Zak - Entry #16

Apparently, it was time for show-and-tell. Well, I guess there was more telling than showing going on, but the world around us was the showing bit. We were to play the role the tellers. By the way, the theme of telling pops up later, so hang in there.

I was a bit self-conscious around these two. At that point I was getting a bit anxious about going down in the gospels as “The Chubby Prophet” or “Chuck the Chubster, Prophet.” The sentence And the new world was built up out of the ashes by two attractive and competent people, and one kind of awkward unfit guy kept running through my head. But I finally worked up the courage to stand, because it sounded like the appropriate thing to do.

“So, hi, I’m Chuck, and I’ve been seeing some pretty crazy shit. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Last night, at least I think it was last night, I’ve sort of lost track of time. Anyways, last night I was playing D&D with a couple of buddies. We were just getting into an encounter with an Ancient Red Dragon, which was actually probably too hard or a thirteenth-level party, and just as I was figuring that out ‘cause they couldn’t get a hit in, my- we, uh, looked outside and the moon was bleeding. Like, it was dripping big fucking drops of red stuff, and the hamlet (I live a bit outside of the hamlet, up on a hill, well, lived, I guess) was on fire and there was some sort of riot going on. It sounded like a warzone had just dropped on top of my town. And then we ran outside because, well, I was still in the habit of avoiding things that seemed dangerous back then.”

I allowed myself a bit of a chuckle.

“But, uh, when we got to the car, there was a guy, I guess that’s what he was, by the car, and he was like all red and on fire and on this red horse. In retrospect, I guess he was a horseman of the apocalypse. Which one is the red one? It’s definitely something I knew once. Like in fifth grade or some shit.”

“I have to say my knowledge of the Norse myths is a lot stronger than the Christian ones,” said Rufus. He had a look of really deep concentration on his face. I looked at Eira. She honestly looked pretty lost.

“Well,” continued Rufus, “what are the four horsemen? There’s four, right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” agreed Eira. She was eying a patch of air next to her very suspiciously.

“I think so too,” I said. “But, actually, can we just bracket that for now so I can finish my story? Sorry.”

I felt a bit pushy saying it, but they seemed cool with it.

“So, he blew up my car, and I’m pretty sure he chopped off my buddy Liam’s arm with that flaming sword of his. So then this voice pops into my head and tells me the horseman can’t touch me at all, but I have to run away or the riot thing in the town is going to kill me, so I ran away and left my buddies there in my driveway.”

I felt like I should probably be crying, but I didn’t need to at all.

“So it turns out that this voice is a sort of like a messenger whose job it is to tell me what’s up. As you guys can probably guess, he told me the world was ending. He was a bit slippery about it, and just sort of ended the conversation in the middle. And then I hitchhiked out here from Brockhaven and got picked up by this guy who was even more cryptic and creepy than the voice in my head. He some really ominous things that sounded like he was going to kill me at some point, and he brought me here. It’s just been really bizarre to be me lately. You guys too, I guess.”

“War!” shouted Rufus.

“What?” Eira and I said in stereo.

“That horseman must’ve been War. The four horsemen are War, Famine, Death and… one other one. I can’t remember. But I’m pretty sure that red is War.”

“Huh,” was really all I could say. He really was quite the well of mythological knowledge.

“Wait!” said Eira, seeming to get excited. “You said it sounded like a warzone got dropped on your town, right? It must have been the horseman.”

“Shit, yeah!” I said. I felt uncool right after I said it.

The general atmosphere of the train car was a stoked one. We were finally unpacking our crazy days. It felt good be working things out with fellow people, as opposed to getting garbled messages from on high.

On a whim, I went for a high-five with Rufus, and he accepted. Then, so as to avoid exclusion, we both high-fived Eira. That was a little awkward.

This story time idea had worked out pretty well. I was pretty sure it had been my idea. I was proud.

“So D&D?” asked Rufus. “I played a bit of it back in undergrad, but I never quite got really into it. My interests shifted, I suppose.”

“Oh man,” I said. “I’m like an encyclopedia of D&D. I go head-to-head with the best! Like, for instance, if you look at a Wyvern-“

It was then that the train stopped, abruptly and completely, and we all went flying across the car.