Young Writers Society

Just a quick note to readers: The second part (THIS IS THE ONLY GUY...) will later be revealed to be a work of fiction written by one of the characters in the first part of the story, even though the disaster of Boston being destroyed by this thing is really happening. he is trying to demonstrate that the world only makes sense for this completely fictional guy, who waited his whole life for the unexplained. The point is that it is supposed to be contrived and fit together too well, so if that's what you think when you read it, great. So yeah, I'll stop telling you how to read and just let you read.

Also, I know it's quite long, so I'll pay back double the amount of reviews if anyone can help me out. :)

***

It was one of those hangovers where everything felt new. Her relationship with the world had to be re-established, like physics was different today. It was more than dizziness, it was as if the space she occupied was separate from the space around her. Elliot was there on the couch next to her, Hannah and Vincent were on the floor, and they looked like they belonged in their bodies, but she was having trouble grasping a place in the universe. The TV was on, but did it always look so… severe?

She wondered if maybe there were a lot of people feeling that way today. At that moment, all across the country, there would undoubtedly be a general cloud of Sunday morning miasma slowly progressing West before sweet blue Monday skies. But it was more than that. Everything was different that day, surely. People all over the world must be calmly reassuring themselves that there are some things that they know. They, like Karen, must be taking stock of their lives, crossing off things that didn’t make sense anymore and clinging to the things that remained in tact.

My name is Karen. My friends are here with me. They love me, and I love them. Still true.

I had nine beers last night. No. Eight. Confirm with Elliot.

My dissertation, which is due in one month, is about communicative action and social media. Communicative action is the idea that… no… not right now.

Grey Goose vodka is the only thing I can stand to drink straight. True yesterday. Not willing to verify now.

Social media is a helpful tool for fostering… nope. Not sure anymore.

Everything is going to be okay. But… there’s a giant… thing. Boston… fuck…

“Maybe we should turn off the TV, guys,” Elliot said. No one moved. The living room was covered in sunshine and the imprint of a party. Empty bottles and lethargy. Karen was relieved when Vincent stood, hoping someone finally had the energy to reach for the remote, but instead he ran from the room. Loud vomiting ensued, and for a moment the news was muted by his misery.

When he came back they sat in silence for a bit longer. By now the newsreaders were just trying to make sense of the online reaction. There wasn’t a hashtag for absolutelynothingtosay so the discussion was mostly debris to be sorted through by dedicated emergency journalists. In the months to follow, the discussion, at least among the young and angry populations of unaffected Western cities, would rally around #FuckYouJesse, and this would be largely because of Elliot’s taste in music and his eventual internet prominence. The people of Boston did not have a large online presence in the discussion.

Eventually Elliot turned off the TV, and then everything was Australia again: hot and isolated – almost irrelevant. Vincent ran to the bathroom again. Hannah just murmured something about coffee. When Vincent came back he announced that he really should be getting home. “I should see if mum’s okay,” he said. “She tends to not handle stuff like this very well. Elliot, do you want a ride?”

“Yeah, sure. You’re okay to drive, yeah?”

“I’m fine. The worst is definitely over now.” The words hung in the air awkwardly.

They all made their way out to the driveway. There was an exchange of hugs that felt somehow foreign, but were probably common enough in places where you had to hope desperately that the people you love would be okay, rather than just assuming they would be.

Just before Elliot got in the car, he turned to Karen. “So I know it might not be relevant anymore or anything, but I’m still going to that gig I was telling you about last night, if you’re still interested. I mean, if it’s still happening at all.”

Karen gave a sad smile. “Maybe. Probably not. I’ll text you later if I’m feeling up to it.”

“Sure. No problem.” He got in the car just as Vincent turned on the radio. Of course, the news was on, but he switched the stereo to CD before they got involved again. There was music again, for what felt like the first time in a long time. Karen, in her newborn hangover state, swore that the song playing, which she had heard a thousand times before, sounded different – slower, thinner somehow.

Vincent reversed the car from the driveway, almost hitting another car parked on the other side of the small street, and they waved goodbye to Karen and Hannah. Just before he lost sight of the forlorn residents of the 7^th Street Red House, he thought he saw Karen reaching out for Hannah’s hand. This made him smile momentarily, before Vincent mounted a curb and swore loudly.

“Totally fine,” he said, either trying to reassure himself or Elliot. He turned up the music and they made the rest of their journey without speaking.

THIS IS THE ONLY GUY ON THE FUCKING PLANET THAT CAN STILL MAKE SENSE OF IT

Professor Alan Doakes, graduate of Stanford University and MIT, tenured professor of biology at MIT, special advisor to the White House and captain of his faculty’s trivia night team, never learned to tie his shoes properly. Not that they weren’t tied properly, but he never learned how to do it ‘like an adult.’ Bunny Ears – that’s what people called his method when they saw him tying his shoes, before games of racquet ball at the club or if he was running late for an award presentation. Bunny Ears. Like he was a child. Everyone else had this method – a complete fucking mystery to Alan – that seemed to go from 25% complete to 100% with a single finger movement that he could never quite grasp.

He was never quite sure how much time he was wasting with his method; surely it was no more than three seconds each time. But because he never bothered with time trials, with meticulous experiments aimed at identifying the average difference in time between Bunny Ears and Being A Grown Up, he could never be certain what effect this extra time spent making loops had on the events of his life. He certainly had some suspicions, though. Now, as he sat on his bed and bent down to tie his shoes – a very nice pair of Italian leather shoes given as a birthday gift by the Dean of Life Sciences – he could hear, in some part of his brain that often lingered in the early 90s, a voice making fun of him.

“Bunny Ears, Bunny Ears,” chanted Lily.

“Shut up,” snapped Alan. The van was downstairs, waiting for Alan to put his shoes on. Five people, a lot of supplies and a VW coaxed from a hesitant parent had all been coordinated perfectly, and were now waiting on one very simple task to be completed. It was early, Alan remembered. Too early. The sun was just coming from over the hills. Spring had gotten the people ready to rock, and Summer was a headline act about to take to the stage. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.” He grabbed his small bag, which really only had granola bars and Dr. Pepper in it, stood up and left that tiny dorm room for what would be the last time. His posters taken down, his books all shipped to his parents house, his roommate having disappeared without a goodbye three days prior, it was empty. Reflecting now, in his decadent Back Bay apartment, he knew he liked that room, but at the time it was just something to be left behind. A skin to be shed as he grew from undergrad to postgrad.

His friends cheered when he got in the van. They were mocking him, clearly, but only for being slow. Lily didn’t tell them about his embarrassing footwear secret. He closed the door behind him, sat down in the back next to a pile of bags and asked if they wanted to keep making fun of him or if they wanted to get moving.

“We can do both, really,” said Mohinder, in his progressively-less-Indian-by-the-day accent. “Only Liz needs to focus on driving. We’re free to do whatever we want.” Everyone laughed.

“Yeah, whatever. As you were then.”

They didn’t keep ridiculing him, but they did start moving. All over the country, college kids were intent on getting as far away from libraries and dorm rooms as possible, heading to seaside towns, or deep American isolation, or shiny, shiny Las Vegas. Alan’s group of Biology majors – himself, Lily, Liz, Mohinder, Teresa, James and James’ girlfriend whose name he had forgotten – were heading north to Washington. Alan had found early on after starting at Stanford that there were definite advantages to having friends with wealthy parents. This is not to say that this is how he chose his friends – this was not the case at all – but he did enjoy the happy accident of being able to enjoy some of the benefits. Benefits such as Teresa’s family owning a cabin in the lush woods of the Pacific Northwest, that she was free to use whenever she wanted.

Alan could feel the interstate while they were still in the suburbs. All of California that morning felt like a place between places. Everything was gliding past his window at 60 m/ph, even when they were only doing 30. When they finally reached the interstate, water droplets destined for this one tributary, he was giddy with wanderlust. By this point the conversation had turned to plans for next year. It was well-known within the group that Alan was continuing on to MIT in the fall, but no one else’s plans were quite so distinct.

“Oh, you know. I guess I’ll have to look for a real job now,” said Mohinder. “If I don’t find one, they’ll make me go back to India, and that absolutely must not happen.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Liz from the driver’s seat. “You’re like, the smartest guy I know.”

“Really? You think so?” he replied. “Well, I’m glad you think so. Because, well, my back up plan for staying in America is…” at this point he stood up from his seat, climbed over Alan and a pile of luggage, and knelt down behind the passenger-side front seat. Putting his hand on Liz’s arm, staring into her eyes, which were thankfully mostly focused on the road, he asked: “Liz, will you marry me?”

Liz turned her head to look at him. Everyone in the van was glad they were on a dead-straight road with no traffic to be seen. They stared at each other for a moment, until Liz said, breathlessly, “yes.”

Mohinder was the first to laugh, then Liz. It was their moment, so everyone had to hold off until they had broken it themselves.

“Best man!” yelled James. “Totally called it!”

After the laughter died down, someone (Alan didn’t remember who) asked Lily what she would be doing the following year. “Oh, ummm…” she began. “Not really sure. I’ve been kind of looking into volunteer programs. Like, overseas. There’s this one where you get to work with those pink dolphins they have in the Amazon. That looks really cool. So yeah, I think I might do that for a few months. Then maybe come back and, I don’t know, tell people about the fucking pink dolphins. A few months at a time, guys. Jesus.”

By the time they reached Oregon they had covered, in some detail, their favourite memories of the past four years. Best parties, favourite professors, most intense study periods, who slept with who, and who slept with who during the best parties and most intense study periods.

By the time they reached Washington it was getting dark, and a contemplative silence had fallen over the group. It was almost too dark to see anything outside the windows, leaving the options for things to look at while reflecting confined within the VW. James and his girlfriend had fallen asleep, their limbs and luggage awkwardly entwined. Mohinder was still looking out at the darkness, and Liz and Teresa, in the front seats, watched the road unfold out in front of them. Alan allowed himself, in this moment of diverted attentions, a glance at Lily. It would have been a fleeting one, but just as he was about to turn away, she turned to him. He was not so naïve as to think that complex things could be communicated through mere eye contact. At the very least, however, it was an admission of the existence of complex things. They shared this moment for maybe thirty seconds (although it may have really only been five) until Alan broke down.

“Pink fucking dolphins,” he said, with a healthy combination of frustration and laughter. She laughed too. The others, those who were awake, let out small chortles, but the enormity of the actual joke was beyond them.

That first night up at the cabin was the first time Alan kissed Lily, and also the first time he saw Bigfoot.

They’d arrived at their destination, about 15 miles outside of Olympia, surprisingly energetic and ready to enjoy their freedom. They had each, at one time or another, gotten in at least a small nap in the van, so the early morning departure was no longer weighing anyone down. Even Liz, who had done most of the driving, had switched places for a while to get some rest. So they each chose a room (there were six in the spacious House That Old Money Built) by doing no more than throwing suitcases on beds, and reconvening in the cavernous main living area. To call it a cabin was not accurate at all. Cabins invoke images of lumberjacks, simple lives and DIY taxidermy. This place was a woodland mansion.

“What is it your parents do again?” Alan asked Teresa, as they all stood in the hall, turning in small circles of amazement.

“You know,” she began, as if the question had never occurred to her, “I’m not really sure. Something about… money?”

“Yeah, no kidding,” said Mohinder.

“But you guys haven’t seen the best part yet.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“The liquor cabinet.”

It wasn’t long before a large table out on the deck, overlooking a small lake, had been turned into what they suspected was the world’s first Johnny Walker Blue Label-pong table. It was, however, not long after that (whiskey, even at $300 a bottle, should not be approached with such a frivolous attitude) that it downgraded to a regular beer-pong table. One of the cases of PBR that had been brought along, which was still slightly warm, made for a much less ridiculous drinking game. As the losers of Johnny-pong, as it was now being called, they were at a severe disadvantage, so Lily and Alan decided to sit out for a round.

Some parts of the evening are kind of hazy in Alan’s memory. He remembers the games, and the late-night swimming down at the lake, and Mohinder’s wondrous vomiting. He does not remember why he decided, after everyone else had finally gone to bed or passed out, to walk out into the woods and sit down in a small clearing he came across. He could only assume it was to get some fresh air, but surely the balcony would have sufficed for that. Anyway, there he was when Lily found him. He found out later that she’d heard him leave his room, since it was next to hers, but when she heard the front door open she had to make sure he was okay. In the few minutes it had taken her to put on outdoor-appropriate clothing, he had found his way to that clearing.

“Hey,” she said, approaching him. She walked casually, like she had also been out walking and just happened to notice him.

“Oh, hey Lil.” He remembered all this much more clearly than the journey that led him to that place. “What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. I feel kind of… weird in that huge house. It’s hard to explain.”

“It’s no college dorm, for sure. You’ll feel more at home once you’re back at a university. It… suits you.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment, whether it was meant as one or not.”

“I don’t know. It probably was.” She sat down on the grass next to him.

Silence for a few minutes.

“You know,” he began, “in the Amazon they have these really tiny fish that can…”

She interrupted him. “If this is your attempt to scare me with biology, it’s not going to work. I know all about the tiny fish, and the bigger fish, and the tiny insects, and the giant snakes. I’m going.”

“I though you said you were thinking about it.”

“I may have overstated my doubts. I’m doing it.”

“Oh. Cool. It should be a great experience for you.”

“It really will be.”

Silence again.

“But seriously, the tiny fish…”

Lily laughed.

“Just… don’t die, is all.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

“I heard in Boston they have this cinema where you go and watch bad action movies, and people yell things at the screen.”

“Where did you hear that? What kinds of things?”

“Some guy in my organic chemistry class. He was usually a little bit high, but he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. And I don’t know, haven’t you ever been watching an action movie and thought to yourself, like, fuck off, there’s no way Schwarzenegger, or any man, could survive that explosion. Or what the fuck is Stallone talking about? And so I guess you just voice these thoughts, as loudly as you can, but nobody cares because that’s what people are there to enjoy: the ridicule, not the movie.”

“Dammit, why couldn’t they have had that for The Empire Strikes Back? I hated that movie.” She knew this would get a rise out of him. He opened his mouth, and his eyes wide, in preparation to yell at her, but he stopped. “Terrible. Just, terrible,” said continued, prodding further.

Still he didn’t respond. He had gotten distracted by something behind her. It was something moving in the woods, just outside their little clearing. At first he thought it was one of his friends, as it seemed to be the same size and shape as a human.

Lily, bewildered by Alan’s inability to defend Star Wars, now noticed that he wasn’t looking at her, but at something over her shoulder. She turned and immediately saw it too. “James? Mohinder?” she yelled into the moonlight. It was too big to be one of the girls, so she figured it must be either of them. But as it slowly grew closer Alan realized it was bigger even than James, the 6’5” star football player.

It lumbered into the clearing, now standing maybe fifteen feet from them. In the moonlight now covering its hulking body, they could see it clearly. It was seven feet tall if it was an inch. Covered in fur, probably brown but hard to tell in this light, with a face like a gorilla. Alan’s first thought was a bear, but this was clearly something else. It walked on two legs comfortably, almost with the ease of a human. And there was something in its face. Something… sentient.

Lily, too scared to run, pressed herself against Alan. He felt absurd, thinking that he might serve as some sort of protection against such a creature. Even in its presence, however, he liked having her so close.

It was quite obviously looking at them. Everything was very still for what felt like a very long time. There was no wind, no sounds except for the audible heavy breathing of the creature and the girl in his arms. They couldn’t tell if it was regarding them with the same sort of look with which one might browse a menu, or if it was something else. Just as Alan decided that their best bet was to run back to the cabin, however, the beast turned around and exited the clearing from the direction it had come.

Not daring to speak while it was still nearby, or take their eyes off the silhouette now gradually getting smaller through the trees, they sat in stunned silence. Only then did Alan realize that Lily was grasping his hand more tightly than anyone ever had. After it felt safe again, she turned to look at him, less terrified now than incredulous.

“Was that…?” she didn’t have to say its name for him to know what name it possessed.

“I think it was.” Before he realized it, he found himself laughing. First giggling nervously, then hysterically. Clearly it was infectious, as Lily soon joined in. Watching her laugh there in the moonlight, now in some secret universe solely inhabited by the two of them and their mythical friend, Alan felt a rush of time. Like he was falling backwards through all the memories they shared. They were in bars and coffee shops, on buses and at parties. They were looking at each other from opposite sides of the room as people counted down to the beginning of 1990. They were watching the Berlin Wall come down. They were dancing. And when the circularity of time brought him back to the present, her lips were pressed against his as if they’d always been there. When they stopped, she pulled away.

“I’ve always…” he began, before she interrupted again.

“I know,” she said, flatly. For a few moments she made no attempt to move closer.

Fearing that it might be over just as it started, Alan leaned in again. He wasn’t sure if this was what she wanted, but his fears were settled quickly. Her tongue brought him forth to a world where the bright unknowable future, filled with mystery and excitement, called for a brave explorer. At the intersection of young love and cryptozoology, Alan Doakes stood tall.

When it was decided that it was too cold and that they should go inside, they went back to Lily’s room. Fully clothed and now droopy-eyed, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Almost as if the world agreed that this was a natural stopping point in his recollections of that time, Alan felt a slight tremor run through his apartment. Like someone upstairs had dropped something heavy. Snapped from his reverie, he stood up from his bed and finished getting ready for dinner. He was to meet Matilda at 8 o’clock, and it was now almost a quarter to. Alan liked Matilda a lot, in the sort of way that people have to constantly, consciously remind themselves that someone else is very nice. They had been out twice before, both lovely evenings, but he found that he did not think about her much when she wasn’t around. He figured he would invite her back here after dinner tonight, because that, at least, might be something to think about in her absence. He really did want to like her.

He felt another tremor, this one stronger. Pausing to think, momentarily, what it could possible be, he decided that his time really was better spent getting on his way to the restaurant. It was only a ten minute walk to the place, but he could never stand to be even the slightest bit late.

The next tremor, Alan was surprised to feel, could be felt on the ground floor. He stopped to talk to the doorman, who was also named Alan. “Do you feel that?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, I do,” he replied.

“Any idea what it might be?”

“Nope. Never heard of earthquakes of anything up here.”

“No, it couldn’t be an earthquake.” He paused, still trying to figure it out. “Anyway, must be going. Goodnight, Alan.”

“You too, sir.”

He hurried along Beacon Street, barely on schedule, deciding by the time he reached Arlington that he was going to enjoy a nice steak for dinner. He turned right, his head down as the wide expanse of Boston Common opened up on his left. He was thirty feet from his destination when another tremor, much stronger than the others, shook him out of his intent strides. Looking towards the Common and the skyscrapers of Boston beyond, he stopped dead.

After the week up at the cabin, so long ago now, Lily came with Alan to Boston for two weeks. They never told anyone about Bigfoot. He didn’t know why she never told anyone, but he never brought it up because the whole scene – the woods, the kiss, the unknown creature – was monolithic in his head. He couldn’t tell Mohinder, for example, “hey guess what: yeah I saw Bigfoot,” without adding the rest. And he wanted to keep it intimate. Not that he wanted to keep it a secret; he wouldn’t have cared if people knew. He just wanted it to be unspoken, like so much about that night was. The others surely had their suspicions, but they were good enough to keep them to themselves. So they hung out in Boston for a while. They yelled at Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren, they fell in love with Downtown Crossing and Café Pamplona, they talked in private about their giant hairy friend.

Then Lily left. She went home to San Diego for a week and then on to South America and the pink dolphins. She was away for three months, and during this time contact was limited, but before she left he had asked Alan to wait for her. So he did. There was no doubt in his mind that the wait for would be worth it. But then when she came back, on a three day trip up to see him, she was different. Everything was different. She half-explained to him that after such a huge, life-changing experience, she didn’t feel the same about a lot of things. He tried to change her mind, even though he knew it was impossible. So she left, back to California, and he never saw her again.

Since then, he had still not forgotten about Bigfoot, despite the painful memories the beast now brought with it. In secret he read widely about cryptozoology and the thousands of undiscovered species that could potentially exist, but there was never any proof. The thought of returning to that place made him feel lightheaded, so that was also not an option. So, over the years, he gradually lost interested in unexplained fauna. In matters less controversial he was a brilliant mind, and was soon made a full professor at MIT, where he now felt perfectly at home. The possibilities of that potential future now severely limited, he was, at least, comfortable.

Until that moment on Arlington.

What he saw there, looking across the Common, was what he could only describe as a giant lizard-like creature, almost as tall as the buildings it was now attempting to tear down. The tremors continued, and then the sirens as the emergency services came to their senses again.

The improbable world he perceived in his youth – of wonder and mystery and lifelong discovery – it seemed, had come back to find him. It was here to destroy everything.