The Discordance of Anima
by Zachary Robert Long (2153 words, estimated reading time: 10 minutes)

The night held the world in a darkness that felt never-ending to Billy’s ten year old brain. Curled up in his tent with a sleeping bag and a flashlight and his Deadpool comics, the chill dark air tasted like freedom. Freedom from bedtime. The kind of freedom adults get. This, he thought, this is what it means to be grown up.

He was waiting for this night for weeks and weeks. Throughout all of winter he was repeatedly told that if he did good in school, did his chores, and didn’t talk back to his parents or teachers, then, but only then, could he stay in the tent. So with a smile plastered to his face, and hope in his heart, he put away the dishes night after night. Home work always done before supper, no complaining. For an entire season he didn’t fight with his parents, didn’t hold a grudge when he couldn’t have dessert or argue when he couldn’t rent the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, even though they went to ancient Japan in this one.

But it was all worth it.

The tent reminded him of last summer, when the whole family went out to the woods to camp. The smell of the forest still lingered in his nostrils, remembered with all the childhood charm of a first kiss. The only thing missing was the river where his father taught him how to fish.

Eyes glued on the comic, flashlight held between chin and chest, he was absorbed into the Marvel Universe. The world of superheroes with amazing powers, fighting grand battles on the page. He could see himself in that world, fighting crime with Spider-Man or taking on an alien invasion with Deadpool. Always saving the day. They would say to him, “If it wasn’t for you, Billy, we’d never of made it!.”

Finishing the comic he set it aside and looked wistfully around the tent. Stealing an Oreo from the box Mom bought and popping it into his mouth, he unzipped the flap and stepped outside. The night air was crisp, refreshing. The stars overhead each held their own adventure, a planet for him to protect from alien scum.

The backyard was huge for such a small house. To him it stretched on forever and ever, so much bigger than the first floor with its tiny hallway and boxed in rooms. Dashing to the tree with the rope dangling free – from which a storm blew away the tire years ago – he unzipped his pants and let a stream of urine out.

This, he thought, this is freedom.

His pants zipped up again, he headed over to the playset his parents got when his brother was his age. Arms stretched out to both sides like an airplane, he leaped the tall slide in a single bound. Laughter rolled out of him like an avalanche, tumbling all the way from his stomach to his throat and then spilling out to encompass the still night air.

Climbing up the three-step ladder that seemed like a skyscraper in the dark, he pretended he was the captain of the firefighters on the way to save the damsel in distress. Leaping off the ledge of the skyscraper he flew to the rope and started putting out the fire. The day was saved by Billy again!

Exhausted by the effort of saving lives he retreated back to playset and plumply sat himself on the single swing. His brother always got the swing when they played together, but not now. Robert was caught smoking at school. Billy remembered how Mom cried and Dad yelled at him. He wasn’t allowed out in the tent. He wasn’t allowed his freedom, a punishment for abusing it in the first place.

Kicking back with both legs and shooting up a spray of dirt, he launched himself into the air. The whoosh of air rushing passed his ears made him feel alive, truly alive. Truly free! He pumped his legs, back and forth, back and forth, until he was almost horizontal to the ground. Laughter filled the cool night air yet again, painting the world alive with the joy and innocence of youth.

He back-flipped off the swing, landing on his feet but losing his balance, fell square on his ass with giggles flowing out of him like water. He laid back, head in the green grass and just watched the sky, so alive with the twinkling of the stars.

That’s when it happened.

The night sky came alive with a trailing red flame, tearing through the dark and washing out the stars. Billy’s eyes lit up in reflection of the monstrous flame, watched it trail away towards the ground near the school he went to. What was that?!

There was no sound of crashing, no rumble of the earth being torn up. No sound at all, and in the silence, Billy ran towards the shed. Cracking the door open slowly, careful as a thief in the night, he took out his twelve speed bike. Pushing the bike slowly up the driveway, waiting to hear the yelling of his mother decrying the loss of his tent privileges, he creeped towards the road. Only when he was out of sight of the house did he hop on.

The bike was his metallic green steed and he was a knight in the dark rushing to save the kingdom from the dragon. Rushing through the roads the bus took every day, he knew all the turns. Left, left, right, left, straight, right. Then there it was in front of him. The school.

It seemed a strange and ghostly thing in the dark. Empty of the laughter of children, the scolding of principals, the lessons of teachers. The building gave off the feeling of an empty husk, like the cocoon of the moth he’d dissected in science class.

Slowly stepping off the steed, Billy wheeled the bike to the edge of the building. Resting against the red bricked wall he looked into the window. A classroom, dark and empty, chairs on desks, waiting for the week to bring back more souls to its chamber of learning. Shivers made free range of his spine and he started to second guess this adventure. But the brave knight never runs from a battle!

The playground was a abstract painting of shadows, all holding their own monsters to a ten year old mind. The trolls who live under the rainbow, the goblins dancing just out of sight behind the slide. The playground was the place of boogeymen and he had to cross it. It was with startling clarity for such a young mind that he mourned the speed of his departure from the tent.

The tent with the flashlight still sitting next to the comics.

He didn’t know where the red flame landed, or if it even landed at all, but he was determined to find out. With one last glance into the haunting classroom, the honorable knight set out to brave the horrors of the playground.

First he ran to the swings. No where for anything to hide by the swings. His boots kicking away gravel as he slid to a stop. Next was the slide the goblins danced under. Taking a handful of rocks, he dashed to the slide and released them out underneath it. When nothing screamed out curses, he knew he was safe.

The woods behind the school seemed to be alive with a faint light. A faint red light. He knew where he had to go. The brave knight, always charging into battle.

He approached the woods as if they were a monster. Creeping slowly through the dark, the thoughts of the nightmare playground behind him slipping into the ephemera of childhood fancies. The trees seemed to devour him, the branches closing the way back to his freedom. He stumbled forward, feet catching on roots nearly launching him on his face. The glow got brighter as he progressed.

Finally, when it seemed like it couldn’t get any brighter, the trees gave away to a perfect clearing. The forest surrounded a patch of dirt, nine feet by nine feet, no sign of plant life. And floating in the middle, five feet off the ground, was a glowing red disc. It looked like a giant Frisbee. It’d take a dog like Clifford to catch that!

Billy crept forward, one foot trailing reluctantly after the next like they didn’t want to be there. Not anymore. The air was warmer here, though, as if the disc was emanating waves of heat. As he got closer he saw that the disc wasn’t red but surrounded in a glowing red coat like Carmen Sandiego.

He was about four feet away when it started to move.

His scream caught in his throat and all that came out was a croak. A rectangular slice of the disc extended forward and then down. Slowly it descended until it was hovering a foot above the ground.

Inside the disc stood a weird man. Twice as tall as Billy with skin of a pasty blue color like rain washed Play-Doh. Its hands were half the length of its body with fingers that curled on the floor of the disc, reaching back up to its knees. Or, rather, they reached up to where its knees should of been, as if its leg was one long appendage unbroken by joints.

“We have come for you, Billy”

Billy tried to speak but his throat was constricting, leaving him mute.

“Across the stars we have come to taste of the glories your civilization has come to call youth.”

Billy wanted to scream, wanted to run as far as he could, as fast as he could; but his body wouldn’t do anything he told it to.

“We have been studying you, Billy. Humans seem such predatory beasts, yet here you stand. Innocent.”

Its mouth wasn’t moving. Billy could hear each word, but its lips hadn’t moved once.

“The frailty of the human race has long been a complex algorithm we haven’t been able to crack. How you are so compelled to destroy each other. We would take you away. Learn from you.”

The air flashed and before his eyes appeared a machine. Shaped like the drill the dentist used, it floated in front of him, inches from his face. He couldn’t do anything but watch as the laser leapt forward from its tip.

The pain was a cold sensation as it cut away the skin of his nose, traveled down and split his lips in half. It continued on, agonizing, burning a line straight down his body, rupturing his stomach. His only saving grace was his inability to move, his inability to look down and watch his guts spill out on ground. It was between his legs now, splitting his penis in half, traveling around to his back, perfectly splitting his ass along the crack as it made its way up and over him.

When it completed the incision, with Billy clenching his eyes shut in pain, it rose to float in front of his chest, hovering over his heart. The beam that shot out this time was a green flash of pain. It bore its way into his heart. Then it stopped. Another flash lit up the darkened sky and the machine was gone.

From where the man stood on the disc, it reached out two enormous fingers and squeezed inside his heart. Billy’s body finally stopped struggling to hang onto life and, in the woods behind the nightmare playground, his body died.

The fingers held onto a glowing light, invisible to the human eye. The door to the disc closed as the fingers retracted. With the crisp night air locked outside, the disc rose to split the sky and disappeared. The only trace of its passing was a nine foot by nine foot clearing and the mutilated body of a ten-year old.

It’s found the next day, causing great alarm in the village and the surrounding towns. Police investigation turns up no leads but the absence of further slayings slowly alleviates tension. Theories proliferate. The kid ran into a migrating bear. A plane lost a piece and the poor darling was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Freak accident. Over time the theories are reduced to simply accident, lacking the details necessarily to elaborate it is simply easier to place it in that vague genre of death.

The funeral is held nearly two months after the fact. The police were obscure in their delays. Only later would a journalist discover the cause. They lost one of the halves. At the funeral, the priest speaks words of wisdom in the hope of assuaging the family. Too sooth them he speaks of the glory of the lord, the light of heaven, and the freedom of Billy’s soul, completely unaware of the egregious fallaciousness and destitution of his words.