"The Edge of All Worlds" - Chapters 1 thru 4

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     The sand spread out before him, a sea of blackness under an indigo sky glittering ocean-bright with stars, a distant fingernail moon.

     Too dark to see the blood.

     He pushed the blade once more beneath the skin, slicing a ribbon of flesh rife with the blackness of pent-up rage blighted by sorrow. Separating it from the tissue below was slow, laborious, excruciating.

     The moon was full the night he began.

     Edging the blade deeper, he cut the last remnant of blackened flesh from his back, left the dangling shred that he could peel it up, pull it free, cast it upon the heap with the rest. What remained bled pure, cleansed of that which he could no longer abide within himself, pain but a shadow of what he’d endured. And the reward was clarity. Of thought. Of purpose.

     His an unobstructed view of the end and the way to reach it.

     The sorcerer from the north had defeated him. Everything he had known, destroyed. Everyone he had loved, lost. And he knew—knew with a fire-blackened rage that made him scream into the very eyes watching silent from the heavens—that it was his weaknesses that allowed it to happen; weaknesses now cut away.

     The sorcerer from the north suffered no such afflictions, perpetuating acts of purest betrayal and cruelest savagery with unflinching indifference. Forever after called God Slayer, the White Sorcerer from the north suffered not from rage or hatred, not from love or lust, not from appetites or greed or desire. The God Slayer was none of that.

     The God Slayer was inhuman.

     When next we meet, it will be on equal footing.

     For thirteen days and thirteen nights, he had wept over the loss of her and raged at the great desert, screamed at the sky until lightning rained down and burned the sand into glass. And over and over, he cut into his flesh, peeled away the agony, the torment of his failure that left him consumed by anger, lost to the chaos and the madness that swallowed him whole after the fall of the City of Doors. And this too he cut away, the poisoned strips of flesh sick with self-loathing and despair.

     Soon after followed his wants and desires, his thirst for glory, his longings for the soft comforts, the sins of the flesh, the tender nature of the meat that shackled his mind, kept him prisoner to his base nature.

     But not his hatred. That he kept.

     Again and again, he drew the blade along the skin, peeled it up like the rind of an orange, cut it away in black and bleeding bits until he was raw. And he threw the pieces upon the heaped jackal bones laid out in the circle he’d inscribed in the sand, outlined in sapphire and salt. Anyone other than him, highest among the court of the gods, and the Ritual of Clarity would have ended in death. But the gods did not flee the world without leaving a few things behind for those who knew how to use them.

     Looking to the sky, he saw further than he had seen in years. Maybe in his lifetime. How long had he carried them, these horrid things that weighed upon him like chains, kept him down, cost him an eye and the use of one leg, left him homeless and broken and insane, a man without anything but the scars that marked his failure and the emptiness that sang to a universe that could no longer hear? Months? Years? He no longer knew.

     When the walled city fell, when he cradled her body in his arms, her blood cold against his skin, he lost his mind. A lunatic, he ran into the desert and disappeared into himself, a shrieking wild man, a mad demon haunting the night with hands that dripped liquid fire, powerful and unpredictable.

     Even the djinn dared not cross him, the wizard gone mad.

     Hearing of him, the god-king sent soldiers to investigate, find him, kill him. Pathetic. And when they did not return, the god-king lied to his subjects and declared the Dark Wizard from the City of Doors dead, denounced rumors to the contrary as false and treasonous, and claimed the raving monster stalking the dunes was but a low demon cast out, banished from the god-king’s lands forever and in fear of the god-king’s power.

     With the gods dead and gone, even an impudent charlatan seemed grand, a puffing monkey howling from his squalid pedestal of shit.

     No matter. Let the god-king spread his lies, let him worship his own reflection and tell tall tales to his subjects of his God-given rights. He knew better. There were no gods left to give the charlatan his powers, no powers left to be given.

     The gods were dead. All of them.

     The air seized in his lungs, and he bent double, forehead pressed to the hard carpet of dust like a man at prayer—Laughable! Nothing was listening anymore—choking, unable to breathe. He retched the poisoned bile up from deep inside, tangled and thick and black as tar, and spat it within the circle.

     Nearly done.

     He looked once more upon the arrangement of bones, upon the long strips of blackened skin, stench replete with all the things that weakened him. A whiff still evoked memories: the mouthwatering taste of fine foods, roasted meats, sugared fruits, honeyed bread, succulent wine. Or the perfumed scent of a woman’s hair, the tang of sweat between her breasts, the smell of her sex. Or the raw hotness of digging his fingers into the throat of an enemy, squeezing the life from them, feeling them die, the iron smell of blood. 

     All of these things lay in the circle of sapphire blue as the sea, salt bright as the moon, bled freely atop the frame of the jackal bones under the cold stare of the distant stars.

     This was the Ritual of Clarity.

     Somewhere beyond the farthest edges of the sands, beyond the last corner of the sky, behind the most distant smear of stars so far away as to beleaguer the imaginations of any but the few who could conceive of eternity and godhead and worlds beyond worlds, the White Sorcerer from the north was hiding.

     And Akil would find him.

     Under the sliver moon and the empty heavens, the Dark Wizard finished the spell he’d begun nights before, the spell he’d bled for, wept for, raged for. And as he spoke the words that were older than the desert, the black ribbons of skin began to slide one atop the other like a knot of vipers, laying themselves across the bone lattice, binding and bending them to their will, transforming both into something unrecognizable but hauntingly familiar.

     And under the waning knife-blade moon, the thing took shape, building itself from the magic and the raw dark material, from the blood and the hatred and the weakness and the agony that the Dark Wizard could not stand within himself, but of which he was unable to rid himself completely.

     Before the sun could throw its first rays across the sparkling sea of sand, a man crouched within the circle where the bones and the black and bloody skin had been, body strong and lean and dark, muscles taut and rope-thin. He sat tensed within the ring as if he meant to leap up, run free, find something alive and choke it to death. Grin wide and feral, flash of white teeth, eyes full of immeasurable hatred, painful truths spilling endlessly from his lips in a babble.

    The Dark Wizard looked on him with understanding, knowing what had to be done. And though he was tempted—a little, he would not deny it—he knew it was not right to leave it behind, trapped forever within the circle, this flesh of his flesh, this inheritor of all his dark and weak emotions.

     Leaning heavily upon his staff, he smeared an edge of the circle with his foot, releasing what was inside.

     “Come. There is much to do.”

     In the sky, the last stars of the night watched in silence. And they waited. The end was a very long way off. There was still time for it to change.

     Perhaps …

     On Tuesday, witnesses reported an attack on the shore near the old pier, two men assaulting a young woman. The two men are dark-skinned. The young woman is white. All three are homeless.

     None of that matters.

     They were fighting, witnesses claim, over books. Videos of the incident already uploaded to the internet, bystanders quick to record everything with smart phones though none possessing the wherewithal to contact authorities or otherwise intervene. The reality of information overload is rampant disassociation, leaving us spectators to our own existence, no more participants in the events surrounding us than the audience is a participant in a movie playing out on the screen. The social media revolution has rendered society less sociable than ever before, billions of people all quietly tracking every facet of everyone else’s lives, endlessly entertained and never more ignorant, despondent, or alone.

     Wobbly footage filmed by amateur voyeurs with handheld cellphones shows one of the men repeatedly striking the young woman until she collapses. The other rummages her bag, takes her books, then wipes the knuckles of the first clean of blood with a linen cloth. They leave. She screams after them, but no one seems to hear.

     All of this over books.

     Speculation runs rampant, the mouths of the cyber sleuths moistened with anticipation. It could, of course, be an elaborate hoax, a marketing stunt dreamed up by guerilla advertisers looking for a hook, viral video all the rage now that flash mobs have gone the way of the passenger pigeon. But to what end? Local authorities refuse to comment on the story despite uploaded videos—bad publicity for the city’s waterfront—and point out that the captured footage clearly does not tell the whole story.

     It is the age of deniability. Facts can be challenged or even dismissed outright if taken out of context, held too close, scrutinized too deeply … questioned. 

     Sometimes an elephant is not an elephant.

     Authorities are also quick to point out that, as a rule, the homeless do not trust law enforcement. Even when they themselves are the apparent victims of a crime, the homeless seldom choose to report it, afraid of being arrested themselves. Trust is not a thing universally given … or deserved. All parties flee before the police arrive, no one left behind to question. This is not unusual.

     Sometimes an elephant is an elephant.

     Locals say they know the young woman who carries the books, have seen her around the beach before, but do not know her real name or where she stays. Locally, she is known only as “Lost Angeles.” No witnesses claim to have ever seen the two men prior to that day, but this is not unusual. The homeless are frequently transient, moving towards opportunity or away from danger like fish swimming a coral reef, and it is not uncommon for them to exist beneath the notice of those around them, their condition a kind of camouflage, invisibility by virtue of being beneath notice. Regardless, none of the parties to the incident have been seen since. Authorities indicate finding these two men without the assistance of the public will likely be impossible, and they encourage anyone with information as to their whereabouts to please contact them. Tips will be kept confidential.

     Off the record, police are not optimistic. This is also not unusual.

     You did not hear about this.

     On that same Tuesday, a news report out of the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe detailed the slaughter of a small herd of elephants on the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park by ivory poachers, the story immediately picked up by the AP, going international. The animals are killed with high-powered rifles, tusks separated with chainsaws, carcasses left to rot in the sun. Images shared thousands of times. Millions. We are horrified, unable to look away. Reporters descend like flies, and the story rockets around the globe in hours. The reality of the World Wide Web is that we live in an age of boundless information, saturation to the point of distraction. Snippets of footage, seconds of sound bites, small and easily digestible tidbits of story bled dry of any detail save the most salacious. The social media monster awakens, tears into anything it can find like a starved animal.

      And in the midst of all this information, we have never been more ignorant.

     The incident explodes.

     Park officials blame underfunding for their inability to adequately protect the animals under their supervision. Foreign conservancy groups blame lax regulations and policing of parkland by the government of Zimbabwe. The government of Zimbabwe blames the global demand for illegal ivory, likening the trade in animal products to the trafficking of narcotics; it is the demand from other, wealthier nations that fuels the need for supply.

     Rangers note hopefully that they could account for only eleven of the fifteen animals in this herd, launching a search for the remainder. “Find the Four” becomes a rally cry, a popular hashtag as the world turns its attention to this small corner of the globe and four missing elephants. The money machine turns on, donations pour in. Our love of animals is proportional only to our indifference or hatred towards other human beings. Most of the charitable funds will not reach their intended destination, skimmed off en route. They term this breakage.

     Six days later, a Nor’easter slams the mid-Atlantic causing severe coastal flooding. Thousands are left without power. Homes are destroyed. Possessions are lost. Some of these are the invaluable collections of memorabilia, meaningless and worthless to any except the one who has lost them. And for them, the loss is immeasurable. Photographs and mementos and trinkets that tell a story greater than their own all disappear in the raging of the storm, but are mourned only by the few who choose to listen. The National Guard is mobilized. The Red Cross responds. The money machine changes direction. There are no deaths, and for this, we are grateful.

     The elephants are forgotten, both the living and the dead.

     Sooner or later, everything is forgotten. It only means that it is simpler to forget about something than it is to make it go away.

     No trace of the missing elephants is ever found.

     The police never find the homeless girl from the beach by the pier, the girl they call Lost Angeles, or learn why she was attacked by two men over her books. No one even knows if it is true.

     But it is.

     The Nor’easter is meaningless. The skies clear. The waters drain away. The sun comes out. Life goes on. The elephants are also meaningless. The dead simply arrive at their destination ahead of the rest, a destination not so far away as you might think. Soon they will be gone, all of them, and the world will never again know elephants.

     The only thing that is important is the girl. And the two men. And the books that bind them.

     I’ve put it all down, kept the stories because that is what I must do. What I promised I would do. She did not lie about the cost. I simply did not listen. Whom among us ever does? But the door is closed forever now. Everyone else is dead. Except for him. And her, of course.

     As for me, that’s a matter of opinion.

     So why are you still sitting there, breathing easy, eyes going shut? I told you already to wake up! This world is already happening, and you don’t even realize it. The ending is already written, and you don’t even know. Too concerned with your morning commute, the highlights on the sports page, insensate politics populated by selfish, self-important children screaming at one another like piglets in a pen, television programs of believable fiction and unbelievable reality, political affiliations, sexual orientations, cell phone apps, likes and shares, the credit card bill, your cholesterol score, swipe left, swipe right, turn on, jerk off.

     None of it matters.

     None if it!

     All of this will end sooner than you realize.

     And you’ll never see it coming … 

          … never … see it … coming … 

               … never … see … 

                    … never … 

     The sorcerer walks the endless plains, the infinite desert, the place at the end of all roads where reality finally runs out.

     He is looking for something.

     The dust beneath his boots barely lifts, his presence little more than the passing of a breeze. Not sand but dust, to the very edges of the horizon. No dunes or hills or distant mountains or thirsty scrub. Only dust, bone-dry, a wasteland as limitless and empty as the sky.

     Behind him looms the edge. If the Wasteland actualized infinity, an emptiness of dust and sky, endless in all directions, then the edge takes it one step further. That way, even the ground disappears. Over the edge is nothing. Not ahead, not down, not up, not anything.

     The void.

     And sometimes it calls to him.

     He keeps his back to it this day, searching. He’d cast a message into reality’s ocean. No hollow scream from the lip of the abyss, no shout from the precipice, the mad and mighty roar at the water’s edge. This message was more subtle. Someone was looking for it, had been looking for it for thousands of years. And when they saw it, they would know.

     And they would smell the dust. 

    Just as he could smell the dust. 

     They’re coming.

     He catches sight of it from the corner of his eye, a restless shimmer to the air. He walks over, stares down, sees the filmy ether beneath his boots, down below, hidden under the surface.

     The wizard strikes the ground with such force that his fist smashes into the hardpan, no more resistance than a pool of water. And that quick, he snatches it up, wrenches it free from the ground, writhing and hissing with undirected rage, slithering coils of coal-colored smoke, wisps of carbon blackness snatching and clawing the air. One might think it nothing, ephemera, a hollow of shadow and vapor, the stench of oil, the color of midnight.

     How wrong one would be.

     He draws the snapping, chittering thing close, stares into the murk, reads the pieces of its story. It is what he expects. What he seeks. This far out in the Wasteland, this far down, there is little left but what he holds: unformed hatred woven with fear and anger and disgust, so tight that nothing can break it apart but time, infinite and agonizing.

     The wizard speaks to the writhing shadow of smoke and stench, his words printed on the back of the darkness, etched into the foundation of the universe, inscribed on the notes of the sea. And like a snake attentive to the charmer’s flute, the smoke ceases to move, more haunting for the suggestion that there might be something aware lurking inside.

     Then the wizard breathes in, drawing the thing into himself, holding it, transforming it. And when he breathes out again, it falls upon the pale ground with a slushy splat like blood-soaked rags, edges more defined, movements agitated, angry.

     Sometimes hatred only needs a direction.

     The White Sorcerer lifts the shifting mass—its wet edges, its sharpening resolve—like a hunter holding a snared rabbit, bleeding out, almost ready to skin and roast. He is careful to keep his hands clear of the new claws, the forming teeth, sharp and growing sharper. He will take it back to the palace, let it grow, age, harden. 

     He will need more. Many more.

     They can smell the dust.

     And after more than two thousand years, they are coming for him.
 

     At night, the glass walls of the lobby had a tendency to reflect back upon themselves, an effect of the glazing that made it look from without like a golden mirror. But even with the interior lighting reduced by a third— afterhours green initiative, energy saving rules—it was too bright inside to see anything but the lobby’s reflection. Soaring walls of bone-colored tile. Dizzying floor pattern that appeared to recede and approach, both at once. The stark emptiness that was the ground floor of the Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher Building at night.

     Clark worked the lobby. Alone. He leaned back, glanced across the half dozen screens arrayed below the line of sight at the Information Desk—stupid name; like there was anything wrong with calling it the Security Desk; that’s what it was, wasn’t it? And everyone knew it—and saw nothing on any of them.

     Empty views of empty hallways and dingy, pixelated shadows. Nothing.

     The way it should be.

     He absently flipped through a magazine.

     It was a good job, for the most part. Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher hadn’t replaced out guards with a security motion sensor system like a lot of the other big office buildings. And if everything went well, he could retire out in a little less than two years. Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher would be the last job he ever held before he found his way to a place with a little more sun and maybe a little more sand.

     Good job or no, this shit gets old.

     Like that weird electrical glitch a week and half ago, the one that shorted out the video backup server and killed all security camera recordings for the better part of six hours. Real fuckaroo. Put Security on edge, and had IT crawling around the Information Desk like they were looking for a way to blame it on the guards on the evening shift. It was the same day, according to the morning shift, that some young woman from the college came in and defaced one of the lobby alcoves. She just showed up that morning and started painting the wall, creating some kind of mural or whatnot.

     The whole world’s gone nuts.

     Apparently, some Mail Room dumb-ass let her into the building through the employee entrance. The same dumb-ass was fired and walked out the same entrance a few hours later.

     Nuts!

     Clark enjoyed the quiet of the evening shift, make no mistake, but still wished he’d been there to see that. Moron! Instead, Clark got the electrical issue later that night that had IT playing ant hill with the Security Desk—Information Desk; whatever—for hours before concluding it was some kind of short.

     Yeah, no shit, geniuses.

     Maintenance brought in an electrical contractor the following day who confirmed the same and started pulling and rerunning all the wiring from the Information Desk down to the server vault. Cause it’d be a real shame if no one could keep video recordings of empty halls and shadowy corners and a whole lot of nothing. 

     Seriously, who cares?

     Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher kept surveillance recordings for ninety days on the local server. After that, it was purged and overwritten, gone like it never was. Morning to evening, recordings of a bustling lobby, busy hallways, people filing in and going out, scurrying like insects. But much past six o’clock, and the lobby—like the rest of the building—became a ghost town minus the ghosts.

     Nothing.

     And that’s what made this a good job. He got to sit behind the Information Desk and monitor the screens, watching and making sure that nothing happened. And nothing did. The cleaning crew made their rounds. A few of the white collars put in their thankless overtime. Corporate suck-ups. And some of the more eager security guards, mostly young kids who didn’t know any better, walked patrols, flashlights hefted over their shoulders, one hand kept on the holstered walkie—can’t carry guns in AHA, even Security; liability issues—because it made them feel like they were accomplishing something.

     This only served to confirm Clark’s low opinion of Millennials and Gen Z’s. Not a one of them appreciated how his generation had worked to make life better. How they’d put in their time, learned the ropes, earned their stripes. Folks today figured everything should be handed to them on a plate, too lazy or too stupid to earn it on their own. They tossed out participation awards like candy at Halloween. Everybody’s a winner, so nobody gets their feelings hurt. Boo-hoo! All anyone knew how to do now was complain, talk about getting everything faster, making everything better, get paid more for working less. Like no one before them ever thought of that. What was wrong with doing a job, with working hard and going home after, huh? Where was the issue with doing what you were told and collecting a paycheck? 

     Evening shift security at Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher was the cream of the crop for an ex-cop. Best ever. It paid well. No walking a beat or worrying about somebody standing over you telling you what to do. Never worrying about stacks of bureaucratic bullshit at the end of every day, or running down some tweaker, or getting jabbed with a stray needle, or having to pull a gun. Nobody was ever going to bust into Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher. Seriously, what the hell for? The place turned on information, investments, and transactions. Nothing here but file cabinets and computer records. Nothing worth stealing that anyone could carry except maybe a couple computers. But what kind of an idiot would do that nowadays?

     And the evening shift had other perks, too; ones no one talked much about. Security had access to any floor in the building, and that included the executive floors above thirteen, the ones with the nice restrooms that smelled like tropical suntan oil and mango, where the floor and the seats and the sinks and the handles were all spotless, not just clean but shining. Regular employees, the herds of wage meat morons and suck-ups that filed in every morning and out every evening, couldn’t access above thirteen. Being able to use those executive toilets every night, so clean you could eat off the floor, was definitely a perk of working security at night.

     And of course, working the evening shift came with a ten-percent shift differential, so there was that.

     Come in late, don’t work too hard, go home every night safe and sound, and collect your pay. Plus the little extras.

     Yeah, a pretty good job.

     Clark stopped, the magazine’s thin, glossy paper held between his finger and thumb, page half-turned. He cocked his head a little to one side, listening over the white noise whisper of the building’s HVAC system.

     Voices?

     His eyes trailed over the monitors, each screen segmented into fours, dozens of images of empty halls, empty elevator lobbies, empty cafeteria entrance, empty everything. Even the cleaning crew was done for the night.

     So who was still here?

     Hands instinctively closed the magazine, rolled it quietly into a tight tube before rising from the Information Desk, holding it tightly like a policeman’s baton, the one Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher wouldn’t let him carry.

     “Is someone back there?”

     He turned into the main hall leading to the elevators, the hall with the vestibule alcoves, the one still sheeted to the ceiling in Tyvek covering the scaffold that concealed the crazy woman’s graffiti.

     The magazine fell from his hand, made a soft crumpling sound upon the floor, pages fanning open.

     Curls of plastic lay about the base of the wooden scaffold, swaths cut from nearly seven feet up all the way down to the floor, light from the hallway shining down on the vandalized alcove. A strong smell of paint.

     “What …?”

     He was sure he was looking at two people, a man and a woman. They were holding hands, stepping back into the shallow alcove, trying to hide, trying to …

     And just like that, they disappeared right into the wall.

     Like ghosts.

     Clark stepped closer, blinked, shook his head. One hand fumbled for his walkie, the other groped for his flashlight before remembering he wasn’t carrying either, had left both behind at the Information Desk. 

     He found himself staring into the exposed alcove, the exposed painting, an illusion of depth and doorways, darkness that seemed to descend through the wall, through the building, through the heart of the universe.

     What the hell is this?

     The explosion from the front of the Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher Building spun Clark’s head around like a swivel, startled him so badly that he fell, tripped over his own feet.

     A small truck had barreled into the building, smashed through the revolving doors, blasted a swath of mirrored glass across the lobby like flung ice as it skidded to a halt, front axle torn completely from the carriage, shredded metal scraping across the lobby, carving into the gleaming tilework.

     Clark stared at the wreck, realized the vehicle looked like it might have been an ambulance before it was demolished by the collision. Probably racing to an accident. Or the hospital. Either way, trying to help someone. And now they needed help.

     The security guard watched someone crawl from the ambulance. Not from the door, but through the missing windshield. Skinny, jet-black, wearing a loose black t-shirt and pants, he dropped nimbly to the ground, engine already dead, and surveyed the wreck, swaying back and forth as if the world was a ship at sea. 

     “Cripes!” Clark declared, starting towards the man. “A-are you all right?”

     He forgot to stop at the Information Desk for his walkie and flashlight. 

     Through the gaping hole in the front of the Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher Building, a young boy suddenly appeared, racing inside. Behind him, supermodels, two women, tall and slim and exquisite, one with long, platinum hair, the other with hair black as night. Both women were dressed in tight, black-and-red silk like glossy spiders. All three stopped suddenly, looked at him, eyes hard and alert.

     Then the ambulance driver—the one that looked nothing like an ambulance driver should look—turned as well. The thin man glared at him, white teeth flashing as he grinned widely, fearsome eyes inexplicably filled with what Clark could only describe as unbounded hatred.

     And that was when he realized that this wasn’t an accident. It was a crime!

     Walking faster, Clark’s hand graces his right hip, a reflex to draw the revolver he hasn’t carried in years, not since leaving the force, not since taking on the cushy security job at Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher.

     The boy looks back at him with black, almond-shaped eyes—they’re wrong; those eyes are wrong—points, fingers twisting the very air before closing into a fist.

     “Stop!”

     And Clark stops, ogles. Something inside of the security guard’s chest closes like a fist.

     He falls face first upon the marble floor of the Abaddon, Hopewell, Andreher lobby.

     It hurts! Everything hurts!

     And then it doesn’t.