A Matter of Words

1. Brian Paone – Outside of Heaven-4

“What the hell happened here? What were those things?” Mel asked.

Alice just rolled her eyes as Father Jackson started spewing his biblical hogwash from his mouth again.

Cecil was the first one to hear the screams.

“HELP! OH, GOD, WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP US!”

“That sounds like it’s coming from my room,” Cecil said, and they all broke out into a full sprint.

As Cecil got closer to the cries for help, he realized that they were coming from the room next to his and Grace’s—where the ménage à trois had taken place. When they reached the room, they found the door locked.

“Unlock the door!”

“We can’t. We’re trapped,” a female voice replied.

“Are you far enough from the door for us to kick it in without you getting hurt?” Mel asked.

“Yes,” a different female voice answered.

Mel and Cecil took a step backward and counted to three in unison. On three, they kicked the door as hard as they could. Wood splintered around the door frame, but the door held fast. Cecil and Mel kicked again. This time the door cracked right in half.

Two women were pinned under a large piece of the ceiling that had fallen when a spider leg had penetrated the roof. Mel, Cecil, Alice, and Father Jackson were able to remove enough of the debris for the women to shimmy out from the rubble. Both women got to their feet on their own accord and shook the plaster dust from their clothes.

Cecil was embarrassed to ask the women where the male was. He didn’t want them to know that he and Grace could hear them during their s****l tryst.

“Does anything feel broken?” Father Jackson asked.

Without answering, one of the women immediately broke down and began to cry.

“They took him. Those … things took him!”

The mystery of the third victim has been solved, Cecil thought.

“Took who? Who was he?” Cecil asked, the urge to find the answer to at least one conundrum was too great for him to control his emotions.

“He was a DJ at Overland’s,” the other woman stated. “His name was Michael. That’s all we know.”

“I saw the spiders take him away,” Cecil said. “There were three of them. My wife, Grace, is also gone. Alice’s dad, Gabriel, too. We followed the spiders to the churchyard, but then they disappeared.”

“Oh, God,” one of the women said and clasped her hand over her mouth. “What is happening here?”

“That is still up for debate,” Alice responded quickly, hijacking any nonsense Father Jackson might offer up as an explanation.

“What were you two young ladies doing in this room with a man that you hardly knew?” Father Jackson asked.

Cecil shot Alice a look. If he only knew what Grace and I had heard last night.

“We came back here after the club closed. He wanted to play us some songs he wrote himself.”

Father Jackson eyed them suspiciously. The silence became heavy and uncomfortable.

“My name’s Lilly, and this is my wife, Victoria,” she blurted out, attempting to eradicate any accusatory ideas Father Jackson might have about the women’s intentions with Michael.

Cecil found it amusing that Lilly would rather give a member of the clergy the impression that she was homosexual instead of him thinking they were having a threesome.

“Father,” Alice snickered. “Based on your theory, why weren’t Lilly and Victoria taken away also?”

“What’s this? What theory?” Victoria questioned.

“Father Jackson believes that the spiders were sent as a cleansing of Earth—a Day of Judgment and reckoning, if you will,” Cecil said. “He lumped all people of homosexual orientation into the same category of the other evildoers in the world. The murderers. The rapists. The—”

“Enough!” Father Jackson commanded. “I will not sit by idly while you mock me. There is a reason why Lilly and Victoria were chosen to remain here in paradise. It’s not my place to question the motives and decisions of the good Lord.”

“But, according to your cockamamie theory, there absolutely is a reason why they should have been taken away,” Alice snarled.

“I believe that the idea of Heaven,” Mel spoke up, “is a gateway to hope—hope that something is better out there than this life. Hope that someone up there is willing to embrace us with open arms, no matter how we have lived our lives down here.”

“Some people attend church just to sit in the fire,” Father Jackson retorted. “The guilt from their own iniquities drives them to enter God’s house, when, deep down, what they really want to feel is the weight of penance and a smidgen of His wrath in order to sleep at night. Sometimes, when you have fallen out of His good graces, it hurts to pray—and it should.”

“Wow. I thought I was pretty f****d up with some of my opinions on the sanctity of prayer, but you take the cake,” Alice grumbled. “I’ve never met anyone like you before, that’s for sure.”

“If things were perfect, there wouldn’t be room for opinions—only truths,” Father Jackson replied.

“If things were perfect, gigantic f*****g spiders wouldn’t have taken away my dad. Everything is wrong. I can feel it.”

“On the contrary, child. Because spiders came and took away people like your father, things are now finally perfect.”

Alice lunged at the priest. She tightened her fingers into claws, preparing to dig her fingernails into his face and gouge out his eyes. Cecil and Mel grabbed Alice around the waist just before she was able to reach him.

“That’s enough!” Cecil yelled. “We have plenty to figure out without you guys at each other’s throats. Father, I understand your convictions are unwavering, but, please, until we can clear the hotel and come up with a plan for what to do next, keep your tongue in check. This girl just lost her father in a very violent and nightmarish manner to a bunch of very real monsters. Just because you believe in your theory, it doesn’t mean everyone else has to.”

Father Jackson swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

“Is that really what they were? Spiders?” Victoria asked.

“That’s what they looked like, at least,” Cecil said.

“We’re going to finish checking the rest of the hotel for anyone else injured,” Mel said to Lilly and Victoria. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“What are your plans after the hotel is searched?” Lilly asked, stepping over a large pile of broken glass and plaster.

“We haven’t thought that far ahead,” Cecil answered. “One step at a time here. Once we get the hotel figured out, I assume we’ll have to see what shape the rest of the world is in.”

“Does anyone know how long it’s been since they attacked us?” Victoria asked.

“About thirty-five minutes,” Cecil answered, looking at the watch his wife had given him for an early birthday gift a few weeks ago. That was the day before he found out about Lucas What’s-His-Name—when everything in his life changed.

Cecil reached out to help Victoria step over a pile of rubble. She grabbed his uninjured hand tightly as he guided her away from the debris. Cecil could feel the stitches in his other hand itch again.

“Do you think the people who were taken away were chosen or was it random?” Victoria asked as she let go of Cecil’s hand.

“I’m not sure.”

Just then the lights went out, and the hotel was covered in a shroud of darkness. Outside was deathly quiet.

“Oh, s**t. Are the spiders coming back?” Lilly squealed.

“Everyone stay calm. I don’t think so. Last time they appeared, the ground was shaking like an earthquake. Yet it’s totally silent out there,” Cecil stated.

“I think it’s a blackout,” Mel said, looking out a window. “All the street lights are out too.”

“Is this really the beginning of the end?” Victoria exclaimed. “Is this really how the world ends?”

“The world has already ended. The spiders took care of that. This is the beginning of a new Heaven,” Father Jackson answered.

Alice shook her head, glaring at the priest for a moment. “There’s a generator in the utility closet,” Alice said to Cecil. “It’ll give us maybe an hour of power so we can check the rest of the hotel.”

“Lead the way.”

Slowly shuffling their feet so they wouldn’t trip on any debris, and gingerly touching the walls for guidance, they made it safely to the office. Alice felt for the doorknob and went in. A few moments later she returned.

“The office is destroyed. There’s a pile of s**t covering the door to the closet.”

“Is there another way in?” Cecil asked.

“The closet’s wall is butted up against Room 7. These walls are pretty thin. I’m sure we could break through the adjoining wall and get into the closet.”

“That’s my room,” Mel spoke up.

“Finally a stroke of luck,” Lilly said.

“Are you sure there’s no other way?” Mel asked nervously.

“There’s no way inside the closet from the office. Huge pieces of the wall, ceiling, and roof are stacked up in front of it. It would take us much longer to clean it away than it would to just put a hole in the wall small enough for me to crawl through. Trust me.”

“What are we going to use to smash through a wall? Our hands?” Mel asked with a twinge of sarcasm in his voice.

Alice disappeared again into the office. Her eyes must have adapted a little bit more to the darkness in there. Cecil heard the squeak of a metal cabinet opening and some thuds afterward.

She exited the office carrying two sledgehammers.

“With these,” she replied and handed one to Mel.

“I don’t know. I just think it’ll be easier to move stuff away from the door. There would be six of us working together. If we go through the wall in my room, there’d only be two of us making the hole.”

“Yes, but sledgehammers can do much more damage in a short amount of time,” Cecil retorted and grabbed the second sledgehammer from Alice’s hands.

Cecil walked down the hallway toward Room 7, and Mel followed closely behind.

“Aren’t you afraid of hurting your hand more by swinging the sledgehammer?” Mel asked, keeping up with Cecil’s strides.

“I watched my wife be impaled by the leg of a spider taller than this building less than an hour ago. Do you think I’m concerned about something like the stitches in my hand? We need to get the power back on. We need to finish combing the building for survivors, and then we need to figure out what the f**k is going on out there.” Cecil pointed toward a window, implying he meant the rest of the world. “Why are you so hell-bent about us not going through your room anyway?”

“I’m not hell-bent on anything.”

“You sure as s**t are hell-bent on us getting into the closet through the office. What are you hiding?”

Mel immediately dropped the sledgehammer to the floor and turned to run in the opposite direction.

“Grab him!” was the only thing Cecil could think to yell.

Instinctively Lilly threw all her weight at Mel, knocking him off his stride. He stumbled over a discarded chair and fell against the hallway wall.

Cecil walked over, handing off his sledgehammer to Father Jackson. With Cecil’s injured hand, he grabbed Mel under his forearm, lifting him to his feet, while grabbing Mel’s sledgehammer with his good hand.

“You’re not going anywhere until we see what’s in that room,” Cecil said. “Could you do the honors, Father? I don’t trust this one anymore.”

“It is God’s will that we are together. I would be happy to help in any way you need me to.”

Cecil escorted Mel to Room 7 with the rest of the group in tow.

“Open it,” Cecil told Mel.