Deadly Passion, an Epiphany (11 page)

Azim stepped back. “No. I won’t do it.”

“You must. Do you want to go back to that pit of filth I rescued you from?”

“No, but I won’t push the button. Do your own dirty work.” He shoved the detonator back at his father until his father grasped it in his hand.

“So you flat refuse?”

“Yes. Take me back to the cell.”

“After you witness this.”

Azim saw his father’s finger on the red button. “Nooooooo,” he screamed and lunged for his father to stop him, but it was too late. The bomb exploded. The dining room turned into an inferno in seconds. Body parts landed on the porch near where they stood. Azim saw a child’s arm near his feet and puked. A red mist floated before his eyes, clouding his vision, but he could see well enough to lunge at his father. He threw a punch that landed on nothing. The red haze disappeared and he blacked out.

Joining his victims…

Azim opened his eyes expecting to be back in the dungeon, but instead he was surrounded by verdant green, very tall grass. He rubbed his eyes but he was still lying on a soft bed of grass, a very blue sky and a blazing sun above. Feeling quite disoriented, he stood. He looked around but saw no one. In the distance was a line of trees, a forest. He turned to see a cliff. He walked to its edge and looked down at pristine beaches and a crystalline lake. Far down below, on the beach, he saw people. When he looked closer at the cliff wall, he saw ropes and ladders hanging made from vines. “Where am I now?” he wondered aloud. “Who are those people?”

He sat on his knees and carefully pulled one of the vines up. He yanked it a few times. It felt sturdy enough. It wasn’t until he was slowly lowering himself that he realized he was stark naked. All the ugly hair on his body was gone. How could he approach those people not wearing a stitch of clothing? He stopped his descent, but too late. Someone had spotted him. He heard shouts down below him.

“Hey, everyone, look at that! A naked man!”

“Looks human enough!”

Azim slid the last stretch, his hands smarting from the friction. He landed on his feet in the warm sand. Quickly covering his privates with his hands, he turned to face the crowd that had gathered.

“Do you speak English?” he asked.

A man made his way to the front, a tall, black man. “My name is Jonas. Who are you? How did you get here?”

“Azim Sajadi. I don’t know how I got here. I woke up in a field of grass near the edge of the cliff.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any clothing to offer you, Azim. Are you from Earth?”

“Yes. Are you human?”

“We sure as hell are. Cassie, do we have anything for Azim so he can cover himself? The women have been weaving makeshift clothing by plucking the vines apart. We go to the jungle to get the vines.”

“I’ll go and get something,” Cassie said.

She soon came back with a roughly woven length of yellowy green grassy cloth. It just fit around his hips. It had two ties that he quickly tied together.

“Now that you’re decent, come and join us on the beach and tell us your story,” Jonas invited. “Are you hungry? All we have to offer you is fish, fruit and nuts.”

“After eating slop for what seems a century, anything sounds good right now,” Azim said.

“Slop? Where were you?” Cassie asked.

“In some kind of dungeon.”

“Here?”

“No. It didn’t look anything like this. I’m terribly thirsty and I feel very dirty. I’ve had no bathing facility or even a toilet all this time.”

“So what did you use? A bucket?” Jonas said.

“The floor. I had no choice.”

Cassie handed him a large shell filled with water. “That’s gross. We don’t have soap or shampoo, but you can wash in the lake.”

“Is that your drinking water, too?”

“No, there’s a small river and waterfall further down the beach. We fetch our water from there. We bathe in the lake and catch fish,” Jonas told him.

“How long have you all been here?” Azim asked.

“We don’t know. A long time. But why don’t you go and get cleaned up, eat something, and then we’ll talk.”

Azim felt so much cleaner after scrubbing his body with sand and swimming in the lake. He even scrubbed his scalp with sand. He wished for soap and shampoo, but this was great compared to where he’d just come from. When he was finished, he approached Jonas. “I feel so much better now.”

“Sit with us and tell us your story, Azim, but eat and drink first,” Jonas said.

Cassie handed Azim two wooden bowls, one filled with chunks of fish and the other with fruit and nuts. “Sorry, we don’t have utensils. You have to use your fingers,” she said.

Azim didn’t care. The fish, fruit and nuts tasted like the best gourmet meal on Earth right now. He emptied both bowls and drank the fresh, clean water. “That was the best meal ever,” he said. “Thank you.”

Several people wandered over to sit with them as Azim started to tell his story. He left out the part about the bomb, that he belonged to a terrorist group and was at the club with a bomb strapped around his abdomen. He also didn’t tell them about his father, or his father detonating the bomb that blew up that family’s dining room with all the people and children in it.

“So you were peacefully dancing with your girlfriend and suddenly woke up in that horrible place? You don’t remember the explosion? The fire and panic afterward?”

“Explosion? No.” It wasn’t a lie. He didn’t experience any explosion.
So the bomb did go off? How is it possible that I’m sitting here in one piece? And how could I have witnessed my father blowing up that house? Was he even my father? Father is dead. The aliens created an illusion. I’m sure of it.

Jonas told him about the explosion and how they’d all woken up on an alien planet.

Azim nodded. “I can believe that we’re on a different world. I saw things that seem impossible. The monsters claimed to be human, spoke English, but I’m not at all sure about them being from Earth. Though it was weird, I was covered in coarse black hair as well, even my face. It’s all gone now.”

“And then you woke up here. I wonder if it’s the same planet,” Jonas said. “We’ve explored no further than the beaches. We’ve thought about building a raft and going to the other side of the lake, to the mountains, but if we find what you described on the other side of them, forget it. I’d rather stay here.”

“Is it safe here?”

“Reasonably so. Some of our people were killed by lightning striking from a clear blue sky, burned to a cinder, then their bodies mysteriously vanishing afterward, and several of our people were plucked up into thin air and disappeared. We stick to the edge of the jungle and only go into the jungle to look for fruit and nuts in groups. We don’t know what lurks in the shadows. So far, the aliens haven’t attempted to make contact,” Jonas told him.

“It’s rather curious that we were all in the same place, the nightclub,” Azim said.

“Yes. Though many that were with us are missing.”

“Maybe they ended up in a different place, like I did.”

Georgia finally spoke. “Well, I hope to God it isn’t a dungeon like you described.” She shivered. “I couldn’t imagine my poor Harry and Megan in a place like that.”

Georgia listened to the conversation for a while, then decided to go for a walk. She quietly slipped away without anyone noticing. Jonas wanted everyone to at least go anywhere in pairs, but she needed some alone time. Thinking about Harry and Megan stuck in the same hellhole that Azim had described had horrified her.

The time they’d spent on the beach near the lake seemed like an eternity now. Yet when she thought about her loved ones, it was as if they were together just yesterday. When Mark had approached them and told them he wanted to marry Megan, she’d been very surprised. Megan hadn’t said a word about having a relationship, much less such a serious one. She was still so young. She’d hardly had time to live, to explore the world.

She pictured Megan as a baby, as a little girl, and smiled. She’d been so spirited, filled with so much energy and so talented. When she became a teenager she surprised Georgia by turning into a withdrawn quiet girl, one that didn’t go out much, who didn’t date like her friends. As far as she knew, Megan had never had a boyfriend. She was pretty enough, matter of fact, she was beautiful. But no boys or young men ever called for her. She didn’t even go to the prom, or the graduation banquet, no matter how Georgia tried to persuade her that this event only happened once in a lifetime. Were Harry and Megan together wherever they’d ended up? Harry adored his oldest from the moment she was born, supposedly more than two months early. He’d been so worried when her aunt called him that she’d gone into labor. He’d never suspected that Megan was born right on time. It was the secret she’d kept from him all these years.

The thought caused her to think about Chris. She and Chris had been boyfriend and girlfriend since they were teenagers, which developed into a strong loving relationship as they got older and when they graduated, he’d asked her to marry him. Chris and Harry were best friends and the three of them were always together. After graduation, Harry stayed on the farm, but Chris decided to join the army. They’d only been eighteen. She’d missed him so much at first and she and Harry grew closer during Chris’s absence.

The last time he came home on leave, he’d told her he wanted to get married soon and then she could join him and live on the base. They’d made plans, set a date, and they’d made love for the first time. Sure, they’d petted and experimented, but they’d never gone all the way. Their first time had been so sweet, so wonderful, and it had felt like their wedding night, even if it wasn’t. And that night, he’d dropped the bomb.

Georgia closed her eyes. It had been years since she’d thought about that night, the night Megan was conceived.

Georgia’s early years
…

“Where are you two off to tonight, Georgia?” her mother asked. “You look lovely. That color really suits you.”

Georgia inspected herself by twirling before the full-length mirror in the hallway. She’d splurged on the blue cocktail dress. Normally, she didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes, but Chris said he wanted this evening to be special. “We’re going to town to a fancy restaurant. Chris leaves again tomorrow and he wants to spoil me, he said.”

“To town? That’s a long drive.”

“Yes, it is. We’re staying at his aunt’s for the night, so don’t wait up for me, okay?” The white lie had slipped out too easily. Chris really had booked a hotel room for the night
.

“It won’t be long now and you’ll be a married woman, young lady. Three months to go and you’ll be a bride.”

Butterflies crept through Georgia’s stomach at the thought. She could hardly wait to become his wife and spend the rest of her life with him. The doorbell rang and she ran to the door, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor. “You’re early,” she said after opening the door for him. He looked so handsome in his uniform. No wonder all the women drooled at the sight of her big strong hero. He had his cap in his hands. His light blond hair was cut very short, military style.

He grinned. “I didn’t want to waste another minute. I knew you’d be ready,” he said. “You look so beautiful. Are you ready?”

Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed him fleetingly on the lips before running back to fetch her overnight bag. “We’re leaving, Mom,” she called out to her mother who’d gone to the kitchen.

Her mother came running. “Already? I thought you weren’t leaving for another hour. Your father hasn’t even come in from the fields yet.”

“Can you tell him goodbye from me?” Georgia kissed her mother on the cheek and joined Chris.

“Take care of my girl. Drive safe, you hear?”

“Always do, Mrs. Johnson. Not to worry. I’ll have her back safe and sound in the morning.”

“You’ll be back in time for church?”

“Yes, of course. Bye, Mom, love you.” Georgia left the house and ran to join Chris at his car. Like the gentleman he always was, he opened the door for her to get in. She smiled as he touched his cap military style to her mother before he walked round the car and got in on the drivers side.

The drive seemed endless. Every now and then she glanced at the speedometer, but saw he was doing the speed limit, which wasn’t slow by any means. They were both quiet while he drove, Georgia dreaming about their evening and night together. Especially the night. When he finally parked in the parking lot of what looked like quite an exclusive restaurant, she said, “How can you afford this fancy place, Chris? It’s so posh, it’s scary.”

“Nothing’s too good for my wife to be,” he said, looking down at her and grinning widely.

She gazed at his handsome face, his well-formed lips that were made for kissing and sending a girl into spirals of ecstasy, his perfect nose, the angular lines of his face and the dimple in his chin. His blue eyes were like the depths of the ocean and she felt the heat rise within her. Oh, she definitely didn’t want to wait until their wedding night. Smiling to herself mischievously, she thought about the sexy negligee she had in her overnight bag. Tonight’s the night. I don’t want to wait.

Though she was starving and would much rather have eaten a juicy burger, she didn’t complain. The food on the huge plate looked miniscule. After she’d eaten it, she was still hungry. Dessert wasn’t much better. Sure, it was all fancy and decorated, but it hardly filled the empty spots in her stomach. She was surprised that Chris didn’t say anything about the food. He was usually a big eater. If the food didn’t satisfy her, it would hardly still his hunger pangs. Then again, she also noticed he’d been unusually quiet while they ate.

After they left the restaurant and went to the hotel, Georgia glanced at the two double beds in the room he’d booked. Yeah, one bed will do just fine. When he sees me in the negligee, he won’t be able to stop. She smiled at the thought and felt moisture between her legs. “Who’s first in the bathroom?” she said.

“You go, sweetheart.”

She suddenly noticed a sadness in his eyes, a somber expression that wasn’t there before. “What’s wrong, Chris?”