Price of Forever

He sat down on the bench overlooking the bustling street. An older gentleman sat at the far end of the bench, reading his newspaper silently. A young man with a dog stopped to check his phone. The stranger looked over.

“Excuse me, how long has that restaurant been there?” the stranger asked. The young man with the dog looked up.

“Huh? Oh, there? Uh... about eight years I think. Been a while since you've been in town?” the young man asked.

“A bit, yes,” the stranger confessed. The young man nodded and continued on down the sidewalk. The old man cleared his throat. The stranger looked over.

“It's been fifty years since you've been here,” the old man said.

“Pardon?” the stranger asked.

“You weren't asking about the business in the building. You were asking about the building itself,” the old man chuckled. The stranger looked over at him, puzzled.

“It was a rainy day, and the drainage was as bad then as it is now. Water was almost knee deep out in the street. A branch fell and caught the power line, tearing it down. A piece of cable slashed a young boy across the face, and you grabbed him and ran to safety before the water got electrified,” the old man cited. The stranger nodded.

“That sounds like quite a story. I must have an ancient twin,” the stranger smiled.

“No, it was you. Because you didn't get through the water before it electrified. The cable hit that water. Somehow you kept running. It should have fried you, but it didn't,” the old man said. The stranger now cleared his throat. This was becoming uncomfortable.

“It's okay. I'm not going to rat you out. I've been sitting here for some time thinking of how to say hello to you,” the old man said.

“Well, hello,” the stranger said as pleasantly as he could muster.

“And I wanted to say thank you,” the old man said. He turned and the stranger could see the jagged scar that etched down the left side of his face.

“I'm sorry I couldn't get to you before the cable struck,” the stranger confessed.

“You saved my life. I'd have been dead if not for you. And I've had a good life. Even found a good woman that looked past this mark on my face. So for all the days I've had since then, thank you,” the old man said. The stranger was quiet a moment.

“How did you know the cables struck the water? Your face was covered with blood,” the stranger said.

“Heard it. Felt it,” the old man said.

The stranger looked over curiously.

“You took the brunt of it, sure. But I felt it surge through me. My entire body clenched like one big balled fist. It hurt like hell. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how you were able to keep running. More I've learned of electricity since then, the more it's a mystery to me,” the old man said.

“There are many mysteries in this world,” the stranger replied.

“What's got you in town?” the old man asked.

“Funeral,” the stranger replied. The old man nodded.

“Older you get, the more of those you go to,” he said, then caught himself, realizing this man was likely far older than he.

“Until they grow fewer than you ever imagined,” the stranger replied. The old man felt awkward, and sorry for his comment.

“Name's Bud Tanner,” the old man said. The stranger nodded.

“Alan Southwark,” the stranger introduced now.

“Southwark? Don't think I've ever heard that last name,” Bud mused.

“There weren't many of us left. Two world wars saw to that. After tonight, the family name will be no more,” he said matter of factly. Bud could sense the edge of sadness, although Alan was clearly not the type to wallow in it. Bud nodded.

“My condolences,” Bud said.

“Thank you,” Alan answered. They were quiet for a few moments. Alan stood.

“My grand kids own a little restaurant around the corner. Bud's Burgers. Clever title eh? Anyways, you should stop on by if you're in town for a bit. Don't worry, I won't tell 'em about you. Just say that you the son of an old friend of mine,” Bud offered. Alan nodded.

“Thank you,” Alan said again and headed off down the road.

Alan headed to the clearing where the body was being buried. There were a handful of people in attendance. Alan sighed. He could recall the Southwark weddings and funerals of old, with hundreds in attendance. It seemed as though they would stand forever. Or perhaps no one was really thinking of tomorrow. Tomorrow is such an obscure idea anyway.

He approached the small gathering quietly, not wishing to draw attention to himself.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the priest said as he sprinkled dirt over the casket. Alan found himself murmuring the words to himself. He looked up to see a familiar face he hadn't expected. Dorian Ballentine. Dorian smiled. Alan nodded. Another person in the gathering looked up and noticed Alan. A young, pale woman with dark hair and dark eyes. Alan closed his eyes for a moment and considered leaving.

No. This was Gloria, his last living descendant. He would not be chased from this place. He stood in place until the funeral was concluded. He walked forward and set thirteen red roses upon Gloria Southwark's grave. He stood looking at her headstone as though an endless chasm yawned forth before him and he fought to keep himself from falling in. Instead, a fathomless gray enveloped him. He found a kaleidoscope of faces and places cascading in his mind. So many years, so many people. Many names he could no longer recall.

“Are you Alan Southwark?”

He breathed deeply and slowly. He had stayed too long. He had been discovered. He opened his eyes slowly and looked over to see the young woman again.

“I'm sorry, I know this is a difficult time, having just lost your aunt and all, but I need to go over some legal documents with you,” she said.

Aunt? he thought to himself.

Reluctantly he followed her to her office. He followed her black Lexus through the winding roads heading well outside of town. She eventually brought him to a secluded manor. Inside was an office furnished with aged mahogany chairs and desk. She set some tea to brewing and pulled out a series of folders. She opened up a folder and handed it to him. He looked it over. There were a series of deeds, estates, stocks, bonds and bank accounts listed. He glanced over them, then back up at the woman.

“Having no other surviving heirs, sole control of her estate goes to you it seems,” the young woman said with an awkward smile.

“How do you know who I am?” Alan asked.

“All I've got is the photo she had of you. It looked old. Honestly, I was surprised when I recognized you. It must have weathered prematurely,” she offered. Alan nodded. He looked back over the files.

“How did Gloria... Aunt Gloria come about all of this?” he asked.

“She apparently spent her later years tracking down all of the lost estates and accounts of the Southwark family. There were apparently quite a few scattered across the U.S, Canada and Europe,” she said. Alan had spent centuries amassing a fortune so that the Southwark family would want for nothing. His condition often forced him to travel. Often unexpectedly. As the 20^th century loomed and the world seemed to grow smaller, he diversified his investments and even left himself foxholes and safe houses to retreat to should he need to drop one identity and draw from funds elsewhere immediately. Gloria had found them all.

“Clever girl...” he murmured to himself.

“Excuse me?” the lawyer asked.

“Nothing. Sorry. Lost in thought. Also, I beg your pardon, but I never formally introduced myself to you,” he said.

“Well, I already know you're Alan Southwark. I'm Veronica Ristani,” she said, extending a hand. He shook her hand.

“Albanian?” he asked. She nodded.

“Yes. How did you know?” she asked.

“I just read a lot,” he replied.

His eyes fell on the folder as a mist gathered at the edges of his eyes. He remembered a daydream he had had ages ago, about the end of the world. Everyone on Earth had died off, and he would wander its empty streets like a ghost forever. The thought had horrified him, yet here it was. The indomitable Southwarks, bright and brilliant and full of life, were gone. Alan was simply an echo, a whisper of what used to be.

“What will you do now?” she asked. “That's quite a fortune.”

“It is. Aunt Gloria did well for herself.”

“Most people would be ecstatic at being suddenly wealthy.”

“You're probably right.”

Before he could stop himself, the tears fell. He turned his head as his face reddened, but he couldn't stop himself. He mourned for his lost family. He mourned more for their passing that he could never be a part of. It was selfish, he knew; but sometimes we are. He heard something slide across the table. He looked up to see that Veronica had pushed a tissue box across the table. She was sitting razor straight. Alan took a tissue and nodded his thanks.

“Mr. Southwark, I'm not exactly the comforting type, but you have me at a loss. Are you going to be alright?”

“Honestly? No.”

Alan blew his nose and threw the tissue in the trash. He stared out the window into the hills and forest beyond the manor. He sighed and chuckled to himself.

“But I'm going to do something I swore I'd never do,” he said as he turned. Veronica's hand was inside her purse, her face rigid. Alan held up his hands.

“No no no! Nothing to you! Oh god! Wow, I must sound mad over here carrying on like this.”

“A bit. Yes,” Veronica replied, her hand not leaving her purse.

“I'm going to tell you who I am.”

“I know who you are. You're Alan Southwark, last surviving heir of Gloria Southwark.”

“She's my last surviving heir. And that photo isn't prematurely aged. It was taken just before the second World War.”

Veronica's face was a mask of incredulousness.

“I don't expect you to believe me, but I just buried the last of my family, and I've kept this secret for so long because I wanted them to be safe. That's... not really a concern any longer, I'm sad to say.”

Veronica shook her head.

I Need Magic

I don’t want magic to be real.

I need it to be.

The eking grey of the world around me edges in until it becomes the ink seeping into my veins.

That blood that I pour onto the page in hopes of calling forth the magic I can’t find elsewhere. I need it to come to life. I need to see the glimmer manifest before my eyes.

When I look inward, searching for that light and finding nothing, it feels like I’m dying. I think I’m crying for a moment, but my eyes have long gone dry.

It’s the suffocation I’m feeling. Unable to breath in this world that doesn’t support life. That doesn’t want me. These walls press in upon me like a closing tomb, but I’m too afraid to leave. My prison is my comfort and I am more afraid of the price of freedom than I am of what I lose by not trying to leave again.

Besides, I could fade away, vanish, and the world would be no worse off.

These were my thoughts that night as I crumpled to the floor under the weight of all my failure and insecurity. It was the night I first heard the pages whisper.

They didn’t make words. Not in any language I could ever think to translate. I was confused and terrified at first. I thought maybe I’d finally broken, finally gone insane. I thought that perhaps the icy wraiths whose skeletal fingers I would feel scrap across the inside of my lonely, aching chest had finally come to claim me for good.

With that thought I smiled for the first time in ages. It was finally over. I wouldn’t hurt anymore.

But then the eerie archaic gibberish coalesced into thoughts that I could understand. I understood that this was an ancient conversation I was being allowed to hear. It was something far greater than me, or my thoughts, or my problems. But I was being allowed to hear it at last, and once I understood this, I wept.

What I could gather, what little bit of it I can translate into words is this.

There was. This is. Creation was and is again. It is all around me and I can be its conduit if I choose. Choose to be strong. Choose to be wise. Choose to be.

I chose to be.

And the room filled with the whispers and their possibility until every molecule vibrated and pulsed against one another and the air hummed with the promise of what could be.

I awoke the next morning with my notebook clutched to my chest. Light filtered through the thin beige curtains, alive with the thousands of particles of dust floating through the beams and into the invisible aether that exists in the endless realm of what we are unable to see.

Certain that I had awoken from a surreal dream, I thumbed through the familiar poems of my recent thoughts. Tally marks of the malaise I was certain was my destiny. The familiar lyrics gave way to strange syllables and alien gatherings of letters. In them I found a cadence, a rhythm as natural as my own heartbeat. Although I did not understand their meaning, as I read them it seemed that I could feel the pulse of the Earth, of the universe itself.

I feared to speak the words aloud lest I unzip the double helix of reality and set forth something immense upon this world that could never be recalled again. I closed the book and went to work, doing something I cared nothing about the entire day. I made sure I did it well enough to keep my overseers appeased and quietly returned home to stare at these pages over a lukewarm cup of coffee.

The words made less sense than they had that morning. Instead of secret code, they just looked like the mindless scribbling of a confused child. The cadence was less familiar. The power of the message was fading. I was losing my chance.

I was terrified of what I might unleash upon the world. In the end, I think I was more afraid of facing a tomorrow as bleak as yesterday. So I sat down and began to read the words aloud.

My apartment began to shake. The air thrummed with some invisible, living force. I held out my hand and unseen pens inked the air around my forearm with swirls and unknown symbols. I pushed my hand forward and the wall erupted into fragments of plaster, wood and glass that sprayed out into the parking lot. I looked on in horror as the debris showered the cars below.

I thought about repairing the wall, seeing if the magic could undo what it had just done. But I stopped myself. The wall was gone and now I had no reason to stay here any longer.

Happily Ever After

“I always hoped I'd die first. I know it's selfish to say out loud, but, who are you going to tell at this point?” the old king said to the queen that had ruled at his side the past forty years. She chuckled before she started coughing. The king's grip on her hand tightened.

“All the enemies of the kingdom that I've battled, and I can do nothing to keep you here a little while longer,” the old man growled. She patted his hand.

“Death takes us all in time. Now is mine, and I'm not sad. I've had a good life,” she said, her voice a mere whisper.

“Defeating the evil witch. Slaying the dragon. All the strange and curious things that brought us together, that became the story that they've told about us ever since. It seems so strange to hear it sometimes, but it's just what we had to do at the time,” the king mused. The queen smiled.

“That wasn't the real magic though. Watching our own children grow and have adventures of their own. Rescue villages from trolls. Find lost tomes. Complete quests for wizards. Then to watch them marry and their own children grow,” the queen said.

“Where has all the time gone?” the king sighed.

“In good company,” the queen said, tightening her grip on his hand one last time.

“I'll be sad in my days alone. But I have no regrets. It's been a good life, and I'm so glad I got to share it with you,” the king said, mist gathering around his wrinkled eyes.

“It's funny. It sounds so silly when they read it in the story books, but it really can happen,” she whispered.

“What can?”

“Happily ever after,” she sighed. Then she went still. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, almost as if she were just lost in thought. But the king could see that her chest rose and fell no more, and so he brought his hand across her forehead and closed her eyes forever.

“It really was,” he replied, his lips trembling under his bushy gray beard and mustache. He patted her hand and stepped outside to break the news to the rest of the family. He looked down the balcony from her room at them all gathered. Their children, and grandchildren and cousins and all the people of their household that looked up to them both. Some began weeping. Others forced a smile for their father. He simply nodded in reply.

“It really was...”

Moriarty

• All of the dignitaries of London had come to mourn the fall of their great hero. Even though he attempted to live a quiet life between his myriad adventures, Holmes was beloved of many. Politicians attempted to strengthen their names by connecting themselves with this hero of the people. Many simply owed him their thanks for solving the cases no one else could and bringing some succor to these injured parties. Diplomats, foreign aristocracy, including the king of Bohemia, and so many others whom Holmes had helped over the years. All of that came to an end unexpectedly when Holmes passed from a heart attack. Complications from his use of cocaine to solve his stack of cases. “Natural causes”, Scotland Yard had ruled it, but many of us knew better. I knew better. The servants and colleagues of so many of these gathered reported directly to me, or to a proxy who reported to me. I sat and waited while the Anglican minister commended his soul to God. Inspector Lestrade stood with his underlings in a single file line, rifles over shoulders. I saw one of my own emissaries in that line who’s eyes went wide like a buffoon when he saw me in the crowd. Not all of my associates are yet versed in properly not recognizing me in public. I waited while various speeches were given, tears were shed, hands were shaken. I waited while they lay Holmes in the ground. I watched his ever faithful Watson in tears, held up by his dutiful wife. I even saw the vivacious Irene Adler whom Holmes had shared a keen friendship with. I waited, until it was Lestrade and his gathered men on duty. Then I approached. “A said thing, this,” I said. “Indeed! It’s most terrible. Not that we couldn’t do the job on our own, but Scotland Yard won’t be the same without a consultant like Holmes at our disposal,” Lestrade stammered. I fought the urge to growl. I fought the urge to smash his ignorant, smug face in with the end of my cane. I had much bigger fish to catch. “And the autopsy turned up nothing?” “Autopsy?” the idiot replied. “Yes. An autopsy. Whenever a prominent figure of English society passes, it is customary to look into what may have caused it,” I said. “It’s been ruled natural causes sir,” Lestrade said and turned away. As much as his very existence rankled me, I had to remind myself to be thankful for men like Lestrade. Without buffoons like him in positions of power, it would not be so very easy to run my underground organization right under their very noses. “I examined him myself actually,” a voice appeared from the growing fog. Watson. “And you found nothing?” “Nothing of import.” “So the bluish tint under his nails did not strike you as something noteworthy?” “Bluish tint?” “Or the fact that the left side of his face was pinched ever so slightly. You missed this as well?” “The man fell when he had his heart attack. And the symptoms you observed are common side effects of the drugs Holmes was known to use to keep his mind focused on his cases.” “So long in the presence of greatness, and yet you still fall so short of it.” “Why are you here?” Watson growled. I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. For all of my anger since learning of Holmes’ death, I would draw what small satisfaction I could today. “Are you here to gloat? That you outlasted your nemesis?” Watson pressed. “I came to test what I already knew. I wanted to see his body, and I did. I wanted to be certain that I’d been properly robbed before seeking out the bandits responsible.” Watson paused for a moment. “I beg your pardon?” “You daft man! Holmes has been murdered! The prize of all English crime fighting has been slain, and I have been robbed of my victory!” I said, turning on Watson. Something in my glare unsettled the man. Good. It would be best if he stayed far from what was to come. “I have no quarrel with you Doctor. You are not my equal, and you never will be. But Holmes was mine to claim, and mine alone. And the streets will run red with the blood of whomever stands in my way while I claim recompense for my dissatisfaction,” I said. “If you’re going after them, then let us work together. We have our differences, but we want the same thing. Justice for Holmes!” I laughed. Even well-educated men could be remarkably simple. “I have no interest in Justice my dear boy. That is not my aim. Bloody vengeance for what was taken from me shall be my succour. I shall drink deep from the vineyard of misery I am soon to visit upon those who have wronged me thus. Good day sir.”
  7:05 PM
  Matthew Smith
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