Todd (26 page)

"It means, like, a little bit
of summer that happens in the fall. Or even the winter."

"Oh. Weird."

"Not as weird as it used to
be," Alan muses.

They have French toast (but without
eggs or butter, it's more like toast with syrup that they eat with a fork),
along with fried Spam, and bottled juice.

"Can we play C.V.?" Todd
asks when they're done. "I had this idea for a new card that—"

"In a little bit. I need to
talk to you about something. Come sit down."

"What is it?" Todd plops
on to the bed.

Alan looks at him, trying to
figure out where to start, whether he's even doing the right thing. Finally, he
draws a deep breath and says, "I am going to ask you something, and it's
something a kid your age should never have to answer. But I can't change what's
happening, and you should have a say in this."

"What is it?" Todd says
again. His hands tug at the blankets, his pants, his shirt sleeves.

"You remember the blue star
we saw the other night, when we slept in the truck?"

Todd blanches and looks at his
hands.

"I... I went outside last
night to check on it, and it's even closer. It looked twice as big as it did
the other night. I think it..." He takes another shuddering breath, hating
what he's about to say. "I think it's almost here. I think it'll be here
any day."

Todd snaps his head up, his eyes
bright with fear. "Can we get away? Can we drive south?" He clutches
Alan's hands. "What if we drive south?"

"We can't get away from
it." The whisper has the weight of a sledgehammer. "There's just...
there's no way."
Ah, God.
His voice breaks as he says, "But we
do have a choice."

The sudden hope in his son's eyes
nearly destroys him. He gasps, fighting to hold himself together. "We
can..."

Ah, God.

Ah, fuck you, God.

"We can go to sleep tonight,
and—"

Fighting to breathe, to speak.

"And not wake up."

Todd looks confused. "You
mean, like, sleep through it?"

"No. I mean—" His throat
closes, his body revolting to keep him from saying the words.

But understanding comes over Todd
anyway. His eyes widen, then settle again. When he speaks, his voice is flat.
"You mean kill ourselves."

Alan nods. "I would never
make you do it. Never, ever, ever. But I can't force you to see—
whatever
—that
thing is, either."
I don't want your last moments to be terror.
"And
if you do decide to... to sleep, we'll go together.

"Whatever you choose, we'll
go together."

Todd nods, but his face is
breaking. He buries himself in his father's chest, his shoulders heaving.
"I don't want—" he murmurs. "I don't want—" He can't finish
the sentence. "Why did this have to happen?"

Alan is holding him, rocking.
"I don't know."

"I don't want—to kill
us."

Alan slumps with relief. The
sudden decision gleams like a knife in his mind, like a purpose. "You
don't want to go to sleep?"

"No, 'cause what if we're
wrong? Or what if we're early? We can still play C.V. tonight otherwise, or
maybe tomorrow, too."

"Yeah, we can."

"Or what if the star misses
us? Or something like that? Or even if it comes maybe it won't be as bad as it
seems." His voice quavers, giving the lie to this statement. "Maybe
it's just coming to take the Blurs away. Maybe that's the whole reason this
happened."

"Yeah," Alan says,
"or maybe it
will
be as bad as it seems, but... you know, at least
we'll get to
see
it. We'll get to know
.
" He smoothes his
son's hair. "If it just smashes into us, it'll be over before we know it
anyway. If it does something else, then that'll be scary, but... it'll be incredible,
too. And just think, we're the only ones who will get to see it. A whole star
show, just for us."

Todd falls silent. Slowly, his
breathing evens. Alan holds his son until his arms start to cramp and his back
is aching.

Finally, Todd says, "Do you
think Mommy and Allie will get to see, too?"

Alan kisses his head. He
remembers, a lifetime ago, worrying about what to tell Todd about the
afterlife.

"Yeah," he promises.
"I'm sure of it."

101

That night, Alan goes out alone to
check the sky. Despite the cloudless night, the blue star has vanished, and the
Blurs are still gone. He keeps this information to himself. He doesn't see it
as a reason for hope; he sees it as an omen.

They spend the night gorging on
candy and games and movies and music; they turn on all the lights and play
fight in the living room. Their revelry carries into the night, a trembling
cacophony that pricks the perfect silence. Maybe it can even be seen from
space: a single, defiant point of light.

The next morning is beautiful and warm.
It feels like spring. The asphalt of the parking lot is showing through the
melting snow, and the road is clearer than it's been in weeks. Around noon Todd
asks if they can go back to "the park"—that smattering of playground
equipment they found at the farmhouse—and Alan drives him there.

The house remains slumped halfway
into the front yard, the moss and the years bearing it down. Alan steers Todd
wide, toward the playground in the back.

The swing and the slide are creaky
and rundown; the sandbox is littered with broken toys and has grass growing in
it. When he was young, Alan would've aped his father and scorned the whole
place as worthless. But Todd jumps into the sandbox with a whoop and grabs one
of the broken tractor toys.

How old is too old to play in a
sandbox?
Alan briefly wonders, and then realizes no question has ever
mattered less.

After awhile, Todd hauls himself
onto the swing. "Can you push me?" He doesn't need a push—he hasn't
needed one in years—but Alan agrees, relishing the feel of the boy's warm back
against his hands, of the gentle breeze against his face. The boy's feet kick
against the sky, reaching ever higher. Beyond them, the horizon becomes a
monstrous shadow that begins to creep toward the sun.

The wind swirls, kicking sand and
dead leaves against Alan's back. The air starts to thrum; he catches a whiff of
mildew and rich, dying earth.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah." His voice is
steady.

"Is it happening?"

"I think so, pal."

Alan stops the swing and they
stare into the distance, at that rising tide of blackness. Already, it is
halfway to the sun. As it ascends, a blue aura crackles up around it, igniting
its silhouette like a solar eclipse. The wind picks up as Todd jumps to the
ground, whipping the swing wildly into the air, transforming its clanking
chains to wind chimes.

Then that scar—the massive crack
that splits the asteroid's middle—crests the horizon, blaring blue light. Alan
starts to flinch, but refuses; he forces himself to watch, even if that
radiance scours him blind. A cloud of blue lightning bolts and a swirling mess
of smoke churn at the base of the thing, tearing themselves from the horizon
and hurling themselves into the light.

Into the mouth.

Of course,
he thinks
through a mind numb with awe.
Of course.

It continues to rise. The blue
flames at its apex brush the sun. The smoke it's inhaling is earth and trees
and cars, the blue lightning bolts are streaks of Blurs and moss torn from
beneath the ground.

The shivering air starts to
scream, a howl like a tornado.

He sees a distant squiggle in the
sky, fighting to escape the vacuum, and realizes it's a sky worm; an instant
later, he spies several of them, all being pulled in. A distant rain shadow
flows upward into that ravenous blue light, because the monster is drinking a
lake. Giant boxes lurch into the air mere miles away and shatter against each
other in the swirling sky; his mind tells him they were houses.

And the moss. There are streaks of
it everywhere, ripping from under the earth, bulging at the seams of the cars
and the buildings.
A fly's vomit,
he thinks.
Softening the food.

He thinks of the endless cosmos,
of a creature older than the solar system.

He thinks of Chaos Vector, of the
Devilspar devouring Realms.

Chunks of highway 35 hurtle toward
the sky. In the rain of vehicles falling upwards, he sees their RV.

And still the roar draws closer.
Now the farm field is succumbing, groaning from the earth in ragged strips of
rotten moss. The swing is straining upwards, fighting its chain.

The blue star eclipses the sun.
The vortex of its hunger screams toward them, implacable.

Alan takes his son's hand, and
they await it together.

A Note From the Author

This story came to me during a
dark time in my life. Thank you for letting me share it with you.

If you'd like to be notified
directly when I release new novels, send an email to
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If you enjoyed
Todd,
please
consider
leaving
a review
for it on Amazon. It doesn't need to be fancy or long, just
honest. Reviews are not just about self-expression; for authors whose work you
enjoy, a robust review count can open many opportunities that are otherwise
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will. I'm reliant on readers like yourself to make their opinions heard.

Thank you again for reading. I
hope the story stays with you.

If you enjoyed TODD, also consider

Alex

by Adam J
Nicolai

1

In the hallway, Alex was laughing.

The sound should have grated on
Ian. He was late for work, as always—furiously brushing his teeth as the
seconds galloped past—and instead of getting dressed, his son was in the hall,
playing with toys. The boy had no urgency in the morning, no matter how much
Ian begged, threatened or explained.

Most mornings Ian would be
yelling.
Alex, hurry up! Get dressed! We are
late! But today was
different. Alex had turned five this year, and suddenly, that easy laughter—so
simple, so pure—was getting rarer. Sometimes it felt like Ian hardly heard it
at all.

He heard Alex scamper into his
room, exclaiming something about a big train, and smiled despite himself. His
son's joy was infectious. He rinsed his toothbrush, reached for the shirt
hanging on the bathroom door—and stopped. Closed his eyes, instead, and
relished the simple music of his son's play.
Thirty seconds,
he thought.
Thirty seconds wouldn't cost him his job.

But he didn't get thirty seconds.
Alex fell quiet. Maybe he'd gotten too absorbed in his toys. Sometimes, when
the boy was really into them, Ian could find himself wondering if Alex was even
still in the house. He would get up to check on him and find him squatting in
his room, crouched over his trains and Star Wars guys like a mystic reading tea
leaves, muttering earnest pronouncements.

Ian threw on his shirt and opened
the bathroom door, expecting to find exactly that, but when he peered into
Alex's room he found only stacks of cold boxes. The light from the window fell
across them like riming ice.

It was empty. Of course it was.

His son had been dead for six
months.

If you enjoyed TODD, also consider

Rebecca

by Adam J
Nicolai

1

Sarah found herself in the living
room, staring at the cars passing in the dark out on

During the day she could keep her
brave face on. Tell herself this was all going to work out, somehow—that God
wanted her to keep the baby, and
she'd
wanted to keep the baby, and with
that kind of love, things would work out. Yes, she was young. She had given up
a lot, like going to Yale. And yes, she was doing it alone. But it would work
out. Nothing based on love could end in a bad way.    

At night, her faith evaporated.

The baby transformed into a blob
of hungry darkness: a shrill, starving
thing
that would never let her
alone. She clutched after that blithe confidence she had felt earlier in the
day, and felt it melt through her fingers. In its absence, she was left only
the truth: she had lost everything. This was all there was now.

There was no one who cared
anymore, not really—they'd all left or been driven away.  But she craved a
supportive voice. Someone to tell her she was doing the right thing, that it
would all be okay, that God was with her. The things she could tell herself
during the day, but was bereft of in the darkness.

And so she was only slightly
surprised when she glanced across the room and saw the Messenger sitting at the
dining room table. He wore an old smile—gentle and sad—and though she hadn't
seen him in years, she knew at once why he was here.

God wanted her to kill her baby.

 If you
enjoyed TODD, also consider

Children of a Broken Sky

by Adam J
Nicolai

It's hard to believe, now, how
close we once were.

I remember whole summers spent
racing beneath a sprawling sky, winters spent slogging through the snow and
sniping each other from crumbling white forts. I remember feeling like my skin
color didn't matter—not
here,
not with these friends, even if Seth did
always call me a nog—and that every grassy ridge, every glimmer from Pinewood
Lake, was a mystery waiting to be explored.

Do you remember it, too? You'd
make fun of me, now and then, because I romanticized everything—but surely you
remember it. A time when no transgression was unforgivable, a time before
floods, and silent lightning, and death.

Maybe you really don't remember.
Maybe the road we've traveled has stretched so far that you can no longer see
back to the beginning. But I know our history makes you who you are, for good
or ill. I know the children we were—the ones that laughed and chased each other
over the hills, the ones that couldn't imagine anything worse than a frown from
our parents—are still here. They are still us.

They always will be.

- Fragment of a letter from
famed historian Angbar Shed'dei, recovered from his quarters upon his death,
unaddressed and unsent.