Episode 12

Episode 12 (part 1)

JOURNEY

Written by Andy Mascola

A young black woman came out of the cabin, wiping tired eyes. She wore a red jumpsuit exactly like that of the old man with the rifle.

“Nick, I heard two shots. What’s going on?” the woman said.

Without taking his eyes off of John, the British man turned his head toward the woman standing in the door to the cabin behind him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, love,” he said. “I haven’t yet fired at our visitors here and they haven’t fired at me.”

John looked over at Jennifer. John’s hands were still up in the air. “You’ve got some explaining to do when and if we get out of this alive,” he whispered loud enough for Jennifer to hear.

Cyrus was at the edge of the woods. He let out a roar. The old British man the black woman had called Nick quickly moved his rifle so that it was pointed at the Cyclops’ chest. He pulled the trigger. John closed his eyes and winced, expecting another loud shot, but instead only heard a click. John opened his eyes and looked over at Jennifer. She was smiling.

“Bloody hell!” Nick yelled as he checked his rifle. “Kimberly! Did you remember to load this thing?”

“Yeah, I loaded it, Nick,” the black woman said. John noticed that her accent wasn’t British.

John dropped his hands. The Cyclops walked up to Nick and easily ripped the rifle out of the old man’s hands. He pushed the old timer onto his backside in the snow.

“Hey! Just who the hell do you think you are?” Kimberly shouted in what sounded like a New York accent as she marched out into the snow and pushed Cyrus roughly backward with all her might. She then helped Nick up and brushed him off, gently rubbing the back of his head with her hand and kissing him on the cheek. “Are you okay, baby?”

“I think we can explain everything if you’d invite us into your cabin,” Jennifer said as she slowly walked to where Cyrus stood.

“Are you armed?” Nick asked the three.

The trio didn’t say anything.

“Cyrus!” John said as if he was the seven-foot Cyclops’ father and he’d just caught his one-eyed son in a lie.

The Cyclops groaned disappointedly as he pulled the pistol from the inside of his black jumpsuit and held both the pistol and the British man’s emptied rifle, with the barrels pointed downward, toward Kimberly. The young woman took the weapons from the Cyclops and walked into the cabin.

“Well,” Nick said sighing. “Come along then.”

The three looked at each other and shrugged. They followed the resurrected old man and his young girlfriend into the cabin.

Inside the cabin was surprisingly warm. There was a wood stove in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t lit. John looked around to see electric heaters lined up against the walls. There was a picnic table with benches in the middle of the cabin with a map laid out on it. In the back John could see a small kitchen area on one side and a queen sized bed on the other.

“What do you have against wood stoves?” John asked.

“Wood stoves create smoke,” Kimberly started, “We can’t…”

“Kimberly!” Nick shouted, quickly cutting her off.

“Who are you afraid will see you out here?” Jennifer asked.

“You lot will answer our questions first,” Nick said. “Why did Kimberly hear two shots fired?”

“I think we’d all like to hear an answer to that question,” John said, turning to Jennifer with his arms crossed. “Care to enlighten us, Tinker Bell?”

“At the facility I was trained to focus my gift of time shifting,” Jennifer said. “This was before I even knew about my wings.”

“Jennifer is able to roll time backward for one or two individuals in close proximity for a short period,” Cyrus explained. “Those who have had Jennifer’s gift of temporal shifting focused on them will have no recollection of what transpired just before she decided to use her power in this way.”

“So, those were gun shots I heard,” Kimberly said.

“Yes,” Jennifer confirmed.

“I only ever have one bullet in this rifle,” Nick said as he reloaded the weapon with a bullet from a box on the picnic table. “Did one of those two shots she heard come from this rifle?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said.

“Where did the second shot come from?” Nick asked.

“That was Cyrus’ pistol,” John said. “Your bullet missed us. Cyrus’ bullet hit you in the chest.”

Nick began to laugh. “Hit me in the chest?” he said.

“I never miss,” Cyrus said shrugging.

“So, you’re saying, I fired a shot, you fired a shot; your shot hit me in the chest. I was…dead?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said.

“But you there, angel, reversed time, bringing me back to life?” Nick asked.

“That’s what we’re saying,” Jennifer said.

“Huh,” Nick said. “Okay, well, if I fired a bullet at you and it missed before your bullet hit me, then I’ll assume my bullet is lost somewhere in the woods and gone forever. Would you agree?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said.

"But your bullet hit me in the chest, right?” Nick said.

“Yes,” Cyrus said.

“But you reversed time and brought me back to life, right?” Nick asked, pointing at Jennifer.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, in that case, I have just one question for you: where’s the bullet that supposedly entered my body?”

Cyrus walked over to the old man and picked him up with both hands under Nick’s arms.

“Hey! Put him down!” Kimberly yelled. “What are you doing?”

Cyrus shook Nick up and down forcefully, as if he was trying to force ketchup from a stubborn bottle, until a small fired bullet fell out of the left pant leg of the British man’s red jumpsuit and rolled across the cabin floor, stopping at John’s boot. John picked up the bullet and examined it. 

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said.

The Cyclops gently put Nick back down on his feet. Nick took the bullet from John and held it up to his eye. “My God,” he said. “I need to sit down. Kimberly, please make us some tea.” The old man felt at his jumpsuit and found no hole. He unzipped it and ran a hand over his gray haired chest. “Not a mark,” he muttered.

Kimberly walked to the back of the cabin and filled a kettle from a tap. She turned on an electric stove and placed the kettle on a burner. She opened a cabinet and took out five mugs.

“Now, you’re going to tell us who you’re afraid of finding you out here,” John said.

The sun was out far past its bedtime, and Kimberly remarked about such as she pulled out a glass bottle of whiskey for her company. As she clutched the back edges of the chair, she slid it out from under the table to create space for her to sit in between Nick and John.

“No shot glasses?” John questioned, but before he could get to the snark that would embody his next sentence, she twisted the cap off and took a swig straight from the bottle and passed it to Nick on her right.

The old man stared down the bottle and let out a grumbling sigh before putting it to his lips, wiping the remnants from his white mustache as he placed it back on the table. Cyrus was next in the rotation and was handed the bottle, which prompted Nick to ask a question that bubbled to the surface.

“Can you even drink, dude?”

 Cyrus stared back, holding the bottle that looked more like a 12 oz bottle of Sprite in his grasp.

“Never tried before, but I’m about to,” he said as he tipped the bottle back and sucked it down to the last drop. John put his head in his hands for a moment, and when he looked back up at Cyrus, he saw him wearing a smile from ear to ear. “More,” Cyrus demanded. It was clear that he had taken a liking to the spirit that was shared amongst them.

Afraid to question the demand of a gigantic cyclops, Kimberly shot to her feet and pulled another full bottle out of the cabinet. “You can have more, but you have to wait your turn,” she said, placing the bottle next to John.

“I’m not so sure that us getting plastered is going to help any of us, but what the hell?”

Jennifer looked on briefly before returning back to tracing the designs on her wings with her fingertips. John took a swig and passed it to Jennifer. She stared at the bottle and then back at John, almost to say that she wasn’t participating in this party.

“Aw come on. You’re out here in the middle of nowhere, the sun has been out two hours later than it should be, you’ve got fucking wings, you—“

Before he could finish his tirade, she reached for the whiskey and took a larger shot than everybody but Cyrus. Twisting the bottle back on, she pushed it back over to Kimberly.

“Ok, now that the introductory drinks are out of the way, can we get down to business?” John was salivating for answers just as much as he was for his next taste of alcohol. Kimberly and Nick both nodded back in agreement. Cyrus stumbled over and began to hug John from behind, causing John to wrestle him away. Cyrus stood against the back wall, still smiling and giggling like they’d never knew he could.

“It’s weird to see him so happy. He’s usually a living, breathing ball of… I don’t even know. Anyways, look guys, we’re out here and all we’ve been given is this map,” he said, as he pulled it from his pocket and handed it to Nick. “I’m guessing the X on this map is where we are right now, in the cabin?”

Nick nodded in approval before speaking, “yes, yes, my boy. You are exactly where you need to be.” Kimberly took her next swig and passed it to Nick. Nick let the bottle rest openly as he continued on.
“What’s your name again, chap? John is it?” John replied yes. “John, you’ve been given an incredible gift and it would be a travesty if you were to waste it. All of you, in fact.”

John interjected, “you’re not telling us anything they haven’t already told us at the facility. What is it with you people? Always talking in riddles,”

Kimberly rose up from her chair and looked him in the eye, “what do you mean you people?!

John slunk down in his chair before Nick started belly laughing. “Every fucking time,” Nick remarked while holding back tears. Kimberly laughed out oud and sat back down in her dinner chair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “you set yourself up for that one.”

Once Nick’s laugh attack had passed, he took a shot and passed the bottle to Cyrus. His eyes lit up as he wobbled over to Nick to get his next taste.

“So why are you guys here? There’s nothing out here but you guys,” John said.

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Cyrus said as he took a shot, and then another before passing it to John once again. The giant was feeling the effects of the elixir, struggling to keep his balance. Eventually he leaned against the wooden panel wall behind him to stabilize himself. “There’s a whole bunch out here, you guys just can’t see it. None of this is real. You aren’t real,” he mumbled and pointed to Nick.

“Oh my dear boy, I’m as real as the sun that sets in the West.”

John took the bottle and groaned before taking his turn kissing the whiskey.

“See what I mean? Everything is a fucking puzzle,” he said to Nick, which got a decent laugh from everybody in the room. “Really though, what are you guys out here for?”

Kimberly looked at Nick as if to ask who should be the one to let the cat out of the bag. Nick shrugged his shoulders and Kimberly pulled her chair up to the table even closer.

“We’ve been out here for seven years, two months and twenty-six days waiting for you three. We were recruited by the facility over ten years ago. Me and Nick were recruited separately, but they partnered us up and told us to wait for the three that would save all of humanity.”

Jennifer stopped playing with her wings and placed her hands on the table, more intrigued with each word.

“You three… you three have been tasked with an impossible mission and quite frankly I’d hate to be you when all of this comes to a head. I’ll get you what you came for and give you another map.”

Kimberly rose to her feet and ventured off into a back room. Jennifer took her shot as she left the room. Nick leaned over the table and extended his hand towards John.

“My boy, you have been chosen. I know this is getting repetitive but never forgot those words. You have been chosen. This is your destiny.”

Just as Kimberly stepped back into the room, Cyrus slinked down to the wooden floor and began to mumble incoherently. Nick smiled and remarked, “been there before, let him sleep it off.”

Kimberly shook her head in disgust as she placed a second map on the table.

“None of this is real. It’s all a game. We’re all pawns…” Cyrus continued to talk in his sleep, but nobody really paid attention to what he was saying besides Jennifer. She walked over to him and rubbed his chest until he fell asleep.

“This is where you’re going,” Kimberly said, “this is where it all leads to.” John was about to grab the map and put it in his pocket when they heard a knock at the door. Nick reached for his gun and sneakily approached the door. Cyrus’ loud snoring wasn’t aiding in their attempts to be quiet. Nick creaked the door open and his jaw was agape when he saw who was outside of it.

In the blistering cold stood three people, and one of them held a map in his hand.  Nick couldn’t believe his eyes when he realized he was staring back at a man with a tail, a cyclops, and a blonde woman with angel wings.