Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #10) by DeYtH Banger (books to get back into reading txt) 📖

entrusted exacts a terrible price.

I wasn’t entirely wrong. They only kept me alive because the Being had bonded so closely to me, and they felt like I might be able to coax it back to U.S. territory.

 

You see, after rescuing me and knitting the Rift, the Being and its daughter – who researchers named Asherah – fled. Remember, we weren’t actually capable of imprisoning the Being; it just allowed us to do it out of its boundless, incomprehensible devotion to its handlers.

We don’t know why it fled, although researchers believe it’s because the Being somehow realized we were killing the Charam. Perhaps the Being had parental feelings toward them. Perhaps it was simply heartbroken that we were slaughtering our own protectors. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the Being left us.

 

It came back two years later without Asherah and immediately asked for me. I was brought in immediately. Military specialists told me to obtain the following information: what the Sed were, and how to stop them. If I failed, I would be killed.

I expected to die; hundreds of personnel over several decades had failed to extract this information from the Being. Why would I be the one to succeed?

Even though I was terrified, my reunion with the Being was strangely wonderful. It grieved over my injuries and our sustained separation, then lay at my side. We luxuriated in each other’s presence for many hours.

Then smoky tendrils shimmered into being and formed the words:

The Sed finally understand they cannot open your earth while my children live. Instead they will open your sky.

“Where do they come from?” I asked. “What are they?”

 

You will not understand.

I believed this, but understanding wasn’t my prerogative; survival was. “Tell me anyway.”

The Being hid its face and began to tremble.

You will hate me.

“I could never hate you.”

I did not come to love you. I am not meant to love you. I only love you because your reality makes it so.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

They are the rest of me.

 

The Being was right: I didn’t understand. Neither did anyone else. No one ever would; the Being never communicated again.

In December 2015, U.S. intelligence confirmed that Asherah was at a secure compound in Russia’s far north. Russia quickly developed its own, rather more successful, breeding program. They keep Charam but euthanize Roeh. Funny how that worked out.

Six weeks ago, the Roeh all broke into hysteria. They wept and screamed for hours, throwing themselves against the walls. Several perished. Finally, we obtained the information that was distressing them so:

We have opened the stars

 

The next day, a Sed attacked a Russian nursery full of Charam. As the Being predicted, it came from the sky – from outer space.

The Being immediately portaled to the Charam and fought to the death. Its sacrifice was not in vain; it immobilized the Sed long enough for the Charam to eat and kill it.

The Being quickly decomposed into a small mountain of flowers and fungus.

Over the following days, Roeh became even more hysterical, throwing a sustained fit of maddened despair centered around one piece of information:

We are one we have come we are one we have come

The Roeh then killed each other: they suffocated, strangled, and beat one another to death in the course of two minutes.

According to our intelligence, all of the Russian Charam died last week following an episode of mass psychosis. Autopsies revealed that all of their skeletons had been replaced with a hardened, calcified fungus. The people who performed the autopsy died in similar circumstances: mindlessly violent, with fungus in place of bones.

As of yesterday, the Russian compound appears abandoned: a dark, fungal mass choked with flowers, a curiously beautiful blight on the Siberian tundra.

We found Asherah. She is prepared to die for us. She’s half human, after all; this is her world. She’ll close rifts on earth and in space until it kills her.

 

She doesn’t know what the Being truly was. No one does. If it was meant to be our enemy, why did it give us Charam to kill it, Roeh to reveal it, and Asherah to save us?

No one even knows what the Sed are. We only know that they are opening our skies.

Contrary to released information, the government’s been in space for quite a long time. Naturally we’re launching attacks against the Sed. Without Charam, I don’t think we have a chance. But Asherah is willing to try. The government is willing to send her into space to close the rifts, and it is willing to put soldiers in spacecraft to bomb the Sed to death. It sounds ridiculous, putting a demigod on a rocket ship. The worst part is even if it works, there’s nothing to do about the fungus.

The Being was right. I don’t understand.

I don’t think anybody ever will.

“I’M SURE YOU UNDERSTAND.”

 

The agitated wind roared outside, carrying millions of tiny snowflakes with it. I stared blankly at my computer screen reading the document my now ex-wife had left on it just before she had left me.
“ Dear Blake,
I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to you, considering I’ve been home less and less lately, but I can’t think of a way I could say this face to face without you exploding on me. I’m done with this whole thing. I can’t take the late nights and the yelling any longer. I’ve never met another couple that argued as much as us and I think it’s time we start calling this what it really is-abuse. I’ve found someone else, Blake; someone that will treat me the way I deserve in addition to providing for me. I hope you make some changes in your life, or else you will be alone for the rest of it. I’m sorry things couldn’t have ended differently. I’ve started the paperwork and I’ll contact you soon about arranging a day to come sign it.
-Rachel”

The words didn’t hurt any less the twentieth time I had read it than the first. Each moment I thought about it felt like a chain wrapped around my neck with a heavy weight at the bottom tugging and choking me. Warm tears silently streamed down my face as I closed the document once again, a nightly ritual I had performed since the night Rachel left me.
“I wasn’t a bad person, was I?” I thought. “I had tons of friends at work and even those I had kept in touch with from high school. Rachel and I were just a bad fit, I guess.”

 

Just as I went to open another document, my computer monitor went black, as well as the rest of the lights in my house. “Shit..” I muttered to myself. It must have been the storm outside. The snow had pounded my small home town in Washington for nearly a week straight, but the wires had held on for as long as they could. Realizing that I would be without electric heat, I donned my large brown Carhart jacket and boots and proceeded outside to the wood pile. The icy wind instantly froze my contacts to my eyes and made my vision blurry. I had made this walk several hundred times and even with the distortion of my vision as well as the tenacity of the snow storm, I made my way over to the wheel barrow and began to load it up with pieces of the oak I had cut down during the past fall.

 

After I had gathered all I needed as well as some kindling to start a fire, I started wheeling the load back over to my front porch and stacked it neatly in a pile on my porch so the snow wouldn’t cover it. I went back inside and hung my coat back up, but suddenly I felt uneasy. I looked out my window and what I saw surprised me. About two-hundred yards away stood a man wearing a heavy dark coat and a black back pack. It was hard to make out his face due to my inhibited vision, but through the trees, it was unmistakably a man. I opened my window and called out to him. “Hey, are you lost or something?” No response other than the echoes I heard through the hills was returned. I went over to my living room and grabbed my cell phone off the coffee table just in case I needed to call a tow truck for the man and made my way back outside. To my surprise and confusion, he no longer stood there. Not only that, but after surveying the woods around my house, I couldn’t find him anywhere. This was strange, as I lived relatively deep in the woods and didn’t have any neighbors for miles. What would a man be doing walking around in this blizzard by himself? After locking the door with the dead bolt, I went back inside and started a much-needed fire. After giving a few painful thoughts to Rachel’s memory, I lied down in my recliner and nodded off.

 

I awoke the next morning around 7 AM to all of the lights in the house turned on that I had left on the previous night. After making a round to ensure I wouldn’t have a hefty electricity bill, I cleaned up and put my EMT uniform on. The storm had died down to a few flurries here and there, although the sun was still very much hidden behind the dark grey clouds as I walked out to my truck. I made one last glance around my property for the man I was sure I had seen last night before getting into my old Dodge pickup. The familiar sound of the engine turning on made me realize that I hadn’t lost everything along with Rachel, and I hastily sped out of my driveway to the county EMS station, as I had spent a little too much time preparing for work that morning.

 

In the garage that housed the ambulances stood my best friend, Taylor; he walked up to me and gave me a comforting hug and a few pats on the back before speaking. He was fully aware of the situation with Rachel. “How are we doing, man? Did your power go out last night, too?” He asked. “Yeah, I’m managing, and it went out around 10 and didn’t come back on until morning.” I replied “Hopefully this storm won’t last too much longer. I’m almost out of firewood.” That day went on like any normal day at work. I remember hearing a story on the local news about a man named Roger Patterson who had gone missing a week ago. His family was willing to listen to any leads of his whereabouts. That moment, I thought of the man I had seen last night, staring at me, unmoving. I got really creeped out, and tried not to think about it for the rest of the day.

 

After coming home that day, I checked my cell phone and my eyes widened a little. A text from Rachel glowed on the glass screen, and I quickly opened it and what I read filled my heart with a warm rush of hope. “I need to talk to you, Blake. I think I’ve made a mistake.” This one little message almost erased what had been a week