King of Babylon, Chapter 1

Quick Author's Note: This is a completely different version of chapter 1. I already posted it, but decided I didn't like it, and changed it to this instead. Please enjoy.

King of Babylon

Dark Sploosh

Chapter 1: The Names of All Things

There are more lights in the sky than there are people on this world. Hell, there are more worlds in the sky than there are people on ours. But 66.7 billion people on one world is still a lot, especially when I’m stuck here with them. And that number’s only going to get higher from here on out.

It’s a statistical thing, must be. Thing is, that’s the only way to explain it. That, or a very cruel God who hates specific people for no reason, and I don’t believe that for a second. If God’s real, then I haven’t done anything to piss him off. And if he’s not, well, then he couldn’t possibly be causing my misery.

My name is Lachlan. My last name is quite unimportant. After all, people use last names so as to differentiate each other. Prevent all the Johns and Janes from getting mixed up. But how many Lachlans are out there? Probably not a lot, and anyway, no one who knows me will ever meet another Lachlan. Statistically.

Ah yes, statistics. The reason my life sucks. It’s very simple.

Statistically, some people must lead good lives, some people must lead okay lives, and most people must lead crappy lives. I got one of the crappy ones, I guess.

I thought about all of this as I was sitting on the low brick wall right outside my dorm building, watching a bunch of other students on the green. It was a hot and sunny day, one of the first that year, and everyone was taking advantage of it. Girls were dressed in bikinis, sunbathing on blankets. People were up tossing frisbees and balls. Some guys had even set up a Slip n’ Slide. Looked like a lot of fun for them.

The most fun I could have was sit there on that brick wall and watch them. There was no point in talking to any of them. They all had come outside with their friends. They had no interest in making any new ones. And besides, I knew just from looking at them all that most of them would have nothing important or interesting to say. I’d be lucky if most of them could remember what they did last weekend.

Welcome to college. Leave your maturity and common sense back home, please. You’re not even supposed to use Slip N’ Slides as an adult. Leads to injury, apparently.

I don’t know why I thought this would be entertaining. Watching them all hurt me, a lot. Their laughter and arrogant smiles showed that they had tapped into some kind of fun that I couldn’t see. It was like watching wind chimes.

Rising to my feet, I stepped off the wall and walked back to my dorm. In truth, there was one person who I could have brought outside with me. A girl, too. Maybe she would have made watching everyone else more bearable.

Or she could have made it worse. I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on her anyway, the sun was too hot. I needed the AC indoors to think.

Inside I climbed the stairs to the second floor and found my room. The roommate was gone, as usual. Probably out somewhere enjoying himself. Why wouldn’t he, though? He was gone a lot on the weekends too, and at a college campus, that usually meant only one thing.

But someone else was there. The girl was sitting on my bed, staring at me with a warm smile.

“Welcome back,” she said. Her legs were crossed, her foot bouncing playfully. If I had been in a better mood, I would have said something back. Instead, I grunted a reply, sat down at my desk, and opened my laptop.

The girl rolled her eyes, but giggled all the same. And not one of those stupid giggles that girls are always using, even when they aren’t amused. She genuinely thought my mood was funny. Of course she did, I should know. “Whatcha doing?” she asked, leaning over to get a good look at my computer screen.

“Checking the forums,” I informed her. “There’s a girl who I’m expecting to send me a message some time soon.”

“Oh, an e-girlfriend, huh?” The girl leaned back on my bed and grabbed one of my pillows, snuggling it against her chest. “That kind of relationship doesn’t suit you, Lachlan.”

“Believe me, I know it. I’m worried she doesn’t.”

I moderated a forum for fans of this old roleplaying game. It never got popular or mainstream, but there were about a hundred dedicated fans online who stumbled across this site at some point or another and joined it for the community. I found it myself only two years ago, but I ended up becoming a moderator rather quick. Still not sure why, really.

My inbox on the forums had five new messages, but only one was from who I was expecting.

“Who’s Chidori?”

The girl had snuck up behind me and was peeking at the screen. Her hair was flowing over my shoulder, her chest pressed up against my back. If she had been any other girl, I probably would have cared a bit more.

“It’s the girl I was talking about,” I explained, opening the message.

“Sounds Japanese.”

“It is. She’s not Japanese, but she loves anime and Japanese stuff, so she’s always peppering it into her messages all the time.”

“How cute.”

“It’s actually very annoying. I mean, look at this message.”

I had only read my name in it so far, but that was enough to know it was going to just be more of the same.

Lachlan-sama, I want to talk to you right now. I’ve got problems over here. My parents are being mean to me, and I need someone to talk to. Ai shiteru, Lachlan-sama.

“Doesn’t seem too annoying,” the girl said as I signed in to my instant messenger.

“Yeah, well, that’s a very short message from her. Usually I have to deal with all sorts of words I don’t understand, and she never explains what they mean, even when I ask. And she ends all her messages with that ai shiteru thing, which she refuses to tell me about. I guess it means good bye or something.”

“You could always check and find out,” said the girl. “Isn’t that what Google’s for?”

“One of these days I probably will,” I said, which meant that I didn’t care enough to ever check and probably never would. The Japanese thing was bothersome, but not that bothersome.

However, I couldn’t fulfill Chidori’s request because she wasn’t signed in to the messenger. Part of me felt a bit bad for being glad. After all, it just would have been another two hours of her whining about her parents and talking about how she wishes we could meet in person.

Fat chance, girl. You live in California, and I hate air planes.

“At least it means you’ve got friends,” the girl pointed out, and I just knew she was smiling.

“Online friendship isn’t the kind I want nor need, girl,” I told her. “Your friendship isn’t even the kind I need.”

“Hey, that’s mean. And what’s with this girl stuff?”

I closed my computer with a sigh and stared out my window, watching the other boys and girls below.

“What else am I supposed to call you?” I muttered.

“Call me something,” she demanded, sticking her tongue out at me. “You’ve never given me a permanent name. I’d like one a lot.”

“I can’t think of any names I’d like.”

“Well, what about Angela?” the girl asked. “I remember you called me Angela for a while a few years ago.”

“I don’t like that name anymore, you know that,” I growled. It was annoying when she got out of hand like this, mostly because I knew what that said about me. “I can’t give you a name, so just be satisfied that you still even exist, all right?”

The girl sighed and shook her head.

“But Lachlan, I don’t exist. You know that.”

Then she was gone. I imagined she wouldn’t want to speak to me then if she was real, so there was no reason to keep her around. She couldn’t help me much anyway. Poor girl hadn’t been much help ever since I went through puberty.

There was a knock at the door. Frowning, I got out of my chair and opened it. There was no one there. I looked down the hall, but didn’t see anyone. I caught a whiff of a strange burning smell, not exactly unpleasant but very overpowering. Someone had probably lit some incense to cover up their weed again.

I yawned, my eyes suddenly feeling very heavy. That incense was making me sleepy. Mumbling, I closed the door, stumbled over to my bed, climbed into it. The AC kept it cool enough that I didn’t have to take off any of my clothes, which was just as well, as I was too sleepy to bother even with that.

The only thing I could do before falling asleep was apologize.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” I muttered. A second later the girl was back, sitting on the edge of my bed.

“I hope so. It really hurt.” She was speaking with a smile, that snarky smile I liked so much.

“You don’t seem too hurt.”

“I forgive you,” she whispered. She ran her fingers through my hair for a few seconds. “Can I nap with you?”

“You never need to ask,” I muttered.

So she snuggled into the bed with me, and I feel asleep holding her.

-------

I imagined this girl for the first time back in second grade. At the time, I didn’t have any friends. I lived in the country, with no other children. The bus ride to school was a half-hour. Once I got to the school, I would just pretend I was invisible every day. If you pretended you weren’t there, then it hurt less when the other kids called you a loser.

One year words like loser became words like faggot, and while I didn’t find out what that one meant until later, I knew it was meant to hurt me. Sooner or later, it did.

There was a group of kids who always hung out during recess. They would sneak into a lot behind the school building and just talk about stuff. Mostly it was stuff I didn’t care about, like smoking and sex, but that didn’t matter to me. The boys and girls on the playground always told me to go away when I got near them. The boys and girls in the lot just pretended I wasn’t there, the same way I did.

One day, though, they started to notice me. They pushed me around and asked why I was hanging out with them. They started calling me loser and faggot and queer, and by that point I was afraid of them. But I didn’t know where else to go every day at recess, so I kept coming back, and they kept hurting me.

Then one recess came where one of the girls called me stupid. Somehow, I managed the courage to tell her to shut-up. The next thing I knew, one of the biggest guys there, a boy by the name of Josh, grabbed me by the shirt. Instinctively I flailed my arms at him, which he shrugged off like air. One single punch to my nose was all it took.

Nothing broke, but you couldn’t have convinced me otherwise at the time. My face was swelling and blood was running down my shirt, spilling all over my mouth in a sticky, warm stream. All the boys and girls in the lot ran off, disappearing from sight.

“Assholes!” I screamed at them. “Bitches! Losers! Faggots!” Everything they had ever called me that I could remember I screamed at them, growled at them. I don’t know if they even heard me.

I sat down in the middle of the lot and began to cry, half from the pain, half because of how scared and lonely I was. I must have just sat there and cried all day. I know I never went back inside.

I wished I had a friend. I wished there was someone who didn’t hate me, who didn’t think I was a loser or a faggot, whatever that meant.

“Why are you crying?”

I looked up from the pool of tears and blood on the pavement in front of me and saw a beautiful little girl standing there. She was smiling at me. I knew right away this girl didn’t hate me like all the other children did. No, this girl loved me.

“S-s-some assholes h-hit m-m-me,” I said, my mouth still quivering from the shock.

“They are assholes,” the girl told me. “I hate them. Actually, you’re the only person in the whole world that I like at all, Lachlan.”

She smiled again, so I smiled back, because I wanted her to know that she made me feel better.

That was how I dreamed up my first friend.

-------

It was dark when I woke up. I peered at the clock on my bedside desk, which said 10:36 in digital blue numbers. Groaning, I closed my eyes and wished I could go back to sleep.

“You’re not going to get to sleep. You know that.”

Grumbling in agreement, I reached over and patted the girl’s head.

“I hate it when you do that,” she said. “It’s like I’m some kind of pet or something.”

“To be perfectly fair, dear, you’re not even real. I’d consider that a step below pet.”

I knew she wanted to hit me, just a little playful slap. Too bad I wouldn’t be able to feel it.

What I could feel was sleepiness and boredom. Yawning, I crawled out of the bed and slipped my shoes on.

“Where ya’ going?” the girl asked, rolling over in the bed to occupy the space against the wall I just vacated.

“Outside,” I told her. “If I can’t sleep, then maybe a walk will help.”

“Be careful,” she warned me. Like I needed warning from my own imagination.

“Later,” I said, slipping out the door.

Outside the air was cool, the way I preferred it. The problem with the sun is that it’s always too damn bright and hot. I like it when the sun’s out, but more in the afternoon, maybe when it’s hidden a bit by clouds. Then I can enjoy the light without baking in the heat. At night it was dark, but at least I wasn’t burning to death. In fact, I already regretted forgetting my coat, because it was a bit breezy too.

Oh well. I could handle it. I stepped down over the brick wall I spent my days sitting on and started walking down the street. There was a lot of crap on my mind, mostly involving schools. I had midterms and projects coming up, all in classes which bored the hell out of me. All these required credit classes were annoying. Not like I had much of a choice, though.

My stomach was aching with a bit of hunger, so I turned and started in the direction of Moat Street. It was at the top of the big hill on the north part of campus, but that was where all the shops and restaurants were, which would be the only places I could get food this late.

There was a big brick road leading up the hill, one that I had gotten used to climbing since most of my classes had been at the top. It used to be daunting, but by now I had mastered the art of climbing it. The trick was to distract yourself with a bit of the scenery as you climbed, so you didn’t think about how much your legs were burning.

As I started up the hill, I focused on the top of the stone wall that lined the right side of the path. There was a long series of bushes growing all along the top of the wall, their branches growing so far out over the path that they dangled down, creating a small, long canopy of green leaves. The best part of it was when it rained, and the rainwater flowed down all along the side of the wall, creating tiny waterfalls. It was often the highlight of going to and from class on rainy days.

Something strange caught my eye. An orange light was glowing faintly between the bushes. It faded in and out, like a dying ember. I squinted my eyes, but I couldn’t tell what the light was. It reminded me of one of those solar lamps that people stick in their lawns that only come on at night, although I’d never heard of one that glowed orange.

The light suddenly moved. It bounded off through the bushes, heading for the top of the hill, bobbing up and down as it went. In seconds, it had completely disappeared from sight.

Weird. Probably some guy with a weird flashlight or something, although why he was hanging out in the bushes was another question entirely. But my stomach rumbled before I could put any more thought into it, so I kept on walking.

I reached Moat Street in no time, all the stores lining both ends of the road lit up, ready to cater to the late-night-student-crowd. Before anything else, though, I had to get some money. My wallet was empty from last night’s fast food run, so I stopped in front of the nearest ATM.

As I was withdrawing the cash, something caught my eye off to the left. I looked at it, but I didn’t see anything there except for the store window of a burger joint. An orange neon sign was hanging in the window. That was all I saw, must have been.

Of course, I could have sworn that the orange glow was fading in and out.

I must be more hungry than I thought, I mused. The ATM finished withdrawing my money, making three loud beeps as it did so. Those beeps were always annoying. I overheard some guys a few weeks ago call it the “mug me noise”.

Taking the cash, I popped into the nearest restaurant, loaded up on food, and ate. By the time I was finished, I felt just as empty as before. My stomach was full, but my boredom was as strong as ever.

I didn’t want to spend much more time outside, so after I left the restaurant I cut through the nearest alleyway. The buildings here all lined the hill leading back down to my dorm, giving me a slight shortcut back home.

I got about halfway down the hill, turning into one of the last alleys, when it happened.

It’s not like it is in movies. They don’t just walk up to you all casually, maybe throw some snide comments and insults at you, take your money, and that’s that. In real life they’re fast and scary.

I didn’t even know what was going on when the first one came up behind me and grabbed both of my arms, pulling them behind my back. I cried out in surprise, trying to twist my arms free. He responded by kicking me in the back of my knees.

I yelled again, falling to the ground. But he kept holding onto my arms, and their attachment to my body kept me from falling all the way. The muscles in my arms and back burned from the sudden snap of halting my fall.

Panicked, my eyes darted around the dark alley, my brain unable to even comprehend what was happening to me, besides the fact that it was very, very bad. I saw a second person, a large man, come walking out of the shadows. He was holding some kind of knife in his hands, a black mask hiding his features.

“Get his wallet,” he muttered. I could tell just from that voice that he was sneering at me.

I shouldn’t have moved, but out of some kind of dumb instinct I struggled a little more. The guy with the knife walked over and kicked me in the side. It wasn’t hard enough to break anything, but all the wind was knocked out of me, and I stopped moving. My head rested against the wet, filthy ground. I could smell something burning, and my first fear was that I had been set on fire.

But that wasn’t the case at all. Hands rummaged through my pockets, until they found my wallet and pulled it out. After that I couldn’t tell what happened. My eyes were glued to the knife dangling loosely from the guy’s hand. Fear was controlling me now. Fear, and common sense.

But then it happened again. On silver blade above my face, I saw a glowing orange light, fading in and out of the darkness.

“Got it, let’s go.”

Something small and black hit the pavement in front of my face. My wallet, open and empty. The pressure on my back and arms let up. I heard the sound of shoes hitting the ground as the two muggers ran off.

Growling, feeling horribly embarrassed and defeated, I grabbed my wallet and stumbled to my feet. At the end of the long alley, I could barely make out the dark shapes of my two attackers disappearing from my sight.

“Assholes!” I screamed after them. It never even occurred to me that they might turn around and finish the job. “I wish you’d die!”

And just like that, my life changed.

At the end of the alley, the two shapes of the men ran out into the street. I heard the honking of a tuck horn, the screeching of rubber. An awful crashing noise somehow lit up the night, and even in the darkness, I saw the truck come out of nowhere and hit the two shapes. They vanished from sight, absolutely powerless against the force of the vehicle that had hit them at that speed.

Then silence. Silence except for my own ragged breathing as I stared at the open alley entrance, amazed by what I had just witnessed. I didn’t care about the money, or my pride, or any of that anymore. All I cared about was that someone inside me, I knew, right then, that I had somehow done that.

“Guess now’s good a time as any.”

I whirled at the sound of the deep voice behind me. Standing there was a man, dressed in a white suit. His head was shaved bald, and his mouth was open in a wide grin, showing off all of his teeth.

His skin was glowing orange, like there a dying fire inside his very body. This was what I had seen at the bushes, and at the ATM. This man.

“Who are you?” I asked him, too tired and wrapped up in the situation to fear him.

“Name’s Jinn,” he said, his voice carrying an accent I’d never heard before. “Just saved your life. Finally found you, human. My human.”

Then he held his hand to his chest and bowed deeply.

“What’s your wish, master?”