Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

Nina knew the slang term ‘farming’. It described how The Order replenished their ranks. Most of Voggoth’s war machines straddled a blurry line between creature and machine. While they were not alive by any reasonable measure, they still needed to ‘grow’.

Nina asked the obvious question, “When are you guys shipping out?”

“Some of my advanced teams are boarding trains already. I’m expectin’ to bug out in a couple of days. You too, I’d guess.”

Nina’s eyes fixed on him with a determined stare. She answered, “Good,” because that was her way: she wanted to fight.

Shepherd’s attention diverted as he spied the groom across the empty dance floor. Jake, a young man with black hair and a Middle Eastern complexion, wore the gray pants and white shirt of a cadet, but soon those clothes would be turned in for soldier’s BDUs. A lot sooner than should be expected, but with the enemy closing in the luxury of academies, parades, and graduation ceremonies could no longer be afforded.

“Let me go say hi to the kid,” Shep touched Nina on the shoulder as he made to leave. “Or should I say, your son in law?”

She replied with a half-hearted smirk. The general strolled away and Nina returned to the bar where a goblet of merlot-and that mirror-waited. In the background the DJ made an announcement about some request or another.

Nina eyed herself in the reflecting glass again. The troubles of the future were legion, but her mind kept drifting to a forgotten past.

Snapshots of those missing days came from the videotape and photographs given to her by Ashley. On that video tape she had confessed her love for Trevor, and him for her. So why had they not remained together? Why had he let her go?

One idea haunted her in the middle of the night. Had she betrayed Trevor during that year? She knew she had been under the influence of The Order during that time. She also knew that Trevor had been taken captive by Voggoth’s forces some time that first year.

No matter how hard she gazed at her reflection, Nina could not find the answer.

Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely. I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue…

The song eased tenderly from the DJ’s speakers. And as the melody caressed her ears, something switched on inside the cold warrior’s heart. A feeling of warmth, like a toasty blanket draped over her shoulders on a chilly winter night.

It felt-it felt familiar.

Couples formed on the dance floor and swayed.

“May I have this dance, miss?”

Nina stumbled from the bar stool, chased by a ghost. She did not know if the specter’s voice came from her memories or some residual image imparted to her when the Old Man had built a bridge between her mind and Trevor’s.

She felt her cheeks blush, her body wobble. She found some kind of comfort in Patsy Cline’s crooning voice, but confusion, too.

Tears tried to swell but she held them at bay. Nonetheless, she needed to retreat. For one of the few times in her life Nina Forest ran away, this time for the sanctuary of the ladies’ room at the end of a short corridor adjacent to the dance hall.

She entered the empty, tight confines of the two-stall/two-sink lavatory. Dirty tile lined the floor and the walls wore a grungy white plaster. Volunteers culled from a pool of Denise and Jake’s friends had thoroughly cleaned the reception hall but no amount of elbow grease could completely scrape away a decade of neglect.

She placed her hands on one of the two ancient porcelain sinks and pointed her eyes at the drain; she did not want to see herself in the mirror.

The wooden door swung open and in strode Denise in her bridal gown with that glass of red wine-apparently re-filled-dangling in her hand.

“Heyya, hi-ya, ho-ya, Mom.”

The newlywed did not notice her mother’s state of mind. Instead, the young girl wiggled her way into one of the two vacant stalls and-after struggling to fit her dress in with her one free hand-closed the door behind. Nina heard the sound of undergarments shuffling off.

The interruption served to break Nina’s downward spiral and she dared a look into the mirror. She could still hear the sound of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” but could not be sure if the song played in the dance hall outside or in her memories.

Regardless, that warm feeling faded. Yet another of the little memory land mines laced through her subconscious ever since that entity resembling an old man had built that bridge between her and Trevor, an act of incredible intimacy she had submitted to in order to pull Trevor from a state of mental chaos.

“No,” she mumbled aloud, chastising herself for not being honest.

“Huh? You say somethin’, Mom?”

Nina replied to the closed stall door, “I didn’t say anything.”

The truth, she knew, was that she had agreed to open her heart and mind to Trevor for far more personal reasons. She respected him, true. She would execute whatever order he commanded, also true. Yet, she felt more. Exactly what, she did not know. But something more.

There, in the wilderness, Trevor had needed her. The Order’s machines of torture had destabilized his mind by playing over and over again all his feelings of regret and loss and guilt.

From what Nina had come to understand, Voggoth had delivered to Trevor a life time of torments in a manner of weeks. Time, it seemed, was all in the mind and Voggoth had stretched minutes into days, hours into years.

The door to the ladies’ room opened again. Nina diverted her eyes from the mirror and to the sink as if caught in the act of something embarrassing.

A middle-aged woman strolled in with a big purse slung around her shoulder. Nina caught a glimpse of the woman in the mirror before looking away. Her hair hung in spaghetti strings, her eyes appeared sleepless and red. Nina figured the woman to be intoxicated: she would not be the only one in the reception hall in such condition.

“Oh, hello there,” the woman greeted but stayed a pace behind Nina and pulled a tube of lipstick from her oversized purse while staring at the neighboring mirror.

“Um, hello,” Nina stumbled.

The woman wore a simple dress that appeared two or three sizes too big for her thin frame, as if she had been the victim of sudden weight loss.

“Wonderful party.”

“Yes,” Nina pulled a tissue from a box on the sink top and ran it under a stream of water in an effort to find something for her hands to do. If she stalled long enough, perhaps the new arrival would leave.

“There’s nothing quite like a marriage, isn’t that right?”

“I suppose so,” Nina answered and then admitted, “I never married, myself.”

“That’s too bad, honey,” the woman consoled. “As for myself, well, I married twice. I can tell you that the wedding is a lot better than the marriage,” she added a quick chuckle. Nina hoped Denise-who remained quiet in the stall-had not heard that remark.

Nina stole another glance at the newcomer via the mirror. She did not recognize the woman and did not recall seeing her at the church ceremony. The woman, however, spoke in a tone of familiarity with an occasional nervous chuckle placed between words.

Nina finished soaking the tissue, looked at it, then dabbed at the corner of her eyes where those tears had tried to escape.

The woman shared, “My first husband, he died during the invasion.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, he was a jerk. My second husband-well, he was murdered last year. Isn’t that something? To survive the whole Armageddon thing only to be murdered by his own kind.”

The woman finished replenishing her lipstick and returned the tube into her purse.

“That’s a shame,” Nina gave the woman another glance in the mirror and saw the stranger’s eyes staring back.