Zak - Entry #4

It was the moon. That’s what they were looking at. And, to be honest, it was pretty impressive. It was big, seeming so close your first instinct was to cringe and squint, like it was about to punch you in the face. But it wasn’t just that. Like, big moon, big woop, right? What really kept all of their eyes glued to it was that it was bleeding. That’s right: the moon, so big it felt like you could reach out and touch it, was stained a shiny scarlet that was slowly, agonizingly, dripping and falling somewhere on the other side of the horizon. I swore that I could hear those massive droplets splatting to earth out there, but I could have been imagining it.

“Dude, that’s fucking intense,” said Nate, nudging me in the ribs.

But I wasn’t looking at the moon.

While they were gawking at the heavens, I had been busy gawking at the terrestrial. The town, at the bottom of the hill, was on fire and its riot soundtrack flowed up to meet us. It was a sonic chaos, practically orchestral in its density; a polyrhythm of myriad car alarms and shattering windows, a droning roar of flame, a pulsing chant of voices. It was intoxicating, at once beautiful and horrible. Yeah, I can use the English language, big deal.

“We have to get out of here,” I said, my eyes still focused on the town below.

“Why? This too fucking cool,” said Liam. His gaze didn’t break either.

“Seriously. We need to go. Now.” I looked around at them. “We need to get in the car.”

“What’s going on, David?” my mom asked my dad.

“I don’t know, dear,” said my dad, stoic.

“Ok, I don’t know either,” I said. “But we need to get the fuck out of here right now. Look at town! Shit is going down and we’ve got not place getting involved!”

I was wrong.

But that broke whatever bind that dripping moon had on them, and they looked down the hill. My mom actually screamed.

“Let’s go!”

The chaos was getting closer; I could hear it.

“Wait for me in the car,” my dad ordered, turning to go back into the house.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“I’m getting the keys and my gun.” I figured those were probably pretty good things to have.

“We have a gun?” I asked my mom. She looked at me like I was an idiot.

I saw something crimson and silver flit across my vision, figured I was just stressed out.

I led the group out to the car, but didn’t feel comfortable sitting down while a riot encroached on us. We stood, awkwardly and anxiously, around the car.

“There’s not enough seats in the car,” said Liam. I looked from him to the car, and back. He was right. My family had one car, which my dad drove to work and which was a five-seater Subaru. I walked to work and my mom stayed home. There were five of us standing around the car, waiting for my dad.

“It’s ok,” I said. “We can cram.”

“Dude, I don’t think that’s safe,” said Liam.

I looked at him like he was crazy.

The front door slammed open and my dad barreled out like an arthritic racehorse, a shotgun in one hand, and the keychain hanging from the fingers of the other.

It was right around then that the car burst into flames.

The ground leapt up to meet me and slid away behind me. I ran into my dad’s shins and buckled over top of me. His gun went off as he hit the ground.

There was a single contextless moment of indeterminate length during which I laid outside of time on the gravel driveway, my entire body sore, vaguely aware that my shoulder was on fire.

And then back down crashed context, jarring me to my feet. Some dangerous mass of people was flowing up a hill towards us. We were trying to escape. Our car had exploded. My shoulder was on fire.

I slipped the flaming shirt off and tossed it to the ground. The first, but certainly not the most dangerous, thing that I saw was an arm. It was not connected to a body and it was smoldering. I was pretty sure that it was Freddy’s arm. It was lying on the gravel a few feet in front of me. It had been cleanly severed, not torn, and cauterized.

The second, and distinctly more dangerous, thing that I saw was a man on a horse. He was invisible beneath a glowing suit of armor, but I could see his eyes burning back behind the his facemask. His horse was red and smoke was pouring from its nostrils. His sword was on fucking fire. The horse pawed at the ground on the other side of the burning Subaru. My friends and family were spread out in various contorted positions across the driveway. Freddy was minus an arm.

“Well,” I muttered, “I’m fucked now.”

No you ain’t. This muthafucka can’t touch you, said a voice that was in my head but certainly not my own.

“What?” I actually said it out loud I was so surprised.

It’s cool, fool. He ain’t be able to touch you. You just waltz on past him ‘cause he can’t do shit to you.

I was confused to all hell.

“What about my family, my friends?”

You gon’ die, you try’n’ help them!

For some reason I trusted the voice. I wish I could explain it, but I can’t, even now. I just believed it, and I ran. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, which is admittedly not really that far, and that guy on the red horse didn’t follow me. Not that time, at least.