After the meeting with Alex Guero, Martha and Nicholas came back to the center of everything.
The bower had grown some weeds and the hound had missed her so much. It shows on his face. Nicholas returned home after that, doubting everything he knew about life. He rummaged into his bag, the black one under his bed, and retrieved a pistol. He called his uncles, told them he was coming home. He put on his old gramophone, Nina Simone plays and shot himself in the head.
Boom!
He left a note. It says; What is life if you can't leave.
***
I heard my father's friend Nicholas Martin committed suicide after returning from a trip. I nearly went to his burial but his family came over and took him away. He's an elite too. It came to be knowing his uncles are the ones looking for my father's clothes and they've been using Elvira.
Elvira, since we were children, has been a bone in my neck. She contributed to my going to Figma P. She never really liked me and I know perhaps it's because she thinks I looked prettier then though I don't think that, it was the only reason I got from our father. Plunging into how she made me feel and how she's making me feel now will make me reveal myself. Probably some of the people have started seeing the difference. I think Sam know and some of the mutts but because I don't go out much and left most of our external operations to Alpha, they couldn't tell for sure.
Alpha knows too, he only wants me to tell him myself so he continued pretending he doesn't. He's good at that. He loves minding his business, blunt, and action taker. Damien too is great. He knows I know he's gay and I'm happy for him when he told me he loves someone but that person couldn't love him back the way he wants but that he doesn't care and still love him all the same. He told me he's happy and that's why I'm happy for him.
Many of us aren't happy. We only walk the Earth hoping for what we can't get.
I hope one day Elvira will come back as a sister. I hope we can govern these people together. I never knew this will be my plight, that I'll be the one running things partly alone. Running this pack with Alpha is draining because I can see he's madly in love with me. Last week we kissed at the park before he drifted away again. Perhaps he wants the truth. I think I have to tell him.
***
In the bower, Martha sits reclined on a sofa looking blankly into the mistletoes growing across her. She has stopped talking to anyone since she came back from 7th Alley. She heard Nicholas died. She knew what happened. She saw it. She is dumbfounded.
Her phone rings. It's a new number. She picks.
"Maddie with you, Martha. What you did was hilarious and we'll soon visit you. The mutts work for us now. You think they mostly still follow that old way… know. I'll leave you to think about our proposals. Another rain will fall tomorrow and this time all the planters will die. We need to create a place for our new soldiers."
She dropped the phone, tears couldn't roll down her face but her eyes reddened as if they were the core of the Earth.
"These fools are ahead of us in the game. Dang!"
***
The birds nested in the lower tree canopies singing and the butterflies fly around. Sunflowers bloom around the lower walls and the city seems more serene. The government agreed it'll only rain when it's needed and that the planters will have more organic fertilizers to work with. They even want to build a campus in Smallsvile environmental biologists and open a preservative and conservative board for the ancient artifacts discovered in the hills. These made the people fulfilled. They believe it'll give them more freedom of inclusion in the development of Smallsvile and the other Islands.
"Sarah, I'm listening to you."
"Oh, I need to feed these doves. Aren't they lovely?"
They sat in the garden on a mat.
"They are. Look at that."
"Yeah, look at that. Oh, back to what we are discussing."
"Alright."
"Werewolf. You think Alpha is also hiding from you he's a werewolf?"
"Yes, even though it's apparent he's. Look at how swift and strong he's. Saw him during the protest the way he plunged other wolves away from the humans. They looked afraid.
"You've not seen him transformed into his wolf form?"
"You've started again. How will I see that?"
"Have a spy follow him. You have me here, fool."
"Shut up, Sarah. Be serious. I think I like him."
"Stop thinking. He likes you too. I saw the sensual ways he look at you and you are into him too, bitch."
"I'll say yes. But there is one thing I noticed in him. He still looks at my father's picture like he wants to bring him back. I think he still feels guilty for shooting him. For me, I can't find that longing for him again."
"You've never really stayed with him so it's hard to feel him that much after you lost him."
"On the wolf thing."
"Yeah. Part of the reason they are seen as Dark creatures is that their transformation is against their choice, and removes their ability to choose, as well as the potential for infection which in turn takes away the choices of other people. They aren't necessarily humans but then at what point do we stop defining what's human."
"You are right. Our evolution has taken us through a lot. What is going to look like two millennia from now?"
"Hmm. It's our genes against our so-called consciousness. The transformed wolf is a wolf, largely like any normal wolf but for their taste for human flesh. I have you seen them eating human flesh like the mutts?"
"Stop it, already. The mutts aren't like packed werewolves."
"So you are saying Alpha and Damien since they run a pack are pack werewolves? Is that it?"
"Stop it. He's not told me already. But come to think of it, why is he called Alpha?"
They both giggled.
"You are now sounding like the astrobiologist you trained as, bitch. Look at what I found here."
She pointed her phone to her.
"Read. Or don't worry. Mating and sex.If a werewolf mates with another transformed werewolf and an offspring result they will be born as intelligent wolf pups. They can’t feasibly mate with a human and if that happened and they had children with a human as a human then the offspring would be human."
"You don't need to read this shit. We know that is happening and lots of people here are from that union."
"Look at your bitchy mouth, you know all along but want to play around. Humans are selfish."
Sarah laughed.
"You better go tell him you're not Elvira."
***
That night, Martha Stewart walked into the fortress to inform them of what's about to happen. Her hound was beside her and she was dressed elegantly. She wore headgear, a blue one shining with embroidered patterns and her wrists dangles from beads. She looked like a wench but she's not one.
Sam still guides the gate. He rushed to her and donned his head.
"You don't have to come here searching for me." He whispered.
"I'm here for everyone, Samuel. Look at the clouds."
"The clouds aren't that bad tonight. What did you see?"
"The world is a strange place. Take me to Catherine. I need to speak with her before it's too late."
"Are you going somewhere, old one?"
Before she answered two simultaneous bullets ran through her head killing her right here. She fell and the hound run. Samuel ran back towards the gate he grabbed his gun and started shooting randomly into the sky. The clattering of bullets, falling from the sky, against roofings woke the other. Samuel continued shooting and crying.
Martha Stewart died right there smiling.
***
The Second Coming: William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
***