and I don’t know how to stop it. Five years. Five years I waited for something to happen, and now that it’s all at once, I… I need help, Dad. Please. I need help so bad, and I promise, oh how I promise you, that if you send him back, I’ll do everything I can to make it right. I’ll do everything I can to help him like you asked me to. I’ll do it for you. And I’ll do it for him.”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “Fuck, do I miss you. There’s times that I find myself thinking something and I’ll turn around to tell you, and it hits me that you’re gone. It hits me all over again, because I could’ve sworn you were just here. Like you were standing right next to me just a second ago. Why can’t you be? Why did you have to go? Where were you going that day? You lied to me. I know you did. You weren’t going to see any friends. What did you do? What did you see?”
A sob rips my chest and I try to choke it back down. “I’m so angry at you. I’m so fucking mad. You bastard. You fucking asshole. Why’d you have to go? Why did you have to leave me behind? You promised me. You promised me that you’d always be there. I’m your fucking son, and you promised me! You fucking promised!”
My eyes are bleary and my knees feel weak. I reach out to steady myself and grab onto the stone angel’s hands. She holds me up as my body trembles. It hurts to stand here. It hurts to be here. Even after all the time that has passed, it still hurts. Everything about this place is—
blue
—pain and I just want it to stop. I just want it to be over. I just want to raise my head up and wake from this nightmare that I can no longer tell is real or not. There has to be an ending. This has to finish before it’s too late.
Footsteps, from behind me.
I whirl around, the angel Calliel’s name dying unspoken on my lips.
Standing ten feet away are the Strange Men.
I take an inadvertent step away, and the angel’s stone hands jab my back. The Strange Men cock their heads at me at the same time, mirror images of each other, light and dark. I don’t know if I should be frightened yet, but I’m well on my way. I try to keep it from my face.
“Hello,” I say evenly.
“Benjamin,” the dark man says. “Benji. Benjamin Green.”
“Out here?” the light man asks, quirking his head at the other. “It seems… unwise.”
“Why are you here?” the dark man asks. “What is it you hope to find?”
My heart is jumping in my chest, and my palms feel clammy. “I was just coming to see my father,” I say.
“Father?” the dark man asks. “Father.”
“Ah, the father,” the light man breathes reverently. “His… name?”
“Green. Edward,” the dark man says, his eyes twitching back and forth rapidly. “Edward Benjamin Green.”
“Transposed,” the light man responds. “One is the other and the other is one. Big Eddie? From the sign?”
“Yes,” the dark man agrees. “The sign.”
“Crossed?”
The dark man’s eyes twitch again. “No,” he says, sounding confused. “He… hasn’t. He’s…. paradox. Contradiction. How…?”
The light-skinned man reaches out a white hand and touches the dark man on his shoulder, a caressing slide of his fingers. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. Later. Now is blue. Now is Calliel.”
The dark man shakes his head quickly, as if trying to clear his thoughts. “Yes. Calliel.”
They look at me again. The angel’s hands are still pressed against my back.
The dark man says. “The angel Calliel. Where is he?”
“I told you,” I say, my voice high-pitched. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“You’re lying,” the light man says. And then he smiles at me, and it’s such a terrible thing that my stomach twists and my skin crawls. There’s no humanity in it, just a wide grin under the dead, black eyes of a shark. “The scratches? Wings, we should think.”
“What… scratches?” I say faintly.
“The angel?” the dark man asks. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know any angel!”
“Lies,” the light man says.
“Deceit,” the dark man says almost regretfully.
They take a step toward me at the same time, and then another. And then another. “We can make you,” the dark man promises. “We can make you tell us things. So many little things.”