The Phoenix Series

1 I awoke to the sound of heavy breathing: heavy, rattling breaths thick with mucus. They permeated the silence of my bedroom and I lay still as they worked their way in and out of the creature’s lungs. I opened my eyes to the darkness and spoke without a trace of sleep. “Hello, Sid.” “Phoenix! I… I… thought you were sleeping!” “Apparently,” I slithered up to rest against my pillow, “You’ve forgotten that little talk we had. You know, Sid, the one about not visiting me while I sleep!” I turned my cold blue eyes on Sid as he sat in the moonlit corner of my room. And in the half-light his shape was clear. Sid was a Minion, no taller than a five-year-old, with dark grey skin, a bowed back and a face that proved Creationists wrong. He moved with a combination of hands and feet so the skin on his palms was always dry and peeling. His only clothing was a small rag around his waist. Minions are not beautiful creatures. They have a moist quality to their bodies, like frogs. They’re always slurping or snorting something and usually leave a damp patch if they stay in one place for too long. They have no smell though, seriously, they are the absence of scent, which is a real help. If they smelt anything liked they looked, they’d never be able to hide, and Minions are very good at hiding. “What do you want, Sid?” There had to be a reason for this. “I? I ask for nothing Phoenix, just a moment’s respite in your presence.” That was the other thing about Sid; he could say the most beautiful bullshit. It almost made up for the slurping. “Come on, Sid. What’s going on?” He coughed and then slurped back whatever had come up. “Phoenix, beauty, I simply enjoy the sanctuary of your dwelling.” I rolled my eyes but since it was dark the effect was lost. I’ve always been a magnet for weird stuff. Always. Weird people, weird jobs, weird events. And then sometimes I’d see things out of the corner of my eye. Things that I couldn’t quite explain. Most of the time they were just mists or flashes. But sometimes they were more. The first time I saw one of these solid things, happened while I was babysitting. I was 14 and babysitting meant potato chips and Elvira. Since it was my third or fourth time at this particular house, their kid was comfortable with me and bedtime was a breeze. She went out like a light and their little dog curled up beside her bed and was quickly dreaming little doggy dreams. I went downstairs, grabbed a bag of chips and started watching TV. The night went on like any other. I flicked back and forth between some late night movies, went up periodically to check on the sleeping duo, and plowed my way through the chips. I was making money and watching TV, things couldn’t get any better. Around midnight I got this feeling. This weird feeling. The stillness of the house suddenly had an edge to it. I felt cold and instinctively brought my feet off the floor. The hair on my arms and neck tingled and I got this eerie, spacey feeling. I had to look down the hall; something was pulling me there. I got on my hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the couch. The couch was situated so that it butted against the entrance to the hallway. If I leaned over the arm I would be able to see the length of the hallway. So I took a deep breath and, counting on the element of surprise, I dropped forward. Now, up until this point, I had been convincing myself I was crazy, that there was nothing in the hallway and I was being incredibly stupid. But as I shot forward, I saw it: the head and shoulders of a small dark creature, the size of a child, slipping down the basement steps. I froze for a brief beat of time and then threw myself back on the couch. I lay there catatonic. I couldn’t bring myself to look again. I was convinced that whatever it was, it was going to crawl into the living room at any moment and slice me to pieces. So as quickly and as quietly as I could I reached towards a mass of toys and grabbed a plastic baseball bat. I think it was this first grip of a bat that started my love affair with them; since this encounter, I’ve always kept one handy. Once the bat was in my hand I felt a little more prepared to leave the safety of the couch. I was way too scared to go down to the basement after the thing, but it had to be done. I was the babysitter. I tightened my grip on the bat and headed downstairs. I took the stairs one at a time as quietly as possible, the bat drawn over my shoulder, ready to bestow a beat down. The door to the basement proper was open about a foot. Just enough for something to slip through. I took the bat and gently pushed the door. Well, I thought it was gentle but the door swung fast and hit the wall with a loud crack. I let out a short scream that was echoed by a slightly deeper one from inside the basement. That shut me up. I stood in the doorway, not breathing, for several minutes. Okay, it was more like ten seconds but at that moment time had no meaning. Eventually, I peeled my feet from the floor and began to walk slowly into the room. The cord for the light hung in the centre of the basement and I inched my way towards it, waving the bat in slow circles about waist high. Something hit me in the face and after a moment of panic, I realized it was what I was looking for. I braced myself and pulled the string. Light flooded the basement. I forced my eyes to stay open and spun in a circle searching desperately for the creature. There was nothing there. But you already knew that. Nope, nothing. That pissed me off. I scoured that basement and found nothing, not even a disturbed box. I left the basement, locking the door behind me just in case, and checked on my charges. They were still sleeping. I went downstairs and tried to convince myself the whole thing was just a strange mix of Elvira and potato. Fast-forward and I find myself swinging a bat at a very similar creature, determined this time not to let it slip away. On the night of my 25th birthday, I found Sid sleeping under my sink. My guests had just left and since I was still pretty wired I thought I’d clean up. I didn’t want to wake up to a new year of life and a pile of dishes. So I went to the kitchen and with an absent mind opened the cupboard under the sink to grab my rubber gloves. As I thought about having completed a quarter of my life, my hand slid across something large and moist. I yanked my hand back and peered into the cupboard. There, curled into a tight ball, was a sleeping ‘thing’. I say ‘thing’ because at that moment my mind couldn’t decipher what I was looking at. Was it a doll? A kid in a costume? Sure, it had a face, but not a normal one. It looked like someone had put human bits on a gorilla’s face with the precision of a 12-year-old. It appeared to be sleeping. Its little chest was heaving in a slightly ragged fashion. I watched it for a moment or two, but that was kind of boring, so I poked. Hard. Its eyes shot open. They were grey as steel. We both screamed. I ran for my bat. Running for the bat was instinct. Like I said, I’ve been doing it since I was 14. My friends like to test my paranoia from time to time, so even though instinct raged for the bat, my rational brain screamed ‘It’s a joke! Relax! Kid in a costume! Kid in a costume!’ Bat in hand, I headed back to the kitchen in time to see him scramble for the bathroom. He moved with a combination of hands and feet, agile and clumsy all at once. I could hear him panting as he made his way. There was no way my friends could rig something this good. I cut across the living room and swung at his back. The bat met flesh and he slid down the hall into the bathroom only to be stopped by slamming into the toilet. I was on him before he could get to his feet, but he wriggled through my legs and into the bathtub. I turned and was about to bring the bat down on his head when he started to cry. “Please! Please! Lady Phoenix I mean you no harm!” The moment he said my name I froze. He knew my name. This horrible little thing knew my name. “Please! I can explain!” He took my silence for permission and continued. “I am sorry, I did not mean for you to find me like this. I have been waiting for the right moment. Waiting for years to reveal myself, I did not mean for it to be like this.” He sobbed harder, wiping at the streams of fluid that were leaving his eyes and nose. It was as I watched him paw at his face, leaving flakes of skin on his cheeks that the words sank in. “What do you mean, years?” He blinked at me. I could hear the squelch of eyelids slapping together. “Are you going to hit me again?” I thought about it. “I don’t know.” “Well, could you lower the club until you have decided? “ I followed his eyes to the bat. I had my baby blue “li’l' Slugger” in a two handed grip, drawn back over my right shoulder. If I wasn’t going to hit him right away it seemed stupid to leave it there. I lowered the bat. “Now, what do you mean, years?” He cleared his throat, it took a lot longer than you can imagine. “My name is Siddhartha and I am a Minion and a Traveller.” He calmed down as he spoke, the sobbing stopped and a strange formality came to his voice. His new calm soothed me as well and I sat down on the lid of the toilet so he didn’t have to crane his neck to talk to me. A smile came to his face as I sat and he continued in earnest. “I come from The Void and Travel from world to world.” He stopped talking and looked at me. My mind feverishly tried to decipher the information being crammed into it. I had so many questions and he had barely said anything. I was frightened yet I couldn’t deny that I felt an instant comfort around this creature. In the bright light, he looked totally alien and yet completely familiar. “Okay… what’s a Minion.” “I am.” Cryptic bastard. “Okay…what’s the ‘The Void’.” He looked at me with his moist grey eyes. His gaze was incredibly penetrating as if he were trying to read something on my soul. “It is a place without Time, a gateway to every world, every moment, that has ever existed.” My pulse quickened as he continued as if something deep inside me was waking up. “We who live in The Void are Travellers. We are the amalgamation of the moments of evolution, each species embodying a stage of development seen and unseen throughout the galaxies. From The Void we Watch, tracking the Light of creatures like yourself.” His voice softened. “Your Light is very bright and I was drawn to you, from The Void I felt you. I have been observing you for a very long time, waiting to see what your Light would do.” I had a completely unearthly being sitting in my bathtub saying he’d been watching me and I had not run screaming from the room. Sometimes I amaze myself. “How long have you been watching me?” He closed his eyes. I think he was trying to come up with an answer but the action just caused goo to squelch out the corners, and he quickly wiped it away. “In your World, it would be considered eleven years.” I sat stunned for eleven heartbeats. “You!” It came out much louder than intended and we both screamed, again. “Sorry…” I panted. “You were the one on the stairs! When I was babysitting! You scared the s**t out of me!” He had the grace to look sheepish. “Yes, I am so sorry I frightened you. I had been Watching your world for so long, centuries, and in all that time no one had ever seen me. I underestimated you. I never made that mistake again, although there were moments when I knew you felt my presence.” “Yeah, there has been a lot of that over the years.” I replied dryly. I leaned back against the tank and rubbed my eyes. “If I may say, Lady Phoenix, you are handling this remarkably well.” He smiled at me, saliva pooling at the corner of his mouth. “You should be in my head.” A horrible thought came. “Can you do that? Be in my head?” “No, My Lady, I simply Watch.” We talked through the night. Sid in the bathtub and me perched on the toilet. He told me about The Void: it’s flat, grey land with few trees and deep, cold, streams. He told me about the other Minions, many others, more than any other species in The Void. He alluded to more species, but I couldn’t get any details out of him. Besides, his other stories were too interesting. He had seen so much history. He had been present at so many moments of change that I barely scratched his surface. It was sometime around four in the morning that my eyes grew heavy and my head began to nod. Sid paused in his description of the oceans before man began to cross them, and placed a hand gently on my knee. This was the first and only time Sid has ever touched me. It felt like a warm fluid emanated from his hand and moved through my flesh and bones. The weight of Time was in his touch. The sensation was so strange that I made a small cry and sat up. Sid began to speak: “Lady Phoenix, the things I have told you tonight are closely guarded Secrets. Secrets you must keep. We Travellers have shared our stories with very few of those we Watch for good reason. There are those in The Void who would not be pleased if you began to tell tales of our meeting tonight. They would be most unhappy with me and they may harm us both.” “Who are they? Other Minions?” “It does not matter who they are!” He raised his voice and the warmth moved more forcefully through my body. “It does not matter as long as the Secret is kept. Promise me, My Lady, that you will keep it.” He gave me his penetrating gaze and I felt a click of understanding. An oath I’d never known fell like a ritual from my mouth. “Siddhartha, I, Phoenix, will keep your Secret.” The warm liquid feeling grew until my entire body pulsed. I felt safe and peaceful. As sleep took me, Sid removed his hand from my knee. “Thank you, Lady Phoenix. I will visit you soon.” I woke up alone, sitting on the toilet. Classy.