Chapter Ninety-Nine: Mishaps, Perhaps
"So." Gino broke the silence, drumming a quiet rhythm on the steering wheel while driving home through the streets of Downingtown. "Um."
"We don't need to talk." Anna reclined in the passenger seat, gazing out the car window, watching the homes and small businesses and fast food places of Downingtown pass her by. "I'm not uncomfortable with silence."
"Well, I am, so let's gab." Gino clicked on a turn signal as he pulled up to a red light. "I know what you said about spontaneity and everything, but this is all very out of the blue."
"You're saying you know what I said about spontaneity, but this is all very spontaneous?" Anna allowed Gino a moment to soak up his juicy redundancy. "If this ever happens again, I'll be sure to book you in advance."
"C'mon, showing up unannounced at lacrosse practice was unusual, even for you." The red traffic light turned green, and Gino hit the gas, accelerating across the intersection. "Not gonna lie, I was a little weirded out."
"It was last minute." Anna's hands began to tremble again, and she furtively hid them in her sweatshirt pockets before Gino could see. "If you're not feeling it, you're more than welcome to give me a ride back home."
"If I'm not feeling it?" Gino scoffed. "Do you think I'm a corpse? Of course I'm feeling it."
"Are you sure?"
"You're hot and charismatic. It's a persuasive mix."
"Well, you get points for accuracy," remarked Anna. "You're pretty non-corpse-like, yourself."
"And charismatic?"
"Definitely non-corpse-like."
"Rude." Gino clicked on the turn signal again, turning onto Prospect Avenue, his home street.
"Rude, too, definitely."
"No, you're rude."
"Do you realize how uncharismatic it is to ask someone else to validate your charisma?"
Gino pulled up to the townhouse where he lived with his dad, parallel parking on the curb. "I guess you'll just have to enjoy my other attributes."
"We'll see," said Anna. "I'm certainly not here for your charisma."
Gino took the keys out of the ignition and opened his door, grabbing his backpack and stepping out of the car. "I could use the exercise, anyway, since you made me skip practice."
"I didn't make you do anything." Leaving her bike in the back seat, Anna shut the car door after climbing out, accompanying Gino to his front door. "You can choose to ignore your libido anytime you want. Just say the word, and I'll leave. Even when I'm in the middle of fucking your brains out."
"Well, that's that." Gino's pulse quickened as he fumbled around in his pocket for the house key. "Just put my brains back when we're done."
"Why, are they currently in use?"
Gwen and Cass flew together towards the edge of the afterlife.
The brilliant indigo light of Gwen's dream bubble diminished gradually, giving way to the eternal midnight void of the Furthest Ring.
Gwen glanced over her shoulder, hoping to glimpse the beach and rainbow sky, but all she could see was fading indigo light. "This is wild."
Cass breathed deeply, preparing for the exit. "Don't let go of my hand."
"What?"
"It's dark out there. You'll see. Don't let go."
The moment Gwen passed beyond the threshold of indigo light, her dream bubble popped, and darkness reigned supreme.
Cass and Gwen drifted alone through the silent endless void.
"Fuck. Fuck." Gwen could see nothing, not even her own hand in front of her eyes. "Even a lost astronaut isn't stuck in space forever. At least a lost astronaut gets to die eventually, and they get to die stargazing with zero light pollution. There are no stars here. And I can't die again, can I?"
"Try to relax," recommended Cass, closing her eyes and waiting for them to adjust to the darkness.
"But there's nothing." Gwen blinked several times, unable to differentiate between the darkness underneath her eyelids and the darkness beyond her eyelids. "There is literally nothing. How can I relax when there is literally nothing?"
"Give your night vision a chance to kick in."
"Night vision?!" Gwen's shallow breathing slid towards hyperventilation as she fought the feeling of drowning in the oppressive darkness. "Cass, this is the void between universes! We're way past night vision!"
"Gwen-"
"I'm gonna lose my mind, I'm gonna lose my fucking—"
"Gwen, look!" Cass squeezed Gwen's hand, giving Gwen a palpable reminder that she was not alone in the dark. "Do you see it?"
"There's nothing to…" Gwen's voice petered out as she spotted a glimmering point of light in the distance. "…light?"
Suspecting at first that it was a trick of her imagination, Gwen blinked several times, pinching herself, and when the distant glimmer did not go away, she welled up with inexpressible joy.
"Sweet motherfucking Athena!" screeched Gwen, rocketing forward towards the distant glimmer, dragging a startled Cass behind her. "That's LIGHT!"
"Oh god." Focused on little beyond the warm penetrating rhythm between her legs, and Gino's grip around her throat, Anna had no qualms about vocalizing her pleasure. "Fuck."
Straddled by Anna, Gino sat propped up by a mound of pillows against the headboard of his bed, pleasuring Anna with one hand while safely choking her with the other. "How are you doing?" he asked, trying to ignore the sweaty tangled strands of Anna's hair dangling in his face.
"Close," Anna replied between breaths. "Very close."
Gino carefully focused the pressure of his chokehold on the sides of Anna's neck, protecting her windpipe and slowing the flow of blood to her head. Even so, it never hurt to get confirmation. "Can you breathe okay?"
"Yeah." Grasping the headboard to support herself, Anna brushed her hair back behind her shoulders, much to Gino's relief.
This was so much better than getting drunk at Bell Tavern Park.
"Hair," commanded Anna, catching herself in the act of thinking about getting drunk. "Pull my hair again."
Gino released his chokehold and seized a handful of Anna's hair, close to her scalp, pulling firmly before she had the chance to take a full breath.
Blood rushed to Anna's brain from the chokehold's sudden release.
Gino rose abruptly from his mound of pillows, pushing Anna onto her back. Resuming, Gino tightened his grip on Anna's hair, whispering into her ear, "You're so fucking good."
"Ohh god." Anna's toes curled tightly as waves of ecstasy surged through her body. "All the gods, every god, every fucking pantheon, FUCK!"
Gino wondered if he was bleeding as Anna's fingernails dug deeply into his back. Only when Anna began to calm down did Gino dare ask, "My turn?"
Settling back into her body, Anna nodded wordlessly, surprised by how good Gino felt. Perhaps a little too good.
Alarm bells went off in Anna's mind, but they rang too late.
"Ahhh—" groaned Gino, surrendering to climax.
"Fuck. Seriously?" Anna's worries were immediately confirmed. "Don't you know how to keep a condom on?"
Gwen and Cass hurtled together towards the distant glimmer of light, holding hands to keep from losing each other in the dark void.
The distant glimmer drew nearer, and Gwen realized it was not a single light, but millions of lights twinkling from the surface of what appeared to be a small planet.
"Why Athena?" asked Cass, recovering from the disorientation of Gwen's sudden acceleration. "Why not Apollo?"
"Huh?"
"You saw light and invoked Athena," said Cass, "but Ancient Greece's resident light god was Apollo."
"Being in total darkness and seeing the light is more of an enlightenment thing. From ignorance's darkness comes wisdom's light. Athena would appreciate it." Once again, Gwen held her hand up to her eyes, and this time, much to her relief, she could barely make out the shapes of her fingers in the lessening dark. She turned to look at Cass, relieved to see her again. "Apollo's light is still very nice."
"We need more of it where we're going, along with Demeter's green thumb. Do you enjoy working with plants?"
"Glad to hear the afterlife has plants," remarked Gwen. "I've grown some flowers and herbs, but that's about it, unless you count reading copious amounts of articles on the internet as experience?"
"Anything helps. We're planting a harvest soon. It may be your afterlife, but everyone else still needs to eat."
The millions of lights illuminated almost the entire surface of the approaching planet, save for a single area, miles across, which remained dark. Gwen was now close enough to make out the shapes and contours of the city underneath the lights, recognizing the cobblestone streets and the overabundance of clock towers. Puzzled, she asked Cass, "Derse's moon is Our Home?"
"The new name was chosen at our first Public Conclave."
"How did it wind up way out here?"
"A battle broke out after you died," offered Cass, uneager to revisit traumatic memories of the Bloody Road and the Red Miles. "We won."
"What the fuck? Are the others okay? Gino can't have taken my death very well. How is he?"
Cass decided now was not the time to mention how she'd been forced to shoot Gino through the leg after he'd gone insane, turned into a mild Lovecraftian horror show, and attacked everyone. "I don't know," she replied, which was not a lie. "I haven't seen the others in a long time. I'm the only human company you'll have here, but I always feel lonelier when I think of myself as a human among non-humans. We're all just people."
"I really dig that, Cass, but I'm still struggling to understand why you left our friends behind."
"Our Home is more important than you realize."
As Cass and Gwen entered the Obsidian Moon's more immediate airspace, the city lights revealed surprise patches of green and brown dotting the otherwise gray-violet-black stone and brick cityscape. Much of the charred and pulverized debris, the carcasses of thousands of buildings destroyed by the Red Miles, had been cleared away, allowing widespread networks of newly vacant lots to be cultivated into micro-farms and community gardens.
Cass's initial awe quickly gave way to uneasiness as she realized most of the urban farms lay fallow.
Without warning, a huge portion of the city lost power, plunging nearly a fifth of the entire Obsidian Moon, Cass and Gwen included, into sudden darkness.
"What the fuck?!" Gwen squeezed Cass's hand, no longer able to see, gripped once again by her fear of the void. "What the fucking fuck?! Please no."
Leading Gwen in a gradual descent, Cass stared numbly down at the darkened city below.
Long seconds blurred into epochal minutes, and still the lights did not come back.
Cass's mind began to spin as she weighed the consequences of the blackout. How could there be a harvest without light? How could there be life without light?
Fortunately for Cass, before her anxiety was given time to intensify into a panic attack, the thousands of failed city lights snapped back on, flickering for several agonizing moments before finally stabilizing. For the time being.
"Fuuuuck." Gwen released the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "Thank you. Fucking thank you. God fucking damn it."
Cass recognized Duskfall District far below, near the Obsidian Moon's dark area. Greenflame Plaza appeared deserted, and it troubled Cass that she could no longer see green fire burning from the top of the plaza's central obelisk.
Spotting the brightest lights of the neighboring Umbra District, further in the distance, Cass and Gwen accelerated their shared descent towards Royal House Square.
"So why did the power go out?" asked Gwen, synchronizing with Cass's velocity. "Please tell me that's not normal."
"It's not." Cass frowned, hearing the clamor of many distant yelling voices coming from Royal House Square. "The lights weren't failing when I left. Those farms weren't here, either."
Cass and Gwen neared Royal House Square, slowing gradually to a halt as the source of all the clamoring voices came into view.
The Royal House appeared to be under siege.
"Is that a protest or a riot?" asked Gwen, hovering in the sky next to Cass.
Thousands of people filled Royal House Square, lending their voices to the collective uproar. One Dersite spoke directly to the energetic crowd while several others pounded with their fists upon the sealed doors of the Royal House. With each new call and response, the crowd's anger only seemed to intensify, spurring many in the crowd to pelt the Royal House's windows with rocks, bricks, and clods of soil.
"Unclear." Cass's frown deepened as she surveyed the sorry state of the Royal Gardens, unable to see any of Iris's roses. She began to drift forward through the sky, closer to the activity in the square below, gesturing for Gwen to follow.
"Doesn't look like much has changed." Gwen observed, wincing as one of the Royal House's windows shattered. "Didn't you say we won the battle? What else is there for the Veteran to protest?"
"The Veteran isn't here." Drawing nearer to the Royal House, Cass realized she recognized the voice of the Dersite speaking to the crowd as that of Elunes, the commando-turned-librarian who'd volunteered to carry out the census. "I have no idea what this is."
"Do Atrex and his degenerate followers honestly think that if they lock us out of Conclave, the threats to our survival will melt away?!" Elunes asked the crowd. "They want us to calm down! They want us to return home! They want us to give up and be quiet so they can continue hoarding our food! Should we give them what they want?!"
"NO!" thundered the crowd.
"What should we give them instead?!"
As the crowd roared a cacophonous mixed response, calling for a wide variety of simple and complex punishments, Elunes began to hear cries of "The Sylph returns!" and "The Witch lives!" Many in the crowd pointed up at the sky, and a few even fell to their knees in reverence.
Disconcerted by the crowd's jumbled response and the kneeling, Elunes looked up, wondering if she was dreaming when she saw Cass and Gwen hovering in the sky.
Cass took the lead, descending the final few dozen feet to the ground before saying, "We're not royalty," to the handful of kneeling Dersites. "Stand up."
Gwen came in for her own landing, and the crowd immediately pressed in, inundating her with questions about how she had returned to life, as well as what she had experienced on the other side.
Cass left the crowd to Gwen, turning around to confront Elunes. "Well? Why are you inciting a large crowd to violence?"
"You have missed a great deal, Sylph."
"Clearly."
"Is that all you have to say?" Elunes glared at Cass. "After the first year of your disappearance, most of us stopped believing you would ever return."
"First year?" Cass felt a little weak-kneed. "How long was I gone?"
"You left nearly six years ago."
"Aw, fucking shit. Oh god." Gino pulled out of Anna, picking up his empty condom. "Fuck."
"It got everywhere," Anna complained, inspecting herself. "God fucking damn it, Gino, are you trying to become a father?"
"It fucking fell off!" Gino exclaimed. "It was an accident. My bad."
"Your bad?" Anna climbed out of Gino's bed. "You shitwit." Opening the bedroom door, Anna walked across the basement to Gino's bathroom, surprised by the Saturday morning sunlight shining in through the small window wells. How was it morning already? "It'll be your fucking kid if you don't give me fifty bucks, like, right the fuck now."
"Huh?"
"Fifty dollars!" Anna closed the bathroom door. "Do you think Plan B buys itself? Do you think there are contraception orchards where free Plan B grows on the fucking trees?"
"Oh… Um. No?"
As she approached the toilet, Anna tripped over a book lying on the floor and nearly fell flat on her face, saving herself only by grabbing the nearby towel rack. "Jesus fucksucking Christ!" Glaring at the book, Anna sat on the toilet and started to pee. "Why the fuck is Slaughterhouse V on your bathroom floor?"
"It's good bathroom reading!" hollered Gino from his bedroom. "I mean, like, when I'm taking a shit, I can flip to any page, and it doesn't matter which page, because it's Slaughterhouse V. I'm reading it like a fuckin' Tralfamadorian."
"That's not how Tralfamadorians read. Tralfamadorians read all the words in a book at the same time." Tearing off a sizable clump of toilet paper, Anna cleaned herself up as quickly as she could from Gino's messy accident. "Why can you marginally comprehend Kurt Vonnegut's mad scramble to share his Dresden firebombing experiences, but condoms are too difficult to understand? Do you have any idea how shitty Plan B's side effects make me feel?" Anna flushed the toilet, stood up, and washed her hands at the sink. "I'm going to feel like a Nile River of shit because of you."
"It was an accident. I'm sorry."
For her trouble, as she exited the bathroom, Anna picked up Slaughterhouse V and stashed it in her sylladex. Walking back across the basement, Anna returned to Gino's bedroom, finding Gino exactly where she'd left him on the bed. "C'mon, let's go." Anna picked her underwear up from the floor, getting dressed. "I need a ride home."
"Like, right this second?" Gino rolled onto his stomach, yawning. "Can we try again before you go?"
"Oh my god, you literally have no idea how to read a room." Anna looked about the room for her shirt and pants, spotting them over by the door, next to Gino's shirt. She grabbed Gino's shirt first, tossing it at him. "Where's that fifty bucks?"
"Top drawer," said Gino, pointing at his dresser. "Look, I'm really sorry, okay?"
"I mean, it's good you're capable of basic empathy, but nothing you say will unfuck me." Anna opened the dresser's top drawer, grabbing Gino's wallet and taking sixty dollars cash. "Just take me home."