The Ones Who Could Do Anything: A Dark Urban Fantasy Adventure, page 1
The Ones Who Could Do Anything
N.J. Evans
© 2021 by Nicholas J. Evans/N.J. Evans
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
Second digital version
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Print edition produced in the United States of America
Dedicated to all those who continue to show support,
provide guidance and give inspiration.
For my wife, Scarlet Evans. Thank you for believing in me from the first word written to the last, and for pushing me to always strive for more.
For Bailee Autumn, Logan Melody, Ivy Moon, and Caspian Star. Each of you inspires me more every single day.
MOON-GLIDER
SHADE-STEPPER
RAIN-WALKER
GREAT-JUMPER
THE EXECUTIONER & THE CLOCK-STOPPER
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK...
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
MOON-GLIDER
The Disheartening and Harrowing Tale of Eric Lindy;
The Boy Who Could Fly.
The first time I jumped, I didn’t know I could fly.
I remember wind, gentle and swift. It crept up from the river that rushed below and nearly blew the hat right off of my head; a black beanie with a loose fit. It flowed over my dirty tennis shoes and made me wobble a bit as I stood on the railing. I shivered, but tightened my grip on the support cable and kept my focus on the shimmering water below. It looked inviting, thin waves folding into one another like a plush blanket begging for me to wrap myself within it. What a sleep it would be.
There was freedom from within my empty shell. My insect carcass. For so long I had felt like there was a weight, a cartoon chain attached to the animated anvil that I helplessly dragged around with me. A weight I pretended was not there, falsely smiled as the weight gained and grew until I felt my bones would crumble into a soft powder to be distributed in baggies at every party I’ve royally fucked up. I think back to the moments that made up every pound, every ounce, from adolescent embarrassment to the teen angst that every early 2000’s band screamed about at the top of their lungs. Each one a speck of sand in an already overflowing bucket that buried me until I could no longer breathe without the life support cocktail of cigarettes and plastic-bottle whiskey.
Up on that bridge the weight slid off like slick snow on a warm roof, and fell into the water before I even began to jump; I grinned.
Sometimes what you read online comes true, I did feel happy standing there. There was solace in my emptiness, light in my darkness. The flick of a lighter from the depths of my empty heart, empty mind, and it bloomed the sweet red cherry glow of a last menthol to bid me farewell.
“Should’ve left a letter,” I muttered to myself, and my throat rattled like it was full of mucus and gravel. “Yeah, a real fucking letter.”
I remembered the people who called out from behind me and the cars that stopped to watch. Some of these rubberneckers simply turned their heads from the comfort of the car windows just to see me plummet below, but I did not care. Not anymore. I’m not doing it for them, of course. All the voices blended together like the city’s worst smoothie and were one muffled note. I heard the phrase they shouted, just like I heard them shout around me all of those times before when I laid on the ground and took another beating for the enjoyment of others. Curtain closes, audience cheers, cast and crew shake hands; all but one. Fuck, that water looked good.
Be a fucking man. That was my mantra, and I shouted it at the little sad boy inside of me until my voice cracked and bled, until my lungs were two big, flat tires left on the side of the road. Be a man, that’s what Dad would want - what they all would want.
There was one thing, though, that I could not remember. That was the fall. The entire idea of falling seemed so lost on me, as these days I never fall. I keep thinking that this memory should be the one that sticks, but it is not. The wind, the water, the people, all of those stuck. Even my hat, dirty shoes, shredded black pants that I did not purchase pre-shredded and the worn out denim jacket that I did not purchase pre-worn out. I could remember every car horn, every whisper, but not the only moment that I truly wanted to. The feeling of the fall was still there, a spinning carousel that screamed in my gut the whole way down, and I can recall the moment my hand slid off of the support cable, and how my shoes let out the smallest wimpy squeak just before they kissed the railing goodbye. There was more wind, of course, and this time my limp body had fought against it. I dropped, and there was that flash that everyone claimed I would see had come; I barely recognized the leading role in my own movie. The videos I’d see posted online much later were only a mere few seconds, but the fall felt like ages from what little I could actually pull from my subconscious. The last thing I wanted was more videos, or the ability to see them at all I guess. I had always heard that most people die of a heart attack before they actually touch down.
I didn’t.
When I awoke it was to the bright fluorescents of a stark white hospital room. Oddly, I was not in pain despite two full leg casts and an arm cast, a concussion, and a few broken ribs. It was all like a cacoon for my poor little insect carcass. I looked up, passed the colorful meaningless flowers, right by the television that showed someone preparing a roast chicken with a toothy grin, and I followed the tube from my arm to the bag. I guessed that this was why I felt no pain, and it was pretty nice if I am being totally honest. It felt like flying, or at least what I assumed flying had felt like back then. Weightless, effortless, and it was like having no flesh or bones at all. Just a conscious mass of air levitating over a piss-stained hospital bed.
My mother, primped brown hair and extra makeup to hide the wrinkles, sat beside me holding my casted hand and repeating prayers to someone or something. I could see the worry in her eyes as I had regained control of myself, and the smile that moved her lipstick like two long, red slugs. I felt guilty for putting her in this situation, and I thought that maybe if it had just worked she would have been saved from the pain of seeing me this way. Behind her was my father, who had fallen asleep on the pull out couch - which was ironically not pulled out - with a magazine on his chest. He snored loudly, uncomfortably loudly, with a wide open mouth amongst his salt and pepper scruff.
Then, I heard her. My internal monologue let out a groan before my eyes even shifted over.
Beside me, grasping my unwrapped hand and saying Hi in a shrill, high-pitched, too-young-for-your-age voice, was Kat. She had, somehow, become my girlfriend despite me not finding her company all that pleasant, and actually I could not even remember how we even got this far. I remember being pretty intoxicated when we met and through most of our interactions… Well, that probably explains it. She had eyes that were big and blue, hair that was multicolored like a blond peacock, and skin that may have never seen the sun. She was eighteen at this point, just a few months younger than me, but somehow acted like a fourteen year old who watched so many cartoons that she had become a character herself. As if the skirt-leggings combo year round was not enough, she insisted on over-dramatically acting out every aspect of life. Although, I suppose that this situation may have been a bit different.
“My poor, poor, sweet baby,” she said, and even my mother cringed. “What would I do if I lost you, my prince? I would be such a lonely princess.”
“I’m fine,” I croaked back, even though I wasn’t. I rolled my head back over to face my mother. “Hey mom,” was all I could say.
“Oh, dear Jesus,” she began, same religious vomit as usual. “Your father and I have been so worried… W-we had thought we lost you, Eric. We could barely sleep.”
Flash to my father, an open mouthed revving chainsaw who could sleep through a zombie apocalypse and an alien invasion simultaneously.
“Really,” I coughed. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
My mother rubbed her hand against my forehead, pushing away my greasy hair. As she did so she smiled, but it was not a happy smile. Instead it was more of a pity smile. I did not want pity, and if I was to get any it would be pity for the fact that my plan had not actually worked out. Kat decided to mimic this motion and now swooped my hair to the opposite side which made my mother raise a puzzled eyebrow. If laughing did not feel like rolling in shards of broken glass, I would have laughed.
Sharp pain snuck through my ribs, peeking through the wall of painkillers; I winced, then nearly fell back asleep.
“Mom…” I managed to groan out, and I could see her look to me through the slits of my barely-opened eyes. “How…? How did I…”
“Well, Eric, it depends who you ask, sweety. Witnesses say a strange man was standing on the shore, who knows what for. He saw you fall and dove in at just the right time to yank you out before you drowned. But, some people say there was no one at all and others claim they didn’t even see you fall.”
“A person?... Someone was there?”
She combed my hair with her fingers again. “But, no one really remembers seeing him before or even what he looked like. So, if you ask me… well… I just believe God was looking out for us, what a terrible accident this could have been.”
I wished I could roll my eyes, but instead they fell like heavy garage doors and I embraced the dark again.
. . . . .
The next three weeks were spent healing in a hospital bed, and then another four weeks after that were spent in a rehabilitation facility for people like me. It sounded better than just calling it an asylum. When they first wheeled me through the doors I pictured padded rooms and straight jackets, but it was nothing like that at all. I had a bed, it was normal if not just a bit too small, along with an empty desk that lacked a chair, and a television that hung high in the top corner of the room near the door. The TV got me through the first few days, but I became bored of the same few channels that played the same few shows. A cycle of idiots winning prizes, overacted cop dramas, and that same smiling chef from the hospital who I grew to hate with the passion of a comic book nemesis. The staleness of talk shows was enough to make me want to kill myself. Again.
A bit of dark humor seemed to be appreciated here.
I do have to say, I enjoyed my time in Owens Psychiatric. I met some people that had also jumped, or cut, or overdosed, or hung, and were now considered a danger to themselves. We shared laughs together, which were greatly needed for our group, and talked of television shows, books, games, drugs. We purposely avoided conversation of our pasts, or the darkness that could be found lurking in each one like a grim reaper version of Where’s Waldo. But, the company was not what I truly enjoyed there because in the asylum was where I learned I could fly.
Not figuratively.
Now, it was very odd that one of the directors would take a group of suicidal and unbalanced young adults up to a roof just for the view. There had to be regulations against this, and if there were any she truly did not care. I believe her name was Cindy, and if it is not then that is what we are going with.
Mrs.Cindy liked our view. A beautiful lake surrounded by rolling hills and paintbrushes of full, green trees that could easily be a Bob Ross original. She especially liked it on the gloomy days, where the sky was gray, the clouds hung heavy, and when the air was at its most moist. I too enjoyed the rain, and it was something Mrs.Cindy and I would bond over until I flew-the-coup. I like puns. She would say it was when the earth would cry and the cycle of life would start again. I would watch her stare across the lake, sipping her coffee, while the rest of us sat on the tar roof and made subtle jokes about how the concrete would feel if we were to plummet off, passing the cracked white siding and just missing the red shingles of the foyer. She didn’t hear these jokes, or if she did then she did not care. It was a city-funded institution, so she probably figured if we did leap off we would save the Owens taxpayers a couple bucks.
“Imagine we all went down at once,” Said a husky new guy through a huff of laughter. “Like, we all just did it like synchronized divers.”
The girl beside me chuckled, dark tired eyes widening as she did so. She looked at me for a moment and we caught each other just enough to share a brief glance.
“Screw that, I still want to pack one last bowl,” Added a kid beside him with a fluffy, brown mop of hair and constellations of acne scars. Others nodded in agreement, I did not.
“Well,” said the soft voice behind me, slow with a gentle rasp. “What about you?”
“Hm?” I motioned as I turned to her. At this point I was still pretty new myself. “Uh, don’t know.”
My insides tossed. I recall the sickening feeling of speaking to anyone after the jump. It was so different, like speaking for myself as if I were a puppet being forced to perform. The true Eric was pulling the strings from the inside and I was just going through the motions of what a human should do. I didn’t want to talk, at least at first. Those sentiments would eventually melt away, but those empty, hollow feelings that constricted my soul like a boa would not.
“Probably a drink, something hard. Maybe a cigarette,” I answered truthfully.
“Dude,” she said with a shake of her head. “What are you? Like, sixteen? That’s the answer of, like, a middle-aged Law and Order detective.”
“Eighteen,” I answered. “But, I’m a little past my expiration date.”
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of the others laughing, her especially. It is what motivated me to attempt to act like I was alive again, and the flicker of her dark eyes over the soft-lip smile forced me to smile a little myself. We never exchanged names, only nicknames. I called her OD, and she called me Bridge; her picks not mine. But, I still felt over and done with this life or any other, and that feeling hung on me like a leech waiting for the right moment.
A few days later that moment had almost arrived.
We shuffled up to the top, in our matching uniforms - as we called them for fun - and I could already smell Mrs.Cindy’s coffee as we climbed the stairs. Its burnt, gas station quality aroma filled the entire stairwell from top to bottom. As I walked, I could feel a sensation inside of me that screamed that I had a job to finish. I was the job. It is worth noting that I had behaved exceptionally well, at least I thought so, and there was no trigger for this sensation. Like I said, it was just something that was there and I could not shake it even if I was a fucking dancer. The moment morning sun hit my eyes I knew that today was round two in the fight for my life and it had only gotten easier to throw the match as the minutes passed.
Instead of my life flashing before my eyes during the mundane stair climb, I witnessed my past few weeks. The bridge, Kat in the hospital room treating me like a baby, my father’s snoring. I could see the asylum, old and dull, and the people inside of it. I remembered the television, the desk, OD and how I would sneak her into my room when the hall attendant fell asleep in his chair, and the way the small bed barely fit us both. It had been a busy few weeks and throughout the experience I felt as if I was just a walking corpse waiting to fall again. On that last step, just as I could smell the wet air that was poised for rain, I knew that everything I had done here was just to pass the time. It meant nothing else, at least not at that exact moment.
“Alright,” Mrs.Cindy puffed as we stood on the roof. “A little relaxation time with a view! Nothing more pleasant, and right before the rain!” Her voice was nice, but fake nice. Like if a Barbie doll could talk, only the doll was mildly overweight, middle-aged, and wore thick, starch dresses that smelled of perfume and cigarettes. I’d be lying if I said the cigarette smell wasn’t just as intoxicating as any high-end perfume, and I wish I had that one last smoke.
This day I hung behind the group as they moved to the usual sitting spot.
Mrs.Cindy stood at the head of the pack and, like an alpha wolf howling at the moon, she barked at us to sit down while she stared out into the distance. The others sat, but I didn’t. See, today I had purposely not worn my shoes with a fake complaint that they were uncomfortable, which I guess wasn’t that fake, so I was permitted to wear just my socks. I knew my footsteps would be extra quiet this way. So, as they sat and she stared, I started silent steps backwards.
The others began their conversations and told the same stories as they always had without even noticing my absence. The fact is that you get used to a new member joining the group as fast as they left because you don’t stay here forever even if you want to. I backed away until I felt my heel touch the ledge of the roof, and then I turned around. I’d miss OD, but I’ve had enough of this pitiful excuse for a life and I refused to go back to it when I left there. I would not look at myself on one of those videos again, I would not hear the laughter of peers and friends as they beat the fuck out of me for something as dumb as what happened at that party. No, I was done.
No one was outside, the parking lot was practically empty, and a nice firm surface of concrete just a quick jump away. So, I jumped.
Only, something was different. Like the wind was alive and cradled me as mother and child. My jump should have plummeted me straight down, but instead I leapt out and glided along like a paper airplane with my limbs flailing and my hair flowing. My heart beat pounded in my throat, stomach rolled and prepared to release yesterday’s meatball parm from me like an airplane bomber. To an outsider, I probably would have looked like a cartoon where the character runs off of a cliff and doesn’t notice the drop just yet. The ground beneath me moved so quickly, and little did I know I was approaching the main gate that leads to the asylum parking lot.
