Shards

Baruti who had moved into the room next to hers ran along the beach after her. Elizabeth knelt down next to the man on the beach a ball of tension she hadn’t even known she was carrying left. It was not her father just an older man. He was maybe in his late middle years he was balding and he had almost as much gray hair as he did black. He was defiantly pudgy and his flannel jacket was ripped and torn in several places.

“Hello are you ok?” she asked. The man opened his eyes stared right at her.

“English thank goodness its English, where am I girl.” He released a long sigh and closed his gray eyes, there was something funny about that.

“You are… in the Bahamas” Elizabeth said. “How could you not know that you swam here?”

The man started laughing deep in his chest as if there was something funny and he was the only one that got it. The man ignored her question and instead he asked. “What year is it? Tell me what year?”

“It’s 2012 what are you talking about? How did you swim here? Where did you come from?” she had just noticed his English was a little off.

“Me girl I’m from Detroit, and I got here through the shards. I had to take six different paths and almost died three times.” He said his eyes still closed.

“What are you talking about paths and shards? What’s a shard?”Baruti asked over my shoulder.

“What is a shard well it that broken place right over there. It’s how I got here from Detroit. I left Detroit looking for my son; he was at a university in New York. I headed up north and pretty soon I couldn’t avoid it any longer I had to go through one of the shards. I was transported like Captain Kierk in Star Track. It felt like someone had stretched me out and scrubbed each one of my molecules. I ended up in the middle of a battle, medieval style everyone was trying to kill each other with swords. That was the first time I almost died with everyone trying to shish kabob me. I went back through the shard that I came there in but I didn’t go back to Detroit instead I was in one of the arctic’s I swear I almost died from the cold on that one. Although the last place I jumped from was jungle almost got bit by a snake there. And let me just tell you that right now, there is nothing more dangerous than trying to travel those shards.” He ran a hand through his balding pepper black hair. “Is there any chance that you have some food to spare? I don’t know when I ate last. And if you have something stiff to drink I don’t think that would go amiss either. I don’t know what’s going on but I swear there’re ghost in between the shards and they almost got me last time”

“Baruti could you take him to the house and get him feed I want to think for a little bit.” Baruti helped the man up and they headed to the house. Elizabeth waited until she couldn’t hear them anymore. She slowly went down and then grabbed one of the kayaks and headed into the surf. If the man from Detroit could survive and make it here, she started thinking. Than she could make it out there, and find her mother and father. She neared the shard and felt a moment of panic. Thinking about the stories the man had said about ending up in the middle of a battle. What scared her even more than that was going through and not being able to find her why back here. Taking hold of herself she went through. She had to find them.

Time seamed to stretch and she felt like she was pulled in so many directions at once. She kept going though not know what else to do. The feeling of being pulled in so many different directions didn’t lessen. Suddenly she was surrounded by figures of light. They swam around her some of them came very near and she felt her body convulse as they did. It was the ghost that the man had talked about. She was too scared to scream and started swinging wildly with her paddle. In the back of her mind she realized that she was shaking. The lights continued to flout around her some of them came closer and again her body convulsed. Somehow she was sure that if one of them touched her it would all be over. Abruptly the light started taking on panicky movements and then they all started taking off into all directions. I light much larger and brighter than the others flouted up and stopped right in front of her.

I voice entered her mind vast and powerful it said. “I know what you seek, let me reside within you and I shall give you the power to find it.” It rang in Elizabeth’s mind she could hear it going on forever rolling over time and space.

“Are you an angel, or God?” Man she thought to herself that was a stupid question to ask, but she was having trouble thinking right now. There was a moment’s hesitation and it felt like someone was shuffling papers in her brain looking for information. Finally the voice returned a little softer this time so that she could actually think.

“No we are not angels. Give me residence and I will give you the power so see the paths.” Again the voice sounded like it went on forever. “You shall have eyes to see beyond the shards. You shall always know what path to take to were you need to go all this I give for residence. You may even keep your own will.” Elizabeth thought about this she didn’t know what was going on but the little lights had backed away for this one so maybe it could protect her from them. And if it was right about seeing past the shards she could find her way back to the mansion and Baruti. If what the light said was true she wouldn’t have to walk into a battlefield.

“Ok. But…” she never got to finish her sentence she was filled with light and fell out of the space in-between the shards. The kayak stopped suddenly no longer in water and she rolled out onto solid ground but she couldn’t see. What was going on, why couldn’t she see. Shakily she got to her feat and took a step suddenly the world burst into view but there was no color she took another step and the world burst into view again responding to the vibrations. She took another step and tripped and fell on her hands and knees. The world still burst into view as she moved around like that it was all so deferent. There was no color just lights and outlines nothing she could recognize she turned to where she had come from and she could see without seeing a map past the shard she had come from to all the different shards there were.

It made a spider’s web look simple. She looked closer at the intricate web now that she was looking closer she couldn’t see everything that farthest paths wear shadowed. Actually all the different shards were hazy but she could see what paths she had to take to get to any shard. Along three paths was the mansion, that was funny the shard with the mansion was clear as day unlike all the others. She could see it in her mind and every shard she had to take to get there. She noticed that some of the shards had different tones of color on them. Now that she looked closer she could see that there was a shard with a red mist around it on the path she deeded to take to the mansion. She screamed and slammed he fist into the ground.

“What is going one? what happened to me?” She started crying tears cascading down her face. As they hit the ground they made small spots of light in her dark vision of the world. “What happened to me?”

“You have become my host.” The voice came into her head and shocked Elizabeth out of her tears. Than anger came it had done this to her. Elizabeth started swinging around wildly with her hands hopping she could at least hit the ball of light.

“Where are you?” she screamed. Again the voice answered her in her head.

“I am here inside you. As I said you have become my host.” That shocked Elizabeth into silence again and she timidly reached her hand up and touched her head.

“What are you doing in there? Get out! Get out!” she screamed at the voice now in her head.

“I cannot and will not.” The voice answered her comely. “I gave you a choice and you chose.”

“Like spite I did. I didn’t even know what was going on.”

“That is not my fault I gave you a choice and was much kinder about it than others of my kind would have been. Well I know now that it was the kind way because of your mind and memories.” The voice replied almost cordially. Something about what the voice said got to Elisabeth.

“What are you?” she asked.

“I am an Ethrea. I don’t know anything more than a couple days ago. I woke up with others of my kind in the places between. We shortly found out that we could not survive going beyond that and so we now have to take hosts. I at least gave you your own will. Some of my kind takes that away while inhabiting.”

“Why can’t I see?”

“That is payment for the gift. You will have to see as I do from now on. In time you may find it unhindering. For now I will stay and look at the world through your eyes. Be careful of the shards of different colors those can be dangerous to you.” Elizabeth felt that the being the ethrea had retreated to the back of her mind. She stood shakily the world popping in and out. Slowly she turned to face the shard.

She took another step and the world came again the real world responding to the vibrations it looked almost as if she was looking through night vision goggles but instead of everything being green it was all white. She needed to get back she needed help and to find out more about what was going on to her. She needed to get to the mansion and the only way to do that was to go through the shards. She noticed that the mansions shard was almost all surrounded by the red mist and only had a couple of places to get to it safely. Taking a deep breath she walked through the shard she had come from. She would never to be bothered by other Ethrea now being possessed by one of the greatest.

After 72 Hours

It lasted for three nightmarish sweat soaked days. The ground shook and heaved the walls of the safe room groaned from the strain of trying to stay together. It felt like at any moment they would all be torn apart or just crushed to death by the collapsing walls. Elizabeth was pressed against one of the walls clutching her cell phone to her chest. She had tried making contact with her parents to no avail. She had tried contacting anyone to tell them about their predicament but nothing got threw. The phone was now dead from constantly being opened and closed but she couldn’t stop herself from checking she couldn’t stop herself from looking for an answer.

Baruti had told her after she had stopped screaming that it was a tsunami. As he was about to go for a swim he saw the water rush away exposing a good hundred yards of new beach. Remembering his survival training he ran back to the mansion telling everyone on the way to get to the safe room. After seeing that she was safely in the room he went to his room and grabbed some boots and extra cloths for himself then hurried to the kitchen and grabbed as much food as he could; hopping that it would be enough for all the people for at least a week until help arrived.

She turned on her flashlight and looked around the room. They had stopped using the flashlights constantly after the first 24 hours now they only turned them on when they ate and went to the little cubicle latrine in the corner. There was close to twenty of them everyone except for herself and Baruti were the workers that kept the place running. Mostly all of them were islanders there English wasn’t really good and she wasn’t really good at their language. They all looked disheartened their faces long and downcast. Most were asleep probably feeling that it was better to die asleep then awake. She quickly turned off her light not wanting to see those faces anymore.

The room shook again and Elizabeth braced herself against the wall but then everything went silent. After three days of constant bombardment and noise the silence was deafening. Lights started coming on all over the bunker and the workers started to look around expectantly. They waited another hour with no other sound than the quick exchange of speech. After some quick discussion with the islanders, Baruti somehow new their language perfectly, they decided to try opening the doors after five hours to give the water time to recede. They really didn’t have that much choice in the matter they were sealed in a room and the oxygen tanks only had enough air in them for another ten hours.

They hours seemed to drag into days everyone was whispering excitedly with each other. Baruti went around making sure that everyone had the proper footwear on. He didn’t want anyone to cut their feet on the glass sure to be there from the broken building. He instructed some of the islanders to wrap cloths around their feet if he wasn’t satisfied with what they wear already wearing. Finally the time came to open the door and everyone was looking at it expectantly. Baruti unsealed the doors keeping the bolt in place and checking the edges looking for water coming inside ready to seal it in a moment’s notice if any water came in from the top. No water came in and Baruti looked a little confused but slowly he unlocked the door and opened it to the outside.

The light was blinding and Elizabeth held up her hand to shield her eyes. Baruti was the first one out and everyone else followed and then stopped to stair around in amazement. It was the strangest sight that Elizabeth had ever seen, nothing was wrong. Elizabeth looked around in bewilderment she had seen pictures of natural disaster sights and they were nothing like this. Nothing was wrong the mansion was their looking exactly like it did right before she went into the safe room. In a daze she went over to one of the walls and put her hand on it. It felt solid she pushed a little harder yep defiantly solid. How was this possible she had felt the tremendous blows of the tsunami she had heard the house fall breaking into a million pieces.

She ran around the mansion checking on everything, it was all there, nothing was out of place. She ran into her room all of her clothes were still their even her sandals that she had kicked off before changing. She went over to her desk her charger was there and she bent down and plugged her cell phone in. The screen light up and the charging sign appeared on the display. Nothing was wet and everything still worked even the electricity. She noticed something out of the corner of her eye and turned to look out of her big bay window at Baruti who was standing their looking out at the ocean. She went out and stood next to him, he didn’t even look at her, she looked at what he was staring at and almost swallowed her tongue.

Out to the horizon maybe 30 yards from shore the earth was splintered. It almost looked like a very realistic water coloring or looking through a pane of glass one that seemed to follow the curvature of the island. A bird took off from one of the trees and flew to the spot were space did not match up before it could get to close it whiled away and went over the island. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing it didn’t make since it looked like something out of a freaky sci-fi movie.

“Baruti what’s going on?” Elizabeth asked her voice sounded hollow to her own ears.

“I don’t know Miss Ammons I just don’t know.” suddenly something caught his eye down on the beach right next to the dock. “No! What are you doing come back here.” He switched to the islanders language and kept on yelling running down to the dock.

Elizabeth ran next to him seeing now what he had seen. Some of the islanders had grabbed some of the kayaks and began to paddle them out into the sea towards the huge wall of what looked like glass. Baruti stopped at the water’s edge and started yelling at the men in the kayaks in their islander tongue. They started yelling back and Baruti started yelling again shaking his head and making motions to come back to shore. They shook their heads and continued to head to the fractured space

“Baruti, Baruti what is going on?” surprisingly my voice was choked up with emotion, for some reason I already knew the answer.

“They are leaving Miss Ammons to go to their home island and find their family.” Baruti started yelling at them again telling them to come back to shore; there was now a frantic edge to his tone. One of the kayaks had already made it to the fractured space and slowed down. Then with determined strokes the islander headed right into it and disappeared. The man in the kayak right in back of him screamed and threw himself off his kayak and started swimming to the shore the kayak he was on slowly hit the wall gliding into it and then it to was gone disappearing right in front of their eyes.

Word spread among the islanders and none of them would even go close to anything that looked remotely like fractured space. But Elizabeth couldn’t really care the only thing she was thinking about was her mother and father. She had tried calling them when her phone was charged but she didn’t have any bars so none of her calls made it out. She hardly slept at all she just looked out into the distance at the docks where her mother and fathers boat should pull up when they arrived. Somehow Baruti convinced the islanders to continue working as if nothing had happened but he was the one that came to her room with food he kept talking to her about the different things that were happening. How the food never ran out how they always seemed to have running water and electricity how one of the workers cut her arm and it had healed by the next day. Elisabeth didn’t know how long she had been like this maybe a couple of days maybe a week but it was she that first saw the newcomer. He came swimming through the waves crawled onto the shore and laid down on his back. Before she could think she was screaming for Baruti and running down to the beach.

Cataclysm

‘im so bored…’

The words blinked from the cell phone and Elisabeth Ammons stared at it a moment longer before sending it off. She sighed and leaned back in the pool chair trying to soak up the sun. It had happened again her dad and mom had brought her here with the promise of spending family time but again something came up and off they went trying to fix whatever it was. The world had gone to pot but still her parents were determined to fix it.

It had started two years ago in 2010 all those natural disasters that kept coming up all over the world. From there the problems had escaladed making the first seem like play days. It had all seemed so far away then something happening to someone else. Of course her parents had always been gone then to. Well of course those things were well natural it had become really scary when things began to be unnatural.

The world had been turned upside down when people started to disappear. There had always been missing people photos that people sometimes looked at as they went through Wal-Mart but it was nothing like this. Elisabeth didn’t think there was a Wal-Mart big enough to hold all the missing persons photos now. The missing persons list was now somewhere in the high millions and some people even said a billion people had disappeared over the last two years. Some others said in whispers as if they were afraid to say it themselves that it was closer to three billion now. The scariest incident had happened six months ago a whole town in Colorado had just disappeared some 300 thousand people. The only one left was a little boy maybe six years old. He had been all over the internet and news his big brown eyes wide has if looking at something no one else could see. No one could get him to talk he just stared wide eyed at everyone as if he was surprised to see them. He didn’t last long a week after they had found him he died, the doctors said that there was nothing wrong with him, he just quit wanting to live.

The world had been rocked on its axis. Some countries didn’t even exist anymore just torn apart by desperate men looking for answers. Even the United States was not immune to the madness although they had held on to sanity better than any other country. Martial law had had to be placed on many towns and cities. Travel now between countries was almost nonexistent. The only reason Elisabeth was here now was because of her parent’s money and political influence. Well also because they had said they wanted to spend family time together. Elisabeth let out another sigh and felt her cell phone buzz she flipped it open to look at the message.

‘wth r y talking about your in the bahamas and away from the DC madness and snow you’re in paradise.’

Elisabeth sighed again she seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Her friend was right she had escaped the snow and madness of Washington D.C. She was on Christmas break that’s why her parents had brought her here now. Really, and she hated to admit this to herself, she had only sent the text to make sure her friend was still there. She had had a scary experience a couple of weeks ago in school. She had been following a boy as they both walked to get their photos taken for their senior pictures. As they walked up the stairs the boy tickled her and ran away around a corner and when she ran after him she turned the corner and he was gone. He didn’t show up at home and after three days of no one seeing him he was added to the missing persons list; Just another name among the billion already there.

She sat up on her chair, she needed to get up and get moving again, it didn’t seem like she had any more tears to cry but she was sure that if she stayed their she would start doing just that. She walked along the beach felling the nice breeze coming off of the ocean. Her parents owned the island and it wasn’t a small one either, it was now their private getaway, their haven in a torn world. She started up the path that lead to their mansion a shining complex of glass catching the sun and throwing it in a thousand different directions. It looked more like a small hotel then a mansion spreading out over the land like that and just like a hotel it took a lot of hands to keep it as pristine as it was. And of course her parents didn’t just keep this place to themselves friends and family could use it as well. The only other person here besides herself and the couple dozen workers was there family lawyer. And as she went up the path to the mansion he came down it.

He didn’t look anything like a lawyer at all and if you didn’t know him you would probably think he was a professional athlete or a body builder. He had on a white bath robe from the mansion and white swim trunks bordered in red with bright red flip-flops. All the white only emphasized the fact that he was darker than dark chocolate. He was at least six foot eight and so heavily muscled he looked like a linebacker in the NFL with none of the fat. He was in his thirties and had been friends with her dad for years even though he was at least ten years younger. He intimidated her and probably anyone else on the other side of a courtroom but that’s not why he always won. Her father always said that he was the smartest man he knew and her father knew a lot of smart men. He had shaved his head and it sparkled in the sun and as she came close to him he smiled at her showing of way to white teeth.

“Miss Ammons I was on my way to tell you that your mother and father are on their way back.” Baruti said his words heavy with an African accent. She couldn’t help a smile spreading across her face and he smiled at her in turn showing again his way to white teeth. “But I’m off for a swim Miss Ammons. I will see you at dinner.”

Elisabeth happily ran back to her room going straight to it from the beachfront. She hadn’t expected them to come back so soon. She changed form he swimsuit into a pair of khakis and a tank top looked at herself in the mirror. She knew she was pretty but liked to downplay the fact by not wearing makeup. She liked being normal and even tried making a point of it demanding to go to a regular high school. She had long curly blond hair, almost white, and bright blue eyes with a fit body. Not that she would be anything else not when she had to do gymnastics all the time. But she had not really had the gymnastic type of body either. She was skinny in some places and to big in others. But she had heard other girls say they would kill to have her body so she just went with it. She was just contemplating if she wanted to put on a little makeup when Baruti ran into her room.

“Miss Ammons you must come quickly.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Grab anything you need for two days, but we must hurry, we need to get to the safe room.” He let her grab some cloths and then he was pulling her through the halls yelling at anyone he saw to get to the safe room quickly and when a tall black man that could rip you apart without breathing hard yelled at you you just did what he said no arguing.

In the center of the complex was a large concrete room. Her father was a very cautious man and had a safe room made in case of emergencies. So even though the mansion was made mostly out of glass you would be safe in the concrete room, the builders had said that it could withstand tsunamis. There were already some people in the room when Baruti pushed her inside.

“Stay in here and if I’m not back in ten minutes close the door and lock it.” She saw the worry on his face and couldn’t stop herself from asking what was going on. “No time to explain I have to get the others if I can.” And with that he was gone.

The ten minutes stretched into eternity others arrived and sat down around the safe room everyone had the common mask of fear etched on their faces. Sooner than ten minutes but she had been certain it was hours Baruti was back pushing others in front of him into the safe room. He was also caring a large laundry basket full of food from the kitchen. He sat the basket down and started to close the door but before the door was halfway closed there was a loud rushing noise and the lights went out. Not just in the safe room but all light went out. It was as if someone had put a blanket over the sun. The door clicked shut and there was the hiss as it sealed itself shut and then there was silence.

The roar that was cut off from the door closing was back only louder and then the sound of glass breaking it was the sound of all the glass in the world breaking at once and Elisabeth knew it was the mansion falling down around the safe room. Then the safe room itself moved as if a giant hand had smacked it with a hammer. The sound was thunder and drowned everything out even her desperate screams. She had no idea when she started doing that but she could not stop.