“To The Last Generation” – The Saga Of The Stolen One: book one, by A. Allan Chibi

Michael opened his eyes, glanced about, but nothing seemed familiar. It looked like the ceiling of a cheap motel room, very much of a muchness with those he had visited over the years of the Omaha – Boston route he drove. Golden white morning light was streaming in through poorly installed curtains; it was mixed with an inconsistently strobing red light of an advertising board which must have been placed near the front of the parking lot. He watched the colors chase each other across the greying white stucco above. These rooms are always too hot or too cold; this one was too hot.

Okay, he blinked and silently mumbled to himself, so far so good, but how did I end up here? He could not remember any specific details of the previous day.

He tried to sit up but found that he could not move.

He tried to turn his head, but he could not move that way either.

He tried, but he could not feel anything binding him, tying him down, although it seemed that there must be something. Before he could even begin to process that realization, a shrill screaming worked its way into his hazy thoughts.

Michael was so startled that the question of his immobility was instantly forgotten, only to hit him again ten-fold as he tried to get up and away from the earsplitting shrieks which were now all around him. Sweat formed on his forehead and dripped into his eyes… it felt salty and it stung and was hotter than the room. The comparison came randomly into his consciousness, but he tried to push the random reflection aside; he was pinned down in what was beginning to sound like a slaughterhouse or a battlefield.

A battlefield? Michael paused, having never heard a battlefield except in movies. This sounded like no movie, however.

At least the sounds were no longer getting louder or any closer, but they were all around him still. Then, under the screams, he could just make out another noise… click-click-tap, click-click-tap… and that one was indeed getting closer. He was inadvertently more frightened of that sound than of the noise of the screaming and dying. He grew frantic and nearly shit himself when he unexpectedly felt a hand on his leg.

He was too afraid to look down (forgetting that he could not do so).

He was too fear-stricken to scream. He did not know that any sound he made would attract no attention. He did notice that the weird click-click-tap sound that had scared him so had ceased, but then he heard something else under the sound of screeches and cries encircling him.

His mind was working overtime and at a frantic pace, but all he could produce to explain the new sound was the word “metal”. Only slowly could he attach new words to that base sound… “metal on wood” and then “metal on… something else.” Michael did not know the last sound exactly, but it was like a slap, followed by a scratch, followed by a sickening sucking resonance which suggested an awful thing to him. He also now heard the sound of squealing animals added into the cacophony.

It was almost too much to bear, then the hand, he had almost forgotten the hand, began to move up his leg, squeezing his muscles alone the way. It felt like someone was crawling up his body or pulling themselves up, testing his nerve for… something?

He closed his eyes again at the second thought, holding them tight, afraid of what he might see through the tears leaking from his eyes and the sweat pouring into them.

‘Why?’

Why? Michael was confused by the word, by the Irish accent of a woman’s voice, by the suggestion that he had done something. He was relieved too by what she had said.

‘It’s a mistake,’ he whispered to whomever she was, whatever she was. ‘You… you have the wrong room, the wrong guy.’

Thank God for that; it’s settled, no harm done, go away now… please. Michael had never been religious before, but right now he could have been a Jesuit.

The hand paused; Michael allowed himself another quick sigh of relief. In a moment, however, no more than mere seconds later, the hand resumed its lateral crawl up his body. Leg to hip, hip to stomach, stomach to chest it inched upwards. All the while, Michael mentally shook his head and proclaimed the obvious error being made.

Finally, the hand reached his neck and there it paused. No squeezing, just overt menace.

Michael was afraid that he would be strangled, but after a moment the hand moved on again and came to rest over his mouth. Now pressure was applied. The hand smelled of dirt and sweat and… beef stew?

‘You killed me, Lawrence Pennyvale!’ The name was spat out like a curse.

No.

‘You killed my husband and forced me to watch.’

No!

‘You killed my son and forced me to watch.’

No, please!

‘You did unspeakable things to my girl, forcing me to watch before you killed her too.’

I did not. I swear I didn’t! I couldn’t!

‘Why?’ That question again; the woman sounded desperate for an answer. ‘What harm did we ever do to you English cuntes?’

Michael could not speak as the hand clamped harder over his mouth, but in his mind, he caught flashes of the acts the voice had described. He was like a ghost in the vision; he saw the face of this Pennyvale in the reflection of eyes and it looked nothing like his own, how could it, it wasn’t him.

Why would it look like him? The whole idea was absurd.

Where the sadistic torturer in the vision was of light complexion, dirt smeared, blood splattered and sweating, Michael was of a darker skin tone. The man had brown hair, the color of a dirty potato just plucked from the earth while Michael, he would have shouted had he been able to, had hair the color of coal, a tumble of blackness.

I’m not even English!

In his mind he balked at the unfairness of this attack and the accusations of violence against him. Could the crazy bitch not see that? His eyes flew open, to plead his innocence or to somehow signal the mistake to her some other way. His eyes were blue! Mine are grey! Look! Look damn you, look! He moved his eyes as much as he could, but then he registered the owner of the hand over his mouth and forced his eyes shut again, even tighter this time. He had witnessed the impossible and did not want the vision to get into his head any more than it had.

The woman who held him down had at least a quarter of her head bashed in, and slits and gashes appeared on her neck and what he had briefly glimpsed of her shoulder through a torn peasant dress. How he wished now that he had resisted that brief terrifying glimpse, that curiosity brought on by terror. Her skin was a bleached out white. The only color about her was the brown of dried blood on the rags she still wore, raggedy, and dirty. Her one good eye was dead, cloudy with a film of… something; there was no mercy in there to appeal to; nothing with which to compare her victim to her previous torturer.

Around them the screams and hollering, the sucking sound, the animal cries, it all rose in volume.

It was then a strange thought forced its way into Michael’s consciousness. There was an underlying rhythm to the noise… a beat. A sickly thud, a blood curdling scream, a laugh, a plea for mercy, the slash of a blade and the sound of skin invaded and skewered on repeat. Michael tried to deny the evidence of his eyes, but he could not deny the power of the hand as it gripped his mouth tighter and tighter. He would have shaken his head, but he could still not move it. Then another hand pinched his nose, a smaller hand with tiny fingers.

Oh no!

‘You killed my papa. Why mister, why did you do that?’

This was a softer, younger, feminine voice. If this were the girl the corpse-like woman claimed had been attacked, he certainly did not want to see that, and Michael screwed his eyes shut as tightly as he could and then he tried to close them even more, so tight it hurt.

I am innocent, he wanted to scream.

A mistake, this is a mistake.

Suddenly, the pressure on his mouth and nose was gone. He could breathe again, and he took in great heaving gulps of air.

After a moment he tentatively opened his eyes to see a… savior… a soldier’s head appeared over the shoulder of the (dead?) woman; a strong hand now on her shoulder, pulling her off and throwing her effortlessly across the room. He was in a vague uniform, but it too was torn, and too dirty, and too blood splattered to see if there was any real colors Michael could discern, other than that of the dried blood. The soldier followed the arch of the woman’s flight, pulling a sword and swinging it up and under her.

Michael watched the arc in slow motion.

It struck off what was left of the woman’s head.

Michael half expected a gush of red blood, but there was nothing but brown, dried out dust puffing out of the woman’s neck. It plumed out and settled as far as his bedclothes like a fine powder. The sword then stabbed forward over Michael’s chest and face, and more brown dust puffed out and choked him.

The girl

 was the thought in his head, Michael still could not look that way to confirm it though.

‘Get up, Pennyvale!’

This was the voice of command, and it was English – not American English but something you might hear in a movie, an old movie, maybe not even then. ‘You’ve had your fun, ya dorre cunte but there’s still work to be done. Get on your feet, pull up your britches man, get your sword and move out!’

But try as he might, Michael still could not move, nor could he correct his savior’s mistake.

‘Did ya not hear me bor? Are ya addled or sumptin?’

Michael’s eyes widened as the soldier’s fist struck him in the ribcage, punctuating the order to move. He gasped in a great breath of dust-filled air from the new pain, which made him cough once again.

Suddenly he found that he could move after all and he sat up, only to find himself alone.

He was in that motel room bed still. Golden-white and red strobing lights playing across a stucco ceiling; a chair to one side of the bed, a side-table and cheap lamp, a television chained to a wall mount, a non-working air conditioner unit in the window.

So hot in here.

Michael suddenly woke up again with a start, realizing that the scene of normality had also been a dream of sorts.

Click-click-tap, click-click-tap. All was darkness, and the sound was getting closer, closer and louder. Michael sank into the bed and pulled the covers up to his face like a child might do, no longer seemingly constrained in his movements except by his own imagination.