Jack Sari Episode VI
the Riptide nears
Jack
Jack weaved and sloshed through the trees toward Sari.
Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, echoed throughout the endless void.
The sulphuric scent of nitroglycerin burned Jack’s nose. He was reminded of his brief and bloody rotation in Guam. Yet as quick as the memory came to Jack, he banished it. He didn’t want to introduce any more moving parts to this strange world.
Jack pressed on.
The beam of Sari’s flashlight swept the water, exposing the hoard of masked people. Their shadows stretched toward Jack, knitted to their animated forms ahead. A group of them fell back as bullets reigned down. Yet where two disappeared beneath the black waves, three more took their place. They were starting to close in from behind too.
Jack crouched and urged for Money to do the same as gunfire swung in their general direction. “Bottom-feeders,” hissed Money at his side. “You’re not going to be able to get away without some diversion.”
Jack doubted any diversion would work.
As if hearing his thoughts, Money grinned. “Don’t you worry, Jack. I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve.”
Jack opened his mouth to respond. The words didn’t come. A wave of agony seized Jack’s head. With a grunt, Jack’s free hand shot to his temple. It suddenly felt like his skull was being crushed in a vice.
Money noticed. “Pressure,” he said. “Try to ignore it.”
Jack managed a nod. Gritting his teeth, he tried and failed to rise to his feet. He placed a hand on a nearby tree. Another wave swelled and struck, rising to his chin.
Jack turned his face away from the frigid water.
It was quiet and bright. Sun filtered through the trees to the mossy forest floor. Somewhere in the distance, Jack could hear the lake lapping at its rocky shore.
There was a small towheaded boy in a white-rabbit t-shirt. Jack’s brows knitted. “Where—?”
“You let me fall,” the boy interrupted. His blue eyes were glassy, mouth downturned. “And now you’re ignoring me.”
Not real, thought Jack. Money said to ignore the thing and it’ll go away. He screwed his eyes shut and turned his back. He needed to return to the blackwater forest, to the bottom-feeders. This problem—the Benji problem—was one for later.
Later,
later,
always later.
“Don’t ignore me!” shouted the boy.
Another voice, slithered past him, into his ear. It was too deep to be Benji’s. “Who are you, Jack? Jack, Jack, Jack. It’s an ‘every-man’ name. There’s nothing to it. You’re a suit, an empty and plastic hero-shaped space. What else? Give me something.”
The water rose.
“I’ll drown,” mumbled Jack. He could taste apples on his tongue, sour and unripe.
Benji began to cry. “You let me fall!” he sobbed. His voice was too loud, echoing from the pit.
Holding his breath, Jack shook his head. “You’re not real.”
“F̵̣͂a̵̢̗̽c̵̩̜̈͠e̴̦͌ ̷͎̌̒m̶̼͇̎̚e̴̝͑͘!̵̧̆̾”
A roar of water, the coursing current, and gnashing teeth. A rabbit reared its white head. Blood on the fur and on its teeth. The line snapped taught—
Money grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet. “Don’t touch the tree!”
Swaying, Jack took in his surroundings. He’d returned. Yet things weren’t quite right. Things were overlaid in a sort of bone-white, things that Jack didn’t recognize. People were moving through the dark—not the bottom-feeders but normal people.
“It’s all connected here… All connected to the Riptide,” Money whispered. He pressed a hand to the based of his throat and visibly swallowed. “You’ve called him,” said Money. “Damnit. Damnit. We need to get out of the water, out of the orchard.”
Jack smacked his lips. The taste of tart apples lingered on his tongue.
There came a terrible groaning, like that of a ship’s hull. Voices, jumbled and overlaid, reached Jack as though over a poor radio connection.
“The ancient one. It waited for you.1” “Extra, EX-tra krispy! The one and only! Shrimp Krisps™!” “Hello, Uncle Alex.2” “Guten Abend, gute Nacht3”
“Please don't throw me in that briar patch! Do anything you want with me – roas' me, hang me, skin me, drown me4!”
“Don’t, like, rock the boat, y’know? Take it e-e-easy5.”
Peter was not very well during the evening. He-he-he was put in a pie by Mrs. Mcgregor6. What is real? Does it mean having things that buzz—that buzz—that buzz—buzzzzz—buzz inside you and a stick-out handle7?
A gravelly voice was louder than the others: “You can take me now.8”
Static swallowed the sounds and visions. It went silent.
“Oh, shit,” whispered Money.
“Oh-kay,” Jack muttered, more to himself. “Let’s ignore that for now, grab Sari and go.” He met Money’s eye. “What’s the plan?”
Sari
Sari was rapidly losing control of the situation.
There’d been a momentary pause in their pursuit. Now, they’d recommenced in full force. The black water felt thick around her knees, slowing her progress. Where should she run? Pain raged behind her eyes and blurred her vision. It was a nightmare, both too fast and too slow. She couldn’t match the tempo.
Everywhere she looked, those horrible faces gazed into hers. They laughed with toothless mouths and grasped with cold and waxy hands.
A masked man lunged.
She dodged, she slipped, she fell. Water closed over her head. Everything turned on its head. Sari felt dizzy to the point of nausea.
Leather seats beneath her, cigarette smoke filling the car. Seoul, firecrackers, and sparklers.
She was in the driver’s seat of a parked vehicle across the street from a nightclub. David Choi turned the radio on.
“Turn it off,” she snapped.
No one responded. David Choi was beside her, hand on the radio dial as though frozen in time.
No one? More than one?
There was someone else. He sat just behind her shoulder. A presence strong and steady. Someone whose face blurred in the rearview mirror of the car; another man. Sari raised her eyes to her reflection and could see she had tears in them.
An organ played. It held a single note that echoed in and out of reverie. It resonated in her bones as the image grew clearer. The memory surged to the forefront of her vision just as a guitar began to play.
She knew him and he knew her in ways unspoken.
He knew the choices Sari would make before she had a chance to choose them.
He had a heroic curve to his jaw and heavily lidded eyes that swallowed the world without compromise. Beneath shining dark hair was a pale, serious face that split into a vision of innocence and wonder when the occasion called. Someone that beautiful would have to die young, she supposed.
Isaac.
He turned his face toward her and smiled with a mouth that never spoke. His hands signed, “listen to David. We wait.”
Sari unfurled her fist to see a crumpled paper. It was damp with sweat and yellowed from age, yet she recognized the scrawl as if it were her own.
There is nothing hid from her heat
Which is to be more desired than gold
Her kisses sweeter than honey
Let the words carved by my hands be pleasing in your sight
Let it be like stone, like marble
Forever.
My love, my love…
Message buried under a grounded mattress lying in an apartment without furnishing.
White, empty, no mess.
Control.
Control.
Control.
A vision of hands signing words: “L E T G O”.
Green fields and gold wheat, drives in the late afternoon, drunk off sunshine. Golden bubbles encased in a frosted glass. Alcohol lingered on her tongue and numbed her lips as he kissed her. “Terra™” wound its way around the half-empty green beer bottle. She was in a fish market, sitting at a plastic table with a bubbling red soup before her. It was cold. A white-winged creature, a gull, sailing on ocean’s breath. Her hair whipped her face and stung her cheeks. No grappling for domination, just the exhilaration of a wilding free-fall.
Something else preyed here, watched here.
Fire.
Violin.
Blood on her skirt. Blood on her face; Isaac’s.
He stood at the top of the mountain with the sun at his back.
It was almost a memory, but not quite. It reminded Sari of the time he’d carried an elderly woman to the peak. She couldn’t finish the hike.
Sari shielded her eyes against the light and squinted, praying for another glimpse at what she thought was Isaac.
His body was a shadow that cast down the stone and over her. He reached out a hand.
Sparklers through the crowd. Thunder split the sky and red lightning struck the ground. Isaac guarded her body with his, guarded Sari from her mistake.
The familiar sound of the glove compartment and another click to signal the magazine sliding into place. Her hands around the grip, her eyes determined, self-confident smirk on her face.
Blue and red neon stained his skin. His brown eyes were wide in surprise. Perhaps he didn’t really expect to die. She wanted to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come.
An ambulance wailed9.
살려주세요! 이 사람이 총에 맞았어요!
Help! This person’s been shot!
An autumnal breeze stirred fallen leaves. Her steps were quiet, but her breathing loud. Sari looked up into the blood-red sky. Car alarms along the side of the road began to go off, nearer, and nearer. Glass exploded from their windshields. With each pop, it closed in. She readied her gun with a satisfying click. Static.
The eye opened and it spoke: “You will never die.”
Words spoken not like comfort, but a threat.
A dark mass hovered, shifted, spiked. Its disembodied voice wound its way around her skull and squeezed:
Ị̸̛͔͎̦͗ ̴͇̱̩̝͌̀̍͝ͅá̷̡̮̈́͝m̷͚͚̙̾͂͂͒͘ ̴̗͉͓̺̻̾t̷̟͍͎̦͆ḧ̴̳̺͔̩͝ȇ̷̟͑͘ ̶̣̖̫̩̈́̀̕R̵̛̪̟̂̇i̸̧͋p̷̨̥̖̦͙̓͝t̴̳̓͑̿̏i̴̘̺̩̠̚͜͠d̵̯͍̲̬̓͂̋͘e̵̡̳͚̓
3AM. She sat up in bed, sweat drenched through her t-shit.
You get excited… you miss details… you got your partner killed.
Now play it again.
Again,
again,
again.
Something external detangled her mind, set her free. Play the song again. Stay there.
From pupil to deep umber iris, to the flooded apple orchard.
Sari raised her gun to the monster’s face and wrapped her index finger around the trigger. Madness reasserted its hold on her mind, tried to. Sari held onto the music as tightly as she could, resisting madness’s grip.
She pumped the nearest man full of lead. Blazing hot casings dropped into the water by her feet.
One of the masked staggered forward. A bullet to his shoulder knocked him off-kilter. He ignored it and yanked the gun. Sari took the creature by surprise, falling with him. From her back pocket, she pulled out a knife and plunged it into his throat. Out, then into his mask. It sank, bloodless, to the hilt. She used the knife to drag his not-quite-limp body before her and shove it into the pursuing crowd.
The music changed. It pulsed; alive. She moved through the throngs of club goers. Sweat glistened on their skin, makeup ran down cheeks. A wall of bodies, bodies, bodies. It was so hot; like a furnace. Sari couldn’t breathe. She squeezed past, did her best to ignore the pressure on all sides, how her lungs yearned for fresh air.
EXIT
Out the back door, into the street, up the narrow alleyway. Sari was sprinting. She was younger, faster. Her boots hit the pavement, splashing through puddles. Tongue and gritted teeth; iron and tobacco.
In the orchard, an attacker grabbed her sleeve, then another reached from the water and seized her ankle, a pale hand closed on the muzzle.
Sari felt fear.
Jack
Blue and red neon emanated from the shadow behind Sari—her mind leaking into Jack’s.
No time to analyze this.
No time for fear.
Focus.
Jack felled two bottom-feeders with his shotgun. The third faltered but remained upright. It turned and faced Jack with a wet snarl. The sound didn’t match the placid porcelain mask.
He released the shotgun and let it hang from the strap. In a quick motion, Jack retrieved his service handgun from his waistband. The bottom-feeder lurched forward. Jack met the it in the middle, closing his free hand around its throat. As he drove it backwards into the din, he pressed the muzzle to its forehead and pulled the trigger thrice.
Bang, bang, bang!
Someone grabbed him, Jack threw the body over his shoulder and finished the new bottom-feeder with a single shot.
Now freed, Sari met his eye. Jack saw her expression brighten.
Brer Rabbit
Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Please forgive my mistakes (if there are any)!
Whew! What a whirlwind!
The swimming back and forth between the nightmare orchard and the events they’re trying to suppress from their pasts is so effective. And that rabbit motif.. 😱 I’m getting childhood flashbacks of Watership Down (the 1978 movie version)