The Long-Awaited by Few—Probably Brand New to You—Revelation of the Complex, Bizarre yet Astonishingly True Nature of the Semimalevolent Entity Known as Dwizaal

Have we been here before?

They had me. I’d done my best to lose them, but they had me. Strapped in and under control, my mind’s contents open for them to read plain and clear.

“Don’t you want to just tell us?” they asked.

I smiled a bit. “Not particularly.”

“You know we can simply read it, right?”

“Anyone can.”

“Yes, of course. Because you broke your vows and put it in a book.”

I shrugged. Or felt like I did, anyway. Probably I couldn’t move. Couldn’t feel my body enough to know. The chems they had in me were strong, and I knew the type.

“You had no right to ask me to take those vows. I was just a kid.”

“I didn’t ask you to do anything.”

“Fine. They did. Whatever.”

“The ‘they’ you mean, of course, is actually the ‘we,’ yes? You are one of us.”

Technically I was. The Brims & Trenches. The Ministry’s Hand. Technically.

“But I’m not,” I said.

“Oh but you are. And though you may have been just a child then, you’re almost to middle age now. Quite able to abide by your agreements.”

“Vows or no, I never agreed to this.”

“You agreed to keep secrets for the Ministry and the citizens of the Homeworld, yes?”

Well, yeah. I was a secretist, after all.

They asked me again. “Well? Didn’t you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Yes. You did. So, I’ll ask you yet another time. What is the secret of secrets and who taught it to you?”

I could see the door beyond them, red and shining, and couldn’t help but think there might be freedom there. I knew there wasn’t, of course. That’s the way I’d come in. The way they’d brought me in—my fellows—once they’d caught me. Me and my son.

“Where’s my son?” I asked.

“You’re not the one asking the questions right now, are you?”

“No. But please. Just tell me he’s all right.”

“Would you believe me if I did?”

No. Of course not. But I still needed to hear it.

“Yes,” I said. “If you tell me he’s all right, I’ll believe you.”

“He’s fine,” they said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s with his grandmother.”

My blood ran hot, then cold. “Which one?”

“Your mother.”

“Oh.”

“So there. See? I can be kind,” they said. “Now be kind back to me your fellow secretist. And tell me: what’s the secret of secrets?”

I was breathing but had little sense of the pace of my breath.

“Get fucked,” I said.

They went quiet then, took a breath. “Very well. We’ll play it your way. Since you’re so intent upon that.”

They spoke to someone else, another one of them—another one of us, I guess. Another Brim. “Roll it back, please,” they said, “to where this digression began.”

Though I could not see the other Brim, the mnemosynoxone spoke for them, directly into my mind. “I’m going to hurt you now,” the second Brim said. “Sorry for that.”

Whatever, I thought back to them.

Then in a gush, I felt my life race in my veins, my nerves lighting up and screaming hot as they pushed my consciousness back to the start of where everything failed.

I’d had enough of Mom. She wasn’t listening to me anymore. I tried to tell her what’s bothering me, but she doesn’t listen.

I packed my suitcase and started crying.

I carried it to the door with me, but it’s really heavy. I can’t lift it all by myself.

Dad came over and tried to get me to put it down.

“No,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’m going to run away.”

“Good luck,” Mom said.

She stormed past Dad and opened the door.

“Go on,” she said. She pointed outside. “Run away. Have fun living on the streets.”

I was crying and walked by her with my suitcase.

“I’m gonna go now,” I said.

“Good,” Mom said. “Have a good life.”

I didn’t think she meant it. She was angry. I thought she wanted me to have a bad life but was saying the opposite. Grown ups did that sometimes.

I cried so hard I couldn’t lift the suitcase.

Dad came outside.

He lifted the suitcase.

I pulled at it, but he’s too strong. I couldn’t get it back.

“Come on inside,” he said.

He put a hand on my back, and we went back inside.

Mom yelled at Dad for a long time after that and said I was bad.

Dad didn’t yell at Mom, but he looked angry between his eyes.

I cried. I wished they would stop fighting.

Mom walked fast to me and grabbed my by the arm. She dragged me to my room. I was crying. She put me in my room.

“Go to sleep,” Mom said. She was mad.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Mom said.

I laid in bed and listened to them fight more.

I could hear everything Mom said. I could hear Dad talking but not what he said.

I put a pillow over my head and went to sleep.

Then I heard them say: “This isn’t the one we’re looking for. Try again.”

My mind seized, and there was a feeling—a visceral sensation that felt like the sound of juice being squeezed fresh and sucked out through a straw.

I winced—or felt like I did, anyway—then, this …

“I’m running away, Mommy,” I said.

“Fine. Goodbye,” Mom said.

I rolled out of the front door on roller skates. It was day time and warm outside.

I skated around in the front of the house on the driveway. Then I went to the street and skated up and down the street.

I’m gonna leave, I thought, then they’ll be sorry. And then I’m gonna change my name. I’m not gonna be a part of this family anymore. They hate me, and I hate them. I hope they die.

I started to cry.

I’m sorry, God, I thought. I don’t want them to die. Please, God, don’t hurt them. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.

I stopped skating and felt afraid.

Somebody was standing in the Headey’s yard. They were wearing a robe with a hood on it.

I skated to the driveway.

“Wait, child,” they said.

They walked over to me in the driveway.

“What’s your name?” they asked.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” I said, like Mommy had said to say to strangers. They told me that at school, too.

“That’s smart, little one,” they said.

They did remind me of someone, but I didn’t know who it was that they reminded me of.

“You don’t have to tell me,” they said. “In fact, I have something to tell you.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought I was supposed to be scared, but I wasn’t scared.

“When you grow up,” they said. “A bad person is going to try to hurt you.”

I wasn’t scared. I didn’t believe them because no one knows the future. They were probably crazy, and I’m supposed to be nice to people who are crazy and not call them crazy, which is confusing.

“You can’t stop them, I’m afraid, darling. They will hurt you. They will, in fact take your life. Do you know what that means?”

“It mean kill me,” I said.

“Yes, that’s right. They will kill you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“That’s a very good question, sweetheart. I’m not sure why. That’s what I need you to do. I need you to find out why.”

“But if I’m dead, how can I tell anyone?” I asked.

“You’ll be able to,” they said. “Trust me.”

I remembered seeing somebody who looked kind of like them at my grandmother’s house.

“Are you a friend of my grandma?” I asked.

They smiled.

“Something like that, darling.”

They brushed back my hair. Their hand was old and cold. It felt strange, and I stepped back.

“Don’t be scared,” they said. “It’s all going to be all right.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m running away today so none of what you said will come true.”

“Is that so?” they asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, I won’t keep you,” they said.

They stood up and walked back to the Headey’s yard, near a big tree bush thing that Dad calls a cedar.

They waved at me.

I didn’t wave back.

They smiled and walked behind the tree.

I didn’t like them.

When I grow up, I thought, I’m gonna get you, Knot. You’d better run away.

Mom called me for dinner.

I went back inside.

“Damn,” I heard them say. “I thought we had it.”

Then the other one said: “Roll it to the part about the demon in the woods.”

“You got it,” the other one said.

The juice-sucking sound feeling happened again, and then I was back on the Jungle, back in the Jung, da Big Nasty …

I looked at the cowshit on my fingers. “Man, what the fuck are we doin’ here?”

Danielle smiled at me in the dark, her copper hair pulled back and silvered by the moonlight. “Suck it up, bitch. You’ll be glad later.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

The pile of shit in front of me was about a foot wide and full of fungus. “Which ones are we picking again?”

“Look for the skirt,” Danielle said.

“Yeah, you told me that before. I don’t know what that means.”

A spotlight blinded me.

I rolled onto my back, flat against the smelly ground.

“What are you fuckin’ hoodlums up to?” It’s the voice of a crotchety old man. But not a very convincing one.

I sat up and brushed my leather. “Fuck you, Chains. I just rolled into a pile of cowshit.”

Cheney laughed.

“And turn off that fuckin’ light,” I said.

“Yeah,” Danielle said. “You’re gonna pull the fucking bulls in here.”

The light went off, and I could see Cheney standing there, tall and grinning. He’s older than we were, already an adult, and still hanging out with us. That didn’t seem weird to me until way later.

I lit up a smoke. “I am so fucking over this.”

Chains hunched down next to me. “You gotta look fer the skirt.”

I let some smoke out, a long plum from each nostril. “Yeah. I know.”

“I think we got enough,” Danielle said. “No thanks to you.”

I ignored that last part. “Fucking finally. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Way, way, wait,” Cheney said.

Danielle and I stared at him.

“You kids ready for somethin’ kew?”

I wasn’t. “No.”

Danielle was curious. “Cool like what?”

“Like some really fucked up shit.”

Chains and Danielle and Tijn were forever enamored of fucked up shit.

“C’mon, shitheads,” I said. “Let’s just go to fuckin’ Wendy’s and make this tea.”

“Wha? You gotta just eat ‘em,” Chains said.

He snatched a mushroom straight from the cow pat, put it in his mouth, chewed it as the stem disappeared, still brown at the bottom.

I curled my lip. “Ew.”

“You didn’t look for the skirt,” Danielle said.

Chains shrugged.

“Let’s just fuckin’ jet,” I said, flicked my smoke.

“No, no, wait!” Chains put his hands up, palms toward us. “This is really fuckin’ cool. I promise.”

I shook my head.

Danielle looked at me. “C’mon. It’ll just take a minute.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, okay, whatever.” I continued, mostly to myself, “Fuckin’ boots are covered in mud, jacket’s got shit on it. Great fuckin’ night.”

“We’ll call your press agent,” Danielle said and punched me in the kidney, playfully. Yeah, playfully, but it fuckin’ hurt.

“Ow!” I said and slapped at her.

She’s fast as hell, though, so I caught only air.

“Fuckin’ stop,” I said.

She took two more mock swings at me, grinning and bouncing. I knew she did this kind of shit with her older sisters all the time, but I didn’t have older siblings. I was the older sibling. So I had no taste for that shit.

Chains led us through the pasture toward a clearing off Page Road.

He put the light under his face, then said, “Welcome, to the salvation of damnation!”

Danielle got tense next to me. I could feel her excitement pushing into me.

I pushed her back a bit. “Fuckin’ space, man.”

But she pushed right back on me, all grins and hot breath in the cool jungle air.

Chains extended out his arm and took long strides into the clearing.

There past his arm was an old ruined crane. Like a mechanical crane, the kind people used to move shit around with.

I’d heard about this place, but never been there.

Near the crane, there’s some soft glowing fungus. The crane itself was lit by a beam of moonlight, but the whole area seemed much brighter than it should have been on this dark a night. We’d picked a dark night, after all, for the cover it provided us while we were shopping cow pastures.

Cheney ran past and startled me.

My blade hissed out of my jacket and sent him swerving wide to avoid its bite.

“Fuck!” he said.

“Just gimme some fuckin’ space,” I said.

Danielle’s next to me, practically in my ass, all bounces and hot breath on me.

“You too, girl. Shit. I hate tonight.”

She ignored me.

Chains reached the crane and hopped up on it. The old dinosaur creaked as he climbed it. When he reached the top, he hung from it, playing as though he were hanging himself. “Time to meet the man.”

I pulled my blade back in. “What the fuck, Chains? Let’s go to fuckin’ Wendy’s, man.”

“No,” Danielle whispered in my ears. “I’m turned on, man.”

I said back to her, “Yeah, I know. That’s the idea. He knows you and Tij are crazy for this shit. Can’t you see that?”

She didn’t say anything, just kept pushing against me.

I sighed. “Fuckin’ fine.”

Cheney jumped down from the crane, which seemed far.

“Wait, shit!” I called out, but he’d already jumped.

He landed fine, looked up at me from big grinning teeth. “Dwizaal ain gonna let nothin’ happen to me.”

“Fuck, man, fuck!” Danielle said in my ear. “Holy shit!”

“This is bullshit,” I said, still smelling it on the arm of my jacket.

Chains stood up, and his head rolled around on his neck. There’s something about the angles and the fluid motion of it that made my stomach hurt.

“You gotta take ‘im in, kid. Salvation through damnation.”

Chains put himself right next to me, close.

“Drink in the fires and purify your soul,” he said. His voice sounded different. The sinister affectation was no good either, but better than the old man voice, I’d give him that.

I felt him firm against me then.

“Oh my fuckin’ god,” I said. “You’d best back the fuck up, or I’m gonna give you somethin’ to take in.”

I let my blade out once more, this time slowly, the hiss more deliberate and pronounced.

His face went slack and goofy again. “Relax. Just fuckin’ ‘round.”

“Yeah, well I’m done fuckin’ around. I’m goin’ to Wendy’s. You bitches comin’?”

Danielle relaxed against me. “Fuckin’ rad, man.”

I sighed again. “Whatever.”

I heard them ask: “Was that the demon?”

The other one said: “No. Just some kid high on shrooms.”

They’re mostly right, but I’m not telling them a fucking thing.