Young Writers Society

My vision swung back down the rope of light, tracing back to the “hovercraft.” It was still backsliding and gathering momentum. If it accelerated much more, it would catch 22. With less and less space before the wall would make for a booby trap, not even the heavy tangle of wires on its back would be enough to cushion the impact. But hey, if I went high and he went low, assuming we reached that portal before the Magneliohasetrop pulverized itself, we could avoid conking ourselves against that magnetic field. But we’d need luck too. Hopefully no more uncalled-for ingredients would be tossed into this recipe.

I dropped the Scenario bomb. “The hovering tank looks like it’s headed for a little more than a fender-bender! It’s a race! Him or us! Strap your helmet on and don’t forget Santa’s Christmas Booty! I go high, you go low!”

The man was struggling to his feet in search of the weapon-gobbling sack.

“Behind you, behind you!” I went off like an alarm. “And you need the head start to time this right!”

He bent down to snatch it but before he could squeeze the bag’s neck shut, his glasses were flung from his face.

Lost below an ocean of guns.

Shit. I pinched my eyes closed. “How good is your unrefined vision?”

He scooped up the fumble and spun, juggling the now oddly football-shaped bag. “It’s like having two left hands!” And about to turn on his booster jets, he knew as well as I did, “It’ll have to doooooo!”

I guess it wasn’t like he was reading anything; all he had to do was see the light.

Letting him get that sizeable head start, I watched tensely as the machine seemed intent on desecrating our escape, or aborting our rebirth, however you choose to look at it. 20 yards or less to the wall and rapidizing. Letting out a low whistle and gripping the weapon solid between my fingers, I mumbled Sayonara to it and chased after Gutterson.

For more adrenaline as well as the thrill of adventure, I envisioned myself being pursued by a bunch of gangsters over the rooftops, in my hand, the case of money they were after. Sure, you can’t outrun a bullet, but if it was anything like I’d seen before, the mobsters would be God-awful shots.

Peering down at the laboring Gutter, I took into consideration that his load was of far greater toll: an elderly man flying at full speed rendered blind as a bat carrying a stuffed bag. But that was just the way the cards had unfolded. Destiny: the ultimate palm-reader. I returned my gaze to my path. Besides, he wouldn’t have been able to make that upcoming jump.

But a clatter from below had my eyes off the prize in a jiffy. It wasn’t long before my body replicated my gaze, arrested by the commotion, engrossed by the scene. Gut was sprawled on his gut, fortune lounging vulnerable amidst a rubble field. He’d taken a hard spill and in the downfall, dropped the ball into the disaster area. The debris of weaponry we hadn’t been able to put back in their places had come back to trip him up. Any estranged contents were likely to remain that way, for they would blend in with the likewise decor of guns. In fact, I couldn’t see where the dropped bag was.

Frantically, I repeated, “The sack, the sack, the sack!”

With a strenuous grunt, Malibu pushed his sagging form to a sitting position. “Working on it.” he said wearily.

I was scouring the land so I could lead Gutterson in the right direction. The light was shining off the stocks and barrels of most guns. But not off the bag. There was a darker spot on the largest mound of arms, standing out (or in) much like how a black hole is brought to the foreground against the star-dusted background of space.

“Big stack!” I crowed. “Not far to your left, flapjack’s on the big stack!”

He did a fancy little roll over to the “flapjack,” a move he probably learned in the military. Upon seizing it, he spoke to the bag, “I didn’t know I dropped you into iHop! Which is too bad because I don’t eat pancakes. I’m strictly a Vietarian; I only eat Charlies!”

“Charlies,” as they were often referred to, were the opposing Vietnamese soldiers in his war.

The Tap was fluctuating. The magnetic field was causing an imbalance, and it wasn’t clear if the magnet or the portal was going to win. Every now and then, the Tap would shut itself out of existence, only to be hauled open, wider and wider with the jerky motions of a day-and-night wrestling match.

Gutterson staggered his way up as I called, “Slap it back into place and let’s go!” I was talking about the bag, his bearings, and his brain. Seriously, he had just talked to the dumb sack.

He took one step and then went very stiff. “Something,” I asked uneasily, “wrong?”

“I heard a glassy crunch!” Malibu lamented. “I’ll be darned. I think I stepped on my glasses!”

He’d never sounded like he had when he said that--the plaintive cry of a child. He was always tough as a weather-worn strap of leather. Maybe the leather had cracked after one too many a storm. The important thing was for the leather not to come undone.

Anyway, if the glasses had fallen from the bag, he would have run off unaware of the fact and left them behind. Demolished or intact, with nothing to perform service upon they were idle either way. No use crying over spilled milk.

From my vantage point I saw an opening that would keep him unimpeded by more traffic. “The path is clear if you vamoose straight ahead!”

“But without my glasses, straight has become a garbled concept!” he complained.

“Forget the diversions; I'm tellin' ya! Your life shouldn’t be dictated by your itch to see perfectly anyway; there’s more to be perceived than just with eyesight!”

His head cocked as if he was listening to a frequency that I couldn’t get wind of. “Nevermind, I’ll trustcha!” and he charged ahead thoughtless as a bull; for he was fat, dumb, and happy, anchored upon my supervision.

There was only about thirty yards until we hit home base. I shot a quick peek over my shoulder; at any second the Magneliohasetrop was going to meet its maker, and in doing so, deal us the same fate. I planned on wrecking its plans, even as it did ours, and scrambled to reach cover first.

There was no time to determine where Malibu was in relation to me. If I didn’t catch up with him, I had to hope he was attentive enough to wait a second for me to come through so neither of us would hit the crescent out of sync. But I could rest easy; he was a very vigilant person.

The end of my line was strides away, bobbing along to my head in time with my sprint. There would be no bridge to cross over. My leap of faith would not be a smooth one. The catwalk was secured from end to end of the superstructure. I’d have to approach from an awkward angle in order to correctly surmount the railing and vault with adequate propulsion.

Like I said, the Walk came to a dead end where it fused into the wall, so I veered left with approximately five steps pending before I would’ve become a pancake complete with bloody syrup and whip-creamed bone. This maneuver left me running sidelong next to the railing, weaning off the distance at a sharp, reverse V angle for the chance to swing my shoes atop it like a feline on a fence.

Except I didn’t plan to run along it.

My heart dropped and bore a hole through my stomach as second thoughts about clearing this hurdle crept in. Nothing short of first place form will drive you home. But this vocation was more acrobatic than mere track and field combined with a series of jumps. I had to jump on the hurdle and rebound cleanly from its narrow foundation. Oh yeah, and hit a target some two-hundred feet below.

But I wasn’t about to allow no heart-sinking feeling to conquer my devotion to live, to succeed, to prosper. My leg muscles willed themselves to bunch together and translated into a brisk crouch. Then only air was underneath my body and there was no turning back.

My left foot landed first. It connected a touch on the near side of the round bar, just where I had wanted, and slid into place as my momentum pushed it across to the top.

Then carried it out of place.

I had overshot by a morsel. My ankle buckled with a small flash of pain and rolled over the far side before I could plant and boost off, leaving me airborne. Quite unwillingly. I grappled the flamethrower with all my might. The center of my body was still traversing the rail, though now beginning to cartwheel. The overdone motion had sent me into a sideways flip. The forefront of my pounce had spent its energy and was now useless in the empty air of gravity’s clutch, with nothing solid for traction, its route was unchangeable.

I had to change that.

It’s nice to have more than one of something. My other foot arched up from behind my body, flailing loosely, but it was the only part of me that I had much control of. Everything up and beyond from my right hip might as well have been paralyzed. Now, my last leg was on the rise, but it had joints that moved independent from the core of the body, the knee being the main attraction.

There was no way to stop its rise. And it was essential for it to go lower. Or I’d be the real pancake at iHop. But there was no time, the spin was sweeping the leg away from the rail as well as up. That meant I would have to wait dreadfully long.

My head screamed, do it now or it will be too late!

Of course, that seemed logical, but I figured only an anticipatory resting period could save my life. Jumping the gun would be a false start and therefore disqualify me, so I hung onto my hat, coiling my leg for the strike. And then my hair net launched itself from my head because I wasn’t literally holding onto my hat. The hair on the side of my head that was turned into the pseudo-generated wind, was set free and its first order of mutiny was to siege a whole half of my face, treating my tongue to an ever-so-delicious taste of hair while it stole fifty percent of my vision. We were now three quarters blind as a duo. Batman and Robin could use some bigger eye holes.

It had been only a second or less since I had slipped and I was very aware of the railing’s location though I could not feel it. My glute, hamstring, and quad went tight as my knee gathered in so far that it almost brushed against my chest.

And I held it. Like a serpent poised, collecting itself for the one meticulous moment that would serve it best to lash out, I held it. I held it because I was falling. There’d be one more chance to shove off when my body came back down even with the edge.

I cartwheeled onward. I knew that my descent would be slowed at first, since I had clipped the metal and skidded. My chance to leap with a proper arch had been squandered. However, that wasn’t necessary because the Tap was far below and I would have time to progress towards it in the fall, though being afraid to undershoot, the first method had been the more preferable. Improv was all that remained--Could I think faster than I fell, reform my error in direction before I would crash?

My new calculation was based on the location of my head, and took the rate of my sidespin into account. The instant I was waiting for arrived. Where I had determined I was horizontal.

I fired the trigger, my leg. It exploded away from my body. The time that it took to gain full extension and connect with the metal bar that I had failed to use correctly, left my head aimed just past a 180 degree plank of evenness. The ball of my foot made contact. Straight as an arrow I shot, released from the taut bow of an archer upon the tower wall under a moonlit night, marked for a piercing landfall just as designed.

Bull’s Eye.

My eyes swelled with the precious white glow of the crescent, shuddering back and forth as if so eager to embrace me that it could not contain its joy in knowing that I was on the way. It was a perfect release, and I reveled in the sensation of success, extending my hands in a diving style, the weapon of flame serving as the tip of the charge.

But as I did so, I felt a fresh tension. Something caught hold of my neck. And almost as soon as the feeling began, it stretched until it pressed sore into the nape of my neck, delivered so callous that I became certain it could exact no more pressure. Next there was a pop, felt not heard, and a thin band so slight it was almost ticklish slithered across my skin.

I figured out what it was immediately. Something during my superfluous gesture had snagged the chain. Dear God. I saw it shimmering. A silver tendril had taken flight. Vinny’s beloved necklace was wreathing away from me.