There was a stillness in the air. An almost unnatural stillness. He had heard—or maybe dreamt—an elephant’s trumpet. A harmless sound, usually. But he was propped on his elbow, heart beating fast, palms sweaty.
Insane, insane, you’re going insane, he muttered to himself. He figured he was experiencing something like menopause, and felt a sudden stab of pity for middle-aged women everywhere. Why the hell is it so hot? he wondered, rising to his feet. The woods were spacious, but the heat and darkness made him feel like he was cramped in a shoe box. And the silence…
Marco yelled. His voice echoed through the woods… bounced off the trees… faded in the distance. He just needed to hear something. Anything. He was beginning to feel dead. Maybe he was dead. Maybe this was purgatory. Or hell. In any case, his senses were under-stimulated. It reminded him of that ancient AssMachenstani method of torture he had learned about, where soldiers were locked inside a zero-gravity chamber and deprived of all sight, sound or touch, forced to float in nothingness for days.
Marco shrugged. His present condition was too similar for him to think of such torture without an uncomfortable empathic reaction.
He turned to stare at his “bed,” a crevice between two massive tree roots. Whatever had seemed comforting about it was gone. And then he thought of Lithuania again, and his insides tightened. He felt guilty. She had been driving the damned chopper, but he felt guilty.
Guilty for her death?
No. Not quite. Marco couldn’t quite place a finger on it. But he felt wrong, and what was making him feel wrong was the fact that Lithuania was dead. He was responsible… for something. Not her death—he knew better than to blame himself for a helicopter crash. But he was responsible for something. For not expressing something. For not sharing something with Lithuania.
That was it. He was responsible for never telling Lithuania how he felt. Chicken shit, he thought to himself, kicking at the dirt. He had never let her in; never told her what he thought of her; never told her how he felt. It was a feeling similar to that of cutting a movie right before the climax—of turning off the TV right before the murderer was revealed. A sense of incompleteness—of things left unresolved. It was a strange comparison, but that was more or less how Marco felt. Not to mention, the grief.
An uncomfortable feeling bubbled in Marco’s chest. He pushed it aside and blinked several times, walking in no particular direction. The heat was driving him crazy. The flashlight on his helmet had long since burned out. He was now navigating the darkness by virtue of his unnaturally enlarged pupils. And then he heard a rustling sound.
“Who’s there!” he called. He was too frazzled to feel panic. It was more like impatience, or anger. He pulled a blade from his belt and held it by his waist, standing completely still.
A crackling sound.
Marco’s eyes scanned the darkness, straining to penetrate the dark recesses between the trees. Suddenly, something sparkled, like a tiny, orange firefly, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Then there were two sparks. Then three. Slowly, the lights multiplied, coming, going, floating. It was beautiful—until one of the lights landed on Marco’s sleeve, leaving a singe mark.
Marco backed away from the light show, holding his knife up before him. He had seen enough crazy things since arriving at LusciousLocks to know that something, even something beautiful, was more likely dangerous than not. The entire forest was now aglow. If these things were flammable, he wouldn’t want to stick around much longer.
“You don’t want to be here,” said a woman’s voice. To Marco’s left emerged a woman from the darkness, dressed in something resembling black mist; Marco couldn’t tell if it was fabric, or some sort of controlled gas, but it moved with such an uncanny airiness, and it blended so easily with the darkness, that it could only be supernatural. Her raven hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, throwing her sharp chiseled features into high relief. Her angular eyebrows and coal-black eyes gave her expression an almost frightening severity, while her lips—full, glistening, and slightly ajar—endowed her severity with a disarming hint of sensuality.
“Who are—”
“Shut up. Get out. Go back to the City,” she said. Tiny sparks of flame were floating all around her. “We reveal ourselves tonight. You must be underground. Do you not obey the Common Mind?” Her voice was menacing.
Marco had no idea what she was talking about. The Common Mind? “I have a mission of my own,” he lied, furrowing his brow and feigning indignation. This woman clearly was not friendly. Marco turned his back to her and began walking away from the floating sparks, hoping the woman would just forget about him.
“You aren’t connected,” the woman said, her voice suddenly one of shock. Marco stopped and turned, gripping his knife tight. The woman’s eyes were wide—and suddenly, they were glowing bright red. “WHO ARE YOU?” she yelled, specks of orange light bursting from her fingertips and hair.
“I’m here to help your country,” Marco said, struggling to convey serenity. He couldn’t let this supernatural woman know he felt threatened.
“Don’t toy with me, idiot!” she roared. “You are Foggistani!” She raised her hands into the sky, shooting a stream of sparkling lights that soared into the air, then spiraled and darted straight for Marco. In a split second, Marco’s brain decided between fight or flight. He charged at the woman, brandishing his dagger as thousands of tiny flames clung to his body and set him aflame. He screamed, just as his knife plunged smoothly into the woman’s chest. They both crashed down upon the forest floor, a mess of fire and blood—and suddenly Marco’s body was no longer burning.
He jumped to his feet, brushed himself off, and looked at the bleeding woman on the floor. The hilt of Marco’s knife was protruding from below her left breast. He had pierced her heart.
“Fool,” she growled, gurgling blood. The sparks all around them were vanishing. “You can’t kill us.” She gasped—she was on her last dying breath. “We are AssMachenstan!” she roared, and suddenly her body exploded in a swirl of embers that spread like wildfire.
Crap, Marco thought, dashing wildly for the forest edge as the world around him turned bright white. The fire was spreading as if the forest were drenched in gasoline. “WE ARE ASSMACHENSTAN!” he heard the woman’s voice echoing all around him. Already trees were crashing down—the ancient, famed forests of LusciousLocks had, in a matter of seconds, turned into a raging inferno. Marco ran so fast he could have sworn he was flying—weaving his way through columns of torched trees and pillars of swirling flame.
And suddenly he was at the forest edge, collapsing down a steep hill of dry, red earth, sputtering dirt. He tumbled, rolled—fell flat on his face. He pushed himself up and looked behind him, heart racing. It was the most horrifying forest fire he had ever witnessed. The world around him was cast under a vicious red glow, and from the woods came the unearthly sound of wailing—screeching—death; an eerie chorus of high-pitched, dying creatures, shrieking at their sudden demise.
Marco took several steps backwards, his eyes so absorbed with the fiery horror that it took him several minutes to realize his ears were picking up on a distant chanting. Cheering. The voice of a multitude, clamoring in unison, “We are… We are…” We are what? Marco couldn’t quite distinguish what they were saying. He looked away from the woods and towards the world behind him—down the portion of the hill he hadn’t rolled down. In the distance was Green City, the capital of LusciousLocks, drenched in bright lights. The city looked alive—excited—almost festive. And everyone in it seemed to be chanting something…
It wasn’t until a jet of fiery light shot into the sky and began painting letters in the black clouds above that Marco understood what they were saying. The people of Green City… the roaring voice in the woods… and the letters in the sky all said one thing:
“WE ARE ASSMACHENSTAN”
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