Who is The Hollander?
21.5.04
It was almost noon when I awoke. I could smell Kyrla's perfume in the air as my eyes snapped open in a timeless moment of wonder.
"Where the hell... ?" I felt lost and confused, there was a thin and distorting sheet draped between me and the rest of the world. But there was a tear in the sheet, a tiny tear... and it was getting bigger. "NO!" I shouted out loud. My hands raced to pin the tear together but I was too late, the hole was growing too fast, and through it, I saw her. I saw her!
"No! This isn't right! This isn't my life!" But the yelling was useless, clawing at the sheet was useless - it was immaterial, but I knew at that moment that few such things are unable to affect us.
The urge to scream came from somewhere within the pit of my stomach. The fear and realization within me rose through my body in a slow crescendo as the butterflies which normally contained themselves to my lower regions rose in rebellion, their bodies growing and wings expanding in their exodus. First they crawled, then they flew, their wings beating away layers of flesh from within me as they ripped and tore their way to the mouth - my mouth, their freedom.
As the sheet before me tore itself asunder from the inside out, the agony within fought to reach the outside world. "No," I muttered. "Please Gods, no! NooooOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" The tear became larger than the sheet, the butterflies gushed forth in waves of agony, misery, and pain. The world spun and I collapsed as the fabric of the world around me exploded and shattered into chemicals, molecules, atoms, and nothingness.
Beranice left the Patisserie at a brisk pace, her bundle of bread under one arm, and her bundle of joy under the other. Jean was just 3 months old, capable of crying through the entire night and waking refreshed and ready for more in the morning as his mother roused herself groggily out of bed to fix breakfast for herself and her husband.
They hadn't much to live on, but it was amazing how far you could stretch a single piece of bread if need be. Crumbs became sacrosanct, and butter ... well, who are we kidding, that had run out weeks ago. But still it was not so bad really - they were making ends meet, and the Lord knows of the suffering in Paris. Yes, the Lord mon Dieu knows, and he will surely do what he can to lessen the suffering of his children. Won't he? Pere Auremon's sermon last week was testament wasn't it? Beranice thought so.
As she hurried home, Beranice pulled Jean closer to her body. There was something wrong with the air, it seemed to be getting thicker around her, coalescing into a kind of soup. Damn, she had forgotten the potatoes for the soup! But she would not turn around - there was something wrong, something in the air. Two blocks, left, one block, right, and home. "Non," she moaned. She was afraid, deathly afraid. She started to run, dropping the bread and pulling Jean to her with both arms.
She had reached Rue de L'Iglese and turned in stride to the left. "Un quartier," she muttered "seulement un quartier!" As she sprinted across the cobblestones in a mad dash to the corner, she spoke again, for the last time. "Mes Dieus, non! No-"
Jean's mother turned as she fell, pinning him to her chest with cold, rigid fingers. Jean began to cry.
Herr Gunther had reached his fiftieth birthday with little ado. He was not a man of celebration, frivolity, or anything else these boisterous youngsters seemed to enjoy so much. Anyone younger than he was a youngster to Gunther, them and a few of those inarticulate fools which had the audacity to think that they were older and wiser than he. In truth, everyone was a youngster to Gunther, and nothing but fools the lot of them.
As he crossed the street to the apothecary (Gunther had a penchant for sleeping potions) he was bitterly aware of the chariot careening down the cobblestones toward him. Young fools were always in a hurry, but they always stopped if you stared them down long enough, this young fool would be no different.
Gunther did not feel the air thicken. Gunther did not hear or speak the phantom words. Gunther only stood there, in the middle of the street. The young man driving the chariot, however, had felt, heard, and spoken everything. Just before the horses knocked him to the ground, and the buggy's wheels crushed his old, frail body, Gunther became convinced that the man driving must be drunk. Celebration and frivolity - bah! The world would soon end if these youngsters- but the thought was cut off and Gunther's body rolled slowly from side to side as it settled on the ground. The speed of the impact and the fright of the horses soon toppled the buggy, setting the blinded beasts free. The two dead men lay in the street.
A man named Khan had been celebrating long and hard following his most recent victory, a pair of beautiful slaves who had refused his orders. Even such small victories were victories nonetheless. One of the girls had managed to smack him in the face with the back of her hand before her spirit, and body, were broken with a few swings from a nearby club.
As his hand reached up to wipe a trickle of blood away from his nose, his body felt enclosed, trapped, claustrophobic. Khan started muttering the words as he collapsed to the ground, face to face with what was left of slave girl number two. The irony did not escape him as his lips finished the helpless plea to the Gods, and the pained screaming in his body and mind became an eternal silence.
Johnathan Spooner collapsed in his office, his secretary discovering the body only when he had not answered the intercom for five minutes straight, by then the drool had started to dry on his desk calendar.
The slave Ishar had escaped his masters and walked through countless nights and endless dunes to reach the small town where it was said that a great man lived. A prophet, healer, some even said messiah. When the words overcame him, Ishar became sure that it was all just a dream, a mirage brought on by the heat, and dryness. He would have died anyway, this just went faster.
Brnyvk collapsed in his Lord's fields.
Susan Tanner slammed into a freeway wall and caused a 7-car pileup across two lanes.
Theoneses' body spun and cartwheeled down the steps of the senate building, landing on a fruit stand and its shocked proprietor.
The tear grown and the shards flung, time stopped, the innocent man hung.
The beginning of the end came for me, and when it found me, I was reborn. The ripple had torn all the way through me, through time, and through all the worlds, and that's just one of those things you can't do a lick about.
-H
