PART ONE
catalyst
featuring:
a sunset—a sunrise—stolen strawberries—the girl with yellow hair—
capture the flag—a forgotten father—dark poetry—and a pen
A SUNSET
That is how our story begins:
A parchment sky burnt at the edges, its corners curling inwards. The sun a heap of dying embers. A spectrum of matchstick pinks to singed golds, and an undertone of darkness like smoke beneath a curtain. Ten more minutes and nighttime would fall, charred and ashy.
Poetic, isn't it? —beginning with an ending.
I appreciate those kinds of things.
/
A woman was sprawled on the sidewalk.
If you want to get metaphorical again, she was yet another candle, stifled beneath a smoky sky. Her blood pooled the pavement. Melting. Dribbling. Like liquid wax.
/
✸ ✸ ✸ A COMMON MISCONCEPTION ✸ ✸ ✸
People often associate death with the color black.
I disagree.
It is, much more often, red.
/
I arrived perfectly on time, just as her flame flickered out completely. Her soul was mercurial in my arms. I almost left, as I always do, to bring her away. That's my job.
But something gave me pause. Two things, really.
One: Her soul was mercurial in my arms: warm and light, but not insubstantial. It was oddly, strikingly blue.
Two: Unlike most people, she was sitting up. But she wasn't waiting for me.
/
A few blocks away, her son was doing homework.
He did this every night. Or, at least, he tried to.
The dyslexia—and his stepfather—made things difficult.
/
✸ ✸ ✸ WHAT HAPPENED WHEN ✸ ✸ ✸
GABE UGLIANO WALKED INTO A ROOM
1. Everything took on the stink of alcohol.
2. A few items (vases, books, etc.) were pushed
to the floor. This was usually accidental:
a byproduct of Gabe's inebriated state.
3. A dumb, slurred statement.
4. Anger. Shouting.
5. If unprovoked, he would leave.
/
Gabe was built like a walrus: fat and strong. People didn't provoke him often.
He entered the boy's bedroom just as the sunlight was starting to diminish. The boy, Percy, pushed down his own anger and let the words fly over his head. Swears shattered on the wall. Shards of indignance rattled in the carpet. One piece—a splinter of insult—sliced across his face.
But then Percy's stepfather left, as he always did eventually.
That night, it was his mother who never returned.
/
"Is this the home of Sally Jackson?"
The police officer standing on the doorstep was hard and flat, like steel. He squinted inside the apartment disinterestedly, gray-brown eyes taking in the scrawny figure of the boy.
"I'm her son," said the boy. "Why?"
/
Later, Percy would recall that he always knew something was wrong.
There was nothing logical to it. His mom had gone on a shopping trip for groceries. "I might not be home until dark," she had said. So when the sun began to set and she still wasn't home, there was no reason to worry.
But Percy was worried, which was rather obvious when you looked at him: pencil spinning, eyes moving restlessly and uncomprehendingly over the pages of his book. Even the ADHD couldn't explain his heartbeat, which thrummed anxiously in his chest.
On some deeper level, Percy knew that his mom was in trouble. In some unfathomable, inarticulable way, he knew, even before that first person found her, screamed, and called the police. Before the crowd formed, as crowds do, attracted to tragedy as flies to honey. Suppressed. Loud. Their shadows shuddered and their voices rose, a stifled murmur, a shameful cloud. It coagulated against the sunset, and Percy just knew.
Human intuition—so often right, so rarely listened to.
It fascinates me.
/
There are few humans who I take special interest in.
Most pass by in a brief glimpse of color, acknowledged by an eclipse, quickly forgotten by sunrise. Billions of souls—how could I afford to get to know each one? I do my job with efficiency, and I reap my souls impartially.
Every so often, someone gives me pause. It's hard to place what makes them special. For Percy Jackson, it might have been his unique parentage; his father is, after all, closely related to my employer. And his other uncle, well, anyone would die to have a connection with the king of the gods. It would be safe, logical, to say that Percy's family is what made me notice him.
Perhaps it was.
But I don't think so.