Priests of 2122
Patricia among petals
Priests of 2122 episodes are stand-alone stories told in a shared world.
[Image credit: Evie Shaffer]
The burgeoning familiarity of ripping cloth had Patricia turn about face. One of Jess’s wings had gotten caught on the side-view mirror of a decrepit diesel truck. Cobalt paint fought a losing war on its sides. The hood had gone rogue long ago it seemed, now just a pit of rust and grey metal. Patricia rushed over to her, cheeks burning with shame for pulling the leash without looking back.
They had been traveling on the abandoned highway for three days. Jess had lost meters worth of her massive black butterfly wings. Abrupt torrents of wind, the slicing metals of destroyed vehicles, and their own seemingly rapid aging. She didn’t seem to mind. She only stared ahead blankly. Occasionally, she would offer a “Bipp’ or a “Ftuhk” from dry shrunken lips.
Patricia went about the work of disentangling her sheet-thin wings from the diesel’s mirror. A few birds gossiped about the happening from the tree tops. The highway was surrounded on both sides by forest. Thick old growth that kept Patricia’s paranoia active day and night.
“Tik-tch” Jess encouraged as Patricia gingerly moved torn wing from hard metal.
Patricia looked up, curious if this was a reaction or just more mindless mumbling. Jess was suddenly gazing toward her, the black and blue many-eyes somewhat angled in her direction.
“Jess?! Do you see me?!” She yelled desperately. This was the first sign of any consciousness beyond forward walking.
“FF-” She spit, “Tuh” Jess muttered before returning to a forward gaze.
Patricia waited for any further signs of thought. Nothing. Eventually, she remembered to finish disentangling the wing. When she was done she took a patrol around Jess with a finger held to her chin in contemplation.
“Maybe I could strap these to you?” She thought, envisioning failure.
A branch cracked in the near distance. Patricia spun around, attempting to triangulate the sound based on its memory. Now that she was tuned in she deciphered something shuffling through leaves. They were the untrained and flat steps of a human. Creatures knew better. It was coming from the opposite side of the highway than the diesel. They were exposed to the forest on that side with little cover via dilapidated vehicles.
Patricia walked to intercede between Jess and the suspicious sounds from the woods. She could do nothing to hide the wings, they rose even higher than the diesel’s trailer when spread out. Her thoughts raced with escape routes and excuses.
She’s not a demon, its just an outfit!
We are heavily armed!
We have scouts in the woods!
“I know you’re there.” She finally called out. The only responses were the sounds of leaves and sticks being disturbed.
“I need you to start running.” She whispered to ‘Jessiefly’. No reaction. “Please.” She begged.
“KAK!” Jess spit up green and red mucous and stared blankly on.
Patricia couldn’t be sure but she thought she heard the soft click of a gun being adjusted. This was the second time she was going to have to stake her life on preserving Jess. She didn’t spare herself the thought, the decision was behind her already.
“We’re moving on!” She yelled to the enigmatic threat.
She pulled gingerly at the make-shift lead she used to guide Jess’s movements. It was made of braided grass with a spare red shop rag for a collar. Leaves from the woods shuffled in response. The butterfly demon refused to step forward. Patricia swung around in consternation.
BANG!
The driver side window of the diesel exploded. Right above where Patricia's head had been before she turned around.
BANG!
A second shot informed her that they were using some sort of small caliber pistols. The leaves had informed her that there were at least three of them. One was further back while two seemed to cautiously be closing the distance. Patricia’s mind worked like a lightning storm to piece the chessboard together when she finally noticed where the second shot hit. Green streaked blood flooded out of Jess’s left hand. Patricia’s heart sank in equal measure with the rising fury deeper within it.
One’s a bad shot. One isn’t, she had time to think before the third and fourth shots rang out. The diesel shrieked in broken steel as the bullets tore through the siding of its trailer. Feathery black fragments of wing fluttered like spent petals around them.
A sudden wind tossed Jess’s wings in a small vortex, covering them both from sight for the moment. Patricia rushed over to Jess and picked her up. The wings began to sink like parachutes over them. She mustered what strength she could and ran around the front of the diesel for cover. As the wings dragged along the hot scratched hood they ripped in several places. More shots rang out, more desperately rapid now.
Patricia heard boots drop on the blacktop. Someone just hopped over the guardrail. She dropped Jessiefly unceremoniously to the ground and pulled a chipped and rusted knife from her right sock. She looked down at her mutated princess to memorize and love what was left. Then, she grabbed one of the battered wings and tossed it up and wide like she was setting a bed, hoping to make more cover.
The clap of boots made it to the front end of the truck and marking that she swung around with the knife braced in both hands. A few black wing petals fell between Patricia and the stunned man. Her knife was buried to the hilt. Her accuracy was unreal.
He attempted to protest but could only lift a hand to lightly graze hers. Shock blue eyes closed as his fuzzy white eyebrows lowered over them. She waited until his jaw went slack and she could smell his breath from under a huge white mustache.
Patricia pulled the knife free with a jerk and ran back behind the diesel. Only one more shot occurred. After a few moments a man and a woman whisper-yelled sharp curses at each other. While they argued she pulled Jessiefly back up to a standing position. The wings scraped across the ground and she reflexively pushed them out to full spread. As they reached heights over the diesel the voices stopped arguing to notice. Two impossibly gentle flowing black sheets. They were streaked with holes and iridescent blue spots. Another visiting breeze augmented their intimidation with shivering height.
They waited in that silence for half an hour. Patricia heard the phantom of movement as they seemed to sneak away, but she waited to hear them double back. Instead, after the torture of waiting, a woman’s scream pierced the forest and the sky. If it had been one of her attackers, they must have moved far indeed based on the source. That was the last evidence she had of them.
Patricia stood up and rubbed her knees. They ached with the tension she had been holding. She hadn’t mastered helping Jess from sitting to standing so her human butterfly had stood for the half hour. When she was ready to move on she grabbed Jess by the shoulders and stared at her in a vibratory silence.
Some of her face was left. Most of her arms. Nothing could be done about her hands, they were sharp insectoid things now. Where their dark matter merged with her own beautiful brown and white skin a red rash had appeared.
“Kut-thu” Jess’s warped voice fluttered from a deformed throat.
Patricia let her hands slide down those dirty perfect arms until she reached the sharp talons of Jessiefly’s hands. One still leaked its ichor. She wrapped it in what was left of her last rag.
In the time it took to tie that simple knot a loud crushing of vegetation could be heard not far off. The brush complained in a long rolling crack. As if under a wheel, then another. It was on the opposite side of the highway than their assailants had been from.
“Wagons.” She said to her mute friend. “Heading this way.”
Patricia looked ahead and saw the tell tale signs of concrete collapse on the highway ahead. About a half-mile forward a black and grey fractured lip stuck up over the otherwise flat street. If the wagons were heading in their direction that’s the only crossing that would make sense. She walked to the back of the diesel’s trailer to experiment with the concept of hiding in its trailer.
It was bent beyond integrity from some sort of ancient impact. That was great for her purposes. They could just climb inside as long as she was careful around the sharpest edges. Patricia sighed in relief. One thing she didn’t have to fight for today.
She walked back around the side of the truck to go about hiding the princess from the oncoming convoy.
Collapsed
A thought spoken in her own tone. The word deafened her to the rest of the world and repeated. Jess lay on her back. The wings were lifeless and limp on the ground. Patricia tried to unsee it. She tried to press the urgency into her brain that this isn’t real. She blinked hard twice. Hot tears started falling from her eyes as she forced paralyzed legs to waddle in Jess’s direction.
When she arrived at the body there was no doubt. Red threads of mycelium were crawling from every hole in her head. The sound of cloth dragging against rock interrupted the recent deafening hum in her ears. The wings were shrinking. The many eyes lost a light she hadn’t noticed was there.
As the wings deformed and moved inward, one rolled over a white lily that had been growing from a puddle in concrete debris. It was wilted, torn and just as perfect as everything Jess was. They each seemed to lay on the ground in a deeply earned rest.
Patricia collapsed to her knees next to the most impossible butterfly. She lifted her by the neck and held Jess in her lap.
“I am so proud of you.” She stated with a tone of maternal authority. “You made it so far, my love.”
She brought Jess into a trembling embrace. She waited in that pose until twilight. Damn the wagons as they passed. Their convoy halted with its midpoint intersecting the highway. Shadows wandered the streets, trying cars, pillaging resources from the long dead.
Jess’s spine made a sound like chalk snapping. Patricia lay her down at a glacial pace. Every new snap a dagger in her heart. A perfect mushroom cap, round and slick with red stripes twisted out of her mouth with the pressure of exercised gases from the corpse. The black scaled eyes all fell away to each side as if she were wearing a strange veil.
Patricia stood and observed this garden of grief. She would never cry again, she thought. Not as an order or a threat, but as an acknowledgement of the hollowness of everything that wasn’t Jess.
She glanced back at the convoy of wagons in the near distance. Then back at her world as it decayed. Suddenly, the stomach gave out in a dry collapse. It warped like a sand dune under pressure. The piercing pain of watching this occur was the grace which drove her away. Toward the wagons. Whatever may come.
Whyyyyyy???
This one hurt.
But it was awesome.
Ahh wonderful episode!