Cynetic Wolf

Something wasn’t right. I’d died, and gone to hell, that was the only explanation.

But hell wasn’t real. There was no right and wrong, no good and evil…

Yet, here I was. This was no dream. It wasn’t VR either. Everything was real, and somehow, ethereal.

The world was happening around me, like I’d become something else.

Bodies everywhere, butchery beyond imagination. Raw horror. Everything reeked of death. It was ALL my fault!

But who’d won? I needed to know. I headed toward the worst of it but stopped dead. Henk was sprawled on the frozen earth, coughing blood.

‘Henk? There you are. Can you hear me?’

“Help!” he cried. “Can anyone hear me? Is anyone there?”

‘Henk, it’s me.’ I reached to pick him up. ‘I got you budd—’ The words died on my lips. Where were my hands? My arms? My body was gone.

No No No! Was I dead? Was I a ghost? Or something...

I ran—or glided, I guess—away as fast I could. I was going to be sick.

‘Can anyone hear me?’ I screamed. ‘Help, help!’ What was happening?

Farther, faster; bodies and blood and death as far as the eye could see.

The scene changed. I was somewhere else, yet time stood still. A sign, Itany. Here too: death, destruction, suffering.

‘What is this place?’ I yelled in a wordless scream. ‘What do you want from me?’

Suddenly, back in Caen, a small side street. Zedda’s bloody face alongside a headless man. What was she doing here? I ran to where she lay. Her chest and torso were gone, nothing left. No, this couldn’t be happening. Tears came as I threw back my head and wailed. She was all I’d had left, and she was gone.

‘Why are you crying, son?’ a voice behind me asked. ‘We all lose loved ones, you of all people should know that.’

It sounded like, but it couldn’t be.

Fitz? I turned. Sure enough, it was him, his presence at least. I felt it.

‘You’re here?’ I whispered. ’How?

‘Yes, son, I am. World’s worst afterlife, isn’t it? I was expecting tropical beaches, beautiful ladies, fine wines… Oh well, what are you going to do?’ He smiled.

‘You’re dead too?’

‘Don’t worry about that, worry about you. You managed to screw things pretty good. I’m gone for what, two months, and you and Lars start all kinds of trouble.’

‘We thought we’d win,’ I mumbled, ashamed. ‘We thought we were ready.’

‘This is winning?’ he asked, sarcastic even in death.

‘So we lost?’ After all that...

‘Does it matter?’ he said. ‘Look around. This isn’t winning or losing, this is ending. There’s an old song I like. You might not know it. “Nobody wins when everyone’s losing. It’s like one step forward and two steps back...” Forget it, I can’t sing. You get the point.’

I nodded, or at least meant to. ‘It’s too late now.’

‘It’s never too late. We’re having this conversation, aren’t we?’ he quipped. ‘Think about it, son. I need to go, my time is running short.’

But wasn’t this infinite? ‘Wait!’ I protested. ’Wait, I need to ask you—”

He disappeared as a sharp pain seared my chest.

This was it.