Silent Epitaphs

The Power of Children

            The enlightened child sat upon his throne of sand. A great expanse of grasslands floated before his eyes, behind him the waves crash delicately. The rhythm of the ocean hums a beautiful song, marred only by the patch of scorched blades placed not ten paces ahead. A burn set by a fire not more than a few hours previous. No doubt one of the tragic side effect of some blaze left unattended by a group of belligerent teenagers, drunken, unruly and too busy attracting the attention of the flesh entering the water, than wounding the landscape.

            The boy frowned at this, and travelled the ten paces between himself and the beginning of the charred insult. Lying on his stomach, he cradled a blade within his hand, letting the roots dangle in the soft sea-breeze. At one with the sand, and sky, the sea lapping behind his digging feet, and one with the grass, he gently blew the light and water needed to heal the blackened plant. As the moments passed the charcoal color began to fade, replaced by a dirty green, and camo grey. Exhausted, the boy returned the blade into it's home, and satisfied he drifted, and as the wind receded, the boy's eyes closed in time and was lost in sleep.

            Awakened by the cool water licking the soles of his feet, the child looked up in trepidation. In the distance, the lights of the city had been turned on. Vibrant flashes, amidst the constant glow of neon, and the cringe-worthy sound of fluorescence. No longer was the wind a cool comfort under the blazing sun, it was now a frozen knife, cutting through the boy's jean shorts, and cotton t-shirt. Like a frightened deer, the child began to run toward the shining city, not noticing the mended wound as he traveled towards the incessant light.

            Other than a short break in the middle of his run, the boy did not stop until the concrete walls and barbed wire gates loomed above him. The seemingly  never-ending blockade that denied all without the proper access entry into the Golden City. After another step, spotlights flashed on, momentarily blinding the child, and cursing under his breath he raised his hands to cover his adjusting eyes.

            "We want some identification, and we want it NOW!" Bellowed an unearthly tone.

            Without a moments hesitation, the child slipped his hand into his rear pocket and retrieved his ID, pulling it out and thrusting it like a piece of treasure. A green laser audibly clicked on and hummed, it's beacon spiraling until it landed upon the card. Beeping once, and then blinking out of existence, the child sighed heavily, knowing fully the consequences of a failed identification.

            A short groan, and a few steps later, the boy stepped inside the Golden City, letting the sounds and lights bathe him in electric afterglow. Feeling anxious to return home, the child walked at the invisible pace. Slow enough to no attract attention, yet quick enough to get to his destination a whole lot faster than at normal walking speed.

            Barely noticing the soulless advertisements walking past him, or the screens that covered the streets that projected a never ending stream of tragedies beneath the child’s feet or the flea-ridden bums urging coins from passerby's. Each stoplight, was just another hex in time, yet as pure as the child was, he noticed not the signs and portents warning him that home was not the place to go. That no matter where he roamed, the darkness would find him, the back alley monsters would sniff him out time and time again, to test the child’s self-inflicted blessing.

            The boy's building was just another set among a thousand like it, each owned by the wealthy families of the Golden City. The boy's father was an important politician, in charge of numerous committees of noteworthy measure, and his mother was the star actress of GlobalVision for the past five years.

            Reaching the door, illuminated with a news fragment pertaining to a deadly outbreak in a rare skin disease, followed almost immediately by the screeching of two women, who's flesh was being sloughed off, by some unknown assailant. The boy's presence was not recognized by the door, so again he retrieved his ID card, and swung it back and forth in front of the door, changing scenes to a large hydrogen plant explosion before opening and spilling the light of a thousand golden chandeliers upon the child’s sun-ripened face.

            Upon entering, the boy noticed a strange air surrounding the foyer of the building. Not only did it smell like someone dropped a load of funk into the lobby, but the air around him just seemed to feel wrong, like a blanket of apprehension was spread thickly upon the filtered ventilation. Concerned, the child traveled to the side wall, plaster smooth, and painted in the color pearl. Reaching out to the intercom synced perfectly to the walls face, he pressed the Signal key and listened for the almost inaudible chime that resonated through each room within the building, provoking a response from any room with sentient life.

            Seconds trailed away, and just as the boy was about to turn to the stairs, a voice came through the walls.

            "H-h-hello?" Came a desperate tear-choked voice.

            "Dad?" The boy replied, though he had instantly recognized his father's voice, he was still unsure as how to proceed and decided to let his father make the next move.

            "We.... we're in room....." And faintly, " What room is this?"said his father through, the flattened speakers. "415." Replied another voice, much calmer than his father's but far more severe.

            "We're in room 415 son, come up.... We need to talk."

            His father's voice came across like a club, bludgeoning all reason from the boy's head, he absent mindedly meandered down the wall, until stumbling into the stairwell and up four flights of stairs. Finally after trekking across an abundance of plush carpets, and rounding a few tiled corners, he came upon room 415. The door was wide open, and in the room were dozens of people in differing arrays of Militant apparel. Police officers, and uniformed and armed Military personnel, along with a splattering dressed in official business attire.

            Creeping slowly into the frantic buzz of hushed tones and silencing stares, the boy scanned each face quickly in order to find his father. Without warning, the back of his shirt was grabbed, and too afraid to struggle, the boy was dragged through the whispering congregation. Forcing back the tears that had begun to fill within his eyes, the child bit his lip. As his feet struggled to keep up with the pace of the stranger, the child looked up to see a dark, muscular neck, leveled by a scarred chin. The grip on his neck intensified  when he took that tiny glance, so he decided it best to just move forward and allow the cat of curiosity to live.

            The child and his mystery captor had already passed through two sets of crowded rooms, and upon entering the third, the child realized something different. There was a blue curtain set up in front of the door on the opposite side of the room. The curtain was frantic with shadowed bodies, allowing only a tiny fragment of the actual happenings behind it discernable. Before he was able to fully digest the actions of those gloomy personas, the boy's focus was interrupted.

            "Here you are sir." Said the man as he released the stranglehold he had on the boy's neck, and before the child could turn around, the man had disappeared

            Reeling and confused, the child let his eyes wander, feverishly attempting to comprehend the circumstances he had just been shoved into. Far to his left though, his questions seemed to all be answered without speaking. The boy's father sat, his right leg bent elegantly across his left. Hands intertwined and resting gently upon his knee. A sad smile crested his lips, and as he swallowed the boy noticed the day-clear stains of tears that had moments earlier slid down his cheeks.

            "Take a seat kid." He said, swallowing loudly as he always did when he was nervous.

            He planted himself in the lavish leather seat beside him, and stared into the wall of silence between us. Preparing itself for a sudden and catastrophic impact.

            He began slowly, and calmly, " Your mother and I came home this evening from a late dinner at The Grove, and we came upstairs to kiss your sister goodnight...", but as he continued the words began to become a juggling act of sobs and whimpers. " A-a-a-and, we turned on the light to see if she was awake,  and OH MY GOD!" He wailed, mumbling "Oh My God," to himself like a mantra. "I-I-I-I didn't know what to do, the bloood, my god, I can't.... Oh my god, I think I'm going to be sick."

            Trailing off in  a sickening display of tears and vomit, his father leaked his last meal upon the animal skin rug below him, before erupting in another fit of skull splitting spasms of sobbing. Snot and saliva bubbled from his father's mouth, and as he opened it they blended, creating a concotion that connected his upper and lower teeth, like dew-drop prison bars of sorrow.

            Stunned, the boy could not speak, nor stop the tears that were effortlessly gliding down his swollen cheeks. Each word his father said echoed through his brain. The blue curtains. Blood. His sister. Tears. The terrible pit dropping feeling as he entered the building, all crashed upon the boy's young mind, fracturing his normal thought pattern, and drove him by an inexplicable force.

            The child rose from his seat quietly enough to not disturb his father's breakdown that was continuously undermining the foundations of security in which he had built his life upon. Following an unseen light, a silent voice that whispered secrets carried him towards the ever-shifting shadows dirtying the azure curtains.

            Pushing the plasticine fabric aside with a numb hand, the boy stepped into madness. Even at a moments glance, the boy knew the place where he stood now, should not be possible in the world in which he lived, yet there it was. The bedroom seemed so small amidst the chaos. The disemboweled drawers and bureaus collapsed upon each other. Shelves once filled with books were emptied, and books once filled with pages were gutted, the paper shredded, and soaked in blood spiraled from the gales entering the shattered window. A crimson flurry that obscured the boy's view of the outside.

            Betwixt the wreckage, shown bright and silver, supposed metallic heroes raced around once white sheets, now the color of darkened rubies. Slick, and shiny, outside, liquids that should always remain within.

            Unable to control himself any longer, the boy fell to both his knees, shrieking in unbridled anguish. Shards of glass dug unnoticed as his weight settled upon the floor. Hands balled in defiant fists, he closed his eyes hoping his lids would betray what he had just seen. But to no avail, his mind would not release the gruesome visage.

            The boy's chest heaved like an impending avalanche, waiting for the slightest disturbance to send it reeling to the point of no return, but just as the boy thought he could take no more, and the torment took control like it did to his father. The child remembered the dune-grass, and as hard as he could, the boy tried to replicate the feeling he had earlier as he laid so pleasantly upon the sandy beach. He attempted to slow his breathing, to slow his heart, and to ultimately halt his frenzied mind.

            The boy's forehead burned with the effort, as a bead of sweat began to form at the crest of his brow, but before the droplet could flow down his nose the boy felt the strangest of sensations. Almost as if someone had stuck a wedge upon the spot, and had begun slowly splitting the boy's forehead down the middle. He felt no pain, but no matter how badly he wanted to he could not open his eyes, or hear any sounds. The taste of copper left his mouth, smell of blood, and the pain of broken glass that had imbedded themselves into the boy's knees, was instantly lifted. These feelings were all replaced, and deadened until the boy rested in a state of nothingness.

            Once the boy was properly prepared, his forehead split like a fault line, rippling the flesh and molding the bones around it into another cavity, filled with a third eye, centered on the boy's forehead. A brilliant globe, with an emerald colored iris that produced a light of purest gold. Though the boy could not see in the traditional sense, his soul digested the information it produced, and rising, his spirit lifted visions in the form of a static shadowed blur. A portrait of night, wrought with spikes of white light, that peaked and dropped, ever changing in size and vibrancy, some exploding in a supernova of spiritual ascension, while others fell within themselves creating pockets of black abyss that dragged down any peaks of light surrounding it.

            Before him, the boy watched as his sisters own thorn of light, seesawed from a tiny prick of radiance, and then as if slamming the door on oblivion, the shaft would burst upward, and then slowly make it's descent again.

            The boy reached out his hand, that was just a blip of white in the boy's soul vision. It reached into his sister’s heart, connecting the two physically. Feeling each beat, as the peaks responded in time, weakening with every passing moment. Though the boy worked magic with his hand within his sister’s heart, the peaks of light were gaining no height. His third eye guided him with the sleek precision of a god, but he was not truly feeding his sister spiritually and upon this realization the boy knew what he had to do.

            Removing his hand and lowering his soul's vision onto himself, he sent out a large strand of white light, connecting it to the base of his sisters, and with a jolt of the most intense pain the boy had ever experienced, his sisters own spike rose, and stabilized as her wounds began to mend.

            The boy writhed in agony, both physically and spiritually as the contact between his soul and his sisters stole enough energy, to flick on the senses he lost, and as those senses gained ground, his third eye began to close, and the boy felt each fold of flesh re-stretching and re-mending itself. The cavity collapsed and produced the flattened forehead the child had before, and as the pressure built, so did the boy's suffering, until at last his mind could take no physical or spiritual torture, and the boy slipped into unconsciousness.

            As the sun climbed upon the horizon, their chests rose slowly with it, and falling in time with the stars, the siblings slept peacefully. The girl with her hand pressed firmly in the middle of her brothers head, and the boy with his hand resting lightly upon his sisters heart.