I couldn’t breathe. The burning in my throat made me cough, but nothing came out, instead the cough sent ripples of pain into my lungs.
“Let go,” Terry ordered, his voice sounding distant.
The Shape that was thinking for itself didn’t react. Its focus was solely on me. “Stop the threat,” it said in a grinding voice.
“It’s not working!”
Graham’s large frame slammed into the side of the thing, trying to knock it over. It was as sturdy as a tree, even though its base was the man who cowered on the ground. Graham’s former student. Regardless, I had a method for dealing with strength. Alek, the Goblin… I let the fire out from under my skin to consume.
Immediately something felt very wrong. Flashes of perception crashed into my already dazed brain. I realized it was the memories. They were coming faster than ever before, but these weren’t the memories of a human. This thing had never been human. The way it perceived the world, the way it thought, the way it remembered, everything was shoved at me and I couldn’t handle it. It was like trying to fit a square block into a circle hole, bashing it against the edges. I stopped assimilating to gain relief, my vision darkening as I ran out of breath.
AJ appeared from behind a tree. He ran up and kicked Graham’s former student in the face. The man yelped in pain and the Shape responded, letting go with one hand to reach for AJ. He scrambled out of the way, ducking low. Graham grabbed the reaching arm and wrenched it back. Richard joined him and with their strength combined they managed to haul the Shape towards them.
“G-graham?!” The man sputtered as he recognized his former professor.
“Rami. Tell it to let go,” Graham grunted out the words while straining against the Shape’s uncanny strength.
Rami shook his head. “No! I don’t understand! You’re with the bad guys?”
Richard and Graham’s efforts made the Shape start to lean backwards, raising me closer to the branches above me. I reached up and grabbed a bough.
“There are no bad guys here. Only people who have been hurt, some who have decided to act in kind to others,” Graham said.
“Just leave me alone!” Rami cried out. “I don’t want to see you!”
I pulled myself up while pushing bone out of my neck. Finally the grip loosened and I sucked in a breath.
Zola arrived, swiping at the Shape’s torso, gouging it with his nails. The Shape let go of me and reached behind its back to tear Richard’s arms off of it. Then it shook off Graham and reached upwards, grabbing onto a branch as I had and hauling itself up and away from the group. It let go and Rami landed on his feet, back bending under the weight of the Shape. He faced us with a hunched back, lips trembling, the Shape looming from behind him like a living shadow with jittering eyes.
“Why are you here?” he asked Graham accusingly while holding a hand to his bruised cheek. “I said I never wanted to see you again.”
Graham straightened up and fixed the collar on his torn shirt before leveling a steady gaze at Rami. “I hadn’t intended on it. I wanted to respect your wishes. But since we have met,” his expression softened, “how are you, Rami?”
Rami’s face screwed up in tears. “You don’t get to act like you care. You abandoned me!”
“Yes,” Graham admitted heavily.
“Do you even know how hard it’s been? Rami held his hands up to his head. “I’m always scared, always terrified.”
Graham nodded. “I suspect that the Shape has been aggravating your mentality. It’s brain is linked to your own, I-”
“Braveman is the only thing keeping me safe!” Rami burst out, gesturing wildly. “The Red Ring, they don’t understand anything except for strength. I had no choice. Braveman is strong and I’m so weak…”
The Shape, “Braveman”, moved, reaching up and tearing off a large branch with a sharp twist. A weapon.
Graham stepped forward, hands up. “Rami. Listen to me. Stay calm. You can control it. You’re in control.”
“You left!” Rami shrieked. “Me and Emily and Lara! You turned us into monsters and ran away!”
“Guys, that huge thing is coming this way,” AJ said nervously. “And it’s fast.”
Graham ignored AJ, continuing to take cautious steps towards Rami. “I know. I know I left. I’m responsible for your life being ruined. I tried to atone. To help stop future victims. But what has been done cannot be undone.”
“Leave. Me. Alone!” Rami shouted and his Shape thrust the weapon forward threateningly.
AJ yelled out, “It’s here!” a split second before I heard the Aberrant carving its way towards us.
A giant arm stretched out from the darkness. Graham turned just as it hit him. A hand whose fingers curled around Graham as if he was a toy in a toy box. The arm carried forward in a blur of snaking motions, whipping through the grass until it slammed into a tree, trapping Graham between fingers each the width of a telephone pole. The hand was as tall as Graham was. Its entire body was covered in clear scales that looked like massive fingernails. Gray flesh was visible beneath.
Richard moved to help Graham and stumbled, holding a hand to his head. The rest of us were feeling it too. The numbing haze was growing stronger. AJ threw up, clutching his stomach.
“I see I arrived just in time for the good part,” a voice said from behind us.
I turned to see Louis leaning against a tree a short distance away. He held a pistol loosely in his hand. Louis grinned at us, “Feeling a little unsteady on your feet, eh?”
“I wouldn’t be so-”
“Shut up, Terry,” Louis snapped, quickly leveling the gun at him. “I’ll drop you if you open either of your fucking mouths again.”
“Try it,” Richard taunted, which made Terry glance nervously back at him. “We’ll drop you first.”
Louis smiled and shrugged. “I’m just here for the show. My men aren’t going to last much longer against those government drones, even with my help.”
He sighed. “Feeding that thing was always a challenge. Lost a few good men to it. Oh well. It was worth it to see the look on Graham’s face. And I have enough cash from this job to buy an island. I’m thinking somewhere in southeast Asia.”
“Graham!” AJ cried out. Graham was struggling beneath the weight of the massive hand.
The gun went off. Terry cried out and fell, clutching his leg.
Louis glanced briefly at his smoking gun. “Can’t really take chances with you Terry. Sorry.”
“Motherfucker!” Richard spat, anger bristling.
“Careful,” Louis said. “The kid is next if you try something.”
Rami was ignoring all of this. He moved towards where Graham was pinned by the Aberrant. Graham’s expression was haunted, his movements sluggish, like he wasn’t trying that hard to free himself. In the sudden quiet, I could hear someone speaking. Not Rami. Not Graham. Not Braveman. It was the Hand.
“Is it you?”
The voice seemed to emerge from the palm of the hand. Graham saw something there that the rest of us could not. His eyes widened. Then his hands fell to his sides. He gave up his struggle entirely.
“It’s me,” he responded softly.
“Your fault.” The voice sounded eerily human still.
“Oh Emily,” Graham said. “I know it’s my fault.”
“It is!” Rami crowed. “You left!”
His Shape raised its weapon, ready to be the executioner.
Graham set his head back against the tree trunk, looking up at the night sky. “I did leave. I was so guilty of what I had done. I thought that nothing I could ever do would help the two of you. So I gave up.”
His arms reached up and stroked one of the scaly fingers. “I figured the least I could do would be to leave. To let you have freedom, choices, authority over something in your life after I’d taken most of it away from you.”
And then Graham’s eyes locked with mine. In them, I did not see despair. I saw hope.
“But I realize now that this was wrong. How are my students supposed to learn agency, to take accountability and seize back control of their lives if I don’t lead by example? It is time for me to move past my guilt and take charge. Rami?”
Rami stared at him.
“Watch closely.”
Graham’s burly arms wrapped around the snake. He couldn’t reach all the way around, or at least he couldn’t until he squeezed. The skin around his grip bulged out as he compressed his hold.
The arm began to thrash, tearing up grass and dirt. The nails of the fingers carved deep fissures into the tree trunk around Graham. It tried to crush him, to squeeze him to a pulp. But Graham was doing the same and succeeding.
“Emily,” he declared loudly over the struggle. “It is time for you to let go. I know you can’t hear me. Your transformation went wrong. You aren’t really here anymore. It’s time to say goodbye.”
The Aberrant fought hard to free itself from Graham’s grip, but he held on stubbornly. The thrashing became sluggish until the Aberrant drooped entirely in Graham’s arms. Graham stroked it one last time before setting it down. The fingers went limp around him.
Braveman reared back, preparing to strike.
Graham straightened to his full height and stared Rami down with disapproval. “No more, Rami. It’s time for you to take control.”
Rami cringed and fell backwards, landing on top of his Shape.
Louis barked out a laugh. “I don’t believe it! Graham, you really did it. Incredible! You killed your own student!”
“Freeze,” a voice rasped.
Louis stiffened.
But I was ready. There was a reason that Terry usually subtly layered his voices together instead of commanding like this. The effect was less powerful if you were ready for it and resisted. Louis had been distracted and in that moment I broke free of the voice’s influence and charged him.
I knocked the gun out of his hand and tackled him to the ground.
“Woah, woah! Let’s all just relax,” Louis said, still smiling. “I wasn’t going to let Graham die. This was all just for the laughs. You may not know this, but I’m Graham’s brother.”
“Hmm,” I said, raising a fist. “Don’t see the resemblance.”
His smile vanished a moment before my fist crashed into his face.