The Permutation

Apex (Part 13) Paul

One star had a reddish cast to it. As a child who had nothing but time alone, astronomy became a passing hobby of his. Paul's instinct was to name the star Mars, but that didn't sit right. He shouldn't have been able to see the planet at this time of year.

The red star seemed to draw in Paul's eyes, leaving him unable to tear away his gaze. It hung there, emblazoned in the night's sky like a festering wound. It didn't look bright. The star burned with a feverish glow that was a blemish on the otherwise pristine night sky. While the other stars seemed to orbit around it, the red star stood still.

Despite their meandering paths, every orbit drew closer to the red star. It was a slow and inexorable path that each star seemed intent on following. As each star made contact with the fevered star, they disappeared. The red star did not gain in size or brightness, but whatever it touched ceased to exist.

Paul lie there helplessly, as all-natural light was engulfed by the hungry entity in the sky. A tendril slapped Paul in the face leaving red spots in his vision. It had shaped itself into a flat spatula-like protrusion and whacked Paul in the face with as much strength as it possessed. He tore his gaze free from red anti-star and realized he couldn't see anything. The thing had swallowed all visible light. Paul couldn't even see the hand in front of his face.

Forget the quilt, I just want to be in my room with the nightlight on, my mother tucking me into my sheets, and kissing me on the forehead.

The tendrils seemed to read his mind. They writhed with an eagerness that bespoke an intelligence of their own, each a product of his fractious mind.

Who wouldn't be going crazy after something like this? The crazy thing would be to be okay after all this.

As Paul thought the words, the tendrils popped out of existence. He had to expend extra effort just to retrieve them, but this time they were placid, eager to obey Paul's every command. There was no trace of the eerie intelligence they had displayed before, and not one of them slapped him in the face.

He tried to relinquish conscious control to see if they would start to act on their own, but they evaporated the moment he let go. Paul regretted having left the truck when he did. He could have just waited until they drove him into town, and he could have killed them all there, where his house would have been a reasonable distance away. Now he had no idea where he was, and no way to escape.

What is it I'm not realizing?

Paul's teeth chattered against each other, and Paul was hugging his arms to his chest. Gooseflesh prickled underneath the hairy coat covering his arms. Despite his best efforts, Paul could do nothing to dispel the shivers starting to wrack his body. Where his bare skin made contact with the cold stone, Paul's body was leeching heat at a dangerous rate. Paul wasn't much of an outdoorsman, but this felt like it was well below the temperature that could kill him.

He closed his eyes and was plagued by the image of Perry Durant's heart spurting out of his chest.

Regrettable but necessary.

Paul told himself that, but the words gave him little comfort. By all accounts, the man the perfect representation of what the justice system should be, but Paul chose his own miserable existence instead. In his own twisted way, Paul had rationalized himself as another positive force in the universe. Paul was a biological accountant, eliminating individuals from the equation who lied, cheated, and stole. Now that he'd killed someone who didn't deserve it, Paul found the rationalization to be a tough pill to swallow.

The flat end of a spatula hit slammed into his jaw. The tendril seemed to say, "Snap the fuck out of it. We didn't come this far for you to pussy out and grow a conscience."