Happy Holidays, pollitt!
Dec. 29th, 2018 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle: Deja Vus
Recipient: pollitt
Rating: Gen.
Word Count: 3,793
Prompt: The Them. Future, however far as you'd like. Everyday moment(s) where the vaguest memories of what happened tickle at the brains of Pepper, Wensleydale, and Brian.
Notes: Happy holidays, Pollitt! Thank you for your nice prompt, I hope you like this fic. And thank you to my beta for her invaluable assistance!
“Wait, what did you just say?” asked Pepper, abruptly cutting off Wensleydale’s endless explanation about the rules of the board game he’d brought.
Despite its name – Risk – it looked boring. Not to mention that Wensley’s ramble had turned some time ago into something that sounded suspiciously like a school presentation about world politics – because he read the newspaper every morning, he thought, for whatever reason, that it was his duty to share what he’d learned with the other Them. Anyway, Adam had never enjoyed playing others’ games.
Wensleydale pushed his black-rimmed spectacles up his nose. “I said that’s exactly how Iraq invaded Kuwait last year. If you’re interested, I-“
“No. Not that part. That example you gave us,” urged Pepper.
“Oh. Well, let’s say I have the eastern United States, and Brian gets those parts of Europe and Africa, and your territories are there – which is approximately Russia…”
Pepper raised her hand in an imperious gesture to hush him and frowned. Brian stopped picking at a scab on his knee to look at her.
“That was just an example…” ventured Wensleydale, after a solid minute of Pepper’s heavy silence which nobody dared interrupt. “If you don’t want those-“
“I don’t want Russia,” asserted Pepper, slowly shaking her head. “Russia’s…” She paused, staring into space, then ended in an unsettled voice, “Russia’s boring.”
“This whole game is boring,” Adam hurried to say as Brian and Wensleydale seemed about to get lost in the echo of her words. His three friends turned to him, as if being startled awake from a dream. “Seems to me that we better go play outside. I’ll be John Connor, and Pepper, you can be the Terminator if you like.” (They’d seen the second in the series a few weeks ago, and Adam knew her well enough to bet she couldn’t resist that proposition.)
She nodded, pushing her pieces away. “Don’t see why we should play a game where we divide up the world and wage war.”
“Yeah,” approved Brian, for whom a board game was terribly lacking in opportunities to end up covered in mud. “And there’s no fun playin’ a game if we must think harder for it than for homework.”
Usually, Wensleydale would have argued that thinking was fun – and Brian would bring up the subject of Wensley’s alleged comic and, if they were in the right mood, it would lead to a brief scuffle. Instead, he carefully stored the pieces of his game in the box, absentmindedly nodding in agreement.
“Who gets to play Sarah Connor?” shouted Pepper, rushing outside, followed by Brian and Wensleydale intensely debating that subject, and Dog yapping in excitement.
Adam breathed a huge sigh of relief. During the past year, none of his friends had asked questions about the nebulous events of last August. He hadn’t expected them to remember anything. He resolved to be more vigilant about it.
“Hey, Adam! You comin’? An’ watch out, Brian’s lying in ambush!”
He smiled. Soon enough, the Them would be too old for this kind of game. But not this summer. Not yet.
***
“Hi, guys! How’s your break goin’?”
When Brian had said he wanted to spend his Easter holiday in Wales, to help clean the beaches around Milford Haven of the Sea Empress oil spill, his friends had thought he’d gone crazy. (His mother, for her part, had exclaimed that he should clean his bedroom instead; that it was a shame a seventeen-year-old couldn’t even vacuum, etc., etc. – a rant that Brian had shrugged off with a carefree smile.)
Now that they could see him on Wensleydale’s computer screen, they recognised that Brian was entirely in his element. With his clothes, face, and unkempt hair smudged with oil, he didn’t look much different than the seabirds he was trying to save. Brilliant through all that blackness, his white teeth were displayed in his usual wide, contagious grin.
Adam couldn’t help grinning in return, catching, out of the corner of his eye, Pepper’s beaming smile. His stomach twisted in an all-too-familiar way – which didn’t make it any less simultaneously thrilling and distressing.
“You okay?” asked Wensleydale in a concerned voice. For a terrifying second, Adam, dragged from his reverie, thought his expression had betrayed him. Then he realised that Wensley, sitting in front of the computer, hadn’t been speaking to him.
“Sure. Why?” said Brian, rubbing his nose and adding another smear of oil.
“Dunno... You look tired. And worried.”
Adam wondered how closely Wensleydale had examined Brian’s face to detect that despite the layer of filth covering his features – a technicality of which Wensley himself became suddenly aware, judging by his blushing neck. Many similar details, accumulated, clicked together to finally make sense, and Adam felt a rush of sympathy for his friend. They were in the same boat.
Brian shrugged. “Heh. This is a hell of a job, y’know.” He looked around and lowered his voice to say, with obvious reluctance, “But there’s also… Don’t make fun of me, okay? I think it’s because of all this smell of oil. All day, it makes me feel like I’m about to remember something. Something important. Just like when you have an answer on the tip of your tongue, y’see? It’s a bit gettin’ on my nerves. And I have weird dreams every night. With a spooky melting figure. I’m like paralysed, and then that damn inhuman scream wakes me up.”
Pepper and Wensleydale exchanged a meaningful look that didn’t escape Adam’s notice.
***
“Did that for them, y’know,” grumbled Adam, slouching along the dusty lane. “Thought if people remembered what had happened, they’d be disturbed.”
Slouching dutifully behind his Master, Dog let out a brief, sharp bark.
“Fine, I reckon it’s convenient, too. Who’d be friends with someone who tried to control them?” He kicked a pebble, his hands in the pockets of his frayed jeans.
Now he wasn’t so sure he’d done the right thing. Maybe it was worse to not remember exactly. He hadn’t foreseen that his friends would end up haunted by fragments of vague memories. Oh, most of the time, they were perfectly well. But, every now and then, one of them would get caught with a vacant look or show up with shadows under their eyes, especially towards the end of August.
Oddly enough, the subject was rarely put on the table, usually saving Adam the trouble of deflecting the conversation. Was it due to his instinctive, unconscious will when he’d blurred their memories? Was each of his friends afraid to be regarded by the others as some kind of weirdo? The possibility that they’d discussed it – just the three of them – couldn’t be excluded either. That thought made Adam’s chest tighten painfully.
Anyway, what was done couldn’t be undone. Not only because Adam had no idea how dropping a time bomb of terrifying memories back into his friends’ brains would affect them, but also because he’d gotten rid of his powers. Not without regret. They’d been pretty handy to fix the world and ensure a happy ending for everyone (and really, he was proud of himself: Greasy Johnson had become a fantastic American football player, Warlock was jolly lucky to taste all those flavours of ice cream in America, and the existence of a certain angel and his demon boyfriend was opportunely forgotten by their respective authorities). Still, a few days later, he’d thought hard about it. That is, as hard as one could expect from an eleven-year-old, even if he was the Antichrist himself. Sure, being able to conjure up holes in the garden hedge was cool and all. But to keep using his powers would lead to jeopardising normal entropy again – a connection crystal-clear in Adam’s head, even though he couldn’t put it into words. It wasn’t an easy decision, but with great power comes great responsibility. They’d said that in Spiderman.
Adam whistled to Dog. Where had the little mongrel disappeared to? He heard him yelping but he was nowhere in sight. Although he’d been distracted, he was almost certain the stick he’d thrown for Dog to retrieve had ended up near the hedge of Jasmine Cott-
“Adam Young!”
The intonation didn’t augur well. That was the same kind of ‘Adam Young’ his dad had yelled when he’d suspected his son had been involved in the Case Of the Missing Ties (rightly – they were required for a game in the woods – but that was beside the point).
“You couldn’t have come at a better time. I need to talk to you,” said Anathema from behind the hedge. She threw the stick she was holding far away into her back garden – a terrific throw, Adam had to admit. Dog stopped hopping around her and ran after it, wagging its tail. Traitor.
“Nice colour!” tried Adam, nodding at Anathema’s hair – lilac, this time. “And how was your vacation in Italy?”
“It’s funny.” She wasn’t smiling. “I’m almost tempted to believe you’re psychic, too. That’s precisely what I wanted to talk about.”
Heck. What was he being accused of now? Destroying the Coliseum?
“It just so happened that we had the chance to climb Stromboli. The volcano is still active but can be visited, you know. There are several small eruptions per hour. The ground was shaking under our feet, there was sulphur smoke everywhere… Quite impressive, I must say.”
Adam, who was starting to understand what she was getting at, showed nothing but polite interest.
“And then, I had like a… a flash. Feathers... black holes... wings of night… and the sound of millions of flies...” Her voice died away and her thousand-yard stare would have made Adam enter the garden to shake her if she hadn’t pulled herself together quickly. “Interestingly enough, Newt had the same vision. Except for the black holes. He said he’d felt something like electric shocks instead. But the poor dear is electrocuted so often that I’m not sure it’s relevant. Anyway, what do you think about that?” She gave Adam an inquisitive look.
“I’m no expert in volcanos,” Adam emphasised in a mildly annoyed tone, hopefully conveying an implied I-have-absolutely-no-idea-why-you’re-asking-my-opinion-on-this, “but don’t they emit toxic gases? Must have made you hallucinate.”
“They weren’t hallucinations. I know what hallucinations look like. I’ve tried enough – erm, not the point. What I mean is, it actually looked like… a deja vu… a memory of things that hadn’t happened. That wasn’t the first time, but it’s never exactly the same. Like variations on a theme. Or changing clouds, as Newt says. And I don’t know why, but I have the persistent feeling it’s related to you. And trusting our intuitions is what you might call a family tradition.”
Grownups! All you do is try to help, and they would think you'd murdered someone or something. There was no way he would ever become one of them.
Looking her straight in the eye, Adam displayed his best expression of calculated innocence. He was very good at it – years of practice. Anathema held his gaze, like probing him. A western movie soundtrack and a tumbleweed rolling between them wouldn’t have seemed out of place.
“Hi, Adam!”
Agnes. In the right place at the right time, as usual.
She was born nine months after the Armaggedont. Adam suspected Newt had tried to veto that name – as if he’d had a chance against Anathema. At almost five, Agnes was a lonely kid. She was an only child and she didn’t seem to have friends – she tended to make people feel uncomfortable. She never looked bothered about it. When she wasn’t reading, she was drawing strange scenes with the deliberation of someone working for posterity. Adam, who couldn’t imagine what his childhood would have looked like without his friends, felt sorry for her and always volunteered to babysit her. He liked imagining for her the make-believe games and skits he could no longer devise for Pepper, Wensley and Brian.
“Mom, you should come inside. Dad wanted to show me how to make a model airplane and now he’s stuck. I mean, really glued stuck.”
Anathema rolled her eyes and headed towards the house, after a we’ll-talk-about-it-later-you-won’t-get-off-that-easily glare at Adam.
Agnes gave him a wild grin. "I don't think you need to go worryin'," she said. She stuck her tongue out, then squeaked with delight when Dog came back from the back garden – with no stick – and greeted her enthusiastically. “You’re a good boy, Dog, but I gotta go. Don’t wanna miss the rescue of Dad. It’s going to be funny.” She started running after her mom, stopped dead and turned round. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.” Concentrating as if she was reciting poetry at school, she declared, “You’ll try to disperse the mist of the past, but will only disperse the mist from your future.” She fell silent, as if checking that she hadn’t made any mistakes, looked extremely pleased with herself, and resumed her rush towards the cottage. “Bye!”
She was always a bit creepy when she did her cryptic little trick.
***
Kneeling on the floor, Pepper was painting a sign. Adam revelled in the line of the nape of their neck, highlighted by their short haircut – a few months ago, Pepper had said they would go by “they” now and their friends had quickly gotten used to it, to the point that “she” had become, in referring to Pepper, as unfitting as Pippin Galadriel Moonchild.
And last week… last week, he’d kissed Pepper. Or rather, Pepper had kissed him, with the air of someone who was tired of waiting. Sometimes he needed to remind himself that it hadn’t been a dream. It had felt so fuzzy and exhilarating. Like his first beer, but so much better.
The whole world felt different and yet, entirely the same. Pepper was still good ole Pep, his best friend, teasing him and arguing with him and punching his shoulder. Except that, when they were alone together, they now kissed and awkwardly held hands. Could something feel odd and right at the same time? Because that certainly did.
They’d concurred that they needed a little time to adjust to this novelty, and they’d decided not to tell Brian and Wensley for now.
“Are you quite done?” asked Brian, dipping into a packet of crisps.
“Yeah.” Pepper put the final touches to their sign that read: Help Afghanistan to stop the Taliban!!! and stood up to admire it. “Ta-da! We can leave as soon as Wensley shows up. I hope he won’t be late or we’ll miss the film.”
Wensleydale had gone to London to book a student accommodation and complete his registration to the Pearson Business School.
They all had plans for next year. Pepper would study to become a war reporter – a project Adam both admired and feared. Brian, who had always been bored to death by school, had convinced his parents to let him apply for a job at Greenpeace. His dream was to work on the Rainbow Warrior II.
Adam’s plan was far vaguer. He couldn’t picture himself at uni. He’d briefly considered going to medical school, but that would have been too large of a step towards adulthood. He wasn’t ready for that. His father was pressuring him into choosing a career and thinking about his future. But Adam seldom did what his father wanted, and the future could wait.
A gap year to travel the world, hiking and hitching, doing odd jobs here and there – that was what he really wanted. The world was bright and strange, full of all sorts of brilliant stuff. He hadn't found out about it all yet. This was the right time. He might even be able to convince Pepper to postpone uni and come with him. After that, he would come back here because, even if the planet proved to be amazing, no place on Earth could be better than Tadfield. There would still be time to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.
Brian looked up from his packet as the door of Pepper’s bedroom opened. He grinned. “There you are, Wens! Everything in order?”
A thick folder in his hands, Wensleydale nodded, smiling back. “I’m now officially registered in Law School.”
There was a shocked silence, until Pepper voiced the general amazement. “What do you mean, law? What about accountancy?”
Wensleydale blinked owlishly at Pepper and went pale. “I… I completely forgot about accountancy.”
“How is it even possible? Wensley, you’ve been talking our ears off about that business school for the past two years! You just went to London specifically to enrol in it!”
He fell onto Pepper’s bed. “I don’t know… I walked past the law school and it had the scale symbol on the front that reminded me of…” Adam cringed internally. It had happened again. “Whatever it was, it didn’t make any sense… but it was like someone telling me it was the right thing to do.”
Pepper threw their hands up. “And you registered, just like that? Please! You never do anything on impulse!”
“I know.” Wensleydale whimpered, his head in his hands. “How am I goin’ to tell my parents?”
“I s’pose you can still unregister,” offered Brian.
“No! I mean, yes, I probably could but… what it said, it was right. I could be useful. More than if I spend my life summing columns of figures. I… I could help make laws to protect the whales. I could prosecute those evil companies misleading their customers, you know, like the Newtrition corporation that made my aunt sick when-“
“Who was right?” interrupted Pepper in the slow, cautious delivery one would use with an incoherent child or a delirious patient.
Wensleydale looked even more distressed. “The… the voice in my head.”
“Bro, that’s weird. Even for you,” said Brian to laugh it off, but without conviction, speaking way too worriedly and sitting way too close to Wensley, who leaned against him almost imperceptibly. Hey! For how long had they been hiding that?
“Oh my god! I must have a brain tumour or something,” whined Wensley, really losing it.
Okay. This time, it was going too far.
After all, those recollections, albeit fuzzy, elusive and fragmentary, had made them who they were: good people, still fighting with their own weapons, willing to help build a better world. Adam’s kind of people, then and now and forever.
More than those fleeting memories, what tormented them was their inability to pinpoint from where their strange visions and intrusive thoughts were coming. He may have underestimated them by thinking they couldn’t face the truth about what had happened. They were stronger than he’d given them credit for. Hopefully.
Adam took a deep breath. “For the love of... of Earth, Wensley, stop being such a drama queen. You don’t have a brain tumour, I swear.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can, ‘cos I know what made you act like that.” Three pairs of perplexed eyes were turned towards Adam. “I should have told you a long time ago. Actually, I shouldn’t have messed up your memories at all.” They all frowned. “I thought it would save a lot of trouble. I’m sorry. Anyway, it’d be better to not spread what I’m about to tell you, I think. Er. Pepper, you may want to sit down too.”
Pepper straightened up defiantly, their arms crossed.
“Okay. Please just hear me out and don’t cut me off.” Adam stared at his friends, one after the other, as if he would never see them again. “It’s going to be hard enough,” he muttered.
He told them everything. The End of the World. Angels. Demons. The Horsepersons and how they’d defeated them, together. And, his gaze avoiding Pepper’s, he told them who he really was. The riskiest thing he’d ever done, but he’d chosen to trust their reactions.
When he was done, his friends, speechless, exchanged puzzled looks. Then they burst out laughing.
“Holy cow! You’re a terrific actor!” said Brian, drying his eyes. “I almost swallowed it!”
“C’mon, the Antichrist, no less!” Pepper gave Adam a fond smile. “You and your imagination.”
Wensleydale’s laugh stopped short. “Of course! It’s all coming back to me now!” he exclaimed, a look of triumph on his face. “We played a game like that one summer. Don’t you remember?”
It didn’t take long for the other two to smile and nod.
“Yeah,” confirmed Brian. “How did I forget? We had lots of fun!”
As if that weren’t enough, Pepper added, “Of all the games you made up for us, that one was the most bizarre and mind-blowing!”
Astounded, Adam felt the need to take a seat himself. They were unbelievable. Human brains were absolutely, definitely, irremediably unbelievable.
“The scales must have reminded me of that game,” reasoned Wensleydale, “and all the things we wanted to fight for when we were kids. Remember, Pepper, you wanted to save the rainforest by depriving us of hamburgers.”
Pepper smiled nostalgically. “And you wanted to save the whales.”
“I can try. You know, I think I’m goin’ to enjoy studying law. Tons of stuff to read and memorise. And I’m pretty sure my parents will be okay. You were right, Adam, I was being dramatic. Thank you for the great story. I needed that.”
Well, that was something. And if it was enough to make them feel better…
“So, are we goin’ to the cinema or not?” urged Pepper, grabbing their jacket.
“I doubt the story will be as entertaining as Adam’s,” teased Brian, walking out into the hallway, right on Wensley’s heels. “You know,” he said over his shoulder as Adam followed him downstairs, “you should write it. Remember that book you wrote when we were, what, like nine… about the pirate detective? I’ve never enjoyed a book more.”
If his friends noticed Adam’s silence during the ride, they didn’t point it out.
Brian’s idea wasn’t half bad, actually. Quite brilliant, even. If people weren’t going to believe it was true anyway, Adam might as well write a book about the Armageddont. Something funny that would entertain his readers. And remind them it was always time to fight for the Earth. Tell them it could be saved, if everybody understood the importance of balance and worked together.
The more he thought about it, the more enthusiastic he got. He’d refused to mess around by fixing the world and imposing his will on everyone. But he could make people think about the sort of things they were doing to their planet. And they might make better choices.
When Pepper parked their father’s car close to the cinema, Adam had decided what he wanted to do with his life.
Stories would be his tools. Tools to mend the world. They were sort of like… Good Omens.
Recipient: pollitt
Rating: Gen.
Word Count: 3,793
Prompt: The Them. Future, however far as you'd like. Everyday moment(s) where the vaguest memories of what happened tickle at the brains of Pepper, Wensleydale, and Brian.
Notes: Happy holidays, Pollitt! Thank you for your nice prompt, I hope you like this fic. And thank you to my beta for her invaluable assistance!
“Wait, what did you just say?” asked Pepper, abruptly cutting off Wensleydale’s endless explanation about the rules of the board game he’d brought.
Despite its name – Risk – it looked boring. Not to mention that Wensley’s ramble had turned some time ago into something that sounded suspiciously like a school presentation about world politics – because he read the newspaper every morning, he thought, for whatever reason, that it was his duty to share what he’d learned with the other Them. Anyway, Adam had never enjoyed playing others’ games.
Wensleydale pushed his black-rimmed spectacles up his nose. “I said that’s exactly how Iraq invaded Kuwait last year. If you’re interested, I-“
“No. Not that part. That example you gave us,” urged Pepper.
“Oh. Well, let’s say I have the eastern United States, and Brian gets those parts of Europe and Africa, and your territories are there – which is approximately Russia…”
Pepper raised her hand in an imperious gesture to hush him and frowned. Brian stopped picking at a scab on his knee to look at her.
“That was just an example…” ventured Wensleydale, after a solid minute of Pepper’s heavy silence which nobody dared interrupt. “If you don’t want those-“
“I don’t want Russia,” asserted Pepper, slowly shaking her head. “Russia’s…” She paused, staring into space, then ended in an unsettled voice, “Russia’s boring.”
“This whole game is boring,” Adam hurried to say as Brian and Wensleydale seemed about to get lost in the echo of her words. His three friends turned to him, as if being startled awake from a dream. “Seems to me that we better go play outside. I’ll be John Connor, and Pepper, you can be the Terminator if you like.” (They’d seen the second in the series a few weeks ago, and Adam knew her well enough to bet she couldn’t resist that proposition.)
She nodded, pushing her pieces away. “Don’t see why we should play a game where we divide up the world and wage war.”
“Yeah,” approved Brian, for whom a board game was terribly lacking in opportunities to end up covered in mud. “And there’s no fun playin’ a game if we must think harder for it than for homework.”
Usually, Wensleydale would have argued that thinking was fun – and Brian would bring up the subject of Wensley’s alleged comic and, if they were in the right mood, it would lead to a brief scuffle. Instead, he carefully stored the pieces of his game in the box, absentmindedly nodding in agreement.
“Who gets to play Sarah Connor?” shouted Pepper, rushing outside, followed by Brian and Wensleydale intensely debating that subject, and Dog yapping in excitement.
Adam breathed a huge sigh of relief. During the past year, none of his friends had asked questions about the nebulous events of last August. He hadn’t expected them to remember anything. He resolved to be more vigilant about it.
“Hey, Adam! You comin’? An’ watch out, Brian’s lying in ambush!”
He smiled. Soon enough, the Them would be too old for this kind of game. But not this summer. Not yet.
***
“Hi, guys! How’s your break goin’?”
When Brian had said he wanted to spend his Easter holiday in Wales, to help clean the beaches around Milford Haven of the Sea Empress oil spill, his friends had thought he’d gone crazy. (His mother, for her part, had exclaimed that he should clean his bedroom instead; that it was a shame a seventeen-year-old couldn’t even vacuum, etc., etc. – a rant that Brian had shrugged off with a carefree smile.)
Now that they could see him on Wensleydale’s computer screen, they recognised that Brian was entirely in his element. With his clothes, face, and unkempt hair smudged with oil, he didn’t look much different than the seabirds he was trying to save. Brilliant through all that blackness, his white teeth were displayed in his usual wide, contagious grin.
Adam couldn’t help grinning in return, catching, out of the corner of his eye, Pepper’s beaming smile. His stomach twisted in an all-too-familiar way – which didn’t make it any less simultaneously thrilling and distressing.
“You okay?” asked Wensleydale in a concerned voice. For a terrifying second, Adam, dragged from his reverie, thought his expression had betrayed him. Then he realised that Wensley, sitting in front of the computer, hadn’t been speaking to him.
“Sure. Why?” said Brian, rubbing his nose and adding another smear of oil.
“Dunno... You look tired. And worried.”
Adam wondered how closely Wensleydale had examined Brian’s face to detect that despite the layer of filth covering his features – a technicality of which Wensley himself became suddenly aware, judging by his blushing neck. Many similar details, accumulated, clicked together to finally make sense, and Adam felt a rush of sympathy for his friend. They were in the same boat.
Brian shrugged. “Heh. This is a hell of a job, y’know.” He looked around and lowered his voice to say, with obvious reluctance, “But there’s also… Don’t make fun of me, okay? I think it’s because of all this smell of oil. All day, it makes me feel like I’m about to remember something. Something important. Just like when you have an answer on the tip of your tongue, y’see? It’s a bit gettin’ on my nerves. And I have weird dreams every night. With a spooky melting figure. I’m like paralysed, and then that damn inhuman scream wakes me up.”
Pepper and Wensleydale exchanged a meaningful look that didn’t escape Adam’s notice.
***
“Did that for them, y’know,” grumbled Adam, slouching along the dusty lane. “Thought if people remembered what had happened, they’d be disturbed.”
Slouching dutifully behind his Master, Dog let out a brief, sharp bark.
“Fine, I reckon it’s convenient, too. Who’d be friends with someone who tried to control them?” He kicked a pebble, his hands in the pockets of his frayed jeans.
Now he wasn’t so sure he’d done the right thing. Maybe it was worse to not remember exactly. He hadn’t foreseen that his friends would end up haunted by fragments of vague memories. Oh, most of the time, they were perfectly well. But, every now and then, one of them would get caught with a vacant look or show up with shadows under their eyes, especially towards the end of August.
Oddly enough, the subject was rarely put on the table, usually saving Adam the trouble of deflecting the conversation. Was it due to his instinctive, unconscious will when he’d blurred their memories? Was each of his friends afraid to be regarded by the others as some kind of weirdo? The possibility that they’d discussed it – just the three of them – couldn’t be excluded either. That thought made Adam’s chest tighten painfully.
Anyway, what was done couldn’t be undone. Not only because Adam had no idea how dropping a time bomb of terrifying memories back into his friends’ brains would affect them, but also because he’d gotten rid of his powers. Not without regret. They’d been pretty handy to fix the world and ensure a happy ending for everyone (and really, he was proud of himself: Greasy Johnson had become a fantastic American football player, Warlock was jolly lucky to taste all those flavours of ice cream in America, and the existence of a certain angel and his demon boyfriend was opportunely forgotten by their respective authorities). Still, a few days later, he’d thought hard about it. That is, as hard as one could expect from an eleven-year-old, even if he was the Antichrist himself. Sure, being able to conjure up holes in the garden hedge was cool and all. But to keep using his powers would lead to jeopardising normal entropy again – a connection crystal-clear in Adam’s head, even though he couldn’t put it into words. It wasn’t an easy decision, but with great power comes great responsibility. They’d said that in Spiderman.
Adam whistled to Dog. Where had the little mongrel disappeared to? He heard him yelping but he was nowhere in sight. Although he’d been distracted, he was almost certain the stick he’d thrown for Dog to retrieve had ended up near the hedge of Jasmine Cott-
“Adam Young!”
The intonation didn’t augur well. That was the same kind of ‘Adam Young’ his dad had yelled when he’d suspected his son had been involved in the Case Of the Missing Ties (rightly – they were required for a game in the woods – but that was beside the point).
“You couldn’t have come at a better time. I need to talk to you,” said Anathema from behind the hedge. She threw the stick she was holding far away into her back garden – a terrific throw, Adam had to admit. Dog stopped hopping around her and ran after it, wagging its tail. Traitor.
“Nice colour!” tried Adam, nodding at Anathema’s hair – lilac, this time. “And how was your vacation in Italy?”
“It’s funny.” She wasn’t smiling. “I’m almost tempted to believe you’re psychic, too. That’s precisely what I wanted to talk about.”
Heck. What was he being accused of now? Destroying the Coliseum?
“It just so happened that we had the chance to climb Stromboli. The volcano is still active but can be visited, you know. There are several small eruptions per hour. The ground was shaking under our feet, there was sulphur smoke everywhere… Quite impressive, I must say.”
Adam, who was starting to understand what she was getting at, showed nothing but polite interest.
“And then, I had like a… a flash. Feathers... black holes... wings of night… and the sound of millions of flies...” Her voice died away and her thousand-yard stare would have made Adam enter the garden to shake her if she hadn’t pulled herself together quickly. “Interestingly enough, Newt had the same vision. Except for the black holes. He said he’d felt something like electric shocks instead. But the poor dear is electrocuted so often that I’m not sure it’s relevant. Anyway, what do you think about that?” She gave Adam an inquisitive look.
“I’m no expert in volcanos,” Adam emphasised in a mildly annoyed tone, hopefully conveying an implied I-have-absolutely-no-idea-why-you’re-asking-my-opinion-on-this, “but don’t they emit toxic gases? Must have made you hallucinate.”
“They weren’t hallucinations. I know what hallucinations look like. I’ve tried enough – erm, not the point. What I mean is, it actually looked like… a deja vu… a memory of things that hadn’t happened. That wasn’t the first time, but it’s never exactly the same. Like variations on a theme. Or changing clouds, as Newt says. And I don’t know why, but I have the persistent feeling it’s related to you. And trusting our intuitions is what you might call a family tradition.”
Grownups! All you do is try to help, and they would think you'd murdered someone or something. There was no way he would ever become one of them.
Looking her straight in the eye, Adam displayed his best expression of calculated innocence. He was very good at it – years of practice. Anathema held his gaze, like probing him. A western movie soundtrack and a tumbleweed rolling between them wouldn’t have seemed out of place.
“Hi, Adam!”
Agnes. In the right place at the right time, as usual.
She was born nine months after the Armaggedont. Adam suspected Newt had tried to veto that name – as if he’d had a chance against Anathema. At almost five, Agnes was a lonely kid. She was an only child and she didn’t seem to have friends – she tended to make people feel uncomfortable. She never looked bothered about it. When she wasn’t reading, she was drawing strange scenes with the deliberation of someone working for posterity. Adam, who couldn’t imagine what his childhood would have looked like without his friends, felt sorry for her and always volunteered to babysit her. He liked imagining for her the make-believe games and skits he could no longer devise for Pepper, Wensley and Brian.
“Mom, you should come inside. Dad wanted to show me how to make a model airplane and now he’s stuck. I mean, really glued stuck.”
Anathema rolled her eyes and headed towards the house, after a we’ll-talk-about-it-later-you-won’t-get-off-that-easily glare at Adam.
Agnes gave him a wild grin. "I don't think you need to go worryin'," she said. She stuck her tongue out, then squeaked with delight when Dog came back from the back garden – with no stick – and greeted her enthusiastically. “You’re a good boy, Dog, but I gotta go. Don’t wanna miss the rescue of Dad. It’s going to be funny.” She started running after her mom, stopped dead and turned round. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.” Concentrating as if she was reciting poetry at school, she declared, “You’ll try to disperse the mist of the past, but will only disperse the mist from your future.” She fell silent, as if checking that she hadn’t made any mistakes, looked extremely pleased with herself, and resumed her rush towards the cottage. “Bye!”
She was always a bit creepy when she did her cryptic little trick.
***
Kneeling on the floor, Pepper was painting a sign. Adam revelled in the line of the nape of their neck, highlighted by their short haircut – a few months ago, Pepper had said they would go by “they” now and their friends had quickly gotten used to it, to the point that “she” had become, in referring to Pepper, as unfitting as Pippin Galadriel Moonchild.
And last week… last week, he’d kissed Pepper. Or rather, Pepper had kissed him, with the air of someone who was tired of waiting. Sometimes he needed to remind himself that it hadn’t been a dream. It had felt so fuzzy and exhilarating. Like his first beer, but so much better.
The whole world felt different and yet, entirely the same. Pepper was still good ole Pep, his best friend, teasing him and arguing with him and punching his shoulder. Except that, when they were alone together, they now kissed and awkwardly held hands. Could something feel odd and right at the same time? Because that certainly did.
They’d concurred that they needed a little time to adjust to this novelty, and they’d decided not to tell Brian and Wensley for now.
“Are you quite done?” asked Brian, dipping into a packet of crisps.
“Yeah.” Pepper put the final touches to their sign that read: Help Afghanistan to stop the Taliban!!! and stood up to admire it. “Ta-da! We can leave as soon as Wensley shows up. I hope he won’t be late or we’ll miss the film.”
Wensleydale had gone to London to book a student accommodation and complete his registration to the Pearson Business School.
They all had plans for next year. Pepper would study to become a war reporter – a project Adam both admired and feared. Brian, who had always been bored to death by school, had convinced his parents to let him apply for a job at Greenpeace. His dream was to work on the Rainbow Warrior II.
Adam’s plan was far vaguer. He couldn’t picture himself at uni. He’d briefly considered going to medical school, but that would have been too large of a step towards adulthood. He wasn’t ready for that. His father was pressuring him into choosing a career and thinking about his future. But Adam seldom did what his father wanted, and the future could wait.
A gap year to travel the world, hiking and hitching, doing odd jobs here and there – that was what he really wanted. The world was bright and strange, full of all sorts of brilliant stuff. He hadn't found out about it all yet. This was the right time. He might even be able to convince Pepper to postpone uni and come with him. After that, he would come back here because, even if the planet proved to be amazing, no place on Earth could be better than Tadfield. There would still be time to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.
Brian looked up from his packet as the door of Pepper’s bedroom opened. He grinned. “There you are, Wens! Everything in order?”
A thick folder in his hands, Wensleydale nodded, smiling back. “I’m now officially registered in Law School.”
There was a shocked silence, until Pepper voiced the general amazement. “What do you mean, law? What about accountancy?”
Wensleydale blinked owlishly at Pepper and went pale. “I… I completely forgot about accountancy.”
“How is it even possible? Wensley, you’ve been talking our ears off about that business school for the past two years! You just went to London specifically to enrol in it!”
He fell onto Pepper’s bed. “I don’t know… I walked past the law school and it had the scale symbol on the front that reminded me of…” Adam cringed internally. It had happened again. “Whatever it was, it didn’t make any sense… but it was like someone telling me it was the right thing to do.”
Pepper threw their hands up. “And you registered, just like that? Please! You never do anything on impulse!”
“I know.” Wensleydale whimpered, his head in his hands. “How am I goin’ to tell my parents?”
“I s’pose you can still unregister,” offered Brian.
“No! I mean, yes, I probably could but… what it said, it was right. I could be useful. More than if I spend my life summing columns of figures. I… I could help make laws to protect the whales. I could prosecute those evil companies misleading their customers, you know, like the Newtrition corporation that made my aunt sick when-“
“Who was right?” interrupted Pepper in the slow, cautious delivery one would use with an incoherent child or a delirious patient.
Wensleydale looked even more distressed. “The… the voice in my head.”
“Bro, that’s weird. Even for you,” said Brian to laugh it off, but without conviction, speaking way too worriedly and sitting way too close to Wensley, who leaned against him almost imperceptibly. Hey! For how long had they been hiding that?
“Oh my god! I must have a brain tumour or something,” whined Wensley, really losing it.
Okay. This time, it was going too far.
After all, those recollections, albeit fuzzy, elusive and fragmentary, had made them who they were: good people, still fighting with their own weapons, willing to help build a better world. Adam’s kind of people, then and now and forever.
More than those fleeting memories, what tormented them was their inability to pinpoint from where their strange visions and intrusive thoughts were coming. He may have underestimated them by thinking they couldn’t face the truth about what had happened. They were stronger than he’d given them credit for. Hopefully.
Adam took a deep breath. “For the love of... of Earth, Wensley, stop being such a drama queen. You don’t have a brain tumour, I swear.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can, ‘cos I know what made you act like that.” Three pairs of perplexed eyes were turned towards Adam. “I should have told you a long time ago. Actually, I shouldn’t have messed up your memories at all.” They all frowned. “I thought it would save a lot of trouble. I’m sorry. Anyway, it’d be better to not spread what I’m about to tell you, I think. Er. Pepper, you may want to sit down too.”
Pepper straightened up defiantly, their arms crossed.
“Okay. Please just hear me out and don’t cut me off.” Adam stared at his friends, one after the other, as if he would never see them again. “It’s going to be hard enough,” he muttered.
He told them everything. The End of the World. Angels. Demons. The Horsepersons and how they’d defeated them, together. And, his gaze avoiding Pepper’s, he told them who he really was. The riskiest thing he’d ever done, but he’d chosen to trust their reactions.
When he was done, his friends, speechless, exchanged puzzled looks. Then they burst out laughing.
“Holy cow! You’re a terrific actor!” said Brian, drying his eyes. “I almost swallowed it!”
“C’mon, the Antichrist, no less!” Pepper gave Adam a fond smile. “You and your imagination.”
Wensleydale’s laugh stopped short. “Of course! It’s all coming back to me now!” he exclaimed, a look of triumph on his face. “We played a game like that one summer. Don’t you remember?”
It didn’t take long for the other two to smile and nod.
“Yeah,” confirmed Brian. “How did I forget? We had lots of fun!”
As if that weren’t enough, Pepper added, “Of all the games you made up for us, that one was the most bizarre and mind-blowing!”
Astounded, Adam felt the need to take a seat himself. They were unbelievable. Human brains were absolutely, definitely, irremediably unbelievable.
“The scales must have reminded me of that game,” reasoned Wensleydale, “and all the things we wanted to fight for when we were kids. Remember, Pepper, you wanted to save the rainforest by depriving us of hamburgers.”
Pepper smiled nostalgically. “And you wanted to save the whales.”
“I can try. You know, I think I’m goin’ to enjoy studying law. Tons of stuff to read and memorise. And I’m pretty sure my parents will be okay. You were right, Adam, I was being dramatic. Thank you for the great story. I needed that.”
Well, that was something. And if it was enough to make them feel better…
“So, are we goin’ to the cinema or not?” urged Pepper, grabbing their jacket.
“I doubt the story will be as entertaining as Adam’s,” teased Brian, walking out into the hallway, right on Wensley’s heels. “You know,” he said over his shoulder as Adam followed him downstairs, “you should write it. Remember that book you wrote when we were, what, like nine… about the pirate detective? I’ve never enjoyed a book more.”
If his friends noticed Adam’s silence during the ride, they didn’t point it out.
Brian’s idea wasn’t half bad, actually. Quite brilliant, even. If people weren’t going to believe it was true anyway, Adam might as well write a book about the Armageddont. Something funny that would entertain his readers. And remind them it was always time to fight for the Earth. Tell them it could be saved, if everybody understood the importance of balance and worked together.
The more he thought about it, the more enthusiastic he got. He’d refused to mess around by fixing the world and imposing his will on everyone. But he could make people think about the sort of things they were doing to their planet. And they might make better choices.
When Pepper parked their father’s car close to the cinema, Adam had decided what he wanted to do with his life.
Stories would be his tools. Tools to mend the world. They were sort of like… Good Omens.
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Date: 2019-01-03 02:31 pm (UTC)