Holes in the Darkness- a Judas Syndrome Anthology

Illogical Progression

Warning: contains spoilers for The Judas Syndrome

STAGE ONE-The News

Earl has seen car crash sites before. How many times has he driven past a pile of smoking, mangled steel, and turned to look? He always acknowledged the tragedy represented by the smell of burning oil, the glint of shattered glass on the pavement, and the merciless flashing of the police car and ambulance lights, but felt removed from it because he didn’t know the parties involved.

Now it is different, and he can see every painful detail in his mind’s eye. The tire marks that signalled a vehicle out of control. The Toyota Camry that often parked in his driveway, now crushed like a can in a recycling plant. The deployed, blood-spotted airbag. Angela’s moaning and mutilated body, clinging to life by a broken fingertip before letting go entirely.

Earl is traumatized by what he did not see.

STAGE TWO: The Sympathy

His mother is kind in the aftermath.

She doesn’t try to urge him out of his room before he’s ready. She hugs him and insists that he isn't to blame, that the fight he and Angela had the night she died did not cause her to drive without her usual caution.

She tries to protect him. While the accident is still news, she cuts articles from the morning paper, keeps him away from the television, and disconnects the Internet. Although it would be easy to do so, Earl doesn’t try to sneak past her protective barriers, because he cannot handle the turmoil that the gruesome details would arouse.

STAGE THREE: Reproach

The contents of the bedroom where Earl and Angela had spent so much blissful time alone is packed up in cardboard boxes, which are then taken away. Earl, standing on the sidewalk, watches as the earthly possessions of the only girl –perhaps the only human being- who ever made him feel anything akin to love are carted off for storage in some remote industrial park.

He sees Angela’s best friend Carol at school, but she only smiles tightly at him before walking away. She will not tell him what was in the text Angela sent mere minutes before the crash, but he knows it was about him. When they do talk, Carol prefers instead to focus on what movies Earl has been seeing, or whether he’s going to the Easter dance. But he can tell that she is being polite and doesn’t really care about his answers.

They all blame him. He blames himself.

STAGE FOUR: Trying to Move On

Two years later, when he is eighteen, Earl meets Lynn at the clothing store where she works. She is twenty-three, and already the single mother of twins. She is lush and blonde and motherly, and he is fascinated. He doesn’t love her- that emotion was buried with Angela like a goodbye note slipped into her casket before it closed. But Lynn makes him feel safe.

She accepts his advances and becomes a gentle, supportive secret lover. Earl watches her play with her son and daughter, Tim and Amy, and silently praises her for bringing life into a world so marred by senseless death. Lynn has replenished the human race.

But she cannot resurrect his dead heart.

STAGE FIVE: Memories Remain

It is his fault, he keeps thinking. He told Angela to get out of his life the night they fought over something as stupid as which movie to see. And she had. Forever.

And he knows her family still blames him. Since the funeral service, he has seen her dad only once, when they ran into each other at the bank. The man greeted him coldly before turning away. Earl wanted to prolong the encounter and sink back into the safety of the past for a few more seconds. But he knew how the older man would glare at him, implying that he had no right to seek comfort, not when it is his fault that the family was now short a daughter and sister.

STAGE SIX: Numb

Earl is fond of Lynn and her children, he really is.

He looks at them and thinks how wonderful they are for welcoming him into their lives so quickly and gently. Tim refuses to go to bed for anyone but Earl, and Amy solemnly declares that she wants to marry him when she grows up. It’s idyllic.

Except, he can't help but wonder why he does not feel happy. He feels nothing akin to strong emotion. Has he lost the ability?

STAGE SEVEN: Anniversary

It is the second year anniversary of the accident, and Earl cannot get out of bed. He’s not sure what he’s feeling inside, but his limbs are like concrete and his eyes only see Angela.

Lynn makes sure that he eats breakfast. Three-year-old Tim watches him curiously from the doorway before running into the rec room to play. Amy asks him if he wants to play with the new dollhouse she got for her birthday. After a few minutes Lynn intervenes and steers the little girl out of the bedroom, leaving Earl to suffer in peace.

Earl stays in bed until the clock strikes midnight and the date changes.

STAGE EIGHT: It’s Not Her

Lynn comes home from work early one day, complaining of a migraine. Earl takes Tim and Amy to the mall so she can sleep for awhile. Tim asks for a quarter so he can ride the carousel in the food court. Amy wants a Slushie. He gives them what they ask for, and sits down with a coffee. He has homework to complete.

Suddenly something catches Earl’s eye, and his heart convulses.

At a nearby table, a girl laughs with her friend.

She is slender, with long black hair that reminds him of her. Her back is to him, so he can't see her face, but everything looks so right: the body type, the way she tosses her head when she laughs. She’s even wearing a pair of faded jeans like Angela used to own.

Her friend notices Earl’s stare and whispers. The girl frowns and eyes Earl reproachfully. He smiles apologetically and looks down. His heart is hurling itself against his ribcage like a frenzied prisoner, but he knows it is not seeking freedom.

It wants truth. At last.

STAGE NINE: Ready for the Truth

Today Earl is ready.

Lynn is at work, the children at day care. He doesn’t have school. Earl opens his laptop, goes to archive section of the newspaper website, and reads the accident coverage from two years ago.

His throat tightens. Something hot blooms in his chest. His blood thunders in his ears.

He walks around the room, biting his fist until blood bubbles through the broken skin.

Grief has now giving way to anger. He feels powerful.

Because he now knows who is to blame. And who is to suffer.

STAGE TEN: Preparation

On the internet, you can find out just about anything.

Hours after his mission becomes clear, Earl is sitting in a borrowed car outside a small bungalow in the West End. He stares intently at the shadows flitting behind the drawn, backlit curtains. He counts two of them, and wonders which one is Steve Pattinson and which is Edward Moore.

There is a gleaming black BMW parked in the driveway. It is too new and too unblemished to be the same vehicle that shattered Angela’s bones and Earl’s existence.

He watches and waits.

STAGE ELEVEN: Reparations

Eventually they emerge. Both men are in their mid-thirties, slender, and stylish. They linger on the doorstep, whispering and kissing. Earl sneers and his meaty fingers grip the wheel.

He thinks of Lynn and the children, who represent what these men do not. Hope. A future for the human race.

He thinks of Angela, and the future they stole from her. From him also, for that matter.

He thinks of what he is here to do, and for the first time in two years he feels at peace.

Earl’s finger curls around a warm metal trigger, and the night flares orange.