Mike Shevdon: Strangeness and Charm

Eve ignored him.

"It's not about sticking together, is it Eve?" said Alex. "It's only about you, isn't it? Everyone else can go screw as long as you get revenge for being left. No wonder you're alone."

Alex felt the ground shift under her when she mentioned being alone.

"Do you know the real irony?" Eve said. "I couldn't have done it without you. I needed four elements to activate the orb, or it wouldn't work. When Gina stole my books and found out what I was planning I had to deal with her, but that left me short one element — your element, Alex."

Alex sank to her waist so that she was forced to look up at Eve. She ignored the grit and stones trickling into her clothes and her shoes. She dismissed the sensation of the earth sucking her down. She had to wait. She knew what she had to do, but it would only work if she had support. She daren't look at Sparky. She daren't even acknowledge his existence.

"I want you to know," Eve continued, "that it will take you a while to die. Suffocation won't happen quickly and you'll be around long enough to keep the orb stable — long enough to trigger the end of the universe."

Alex realised then that she could save the universe. Eve had given it away. All she needed to do was end herself and it would all fall apart. Eve needed Alex for her element until the orb became self-sustaining. Without Alex, it would fail.

"Why, Eve?" Alex asked softly, meeting her malevolent gaze calmly. "Do you even know why they left you? What happened that they would leave you like that?"

Eve's hands were in fists, her teeth gritted and her face blotchy with rage. "They didn't leave me, you stupid bitch!" she screamed. "I killed them. I killed all of them! I buried them alive, which is exactly what I'm going to do to you!"

"Alive?" said Sparky. "Who? Who did you bury alive?"

"Everyone!" she screamed. "My brother, my sister, my parents! The entire house came down. It buried all of us in rubble and bricks. I was the only survivor. I was the only one able to survive."

"You caused it," said Alex.

"It doesn't matter; nothing matters any more. In a short while it will all be gone and it will be like none of it ever happened. History itself will cease to exist. Time will cease to exist."

Alex shook her head. Her next words would have to be chosen carefully. She could not afford to lie, but nor could she afford the entire truth. She hoped it would be enough.

"You picked the wrong person," said Alex. "I'm not ready to end it all. There are still things I want to do, places I want to go. There are things I need, people I need. There's so much we could become, and you want to choke that off before it's even started."

Finally she looked at Sparky. His expression was full of uncertainty, he looked from Eve, to Alex, to Chipper.

Chipper still watched Eve. He had the face of someone who finally understood — and accepted, no matter what the cost. Alex could see the doubt in Sparky. Was it enough? She couldn't wait any longer.

"And whose idea was it to come here, to Glastonbury Tor?" asked Alex. "Whose bright idea was that?"

"Mine," said Eve. "It's one of the old places — a nexus of power. And it's your grave."

Alex shook her head. "I don't think so. When you picked it, you forgot something. You're so far up your own arse the only thing you can see is your own shit."

"What are you talking about?" asked Eve.

In answer, Alex lifted her arms and began rising from the hole. Though Eve visibly struggled, and the hole around Alex spread outwards so that even Chipper and Sparky were forced to move back, Alex continued to rise.

"A hundred thousand tons of rock, didn't you say? Only a hundred thousand tons?" asked Alex.

The ground around her turned brown and then milky as water rose up through it, lifting her like venus from a mud-bath.

"Your little rock is in the middle of a lake twenty five miles across. It's been drained now, but as far as you can see in every direction was water — and it remembers — it knows what was lost and it's just waiting for a chance to reclaim it all." Alex shook her head in dismay. "It wasn't called the Isle of Avalon for nothing. This is my domain, Eve, not yours."

She could see Eve visibly fighting for control as the rocks beneath her vibrated with the force of the rising water. Eve was so linked to the earth that she was trying to squeeze the water out, to push it back with the sheer weight of stone, but that's not the way water works. Close off one way, and water will always find another. Alex could feel it seeping up through the cracks and crannies, feel the weight of power moving up through the hill.

She knew what must happen. She didn't want it, but she knew it must come, and she would not flinch from it now. Groundwater oozed onto the surface, pooling around Eve's feet, soaking up into her jeans, even as she struggled against it.

Chipper glanced from Alex to Eve, and back to Alex. He could see Eve was losing. Chipper hands bunched. Then he extended his fingers into a pistol, miming the cocking of the hammer, extending his arm until his fingers pointed at Alex's forehead. His eyes flared with anger and hatred. He was doing this execution style, pistol-grip held sideways, arm straight.

"No!" shouted Sparky.

Alex squeezed her eyes shut, curling herself into a ball. Momentarily, she pushed the water back from her skin, giving herself an insulating layer of dry earth, surrounding herself in a thin mist to direct the force away to the ground.

Beyond her eyelids, everything went white. The flash etched into her brain. The shockwave was simultaneous, a physical blow. There was a double sound wave, Crack-Crack! Her bones shook, her teeth ground together, the blood pounded in her ears.

For a while she couldn't seem to breathe. She opened her eyes slowly, green and purple spots floated in her vision. Uncurling her body, she heard the crack rumbling back in echoes from the distant hills.

The first thing she noticed was the grass, splayed out in a radius from the still smoking hole where Chipper had been. Behind him, Sparky's face was frozen, staring at the thing on the ground near the hole. The clothes had vanished, leaving something that looked like a flayed corpse with burned and blackened skin. As the smell of cooked meat steamed into the frozen air, Alex's gorge rose. Mercifully the body blackened further as Chipper's magic consumed his body, leaving only his outline in ashes, soaking into the wet ground.

Eve didn't look much better. She had finally earned the release she was looking for, though not in the way she wanted. Her eyes were open, but had turned milky white and stared sightlessly up into the black sky above. Her hair was in spikes where it stood out from her head and it looked like every muscle she had was in spasm, pulling her lips back from her teeth in a rictus grin with her fat tongue protruding, her twisted body arched over onto its side so that she looked like she was sticking her tongue out at the vanishing remains of Chipper.

"Too highly strung," Alex said quietly.

Then, to Alex's astonishment, Eve's leg kicked out in a spasmodic twitch. Her body was racked with pain, but somehow, for a few moments, she held on to life. Could it be that at the end, Eve wanted to survive? Then Eve's clawed hand reached out towards the orb, as if she wanted to hold it one last time. Her hand slowly crept across the grass.

Alex walked around Eve's body and stood on her fingers, preventing her from crawling forward, feeling it sink into the wet earth beneath her shoe.

"No more," said Alex. "It's over."

Eve convulsed, her entire body gave one final spasm and she lay still. Beneath Alex's foot, Eve's hand crumbled into dust. Alex watched as her corpse slowly collapsed in on itself, falling into dust that mixed with the wet earth.