In The Town Where All Things Are Possible: Part 14
Need To Catch Up?
In The Town Where All Things Are Possible, his voice sounded like flint striking stone. Damaged, coarse, dangerous and searing hot.
“I was released when I was replaced. That is the only way the Town will let you go, by death or redundancy. Ever since, I’ve wandered this world, witnessing tragedy, famine, heartbreak, the horrors of reality that exist in all corners of this planet aside from this one little town.”
Staring into the blackness of the burlap sack covering her head, Alexandria didn’t dare speak. She breathed in its musty, salty stench. It struck her that this sack might have covered another’s head. Her skin might be touching their death.
“And I came back for you,” he continued. “I can feel the women crash into this town like the ripples in a pond, spreading for as far as they need to in order to find me. I return because this town must be protected from love.”
The binds rubbed her wrists raw. She adjusted in the flimsy chair and it sighed labored squeaks from every weary joint. A crisp, moist breeze swirled past her, the wind humming in a low key like a breath blown over an empty bottle. She could sense the space was confined. A small stream of water passed by the souls of her shoes.
“You understand what is here, why the Town must be protected?”
His voice echoed, finding distant walls off which to bounce. The air grew colder with every minute. Her nervous breath misted inside the hood.
“Yes,” Alexandria gasped once she realized he was waiting for her answer.
“Good, good. I know how this must look. I have known many killers. Haters of women. Predators. I am not one of these men. You don’t believe me, but I am a good man. I adore women. I revel in their difficult eccentricities, the eternal riddle of the feminine body, the unsolvable equation of love. I could love you.”
And she felt his face close. Faint, sour whiskey permeated the sack as his words blew through the fabric.
“I had a woman. Like you to him. A singular woman, the sort that we are promised as children by our adoring mothers, like a birthright. Finding her was like finding my homeland. But great men lose great loves. We are still human, and there is only so much that any one person can hold on to.”
He moved away, his feet splashing in the shallow water, his voice echoing again.
“And he cannot hold on to you while fulfilling his duty to this town. It will be too much. This town is better than you. This town existed and endured many terrible things, and this little fling of yours will be no different. He will endure your loss.”
His voice was close again.
“He will, one day, remember your death as little more than a mild disappointment. I am saving him from you. I am saving the entire town from you.”
The burlap sack swept off her head and moonlight found Alexandria’s blurry eyes. They were inside a tall drainage pipe. It fed into a second pipe where moonlight poured down into the depths. The stream ran over the edge, but she could not hear it splashing into any underground reservoir. It simply fed and faded away.
From where Alexandria sat, she could not quite see the sky.
“God’s Blowhole,” the man muttered, just behind Alexandria.
“Please,” Alexandria began, turning her head to find the man. “I will do anything…”
“Turn back around!”
She jerked her head forward, eyes ahead, not looking into the chasm before her.
“Don’t bother screaming,” the man said. “I will kick you in one way or another. No one can reach us here, no one can save you.”
She felt his hand grip the chair behind her and push, slowly tilting the chair forward so she could see more of the drop.
“You will fall, fall, fall, fall until the Earth’s core burns your skin, swallows the air and suffocates you. Your body will roast. A terrible way to die, and I will throw your lover in with you if you so much as whisper for help.”
“I’m sorry that I looked at the card,” Alexandria cried. “I’m sorry that you …”
He jerked her forward. She screamed briefly, but stifled her voice. She peered down into the darkness. A vague warmth drifted up to greet her.
He eased her back until the chair was resting on all four legs. She wanted to see his face, but didn’t dare look his direction.
“Soon,” he said, but she could not guess what he meant. His footsteps led away, back into the drainage pipe. She was left alone.
In the long minutes that passed, she measured her breath and thought of The Man Who Held The Town Together. He would not be searching for her. No one would. They would assume that she’d gone to her shop, slept in her lonely space, and would rise and open the store in the morning. If she did not, they might think she’d left the town and returned home, unable to handle the town’s oddities. She searched for hope, but she could no more find traces of it than she could find light in the abyss of God’s Blowhole.
It would soon be her grave.
She held her tears back, a pride growing within her as she accepted her fate and determined that she would retain dignity as best she could.
His footsteps returned, splashing through the water.
Another sound, from above in God’s Blowhole. A paper falling, flittering, scraping the walls as it tumbled. His form reached past her, she glimpsed only a bit of his pale face as his hand reached out into the pipe and caught a notecard. One of The Man’s notecards.
He flipped it around to read it. A single grunt and the man tossed the card back into God’s Blowhole so it could tumble down, down, down. It never seemed to reach bottom.
And he kicked her forward. The chair tumbled over the edge. A scream choked in her throat.
Her descent quickly ended with the crack of a rope. The chair swung and crashed against the cement face of God’s Blowhole. Her body dangled from the bindings of the chair. Her breaths exhaled in hard, panicked lumps as she stared down into the chasm, trying not to scream. She craned her head around, peering briefly up into the sky. She believed she could make out the shadow of a distant head looking back down into the pipe. She hoped the Man could see her. She reached for him in her mind.
Her straining neck relented and her head wilted back down to face the abyss below her. Her wrists felt moments from snapping from the strain, her shoulder tendons tearing strand by strand.
“Only one card,” her captor growled low. “Only one card. So much need, so much suffering and only one card. This is what you have done to this town.”
The chair lifted a few inches as she heard her captor grunt. Another few inches and it scraped against the concrete. Slowly she ascended, each lift straining her joints, the flimsy chair groaning. Tears dripped from her eyes, plummeting into the dark. She reached the drainage pipe and the chair rocked over its edge until she lay on her side. The stream of water poured around Alexandria, her feet still dangling over into God’s Blowhole.
“An entire night wasted on one card,” he sneered into her ear. “Wasted on you!”
A heavy blow crashed into her temple. With her last conscious thought, she accepted her death.
But The Town was not yet done with her.
