TITAN

The morning was quiet. There were no birds singing. No bugs chirping. Even cars on the road were softer. Something in the air was muted the noise and drowned it out. Or maybe that was just how the world seemed to Eric Steele.

The sun pulled across the eastern sky and cast fire across the periwinkle canvas above. It was big in the sky like the Earth had moved closer. That hadn’t happened, but it was how it looked. No matter how big the Earth was, the sun was always bigger. Eric supposed there was something profound in that, but he couldn’t divine what it was. Maybe no matter how big you are life is always bigger?

Or not.

Whatever.

Fuck it.

Eric wasn’t in a learning mood. He had learned all of the lessons he needed to learn for now. And for all of those “lessons,” Eric was waist deep in bodies. Sarah, Drew, Jim... and all of the others that had been murdered in the name of finding and possessing Titan. Even for the Titans of old. Death had been his teacher of late. He had learned enough.

Eric sat on the bank of the tidal basin with the Jefferson Memorial by his side, just an eighteen-year-old high school graduate in a tattered prom tuxedo. There was blood on his hands. Some his own, some not—both earned from a night of violence. He took comfort in the idea that not all of the blood was his. Somehow it seemed fairer.

Time had not healed him, but it had sealed his wounds—closed them over with bitter scabs. He hoped time would change his mind, but the events of the previous night and the previous two months had only convinced him that he wasn’t ready. There were no training montages or inspiring words that could have prepared him to face what he had faced.

To kill his friend.

And for what he would yet face.

Eric didn’t pull the trigger, but he knew the truth. He hadn’t pulled the trigger on Drew either, but he was just as dead. Drew would never feel Constance’s breasts again or bang her in a mall parking lot. He knew those were strange thoughts, but he thought them just the same. People were who they were and they did what they did. Drew was who he was, but now he wasn’t anything. Maybe he would have become a different person. Now, he’d never know.

Eric climbed to his feet feeling heavier than he had when he sat down. He began walking. He didn’t know where he was going. He looked up and followed the sun. It pointed west and so, too, would he. The horizon he had pined for, in what seemed like ages ago, was west. There wasn’t any divine whisper, super intuition, or mind surge from The Source that told him to do this. This was Eric Steele’s heart, burned to ash, telling him to go.

As he walked, Eric’s mind finally opened up to the really important things he would miss: his parents, Rose, Drew, and Jim. He had left them behind in the wreckage. He had said goodbye in his own way, though they hadn’t realized it.

Would they understand? Probably not. But neither do I.

Eric walked with Titan clutched around his heart, ready to spring. He walked west. Before too long, he was over the horizon and out of sight. There were mountains ahead.

“James” removed his hand from where the Priest’s hand was pressed against the screen of the confessional. Their skin had barely touched, but it was enough. The man of God had heard Titan’s story and knew it was true. Every extraordinary word. Every sorrowful sigh. He’d seen it. Father Kelly took a deep breath like a swimmer surfacing above water. He felt tired and drained and sad. His sense returned to him as the young man left the confessional.

Father Kelly scrambled out of his seat, unaware of how wobbly his legs had gone.

What has the boy done to me?

“Wait, son…”

James slowed but did not stop. “Slow down, Father. Your strength will come back.”

Father Kelly gathered his breath and called out. He said the only thing that he believed would stop the young man, “Eric.”

And James—Eric—did stop then. He didn’t turn, but he stopped just beside the bowl of holy water in front of the heavy church doors.

“Where are you going, son?”

Eric cocked his head so that Father Kelly could see his face burning orange in the dim, flickering light of the candles. “Into the dark, Father.” He smiled.

At that moment, Father Kelly understood that he had been waiting for this boy. The boy was an instrument of God—a hero, real and true. He too was an instrument of God.

“I’ll come with you. We’ll face it together.” Father Kelly had lived on the edge of the woods for many years now. Evil was in the woods. Capital “E.”

Eric’s face came alive with the light of burning candles. Of fire. He chuckled. It was not mirthful, though. It was a cynical, knowing utterance. What Father Kelly saw in Eric’s face was sad. Wisdom; the young man was old beyond his years. He feared monsters in the dark because he knew they were there.

“No, Father. You’ve seen what I have, but you haven’t faced the dark. The room. You’re not meant for this.” Eric turned toward the doors and pushed one open, letting the candle of the holy place push against implacable darkness. He looked back again. “This is what I’m supposed to do, Father. Sarah can’t, so I do it. It’s who I am.”

The one who stands against the dark, Eric finished to himself.

Eric stepped outside and the church door closed behind Titan. His armor was smooth, untarnished, and lit within its fine fibers by the light of creation. Of life.

But he was alone. And that was how he entered the woods.

Alone, Titan faced the dark.