Reign Storm

Origin Story

“I’m selling the house?”

Aidan was standing by the back door looking out into the garden. The paths were overgrown and the PLANT had taken over its section and was not encroaching on the rose bed. “Hmm,” the fence needed mending in the corner, looked like the neighbors dog had been digging again. “What! What? How do you mean?” He looked at his father who was sitting the kitchen table about to take a sip of his tea.

“I mean I am getting rid of the house and moving into an flat.” And he took the sip as if he had just announced that he would be taking a shower, or going to the post soon. Anything other than selling the home they had all known for the last thirty- two years.

Aidan was quiet a moment as he processed this information. His father had never mentioned anything of the sort until the moment of his announcement. “Where I this coming from?” He saw the notch marks in the wood frame of the pantry door. It had been painted over years about but the marks were still visible in wood. On the inside had been etched out his growth and on the side his brother Robert.

Aidan’s father waved a hand, “It’s too much without you kids around.”

Aidan leaned on the back of the nearest chair and tapped his thumb in thought. “If it helps you, I could move, Da. I don’t mind, really.”

“Naw. What ‘bout you and Jessie, what’ll she think about that.”

“She won’t mind.”

“It will add another twenty minutes to her commute to London.”

“Don’t you worry yourself about her. I can take care of Jessie.”

His father groaned and drank his tea. Summer was just at an end and the sun was setting much quicker these days. A few birds sang from the tree that stood to the left of the yard. The branches reached out over most of the small patch giving the most perfect dappled shading on the sunny days. It intruded on the neighbors air space, shading their garden boxes but nothing was ever said since the dog never seemed to learn his lesson.

His dad stood suddenly, ”Son, I can’t ask you to do that. Jessie and you have a good thing, I canna interfere with that.” He took his cup to the sink and turned on the water.

“What if Robert wanted to come stay with ya?”

There was no response. His father stared blankly out the bay window.

“Da?”

The cup dropped into the sink, the clear sound of breaking porcelain broke the silence. The father faltered and grabbed the sink. Aidan ran over, clutching at his dad. “What’s wrong? Speak?” His father’s skin had gone white.

His father’s eyes shifted to him, he clutched at his son’s shirt. His lips moved but there was no sound, only drool running from the corner. There was a rattling.

“Earthquake?” Aidan wondered. He had never been in one before, they rarely had them in this part of the world, but it seemed to match everything he had seen on the teley. The light above swayed slightly and the windows trembled.

His father gasped. Lowering him to the ground Aidan felt his pulse, it raced. Quickly he unbuttoned his father’s shirt. A small, square, thin as a sheet of paper stared back at him totally blank. It should have lights and small set of numbers reporting his father’s current heart rate and blood pressure. The blankness of it could only mean that it was shut off.

“Da!” Aidan fumbled for his mobile. Tears started to drip down his face as he dialed the ambulance. He hit send and then realized his screen was blank too. Nothing! No help. He stood to go to the landline when there was a violent eruption. There a terrible cracking sound. He watched as the wall that faced the front yard was ripped in two. Anything glass shattered and his ears burst with pain. In the fading light of the afternoon a light came flooding into living that now looked like a wave had smashed through and pushed everything up against the wall.

Aidan sat up. Rubbing his eyes he looked around him. He was surrounded by bare stone walls and stacks of books. They had taken them from the university library as insulation from sound, thermal scanners, and the occasional reading. He was woken many mornings by this replay. It was not a dream, but a memory that played itself out almost every night. The only reason he could sleep was due to the sheer exhaustion of daily survival.

There was a knock at the door. Now he realized that he had woken before the end of the dream, the end where he watches his father dies in his arms just before he is dragged from his side by an invader. “Ya.”

The door opened. A head popped in, it was Murphy, he was the only Irishman among them, IRA. Who was North or South no longer mattered in the light of a global invasion. “We’re all Irishmen now” was his response to most matters. “We’ve got some new arrivals.”

Aidan looked at him doley. “What are ya wakin’ me for? Send them on their way.”

Murphy smiled. “They’re from America.”

Aidan ran his hand through his hair. He still could not piece together why this mattered. At the time of the attacks there were plenty of tourists around. London was a popular destination, so there were plenty of non- Europeans among them. “And?”

“As in just arrived this morning. Fresh off the boat as it were.”

“What? How? They’re liars.”

“The boy won’t say but according to Kaelen they teleported.”

“Teleported.”

Murphy nodded. “Interested now?”

“Give me a minute.”