my eyes. With my eyes open, the beasts couldn’t enter. I had nothing to worry about as long as I kept my eyes open, so I did.

  By mid-morning, the monsoon tapered to a drizzle, and by midday, the storm clouds raced across the sky. I wiped the night from my mind. The beast was a natural disaster. I must have made it up. The creature was my way of personifying the stormy weather. Not enough sleep and too many delusions; it didn’t happen.

  It never happened. I had a nightmare from the lightning and tricks of the eye. Thunderstorms always scared me, so it was no surprise. And I was tired; it never happened. It never happened.

  The winds shifted, and cold air pushed me from behind—brisk gusts from Canada. If the trees had leaves, they’d change soon. Autumn wasn’t far. Apple picking and pumpkin pies. Somewhere, there had to be a pumpkin patch. Did pumpkins grow back? I didn’t know. Farms sold caramel apples, two for a dollar, and the hayrides were free. Lia loved the goats, but I didn’t like their leathery tongues when we gave them cracked corn.

  The arid soil soaked up most of the standing water, except for the pond sized potholes that traveled in a straight line from west to east. Alternating ponds on each side of an invisible line; there must have been a fault. Maybe earthquakes happened. Perhaps the ground collapsed and rose along the rift. Our teacher said they were new mountains, after all. An earthquake must have occurred during the storm. It must have been an earthquake. That’s what it was, an earthquake.

  Daylight was burning, so I placed my rifle on the log and looked through the binocular on top. The place where the lines intersected was where the bullet hit after you pulled the trigger from what I figured. I didn’t want to try. If something or someone heard the shot, they’d probably investigate. Instead, I used the binocular to make sure nobody was around.

  No people and no animals—I didn’t spot anything. But in the distance, through the tree maze and muddy ground, I saw a river flowing below the next hill over. Food was a top priority. My body was barely holding on and losing a few more pounds was dangerous. Few individuals had the skills to hunt for food, and fewer still owned well-stocked underground bunkers in the middle of nowhere. After the military bases and cities fell, there wasn’t much to eat.

  There were no drive-thrus in an apocalypse.

  I wrung my clothes out and strolled down the gentle slope towards the wide river. Wind drifts made of leaves piled on the eastern side of the trees and clogged the water flow. The wind was stronger than I thought, stronger than I remembered. I must have slept well.

  Although the river was close, it took me thirty minutes to reach. I didn’t see or hear anything, and the helmet’s alarm didn’t trigger, but that didn’t mean I was safe. If a scab had binoculars on its gun also, then it could probably shoot me from far.

  I didn’t understand the rifle. It had a lever to pull back under the binocular, and every time I yanked, a bullet popped out. After searching for a bit, I found a cartridge that held seven bullets. Aiming the weapon wasn’t easy. I’d need to practice before I was comfortable.

  The muddy water raged, with branches floating through the rapids from storm runoff. It didn’t look like I’d catch anything, so I followed the river west. At 50 feet wide, I had no way to cross safely, so I needed to find a bridge or ramp on the highway.

  Rivers scared me. Not only because of my tubing accident as a child or their strong currents. No, rivers were home to one of the most fearsome beasts alive, eels. Slimy creatures that swam in the water and slithered on the ground. Even worse, they came from the ocean as if it wasn't big enough. As if they wanted to conquer every part of the planet.

  Mike liked eel sushi, I tried it, but the thought of eating one of those things made me throw up. After the breaches, fishermen caught eels over 20 feet long. It wouldn’t surprise me if eels flew after the next breach. Nothing would stop their world dominance.

  I liked the cream cheese crab rolls. Cream cheese made everything better. Sadly, I’d never eat cream cheese again.

  After drifting in and out of thoughts of everything I’d eat for an hour, I found the highway. To the north, charred trees still smoked on the blackened dirt. The heavy rain probably stopped the spread. Who knows how far the fire would have traveled.

  The scabs did a number to the forest, and they did a number on me. If it weren’t for their madness, I’d believe they planned everything, and I fell into a massive trap. Because the river turned before it reached the highway, and I still had no way to cross.

UYScuti

Really, Essence Beasts are catastrophes. Almost all of them are hibernating. Some of these effects on Amy’s thoughts are hunger delusions, others are her trying to cling to the past as a way to make it through the current world. Leave a comment with any questions or thoughts. Thanks for reading so far.