The Darker Side of Light
Forty-nine miles separated Jake Rowling, a man with abs carved from granite and eyes made of topaz, and death, the one that has no face. But then, Jake had never been very far from death. They were friends, the two of them. Rarely did one go without the other following close behind. In fact, it was this unbreakable friendship with death that had condemned Jake Rowling to his own demise.
What irony. Jake giggled. Death was a funny thing. It made people do things. He’d seen people show their true faces when death reached out to claim them. He’d seen them drop their guard, abandon their masquerade.
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.
Oliver Goldsmith. One of his favorite authors.
Outside, the sun was beating down on the dead Arkansas grass, and the head of the squad car made him feel like he was already in hell. Both of the officers in front were sweating like pigs. Through the mesh of the divider, Rowling could see the shape of a church pamphlet on the dashboard.
“Baptist, huh?” he said aloud. “Which one?”
The officers didn’t respond, but the one on the right fidgeted. No one could blame him. A mass murderer sat two feet behind him.
“Either of you tell jokes? You funny?” Rowling continued, smiling genuinely. “Baptists are only funny under water.”
He laughed at his own joke, and the officers remained silent. A tanker truck rolled up beside them as they stopped at a red light at the freeway intersection.
“Neil Simon said that,” Jake choked, still laughing. “He must have really hated those fuckers. You know what I mean?”
“Boy, I wouldn’t be so cocky if I was you,” the officer in the driver’s seat said, looking in the rearview mirror. “I wonder how many jokes you’ll tell when they got you strapped to the ‘lectric chair.”
“Ain’t gonna do it like that, Grandpa,” Rowling replied, mocking the officer’s Southern drawl. “Injection. Fuck, I don’t care how they do it. I’ve done worse.”
“Shut up.”
“Hey, I’m a fucking American, pig! I’ve got rights!”
“You’ve got the right to…”
“Remain silent, yeah, I fucking know!”
The light turned green. They continued down the freeway, surrounded on all sides by empty land.
“You two wanna know how many people I killed?”
“Marv…” The passenger was addressing the driver, but Jake cut across him.
“Thirty-seven total. Fourteen last month, including two cops. Friends of yours? Doubt it, they put up a helluva gunfight. Then ten. Then I killed that family in the car crash, remember? I think you boys were chasin’ me. That fucking whore mother turned the wrong way and…”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” the driver screamed, and Jake smiled. He had gotten to him.
“Someone’s afraid of Jakie Wakie. Wassamatter, officer? Did I kill one of your friends? Did I? Wait…”
Jake pulled back and screwed up his eyes, as if to think deeply about something. “What were the cops’ names? Ramirez and…Smith? No. Smithers. Archie Smithers. Fat guy with a big gun. Popped him right in the fucking…”
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
The officer lost it and, in a spurt of animalistic rage, punched through the grating and grabbed Rowling by the neck, letting go of the wheel. His partner screamed in protest, but Jake just kept smiling, even with fat hands clutching his throat. The car veered to the left, then back to the right as the driver’s partner tried to regain control of the vehicle.
The squad car’s left front tire hit a rut at an odd angle and flipped the car, sending it crashing down the freeway. Jake was able to breathe again, but he saw only dust and heard only the crunch of metal on concrete as the car flipped once…twice…three times…
And then it came to a halt in a ditch on the side of the road, a pile of broken steel and glass. Jake had a few cuts and bruises on him, but the officers had fared much, much worse. In the commotion, both had loosened their seatbelts. Now Marv, the driver, lay unmoving in his seat, blood pouring down his face and out his neck. His partner was moaning. Jake smiled.
“Score one for Rowling.”
He forced his burly body through the hole in the grating and, fumbling around in the officer’s pockets with his bound hands, found the key to the handcuffs and unlocked them. For extra measure, he took the officer’s pistol and stumbled from the wreckage.
The truck from earlier had pulled over, and its driver had jumped out to inspect the damage.
“What happened?!” he shouted as Jake approached.
“Oh, just an accident.” Then Rowling shot him in the head. He dropped to the concrete without another word.
Sirens in the distance. Of course that wasn’t the only car. You didn’t transport the Southeast’s biggest serial killer to death row in a single squad car. Two, three, four patrol cars were fast approaching the crash scene, lights blazing. Jake rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Fuck. Ah well.”
He checked to make sure the gun hadn’t jammed, then took aim, firing over and over as the squad cars approached. Through it all he was laughing maniacally, laughing as if he had just told the funniest joke in the world, laughing and shooting, laughing and shooting…
The first patrol car of the rescue brigade began to slow, and Jake made the mistake of aiming too well. A bullet slammed into the driver’s throat, severing his carotid artery, and he fell forward, shifting his weight onto the gas pedal. The car began to speed up.
Jake didn’t realize what was happening. He was pulling the trigger but nothing was coming out. No ammo. The car. No ammo. Three seconds.
Two…
“Oh, motherfuc…”
The car slammed into him, and everything went black.
Sunshine.
Goddamn, fucking sunshine. So bright. So fucking annoying.
Jake Rowling awoke in a field of daises with a forest at his back and blue skies above him.
And pain.
Oh, FUCK, the PAIN!
“GAAHHH!”
He screamed and roiled and flailed until he was rolling down a hill, trying to put out an imaginary fire that was consuming him whole.
“FUCK! OW, FUCK, JESUS SON OF A BITCH!”
He was bleeding, but blood did not pour from his wounds. It was like shadow, like ink underwater, and it floated in midair as it silently spewed from unseen injuries on Jake’s body. He ripped and tore at his shirt, exposing his muscular chest, and saw his pores vent the same shadowy stuff. It poured from his mouth, from his ears, and from his blue eyes, now black like soot. And it hurt like fucking HELL.
“OH GOD! OH FUCKING GOD! HELP! SOMEONE HELP!”
The pain.
Like setting yourself on fire.
Like swallowing sulfuric acid.
Like starving to death.
But he wasn’t dying. Death felt nowhere near him, which was strange. As he rolled around on the ground, cloaked in shadow and pain, he felt no soothing fingers of death.
He felt lighter. Emptier. Like something was being sucked out of him. But he saw nothing. The black shadow obscured his vision and rammed itself down his throat, choking him. Soon he was a monster of blackness, a shadowy beast with no eyes, no mouth, no head, and no body. A pitiful, horrifying moan escaped the black mass, then silence.
Nothing. Then…
BLAM!
A million fragments of crystallized shadow shot away from Jake Rowling and disappeared into the warm air. But Jake was no longer there. In his place was a creature, a four-legged animal that was so thin it looked like a corpse. Its face, equally emaciated, was etched with lines of tiredness and stress, and its hair was white like snow. Dead white. Its body, though small and runtish, was so disproportionate to its needle-thin legs that it took nearly an hour for the thing to stand up. By then, more creatures like it had begun to gather around it, drawn to the area by the explosion of shadow. These creatures were fuller, healthier, and they seemed confused. One of them approached the emaciated creature and spoke, but with its weakened ears, he heard only echoes, the kinds of sound heard from the inside of a sea shell. The standing creature yelled something.
Underneath the crusted skin and bagged eyes, a human lay naked and cold in darkness, a human transformed.
His eyes opened, and he struggled to observe his surroundings. The creature from before appeared over him, and its words were clearer.
“…awake…Twi…alright?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t alright. He was dead.
He had to be. And yet he was in this world, in a body that did not feel like his own.
“…Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle. Can you understand me, sir?”
“…ye…yes…”
His voice was raspy and low, and the way the words scratched his throat as he said them made him feel as though he’d aged a hundred years. The room became clearer, and he saw he was in a house of some sort, surrounded by books of all kinds. A creature stood over him, a small doglike thing with long dark hair and a horn.
“What’s your name, mister? Where are you from?”
“I…where…am I?”
“You’re in Ponyville, sir. Did you get lost? Were you traveling with someone?”
“…yes…”
“Who?”
“…the…Trillett County…Sheriff’s Department…”
Memories came flooding back, horrible ones of death and destruction, of little girls who would never see their mommies, of boys who would never smile for their fathers, of men and women whose lives, like candles, had been snuffed out.
“Oh God. I…”
“Your name, sir?”
“I don’t…I don’t remember.”
The creature sighed. “Well, can you remember anything?”
“I remember…death.”
The creature gasped, and another creature appeared at its side, a short chubby boy with scales and deep green eyes.
“I got it, Twilight! Here!”
It handed the four-legger a book, and that’s when he realized he was in a bed, but that the blankets provided him with no warmth.
“…so cold…”
“Nothing! Oh, for hoof’s sake! A pony’s sick and we don’t have any remedies?!”
“I suppose we could go to Zecora.”
“Hey! That’s a…wait, what about him? He doesn’t look so good…”
“Twi? Y’in here?”
“AJ! Up here!”
New voices. He was beginning to feel woozy. He couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes. Another four-legged creature, a horse of some sort with a yellow mane and orange hide, appeared.
“How’s he lookin’?”
“Not good. He doesn’t remember his name. He can barely speak!”
“Have y’all thought about…”
“Zecora, yeah, but he doesn’t look like he’ll make it in time.”
The orange horse put a hoof on the purple thing’s shoulder. “I’ll watch him. You go get Zecora.”
“Are you sure, AJ?”
“I’m positive. If he gives me any trouble, I’ll rattle his rump like a bull in a pony shop!”
“Uhh…okay. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t let anypony else in here, okay?”
“You got it.”
The purple creature ran off, leaving him with the orange horse. He tried to speak.
“You…you…”
“Oh, my apologies. I’m Applejack, pardner. Yer not from ‘round here, are ya?”
He shook his head slowly. “What…what are you?”
“What in Equestria kind o’ question is that? I’m a pony! Yer one, too!”
“No I’m…” But he looked and saw that his hand had become a hoof, but that was all he could move. He felt paralyzed from the waist down, and his right arm was stiffer than a rock.
“So what’s yer story, fella? Had one too many saltlicks an’ wound up outside the Everfree Forest?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, regaining some of his strength.
“Huh. You really ain’t from around here, are ya?”
“No. I’m from…Baltimore.”
“Baltimare? Huh, that explains a lot.”
“No, Balti…”
“What brings you here from Baltimare?”
“I’m…”
The stress was beginning to take its toll on him. He lay back on the pillow, breathing softly. Applejack looked concerned.
“Mighty sorry, mister. I get a bit inquisitive sometimes, ‘specially with newcomers. By the way, I think you got really nice eyes for an old stallion. Heck, they look bluer than Rainbow Dash’s skin.”
“Wha?”
“Oh, that’s right, y’all probably never heard of her. Fastest pegasus in Equestria, but then again, what do I know?” She smiled sheepishly.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “No…I know some things…”
“Uh-huh. What’s that?”
“I know…I did bad things. Really bad things. I hurt people.”
“What’s a people?”
“I hurt them,” he went on, ignoring her. “I hurt them badly. I don’t know why I hurt them. I…”
“Easy there, sugarcube. Take a coupla breathers ‘fore ya go on. Who’d ya hurt?”
“So many. So fucking many…”
“Huh? What the buck’s a fuckin’?”
He giggled, but in his throat it sounded like a bat choking on guano. Applejack looked slightly disgusted. But he wouldn’t stop coughing. He couldn’t.
“I…I hurt them…I don’t know why…”
“Geez, you okay, mister?”
“I hurt them.”
He hacked and wheezed, and blood appeared on his hoof.
“Son of a fritter!” Applejack yelled. “Don’t you worry, fella! I’ll get somepony!”
She ran out to find help, but he didn’t need help. Tears ran down his leathery hide as his crystal-blue eyes began to cloud up.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m sorry…”
He realized now that he was dying, that he had to die. He knew the sun had burned away his skin, sloughed it off to reveal the weak, pitiful creature underneath.
Death was with him all along. Death in the shadows, death in the sun. Death in the ponies. Death in the air around him. Death in his soul.
Death. Sweet death.
“Take me.”
It wouldn’t. Not yet. Applejack had not returned.
His soul began to shatter under the weight of…something. What was it? He had no soul, and yet he felt the pain as it broke apart, blasted by…what? What broke it? What broke his soul?
“Good.”
He answered his own question. His soul was black and now was gone. His body began to disintegrate, the individual atoms falling off like grains of sand. He tried to smile, but the weight of the good on his broken soul was too much, and his face froze as he attempted to smile, forever cemented in a twisted half-grin of a man who never sought redemption and never wanted it, but got it anyway.
No words. No sound. Just grains of sand that fell through the floor.
And he entered death’s embrace, as cold as it was. The sun shone on the fragments of his soul that had been left behind.
Bits of topaz. His eyes. Windows of the soul. They existed as atoms, as granules, the only memory of a being so evil that good could do naught but kill him.
