Reflections

Back ‘home’, Claire was thankful for the silence of desolation. The rage induced by Gabriel’s confession was threatening to consume her. Why would the angel do something so stupid?! She stopped, looked to the sky, and let out a scream in an effort to quench the fire inside of her. As her echoes dissipated in the cool, humid air, the tremors began under her feet. Her head on a swivel looking for a source, Claire found nothing out of the ordinary. But they continued, neither getting stronger nor weaker.

She braced herself for a moment or two to acclimate her movements to the shaking ground, then took off at a run to her dorm room. Some houses did begin to buckle under the stress of the tremors as she passed by them, and as Claire turned onto State Street, cracks began to form in the asphalt ahead of her. A minute later, her lungs beginning to burn, Claire pulled up short to her firepit outside the dormitory building.

The tremors subsided as the man she spotted began turning around. He wore black boots, black pants and shirt, and a black trench coat with a mandarin collar and buttoned from neck to waist. Jet black hair in loose waves fell about a face of mocha skin, gray eyes, and a meticulously trimmed goatee. Behind his head, Claire spied the hilt of a broadsword, the leather-wrapped grip bookended by brushed silver pommel and crossguard. The man was beautiful and terrible at the same time. He was no inhabitant of this world. The rage busted through her surprise and hesitancy, and she walked with authority to the lounge chair where she enjoyed the bulk of her outside time these days.

As she sat down, she was aware that the man’s eyes had followed her the entire time, a sly grin appearing on his face when she passed him. Claire knew it would do no good with her visitor, but she placed the Hellcat pistol on her lap as she lounged. She raised her eyebrows in irritation.

“And you are?”

The man gave a close-lipped smile and raised his chin, then returned his gray eyes to hers. “I am Lucifer.”

Claire’s cynicism got the better of her. “The Devil?”

“Come now, Claire,” he said in his deep and measured tone. “You know more of the truth than that. No doubt that Gabriel has taught you well.”

“Don’t talk to me about that backstabbing piece of trash,” she retorted, the venom still dripping from her tongue.

Lucifer laughed mildly at her words. “He did create quite the mess, did he not? Not that I shall miss the dronings of Belphegor, but he was no less important to the balance than the rest of us. Does Gabriel still refer to me as ‘the genocidal maniac’?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Claire rolled her eyes, she had no time for bantering with a demon.

Lucifer sighed loudly and leveled his glare at the fuming woman. “Might I suggest that you temper your anger. I understand why you feel the way you do, but I’m only here to give you a helping hand.”

“You can’t help me, demon. And the last one that interfered with my journey ended up dead. Are you sure you wanna get into this?” Claire’s cynicism only intensified with her words.

“I am already ‘in it’, child,” Lucifer answered, his voice deepening with authority. “Why do you think you’ve been able to use this place as a home?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but the derogatory remark died on her tongue as her expression became one of confusion. “What do you mean by that?”

“I am the destructor,” he said slowly. “Think Gozer, if you will. When a timeline cannot survive, then I preempt its natural destruction by destroying it myself. I have earned Gabriel’s nickname because the first step of ending a timeline is ending its people. Since Belphegor’s untimely demise, I’ve been rather busy. But I haven’t been blind to what has been going on.”

“The successions…” Claire confirmed. “You were supposed to have destroyed this world already?”

“Yes, weeks ago it was ready for death. But then I felt your presence. And knowing that you were way behind in your succession, compared to the Yehwah succession, I felt the need to help you.”

“You’re rooting against your own side?”

“It’s not about sides,” he answered. Lucifer pulled the sword from its scabbard, held the tip of the blade about an inch above the ground, and thrust it into the grass. Tremors erupted from where the blade penetrated, and they continued until Lucifer had the blade half-buried. With a modest grunt, the demon pulled up on the sword, and a mound of earth followed with it. Moments later, he stopped pulling, twisted the sword, and pulled it out of the raised mound. He stowed the sword and sat down. “It’s about the balance. And Yehwah has been tipping that balance since his own succession nearly a thousand years ago.”

Claire shook her head, “But Gabriel tipped the balance the other way, right?”

“No, he didn’t tip the balance, he destroyed it.” Lucifer leaned forward, elbows on knees as he spoke further. “Regardless of that, if this John Friedman completes the succession before you, then he will restore the multiverse to a balance that will be permanently shifted towards control.”

“But your side wants control. Isn’t that good for you?” Her confusion further pushed her cynicism to the side.

“It’s not good for anybody. Too much order, or too much chaos, could spell the end to the universe itself.” Lucifer glanced down to the grass at his feet, then back to Claire. “And this John Friedman, he will lead the universe to destruction in a short period of time. He is a dangerous man.”

“Then why don’t you disobey? Why don’t you kill him?”

“If only it were so simple,” he chuckled. “first, if I kill him, it’s still a supernatural death of an other and still meets the requirements of succession. Second, that is completely against my purpose. I’m not sure I’d be able to.”

“Gabriel,” the name rolled off of her tongue like a bitter liquid, “told me to kill him if I ever saw him. I would do it gladly. But what if I never run into him?”

“Did you know that I’m actually more than one character in the Bible?” he asked her, confusing her even further with his out-of-left-field subject change.

“No…”

“Indeed, not only am I the mythical Satan, but I am also Joshua, son of Nun, lieutenant and successor of Moses. I gave my life to the service of God, to the following of Moses as he rescued our kin from the clutches of Ramesses. And in God’s name, I committed genocide on more than one occasion. That is why Yehwah chose me for one of his demons, as the destructor. I was made for it. But my actions in Canaan were driven by being at one with my God, to be able to sit at His side in Heaven, a faithful servant granted eternal life. For each city that I conquered, I waited for the call to go home to my God. It never came. Yet, my dedication never wavered, no matter how far I had left to travel until I reached my goal. You must do no less.”

“But if I’m so far behind, as you’ve implied, then what chance do I truly have to win this race?” The question was accompanied by a slight quiver in her voice, Claire was nervous.

“You have to be clever, Claire.”

It was Claire’s turn to chuckle, “You obviously don’t know me very well. I’m not very high on the ‘clever scale’.”

“Which is why I’ve chosen to help you,” he said with a wink. “Think of all the ways that you have seen your others.”

The silence was somewhat uncomfortable as Claire looked to the overcast sky. “Well… In person, obviously… In the dream… and in the mirror.”

“Now,” Lucifer continued, satisfied with her answers, “how do you find them?”

She placed her hand on her chest and answered with comic bravado, “With my vibra-compass.”

“Have you ever tried to bring them to you?”

“No,” she said sheepishly. “No…”

Lucifer leaned a little closer, “Think, Claire. If you could bring them to you without going to their worlds, how would you do it?”

She took a deep breath and thought. There was an instant of irritation as she wondered why he just didn’t tell her, but the next instant told her that he wouldn’t do that. What was he getting at? Claire laid back in the lounger and pondered. On a whim, she closed her eyes and entered the dream. Nothing had changed, except that the abyss before her shone brighter, a result of killing her others. All she needed was to cross the chasm, but she needed souls. She turned to face the ranks of her others, all staring straight ahead with their crows standing silent sentinels on their shoulders.

Claire reached out to them through the vibrations inside of her. See me. The others stood still, not reacting to her. She thought back to when she connected with Anne in the dream. But that didn’t help Claire much because Anne was aware of her. None of the other Claires seemed to have that ability. Thinking about Anne, though, provided fuel to the subdued rage inside, and it began to burn brighter. The rage connected to them through the vibrations, and the power flowed out from Claire. I am the prime, they must answer to me. See me!

All at once she felt thousands of sets of eyes upon her, and she heard the caws of the crows in unison. She drew the power back to herself and, like a magnet, she felt the power pulling on her others. Claire could draw them to anyplace she wished, she could feel it. She looked into the eyes of the others in front of her, shifting from one to the next.

“The mirror…” she said aloud, both in the dream and in the waking world.

Opening her eyes, she saw Lucifer standing over her, an apporving smile on his face. “You’re a quick study, Claire.”

Claire reached out for the demon’s extended hand and stood up, a full head and a half shorter than him. Looking into his gray eyes was both disconcerting and comforting, but she smiled back at him anyway.

“Do you know where you have to go?” asked Lucifer, his voice booming even at normal volume.

She smiled, finally feeling like something was going her way. “Red Hill firehouse. In my world, they had just built a small amusement park on the property, complete with a hall of mirrors.”

“Mmm…” he said with a nod of his head. “Unfortunately, I destroyed your timeline some days ago. A meteor strike doomed its future.”

A pang of sadness rolled through her, giving Claire the goosebumps. All of the family she had ever known was now gone. But all she could spare was a few moments of silence. She had bigger fish to fry, and she couldn’t let her grief derail it.

“Fear not, I know just the place.” Despite his youthful, dark demeanor, Lucifer’s wink and smile felt very grandfatherly. “I’ll give you five minutes to get whatever you need from your room, then I will send you there and destroy this place.”

“There is nothing I need from there,” she said, and then bent over to retrieve her backpack from the ground.

The demon raised himself up as tall as he could and pulled the sword from his back. “Watch this,” he said as his eyes flared red. Lucifer pointed the sword toward the ground between them and pierced the ground as forcefully as he could.

The earth undulated like it was the ocean, the clouds grew dark and thick, and the sunlight began to fail. Claire could hear the winds begin to pick up around them, and the trees began to bend and break. It was the end of the world… at least, it was the end of this world.

“Welcome to the Book of Revelation!” he bellowed, his smile larger than she had expected it could be. She could see the pride in his eyes at finally being able to show a mortal what the end of an Earth looks like.

“You’re a badass, Lucifer! I look forward to working with you for the rest of eternity,” and she laughed with a joy she hadn’t known since Christmas morning.

He put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her forward. After a brief flash of white, Lucifer and Revelation were gone.

* * *

“Where the hell did you come from?” The boy stood in front of her, a purple hoodie with “Perkiomen School” in white lettering decorating it hung loosely about him. Claire could see his mild case of acne below the peach fuzz, and she could smell the aromatic shampoo and conditioner he used in his perfectly cut blonde hair.

She pulled the Hellcat from her belt and cocked it, making it clear to the boy that she was deadly serious.

“Do you have car, kid?” She kept her voice hushed, but dangerous.

The fear oozed out him as he spoke, “Uh… yeah. Here… here are the keys.” He pulled the keys, attached to a carabiner, from a loop in his jeans. It made her think of Eric, but she kept a lid on the emotions that came with the memory. The kid stood there just looking at her when Claire cocked her head to the side in growing irritation. “Oh… right. Uh… purple Prius,” he whispered, then turned and pointed to it on Second Street.

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Thanks, kid.” Then she holstered the pistol and took off at a sprint. As she ran, Claire focused on the pull that she had used in the dream. She started the car and tore off, as much as a Prius was capable of ‘tearing off’, past the school and down State Street. It was longer to take Knight Road out to Markley, which would bring her back into town through her old neighborhood, but she did not plan to drive safely and couldn’t risk getting pulled over by the police.

As she drove, and as she pulled on her others in their own worlds, flashes of them ran through her mind’s eye. In one world, Claire slammed on the brakes and did a u-turn in the middle of Main Street. In another, Claire got up from her desk and simply walked out of her job. In yet another, she stopped firing her rifle at the enemy and left the battlefield. In still another, she dropped the piece of charred human flesh and left the diner at a full sprint. All of these scenes took place as the pull grew stronger.

The Prius screamed as its RPMs hit redline and beyond, but Claire still felt that she wasn’t going fast enough. C’mon, you son of bitch! yelled Dean Winchester. Nice to have you back, Dean, Claire thought-replied with a smile. Even as slow as the approach to the amusement felt, however, each second that passed concentrated the power within her. Claire was beginning to feel invincible. But the question of being invincible didn’t seem to have positive answer. Are you, though? The face she saw was her own, her expression cynical and condescending.

In yet another stroke of luck, or maybe it was fate, the firehouse in Red Hill was quiet. Nobody seemed to be around, and even the parking lot at the grocery store across the street was near empty. It was nearly lunchtime, on a Monday (if she remembered correctly), and she could see nobody. In fact, now that she recalled, she was worried about traffic, but hadn’t really found any. The heaviest traffic was back on Knight Road, almost as if parts of the town were off limits for some reason.

“Another time…” she whispered to herself as she approached the gated amusement park.

Claire climbed the fence and dropped down into the park itself, not wasting time trying to get through the locked gate. By the state of things, it appeared that the park had not been used in some time, many of the small rides showing rust and months-old stains of dirt. She had never visited the park in her world, as it was geared towards the children that she never had, but spotting the funhouse was not a difficult task. It stood at the back of the lot, next to the small go-cart track.

Even in the daylight, the funhouse was creepy. The late-morning silence gave the shadowed entrance a horror movie feel. The door looked like it was cobbled together with pallet wood, and it was framed by a clown’s wide open mouth. The clown’s bulbous, protruding, red nose was accented by eye sockets painted in a deep, blood red. Only one of the red bulbs that lit up those eyes at night was intact. The rest of the face was chipped, white paint with thick, black borders accentuating its features.

Claire stopped at the door and placed her hand on the door handle. She sighed and closed her eyes, focusing on the draw of her others. It was tiring. She had never thought that she was capable of such power and using it for the first time made her struggle to hold her strength. Taking a deep breath after the sigh, Claire pulled with all of her might at her others, compelling them to the funhouse, and their untimely demise. She pulled on the door and entered the funhouse, the vibrations within her accelerating to a fever pitch.

Stepping into the hall of mirrors, Claire new without a doubt that she would not see her own reflection. Indeed, walking in among all of the mirrors, she felt like she was walking through the dream. She came to the center of mirrors and looked around, silent and wide-eyed. All of them were staring at her, some glares were dangerous, others were apathetic. They knew she was there, and they now knew that they were all about to die. Claire looked at the other in the reflection directly ahead of her, focusing her eyes on the woman, then she pulled with every ounce of her being.

Claire thought of how she felt when she pulled the souls out of the corpses of her others. It was that feeling that she directed at the thousands of others that stood before her. The vibrations began to reverberate within her, then moved out of her body and caused the air to shimmer. As she pulled harder, the air began to sing like a crystal champagne glass. She kept pulling and pulling, and the reflections began to scream at her. Their screams blended with the singing air and the world began to glow in hues of pink and blue. Claire fell to one knee and struggled to pull even harder.

Time stretched on to unbelievable lengths, and the struggle threatened her consciousness. Then, as the mirrors around her shatttered into millions of tiny shards, it was over. In the darkness of the funhouse, Claire lay on the floor catching her breath, eyes shut hard against the pain coursing through her. Gingerly, she pushed herself up to her knees. The pain struck the back of head like a bolt of lightning, and the immediate nausea forced her stomach to empty itself on the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up slowly.

Note to self, never do that again… Claire gathered her wits, and that’s when she felt it. She closed her eyes and went to the dream. The maelstrom had very nearly dissipated, and the storm overhead had weakened significantly. The glow of the nearly full chasm bathed all the dream in its pink and blue glow, and before her stood the lone survivor. She walked over to her other and looked her in the eyes. The woman looked back at her, a trickle of blood ran down her mouth and blood began trickling from her nose.

“Hurry,” her other said with shaking voice.

She didn’t come to the funhouse by choice… she couldn’t. The realization chilled her to the core, but then the rage returned. She hadn’t come this far to fail now. Accidents don’t just happen accidentally, came Dean Winchester’s voice in her ear. Claire pulled herself together and made her way out of the funhouse.

“Halt! You are in violation of the Exclusion Zone!” The voice was synthesized as it came out of the speaker in the person’s helmet. Whoever it was was one of three pointing their automatic rifles at her.

“Are you serious?!” she yelled at them. “I have enough going on right now, alright! I don’t need this!”

The same person spoke again, “You are in violation of the Exclusion Zone! You are under arrest! Do not move!”

The rage within was close to boiling over, and she had never more powerful. Regardless, Claire didn’t have the time to deal with this. “Just let me go. I’m leaving your… whatever Zone now. OK?”

She turned away from them and took a step. A flurry of asphalt sprayed across her foot as one of the soldiers fired a warning shot. She looked back at them, her rage now boiling over and her eyes flashing a deep purple. The soldiers, startled, lowered their weapons slightly and glanced at each other through their reflective visors. Almost reflexively, Claire disappeared.

She found herself back ‘home’, but she was lucky it was still there. Lucifer’s destruction of the world was well underway, and she found herself barely able to keep her balance through the rumbling earth, the screaming winds, and the flying debris. all she had to do was make it far enough to where she parked the Prius. But the stumbling became too much for her, and she had to duck with nearly every shaky step she took. Take the chance, Claire!

Flashing back into Exclusion World, she heard the voices of the soldiers behind her, questioning each other about where she could’ve gone. Claire prayed that the confusion would be enough to allow her to reach the car. Then she remembered that the gate to the amusement park was locked. But she smiled inwardly, knowing exactly what to do. As she closed in on the gate, she focused her mind on her intended jump.

Claire had never felt like an action movie star, but what she was about to do would be cause for a giving herself a pat on the back. As she closed within a stride of the gate, she flashed into Apocalypse World again. One stride later, and barely ducking out of the way of very large boulder, she flashed back to Exclusion World, now finding herself on the opposite side of the fence. In her next stride, she jumped into the air and slid, Bo Duke style, across the hood of the Prius.

Affording a single glance to the soldiers at the funhouse, Claire hopped into the car as quickly as she could. Putting the Prius into drive, she had to duck a flurry of bullets from the automatic rifles now pointed in her direction. She sped down to Adams Street and hung a left. Now that she was in the clear, she took a moment to follow her vibra-compass. Once she overlaid her mental map of the Valley to where the vibrations were telling her to go, she understood that she was going back to where it all began.

Claire's journey is approaching its end, continue following her in Chapter 19:

Say A Prayer For Me