Northern Downpour

The Open Gates (XIII)

XIII

It was Aleck’s 13th birthday. Like every teen’s birthday, there were candles, food, some kind of arranged land for fun and games and an area for adults who would like to take a glug. It was August the third, where everyone he had known of had come. His friends, neighbors, classmates, and relatives. They were living beside the roads that time, where most of the delivery carriages were to pass by because it was between two industrialized cities, more like a border of which had forgotten for ages but always reminded. Aleck and his parents were at the front porch that time, looking at the guests as they had come earlier that day. It was happy, and it sounded happy.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Aleck? All of your friends are here!” said his mother, whom of which he was so attached into, as opposed to his father who was busy working and working and working carelessly and selflessly, which rendered his very family unknown to him. It was like he was hooked into money, and that was all he was ever hooked into. But they were family, after all, and they went on to check their guests.

Hours had passed and they were eating, enjoying, drinking and some were playing, mostly kids. And then the thing happened. Aleck went blindfolded. They were playing the piñata kind of game, and he was it. They were playing beside their tool shed, where some of his father’s tools, mostly heavy, were stored vulnerably. Their piñata was a pumpkin. A very big, lumpy one. It was placed atop his friend’s head. His friend was standing tall, a mere 4’ 10’’ at least on their age. He was like 2 inches short, but then the game went on. His other friends grabbed him a wood from the tool shed. It was long, heavy, its edges were not smooth and it was a nail embedded past the wood, as it was longer than the wood’s width. They have handed it to him, with the nail farthest to Aleck. Never really noticing the nail, even the oldest of them all (sixteen? No one could remember), as its color was the same as the wood: brown, dingy, and looked like just a twig branching out from it. But it was rusty. No one cared because no one was really aware of it, but they still went on to the game.

“Go, Aleck! Go, Aleck! Go, Aleck!” it was a chant which surrounded Aleck. The parents could not really hear, let alone see, what was happening inside the circle that was formed on their whereabouts. It was loud, then the game continued. Aleck was gathering information from his senses: the sound of his environment, though very diminished by the chants, the wind, his orientation, the smell of the wood he was holding, the weight of the wood, and he swung. He swung harder than one could do, but he knew he missed. He swung and hit once, but it was air. It was nothing. He gathered up his knickers once more, this time there was a much louder cheer, and then:

“Let me guide you, my child, for you are the home of my justice and the chalice of my blood, and together, we seek the truly, and you will seek me ultimately.”

There was a whisper from someone, and he neglected it like the rustling leaves. His senses were different. He couldn’t hear, talk, or even feel.  The only thing he could feel was the hands holding his forearms, as if it was guiding him.

“My justice… My blood… I am… Jack.”

The voice repeated, and then he swung, this time hitting the pumpkin. The impact was so strong that it made the pumpkin fall on the grass with a splat. It couldn’t hold itself, as it was hit by  something; a force so incredible that even Aleck knew he couldn’t do. His friends stop chanting, and cheered for that kind of a sweet victory. Everyone was happy. There were jumping, singing, and shouting ‘yay!’. It really sounded fun and games, but then he swung back.

With the guide of the voice, he hit his friend, nail-first. It was hard. Really hard. It had impaled the friend’s skull, and there was blood. The blood was dripping unto the plank of wood and to the grass, for the swing was dang hard. Every cheer of the boys started to turn into screams. They scrambled, fled and went to the adult’s whereabouts, but Aleck and the voice weren’t done. They tried to pull the nail out, but it was hard, and the friend was unconscious, probably brain-dead. After some quite force, they managed to pull the plank off, and swung once more. They kept on swinging. One? Two? Three? It was numerically impossible to describe, for all they knew was that they were swinging. They were swinging madly, like the head was just another pumpkin piñata to be smacked and call themselves winners, with such a very expensive cost. Micael and the spectral being he never knew how he looked like felt the force reaction around their body. The stress, the tension of beating, and the strength being drawn back by his friend, though he’s much more far than dead. The hearts, too, have felt something. It was quite the tension and the pressure inside their hearts. Every beat of them were a nightmare for both, while it was good on the black specter. He knew he had to stop, but he could not. It was the greatest dilemma ever built and grown inside his mind:

Liking something worse than hating it worst, like necrophilia.

He was dead, but they had never stopped. They never really did and they never wanted to stop. They were happy inside as if their lips were not very so apart but as wide as a rubber stretched halfway, but the people around them were not really happy. Parents soon rushed in, after seeing what was indeed a gruesome scene, they scurried away from their whereabouts, breaking the circle which shrouded the very unlikely, with guards wide open, and suppressed little Aleck, and the swinging of the plank had been rendered done. But it was too late. The face of his friend was badly beaten. It had been concaved. It was bloody. Very bloody. The face was nearly unrecognizable, flat, and like punched hard by thousands of industrial hydraulic presses, which looked like a pie was dropped in the grass, maybe two or three. It was gruesome. Some parents even gagged and moved their eyes away from the boy’s beaten face.

The brain of the boy was not happy, too. It was intact, and it became not. It sprung out of the boy's concave head and scattered itself into the green grass of the house' outside; the brain was noodle-like and the faucet-dripping blood followed and continued.

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