I handed Ash my phone, and without question, she knew already to hold in a way so as to not accidentally end the call. Sharp ears like hers, private conversations aren’t so private anymore. 

She knew exactly what I was about to do, that’s why she wasn’t saying a word or was even doing a thing to stop me. Like Amanda, she already knew there was no other outcome to this than me succeeding.

And I will succeed. 

“Just hold it out for me, okay?” I told her, letting my hands rest in the warmth of hers for just a brief while, before I began shambling down the porch steps, one excruciating limp at a time. 

Then I realized I forgot to address one last time, so I did a quick turn, only to find that she was already following my every step the very instant I made a move.

Diligent, endearing, by my side literally every step of the way… but that’s not what I needed from her right now.

  “And stay where you are,” I said, slightly nudging her back with a gentle push. “Don’t move from the porch no matter what happens.” 

The way she stared back, hearing that… I could almost visibly see her going pale, see the micro-expression of apprehension manifesting in her eyes that had long lost their gleaming luster. 

“Stay… no matter what happens,” She repeated, unable to hide the growing concern in her tone. “Master, is that… is that wise?”

Suddenly there was a buzz in the air, loud grating static. 

“It’s fine, Ash, just stay,” Amanda’s voice spoke out from her clenched grip. “He knows what he’s doing… well, hopefully.” 

“Master’s limping, hunching, the slightest movement an indescribable agony he’s deliberately chosen very little to ever mention,” Ash continued to protest, her wide, green eyes staring, trembling, surprised at her own utter audacity, yet doubling down all the same. “At the very least, the first few steps, Master… let me assist you.” 

“You are assisting me,” I assured her, reaching to stroke her cheek, hoping I could rub some of that tension away. “If I’m doing this, I’m gonna need something that I can focus on, don’t I? And if it’s you, then hopefully…” 

I could only let that sentence trail off, a throbbing pain cutting me short. But In its place, slowly drawing my hand back away from her, I offered a hoping smile and my final request… but my last?

“Just keep your eyes on me.” 

Absolutely not.

The rainstorm was a merciless one, the moment I left the shelter of the porch, I was soaked to the bone, with every stream of rain its own sledgehammer anchoring me down. I couldn’t see much, just blurs, slight rims of light reflecting from droplets clinging to my eyelashes… even walking was more of a struggle than it already was – the ground quickly turning to mud, every stable piece of earth rapidly eroding beneath my feet. 

“Don’t fall,” I whispered to myself.

Don’t fail, the words echoed in my head.

When I reached my usual spot, the faded imprint in the dirt where my legs stood rooted for hours, I took a moment to gather myself, inhaling the cold air, the frigid rain – before finally facing forward.

Lightning suddenly flashed above, briefly casting out the dim, murky dark… and there clearly, distinctly, Ash’s eyes stared back at me, below her, the dim glow of my phone screen, and then above… 

I looked up.

Adalia has yet to avert her gaze away from the bedroom window. If anything, it seems as if she’s gotten closer to it, the blinds parted just ever slightly wider…

For a second there, I kinda felt like some kind of street magician ready to bedazzle his eager-eyed audience. Well, they do say three’s a crowd… better not disappoint, then.

Lightning again, thunder again, I raised my hands and began again. 

Five seconds.

So quickly, too quickly, the flaring pain streaked and ravaged through every one of my senses. 

Ten seconds.

I barely pushed, barely tried, my hands barely putting up a fight, but already I knew this effort, just this much was already too much for my body to bear. 

I knew, and yet… my arms… I forced them to remain steady. Rain or tears, and a scorching in my eyes, but I didn’t dare blink. Inside, my lungs threatened to implode, but I didn’t dare breathe.

Just focus.

Thirty seconds.

My jaw was clenched, and in my gums, every tooth, this crushing, mounting weight pressing against each other. Something coarse was tearing away at the back of my throat… I think I was yelling….

I couldn’t hear it.

One minute.

Ash remained exactly where I told her to. A part of me wishes she didn’t, a part of me wishes I had her here now. I wanted to be there with her, she looked so terrified. I’m terrified. 

But I couldn’t move… there’s this wall, this invisible, this impenetrable thing stopping me. I had to tear it down first, then I can finally be there with her.

Two minutes? 

Needles. So many. But I couldn’t see them, I felt them.  Everywhere. All at once. Again and again. This is where it gets me, this is where I’d pull away. They were cutting, they were stabbing – electrifying. 

How could you think of anything else? With this agony, blinding, suffocating – how can you be determined, how can you stay brave? How can you want anything else other than for it to stop?

I want it to stop.

But it was rippling again, the invisible. It stopped being stagnant, it wasn’t as firm any longer. Now, I could feel the cracks, I could sense the fractures. Little by little, inch by inch, my fingers sinking in… just like the first time, the second time, the third time… every other time…  and one way or another, it will be like this for the last time…

On top of the excruciating pain escalating, I fought that want within me, that inescapable urge blaring, begging for a stop to this. A silent war of attrition waged between two halves of myself, and I can’t tell who was winning.

For a moment, I thought I was going blind – everything was just a bright flickering white. But then I realized all around me, the rainstorm roared stronger, fiercer. 

It was as if the laws of nature itself were trying to deter me, blinding me with light, deafening me with explosions, lashing me with cold and wind.

Well, it can try… and it can lose.

Digging deeper into the earth, my senses, my psyche, I matched its intensity – surpassed it. Like the thunder, I roared. Like the wind, I spurred unrelenting, pushing. More, even more, I could feel it give, feel it dent.

Then bolts of lightning streak through the dark clouds, splitting the horizon wide open in flashes of white. The wind swirled and blew stronger, hurling stray leaves and sticks across the air, its raging current like a sharp knife searing my eyes, nearly blowing me off balance.

Ash darted forward, stopped – and beneath the fear in her eyes, I saw her lips quiver, move. She was saying something, I couldn’t hear her.

I barely saw her.

Right then, more than agony, more than fear, right then, I felt rage, anger. This was getting troublesome, this pain, this experience, this whole goddamn ordeal in its entirety – annoying. 

Causing all distress, all this worry, plaguing everybody I cared for – something stupid like this wasn’t worth any of that.

I won’t let it be worth that.

It’s as if something had just come over me, just briefly… I didn’t feel me. A resurgence of strength, a newfound ferocity. I yell, and the thunder would fade. I march, and the wind couldn’t push me back. 

As for the pain, the stabbing million billion needles. It intensified, reaching new heights of overwhelming pain and agony, seizing my muscles, crushing my bones. In my mouth I could taste metal, and the pungent smell of rust pervaded my nostrils, in parts of my vision, splotches of dark red obscured my sight… and I could see the veins visibly protruding from my arms.

I just didn’t care.

The rain, the storm, stronger and stronger, it poured, it rumbled, bolts of lightning striking the earth from all around, and that’s when it occurred to me.

Rainstorms don’t act in this way… at least never naturally.

The way it thundered, like anger, manifested. The wind blowing, like focused rage. I pushed, shouted – and the sky exploded white, nature wasn’t against me. 

It was me.

Suddenly, I caught something, in my fingertips, on my nails, like a tear, a loose piece of string, a hole that’s been ripped, and a hole that was growing bigger. Without hesitating, I snared it, curled my fingers, and instantly felt my hand immersing into something that felt like… layers of… I don’t know… I didn’t care to know… I just know that I caught it and that I was going to rip it apart. 

Like a jammed door, I began to pry the air in front of me open. Whatever I had a hold of it felt… alive – something intangible squirming, writhing violently in my grip, trying desperately to slip loose, but when I tried holding on tighter, I only felt my fingernails sinking into my palm. I didn’t know if it was working, but I wasn’t going to risk it – I let it pierce through my skin, felt myself bleed, just for this chance, this once chance. 

It was fighting me, and it was no longer holding anything back. The pain was everything as one – burning, piercing, freezing, stabbing, twisting, crushing – like molting lava coating every inch of my skin. 

That would have been it, it would have gotten me. A minute ago, it would have. 

Now I’m too pissed to even think to stop.

I fought back, rain and blood cascading down my clenched fists, I began to pull the barrier apart. Like paper, like tissues, so easily, pull it, tear it, like skin, like meat, rip it apart. 

Thunder, lightning, channeled in my yells, my charge forward, erupting, exploding, pandemonium all around me – blowing the trees, uprooting the dirt – a raging hurricane of my efforts. 

Then, suddenly, as the skies flashed white again – I saw it. In that split of a second of clear bright light, my hands embedded in a wall of eyes and flesh, a ring around the house of a thousand blinking gazes, flailing madly in its meat sockets, staring squarely at me in rage, in pain – gushing, spurting crimson red from the hole I was tearing in its body, or what looked to be its body. 

This was it, this was what was fighting me back, this was that something pricking, stabbing all this time. The barrier – alive. And it screamed at me.

I didn’t question it, I just screamed back – meeting every single one of its countless gazes with maddened eyes, and mustering everything I had inside of me, I tore its flesh apart. 

It screamed again, and it was the most inhumane noise I’ve ever heard.  A deep tumultuous droning, like a thousand cries of agony in dissonance drowning out the rain, the thunder – and I heard a squelch. as all eyes whirled towards me again, staring at me defiantly. 

Then suddenly, with another flash of white, all was normal again. The darting eyes, the wall of writhing flesh – gone. Just the house, just the thunder, and rain, my hands outstretched, clutching nothing, and for the first time since I started this – feeling nothing.

There was nothing poking, stabbing, not anymore, the pain slowly subsiding… disappearing. It was gone, the barrier was gone. I broke it. I shattered it. I… killed it.

I did it.

Without my input, my arms instantly fell down to my sides, twitching, feeling beads of blood still pouring down from my fingertips. 

This is where I should be smiling, shouldn’t I? Gape in awe over my own accomplishment. Feel as a sense of pride ballooned within me. Any moment now, right? 

No, I’m… that’s later, probably later. Now, I’m too tired to feel any of that. Too tired. This weakness, this fading feeling, an all too familiar feeling… yeah, I’m just tired.

Somehow in a blur, my gaze managed to drift directly forward – and I saw Ash again, through rain and red, my phone in her hands no longer glowing bright, the call no longer connected. 

How long has that been like that? Just then? Long before? Amanda needs to be informed. I should tell her. I’ll have to call her back, tell her the good news. 

It probably wasn’t a good idea to try walking. I know I’ll slip, I know I won’t break my fall, and I know it’ll hurt. So as much as I wanted out of the rain, I had to stay. 

Ash will come get me… there she is now, spurring forward at me, and it was as if I was watching her in slow motion – her lips were still trembling, she was still trying to say something to me, but I couldn’t hear a thing from her. I also noticed she still didn’t look happy, stuck with that same expression of worry… except there was nothing to worry about, not anymore, because I did it.

All was fine now.

I wish I could tell her that right now, shout it, scream it, but it was like I was empty of air, I couldn’t hear myself breathe. 

But then my eyes drifted astray again, this time peering over Ash’s shoulder, where I saw the front door parted wide open and standing beneath the dim light of the doorway – a familiar, pale face gazing back at me. The same eyes as mine, the same stare, only with that distinct, motherly touch that set our similarities apart. 

It was rare where I would see her at loss for words. To me, Mom was always ready for anything, the one that always knew to expect the unexpected. I’ve never once been able to catch her by total surprise…

Until now.

I’ve never seen that look on her face before. A mixture of worry and shock as she blinked disbelieving eyes at the scene before her. 

And that’s when I found my voice, the last of my strength, as I lifted a single trembling finger, pointing squarely at her.

“Your… turn…” 

And I think my knees gave out under me after that, and I slipped – except that I didn’t fall. 

She caught me. Without fail, she always does. In her arms, in her warmth, I felt myself ebbing away. The rain, the thunder, I stopped hearing the world around me. I could hear nothing anymore.

Nothing.

Except her voice.

“Rest, Master,” She said. “You did it.” 

And that was all I needed to hear, all I wanted to know. But it wasn’t over just yet. So many things left to do, so many things left undone. I needed to be there, I have to see them through, I know I have to. 

But for now, just for now, I suppose…

A little rest sounded nice.