It was another sleepless night for Roger, as he relived the memory over and over in his mind. He could almost smell the summer air and feel the cloth of his mother's dress. It stood out in such stark contrast to all the other fragmented cels he had experienced… the barcode, the eye.
He turned onto his back, finding it difficult to breathe with his face stuffed into a pillow. He also discovered, when he took his face out of the soft clutches of the pillow, that his face was wet.
Have I been crying again?
He sighed and began to try and situate himself for sleep again, turning the damp pillow onto the other side. It took nearly an hour for him to get comfortable, and even then he found he couldn't clear his mind. Thoughts kept drifting across it as if they were in the ocean, just waiting for him to fish them out. Problem was that tonight he really didn't feel like pondering the innermost workings of the world OR of his mind – he just wanted to go to sleep.
He knew somewhere inside him that going to see Dorothy wouldn't help too much – she was in that room, where his mother had lived, and even if she hadn't been, Dorothy was always something that Roger was thinking about. Not intentionally, of course, but someplace inside him he had a vague feeling that there was something more to Dorothy than he could see. Something that nobody could touch…
Knowing that he wouldn't get any more sleep tonight, he roused himself out of bed, turned off the alarm, and started to walk down the halls.
If somebody were to walk by right about now, they'd think the house was haunted… he thought, imagining a tall, paler-than-natural man walking down the hall at midnight. Not that it was too far-fetched an idea.
As he walked down the expansive halls of the mansion, he noticed that there were doors all over – doors he had never walked through to the best of his recollection He vaguely wondered why, and found himself walking through one of said doors.
The room that he entered wasn't particularly something he deemed necessary in the household, but he found himself eager to explore it nonetheless. The room was filled with art – sitting on easels, thrown in piles on the floor, stuck under enormous jars of paint. Some of the paintings were only half-finished before having been tossed aside to make room for some new endeavor, and you could see the rough pencil outlines jutting through the latter half of the painting.
Being careful to not disturb a single work of art, Roger turned to the "newest" work – the one sitting on a large easel with a palette sitting down by it. It looked as though the artist had abandoned her painting suddenly, and intended to come back – jars of paint were still open, brushes remained unclean. It was a floral painting, or the garden Roger had seen in his memories, and so he knew it must have existed once. But instead of focusing on the brilliant colors of the flowers, the picture seemed… lonely… somehow. He looked to the center, where the picture remained at an outline. He could see a single figure… in a dress… bowing her head with he hands clasped in front of her. He saw the roughly painted flowers droop as they turned toward her, and Roger decided it wasn't too far out to presume that the woman was wearing black.
He, of course, knew that the woman who had done these many works of art was his mother, but he felt more detached from this than from the photographs. Occasionally there was a picture with him in it, but never anything like the one…
Darkness.
Blood.
Fear.
…I was… there?
A barcode, an eye… a painting…
What is it I'm not seeing?
What is this leading to?
He curled up on the floor, next to the easel. Another sleepless night…
-_-
There had always been one strange building in Paradigm, a place where people went but didn't know why. They went there, and knelt beneath its quavering structure, and sang. They would gather all at once, whenever they felt they were called. No one knew why they were there.
Roger was there. He didn't know why either. He looked over to the people in their best clothes, huddled up against the snowstorm under the half-gone roof, singing, and wondered if they were crazy. One of the men walked over to him. "Bless you, sir," he said, "But don't you wish to get out of the cold? Come join us, sir, in our celebration!"
Roger stared at the man and gently pried his hand off of the suit's black sleeve. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm waiting for someone." He smiled cordially, the man nodded, and walked back to the building, still singing.
Roger looked behind him, considering taking the man up on his offer, but by the time he'd turned around the man was gone, and the people were too, as though they never had been there. The only thing he saw was a corrupted skyscraper, and a single figure leaning against the wall…
He bolted over, running as though he never had before, but the building seemed to get further and further, and finally it collapsed. He let out one wild yell and threw himself at the structure, digging through the rubble for whoever had been in there. Clearing away the dirt, he was able to make out a strand of auburn hair, a pale white face… a hand…
She smiled, and grasped his hand in her own.
"This phoenix rises from the ground… and all these wars are over…"
He voice was quiet, but she smiled, even through the rasp and the darkness that was overtaking her. Roger could see her blood – red, like life itself – spreading out through the stones.
"…over…"
She gave his hand a single squeeze, then her grip loosened, and she grew cold. He could feel his eyes filling with tears, but he brushed them away before they had a chance to fall. He concentrated his whole being on lifting her from the ruins of the building, and carrying her someplace he knew she'd be safe.
The man.
The people….
The… church…
He trudged through the snow and the sleet, not even feeling the cold as it numbed his body. He barely took a passing glance at the cars, buildings, and homes marked with those insane red accusations… not guilty…
No, he wasn't guilty, but he very much doubted he was cast in the name of whatever-it-was. He averted his face from the mansion that had once been his home as he walked across town, a deadened man carrying his final load.
He reached the collapsing building… the church, he remembered it was called, long ago… and nodded at the man who had earlier asked for him to join them. He went up to an odd kind of table at one end of the building and laid her down there, brushing the last few strands of fiery hair out of her face, and kneeling down at the spot. The people came over to him, singing a song he'd never heard before, but one he knew. The old man put his hand on Roger's shoulder, in some gesture of comfort. The tears fell unbidden down Roger's face, and he found himself singing with the rest of them. He couldn't recall how he knew the words or what they meant, but they filled his heart, and so he sang.
The old man walked up to the other side of the table, and began to talk.
"Lord, bless this girl as she ascends into your holy realm. Accept her soul and give unto her your eternal love. Also, bless this man who kneels before you, and forgive him for his sins, for this world has enough of a burden on him already."
He turned his face down to Roger, who had stopped singing, finding he suddenly had no voice.
"You know what you must do. I will bury her… if you don't come back."
Roger nodded and rose to his feet. "Thank you, Father…" he whispered, and headed out the door.
The laughter rang in his ears, guiding him. He reached it – the room in his mother's painting, without remembering his way there. She was there. He drew his hand from inside his pocket and summoned the cursed machine… for once and for all…
And she shot her gun. It hit him, and though the pain threatened to steal every sense from his body, he smiled.
"All these wars are… over…"
-_-
"Another sleepless night, Roger…?"
He stirred, hearing a voice call to him. His eyes flickered open, and Dorothy was standing above him, dressed in her typical black maid's suit.
"…not really… but it may has well have been for how I feel."
He lifted himself to his feet and followed her groggily down the stairs.
"How did you know where I was?"
She turned to face him, and for a moment he thought he caught a glimpse of light in her eyes, but he wasn't sure.
"I thought you may have gone in there. I've… found my way there… before, as well. Did you see the Phoenix?"
"No," he answered, to tired to question what in the hell the Phoenix was.
As they sat down to breakfast – the usual eggs and toast – he turned his head to the window, filling the kitchen with artificial light.
And he heard them singing.