Never Heroes: Act I

Chapter 8

Never Heroes

Act I

VIII: Encounters

Stifling a yawn, dragging his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes… It was past eight in the morning, and typically Walter was already several hours into his work. Yet he never had to worry about that again. A heavy sigh escaped his lips. What a wasted youth he'd had. If he knew all of it was going to go out the window at the age of twenty-eight, he would've traveled, taken it easy, maybe married. None of the long work nights, endless days of study, and rabid passion for success meant a thing at the end of it all. Maybe Sarah had some weird realization like that before she decided to kill herself.

A stop in the bathroom was his first order of business for the day, per usual. Some routines didn't change. Cool water splashed in his face from the rusty sink helped wake him up. His thoughts traveled back to Sarah. He should've been a better friend. He should've been there when she needed him. Chip wasn't able to handle her abrupt downward spiral. Every word he said seemed to only hurt her more. Yet Walter ignored it. He ignored every sign that should've warned him. His work was too important. And where did that get him? Where did it get her? Where did it get anybody?

The cracked and dirtied mirror above the sink reflected his ashamed face back at him. Age and stress had been kind to him. The charming glow of his youth was still present. Aside from a small scar across his brow, his face was flawless, free of any wrinkles or imperfections. There was no evidence that he was overworked and horribly lonely. Even Chip had no clue how terribly lost Walter had gotten as he grew older. For a moment, he wondered if Chip and Emily would notice if he suddenly suffered a descent into madness; or, would they ignore it, the way he shamelessly ignored Sarah?

Ashamed, he shut his eyes in an attempt to block out the faade that greeted him in the mirror. He didn't deserve the wealth and the looks he'd been blessed with. He wanted to be consumed by the darkness for just a moment. Yet all he could see, all that he could recall, was the crumpled letter Chip had handed him the day Sarah committed suicide. It was an apology note – a f*****g apology note. She didn't blame anyone; she didn't claim anyone held responsibility for her actions. Instead, she begged their forgiveness for all the suffering they would go through due to her actions.

Tears from Chip had stained it, and for the first time in years, Walter had cried, too. It was disgusting to him that he had cried. Not because he was afraid of his feelings, but because they were twisted. Those should've been for her; he should've been upset for Chip and the loss he suffered. Instead, they were selfish tears. He had failed. For the first time he could recall, he had failed a duty assigned to him. Friendship wasn't easy when your priorities were to yourself, he'd discovered that day. Chip and Sarah paid the ultimate price for his failure.

The bathroom door swung open. His self-pity party was interrupted. Before him stood Emily, blood from the wound on her ear now smeared across her face and neck. The collar and shoulder of her shirt was also dyed red. Bruising on her cheek bone covered half her face. A glance down to her knuckles showed them swollen and cracked.

Concerned, he asked, "Are you alright? What happened last night?"

As he spoke she pushed him away from the sink. Uninterested in delving into details, she merely said, "I'm fine."

He watched as she examined the nasty cut in the mirror and cursed once she realized her shirt was probably ruined. Every time she tried to get a better look at the injury, more blood came out as she tugged and pulled on it. Snickering from Walter and the sharp pain caused her to grimace. The expression didn't go unnoticed and Walter offered, "Here. Let me take a look."

No thanks was offered. Instead, she went, "Ugh!" and let him take over. A towel was wet and then tenderly placed against the ear. At first she winced but toughened up soon. She had to admit he was gentle, almost loving in the way he carefully cleaned the dried blood off her ear. Soon his ministrations left her ear and focused on the red that dyed her face and neck.

"So," he started to speak, his husky voice right in her ear. It wasn't entirely intentional for his voice to come out that way. He cleared his throat and started over. "So, I take it you didn't get laid last night?"

"Obviously," she snorted. "I only got two drinks in so I didn't even get drunk. Total bust."

He had to laugh at her. Sometimes, he felt convinced her attitude was just a show of humor. "Did Chip get a similar fate?" he asked. The bloodied towel was discarded and he dug through the medicine cabinet for some antibacterial cream and a bandage.

"Unfortunately. He needs to get laid even more than you, virgin boy," she teased.

He smirked in response. She was joking about that virgin line, right? Disregarding her comment about him, he said, "I'm actually inclined to agree with you. Uh, about Chip, that is not. Not myself. He needs to let loose. And preferably not with DMT or LSD."

The antibacterial cream stung harshly when he applied it to the tattered ear. Apparently she had been hit a lot harder than she wanted to admit to. Pride was gone when she winced and inhaled a sharp intake of air at the sensation. Aware that she was sore, Walter placed a comforting hand on her lower back and gently rubbed there. It felt like a parent consoling a child. She decided not to comment on it and just let him do whatever he felt was best.

Tension had always been alive between them. Back in their youth, Walter never acted on it because he was too polite; Emily never made a move because she was too cold. As the years went by and they left their hormonal teenage years behind, those feelings had faded, but only faintly. Occasionally that tension would feel as fresh as it had the day they hit puberty. Alone in an intimate space like that cramped bathroom, she felt certain he was ready to make a move, yet he never did. Still boring and polite as always.

Once more the door swung open – when had she closed it, anyway? – and this time, a rushed Chip pushed past the two at the sink and made his way to the toilet. Expertly, Walter and Emily ignored him as he peed. This wasn't the first time the three of them had been shoved into a bathroom together. Once he was done and flushed the toilet, he decided to greet them.

Well, he wanted to greet them, but his jaw ached so bad he could barely move it at all. Purple and blue, the skin made it clear his face had been hit fairly hard. Walter noticed and had to comment, "Oh, you got involved, too, huh? Want an ice pack?"

"I want a beer," he said, his voice weirdly strained. When he tried to move out of the room, he realized Walter was purposefully blocking him in. Not one for confrontation, Chip never said a word. Instead, he merely glared at his best friend until Walter finally caved and move out of the way.

It was a small bathroom, so physical contact was a necessity when Chip left. For Emily, all she could feel was Walter being shoved against her. Once Chip had maneuvered his way out, Walter apologized to her and then questioned, "What's his deal today? He's unusually bitter."

That's the stupidest question ever. His wife died like a week ago; he can be as bitter as he wants, Emily thought to herself. Instead, her mind traveled back to the night before, where the bruise in his face came from. The moments after that, though, really stuck in her mind. She needed to tell Walter what had happened. Hesitantly, she started, "Last night… we saw someone get stabbed."

"What?!"

Chip could hear Walter's cracked yelp despite the fact his head was in the fridge. He grabbed a cold bottle of brew and placed it gingerly against his swollen face. What he really wanted was to be high out of his mind at that moment, but that just wasn't possible with Walter around. Reality sucked; it sucked a lot. Numbing his mind would make him forget about the ache on his face and the steadily dying beat of his heart. He snorted; that sounded a little melodramatic, even for him.

When did he get so pathetic, anyway? Depression had crept up on him and was swallowing him whole. It wasn't typical grief. At least, it certainly didn't feel that way. All of his emotions felt frozen inside of him, unwilling to budge no matter what happened around him. This melancholy was slowly consuming him even before Sarah's suicide. Perhaps that's why his attempts at reaching her failed. Two people drowning weren't able to save each other.

He was broken from his thoughts when Walter and Emily came out from the bathroom. A fresh bandage on her ear and a cool pack on her cheek signaled that Walter was done administrating aid. Hazel eyes pierced through straight to Chip's soul when Walter made eye contact. Although silence lasted but a brief moment, it felt like minutes ticked by.

"Tell me exactly what happened last night," Walter demanded.

Several beers later and a long winded explanation of their injuries and their worries, Walter seemed less satisfied then before. Both of them had been completely honest and both of them had gone into great detail when they were asked to. Nothing was left unmentioned. They had shared a look between each other when they got to the part about the weird man in armor, but after encouraging, silent looks, they both told the encounter exactly as they had witnessed it.

In the end, Walter asked, "Were you high?"

"No!" Chip yelled, ready to defend himself. "I'm telling you, we both saw a man in heavy armor. Probably… steel or something. Hang on… is there paper or something around here?"

Knowing full well that Chip was about to geek out and sketch something ridiculous, Walter sighed to let his frustrations be known, but he still fetched some paper and a pen. After all, he wouldn't have gotten himself into this mess if he didn't have a strange feeling Chip was on to something. Really, he was just irritated that their first night in town ended up deadly. More than likely, the police would follow leads for a few hours before they got bored with it. If the witnesses said the same thing as Chip and Emily, the cops would probably assume everyone was high and then drop the case right there.

By the time Walter stopped his musing, Chip had finished his drawing. He presented it to Emily first, who gave a nod of approval. Then, he presented it to Walter. Chin in hand, Walter viewed the sketch with interest, determined to take in all details in hope that one might trigger a memory. Everyone knew that Chip was a phenomenal artist, but he also had a crazy imagination. Yet if Emily seemed to confirm this is what they saw then maybe…

The suit consisted of two separate chest pieces held together by leather straps. The arms weren't well protected, with large sections missing for better mobility. Cloth covered the exposed parts of the body. All that was covered on the legs was the knees and the shins. The helmet featured a faceplate and a sloping back neck guard, but the ears were exposed. None of it really clicked with Walter.

Emily and Chip waited patiently for Walter to say something. Chip was already convinced that this other world existed. He knew they had defeated an evil known as the Interfector. Emily, on the other hand, was still convinced she was losing her mind slowly. If Walter wrote off their experience as bunk, then she would just have to admit herself to an institution.

"What did he say to you again?" Walter asked.

"That we'd protected his king, so he was going to protect us," Chip said.

"Hmm, that isn't good," Walter said. He was thinking out loud, not really paying attention to the other two and their reactions. "If that's correct, and the government is after us, we could see a lot more bloodshed before this is over. We have to find out how to open a gate to this other dimension."

"Why, so we can f**k off there?" Emily asked. "I mean, it's not like if we can prove that whatever Chip claimed happened is true that suddenly everything will be peachy. Can you imagine how people will react if they realize that there are other worlds and reaching them is just a matter of cutting through a wall?"

"Well, theoretically, that is the case," Walter said. "The space between dimensions or worlds wouldn't be as vast as people like to imagine. It's much different than traveling to a new galaxy. In fact, it's possible that our worlds overlap – that they're running side by side right now – but we just can't experience the existence of that world if it's on another plane. It's a perspective issue more than a matter of space. The distance between our world and another's is probably quintillion times smaller than the width of rice paper, but due to our limited senses, we're simply not cognizant of it. It's less a matter of cutting through the rice paper, and more a matter of making the rice paper merge with our plane of existence."

"And then, what happens? How much of their world takes over ours?" Chip asked, curious.

"I don't know. That's the scary part. That might be what happened in the past. That could be why your memories are mostly that of battle. It's also probably the reason why the government has gone out of its way to prevent people from knowing about it, assuming Chip is right about this," Walter explained.

"So why us, then? Why kids? I mean, if there's going to be a battle, why didn't this King or whatever recruit adults?" Emily questioned.

"Isn't it obvious? Adults think they're going crazy when the improbable happens. They're jaded. They don't believe anymore – not in other worlds, not in their dreams, not in themselves or their ideals. But kids do. Kids would embrace that. Chip, probably more than anyone, actually. He was dreaming of battles and saving the world every day in school, so why wouldn't he jump at the chance to make it a reality?" Walter said.

"Then to keep it a secret, they manipulated the media and f****d with our memories," Emily concluded.

"But, like data and matter, memories are never truly erased," Walter added.

"How come you guys can't remember, but I can?" Chip asked.

Emily and Walter looked at each other, both of them aware of what the answer probably was but not wanting to vocalize it. Walter tried his best to be sensitive about the subject when he answered, "Sometimes, when we witness something traumatic, our mind resets. Long buried memories come to the surface. The mind is a tricky thing. Whatever the government did to your brain, it just couldn't handle this last week. And, well, the DMT you took probably didn't help their work on your head, either."

"Just because Sarah died?" he asked, unconvinced.

Emily wasn't interested in being polite about the subject. She said, "Look, buddy, you found the woman you've been in love with for f*****g 20 years in a puddle of blood in your kitchen. That's traumatic s**t. It's not like she fell asleep and never woke up."

"But, what about you guys?"

Neither said a word. While Walter hadn't specifically recalled any moments, he felt convinced that Chip wasn't bullshitting them. Emily, on the other hand, had seen enough in the last few days that she was almost ready to drop some psychedelics herself just to see if it opened any closed doors. It was time for another beer.