Grace Interminate

A bitter waft of silver dust aggravates my nose hairs. The Devil damned it, my cursed excuse for a chariot. 'Left it to rot with a sinner as wretched as I, now bound to the torturous earth by the same pestilence that drove me to poach it: that blistering eye of God they used to call the ‘sun.’

She stammers, knotting her fingers: “We can’t stay here— “

“Think I don’t know that?” My barbed tongue gores her, and I bite down on it. “I can fix it.” Barbed and deceitful.

But, in that false reassurance, perhaps I’d mustered a shred of gentleness. Of that, she’s more than deserving. Her enduring grace attests to it; her baffling faith; her rich scent of petrichor; just… ‘her.’ The word warms me now, an unfamiliar sensation, to be sure. I’m accustomed, only, to blister and burn.

I abandon the bolt that fastens the scorched leather ballast to the chassis of my wounded craft. No sense in removing the damned thing. I haven’t a spare. And this chariot won’t get off the ground without a proper ballast.

Then, in seeps a new despair. The inevitable: a phantom turbine moans behind that westward sea of rolling dunes. The dust it’s kicking: obscured by the all-too familiar dark clouds of eminent firestorm… or my impaired vision.

They’re coming. Her ears have yet to be tuned to the melodies of death, doled out by the engines of our enemies. And so, for her sake, I keep my rotted jaws clenched. I ask you: Be there injury in just a moment’s more respite?

Then, like the splintering lights of dawn, the strangest of thoughts slinks behind mine eyes. If, can I, keep this purest of souls aloft, for even the briefest of moments; if prolonged be her gentleness, for only a blink, perhaps this world might be healed, if only by the sanctity of her presence.

Now, traditionally, I’m of the sound mind that suggests that it’s potent thoughts of madness, such as these, that mark a man’s decline. After all, the feeble spark of a single soul will fail enkindle a world as sodden as this one; most notably, a spirit so delicate as the one at my side. But something stirs in me. Trundling, at first, like the initial orbit of the fly wheel. It swells, unbound between the vertebrae of my wicked spine, seeping forth, into that space between back and breastbone. The crisp cool pool of purpose fills me. And, at once, I’m wed to it: that soft, sweet spring of vocation.

I gag, ailing to entertain such a fatal notion. But the fly wheel is spun. My decisions be fettered to it. And, in my darkest recesses, I fumble upon the years-sought shaft affixed to a single match; rigid, dry, and fit for the striking.

An iron slug shatters the crusty earth beneath me. I hear her scream and I curse them for it: those vile men that bear down on us from the scorched sky. The turbine is loud now, shrieking, like the windigo, unslaked by spoils of bottomless greed. They’ll be keen to preserve the scarce resources in my chariot’s coolant tank.

I scramble up the hot chariot’s hull, wrenching wide the tank cover, and shouting, “Give me your hand!” She hesitates. “ You must trust me.”

Another fist-sized slug connects with rock, rending earth from earth, before seething amongst the stones that it separated. I squint to the sky, and sense soft flesh against mine. Her palm embraces my blistered extensors, and I flex them, hefting her elfin frame beyond the barrage of gunmetal that seeks to rake her from me. My smoldering rage burns us both as I grip, perhaps, a bit too tightly. And, amongst the flashes of hell-borne violence, I entrust my cherished ward to the sloshing shallows of lifeblood that, once, drove our freedoms aloft. The sweet oils of her skin will surely taint the basin. Presently, this craft hasn’t need for coolant. I snap shut the lid.

Deafened. The twangs of deployed ordnance vibrate the rusted bulkhead of her watery sanctum. It’s tight, and she’ll fight for breath, bracing against slick aluminum panels in that murky black. Down in those shallows, it’ll taste like blood, halitosis and fear. But she doesn’t retreat. Her golden eyes shine just above the obsidian ripples that shield her from the bullet storm. Her white delicate hairs drift, listless, with the interior tides. Her tiny heart beats.

I feel the dermal layer peel from my shoulder bone. My weakened body copes. The assailant wasn’t shrapnel, but stone. And then, the blackened sky splits anew to expose the grim visage of our aggressors. The hooked spire of a Wraith-class interceptor doubles back upon it’s own crooked contrails, thrusting at me and spilling red-hot munitions from its swinging guts.

I stagger back, behind a parched rock face, drawing fire from my maimed chariot and her precious cargo. I’m leaking thick crimson gore to the span of my fingertips, and it smears against limestone as I brace my frame for the ensuing volley. The concussive symphony of jagged flack cuts my cover to rubble. I won’t survive the next pass.

Suddenly, I feel the familiar kiss of cold steel against my trigger finger. I didn’t reach for Camille. She must have sought me; longing for one final caress before eternity. Her broad barrel glides gently ‘cross my waist, and I hoist her buxom hilt to eye-line. A flick of my wrist betrays her deepest grief: a single round is all she’s left to afford an adulterous bastard, such as I. And I am long enough, now, to respect her for it.

The gurgling yowl of my closing foe drives me to raise my weapon. Behind thick glass, dance the shimmering irides of those fit, only, for death and ruin. And, in that moment, I see, reflected in those eyes, the heinous silhouette of all their darkest deeds, summed and affixed to the crown of a single effigy: that accursed shadowed presence that is me.

The firing pin springs quiet vengeance. A lone bullet scrapes years of hostility from its fateful notch. And, for a moment, the whole of Earth stands still before the silent rage of a single dart, white and hot.

Above my iron sights, the enemy craft flits flimsy against its starboard bow. Surely a miss. But then it descends, shallow at first, then steep. It warbles a wounded carol, from apex to tumultuous deep; driving head-long between the many sacred stones it severed in offense to me. The dust swells, like a tide, and hasn’t settled since. It soaks me in dry swathes of grit before choking out the wailing turbine it arrested, only meters from my chariot and me.

Clutching my wounded appendage, I dispatch the pilot with a stone, I found, in the shape of a coffin. His nav-man appears to be in death, presently, but I do my best to close the issue. These Wraith-class vessels sport automated munitions, so I forfeit my search for the gunman, and collapse at the base of the wreckage.

The breeze is soft and, in my failing strength, I call out to the delicate girl in the coolant. The click of a hatch tells me that she’s safe. And, through the setting twilight of my eyes, I perceive the gossamer posture of hope that drove me to abandon my, once enduring, service of self-preservation; that desert bloom of symmetry that was, before, my bitterest of burdens; my lonesome companion; my only home. She shimmers, in the rising fever of summer, before gliding to my exsanguinous side. I’m stained in rose and crimson. A pool of blood cools my scorched skin a final time. I raise my finger to the pristine leather ballast preserved in the wreckage of my opponents. I taught her well. Her lifeline awaits. And my senses ignite.

I behold no redemption, in death. Nor, do I, discern the nebulous pangs of damnation. But perhaps, between the extremes of both, I come upon the boundless river that divides them. I rest there, in shady reprieve, soaking my aching feet, observing, with placid fondness, the shutting of my soul’s husk: that tarnished, bitter, silver heart-shaped locket. And I hope that, in memory, she keeps it.