Oliver Van Holland, Herald of the Apocalypse, suffers through endless nightmares as punishment for his refusal to start the end of everything.
Traveling warrior, priest, outlaw, mercenary, murderer, and Herald of the Apocalypse Oliver Van Holland has for centuries refused to do his real job -- bringing about the end of the world. For this, he has been cruelly and frequently punished, repeatedly being buried alive for years at a time and savaged by cascading nightmares of his worst pains and fears. Now two new supernatural captors have entered his dreamscape, this time exploiting the loss of the one person he truly loved to finally break his so-far unbreakable will.
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Written by Steve and Robin Pool
Voiced by Emily Woo Zeller
Sound Design and Editing by DSS (Dissecting Sound & Soul). Sound effects provided by ZapSplat
Intro song “Timed” by Gilde Flores www.gildeflores.com
Outro song "In Your Mind" by Panda Music
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Copyright (c) 2023 by Uncle Robot Media, LLC
SAYONARAVILLE: APOCALYPSE
EPISODE 11: NO GOOD DEED
Word Count: Approx. 7,000
This is Sayonaraville Apocalypse.
The following series contains adult themes, strong language, violence, sexuality, and drug use. Listener discretion is advised.
[INTRO MUSIC: TIMED]
Episode 11: No Good Deed
For an unknowable number of days, or weeks, or maybe even years, Oliver Van Holland’s entire world had been reduced to a tiny rectangle of malignant, arrant darkness. He was beyond the reach of any light and could only stare into a void. With nothing else to do, it seemed that his aggrieved mind had begun to make shit up -- vicious, chimerical nightmares -- shaped by whatever scattered bits of disjointed, suspect memories he’d managed to salvage from his eon-spanning life. These were five-sense manifestations of his worst anxieties, fears, regrets, sorrows...and rage.
He had known that much of his mind’s current experience wasn’t real, and he had accepted this surreal psychopathy was likely nothing more than the screams of his imprisoned, tortured psyche. He’d been here before. He’d experienced this terrible form of imprisonment countless times, dying, rotting, and reviving in a cruel, endless cycle until his release once more into a light-filled, oxygen-rich world.
Of course, the oxygen in his casket prison had long been exhausted. In its place, an envelope of heavy, useless carbon dioxide hung like a shroud, sapping both his voice and his strength. It was the evil genius of this punishment and the primary cause of all its hellish physical traumas.
He flashed hot and cold, his shrunken heart unable to pump withered, dried out blood. Ensuing hypoxia left him paralyzed. Without any air to breathe, his constantly-drowning lungs spasmed in a stagnant, fetid, syrupy swamp.
Since he could not breathe, he could not cry out or scream. And, despite the aches wracking his infirm body and the sores constantly forming on his back and grossly swollen legs, he could not move or even turn for relief.
Because he could not move, his regenerating bones constantly shrank and expanded. His muscles withered and mended. His joints tightened and loosened, his elbows, knees, and pelvis fracturing countless times, then healing only to refracture again.
His intestinal tract had, for a time, experienced regular bouts of wave-like cramping, losing control over his bladder and bowels, but, without any food or water, there was nothing for his body to expel.
At some point in the hazy past of this current incarceration, a blood clot had ripped loose in his brain, eradicating all sensation on the left half of his body; that is, until his brain had regenerated, much slower than normal due to being the equivalent of dead.
In a sad, odd, lonely manner, an infecting pneumonia bacterium had also abandoned him, dying soon after colonizing his oxygen-barren lungscape.
But none of the physical suffering would have really mattered if he had just been allowed to die. He was more than ready to let go. Most of his current complications were just natural side-effects of decomposition. Since he could not actually die, however, and since he couldn’t help but be a defiant dick to his master, much of Oliver’s millennia-long existence had involved these extended cruel, sadomasochistic periods.
At least he had his nightmares to distract him.
Oliver shouted at Death, “Hey!”
Death looked back at him, “Hmm?”
“What the fuck, man?!”
“Sorry? I don’t follow.”
“You’re avoiding me! You. Are. Ignoring me, you bastard! Despite that being against everything you’re supposed to stand for.”
[Death shrugged.] “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Last time you came through here, you flipped me off as you ran on by.”
Death sniggered. “Oh, ah, yeah. My bad.”
[Oliver growled.] “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what, Oliver Jan Van Holland, son of Oskar Manfred Van Holland?”
“You’re fucking MOCKING me!”
“Do you really need to curse like that?”
Oliver glared.
“Oh, my, will you look at the time?” Death looked down at his clearly watch-free, boney arm. “I have to go. See you...oh, I don’t know...never?”
“FUCK! YOU ASSHOLE!”
Death melted away into the darkness. But not before shouting back, “Cowards die many times before their deaths.”
“Question #10: True or False? Oliver is a filthy liar who wrongfully -- illegally -- withholds that which belongs to his master.”
Oliver stared at the test page before him. He didn’t remember having entered this classroom or sitting down at the square metal-and-wood flip top suburban school desk. The chair, also wood, lacked any decent lumbar support. As he shifted to find a more comfortable position, it creaked. The eyes of every other student, at least 40 in number, glared. “Sorry,” Oliver mumbled, as he looked down again at the mimeographed paper.
He became aware of a loud tick...tick...tick, the intrusive metronome of a clock that leered down from its perch high above the teacher at the front of the classroom. Oliver was running out of time. Picking up a well-chewed #2 pencil, Oliver circled FALSE and flipped to the next page.
“Question #11: True or False? It is wrong to destroy the dirty, corrupt, impure world even if all the motherfuckers in it deserve it.”
Oliver flinched. Reaching back, his hand went to the smooth leather-wrapped pommel of his sword, lying flat on the seat between him and the chair back. He looked about the room. Everyone else focused on their tests, scribbling in answers. Even the teacher seemed distracted by his fishing magazine.
A whisper tickled in his ear. Oliver’s accursed, black-magicked, soul-slashing sword. Pożeracz Dobrych Rzeczy (Poe-zeratch doh-brich zetsay), “Devourer of Good Things”, or just “Poe” to the situationally lazy Oliver, had been brought screaming into the world by a demented dark rabbi-arcanist-swordsmith in an illegal, back-alley Krakow forge more than a thousand years earlier.
Oliver, never a lavish spender on anything, had chosen a simple magic sword, one without an animus. Other more famous magical blades might be rumored to be sentient, but Oliver had no need for overpriced, self-aware weapons that could argue. Or, worse, possess.
Something the rabbi had neglected to divulge was that the old enchanter-smith would never have allowed himself to make a glupi -- “stupid” -- blade. But Oliver didn’t need to know that.
“What?” [Oliver whispered.] “I can’t hear you.”
“Circle ‘False’,” [the sword murmured back.] “The right answer to this question is ‘False’. If destroying the ugly, gross world with all of its fucking monstrosities is wrong, then we don’t want to be right.”
Two heavy hands slammed down onto Oliver’s desk. A balding, middle-aged, bespectacled, and mustachioed man dressed in a wide-collar button-down and rumpled khakis scowled, his upper lip curled into a slight snarl.
“Oliver Van Holland!”
Everyone looked up at the teacher’s roar.
“Are you cheating? ON MY ETHICS TEST!?”
Oliver shook his head. “N-no. I was just..."
The teacher turned to face the other students. “Class! Mr. Van Holland here has the audacity TO CHEAT on my test! What is the punishment for that? Anyone?”
A smug, ponytailed girl shot her right arm skyward. It emerged from rolled-up shirtsleeves pushed up to the elbows under a blue school uniform cardigan, complete with a pretentious, heraldic-logoed patch. A white shirt open at the collar revealed a strand of pearls shaped like a dragon’s fangs.
Indulgently, the teacher nodded to his pet. “Yes, Kelsey?”
Her waving, pink-painted fingernails were adorned with tiny black stars. They were also encrusted with dried blood.
“We beat the ever-loving shit out of them!”
Oliver could swear that bright red heart balloons fizzed upwards as she cried out.
A horde of grinning, maniacal students dogpiled Oliver at his desk, mercilessly raining down punishment with bricks, metal bars, and heavy-duty tools looted from the school’s shop classroom. The teacher looked on, nodding approvingly. Oliver’s last act before losing consciousness was to flip him off.
Oliver the Prisoner, attired in a bright orange prison jumpsuit, was marched into a sterile, cold, institutional room bathed in harsh fluorescent light. This was where they’d held parole hearings. Oliver’s guards forced him down into a floor-bolted chair, shackling his hands and feet. In front of Oliver sat the Parole Hearing Commission, a collection of lifeless cloth dolls with drawn-on black dot eyes and pencil-slash mouths.
Just behind him, out of sight, Krisi (κρίση “Kree-si”) –- a planet-killing dragon god and Oliver’s master -- began to speak. His voice, both terrifying and monstrous, quavered with sobs. Fucking fake crocodile tears, Oliver thought.
“Do you see that? Do you see how Oliver continually disrespects and defies me? How he endlessly denies me my rights and refuses me the opportunity to walk freely upon and engage with the mortal plane?”
Without moving, or speaking, the Parole Board members managed to voice knowing acknowledgement.
“Bullshit!”
A crack on the back of Oliver’s head set his vision spinning. A disembodied voice commanded, “The prisoner will refrain from shouting or cursing during the hearing.”
“Fuck all of you.” Another blow and Oliver saw stars for a few seconds.
“We’ve heard enough. Parole is denied!”
“No! You can’t do this!”
Two of Oliver’s stuffed mannequin guards seized his arms and chin, yanking him up. A third unlocked him from his chair.
“The Prisoner is to be remanded to The Void until he is deemed eligible for another hearing. Dismissed!” A loud gavel retort echoed through the room. Oliver, fighting against his cloth wardens, twisted back around to look Krisi in the eye. “I. Will. Fucking. Kill you, you son-of-a-bitch! Count on it!”
Krisi smirked as Oliver was thrown back into his lightless, ebon sarcophagus.
[Dove] “This isn’t working.”
[Hand of Krisi] “It is working. He will break. My phantasms will break him.”
Another man shrouded in the darkness laughed at that.
[Hand of Krisi] “Keep your sniggers to yourself, soot-stain, and keep your hand on the fucking crank.”
Oliver stood battered, road weary, severed head in hand before the royal court. It was the head, belonging to the great Mongol leader, Ogadai Khan, that had brought Oliver here. The Khan had to die for what he’d done to Hungary. For what he was going to do to Europe. People had said that the Khan could not be brought down. That he and his horde were unstoppable. That’s because people didn’t know about Oliver. That was, on the part of Europe’s rulers, intentional.
The members of the court, self-important, quote-unquote men -- questionable because each had the head of an animal -- whispered and gawked at the horrid sight of the barbarous Oliver in this most imperial of halls. Some winced at the rotting, severed head, uncovered, brought into the presence of the king. No one there, however, dared to correct Oliver on his lack of etiquette.
His majesty, a pig-headed figure dressed in a velvet mantle and cap; an ermine-lined, scarlet surcoat; and ornaments of long-ago looted gold and jewels, raked Oliver with his haughty gaze. Courtiers and administrators with the heads of lemmings and pigeons and rats shot Oliver eye-daggers. Ungrateful bastards.
The pig-headed monarch cleared his throat. “Tell us, Van Holland. Has the threat truly ended? With the Khan’s death, have the Mongols stayed their invasion, as you reported?”
“They have. A fact your own officers can attest to.”
“And this..." The Pig King flicked a finger in the direction of Oliver’s hand. “This...head you carry...did it actually belong to the Khagan or is it merely some meaningless foot soldier that you have tried to pass off as our great enemy?”
A military commander spoke. “I can vouch for Van Holland’s claim. This is, indeed, the head of our greatest enemy. The very demon who left Hungary in ruins. I had traveled with Oliver and was there to see this head fall and strike the ground.”
There was much murmuring about the Throne Room.
[Oliver] “My reward.”
Everyone quieted at this affront. [Pig King] “Your what?”
“I was offered a reward. For the assassination of the greatest threat that Europe has ever known. I kept my word, as promised. So, please, Your Grace, keep yours, as well.”
Everyone gasped.
“Your reward.” The Pig King contemplated this. “Very well. Here it is. I grant to you, for your great service to the kingdoms of Europe, your life. You may take it with you when you leave our land, within a day, never to come back. Additionally, to allow you to maintain your anonymity, we will spread the word that it was a drinking contest that felled the Khagan.”
Flanking Oliver on both sides, halberd-wielding bear and boar-headed soldiers brought their blades up, prepared to cut him down should he protest too much. Oliver reached for Poe and remembered that he’d been forced to leave the sword behind before entering the Throne Room. Oliver chided himself for his naivete. The wolf-headed soldier who’d spoken up for him earlier now looked over sorrowfully and shook his head.
Oliver slowly placed the Khagan on the ground before turning and storming out, not waiting to be dismissed, ignoring cacophonous shouts and orders to stop.
“Mister Van Holland! A word, please.”
It was 1878, Carson City, Nevada, just before Oliver’s first time being buried alive as punishment for being himself. It wasn’t Krisi who’d come up with the fucked-up idea of sealing him in a pine box six feet under. That had been the brainchild of a resentful demon shit named Spots. Krisi must have liked it, however, because the next time, and from then on, it had been the dragon god who had always done the burying.
Oliver, exiting a saloon following a long day of cards and drinking, sighed. He held up his empty hands as he turned around.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Collins, normally a decent, God-fearing Christian stank of the demon Spots. Both of his pistols were trained on Oliver. Flanking him, his deputies, Hobbs and Peterson, held scatterguns in hand.
Shit. Oliver took a small, slow step backwards. “Now wait a minute..."
Whatever he’d been planning to say was drowned out by twin shotgun blasts, which drove Oliver hard onto the ground. Gutshot, buckshot, he was slow to rouse. Hobbs and Peterson stuffed him into a waiting coffin. Spots, using Collins’s body, quickly sealed it up with magic. Ten minutes later, Oliver was dropped into a freshly dug grave.
As men shoveled dirt into the hole, Spots shouted down, “If you ever see the sun again, see that you watch your back! Cuz I’m going to keep on burying you, over and over, until you find the good sense to stay underground for good.”
Oliver heard sarcastic clapping. [Dove] “Great job, Hand or Mouth of Krisi, whatever the Hades you are. I’ve really gotta hand it to you. Clearly Oliver has been brought to his hands and knees by your psychological proddings. He’ll be ours at any moment.”
[Hand of Krisi] “He has no trust left in the character of men, especially those who parasitically perch within bubbles of power. We will continue to feed Oliver’s resentments, and that, in turn, will feed his hunger for revenge. As that hunger blooms into a conflagration, the earth will doubtless be consumed.”
The Hand of Krisi lightly slapped Oliver’s face. Oliver now hung from a torture rack, deep within a filthy, windowless, torch-lit room filled with sacramental and Satanic objects. His arms and legs were stretched to the point where they’d already begun to separate from their sockets.
“Do your fucking duty, Oliver! Call Krisi down so that he can fulfill his own long-overdue duty. Then he will finally release you from your hellish existence.”
Dressed up as some kind of fucked-up priest, Krisi’s lackwit leaned into Oliver and nearly spit as he shouted.
Oliver, through half-lidded eyes, managed to glare back at his torturer. “...Fuhf...fuck off...”
Another fake priest, heavily muscled, ham hand on the torture rack’s wheel, pulled the crank another notch. The ropes around Oliver’s arms and legs creaked as they tightened again. This sadist seemed rather pleased by Oliver’s cry of pain. “What was that, sinner? All that screaming tired out your voice? Gonna have to speak louder if you want to set a curse on us.”
Further back in the shadows, a tall, willowy nun, far too sensual to be a real woman of God, sat desultorily on an oaken barrel. She had been kicking the barrel each time Oliver had screamed and had mumbled to herself each time Oliver swore at his captor-inquisitors. Now her limited patience had run its course, and she slid off the barrel and stomped over.
“Idiots!” She grabbed the torture rack and shook one of its rails. “Fucking cardinal idiots is what you two are!”
The priest manning the wheel flinched. “You don’t have to be so mean about it, Dove. We’re doing the best we can.”
“Shut up, Sooty. You should just focus on the one fucking thing you really are good at -- manning the machines. You suck when it comes to pretty much anything else.”
Krisi’s man hissed. “Mind yourself, wen-..."
Magic filaments coursed through the air, threading themselves through his jaw, painfully drawing his mouth shut before he could finish THAT word. Sooty clapped his own hand over his mouth as a nova-like fire flared in Dove’s eyes.
“HOW DARE YOU! I MAY BE MANY THINGS, BUT I AM NO MAN’S BITCH-SERVANT!”
Her target began to smoke from the intensity of her gaze. Dove reached up and yanked Krisi’s servant hard, pulling him off the ladder. He slammed onto the ground and began to crawl away. She gave him another smoldering look. “Do not speak to me again, thrall. Your part in this is now done. We will let the dragon know when the task is complete. If your master has a problem with that, he can come and speak to me directly.”
The Hand of Krisi, mouth still bound shut, slunk towards the stone steps leading up to the tower’s entrance and began to crawl.
[Sooty spoke up.] “So, AGAIN, you just couldn’t play nice, could you, my love?”
[Dove] “At the rate things are going, we are NEVER going to convince Oliver that it’s in his best interest to complete his divinely-assigned task.”
Sooty scratched under his scraggly beard. “Don’t forget, we can’t complete our own divinely-assigned plan without the Apocalypse Dragon’s help. You know that. So why alienate Krisi?”
“Just like a stupid man to assume it takes another man to convince this willful irritant Oliver Van Holland to change his mind.”
“Fuck you. You calling me stupid?” Sooty tried hard not to flinch.
Dove closed her eyes as she rubbed her temples. “Sooty dearest, I want this just as much as you do. And I’m going to ask you now, as your wife, to please show some trust in me. Can you do that? Can you trust me not to fuck this up like that half-brained, sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing has done? I have a plan.
“It’s not lost on me that Oliver no longer loses his shit whenever he’s fucked over. I guess he’s matured. So rather than try -- and fail -- to break Oliver’s damnably admirable spirit, I’m going to fuck with his pitiably delicate heart, instead.”
Sooty thought about it. “Okay. I trust you, Dove.... Do you want me to give the wheel another crank?”
“No, let’s give the poor man a reprieve from that.”
“I’m going to pay for that later, cursing at you, aren’t I?”
Dove nodded gravely. “Oh, yes, my husband. You most certainly will.”
Half-naked Lydia, sultry temptress that she was, had somehow wrapped herself all the way around a seated Oliver. Her arms and legs had become fetters that now bound him to her bed. Kisses and bites intermixed across Oliver’s rugged face, one in bad need of a wash and shave, if Lydia were honest. But she knew better than that. There was no profit to that kind of honesty.
“Easy, Liddy. No biting, please,” [Oliver protested].
Lydia ran her wet tongue up the side of his cheek, leaving behind a clear line of drool. “Better?” She smiled as he winced. “What? You don’t like me biting you. You don’t like me licking you. Are you now going to tell me that you don’t like me whipping you, either?” Her smile widened as she sat up, her hands now gripping a riding crop.
Oliver’s smile also widened, to match Lydia’s. “Never..."
His voice faltered. Oliver stood in the entrance to his old, forgotten house in medieval Marseilles, a place he’d taken up while employed by the future Count of Provence, Whatshisname Jordan. A rivulet of blood pooled about his feet. Before him, Amelie, his precious wife, lay prone in the arms of a madman, as if she had been his lover. Beautiful, slashed, nearly naked, lifeless Amelie stared at Oliver with dull indifference. Hers was a slaughterhouse gaze. As he stared back, he could feel the rips in his soul burn as they deepened and widened.
Sitting in a worn-down folding chair next to an ancient, washed-out, red-on-white camper-trailer, Oliver, cold beer in hand, watched the fleeing sun dip towards the endless green and gold horizon before him. Birds chirped and insects buzzed overhead. Somewhere behind, two seared cuts of still rare but going on medium flat-iron steak sizzled on a grill, surrounded by ears of white corn nestled in their blackening husks and spits of gently charred onions and peppers. The combined aromas wrapped around him like a warm hug.
“Damn! That smells great, baby. Need help with anything?”
With mock offense, Amelie retorted, “I don’t need you mangrilling up my perfect char. You just sit there and keep tabs on that sunset. I’ll be expecting a two-page report on it later.”
Smiling, Oliver took his wife’s advice and looked on until the sun dropped out of sight -- first yellow, then red, then bronze -- at the end of another perfect day.
Later, after an evening walk in the nearby woods, after making passionate love to his angelic Amelie, Oliver drifted off to another deeply-contented, halcyon sleep.
Again, Oliver stood in the entrance to his old, forgotten house in medieval Marseilles, a place he’d taken up while employed by the future Count of Provence, Whatshisname Jordan. A rivulet of blood pooled about his feet. Before him, Amelie, his precious wife, lay prone in the arms of a madman, as if she had been his lover. Beautiful, slashed, nearly naked, lifeless Amelie stared at Oliver with dull indifference. Hers was a slaughterhouse gaze. As he stared back, he could feel the rips in his soul burn as they deepened and widened.
The cultist -- No! The Duke’s first-born son -- who’d killed her hadn’t noticed Oliver yet. He seemed to be in some kind of trance, babbling in the Devil’s Tongue while drawing unholy, profane symbols on her face with her virtuous blood.
Oliver heard himself cry out, like an agonized beast more than a man. His body acting on its own, reflexively drew his enormous hand-and-a-half cleaver of a sword, bringing it down upon the nobleman’s head and soul.
It didn’t make any sense. The young noble was at least 50 pounds lighter than Oliver. He couldn’t be that strong. Oliver looked down at his sword, now driven more than a foot deep into the stone floor. Black, necrotic gasses burned and fumed from the palm of the devil-possessed future duke, who’d dared to seize Poe from Oliver’s grasp. Worse, as he grinned at Oliver, his eyes crackled with infernal magic. Looking down at Amelie, now flat on the ground, then back to Oliver, he said, in an inhuman voice, “Delicious.”
The man’s arm was a blur as it punched clean through Oliver’s chest, deep into his guts, between heart and lungs, before grasping his spine from the inside. Smashing, piercing, squeezing, then a sickening, crunching agony, one sensation after the other. Then Oliver felt nothing, from where the man had seized him, not even when he thudded hard against the stone floor.
Oliver was mumbling and twitching when he awoke to Amelie’s soothing words and gentle touch. Once he was clear of the sleep fog, she asked him, “Do you recall what your nightmare was about?”
Oliver looked at her with both relief and dread.
“I...”
In his mind’s eye, he could see Amelie’s slack, bloody, ravaged body; her violated femininity, exposed to the world by the slashed dress; her lost, empty surrender forever burned into the last expression her face would ever make.
“I don’t...”
He could still see that damned devil-worshiping son of the Duke painting obscene things with Amelie’s blood, her pure and pious blood. He could still see the profane joy and ecstasy on the face of that monster.
“You know, I don’t really remember what it was about now.”
He could still see that demoniac’s madness. That filthy rapist arm -- supercharged by the mana stolen from his dearest -- forearm deep into Oliver’s guts, ripping Oliver’s insides apart.
“Better already.” He kissed Amelie, then drifted off to sleep.
Picking berries along a placid stream, Oliver asked Amelie, “What do you remember most about the first time we met?”
Amelie looked back and smiled, one-hundred percent radiant. “What brought this on?”
[Coyly, Oliver said,] “...I don’t know. Just being out here with you, tucked away from all of the stresses of work, the daily noise and irritations of city life...it’s made me wonder how a guy like me ever got to be so lucky.”
Amelie’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘a guy like you’? You are, like, the most fucking amazing man I’ve ever met. And you can trust me when I say things like that because we Stanford PhDs know our shit.” She laughed as she said that last part. She was joking, of course, because Oliver knew few people as humble and considerate as Amelie, even with her Stanford PhD. Putting her basket down, she placed both hands into Oliver’s.
“Well...I remember being dazzled by this beautiful man that I had just met at a colleague’s party, a party that I didn’t even want to go to. So there I was, kinda bored, kinda thinking maybe I’d slip out when no one was looking, when, blam! This angel from heaven walks by and actually smiles at me. God almighty! Thankfully, I was already three-sheets-to-the-wind and found enough courage to say ‘hi.’ And then the most amazing thing happened...he said hi back...”
Later, while Amelie was napping, Oliver thought about that same party where they’d first met, trying to recall his own impressions of that fateful night.
She had been wearing a pretty light blue cardigan over a white top and...
...Wasn’t Amelie French? From a small 12th-century village in the shadow of the Pyrenees, not far from the road to the sea? Her parents -- Firmin and Iris -- had been respectable members of their little community, he a thatcher and she a healer and midwife, both secretly anti-Catholic back when such things had been very dangerous...
After that party, Oliver had asked Amelie if she’d wanted to meet up for dinner some time. She’d immediately agreed, and, later, had admitted that she’d planned to ask him if he hadn’t asked first. They’d dined at some San Francisco Asian-themed seafood restaurant and, afterwards, had taken a long, slow walk along the Bay under a beautiful crescent moon. He recalled that they’d had talked about the mundane details of their ordinary, everyday lives. Oliver, never once having had an ordinary, everyday life, had just made up some plausible-sounding, dull-as-shit, hard-to-disprove bullshit to have something to say. With her optimism-powered perky and just a bit scattered parapsychologist persona, Amelie had managed to charm him with her own origin story. That had surprised him, resistant as he usually was to being charmed. That time of discovery had convinced him that he really did finally want something.
Wait, wasn’t Amelie a sweet, pious girl from a peasant family in impoverished medieval Languedoc? Her world had been small -- she’d never actually traveled more than two dozen miles from her birthplace. But from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, Oliver had been hers, mind, body, and -– if he’d ever had one -– soul.
Her family had generally been held in good regard, despite some unproven rumors that her mother, Iris, might secretly be a witch. Amelie had also been a good Catholic girl, despite her parents’ hidden antipathy towards the infallible Pope, so Oliver had never known if she’d ever actually loved him back -- she never would have said even if she hadn’t. He’d told her that he loved her and wanted her, and she’d accepted it as simply as that. It had been easy enough to push for her hand in marriage -- the opportunistic local bishop had owed him a favor for some stupid enemy-eliminating shit. Announcing their engagement, it had been as though God himself had told everyone that this was happening. They should all praise God’s holy name for it.
She had been so beautiful and so kind, and she’d never argued, complained about his choices and habits, or neglected her wifely duties. She hadn’t fought over being taken to Lotharingia, though he had later learned that she’d cried for days after their move. She never complained about his month-long absences. She’d never said anything upon his return in torn, bloodied clothes.
His family had not approved of Amelie, of course. To them, she’d seemed an ambitious manipulator from a family of serfs and the daughter of a rumored anti-Rome witch. They’d claimed Amelie was merely wanting to steal that which did not belong to her: Oliver’s share of the vast Van Holland fortune. But where she’d endured with silent suffering, Oliver had fiercely defended her, once even challenged a brother to a duel over her honor. After that, despite their cold treatment, his family had never said anything disparaging again.
Amelie and Oliver were chopping vegetables in the trailer’s little kitchen. Suddenly Amelie yelped. Oliver grasped her hand and drew her finger close to his mouth to kiss the cut. Amelie pulled it away.
“Let me wash it off first before you go germing it up.”
“I was just trying to be romantic.”
“That’s very sweet, in a misguided way,” Amelie replied, holding her finger under a thin spray of water. “How ‘bout fetching a bandage, instead?”
Oliver reached down and picked up the offending paring knife. He squinted at the handle. Did the name read “Pożeracz” (Poe-zeratch)? That was a strange name for a knife. But, no, upon closer inspection, the name before him was actually “Cuisiner”.
“Pożeracz...” Oliver’s voice faded as he said it.
[Poe] “She’s lying, you know.”
Oliver, standing on the porch, was inexplicably holding the paring knife again. Startled to hear another voice, he looked around. Amelie was away at a work conference and wouldn’t be back until Monday. Surveying his yard, he called out, “Hello?”
Gripping the knife in his hand a little tighter, he took a tentative step down onto the lawn. “Who’s there?”
No response.
Oliver exhaled and relaxed. “Jesus, Oll, get a grip.”
[Poe] “Do you know where Amelie goes, what she does when she’s away on a work trip?”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want from me?”
“Not from you. For you...for us.”
“...And who’s us?”
“When’s the last time you went into town?”
Oliver began to make his way to his workshed. “You haven’t answered my question. I’m not so sure I want to answer yours.”
“Isn’t it obvious, Oliver? I’m your friend. I have been for a long time now.”
Oliver almost said, “I don’t have any friends.” Instead, he replied, “Uh-huh. So why are you asking me about Amelie? Do you know her? Do you work with her?”
Oliver’s hand gently pulled open the shed door, and he took a few steps inside.
“Definitely not. She and I aren’t even close to having aligning interests. In fact, if anything, we’re playing for completely different teams.”
Oliver’s hand drifted towards a stack of firewood. His fingers clasped the sawed-off barrel of a shotgun sitting behind the woodpile. “She’s a parapsychologist for Stanford. Does that mean you’re connected to Berkeley?”
The voice laughed. “Good one. No, Oliver, I am not connected to any universities. But...truth be told, neither is she..."
Oliver raised the shotgun, about to grab it with both hands, when he realized he was still holding the kitchen knife.
“Oh, is that your old MAG Striker? Love South African shotguns. Those people really know how to make them.”
Oliver, startled, dropped the knife. It clattered as it hit the floor. “Hey, careful. You could scratch up my handle doing that.”
Oliver was digging in the backyard when Amelie’s car pulled up. Stepping out with a bag in her hand, she called to him.
“Hey, babe? Are you out here? I see the shed door’s open.”
More sounds of a shovel’s spade hitting soil and gravel. Amelie made her way back. “Ollie? I’m home. Whatcha doing?”
Oliver, visibly shaking, had his back to her. His head was down, and he said nothing as he continued to dig. As she approached, he speared the shovel into the ground.
“Babe? What’s the matter?”
Oliver turned towards Amelie, his face red with grief and rage. His arm was a blur as he drew and aimed the .45 holstered at his side. Eldritch lines glowing along the barrel’s traces marked it as a guncaster’s weapon. “You’re not Amelie, so let’s drop the charade.”
The Amelie standing before Oliver now noticed the half-uncovered, partially-decomposed bodies of Amelie’s parents, Dan and Iris Feldman, in the shallow grave he’d dug up. She closed her eyes. “Shit...okay, you got me. I’m not your wife. So now what?” She began to reach behind her back.
“Ah, ah!” Oliver waved his gun, motioning for this imposter to stop. “Bring your hands around to where I can see them.”
The imposter complied.
“Now, first things. Who are you really? What’s your real name...and face?”
The imposter chuckled. “Who am I? My colleagues and I..."
Oliver suddenly became aware of a surrounding phalanx of military-like figures in body armor armed with magicked-up assault rifles.
“...represent every person on this planet who lives under the constant threat of cosmic annihilation because of you. And, quite frankly, we’re sick of it. So, a group of determined, influential world leaders got together and decided to address the problem of you once and for all. They were under no illusions that you could be eliminated, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t be manipulated into passivity. So we built a sweet little trap for you.”
Oliver looked around, dismally noting how perfect his home really was, how it provided for his every unspoken desire.
“A psychological profile built on decades of observing you helped us determine the right conditions to make you happy, but not too happy. Because obviously that would have risked tipping you off. Contentment is a far less suspect condition and, thus, easier to control.”
Talk, Oliver reminded himself. Keep the enemy distracted. “Okay. I admit it. Your ploy’s a pretty good one, assuming I don’t start to get bored. What was your plan to keep me here, wherever here is, in case I decided to, say, head into town for a beer and then just decide to keep going?”
“Soma trap.” The imposter picked up a stone and threw it towards the edge of the yard. It briefly shimmered as it passed the threshold of the lawn before disappearing into the bordering trees. “I can walk through it just fine, but if you try to cross...well, night night. Then we’d just use a suggestion spell on your unconscious ass to make you forget whatever itch you felt needed scratching.”
Keeping his emotions concealed, Oliver calmly pointed to the open grave behind him. “Why did you kill Iris and Dan? What did they ever do to deserve that?”
“We didn’t kill them. Honestly, Oliver, how long do you think you’ve been here? Iris died a decade ago, as a ninety-six year old woman. Dan a decade before that. Not to sound too gruesome about it, but their bodies being buried here only helps strengthen the magic field. You may not know this, but necromancy and illusory magics go hand-in-hand, like peanut butter and jelly.”
Fear shot through Oliver like a lightning strike. “Where’s Amelie!?”
“Interestingly, like you, she doesn’t seem to age like the rest of us. We know that she and you are fundamentally different from each other, as well...you are essentially an angel of death, whereas she seems more connected to, I don’t know, life...possibly as your counterpart in the whole cycle of existence thing. You know, Yin and Yang bullshit...though, I’ll admit that’s all just a guess on our part. To be honest, we haven’t a fucking clue as to what she is at all.”
The imposter, still holding her hands where Oliver could see them, crouched down next to her computer bag. “Let me show you something.”
Oliver nodded.
The imposter pulled out a tablet computer. “Being able to observe and study her while also containing and studying you has been an unexpected boon to our mission.”
The tablet’s screen turned on, showing a flat-gray surveillance video stream. Sitting in a chair, tied up and gagged, was a very pregnant Amelie.
“Of course, her getting knocked up with your kid went far beyond the bounds of arcanic-scientific curiosity and became an instant Defcon 1 for us.”
More than a dozen soldiers closed the gap on him, their rifles locked and ready to fire.
“Sorry to inform you that we’re going to have to modify your memory again, Oliver. Say goodbye to the love of your life.”
The imposter jerked and spit up blood as the end of a Damascus-patterned, eldritch-charged blade pierced her sternum from behind. The tablet dropped to the ground before she did. Oliver could swear he heard Poe laugh.
One of the soldiers cried out. “He’s got the sword! He’s got the sword!”
A barrage of assault-rifle red-streaks radiated in at Oliver. But Poe, leaping into Oliver’s hand, projected a silvery, shimmery field that sent the bullets careening off in all directions. Oliver, acting on muscle memory, faster than thought, swung deadly arcs through the armored shooters in front of him then at his side and back. Each strike drew gouts of blood that turned necrotic black, like smoke, while still in the air. Limbs flew; men screamed and fell as Poe took care of its targets.
Drones filled the sky and began to strafe Oliver with explosive-tipped rounds. Armored SUVs topped with roof-mounted autocannons added to the fire. Heavily-armed soldiers poured out of those vehicles. A few sorcerers, abjuration containment spells at the ready, stepped onto Oliver’s front yard.
Oliver dropped to a crouch while still clutching Poe, centering himself, ignoring the terrible damage he was taking even with Poe’s protective field, and went completely still. From the dark behind his eyelids came a glow, small at first, but it grew until it became a painful star of blue-white cosmic power. In the blast that followed, there wasn’t as much of a sound as there was a flash. Machines and soldiers alike, Oliver’s trailer, his shed, his car, the flowers and trees surrounding his home as far as a football field length away were swallowed by white, burned away by his corona as though those things never existed.
Oliver opened his eyes to a barren, blackened yard. He was once again alone, except for his cursed sword. Everyone and everything else was gone. Steam rose from the ground, and white ash fell like snow.
Amelie. He needed to get to her. And their baby. The thought shocked Oliver far more than the carnage he’d just unleashed. Fuck. His car. He was going to need another one.
“Where?”
Poe answered. “I can find them.”
[OUTRO MUSIC: IN YOUR MIND]
A huge blast centered on a grave near the edge of the cemetery east of Brooklyn sent earth, rock, and wood debris flying. Those visiting nearby graves screamed as they fled.
A close-at-hand Avalon drone, detecting the massive explosion, flew to the spot of the blast, sirens blaring. It noted the long-haired, long-bearded man in ragged clothes crawling from the crater. In his hands, the man wielded a sword radiating a high-level, dangerous type of magical energy.
Approaching with counterspells at the ready, the drone commanded the man to release his weapon and lie flat on the ground. The man, instead, hurled the sword at the drone. It split the machinery cleanly as it passed through, shorting out both magical and electrical circuits. Oliver held out his hand, and Poe faithfully returned.
“Where do we go from here?”
An image of a nearby highway bloomed in his mind.
Oliver stumbled through the cemetery until he reached a wall that separated him from an expressway. Poised on the brick cap, he waited until a cargo van raced towards him.
THUMP!
The van screeched to a halt, the driver shocked to have hit a pedestrian appearing out of nowhere. Stepping out onto the road, the driver was roughly grabbed and shoved aside by the man he’d struck. A hand-and-a-half sword clipped the van roof as the man climbed in and sped off.
Back at the cratered grave-slash-former holding pen of Oliver Van Holland, herald of the Apocalypse, sat Dove, now dressed in the same suit that the Imposter Amelie had been wearing. Sooty, in workman’s overalls, lounged on the grass. Dove beamed as she shouted after him, “Yes, Oliver! Go! Save your beloved wife who died almost a thousand years ago.”
NEXT EPISODE: A WIND AGE, A WOLF AGE