rosie, come home

8/3/2019 Rosie, Come Home

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Rosie, Come Home

High above the earth swarms of snowflakes rode the wind. If those snowflakes had eyes they

would shut them tightly now . If they had ears, they wouldn’t want to hear a thing. If they had minds,they would surely lose them, for a shadow was gliding through the snowstorm and it was black and

its name was Madness.

Three hundred feet up in the air, above the small town of Stara Zagora, a small piece of

volcanic rock the size of a human fist suddenly materialized inside the whirlwind of snowflakes. The

rock was black, so black that the texture of its surface was imperceptible unless you touched it; so

black it was consuming what little light was left in the evening sky, and there, in the middle of the

white snowstorm, it looked like an ever-hungry black hole. The rock hung there for a while as if

gravity was hesitating whether it should be subjected to the laws of universal attraction. A couple of

snowflakes were stuck to it, but they did not seem to melt. It was ice-cold. And then, suddenly, it

plummeted, as if guided by some unseen force, through the clouds, towards a block that looked like

any other in the small town.

With a thundering sound the glass of the window over Rosie’s head was shattered as a blur

of black flew in. Rosie jumped startled and broke the kiss that her and Kersh’s lips had been locked

into. Both of them turned their heads sharply toward the window and the fragments of glass that

were now hanging from its frame above their heads. The cold winter wind had been waiting for this

all evening, and now it rushed in, wailing triumphantly, chasing away the warmth of the cozy room

with the tilted ceiling. The black rock fell on the table knocking over a bowl of clementines and rolled

onto the floor with an unimpressive thud.

Rosie and Kersh stared at it bewildered, adrenaline swiftly occupying their veins, just like lust

had occupied the furthest reaches of their nerves a second ago making them numb the world around

them. Reality, however, had struck hard this time.

They looked at each other, as they both experienced a swift recollection of the events that

had led to their kiss, and looked away again. Rosie moved away from him. The others must have

heard the shattering glass, she thought. She didn’t want anyone to see them like that. Hell, she did

not want anyone to see them in the same room alone! Rosie ran her fingers thorough her hair,

making sure her appearance did not arouse any suspicion. It was probably an unnecessary precaution

considering someone had just broken the window, but still she did not want to take any chances.

The door flew open and Victor walked in. As far as Rosie remembered ten minutes before he

hadn’t been able to walk in a straight line and had missed the table several times as he had tried to

put his glass on it, but now he displayed his amazing ability to sober up instantly whenever

something serious happened.

‘What the hell was that?’ he exclaimed as he was taking in the scene. He saw the broken

window. ‘Are you hurt?’

Trying to read his expression, Rosie did not find any clues to whether he was questioning why

these two were secluded here, while the party was taking place in the living room.

Kersh cleared his throat.

‘I think someone just broke your window’ he said and pointed at the black rock resting on the

floor. The three of them looked at it, probably considering how the hell someone could throw a rock

to the eleventh floor of a block, which towered over all of its surrounding buildings. The thought

filled them with a vague sense of unease.

And then the others stormed in.

‘What the fuck was that!?’ George shuffled into the room holding a bottle of Johnny Walker

Red Label. His drunkenness, unlike Victor’s, did not seem to be affected by even the most extreme of

events. ‘Wow! What happened here?’

Nothing happened, thought Rosie, just a rock flew in through the window… nothing else.



And then Maria and Daniela came in and went straight to Rosie, asking if she was hurt, if she

was in shock, and tried to calm her down. But in their eyes she could read something else, buried

deep beneath the friendly concern, there was another unspoken question. Suddenly feeling exposed

to them, her response ‘I’m fine’ did not sound as convincing as she had hoped and they persisted

with their calming words, having misread her.

Victor was assessing the situation.‘Don’t worry, everyone. We’ll think of something!’ And he slid into the living room, looking

for that ‘something’.

Rosie looked around. The small room with the tilted ceiling was now filled with all of the

people that were at their party. Vasko and Ivaylo were approaching the window. Daniela warned

them of the shards of glass on the floor with a high-pitched shriek, which resulted in Ivaylo giving her

an annoyed look and Vasko raising the broom and dust-pan he had been carrying as if saying ‘We’re

not retards but I’m not so sure about you, my dear…’ They swept the broken glass and Ivaylo popped

his head out of the window, shouting ‘Who do you think you’re throwing rocks at, you little brats!’

Vasko pulled him back in and carefully removed one sharp shard that had been hanging from the

upper part of the window frame. As he did that, he looked out into the snowstorm at the closest

building which was only eight stories high and over two hundred feet away.‘That must have been one hell of a strong kid there…’ he said to himself.

Behind him George shouted.

‘Take this, you sons of bitches!’ he grabbed the rock from the floor and threw it out of the

window past Vasko’s head.

‘George!’ several of them shouted at him at once.

‘Are you mad, Georgie?!’ Daniela exclaimed ‘What if you hit someone?’

George frowned at her.

‘Well, what if they had hit one of us?’ he replied.

The distant sound of a car alarm came to them muffled by the wind and the snowstorm.

‘Retard…’ Vasko muttered and shook his head.

At that moment, Victor came back with a triumphant expression, holding a large cardboard

box and a roll of sellotape.

And so they fixed the problem. Victor and Ivaylo covered the broken window, while the

others were back in the living room, where George was showing them a funny video about a snake

stuck under a windscreen wiper.

Trying to get away from all the commotion, Rosie had sneaked to the bathroom. She

splashed some water on her face and looked into the mirror. Even paler than usual, she now looked

like a ghost, her green eyes wide and uncertain, her skin – almost transparent. She was appalled (and

also annoyed to a certain extent) by the way her appearance made it so blatantly obvious that she

had done something wrong and she wished for the gift of a master poker player’s face, that she could

call to her aid at will, and tuck all those treacherous emotions under it.

Suddenly, her vision flickered and for split second there, she was looking into the mirror but

what she saw was not her reflection. There was a man in the snow… crawling away from a car. His

face was an imperceptible mask of blood but still looked vaguely familiar to Rosie. And then, as

swiftly as the vision had appeared, it was gone, leaving Rosie staring at her own scared self.

‘It’s your imagination, Rose… just that!’ she assured her self. ‘ Nothing else! Just the overactive

imagination you have always suffered of…’

Her right hand reached instinctively and grabbed the tiny medallion that she was wearing

under her baggy blue t-shirt. In an instant, as if injected with a sedative, her body and her mind

seemed to relax. Her pulse slowed down and all the tension left the features of her face. She took

long deep breaths, until she regained her composure.

Rosie walked out of the bathroom and into the small corridor where, to her absolute horror,

Kersh was waiting for her.

‘What do you want?’ she asked coldly and immediately regretted it. They had been friends

once.



‘What do I want?’ Kersh smiled humorlessly. ‘What do I want!?’ He looked away from her.

‘Look, Kersh, I’m so sorry…’

‘So, you regret it then!’

‘Just forget it ever happened.’ said Rosie, being utterly unconvincing. ‘Please… I can’t do this

to Nick!’

Somehow the name ‘Nick’ sounded strangely interchangeable with the word ‘myself’. Kersh frowned.

‘Well, you are doing it anyways!’ he said. ‘You did say you felt nothing for him anymore.’

‘I know what I said! Don’t make it sound like…’

‘So, why lie to yourself?’ Kersh persisted.

‘You know nothing about me!’ she said raising her voice. ‘Please, just let it go!’

He was the one writing all those lyrics about feelings and stuff, Rosie thought, shouldn’t he

understand better? But Kersh did not seem to understand, he just sighed with bitter resignation.

‘Whatever’ he muttered and walked back into the living room. Rosie waited for a little while

and followed him.

A heated conversation was taking place in the living room.

‘Come on, man!’ Ivaylo was almost shouting at Vasko ‘You never watch the recordings thenight after the concert! It’s for partying!’

Despite Ivaylo’s party-breaking superstitions, Vasko seem intent on seeing the recording of

their concert tonight, telling everyone there was a passage that he had played utterly different from

what he had planned and he and Victor were rolling with laughter about it. The others weren’t so

amused by that. Vasko was the keyboardist of ‘The Outer Limit’, the little band that he and the two

guitarists - Ivaylo and Kersh - had started a few years back. They had soon met George, who was the

drummer, Victor - the bassist, and had eventually been joined by their singer and jewel in the crown

– Rosie. There had been discussions about the name and heated arguments had ensued and in the

end they had just borrowed the title of the popular TV series about the paranormal, which no one

seemed to have a problem with, but also no one really liked that much. The name had stuck

regardless and it hadn’t been long before ‘The Outer Limit’ had become the stars of their high school

and a permanent fixture to all school events, including this year’s Christmas party, which had taken

place just a few hours ago, marking the beginning of the holidays – a time of solemn celebration for

some and a drinking marathon for others. ‘The Outer Limit’ were of the latter type and af ter playing

a modest set of ten songs at the school event, they had retired (along with the two girls, Maria and

Daniela, who were acting as their fan club) to Victor’s parents’ second flat, which anyone hardly ever

used, and which was perfect for an afterparty.

Ivaylo continued protesting against Vasko’s violating of the sacred rule not to watch any

recordings until the next day, but the latter could not be bothered by that and was nonchalantly

exporting the recording from the miniDV camera with which Victor’s father had filmed them earlier.

At the moment when the computer gave out a loud beep to announce it had finished capturing the

video, all of them were there in the room – Kersh and Rosie on the two sides of the door leading to

the corridor, keeping a safe distance from each other – a space of nine feet in which a million

unspoken questions hung precariously like icicles, while the two occasionally threw seemingly casual

glances at each other; Vic, returning to his drunken state, was wandering around, spitting angry

comments about the apparent deafness of the sound technician, the lack of organization, the

tediousness of high school and the low-quality of the alcohol; George, who had seemed inseparable

from the bottle of Red Label, had switched his interest towards Maria’s long legs and the brunette

was now being taught how to correctly hold the drumsticks; Ivaylo and Daniela were both leaning

over Vasko, Ivaylo with a frowning expression, Daniela with an excited one, her long red hair

brushing against the keyboardist’s shoulder. Vasko clicked the play button and brought up the image

of the familiar hall where the Christmas party had taken place a few hours ago.

George’s father had briefly recorded the two hundred and twenty students that had filled the

hall several minutes before the beginning of the show, all of them dressed up, smiling and chatting,

creating a decent amount of noise. The camera was then pointed at the curtain, which looked



deceivingly still, concealing the storm behind it. Rosie remembered very well the chaos that reigned

behind that curtain.

Dancers were running around barefoot and half-dressed, juggling hair straigtheners, curling

irons and make-up kits, amateur actors were conversing with the bare walls reciting lines long

forgotten in pre-stage fright, the hosts were drowning in the paper sea of the mile-long script, and

one lonely beatboxer was trying to subordinate this whole symphonic orchestra of overexcitedhuman beings to some rhythm of his. Sets were being moved around, falling to the ground with a

thunderous sound, whenever the carriers dropped the princess’s tower or Juliet’s balcony. And

countless steps echoed on the wooden stage as if entangled in an elaborate tap dance. The audience

was cut off by this loud artistic madhouse by the thick black curtain onto which the camera was now

focusing but was unable to penetrate it with the roentgen precision of Rosie’s memories.

At the point where the two parts of the curtain met, a little sun rose – Rosie, with her blonde

curls of sunshine and fair skin was peeking at the crowd with a bewildered and yet charming

expression. She stood there for a brief moment, throwing a quick glance full of anticipation,

eagerness and a little fear, and as fast as her head had popped through the curtain, she was gone,

sinking into the backstage darkness. The guys, seeing this for the first time, laughed at her comic

appearance. Kersh remained unnaturally still and silent.Then the hosts came out on the stage - a tall boy dressed in a black shirt, probably bought

from an expensive shop at the mall, and a dark-haired beauty on twelve-centimeter heels, with a

face hidden behind a mask of make-up, an expression of indecipherable emotions drawn with an

eyeliner. She was wearing something that (with some imagination) could pass as a dress, but most

normal people would call it a longish singlet. With a confident gait the couple approached the two

microphones waiting for them and after they were met with some awkward sparse applause by the

audience and with feedback by the speakers, they started following the script. They tried to

humorously overpraise the winter holiday, wished merry Christmas to everyone and hinted at the

coming New Year’s Eve and everything that high school students associated it with. The boy with the

black shirt made a futile attempt at telling a joke about the end of the world which, according to the

Mayans, was scheduled for today. The twenty-first of December, however, had so far been amazingly

uneventful and apart from the first term of school, the fifth season of a Turkish soap opera, and a

couple of teenage relationships, nothing had really ended.

‘Skip these losers!’ Vic said, his words intermingled with alcohol -induced laughter. ‘Why

watch other people’s pratfall when we can watch our own!’

Vasko obeyed and fast-forwarded the video to five minutes later when the hosts were about

to retreat and invite the musicians onto the stage. Those had been five minutes that had lasted

forever, Rosie recalled. Five minutes, during which she had been straining to hear an introducing line

such as ‘And now please welcome…’ , ‘We offer the stage to…’ or ‘Coming up next are…’ and she

wished she could have skipped these five minutes with a click of the mouse just like Vasko had done,

but she had had to live through them. This torture had ended when the boys, gathered in a circle,

having left a space for her, had called her name and she had joined the group hug with Ivaylo on her

right and Kersh on her left, and that was when she had felt invincible and had started humming some

nondescript tune.

On the small screen of Vasko’s laptop, showing the small stage, the small versions of the

members of ‘The Outer Limit’ came out under the thunderous applause of their schoolmates. Out of

the two hundred and twenty students in the hall, about thirty were constant supporters of the band,

waving banners and shouting at the top of their lungs; about a hundred were enjoying their music

and liked them in a more restrained manner; and the rest were either indifferent to the six young

musicians or were part of the few capricious music lovers who labeled them as talentless. And still

the applause was deafening. Rosie’s appearance on stage was accompanied by some additional

whistling from the male part of the audience, which would have made that well-known and long-

dead psychologist smile complacently, had he been there. Rosie looked glamorous as usual – dressed

in black from head to toes except for her red scarf, which along with the rest of her clothing,

underlined the beauty of her long blond curls. The average romantic suitor would have compared



them to molten gold, a more skilled one, would have gone for celestial body comparisons. Below the

scarf, between Rosie’s collarbones something small was glittering, visible even on the low-resolution

video. A tiny emerald was hanging on a fine silver chain around her neck. Rosie never seemed to part

with the medallion and it had become a thing that her schoolmates associated her with. Boys would

say it was as beautiful as her eyes. Girls would compliment her on her style. Most of them thought

the medallion was a sort of a talisman, a family heirloom or maybe a memento of a long lost butdeeply treasured love, but no one knew for sure because Rosie never really talked about it and

carefully evaded any questions concerning its origin. Just seeing the jewel on the video made Rosie

instinctively reach and grab the chain of the medallion, winding it around her fingers. It had become

something she would do unconsciously more and more often those days, a habit that she wanted to

put an end to. When she realized what she was doing she froze and looked around nervously to see if

someone had been watching her. Kersh was looking at her. ‘What are you staring at?’ she wanted to

shout at him with anger and contempt, but channeled these feelings only through one glance that

she threw at him. ‘Watch the screen!’ she seemed to order word lessly and they both turned their

eyes at it.

‘Hello, we are ‘The Outer Limit’! We control the horizontal and the vertical!’ the little Rosie

with the red scarf said on the microphone.‘This is getting old.’ Rosie said. ‘We totally need to change it.’

‘Why? I like it…’ Vasko protested. He generally had a hard time accepting such dramatic

changes having to do with the band.

‘Maybe next time we can start with the lights down’ Kersh said thoughtfully, ‘and then Rosie

walks in just before the verse starts. How about that?’

Rosie felt awkward when he spoke her name aloud. She had expected to find more affection

in his voice but this cold and callous ‘Rosie’ meant only ‘our vocalist’ and nothing more. She had been

ready to support him by saying ‘Good idea’ or at least ‘We should give it a go’ but now she felt the

need to respond to the coldness with coldness and she did not say anything.

‘That is not gonna work’ Ivaylo said.

‘And so, we begin!’ the little screen-Rosie exclaimed.

George jumped at this and literally pointed Maria at the screen.

‘Whoa, guys! Watch the opening roll!’ His screen counterpart played an elaborate drum roll

and the first song began.

‘Sweet!’ said George smugly.

If we assumed music was a form of art comprised of elements such as pitch, tempo, meter,

articulation, dynamics and timbre, if it was about perfection and virtuosity and outstanding skill, then

‘The Outer Limit’ could not even compete for the title ‘musicians’; but if music was the ability to

af fect people’s moods, then they were the shit! Somehow, their playing had the power to draw

people out of their mundane reality, to erase not all, but some of the negative thoughts from their

minds and to submerge them into the brief and yet beautiful illusion of music.

Rosie looked at her screen counterpart as she began singing. It was one of their songs – they

had composed it together and even though it wasn’t an amazing song, Rosie felt proud and happy

with what they had done. Her problems with Nick and Kersh were starting to drift away and a new

sensation was quickly replacing her fear and uncertainty, something new that seemed unfamiliar

because she hadn’t felt this way for a long time – it was the sense of floating calmness…

This was when everyone in the room around her suddenly recoiled. The abruptness of their

unprovoked reaction gave Rosie a start and she looked at them bewildered. It was like they had

heard a sudden loud noise or seen a scary face coming out of nowhere.

‘What the…’ Vic whispered, sounding scared and confused.

Heads began turning and Rosie could see their expressions of confusion and disbelief. And

then they all looked at the screen again as if it was the source of the disturbance.

‘Wait...’ Ivaylo said.

‘Uh, this… this’ Vasko was struggling to say something. ‘This didn’t happen!’

‘Stop it!’ Daniela shouted and looked away from the screen.



Rosie watched herself in the video, still singing the verse, nothing unusual or disturbing.

‘Stop it, stop it, stop it…’ Daniela started whispering to herself as if refusing to believe what

she was seeing.

George took his hand off Maria’s shoulders, stood up from the sofa and slowly came closer,

his eyes fixed on the screen, his look puzzled and what was more terrifying – sober.

‘I told you R.M.Corp have been messing with the Barrier!’ Victor said, referring to aconspiracy theory of his about the Ray Marks Corporation.

‘Seriously, man, what the hell is this?!’ Kersh said and he approached the screen too.

‘It did not happen…‘ Ivaylo said. ‘None of this…’

Rosie still couldn’t see anything unusual but Vic’s remark had made it clear for her. She

reached for the silver chain and pulled the emerald medallion out of her t-shirt. As her fingers

wrapped around the cold gemstone, she could almost feel it throbbing with energy like it was… it

was…

It was doing what it was supposed to be doing, Rosie thought, it was serving its purpose and

doing it well. But not in this situation! Something was terribly wrong. None of the others were

supposed to… see things; they were not supposed to bring up the Barrier in a conversation and out

of nowhere.This was when the thought crossed her mind for the first time.

‘ Maybe I should take it off.’

The very idea of parting with the medallion made Rosie’s skin crawl. Her pulse quickened and

adrenaline rushed through her veins. She felt numb with fear, panic and a sudden sense of insecurity.

She felt cold, on the verge of starting to tremble uncontrollably. It was a maddening sensation and

she wished for nothing else but for it to cease. ‘No!’ she whispered to herself, trying to reassure that

unconscious part of her being that she was not going to be harmed. ‘Nothing is going to stand

between us’ , she thought, ‘let the others talk about the madness; let them glimpse what is on the

other side of the Barrier.’ It did not concern her, did it? She did not need to know. Knowledge killed.

And even if she knew, she did not want to change anything. Why would she? People who attempted

to change things died. She could remember her parents clear enough. What had happened to them

had been a memorable lesson, it had taught her one thing – to stay away from the matters of this

world, to retreat and live on. You couldn’t fight and you couldn’t run… what was left was to hide and

she had become good at it. The emerald medallion was exactly that – her own personal hiding place,

a retreat and a sanctuary. Wherever she went, it was there, around her neck, the soothing coldness

of the tiny gemstone against her skin, shielding her from the world, softly whispering ‘as long as you

feel me, you are safe’.

She knew there was nowhere else to go but into the soothing turquoise oblivion where it was

nice and warm.

Nothing’s going to stand between us, she thought, but maybe a second won’t hurt … After all,

there was something going on, maybe an even greater danger than the one that Rosie was constantly

in. The idea evolved in her head, justifications were created out of thin air, the ever-present law

stating that the medallion should not be removed at any circumstances was beginning to bend under

the pressure of logic and the exigency of the present situation.

‘This is messed up, man’ George said, sounding completely sober. ‘This is so messed up…’

Rosie lifted the silver chain and took the medallion off. No one was looking at her as she did

it and this was lucky for her because as she held the jewel away from her and left it on the nearby

bookshelf, she experienced a most unpleasant sensation. Rosie’s features twisted into a grimace of

discomfort and pain as she felt like something had pushed the air out of her lungs. Her vision blurred

and doubled and, for one terrifying moment when she was fully aware of what she was supposed to

be looking at but could only see colorless shapes and shadows, she thought she had gone blind. Then

came the pressure. Rosie felt as if she had been lifted to a different altitude and her body was

struggling to adjust. Her hearing became muffled and then suddenly her ears popped and the sounds

of the room came back… richer, deeper, wider. Finally, Rosie managed to blink the world into focus.

Tears were running down her cheeks. She was covered in freezing cold sweat. This must be how



newborns feel, Rosie thought, brought out of the warmth and comfort and into the painful coldness

that reality is. Welcome, the cold breath of the world greeted her, and she was reborn.

Her eyes were drawn to the screen. It was showing something else now, something radically

different from what Rosie remembered. In reality, ‘The Outer Limit’ had finished their setlist of eight

songs successfully and had been called back for two encores. Then, they had packed their

instruments and joined the crowd to watch some of the other performers, mainly dancers andwannabe comedians. They had soon got bored of this and after speaking to some of their friends,

they had gone to Vic’s apartment.

In the video, they were supposed to be two minutes into their first song … but they were not

playing any more. Something weird was going on. The camera, now slightly tilted, was wedged

between two chairs partly obscuring the view. It was showing the hall completely transformed into a

scene of chaos and destruction. The part of the south wall which was closest to the stage had been

destroyed as if by some powerful explosion. Part of the ceiling was gone and massive gusts of snow

were being blown in through it. There were massive cracks spreading over the hall and occasionally

sections of the ceiling would collapse, raining pieces of concrete over the two hundred and twenty

students. Chaos reigned everywhere. The students were running and pushing and trampling each

other. Most of them were huddled at the exit but it was so crammed that it would take at least aquarter of an hour for them to escape in this way. A massive fire had started moving along the south

wall, consuming the wall paneling, the chairs and whatever else was in its way. The hall was starting

to fill with thick black unbreathable smoke. There were several small fires burning on the stage and in

one of them Rosie was pretty sure she could see Kersh’s guitar (affectionately called Christabell), the

same V-shaped Gibson that was now resting against the wall in Vic’s flat, just a few feet away from

her. She was afraid to look at what was happening on the stage but could not turn away. Pieces of

the drum kit were scattered everywhere. Vasko was gone. Ivaylo was helping Vic down the short

staircase, while the latter was trembling with pain every time he stepped on his right leg. Kersh and

George were struggling to carry someone and with growing horror Rosie realized it was her. One of

the projectors fell off the lighting rig and crashed into the left set of speakers sending sparks

everywhere. Another one detached and plummeted dangerously close to the boys and Rosie. And

then the whole frame of the rig was moving and shaking and coming loose.

Rosie could hear Daniela crying into Maria’s arms and quietly repeating ‘stop it, stop it, stop

it …’

An explosion shook the camera making it almost fall over. This time it was the north wall and,

in addition to the flying bricks and pieces of wood and plastic, now there were bodies. They were

lifted in the air like kicked rag-dolls, flew for a few brief seconds, and then fell to the ground and did

not move. The snowstorm blew in through the new hole, but this time there was something else

there, shrouded in the white veil. Something dark descended from the sky and a great big leg

stepped onto the rubble of the destroyed wall. It twisted and bulged with peculiarly shaped muscles,

and ended in seven crooked black claws, which were as long as a human arm. The leg was not

covered with skin, nor fur, but with something that looked a lot like fish scales.

And then Rosie heard another explosion, only this one was not coming from the laptop. It

came from outside. They all turned their heads towards the window. Vic slowly approached it and

peeked through the blinds.

‘My God…’

All eight of them gathered along the window and looked outside.

In the distance, an enormous ball of fire was rising over where the local gas station had used

to be. The inferno was spreading and it engulfed several of the nearby buildings before it started its

ascension to the sky. Another building nearby went up in flames; the lights of the surrounding blocks

flickered for a second and then went out. The neighboring buildings of Vic’s block were next. And

suddenly the light bulb in the living room flickered and in the next moment they were standing in the

dark, their faces lit only by the hellish fireball that hung over the town. The fire gave out so much

light that the clouds directly above it looked as white as the sun would make them look. It was one of

those humbling sights that made people feel little and insignificant.



Several hundred feet away from the gas station, the flames illuminated another bizarre

scene. A dark block as high as Vic’s was rising there. The skies above it opened and down from the

grey clouds a colossal figure descended. It glided through the air on two pairs of wings, which were

made of membranes stretched over long bony limbs. Its body was long and thick and had weird

swellings and bulges that moved like internal tumors with a life of their own. The creature’s

movements looked bizarre, its muscles contracted in weird asymmetrical patterns but this did notseem to hinder its maneuverability. It descended onto the roof of the block, its massive claws

crushing the concrete, sending heavy pieces of it flying to the streets below.

Rosie and her friends could not do anything but watch in silence as it raised its elongated

eyeless head, opened its gigantic maw and gave out a long deafening cry.

‘It’s the end of the world, man!’ Alex laughed, looking at the snowstorm outside.

‘Well, the end of the world had better hurry, ‘cause there is only half an hour left.’ said Nick.

He was pretty much fed up with all the-end-of-the-world jokes.

It had been more than three hours since they had left the capital in Nick’s black Volvo. They

had got off the highway fifteen minutes ago and were now entering the main town area of Stara

Zagora. The journey normally took about two hours and Nick would often push it to an hour and half,but he could barely see the road in this snowstorm and he did not dare go faster. Fortunately, there

weren’t any other cars on the road to Stara Zagora. How lucky was that, Nick thought. His friend and

co-worker Alexander was nervously tapping his fingers on the glove compartment. He took out a

cigarette.

‘Apocalypse or no apocalypse, there is no smoking in my car!’ Nick said.

‘Come on, man’ Alex said ‘It’s been hours! I have my needs!’

‘Do you want me to step on it?! I bet we’ll end up in that tree over there.’

‘I was just saying…’

‘Or you could spend the holidays in a hospital? How about that?’

‘Well, you won’t need to hurry if I just…’

Alex was looking cross and Nick could see more of his nagging coming, so he said:

‘Ok, go ahead.’

Alex lit his cigarette and exhaled smoke in the warm inside of the car. Nick stepped on the

gas anyway.

‘So, how’s that girl of yours?’ Alex asked.

‘Rosie? She’s fine. I haven’t seen her for weeks, though.’ Nick said.

‘Sucks, man. You should get a proper woman!’

‘And now I have to endure a night with her band mates…’

‘As I said: you need a proper woman.’

Nick just shook his head and smiled.

Rosie had given Nick the address of their bassist’s flat and had told him to come. He wasn’t

going to miss this opportunity to enjoy his long-awaited break from work.

Four miles to the east, on the eleventh floor of a tall block on a hill, in a small room with a

tilted ceiling, Rosie’s lips met Kersh’s after he had finished a long sentence ending with the word

‘music’ .

At the same moment, the front tire of Nick’s Volvo ran over something hard and sharp. The

steering wheel jerked in his hands and the car jumped.

‘What the hell was that?!’ Alex shouted shaken and startled.

Staring through the windshield, Nick could now see black spots in the blurry whiteness. There

were black rocks the size of watermelons, scattered sporadically on the road. ‘It’s like it has been

raining rocks,’ Nick thought. ‘They can’t have sprung from the ground, that’s for sure…’ He avoided

the first few rocks but then there were more and bigger ones.

Nick hit the brakes. The tires locked in place.

The car slid on the cover of snow, spun out of control and hit the safety barrier. Hot sparks

flew in the cold winter air.



Nick was struggling to regain control but then the front left tire went flat and the front

bumper of the Volvo dug into the snow. A huge black boulder materialized in front of them and Nick

could only watch helplessly as the car flew towards it at more than sixty miles per hour. It crashed

into the boulder head on and flipped and the next moment Nick was looking at a world that was

upside down. His seatbelt dug into his shoulder as it was trying to hold him in his seat against the

power of gravity. In a sudden, the world shook violently and started spinning like a centrifuge.

Nick found himself standing in the middle of a barren field where nothing grew and

everything was grey. For a moment his mind kept insisting that the world should still be rolling. He

struggled to remain on his feet.

There was no sun in the sky. The cold light seemed to be coming from everywhere. Like

everything else it was grey. On the dry cracked ground a million volcanic rocks of different sizes lay

still. They looked exactly like the ominous black rocks that had been on the road to Stara Zagora.

Directly in front of Nick, there was a wall, and on the wall – a window.

Behind the window madness reigned. He could see Rosie and he could see someone else. It

wasn’t him. It was that annoying bastard guitarist from ‘The Outer Limit’. In an outburst of rage, Nick

reached and grabbed one of the black rocks and threw it at the window. It shattered and with it theworld around Nick fell apart and he was spinning again.

The infernal centrifuge came to a halt when the Volvo struck a large tree and stood still,

turned onto its right side. A huge tree-shaped dent on the roof came almost to Nick’s head. Smoke

was coming out from the under the hood.

Nick hung on his seatbelt over the right seat in which Alex lay motionless. A sharp pain

pierced Nick’s right arm. When he looked at it, the sight wasn’t pleasant either – there was a large

bump where the bone had snapped and almost pierced the flesh. A purple spot was spreading under

his skin.

Then he looked at Alex with growing concern. His cigarette had snapped but was still in his

mouth. It looked like he had bit on the filter. Alex wasn’t moving, his head hung limply as if his neck

was made of jelly. Nick couldn’t see his face but everything was dreadfully obvious. He wasn’t

breathing. Nick tried to reach with his left arm and check Alex’s pulse. His belt suddenly came

undone and Nick fell onto his friend. He could see Alex’s face now – a trail of blood was reaching

from his mouth and down his neck. His eyes were glass-like, the terror and confusion of the crash

forever engraved in them.

‘Shit’ Nick whispered helplessly.

There was something terribly wrong going on here and for the first time Nick thought that

the disappearance of all the cars and the weird black rocks might have something to do with his job.

The possibility was terrifying since he was only a theoretician, a programmer supervising the complex

tracking system of Ray Marks Corp and knew nothing of being in the field next to the very subjects

that he tracked from a distance. He only knew them as dots on the radar and then as photographs at

best. He had only ever met two.

He reached for the glove compartment and in-between the car papers his hand got hold of

the gun that was always there and that Nick had hoped never to be compelled to use.

The cold metal made him think of using it on that fucker who was trying to steal his Rosie. He

would jam the barrel into his mouth and…

But that wasn’t the reason why he took the gun. If what he supposed had happened was

true, they would all be in much bigger trouble.

He closed Alex’s eyes and wondered what to do next. He put the gun into his jacket’s p ocket,

took his cell phone out and dialed a number named ‘RMCSoftWorks’. There was no signal.

Nick cursed his mobile operator and tried to call the emergency line with vague hope that

this one might come through. It didn’t.

He tried to get out but the driver’s door was badly misshapen and would not budge. He

struck it with whatever strength remained in him. Immediately, his right arm protested sending sharp



impulses of pain that almost made him faint. Nick swore and lay in an awkward pose trying to hold

on to the driver’s seat, his eyes closed, praying for the pain to go away. After a couple of minutes had

passed he squeezed between the two front seats (the dent in the roof had made going over them

impossible), got to the back of the Volvo and grabbed a shirt that he had thrown there before they

had left. It took him more than ten minutes to make a bandage and a sling for his right arm and there

were a number of occasions when he would touch or twist the broken limb and become paralyzedwith pain. When he was done, he carefully climbed to the car door that was over his head and tried

to open it. It looked less damaged than the driver’s one but, nevertheless, he was sweating with

effort and pain when the door finally swung open and he climbed out of the car. The cool air felt

refreshing after the smoky inside of the Volvo. Then the wind blew stronger, pierced the sweat

drenched Nick and he shivered. He propped himself on his left arm and took his legs out. Suddenly,

his foot slid on the surface of the car, which was wet and slippery, he fell to the ground face down

into the shallow snow and the pain from his broken arm made him scream. His mind exploded with

white-hot agony and tears ran down his cheeks. Every attempt to move caused him unbearable

suffering, so he stood still, in the prison of his aching body, and wished the pain would go away.

When he was finally able to move again his face hurt from the freezing snow stuck to it. Theskin on his hands was pink and cracking. He coughed himself back to life and stood on his knees. Nick

tried his mobile again. No signal.

With much effort he stood up and walked back to the road. The first blocks of Stara Zagora

were just a hundred feet away; the one Rosie was in – some fifteen minutes by foot. But he would

get a signal, or meet people, much earlier, he thought, he would not get to see her unless she came

to the hospital tonight. Yep, that broken arm looked pretty bad. He walked on.

A white snowy sky hung over Stara Zagora and black volcanic rocks lay scattered on the

pavements and in the streets. Nick could now see giant ones, bigger than the one he had crashed in.

There were no people in sight.

Nick reached a gas station, where the lights were on. His phone finally connected to a cell. He

called the ‘RMCSoftWorks’ number again. The line was busy. He redialed as he reached the station

and walked in through the automatic glass doors.

‘Anyone? Hello! I need help! I was in an accident!’ he shouted as loud as he could. No one

responded and as he came around a row of food products he could see the counter. No one was

there. There was a small television hanging on the wall. It was on, but it was displaying only static.

A piercing howl came from outside the gas station. A crash of hard flesh against metal

echoed over the empty station. Nick ran back the way he had come, slowly popped his head round

the shelves of food products and looked outside.

There were dark animal shapes walking on four legs among the petrol pumps. His first

impression was that he was seeing a pack of wolves. However, these were no ordinary wolves and

once they came into the light he saw they were massive beasts with weirdly twisting muscles like

fantastic creatures drawn by an unskilled artist. They had two heads – one covered with the same

long grey fur that also covered the beasts’ bodies and one with patchy remains of blackened fur,

rotten, often missing an eye or two. Some of the wolves had a stump where the second head used to

be, as if they had lost it somewhere along the way. Their remaining head, however, looked nothing

less than healthy, functional and extremely deadly.

Then it dawned on him and he knew there could not be any other explanation. He was inside

a Rift. He knew it was true and yet and found it hard to believe. When people thought of Rifts, they

thought of them as something distant that happened to others, like hurricanes striking the States,

earthquakes shaking Japan, tsunamis in Haiti. The chance of you stumbling upon one of those natural

disasters was one in a million.

He stood there frozen in disbelief and did not even think of taking his gun out. What

protection could it possibly offer against the inhabitants of the other side of the Barrier? He realized

he hadn’t even taken the spare clips. He had what… eight bullets against (he counted the weird

beasts) twelve of them. ‘There’s my chance for a heroic suicide’ he thought with bitter humor.



One of the creatures struck one of the fuel dispensers and knocked it over onto the ground.

The hose wiggled, spilling petrol on the concrete. The monstrous wolves gathered over the puddle

and started sniffing it with great interest. Some of them probed the fuel with their tongues and

recoiled in disgust.

There is a Mediator nearby, Nick thought and the theoretical knowledge from the R.M.Corp

training came to his aid; and a Mediator would create a Rift with a radius of up to two hundred feetaround them. The Mediator was somewhere close by. And then Nick had his idea.

More creatures were gathering in front of the petrol station. One of them was carrying a big

shapeless object in his jaws. It dropped it on the ground and stuck its muzzle inside it. Others came

near it and the creature that had brought it snarled at them showing several rows of bloodied sharp

white teeth. Another monstrous wolf quickly took a bite of the object and tore a piece of it. It looked

like half a human ribcage. The sight of it struck Nick with horror but also gave him the determination

he needed. The creature that was being robbed of its food lunged at the other wolf and their bodies

tangled into a grapple, their jaws snapping at each other’s necks. The massive beasts managed to

knock another of the petrol pumps.

Ok! Quickly now!

Nick ran to the counter and got a lighter from a small stand there. Then he went around tothe shelves where the alcohol was and picked a bottle of cheap whiskey. There was also a mop

someone had left on the floor. How very convenient, Nick thought. He opened the bottle, pushed the

rag into it and turned it upside down to soak the rag with the alcohol. And he was ready. One more

thing, actually - he went to the back of the store and opened the back door.

Nick walked back to the front door and looked around the shelves of food. There were about

twenty of them now and in addition to that more black rocks had sprung up from the ground. Nick’s

pulse quickened. The Mediator must be really close, he thought, and prayed that he would kill him

with his plan. He also prayed to keep his own life.

And then he ran for the glass door and it slid open automatically. It made a sound and a

couple of the creatures looked his way, their eyes blazing red with hunger. At that moment he knew

he was going to die. He lit the rag and put all his strength in that one throw with his left hand.

The bottle of whiskey flew in an arc and landed a few feet away from the puddle of fuel.

Nick’s heart skipped a beat. Then as the bottle shattered, fire flew in all directions and lit the petrol.

That was all Nick needed before he turned around and ran like hell was on his trail. One of the

nightmarish wolves was sprinting after him.

The sound of four heavy feet running behind him threw Nick into panic. He ran faster,

through the store, round the counter, out of the back door and onto the snow-covered pavement

behind the petrol station. His broken arm hurt. His heart pumped blood at a frantic pace. Nick stole a

quick glance of his pursuer. It was one of the one-headed wolves. It was so close that Nick could see

the spinal cord which used to support the monster’s decayed head.

‘You can’t outrun it’ his rational mind told him and he knew this was the end but he felt

content with what he had done. He imagined the newspaper headings tomorrow: “ Mediator on a

killing spree in Stara Zagora!”, “RMC Seeker Nikolai Stoev blows up a gas station! Saves the whole

town”

The creature jumped. Nick froze. And then the world became blinding white and muffled

rumblings. This is what death is like, Nick thought, whiteness and weightlessness. He felt like falling

for a really long time, like a skydiver over a world of pure white.

Nick hit the ground, falling onto his broken arm, and the world became red for a second

before completely blacking out.

There was a field of black volcanic rocks as far as the eye could see. Between them fragments

of buildings lay scattered looking out of place in this alien plane. Nick could not move. He blinked…

… and the first thing he saw was the massive maw of the monstrous wolf that had been

chasing him. Its teeth were black, its breath had the putrid smell of death, its fur was greasy and



clotted in disgusting tufts, parts of it smouldering, giving off a thick smell of burnt flesh. Its eyes were

blank, thank God, Nick thought. A large metal bar was protruding from the monster’s head.

The snow around Nick was alive with the flicker of the gigantic flames. He looked back at the

where the gas station had been moments before. It was now replaced by an infernal ball of fire,

which rose a hundred feet and made the night look like a day.

His phone rang. His boss was finally calling him back.‘Nick?’

‘Mr. Jackson, I was in an accident.’ Nick spoke quickly. ‘Alex is dead. We drove into a Rift and

crashed. There is a Mediator loose in Stara Zagora… was, actually, cause I think I just blew him up. I’m

in pretty bad shape. I’ve been trying to get through to the emergency line…’

‘We’ve been trying to reach you, Nick. You won’t be able to call an ambulance or anything…

And there isn’t only one Mediator in Stara Zagora, I’m afraid…’

‘What?!’

‘There’s been a break out in the Power Plant. They’re currently passing through Stara

Zagora.’

‘How many?’ asked Nick quietly.

‘All of them.’ Nick swallowed.

‘But that can create a Rift the size of the whole town!’ he said.

‘Yes, but, Nick, the Plant is unharmed. They don’t seem to be on a killing spree. It’s

complicated. You have your medallion, don’t you?

‘Yes’ Nick lied.

‘Ok, then put it on, stay low. We’re sending a team to try to intercept and recapture them

with the Yucatec gemstones… If that fails, we’re going to strike them from the air once they’re out of

town. There should be rescue teams in a couple of hours. Can you make it?’

‘I suppose…’

‘Ok, Nick. Good luck… I have to go.’

‘Wait!’ Nick stopped him. ‘Mr. Jackson, was it the Seekers’ mistake?’

‘No, Nick, it is not your fault.’

‘I just hope…,’ Nick said, ‘Things don’t get as bad as Four-eleven…

‘They won’t, Nick… They won’t.’ And Mr. Jackson hung up.

Moving as fast as he could in his condition, Nick went along the deserted streets of Stara

Zagora. He was holding his mobile and kept trying to call Rosie but the signal was gone again. The

wind blew stronger and colder now and Nick would shiver at every gust coming his way.

Then he saw it – the tall block, where his Rosie was. ‘Is she really my Rosie?’ he thought ‘Has

she ever been?’

Nick peered around a corner and felt desperation grip him as he set his eyes upon the street

he had to cross.

Walking down the road there were dozens of ghostly figures – weird beings in emaciated

human bodies, dressed in white hospital gowns, walking barefoot in the snow, feet shuffling, limping

from side to side like awoken dead.

Nick slid back behind the corner and knew he could not pass while they were there. It would

be a suicide, and not even a heroic one, just pitiful. He tried to calm himself, to make himself think

and do so rationally, but the only thought that crossed his mind was to run… to hide! He would run to

one of the nearby blocks and maybe the door will be unlocked. He would slip inside and lay low, and

wait for them to pass. And if they started wreaking havoc, he would stay in a corner and hope the

ceiling doesn’t fall on him and bury him alive. He would hide, wait and hope. It was the most

reasonable thing to do.

Nick looked the nearest entrance to a block and started walking across the street towards it.

Half way there he suddenly froze having felt… a presence.

Nick looked to his right and there they were – less than thirty feet from him.



How?

The cold wind pierced him. He tried to move but his feet would not obey. There was nowhere

to run now and nowhere to go.

Nick reached into his pocket and grabbed the gun tightly. Eight bullets… What could eight

bullets do against them… the very children of Yucatec? What good would bullets do against their

inhuman wrath? It would be Four-eleven all over again. He could see the titles: “Tragedy!” and“Thousands dead in Stara Zagora after Mediator break -out!” He would die and his name would be

lost among the many who would share the same fate tonight. At the end of the world.

They came closer and he could see their faces. To his utmost terror, he could recognize them.

All around him were familiar faces that he, as part of his job, had discovered, tracked, located and

thus sentenced to lifelong imprisonment and exploitation. It was his job and he was being paid for it.

He knew them, Nick thought as they approached, but did they know him? Would they

recognize his face as the face of their adversary and would they hold a grudge against him? He

wondered as they walked towards him and he knew there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

There were so many of them. And it did not really matter whether they knew who he was, for they

had endured so much pain that Nick was sure they would seek revenge on the whole human race.

They were so close now that he could see their eyes, which looked just like human eyes – green and blue and brown, big and small. It was only from really up close that one could see what

made them different, and Nick could now see how they were forever scarred by what they had seen,

marked by their heavy burden. Those eyes made him shiver worse than the wind.

They never laid their eyes on Nick.

The Mediators barely paid any attention to him and simply walked past. Their eyes were

fixed somewhere ahead and they seemed to care little for anything else but their goal. They did not

seem to feel cold, despite being covered only by the thin cloth of the gowns.

Several of them brushed against Nick and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

He was shivering with fear and cold. His broken arm hurt like hell.

The Mediators just walked on.

Then, suddenly, the soldiers appeared and opened fire. Bullets flew around Nick.

He fell to the ground, covered his head and prayed for his life.

After what felt like an eternity spent in hell, Nick got up. The street had gone quiet. There

was dust everywhere around him and he could not see a thing. Nick tried to remember the direction

of the block he was looking for and set off, stumbling through rubble, snow and dust.

After a couple of minutes he reached the entrance of the block. There was no electricity. The

staircase was dark. The elevators would not be working. Eleventh floor, Rosie had said. Feeling

terribly exhausted, Nick sat on the steps leading to the entrance to catch his breath. He took his

phone out and dialed Rosie again.

‘I told you R.M. Corp were playing with the Barrier!’ Vic said. ‘We should have all gone to that

protest against the Power Plant…’ Then he turned to Ivaylo. ‘You’ve been inside the Rifts at the

Plant…’

‘It was different.’ Ivaylo shook his head. ‘It’s all controlled there… contained. They are only

letting energy through. The Mediators are constantly drugged. It’s nothing like this.’

Meanwhile, George was panicking.

‘Guys… you’ve seen those videos from Tokyo, haven’t you?’ He asked them, his eyes wide

with fear. ‘Four-eleven…. Do you think that’s going to happen to us?’

And then everyone was talking at the same instant, their fear growing at the bringing up of

the infamous tragedy of November the fourth.

‘Quiet’ Vic shushed them. ‘You saw those things’

As if to punctuate his words, a weird dog-sized silhouette flew past the window with a

buzzing sound.

‘We need to hide!’ Vic said.



‘Do you have a basement?’ Kersh asked. ‘That will be the safest place we can get to.’

Vic nodded.

As the others were talking, panicking and arguing, Rosie was looking out of the window. She

saw them first and she knew immediately what they were.

White figures were walking in the streets. There were dozens of them in a bizarre white

procession.As she laid her eyes upon them, Rosie felt sad for those people and their fate and what they

had endured, but she also felt fear grip her, fear for her own life and her own secrets. She knew they

must have escaped from the Plant and she wished they hadn’t. Mediators were slaves; they were

captured and used by humans like aphids were herded by ants. That’s how it had been for a decade

and Rosie saw no need for a change. She had got used to it. Change, she thought, made things

uncomfortable.

What she feared most came next.

There was music in the wind and in the music there were voices.

Her friends joined her at the window and she knew they could not hear what she was

hearing.

‘My God.’ ‘Are those… are those…’

‘Yes, they must be Mediators…’

There are no voices, Rosie tried to convince herself, it ’s only the wind… only the wind… But

the voices were there and, like a thousand chanting little singers, she could hear them repeating the

same three words but she could not understand them.

‘How many of them are there?’ Vasko asked.

‘How many were the ones on Four-eleven?’ asked George.

‘I don’t know…

‘Five… there were five of them…’ Kersh said thoughtfully and then, snapping out of it, urged

them: ‘We need to go! Now!

Vic was already at the front door. He grabbed the keys for the basement, put his shoes on in

a hurry and went out onto the eleventh floor landing.

‘Come on, guys!’ he called.

As he spoke, a blood-curdling shriek came from the bottom of the dark staircase and Vic

recoiled. Whatever it was, it did not sound human, nor did it sound like something you could reason

with. Vic ran back inside, locked the door and leaned against it.

‘What the hell was that?’ Kersh asked him.

Vic just shook his head.

‘Change of plan. We’re staying here’ he said.

Another loud explosion came from outside and Rosie saw that Jeeps, tanks and other military

vehicles, that she did not know the names of, were driving in from the opposite end of the street.

Men in black uniforms, which everyone would recognize as Agents of R.M.Corp, were appearing from

everywhere. They opened fire at the weird white procession. In a sudden, the air was filled with the

vibrations of a thousand gunshots. It went on and on, rifles being reloaded as others maintained the

constant rain of lead and death. More white figures walked in from behind the corner and all of them

stopped in front of the line of fire with nothing but thin white cloth standing between them and the

bullets.

There must be a hundred of them, Rosie thought, and felt as if she was going to be sick. The

music and the voices she could hear became louder now. She wished for this not to be happening

and it was not only because of the fear of the unknown (and Mediators were the very embodiment

of the unknown) so typical of humans, but the desperate need to deny the existence of all this – the

Corporation, the Mediators, the Barrier. She didn’t want to know, she didn’t want to see, to hear, to

smell. She wanted to be ignorant and blissful in her own little world of emerald walls and barriers.

Her body started shaking against her will and her mind was too busy, occupied with the voices she

was hearing, to stop the unnatural tremors.



There were a million flashes between the snowflakes as the riffles fired. Finally, someone

shouted ‘Cease fire’. And then there was silence.

Two of the white figures fell to the ground. Two out of a hundred fell and the rest were

unharmed. The retaliation came next.

Threads of silvery light extended from their bodies and started growing in girth and length till

they transformed into massive incorporeal tentacles at least twenty feet long and two feet thick.Hundreds of them, wavered above the Mediators’ heads, like the most unnatural forest in the world.

Rosie was desperately trying to deny what she was seeing, to attribute it to the gunfire, the

veil of the snow, to some weird optical illusion… but she could not fool herself. She knew very well

that what she was seeing were thoughts weaved into matter, the physical manifestation of a superior

consciousness that was capable of altering reality and bending it to its will. Demonic tentacles for a

demonic race, she thought. It seemed fitting. Each one of them had a gift. Each one of them bore a

curse.

The ethereal limbs also brought back memories of her parents. Grief and fear gripped Rosie,

and she wished for the past not to have happened. She felt the need to hide. The ghostly tentacles lunged at the Agents. Soldiers flew in the air, as if swept away by a

mighty hurricane. The tentacles were reaching and grabbing humans. They tore apart the sol diers’bodies with effortless ease. Blood rained on the white snow. Vehicles joined the human carcasses in

the air, equally weightless, and the silvery forces squashed them to unrecognizable parallelepipeds of

metal. Street lamps were uprooted and flew in the direction of the Agents, who started firing at will.

A large Jeep came through from the side of the Agents. It had a weird device on top of it – a

weird wrinkled satellite dish, ten feet in diameter, in the middle of which lay an emerald gemstone

the size of a human head. It glowed with a soft otherworldly radiance in the white night. The ends of

the ethereal tentacles that came close to it were cut off. They simply disappeared when the rock got

within fifty feet of them. Surrounded by the limbs of light, the vehicle looked like a giant bubble of

defiance submerged in a sea of silvery madness. It reached the first of the Mediators and the

tentacles extending from their bodies faded in an instant. Rosie felt a strong urge to put her

medallion back on.

There was a visible disturbance in the group of the Mediators. The ones in the back of the

procession recoiled and ran in panic like animals confronted by their natural predator.

The agents reformed their ranks and opened fire.

The front lines of the Mediators were mowed down, their bodies shuddering while they were

being pierced by dozens of bullets. They collapsed like lifeless oversized puppets, powerless and

helpless.

More of the Mediators ran but there were a couple of them that gathered together and

joined hands. A nearby five-storey block suddenly shook violently; it was torn from its foundation,

lifted into the air and hurled at the Jeep carrying the giant emerald.

The very ground shook as it was hit by hundreds of tons of concrete. Being on the eleventh

floor, Rosie and her friends felt like on a rocking boat.

A colossal cloud of dust covered the street. The emerald was buried. The Agents’ lines were

broken. They fled and the white walkers resumed their march. The music came again in Rosie’s head,

this time a million times louder, and she felt like her head was going to explode. She fell to the floor

and moaned with pain. Kersh was the only one who noticed, the others were still looking out into the

snowstorm and the dust.

‘Rosie, what’s wrong?’ he asked.

She did not hear his words. Her mind was full of the music, the voices and their unintelligible

three-word chant. It kept repeating and with each time echoes of the previous iterations were

overlaid and amplified.

Rosie screamed with pain.

Everyone turned their heads at her. It was their turn to be confused by her reaction to

nothing. They could hear none of this. Rosie’s fingers dug into her hair, her nails sunk into her scalp

and she tried to cast the voices away but could not.



‘Rosie, are you all right?’ Vic knelt by her and gently grabbed her shoulders. Kersh was there

immediately after him.

‘Calm down’ Kersh said, taking her pain for a fit of hysteria. ‘We’re going to be alright!’

Rosie gave out another scream of pain and tears ran down her cheeks. Kersh embraced her.

‘There, there, Rose. You’ll be fine.’ he whispered softly.

He called me Rose… he never calls me Rose. The thought went through her mind acting aspainkiller as it surged through neurons but the relief was brief, it did not last.

Rosie stood up slowly trying to stop herself from shivering. Kersh held her and so did Vic.

‘I’m fine now’ she lied to them, while the voices went on chanting and the sound of music

went on bouncing inside her head.

Daniela and Maria held her hands and whispered words of consolation, words that they

needed themselves. George and Vasko were still frozen at the window their eyes following the white

procession. Ivaylo spoke to Victor.

‘I might be wrong but…’

‘Go on.’ Vic urged him.

‘There was this article. It said that when inside a Rift, the best thing you can do is … to fall

asleep. Apparently it minimizes you projection through the Barrier and you become… well, sort of…you fade to the other side.’

‘Oh, great!’ Daniela said. ‘So, we just have calm down and sleep while there’s a fuckin’ war

outside.’

‘Calm down…’ Ivaylo said.

‘Maybe the hookah will help!’ George suggested.

They all looked at him annoyed.

‘Ok, we’ll just be quiet’ he said.

Meanwhile, Rosie assured the two girls and Kersh that she was fine and walked towards an

armchair. When she was sure no one was looking, she made a few quick steps, reached the

bookshelf, grabbed her emerald medallion and quickly sank into the armchair. Once there, she

assumed a fetal position, wrapped her arms around her legs and pressed the medallion against her

skin right above the heart.

The sensation was nothing like the excruciating separation from the gemstone. Rosie felt like

being submerged into a bath of warm water and a feeling of drowsiness came over her. Her senses

dulled. She became deaf to the explosions, the howling of the snowstorm and the chatter of her

friends in the room. In a sudden, her world shrunk so much that it spread no further than her own

body and the soft armchair. Her pulse slowed down. Her pupils dilated, her sight focused on her

knees, which were an inch from her chin, and she had no desire to see beyond that. Tears of

happiness ran down her cheeks.

‘I will not part with you…’ she whispered softly. ‘… ever again!’

She thought of all those nights, when she had been lying next to Nick, wearing nothing but

the emerald medallion. That seemed like a nice place to escape to. She thought of him caressing her

hair, whispering into her ear. She saw herself reflected in his dark brown eyes and could tell he was

not exaggerating a single statement of his feelings for her. All of their conversations in the small

hours of the night, she remembered quite clearly now.

‘ Sometimes it frightens me when I think how well you know me…’ she had once said to him.

He had laughed quietly.

‘I just know your biggest secret ,’ he had said , ‘but I could never hope to truly know you.’

Another time she had said:

‘ Am I not too different? Do you ever look at me and think I’m not human?’

‘You are as human as a human can get.’ He always knew how to make her feel better about

the things she could not change.

The emerald medallion was resting on her chest. She took it in the palm of her hand and

started stroking it gently with her index finger.

‘I promise I’ll never take it off as long as I love you… and that means ever.’ she said.



He kissed her. At that moment she truly loved him.

And then she remembered asking him about his job and about numbers.

And she remembered hating him.

The illusion broke. Reality came flooding back. The room came into focus and with it – Rosie’s

friends – George pointing the screen of his mobile around to see in the dark, Vasko closing the blinds

and drawing the curtains, Maria sobbing in George’s arms, Daniela holding Vasko’s hand and holding back her tears fright. They all sat on the floor behind the sofa. Rosie remained in her armchair.

Everyone kept as quiet as they possibly could. Kersh started bombarding Ivaylo with questions.

‘So, did you see any of the Mediators when you visited the Plant?’ he asked.

‘They don’t have them on display you know… I was just being shown the mainframe. I was

hoping I might get to work for them one day… don’t know about that now…’

Rosie felt a sense of unease grip her. It happened every time someone would mention

something concerning R.M.Corp… especially working for them.

‘But they are kept drugged all the time to minimize the strength of the Rifts, aren’t they?’

Kersh asked.

‘Wrong!’ said Ivaylo, ‘I mean… yes, they are drugged but it doesn’t do shit to minimize the

Rift danger. It just keeps them from being coherent in using their abilities, thus making organizedescape impossible.’

Kersh looked the window raised his eyebrows.

‘In theory at least…’ Ivaylo added.

‘And so this makes the whole area around the Plant one big Rift?’ Kersh asked.

‘They must have a way to control it’ Vic said.

‘They do,’ confirmed Ivaylo, ‘They have one Mediator who takes care of chasing away all the

threats on the other side of the Barrier.’

‘Yeah, and how does he do that from the inner section?’ Kersh asked.

‘Very simple. He’s been set free.’

Silence fell in the room. Very quietly Rosie started humming a tune. No one paid attention to

her.

‘They had one of them walking around unrestrained!?’ said Maria appalled.

Daniela protested: ‘It’s not like they aren’t human!’

‘Of course they aren’t humans. Didn’t you see what happened outside?’ said Maria a bit

louder. ‘Setting one free, no wonder this is happening!’

‘Calm down and be quiet!’ hissed Vic.

And they were quiet. An explosion boomed outside.

‘What if we deserve this…?’ Daniela said. ‘We’ve done them wrong...’

‘It’s not like we have a choice,’ Ivaylo said and proceeded to prove how well-versed he was in

the philosophy of the company he wanted to work for. ‘You can’t live with Mediators nearby. They

exist on both sides of the Barrier and they make it thinner for everyone else around them. Whatever

horrors live there can then see you and you are just a helpless human…’

Rosie had been listening to the conversation and now her thoughts engaged Ivaylo in a

hypothetical mental argument.

‘But you are wrong… There haven’t always been demonic horrors on the other side. There

used to be beauty and magic there, too. You are the one with the rational mind, who does n’t easily

succumb to prejudice! Why can’t you understand?! It isn’t all black and white!’

‘It is speculated,’ Ivaylo said, ’that once there was a middle evolution link between Mediators

and humans. It was a race that could see through the Barrier but had no control over the energy

there. Do you know what happened to them? Natural selection! That’s what will happen to us if we

are exposed!’

‘Also, there were once unicorns living on the other side. It was years ago and now they are

gone. Do you know what happened to them? The Corruption that your kind brought over my world

killed them. The blind hatred, fear and envy of humans made everything wither and die. Whatever



did not die, descended into The Great Madness, and now my world feels tainted and I feel tainted,

and there is no place for me there… and in your world for me there is only…’

‘Death used to be the solution to the Mediator problem once’ Ivaylo continued. ’The

organization known as The Flame used to track and actually kill Mediators. What we are doing now is

not as inhumane at all! Ever since the Act of 1999, being a Mediator has been treated as an illness

and murdering them has been outlawed. Then, in 2001, Sir Ray Marks developed a way to extractenergy through the Rifts that Mediators open and that’s it - RMC have been handling the issue ever

since…’

‘You use us like dispensable batteries to harvest energy! You’ve taken everything from us.

Oh, I would gladly give you all the power that resides inside my body and mind, if only I could walk

one more time onto those blue pastures that my father led me to when I was little; if only I could

glimpse again the twin moons and that golden-silvery light that once lit my cradle; if only I could

converse once more with the birds of the other side, hear them speak about distant lands and

marvels, about the sky and flying. But I can’t do it because you destroyed it! What is left now is to

hide… and mourn silently…’

Weird lights flashed outside the window, illuminating their faces. Tremors shook the block.

Several long silhouettes flew by on the other side of the window. Then there was another one. Itcame to a sudden stop and hovered on the other side of the glass buzzing with giant insect wings. It

landed on the window and there was a dull sucking sound as its limbs engaged the glass.

Everyone stood still and quiet, straining not to make any noise. Two long shadows extended

from the creature’s head like antennas. They wiggled as if they were probing the air.

Rosie’s phone rang in the silence. A guitar chord as loud as an avalanche sounded from the

iPhone, which was on the table.

Rosie did not move.

‘Shit!’ Kersh said and jumped for the mobile. He pressed the red button without paying any

attention to whoever was calling.

The creature on the window remained motionless for a while, then it turned its head around

and bashed it against the window. Everyone jumped to their feet.

‘Quick! Come!’ Vic shouted and darted off to the bedroom.

The window shattered and glass rained over Rosie’s friends.

Rosie looked at her kneecaps and quietly started singing the first thing that came to her

mind. It was the song that she and the rest of ‘The Outer Limit’ had composed.

‘I will never part with you…’

The others ran but the creature had already broken through the wooden frame of the

window. It came into view but Rosie did not see it. All she could see wearing the emerald medallion

was the window disintegrating by itself. She lowered her gaze to her knees again.

‘…Cause the world’s a lonely place…’

Rosie heard Daniela scream. There was a thud, like someone falling to the ground. Then she

heard the loud steps of multiple heavy limbs and a weird slithering sound. Daniela screamed.

‘… I will never stray from you…’

‘This doesn’t concern me’ Rosie thought.

Kersh was shouting something. Ivaylo was shouting back. Daniela was now screaming with

pain and fright. People were running past Rosie and into the bedroom. She closed her eyes.

There was a loud ripping sound of flesh coming apart and bones snapping, and then a

sickening spurt of blood. The monstrous creature buzzed with excitement.

Rosie struggled to keep her eyes focused on her knees.

‘… From your soothing warm embrace.’

Rosie did not want to hear anything else but then there was something she could not ignore.

Kersh was screaming her name.

‘Rose! Run!’

She opened her eyes and saw him there, between her and what looked like the upper part of

Daniela’s mangled body floating in the air. Kersh was holding Christabell like a makeshift weapon, his



hands tightly gripping the neck of the guitar. Without averting his gaze from the creature, he shouted

again.

‘Run with the others!’

Rosie froze. Kersh was trying to protect her.

‘You brave fool. There is no need for that, ‘ she thought , ‘I am safe. I do not exist to whatever

is out there. I am invisible. I am safe.’ Then she sang louder.

‘I will never part with you…’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Kersh shouted.

‘ Cause the world’s a lonely place’

Suddenly, his strong arms grabbed her and shook her. She raised her head and met his eyes.

‘I’m safe’, she said calmly.

Kersh looked over his shoulder to check what the creature was doing. Rosie did not look.

‘No, you are not! Come on!’ He tried to lift her.

He suddenly jumped, turned around and raised his guitar.

‘Go! Now! Please!’ he shouted.

He seemed to be preparing to fight the creature, Rosie thought.Kersh struck the air in front of him. One, two, three times Christabell collided with the air.

Then some unseen force grabbed the guitar, yanked it out of his hands and threw it in the corner. Its

neck snapped.

‘This doesn’t concern you!’ an inner voice shouted, trying to convince her not to interfere.

But it was wrong, Rosie thought, because it did concern her!

Rosie stood up. Her hand that was holding the medallion unclenched. She held the chain with

two hands. She took a couple of steps and was right behind Kersh.

Rosie lowered the medallion around his neck and immediately pushed him away.

The world around her started spinning and she felt like being crushed between two

millstones. She fell to the ground.

When she looked up she saw the creature. It looked like a giant black wasp but rather than

insect legs it had several long tentacles extending from its belly. Its mouth opened, revealing several

rows of sharp black teeth. Its eyes set on her.

Rosie tried to concentrate despite the headache and the vertigo. Like silver wires, two strings

of energy extended from her fingers and wavered in the air. They were thin, weak and were flickering

as if they would disappear any moment now. She vaguely remembered doing this a long time ago.

Rosie focused and made the strings lash at the creature. Massive cuts opened where they hit its body

and dark blood gushed out. The insectoid recoiled. Rosie hit again and again, and this time her shiny

strings glowed stronger and they went through the creature’s carapace like a hot knife through

butter. The last hit decapitated it and it fell to the ground twitching.

‘What’s going on?’ Kersh asked pointing in the direction of the creature. ‘It just… it just

disappeared…’

Rosie, for whom the creature was quite visible, slowly walked over and knelt beside him.

‘Sorry for what I am going to do.’ She said.

‘What…?’ Kersh started saying but then she grabbed the chain of the medallion and took it

off his neck.

‘Ahhh…’ Kersh exhaled with great discomfort. Even though he was sitting on the ground he

had to grab Rosie shoulder to keep his balance. ‘What the…,’ he coughed, ‘…hell was that?’

‘Careful now’ Rosie said. ‘It will pass in a few seconds.’

‘It... it…’ Kersh saw the dead carcass of the monstrous insect. Daniela’s body lay next to it. ‘Is

it dead?’

‘Yes’ said Rosie. ‘Don’t worry!’

‘But… but what happened?’ Kersh asked puzzled.

And then he saw the silvery threads that were extending from Rosie’s body. They were

behind her back now and for a moment Kersh thought they looked like wings. Maybe, he thought,



that’s what they were. Humans had just been looking at them from the wrong perspective. And

maybe that’s what Mediators were – angels, cursed to bring the very armies of hell as their

entourage wherever they went.

Rosie opened her mouth to say something but in a sudden the voices were back in her head

chanting again those three words that she could not make out. But it wasn’t painful this time.

For the second time she had chosen to see and act, rather than close her eyes and hide.The voices sounded less intimidating now. They sounded so clear, so close. Why couldn’t she

understand them?

Kersh was staring at her and her incorporeal limbs.

‘See… this is what I am’ she said with self-loathing.

‘You’re beautiful.’ Kersh said

He doesn’t understand , Rosie thought, so she leaned forward and kissed him.

She had a vague idea of what she was doing but she did not exactly know what would

happen, for she had never kissed Nick while not wearing the medallion.

The Barrier shattered around Kersh and Rosie. They became lost in the merging of the two

worlds. Bright light drowned everything into pure whiteness. They saw a colossal serpent with

feathered wings gliding through a sea of colors. The walls of concrete that had surrounded them asecond ago were now gone and intricate patterns of light came in their place. Shades of emerald

green danced in the haze, like water reflections they swayed and shifted towards blue and yellow

and all the other colors of the spectrum. The serpent had two heads, which looked through two

different sets of eyes and into different worlds. One of the heads looked pale, almost transparent,

and Kersh and Rosie could not explain how they knew this, but they could tell it was dying. The unity

of the two worlds was coming to its end. Deep down, below them, they could see a hundred lights

moving – the ones that mediated between the two sides of the Barrier were headed off to

somewhere. They were leaving.

The minds of Kersh and Rosie opened up and merged into one single consciousness.

Everything they had ever done or felt flowed around exposed. Kersh could see the world through her

eyes now, in its full splendor and horror. He stared at its vastness and immediately knew why she

wanted to make it seem smaller, why she escaped to her own little reality of delusions. He

understood. And Rosie saw herself through his eyes and felt that not all of her once beautiful world

was lost. Part of it lived inside her and it was a part spared of the taint. That’s why they are leaving,

she thought, to save what is still left untouched by The Great Madness. They both heard the music

and the voices again and now their words were clear.

‘Rose… it is you… they are calling for you…’ Kersh whispered.

And Rosie finally understood.

A loud hiss came from reality and they broke their kiss to see another one of the insectoid

creatures looming over them, its foul mouth just a foot away from their faces.

A gunshot echoed in the room… and then another one and another one.

Nick fired at the monster once, then again, holding the gun in his left hand. He had fired the

first three bullets into that thing on the dark staircase. Whatever it was, it had run away whining with

pain. The fourth, the fifth and the sixth bullet flew towards the insectoid creature. One hit its body,

another blew one of its antennas off and the final one sunk into its eye. It fell to the ground, started

wriggling around and crawled out of the window.

There were two bullets remaining as Nick lay his eyes on Rosie and that bastard from ‘The

Outer Limit’.

‘I can shoot them both’ he thought, ‘and no one’s gonna pay much attention to two more

victims among the many tonight. It is the one time I can do whatever I want… so why not take

advantage. Things are pretty obvious; there is no explaining to be d one.’

Then Rosie spoke, he heard the voice he loved so dearly and those thoughts became as

distant as they would be on any other day at any other time.



‘Nick?’ Rosie said, trying to recognize him beneath the mask of blood, dirt and ashes on his

face. ‘What happened to your arm?’

‘I crashed the Volvo…’ he said coldly as Rosie walked to him. ‘What happened to us?’ He

nodded at Kersh.

Rosie did not say anything but took his left hand.

‘I have to give it back.’ She said and put something in the palm of his hand. ‘I’m sorry…’ Bewildered, he looked at the emerald medallion.

‘No, no, no!’ he said, immediately regretting his coldness. ‘Keep it! I don’t want it back!’

But Rosie seemed adamant about it.

‘When there is nowhere to run,‘ she said, ‘you can only hide behind barriers of irrational

thought, self-deception and apathy… but now there is a place to go and I will go. So take it! I don’t

need it anymore.’

‘No…’ he said weakly.

‘I need to be with my kind’ she said

‘Rose, no! R.M.C. are going to strike them once they are outside town! You have no business

there!’

‘It is the right time, Nick. It is just once. I am sorry but all the love in the world could not hopeto ever compare to that sky on the other side, nor could it outshine that sun... Not all is lost and

there is a way now!’

Nick felt bitter agitation rise in him.

‘Oh, really!?’ he raised his voice, ‘And what if that way leads through the fire of all the Agents

of the Flame? What will you do against them when the Yucatec gems cut you off your beloved world

and make you a simple mortal? Neither you, nor any of your kind will be able to do anything about it.

You’ll be helpless. Stay! Please! … Don’t you love me?’

Rosie responded to his anger with coldness.

‘I did love you…’ she said with an expressionless voice, ‘but you were a murderer to me all

the same. There is nothing here to stay for.’

‘I didn’t kill your parents!’ he almost yelled.

‘But you didn’t save them.’

‘I only had one!’ he shouted and looked down at the medallion in his left hand.

‘Nick, why do you think,’ Rosie asked, ‘that saving one life redeems the taking of a

thousand?’

‘I didn’t save you to redeem myself’ he said, his anger beginning to dissipate now. ‘I did it

because from the moment I saw you I knew you were more precious to me than anything else in this

world. I seek no redemption!’

Rosie stepped forward and embraced him.

‘I hope you get it one day regardless’ she said and there was a strong sense of finality to her

words, that made Nick shiver.

‘Don’t go’ he cried into her shoulder.

Rosie said nothing. She just let go of him and turned towards the door.

‘Rose!’ Kersh shouted. Rosie looked into his eyes and saw warmth and understanding.

‘What do I tell the others?’ he asked.

Rosie stood there at the door for a moment and thought. She said:

‘Tell them I’ve gone where the music comes from.’

She smiled at Nick and Kersh with new energy and new life that came from the very essence

of her being, which she now embraced. She walked away never to see them again.

Once outside, Rosie looked upon the tracks her kind had left. She bent down, took her shoes

off and stepped into the snow barefoot. She breathed in the cool winter air and felt free, strong and

happy, and with those new feelings written on her face in the form of a smile, she walked into the

dark to whatever uncertain future awaited her and softly sang a tune she knew from a past life.

Around her, threads of ghostly silver light extended into the night and assumed various weird shapes.

One moment they would look like long arms or flowing tails, the next one – they were tentacles or



streams of water and steam, or maybe branches or snakes, and sometimes they would twist and

bend together and sway behind her back, and that was when, more than anything else, they looked

like wings.

rosie, come home

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