Moments of Darkness Read online

  “I have your treasure, now grant my request as promised,” Gerald said to the nothingness. Silence. “Spirit, listen! I have your bounty, now grant me my boon!” To his right, Gerald heard the soft familiar cackle.

  “So, you’ve slain the beast? My what a diligent knight you are. A promise is a promise.”

  The hide disappeared and Gerald fell once again into a deep void until he landed on hard ground. He pushed himself up and recognized the cave instantly. He plucked a green and blue gem from the wall and ran out.

  Upon his return to the castle, Lady Ygraine marveled at his success.

  “You’ve been gone so long! I feared Lord Mormet would gain the kingdom. You truly are my hero!” She kissed him, causing his face to turn a pinkish color.

  “You have done a wonderful thing here Gerald. Fortunately for you and the kingdom, Lord Mormet did not retrieve the sacred hide from the seventh realm,” Lady Ygraine said.

  Gerald’s face went pale. He spun to face the wizard Shonar.

  “What sorcery is this Shonar? Tell me!” Gerald shouted. Shonar shrugged.

  “Nothing. But luckily for you, Lord Mormet didn’t get that hide. If he had, these gems would be powerless. This kingdom would fall to his rule and we’d be helpless to stop him,” Shonar replied.

  “But how do you know?” Gerald asked.

  Shonar waved a hand in the air. “Wizards know much Gerald, it’s what we do.”

  Gerald swore he heard a soft cackle as the wizard strode down the walkway, a faint white glow surrounding his body.

  Tear In the Realm

  I’ve tried to forget The Tear but the reality haunts me. I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes I see red. Fire and blood covers everything. Since the re-boot I’ve been dreading the consequences.

  It starts with Rex. That’s not his real name. Those are never used. It makes it too easy to find the real people. Rex fancied himself a “rebel” or “savior” but he wasn’t anything more than a twelve year-old kid with mommy issues. I think he was a “he” but in the Realm it didn’t matter what you were outside in the real world. All that mattered was the persona inside the Realm. We don’t know each other outside the Realm. It’s forbidden. Well, it was forbidden.

  Rex destroyed that rule. The One Rule of the Realm and someone found a way around it. Hacks materialized soon after its inception but none succeeded. It was the ultimate prize – finding who was in the Realm in real life. What you did after you discovered them no one knew except the Designers. Which is why they created the One Rule. It doesn’t matter now. Rex found the hole. He found the way out.

  The Designers are mysterious. No human has ever seen them. They may be one person or many. What is known is that they wield ultimate power within the Realm. They can expel any player for any reason. And no one wants that. Being in the Realm is like nothing else in the world. Partly because it’s not “in this world” and partly because the means to tap into the Realm are more addictive than any known drug. Once a player visits they don’t want to leave. And usually they can’t.

  Within the Realm the Designers watch. They’re the “all-knowing, all-seeing” eyes. Their reach into everything is part of the reason the hack took so long to surface. Rex played them too. He put on the lonely boy façade and never caused problems. He observed. He carefully plotted every move the Designers made without drawing any attention on himself. It worked. He noticed a small tear in the wall inside a building. I think it was a bar or strip club. Whatever it was, he found the tear in the code. It gleamed bright like a beacon. You had to be at a certain angle at a certain time and only then could you see the pinpoint of light that indicated the abnormality. Rex knew this. He’d been studying the Designers since he entered the Realm. Careful research led to the club hiding the tear and at the exact moment it was supposed to show, it did. Sometimes even the best-designed programs have their flaws.

  To his credit, Rex didn’t exploit the tear right away. Many cycles later he went back to the club with his plan in place.

  He enlisted several other players promising them a cheat code for unlimited credits and actual elimination of their greatest threats. He proposed to murder the real people behind the players allowing his followers access to whatever they wanted in the Realm without retribution. They worked silently staying out of the watchful gaze of the Designers.

  The Designers arrested one of them and brought her to the Justice Hall for a trial. She held out refusing to give away his secrets but they use certain…methods to force the issue. Soon she revealed Rex as the mastermind behind their machinations.

  The Designers found Rex in an abandoned hotel. Pimps and drug dealers used the decrepit building to peddle their vices. Even in virtual worlds humans fed their evil side. Rex hid in a boarded-up room on the fifth floor huddled against the wall with his arms covering his head. He denied everything when the Designers questioned him. His clean record and sad state of existence in the Realm convinced the Designers of his innocence. By the time they realized his ruse, they couldn’t find him and then he used the tear in the code.

  Rex tried escaping the Realm. When he did, everything imploded.

  The tear in the code was more dangerous than anyone imagined. When he left, he didn’t go back to his physical body. It lay thousands of miles away in a back room of a med center in downtown Hong Kong. The tear opened a portal that deposited Rex in Chicago. The instant he set foot on the busy street, a cataclysmic explosion engulfed the real world in flames.

  He broke the space-time dimension. It was why the One Rule existed. If anyone left the Realm not going back to their own body, the Designers understood there could be horrendous consequences.

  Over two-thirds of the world died that day.

  The power of the Realm, though known by the Designers, was never fully disclosed to international governments when they tried to stop its development. They were assured it was only a game despite reports of extreme addictiveness and loss of human life. The Designers denied any wrongdoing and threw enough money at the right people to make the issue go away. They claimed to create a worldwide method of communication that brought people together through inventive game-play.

  They maintained the technological backbone of the Realm was harmless. It comprised nothing more than powerful servers running simultaneous code.

  Those that survived know better.

  The Designers weren’t from Earth. They brought their tech and implanted it within this world to study humans and enslave them. Once they brought all humanity under their power through the Realm, they’d face no opposition and easily access Earth’s rich resources.

  But the code was faulty. As is all code. There is always a mistake. Something that complex cannot be bug free and there’s always someone willing to exploit that bug even if they don’t understand the consequences. Like Rex.

  Because of his greed and desire to destroy competition, he made it his mission to find the tear in the code. When he did, he almost ended human life on Earth. The code couldn’t process the tear. The resulting explosion of the entire Realm that covered every nation across the planet was powerful. Rex died when he stepped through, as did most of the players and the people that were near them in the real world.

  Some escaped the raging inferno with injuries but still alive. The Designers began working on a new Realm more powerful than the first. They’ve learned to hide the flaws deeper in the code so there is no escape.

  Many resisted the urge to join the Realm again. The powerful pull tempts them daily. Once I almost gave in and became one with it again but was kept away by two others whose names I don’t know. If I get caught, I don’t want them to expose me so I purposely don’t get too personal. The Designers are ruthless and I have to be prepared for anything. We have to resist. If we don’t, the Designers will win and humanity will have lost everything.

  At least that’s what I tell the survivors.

  The Designers, my Designers, have already brought them into the Realm but they don’t know it. So
on they’ll all be under my control and my superiors won’t realize our mistake. We’ll blame the inferior Design team they gave me and they won’t know any different. All they’ll know is my success when they claim the resources we need to survive.

  With All My Love

  On a crisp, sunny fall afternoon my doorbell rang. I stood glued to the television waiting for my team to drive down the field. The doorbell rang again. I cussed as the quarterback threw an interception. Figures. Can’t catch a break.

  I crossed the living room and as I entered the foyer, I saw a woman through the windows to the side of the door.

  She was older and I paused trying to remember her name.

  I unlocked the door and swung it open. “Hello Mrs. Jones,” I said as her name barely made it to my lips in time. Saundra my wife would’ve known but she was out shopping for the day with her mom. She never liked football.

  “I wondered,” she said squinting at me, “if I might bother you for a hand. My arthritis makes me not nearly as strong as I used to be. I have a large container I need filled and my son isn’t able to make it over.” I thought they way she asked odd but I was raised to help others. It’s not like my football team was gonna do any good. “Sure thing, let me get my shoes,” I said.

  When I turned from Mrs. Jones, she sprung at me.

  Her frail frame slammed into me knocking me to the wall. “What the…” I said when a sharp burning pain radiated in my back. I looked down at the tip of her knife protruding from my chest. She pulled it out and stabbed again, striking one of my ribs. The fiery sensation of the attack inflamed my back. Blood oozed down my chest. Again and again she plunged the blade in my back. Breathing grew difficult. I couldn’t rid myself of my older, smaller attacker. She assaulted me with a strength I’d never imagined. Soon the pain reached a crescendo and ceased.

  That’s when I died.

  The painful transition from life to death lasted an eternity. In reality it was maybe a minute or less. Once life is destroyed it takes a few moments for the soul to find its bearings. Mine went through a confusing journey near pearl gates and black ominous gates with flames beyond. When the trip ended, I found myself in the living room of my home sitting in my recliner.

  The television was on though silent to me. My team was still playing and losing. I sat a long time expecting my wife to scold me for not taking out the trash as she asked earlier. I wasn’t sure if what I experienced was real or a horrible dream. I had a memory of flight, of a city of gold and of a lake of fire.

  Movement caught my attention. I jumped and watched in horror as the little old lady from down the street, covered in blood-my blood!-was on her knees sawing at my right wrist. She finally broke through the tendons and bone and raised my hand like a trophy. Blood raced down her arm.

  I screamed and waved my arms trying to stop her. Nothing I did affected her. She ignored my pleas. With my hand stuffed in the pocket of her coat, she casually wiped my blood from her arms using my clothes and left.

  My body lay in a bloody mess on the carpet. The beige Berber we’d installed a year ago turned deep crimson around my body. Fragments of my flesh and bone splattered on the floor. Blood covered everything.

  I stood mesmerized by my lifeless body. Was I seeing what I thought I saw? Was that really me lying on the floor? In my bewildered state I didn’t notice Sandra arrive.

  She ran to my body, convulsing. She cradled my lifeless body. Spittle flew from her mouth while she screamed in horror though I couldn’t hear it. I knelt to comfort her, to let her know I was right there. But as I wrapped my arms around her they went through her body.

  I felt her pain. I sensed her anguish. My heart broke as she clutched my mutilated body.

  When the police arrived it took four officers to remove her from me. Sandra’s mother forced sleeping pills in her to calm down.

  No one realized I was there watching the entire scene unfold.

  I tried alerting the officers and paramedics who removed my dead body. None reacted. Sandra’s mom didn’t notice me when I spoke to her telling her how sorry I am for her pain. It would be at least a day before my parents arrived from Texas. And my sister, if anyone found her, may or may not arrive in the next week.

  I sat in the middle of the living room floor hoping someone might stumble on me and I’d contact them. Instead, officers and EMT’s walked through me like a mist. I didn’t exist to them.

  The silent world surrounding me appeared busy though without sound it was like a sinister dream. Yet it was no dream. I watched them hoist my body into a black plastic bag. They scraped muscle and flesh off the floor and stuffed it inside before zipping it closed. They plunked me on a gurney in the ambulance and sped away with lights blazing. I assumed the siren screeched.

  Sandra sat on the couch with a blank look on her face. Her mom comforted her as best she could. Tears streamed from her eyes while she rocked Sandra.

  My love, my sweetheart from high school.

  Her expression pained me. I stood in front of her telling her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me. “My sweet love I’m so sorry. I’m right here babe. I’m in front of you. Show me you can hear me.”

  I thought I broke through when she lifted her head but the deep hollow eyes looking through me told me otherwise. The sleeping pills were taking hold.

  “I’ll never leave you babe. Never. I will always be here,” I said. Her eyes closed and her mother hugged her tighter.

  The next several weeks were difficult for me.

  Sandra refused to leave the house. The only time she left was for my funeral. At least I assumed it was for that. I still didn’t hear a sound but the way she dressed when her mom escorted her out of the house told me that’s probably where she was going.

  I followed them through the door then they vanished.

  My foot landed on a charcoal colored sandy shore with fire in the distance. Immense heat surrounded me. Screams and wailing and sounds of teeth chattering echoed along the dark gray dunes. Enormous fire spouts erupted all around. Black spirits screeched as they dove towards me. Flames arced behind them.

  “No please no!” I said. The black spirits edged near me leaving a sulfurous trail behind. The flames singed my shirt. My skin sizzled. “How?” I said. I had to leave. I had to escape.

  Behind me our white back door stood in the gray sand. I ran through it and the wailing stopped. No more flames spewed. I stood in our off-white kitchen. Trapped. I had no respite from the house.

  There was no way to find answers unless I communicated with my wife or learned to manipulate objects. I needed to know what happened to me and why.

  Our computer lay on the dining room table and I wondered if the answers I needed were online. I tried opening the computer but my hand slipped through it as it did with anything I tried to touch. I grew increasingly frustrated. I spent a lifetime touching my world and I wasn’t adjusting to this one well.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the computer. I envisioned it opening and my hands touching its smooth surface and lifting, the screen lighting to life. I felt the keys under my fingertips when I entered the password to unlock it. When I opened my eyes I tried again.

  Nothing.

  Even in death computers defeated me. I gave up after several unsuccessful attempts.

  Days went by and every effort at touching something in the living world failed.

  After my funeral people slowly stopped coming over until they left her alone. I spent many hours in the living room watching my grieving wife. She cried every day, a blanket and our cat her only companions. I wanted to comfort her. I spoke to her daily though she didn’t hear me.

  I wanted to tell her I loved her. I wanted her to know I was right there.

  One day after another failed attempt to move a pencil, a loud knock on the door startled me.

  I could hear!

  The sound of the living once again flooded my world. My wife barely moved and the knock sounded again.

  I flew
to the door and there she stood. The woman who’d killed me. Grinning.

  Without thinking I passed through the door.

  Sulfur and wailing greeted me. Huge spires of flame lapped at the sky. Black spirits streaked toward me. I jumped back through the door.

  My wife stood and made her way to the door. I had to do something. I had to stop her! The crazed woman at the door meant to kill her.

  Energy surged within me as though static electricity threatened to shoot from my fingers. I grabbed the planter next to the door and knocked it over. My wife broke from her daze. The woman outside hobbled away. I’d done it! I touched the living world.

  My wife cocked her head and stared at the mess I made then turned back to the couch where she laid down. The overturned planter stayed like that for close to a week.

  During that time I worked on touching the world. I typed a single letter on the keyboard when my wife slept. It was progress! I used a lot of energy touching the real world and couldn’t do it for long though I did learn to type.

  The first words I left Sandra were “With all my love.” It’s something I used to text her all the time.

  When she opened the computer and saw my words on the white screen she screamed.

  Undaunted I continued typing messages to her a few words at a time. I could tell she thought it was her mind boiling with grief by the way she disregarded every word as though an illusion. She’d highlight and delete the words, my precious words, and close the program. I’d have to start the process all over again only to leave a couple words.

  She gave up fighting what she thought was her grieving mind and accepted my words, though at first she did nothing with them. Eventually she talked back to the screen as if it heard her. It didn’t but I did and I’d type messages back to her after I learned how to type longer sentences without draining too much energy. I described my murder, my flights through what I assumed were Heaven and Hell, and my entrapment in the house. She acted enthused but never seemed to believe it was me no matter how personal I made the conversation.