I found one of Carmen’s tan cloaks in the closet at her house. I pulled it on over my clothing, feeling disgusted by the implications of the ceremony I was about to attend.
Varo had left hours ago in the van parked outside of Coyote’s house. All I could do was hope that he would make it to where he was headed. I could only hope that he would be allowed to leave Judgment. While I knew our plan required him to leave, I was already feeling utterly alone.
I can do this, I told myself. I can face Leon.
I glanced at a mirror in Carmen’s bathroom before I left the house. In the sand-colored robe, I looked like the others–compliant. In the mirror, my hair was a mess with desert dust. There was still some dried blood on the back of my head from where Leon had pushed me against the house.
I pulled the hood up over my head so most of my face was hidden from view and left the house.
Outside, the sun was low on the horizon, not far from setting. Soon, Lu would become an offering. I walked across town, seeing others making their way to The Watchtower. Like me, they were dressed in tan robes, their faces obscured by the hoods.
As the sun dipped below the ridge of mountains to my west, the sky was illuminated with the color of fire. Judgment was cast in an eerie orange glow that felt suitable for the occasion.
I arrived in front of The Watchtower with the others. We created a half-circle around where Leon stood with Lu at his side. Her hands were tied behind her back, and the white dress I had once worn was pulled over her body in a haphazard manner. Her eyes were filled with rage as she glared at Leon.
A group of Watchmen stood behind Leon and Lu. I felt an odd sense of pride towards Lu. I had stood in that same spot feeling nothing but fear and humiliation. But she was angry. If her hands hadn’t been tied, I wondered what she would do to him.
I tried not to meet her eyes or Leon’s. I kept my head down as the crowd grew around us. Absently, I wondered if they would all die when the Primores got their strength back.
I wanted to be sympathetic, but even the ones who didn’t know the full truth hadn’t done anything to stop Leon from sending girls to their deaths. They hadn’t saved Carmen, my mother, or Varo from the slaughterhouse.
I waited impatiently for Leon to begin.
“Luciana,” his voice boomed across the valley. “Do you accept the gift you have been given?”
Lu glared at him. “I do not,” she spat.
One of The Watchmen stepped forward. I couldn’t make out what was happening but I heard Lu rephrase her answer.
“I do,” she said slowly.
“And how will you accept it?”
Before Lu could answer, a loud boom echoed across the desert. It was hard to determine which way it had come from, but it was so loud I felt it under my feet. The crowd began to murmur to themselves, looking around.
I saw my chance, and I took it.
I pulled my hood off and shouted, “Tell the truth, Leon!”
The crowd turned to look at me, but I was focused on Leon. He had a look of smug disinterest. He shot a glance at two of his Watchmen. They began to walk towards me.
“The Primores don’t have any gift for the people of Judgment,” I continued.
The Watchmen picked up their speed.
“Tell the truth,” I shouted again. “Those pregnancies have nothing to do with The Watchtower.”
One of the men grabbed my arm. I let him. I knew I stood no chance against a group of well-trained men. However, I didn’t have to fight them. I just had to distract them.
Another boom echoed in the distance.
“Do you kill them to silence them? Are they sent to the slaughterhouse like the rest of the people who are in your way?”
At this, the temperament of the crowd changed. Even Leon’s expression shifted. He no longer looked so smug. Two of his men pulled me to the front of the crowd, forcing me to kneel near Lu. She shot me an irritated look.
“Nice,” she whispered. “Now we’re both going to be killed.”
I said nothing. I couldn’t let her know the plan yet unless I also wanted Leon to know it.
“Is this your idea of helping?” The smugness returned to Leon’s face as he smirked down at Lu and me. “They won’t believe you,” he whispered.
If things had gone the way he wanted them to, he would have been right. He could make me disappear as easily as he had with Carmen and my mother. Lu would be sent to the caves and later disappear just like me. The people of Judgment would have forgotten about us. To them, years were minutes. They didn’t bow to the confines of time.
But things didn’t go as Leon planned.
Several minutes after hearing the second boom, the sound of flowing water grew closer and closer. In the distance, I saw movement, a steady wave of churning water headed towards the town. The crowd began to panic as water came down from over one of the hills.
Now, the crowd was no longer standing in an organized half-circle but running in different directions. They shouted to each other over the sound of approaching water.
While Leon and the others were distracted by the heavy flow of water, I scooted closer to Lu to untie her. I shot a glance at The Watchtower. I still didn’t know what water was going to do to the Primores, but I didn’t have much time to contemplate it.
After getting Lu untied, I grabbed her arm, hauling her up.
Still clutching her arm tightly, I took off away from the path of the water. She followed quickly, not hesitating. I ran towards Carmen’s house. I figured if the tides flooded the town, we might not get a chance to outrun it. At the very least, we could climb to a safe height, atop one of the houses.
Behind me, I heard Leon shout something at us and then at his Watchmen. I ran faster, pulling Lu with me.
“They’re following us,” Lu said as we ran through the town.
“I know.”
“Hope you have a plan other than flooding everything.”
“Not for them, but…I don’t think they’ll last long.”
“What?”
I didn’t answer her question. We were approaching Carmen’s house when Leon and one of his Watchmen caught up with us. I had hoped to slip away before they noticed, but even in the chaos, Leon had been watching me.
In the distance, I heard shouts and cries from people closer to where the water was flowing into town. I hoped the water would make it to The Watchtower and Leon and his men would collapse to the ground, dead. But they stood in front of Lu and me, alive.
“The Watchtower was wrong to summon you back to Judgment,” Leon said to me.
“The Watchtower had nothing to do with it,” I glared at him. “You told Varo to bring me here in exchange for Lu. You’re the one who brought me back here.”
Leon wasn’t happy with this answer.
“Kill them,” he said to the man beside him.
The Watchman pulled a gun out from his belt, pointing it first at me. I felt my heartbeat quicken, and I glanced at Lu. I glanced back at The Watchmen. I wouldn’t beg for my life as I had in the caves. I wouldn’t beg to be spared because it hadn’t worked last time. Why would it work now?
“You’re a coward,” Lu said. “You found the cure to death and let yourself become a monster.”
The gun turned to face her.
To my surprise, she didn’t flinch. She had been planning for that, planning to give me an opportunity. I took it.
I didn’t know how to fight, but I knew there was a good chance that if I didn’t do something, both Lu and I would die. I ran at the Watchman. I threw him off balance just enough to knock his right wrist into the side of one of the houses. The gun went clattering to the ground. Both Lu and Leon sprang for the weapon.
I was too busy being tossed to the ground to see where it went. I kicked the Watchman’s legs out from under him, and he crumbled. He tackled me, pinning me to the ground. He was stronger and weighed more, so the idea of throwing him off me was out of the question.
Being held to the ground under the heavy weight of the Watchman forced me to think about the last time a man had held me down. I tried to push him off me, but he held tight. It took me a second to slip one of my hands from his grasp.
I didn’t hesitate.
I drove my fingers into his eyes as hard as I could. The Watchman screamed in pain. I felt something pop under my finger, but I didn’t let up until he rolled off me.
Lu, it turned out, had been the one to make it to the gun first. She now stood with it pointed at Leon. I could tell by the ice in her eyes that she wanted to kill him, but for some reason, she hesitated.
I pulled myself onto my feet.
“You should do it,” Lu said. I realized, but ‘it’ she meant ‘kill Leon’.
I looked between Leon and Lu. I thought of Carmen, my parents, Varo, and the blood that spilled down my legs the night I escaped. I thought about the relief I had first felt when he walked into the cave. I thought he was there to help–but he was the monster.
I reached out and placed my hand on the top of the gun. Lu looked at me, furious.
“I’m not sparing him,” she said.
Hot tears were running down her face. Blood stained my fingers that lay across the gun.
“I’m not telling you to spare him, just lower it.”
I pressed down, lowering her hand so the weapon was no longer pointed at his face. Instead, it was pointed just below his lower abdomen.
I wasn’t sure if Lu would do it, if she would pull the trigger. I’m not sure I would have either. However, before either of us could do anything, both Leon and the now-blinded Watchman began to scream.
I had heard plenty of screams in my life, but this was something different. As Leon howled in agony, I watched as his skin faded from flushed to pallid. The wrinkles near his eyes, brows, and mouth intensified until he had aged thirty years.
Neither the aging nor the screaming stopped. Leon fell to his knees; his scream was nothing more than a rattling whisper. His eyes were blinded with cataracts, and his hair was falling out in pieces.
“Please,” his voice was barely audible.
I did nothing, just as he had done when I begged him. Lu lowered the gun, letting nature take its course. Leon begged several more times for us to do something, but I didn’t move a muscle.
A last Leon collapsed fully, sprawling onto the ground like a puppet cut loose from its strings.
The river rushed into Judgment like it was cleansing the Earth of the town’s sins. Buildings were flooded, and roads were destroyed. The vast majority of the population of Judgment had used up their years. We walked past several bodies on our way to find Varo. Like Leon and the Watchman, the bodies were old and nearly mummified with age.
I felt a wave of emotion. Leon’s death felt like a tipping of the scales. But the others? Sure, the Watchmen were at fault, but what about the rest of the town? I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of loss upon seeing the mummified remains scattered around the town.
They had disobeyed the laws of nature, yet many of them were bystanders. Many of them didn’t know the full truth of what was being done. I wasn’t sure if they deserved the death they received.
Lu and I found Varo back at Coyote’s house. He stood beside the van, looking hesitant until he saw us.
He embraced Lu in a tight hug before saying, “I think he’s gone.”
In my haste to stop Leon, I had forgotten about Coyote. Much like the others whose age finally caught up to them, he was not evil. He was a part of something terrible, perhaps, but he was not evil.
Varo and Lu were the first ones to walk into Coyote’s house. I followed, a sense of sorrow creeping over me.
Coyote lay on the couch. His skin was sallow, and his limbs were rigid. Like Leon, he had aged over sixty years in one day. He was dead; there was no way around that. He had used the Primores’ powers just like the rest of them had.
Two notes sat on the coffee table, each in a tan envelope. One was addressed “Delgados,” and the other said “Ophelia/Harper”. I picked up the one addressed to me as the two siblings grabbed theirs. I opened the envelope and read,
Ophelia (or Harper, if you prefer it),
I should have shared more with you when I could, but I’m glad you returned to Judgment. You were the catalyst this town needed. I am sorry it had to be you.
I looked up from the short letter, feeling strange that Coyote would have left me anything at all. Lu and Varo were still reading their letter, each with a look of deep discomfort. When they finished reading, I didn’t ask what it said, and they didn’t offer to explain.
Instead, we packed up what little we came with and got into the van outside. Varo started up the vehicle and took off down the road.
The skies were dark, but the moon was full. It cast light onto the open desert around us. I sat in the passenger seat, gazing out at the dark night. The stars reminded me of the Primores and their strange eyes.
I looked into the mirror, watching as the dust from the road was kicked up by the van’s tires. I expected to see The Watchtower, standing like an ancient guardian, but it was gone. Seeing the empty horizon, it felt briefly as if it had never been there at all.
The Primores bid us no ‘goodbyes’. They left as easily as autumn leaves.
Thank you for your support!
A good ending, thank you.
I wonder what you will be beginning?