The Hecate Cycle
Disclaimer: Fan Fiction Inspired by the film The Matrix by Larry and Andy Wachowski © Warner Bros. Entertainment (1999). The Ghost in the Machine and The Hecate Cycle © oqidaun / M.L. Nicholson (2002)
Credits: Opening lyrics from Sin (Nine Inch Nails, Halo Four)
Ratings:
± Complete work: R for Language and Violence.
± Chapter One: PG for Mild Violence.
Cycle I: Sacrilege Chapter 1 The Path to ErebusYou give me the reason
You give me control
I gave you my purity
My Purity you stole
Cloth soled shoes scuffed across the uneven tiles. Her old fingers carefully folded the patterned paper napkins diagonally and placed them under each fork. Napkins were always folded diagonally for dinner, square at lunch if folded at all, but dinner was special. The oven timer rang and the old feet scuffed towards the unreliable appliance to reset the timer for another twelve minutes. A car backfired in the street and she hurried to the window to scold her dogs before the barking began. The weather segment of the news cued up with a poorly sampled outtake of Vivaldi and the woman in the orange housecoat hustled into the living room.
The boy in front of her bought seven packages of hotdogs and only two bags of buns. Where was the logic there? The tabloids predicted that it would be the coldest winter on record and the oceans would freeze, three months before the same tabloids predicted that the summer would be the hottest on record and the oceans would catch fire. She put the plastic basket on the conveyor belt and pulled the most ridiculous of the tabloids off the rack for closer inspection. The hot dog boy was paying in change and government vouchers, a maneuver well beyond the sales clerk's retail abilities. Two boys dressed in baggy jeans and dirty white tank tops hovered around the exit. She noted the blue bandanas tied low across their brows and the DIY green tattoos covering their bare arms. Loud music thumped outside as a predatory car circled the building.
"Excuse me." An arm brushed past her and seized a copy of TV Guide off the rack. She recognized him from the frozen food aisle and watched him thumb through the pages, locate his program and put the magazine back on the shelf.
"Cost effective approach to viewing you have there." The sales clerk paged the manager and the digital screen flashed 'Invalid Tender Code' viscously.
"The programming never really changes. On occasion there's a breaking news story to upset the order of things, but the system compensates and everything gets covered up. We go back to watching Leave it to Beaver reruns and the apathy returns."
"So what were you looking up?"
"When Leave it to Beaver will be on tomorrow."
The smell of burnt lasagna woke her and she rushed across the dark room into the kitchen, grabbing her plaid oven mitts and yanking the door open. Quickly she set the glass-baking dish on the stove and pulled back the aluminum foil. "God damn oven!" Angrily, she twisted the dial to the off position and kneed the door to get the light to go out. She looked over her shoulder at the plastic crucifix staring down at her. "Forgive me," the old woman made a cross of her thumb and index finger and kissed it. "Is the lasagna worth it?" A sigh escaped her as she poked the burnt cheese and tomato sauce with the spatula. "I know, I know. Today it is the lasagna and tomorrow it'll be the oven. The next day it'll be the cursed apartment and the day after I'll be a young woman on a beach in Sicily with suitors lined up and no cataracts." She took put the aluminum foil back and uncorked the cheap bottle of Chianti. "It is tempting though," she pulled an old vinyl chair across the floor and sat down with her glass of wine. "What kind of example would I be setting? Of course what kind of example is this place? We've got rats, you know?" The dogs scratched at the back door.
The black car parked in front of Food Town vibrated from the bass and its occupants sat out next to it on the curb. Ten eager eyes watched her move through the automatic doors carrying two plastic sacks. Her keys were at the ready in her fist and she did not prolong eye contact with the young men. She hurried across the parking lot. The sun was setting and a thick shadow descended between the vehicles.
"Yo, yo, Prom Queen!" A voice called out behind her. "Where's your pom-poms?" She stopped.
"Up your ass, Hector!" She rolled her eyes and turned around. "Stop casing Food Town. This sorry ass place gets robbed one more time and they'll shut it down for good."
"We ain't casing nothing, Sephi, 'cept you."
"How romantic! I forgot how charming you and your dropout homies are. Get me some roses and expensive perfume and we'll talk, but this supermarket stalking doesn't cut it."
The screen door needed some WD-40 on its hinges to keep everyone on the block from knowing how many times she let the dogs in and out. "Leo and Equus, you want inside when you're outside and outside when you're inside. You have the consistency of the tides." She stopped and looked out into the evening as the dogs raced by her. Diana Mundi's eyes strayed to her faded gold tone Timex. Backing into the house she latched the screen and pushed the wooden door shut turning the first deadbolt immediately.
"You dropped this," the voice appeared behind her.
"What?" She turned and looked down at the coins in the stranger's hand. "Those aren't mine." Blindly, she pushed the keys into the door lock.
"People don't drop gold coins everyday. Of course they're yours."
"No they're not." Her hand gripped the handle of the jeep's door and she put her foot on the running board. He moved a step closer.
"Look, any minute my friends are going to come over here we're all headed out—"
"I don't think they are. Why don't you take your coins? It's all I offer."
"I don't want them," she thought about screaming.
"But you're going to need them," he jingled the old coins in his palm and raised it.
"What for?" She had the door partially open and the grocery bags between her and his body.
"To pay the ferryman." Suddenly, he shoved the hand with the coins under her nose. She flinched and stepped backwards into the door. His hand slammed her head into the glass.
* * *
The setting sun traced anemic stripes through the peach colored clouds and there was no threat of rain. A scalding Saturday afternoon receded into a warm August night. The boardwalk swarmed with scantily clad bodies milling about idly to a cacophony music ranging from industrial to folk. As the daylight waned the shops opened and the crowds bled in to buy vintage clothing, books, frozen Daiquiris and records or indulge in the ritual of body piercings and tattoos. The fleshy crowd consisted of conformists looking for adventure, misfits seeking anonymity, angst ridden teenagers whose parents thought they were somewhere else, disillusioned parents who hoped they wouldn't run into their children, working class skinheads, Ivy League yuppies, predators and prey. It was an amalgamation of humanity.
Defying the steady flow of bodies up and down the boardwalk, she stood in the middle of the walkway as an immoveable sentinel. Despite the heat she wore a long skirt, black leather jacket, and heavy soled boots. The crowds surged around her, but no one paid attention to the pale creature for fear they would see themselves reflected in the dark glasses. The dancing bears and somersaulting clowns made oblivious circles around their ringmaster.
A smug smile settled on her lips and she began to cut through the crowd. The mob thinned as she neared the fishing piers and commercial wharves. The small bright-eyed creature became little more than a indistinguishable shadow floating along the water's edge. Even as she grew ephemeral her step remained purposeful and focused.
Forty minutes later she was curled up on the end of the peacock-patterned couch at the Bean Tree drinking espresso and reading a well-worn copy of Paradise Lost that someone had left behind. She kept her satchel close and her headphones hung around her neck. The barista brought her another demitasse and sat down on the arm of the couch.
"Kai, tonight you are alone?" He was Moroccan and spoke broken English with a thick French accent. She called him Camus as she had finished reading The Plague the day she noticed him. His real name failed to concern her.
"I am."
"The boy is gone?" He twisted the end of his white linen apron and stared at the Turkish rug.
"Boy?" The book lowered.
"The one…uh, he come with you sometime?"
"Oh, right, Toby." She raised the book. "We had a bit of a falling out and he won't be back." Coolly, she gestured to the herd of patrons lining up at the counter. "Thanks for the espresso, Camus."
The thin man sitting at the other end of the couch looked up from his newspaper and cleared his throat. "I think he likes you."
Her eyes remained on the page, "That's not in his best interests, Alsace."
* * *
Rosy-fingered dawn struggled to tear her way through the boards nailed across the empty windows of the abandoned hanger. Heavy chalk colored tarpaulins draped the remains of broken fuselages, engines and wings. The gray illumination from the shattered skylights cast narrow shadows across the ghostly carcass of the fallen angel. The Capital Airlines DC-10's broken pieces were meticulously labeled and arranged on the hanger floor in a gruesome semblance of its former glory. Some sections were less molested from the flames and complications of a 6,000 foot freefall than others, the slightly charred seats near the tail attesting to an undisclosed perk of flying coach. Exactly three years to the date, 13 August, the FAA investigation had ended inconclusively.
"You want to do it here?" He whispered.
"My little Eros, I didn't think you would be so picky. Come now, we'll join the 'Mile High Club' the easy way." A firm hand rested on his shoulder and the sound of four crisp twenty-dollar bills unfolding filled his ears.
"No worries, buddy, as long as you've got the cash I don't care if you want to do it in the middle of the friggin' K-Mart parking lot. You know I ain't ever been on a plane. We gonna go first class?"
Silence descended and a cloud passed in front of the sunrise. A thick layer of white dust slept on the forgotten mechanical morgue.
"Tell me Eros, do you believe in genetic evil?"