.13. The worst nightmare of Phillip Bright
Faerie are neither beautiful nor friendly. Faerie have big, slanting eyes, and slim bodies, and fragile silvery wings, glistening in moonbeams, but those are the only good things one can say about them. Because faerie have teeth as sharp as daggers in their cynically twisted mouth; the elves are not coming to take you to a fairyland – they are coming to kill you. Faerie know an old magic; which may well not be any magic after all, but some kind of an ancient science. That magic can leave you gobsmacked, enchanted with beauty, dazzled by music, lifted high above ground, sure; but a moment later it will almost certainly kill you in an elaborate, refined and cruel way.
Gold memorised all those truths within barely fifteen minutes from the moment he had found rose petals in dead Doug's mouth. During that time he found out exactly what faerie could do to two teenage girls, a plump mum and a man in his prime. How easily and perversely they could murder them. And then they turned towards Ace...
Pushing Corrie into a corner behind the bed; protecting her with his own body; Gold screamed helplessly when elves got to his friend. He was looking around feverishly, searching for a weapon – any weapon – but of course he did not find it in the School, in the toadstool house, in the underage chick's fable. Corrie grabbed his coat, preventing him from running towards Ace. Gold hated her for doing that, and at the same time he was almost grateful. Elves pressed Ace to the floor. With his arms spread and legs pinned, he fought desperately when they were squeezing his neck with their long fingers, pinching his nose, covering his eyes. And when he finally opened his mouth to scream, a slim arm dove down his throat, pushing rose petals deep, deep into his lungs – contracted with fear and screaming for breath.
When Ace stopped moving, all the elves, as if led by a common thought, turned their triangular faces towards Gold. The boy felt a sudden spasm inside his body; a chill touched his cheeks and forehead. Suddenly Gold was separated from the world, as if swept under a glass jar. He was going to die. In a brief moment he was going to cease to exist.
Elves started laughing, their voices ringing like crystal bells. They let go of Ace's limp body, flown up in the air, coming closer and closer... And then they scampered suddenly, diving past shattered window shutters, into the silvery darkness of the night. Silence drowned the flutter of their wings, the sound of wind catchers.
Gold took a breath that sounded like a sob and went down on his knees.
They did not kill him!
He crawled on all fours towards Ace's body. Rose petals. Bloody rose petals everywhere! He brushed them quickly off his friend's face and chest. Not that it meant anything anymore. He just didn't want to look at them. He didn't want to look at Ace as well. He didn't want to look at all.
"You didn't strain yourself, did you, bro?"
Corrie screamed and Gold jumped backwards, and landed painfully on his backside. Ace, still stretched on the floor, looked at him with semi-translucent eyes in a semi-translucent face.
"O..h!" Gold managed.
"You didn't even try; not much," Ace added. "I tried to figure out why, when they strangled me; you know, weird thoughts are flashing through your head when you're being strangled. For instance – why isn't my friend trying to help me? Why is he staring instead of acting? My best friend. Why? Why is he letting me die?"
"Oh, Ace..."
The blonde boy raised his hand to his eye level and looked at Gold through a barely corporeal flesh and bones.
"Why, brother?"
Gold shook his head, avoiding Ace's gaze.
"How many times we were adventuring together? Huh? Always together, the best mates, Ace and Gold, two of a kind! I thought I could trust you, bro. I never thought you wouldn't have balls big enough to tell me the truth. I thought you'd have... shit, have enough dignity to play with your cards on the table. But no... Genius Gold doesn't do that! Genius Gold cheated on everyone! Again, right?"
"I didn't... You're not..." Gold stammered.
"Was it so difficult to tell me I was just a projection?!" bellowed Ace, jumping up from the floor.
"You're just a projection," said Gold. His lips trembled. He slowly looked up at his friend towering above him. "You're a projection, Ace. I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry."
"Never mind that!" mocked Ace. "No biggie, don't mention it! For years I thought I was a flesh-and-blood boy, but here's a surprise Pinocchio! Wood, nothing but wood!"
Corrie crawled towards Gold and wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him desperately. He patted her shoulder airily.
"So, all these years, all these adventures, all I've ever done was... what... a computer program, a stream of codes?" Ace yelled. "My mum, my dad, my school, my games, my... my... life? That bloody mole I had to have removed when I was eight, and that splint I had to wear after I had fallen off the bike, and that holiday when we got lost in Elvright and community wardens had to take us back to the hotel... All of that is not mine?!"
"Ace..."
"And Brianne; cause you know, I kinda fancied her; didn't want to tell you; you wouldn't believe, you'd just laugh; so I didn't; but you knew anyway, seeing how I was just a stream of codes, right?"
"Ace, you are dead," said Gold.
"Apparently not enough; apparently your elves fucked their job..."
"Not now! You died before today! A year ago! Almost a year!" Gold shouted wildly. "You died, Ace! You had an accident and you died!"
Silence. Ace's semi-translucent eyes widened, his hands dropped down.
"I'm sorry," Gold murmured.
"I had an accident..." Ace said quietly. "But I was just... Oh, bugger!"
"They told me only after your funeral," whispered Gold. "I thought you went away with your parents. Didn't know a thing. I've been told two weeks later. I'm sorry."
"And my parents?"
Gold shook his head. He could feel Corrie's arms squeezing his ribs. He could feel something breaking free, leaking out like blood, leaving him empty and weak.
"What did you do, Gold?" asked Ace, his voice muffled with emotion. "What did you do?"
But for Corrie's grip, Gold would be already on the floor.
"I wanted to remember you," he whispered. "I didn't mean..."
"So you programmed me? You wrote an Ace character? You used me to write a bloody program? And all the time you pretended nothing was wrong? You bloody traitor!"
"I just... wanted it to be... like before..." Gold's forehead rested on the girl's shoulder. His eyes went blank, but he was still looking at friend's image, more and more solid when that golden something trickling out of Gold's body – or maybe out of his soul – was reinforcing it, making it real.
"You let me believe I had a future!" Ace shouted at him. "You lied to me! I hate you, Phillip! I HATE you!"
Gold just sighed quietly, sliding down in the girl's arms. His eyes rolled upwards, hiding under his eyelids.
"Gold?" Corrie shouted, trying to shake him. "Gold!"
"Hungry..." mumbled Ace, coming closer, an expression of manic craving on his face. "I'm hungry..."
He looked like a zombie from old movies now, and the girl would run away, but for unconscious Gold's body pinning her to the floor. Sobbing desperately, she looked up at the blonde boy. His eyes were changing, growing, slanting, and becoming darker. Fragile, glimmering wings opened up behind his shoulders. He reached out his hand, full of rose petals...
The blade pierced the left side of Ace's chest and slid across his body, until it left it just above the boy's hip. There was no blood, no scream nor any other sound of agony. Ace towered over Corrie a moment longer; petals raining from his fingers; and then he trembled, split into horizontal lines, vibrated and scattered into a cloud of pixels. Boudicca–Donna emerged from behind a curtain of swirling motes. She sighed heavily, looking down at Gold and Corrie; then she sheathed the bronze knife.
"I won't even ask," she said. Behind Boudicca–Donna there were maybe thirty people huddled up, taking in the shambles in the toadstool house with panicky eyes. Boudicca–Donna lifted the hem of her skirt and crouched down next to the kids, wrapping her fingers round Gold's wrist as if she intended to check his heart rate. For a moment her face was both angry and worried, but then she smiled briefly.
"Good," she said. "A brave boy."
"Is... is he alive?" Corrie stuttered.
"Everyone's alive, Cor," said Boudicca–Donna. "It's just a game, and you don't die in a game. Listen, kiddo, I have to pick up someone very important. I have to go now. Just promise me you'll stop thinking about these monsters. No nightmares, okay?"
The girl nodded hesitantly.
"Those people will take care of you," said Boudicca-Donna getting up and brushing off her dress. "Everything's gonna be just fine."
She turned to walk into the dark of the night behind the door.
"But... what about Ace?" the girl risked to ask.
Boudicca-Donna gave her an over-the-shoulder glance.
"Ace wasn't real, sweetheart. Ace was the worst nightmare of Phillip Bright," she said and she stepped over the threshold.
Corrie raised her hand and gently stroked the unconscious boy's sweaty hair.
"Of whom?" she whispered.