Morass

MORASS

BY A. K. FREELAND

Scott Temple had become a madman. It was too hot to go anywhere else but back into the tree line, but Scott ran forward notwithstanding the others’ jumpy cries.

The heat did not come from the sun above them, as their star would soon retire for the evening. It was them—the ones in the jelly bean, if they were organic at all.

Scott fell to his knees in the baked ground and grabbed at the slurry. The enigma of the skies took flight, its concave belly radiating red-orange.

“Scott!” Nort ran over, his frying pans clattering against his reindeer-patterned canteen. “Scott, we have to go!”

Scott pulled out the heart-shaped locket from the ruin of ash.

“She’s gone!” Nort tugged at him violently.

Scott swatted him away.

Nort tempered his grip and said, “We have to go, Scott!”

Scott wept over the melted chain.

***

The crystal chain went around the young girl’s neck. Studded in diamonds, the locket was unapparelled in craft and embellished with thin ornate designs. Everyone gathered to hand her applause, and the luxurious room dotted with overstuffed chairs, porcelain fixtures, and gold framed painting grew smaller as more of the statesmen and accompanying women joined the ceremony.

The young girl was beautiful, of course, with her hair pulled up and wound in an intricate bun and her face painted to match the ceramic teacups. She wore a long flowing cream colored dress with red underpinnings and flowers.

“A lovely rendition, says me,” Art Folfinger said. “I do concede ground to the parents of course.”

The matron he accompanied gave a shrill laugh and made it her unending duty of the night to complement him on his work. Still, of course, others joined Art’s company and made the necessary concessions and put forth wonderful ideas in Art’s head about the work they too would soon commission.

Nevertheless, Art had no time to listen to more tautology from the patrons. Nevertheless, he was stuck with nowhere else to go but his own bed. Art selected a neck of the rose colored drink and made for a corner where he found the engineer staring at the fire beneath the mantelpiece.

“Ah, Science,” Art said, “again you keep me company.”

“There’s plenty of company elsewhere in the room,” the engineer said clutching his short drinking glass.

“But Science, transport me, as you have done in the past,” Art found the seat nearest the engineer, glad that his patrons have been distracted by the dancers for now. But the engineer did not comment, as Art was accustomed to. So, he pried.

“We are nowhere near our destination?” Art said inclining in his chair.

“It has been awhile,” the engineer said. “We were lucky to have the supplies that we do.”

“Ohh, Science, save me from the end times!” Art giggled.

“You’re just like them, you know,” the engineer gawked at Art.

Art was silent.

“You always try to pretend—that is the issue! You’re spurious, like Roylt,” the engineer said as though he were finished for the night and even stretched limbs.

“Roylt never told me why we were at war,” Art said diminishing with each of the engineer’s words. “Or what they did.”

The engineer looked over at Roylt. He was the center of attention for the time being and wore a half-naked dancer on his lap. “Roylt probably no longer remembers why. He just remembers that we are here, and they are there, and that’s really all there is to it. There isn’t anything special or clandestine about it.” The engineer stood and inched close to Art. “Much like you—you ersatz fiddle, you. You play your tune thinking you are more miracle than mimetic.” The engineer pointed himself away and said, “But, all you are is played.”

“Oh, I’m played?” Art rose from his chair following the engineer. “What about you?”

The crowd of patrons and matrons stopped to wonder at the scene unfolding before them.

“You are a tin can tinkerer,” Art scowled at the engineer’s backside. “With nothing else to do, this room is your prison!”

The engineer slapped Art into a screen. Colors and numbers ricocheted around the display as the two men tussled about.

***

Scott watched the triangle shaped bean ascend straight up into the sky, defying all physical constraints. For years this alien race had plagued Earth, and mankind had let them. Years before the first attack came, there had been viral videos and sightings all across the globe, China, Japan, Russia, the United States, Europe, and Australia, anywhere where the population was technology literate and had access to high-end phones. The most any army ever did was release reports on the phenomena as concerning flight technology that diminished confidence in the current arsenal of arsenals. No one really took the threat of invasion seriously. Some pundits dismissed the sightings as lighting discrepancies in the cameras.

Too many days, Scott spent chasing down his state senators and blogging his videos of his own sightings. He dedicated his social media pages to making the proof accessible, and he hosted podcasts with some semi-credible influencers in the area where they held healthy discussions about every aspect of the aerial developments that had come to dominate the dialogues of his Reddit circles. He was totally ignored on all formats.

Not until the first attack that melted half the city of Vancouver did the people who denied him take to his platforms and participate in his deliberations. These people were now his entourage. They had camped out in the broken wilds of what was the northern state of New York. For the longest time, Scott fostered a community. For many years he and his followers rebuilt civil society into a kinder tolerating society, one that forgot how to be dismissive and brash. Until the attacks turned from the city to the rural areas. Scott lost good people, and he was tired, so very tired as of late. The small counsel had agreed to move away, further north, far into the cold. Scott would not allow it. He built this community from nothing, and he was not going to abandon it like the cowards who abandoned the cities—like Scott did after the first attack.

Scott fastened his seatbelt.

“You won’t make it,” Nort ran up, winded and shaking. “We don’t think you have the fuel, and they are accelerating with each second higher into the atmosphere.”

“That’s the ship, Nort,” Scott said, “that is the one.”

Nort shook his head. “Look, I get that you’ve got this big plan in your head, but we should wait until we get a bigger vessel, one that can hold more of us. It is a suicide mission to go alone.”

Scott donned his pilot’s helmet.

“Scott!” Nort said, “I can talk to the small counsel. I can delay things!”

Scott powered on the engine.

“Don’t go Scott!” Nort pleaded.

Others from the camp gathered around. They had tears in their eyes. They knew why Scott was in the old plane. Nort did not, at least Nort did not want to understand.

Scott tied the shattered, blackened locket around his neck. He gave his old friend a wily eyed smile and said, “It’s almost Christmas.”

Nort stepped back, choked up only for the moment.

“Now, let’s deliver some gifts!” Scott fired on the boosters, and he shot away from the ground up, up and away from his camp and found the dusk horizon breathtaking. For a moment Scott embraced a peace and calm as the setting sun took on the color of his bronze token, but as he throttled higher, the profane death symbol spiraled into his view.

Scott took aim.

The quiet renaissance of the elegant ballroom was torn apart by the sudden plane-shaped hole that had poked its way through the framed reliefs of Roylts of old and landed squarely on the ivory piano in a fiery heap. Guests of Roylt recoiled at the sight of the rusted cap coming undone and Scott Temple staggering out of the smoke to the floor and into a pool of his own vomit. It wasn’t until he wiped his mouth and apprehend the occupants did the vessel keel over from the hole from his plane.

From the ground, Scott’s camp watched as the jelly bean fell from the sky to smite the land far, far away, and they cheered. By the end of the year, they had constructed a monument to Scott Temple, the man who made them believe.