Keep The Fire HotAct VII

The air is sharp and fresh, carrying the resinous scent of spruce and the first faint notes of leaves beginning to turn.

MARA breathes it in with closed eyes. WIN sees her and she is beautiful.

WIN cuts the engines shaking MARA from her meditation.

She picks a side to paddle the boat beside a broken dock.

Once tied off, they take to land and survey the burnt out lodge before them.

They face the moon-lit remains of a lodge that once hosted ecotourists, canoe and snowmobile enthusiasts, and those who wanted to learn about the traditional ways of the Moose Cree First Nation.

Over there's a part of the building with most of the ceiling and walls intact.

I don't want to get stuck under it if it collapses.

It looks ok.. Mostly safe. No recent damage.

My luck, this will be when it falls.

(pause)

I suppose we could get back on, anchor mid-river and sleep on the boat again.

No, let's go in.

No stars, no light touches the landscape in the direction they just came from.

The distance they have travelled is gone like it was never there to begin with.

Had they just arrived to peer over the edge of the Earth, this might be what it looked like.

The room they choose was once an administration office. Small, tight, most of it damaged.

A calendar, recognizable only by its lines.

A pinboard of notices of snowmobiles for sale, tours, guide services.

All worn down and in some cases sun bleached and in other cases dimpled from rain.

A cover for the nest is made with practiced knots.

Assorted furniture acts as a barrier.

MARA views the outside darkness through the back mesh of a chair.

Without any words to say, they huddle close and let the world spin them on its axis through darkness.

Mid-September sun cleans the landscape in its slow yawn, touching every living and dead thing as it spreads.

WIN and MARA are already folding up their make-shift cover and putting their gear in order.

The sounds of the river, forest and the outside world are all in the cool room with them.

Do you think she's there?

I don't know.

We'll go, hang back, look.

When it feels right to move, we'll move.

Ok.

What happens if he is there?

Then he dies.

WIN draws in a long considered breath.

What happens after?

This feels like the last day.

The last of all days.

Every day has felt like that for a long time.

Nothing interrupted that?

Yes, you did.

Y-You know you did.

And.. our time with.. her. It was a gift.

But it's always been there.

And if there are any days after this one..

it'll be there then too.

And if your family is still alive what will we do?

You're my family.

We'll make it work.

That's adorable. Lying to yourself.

Maybe.

WIN stops pulling his gear together to look MARA in the eye. An effort to make her stop and listen.

(CONT'D)

When I was growing up my parents were the kind of parents that believed in free-range parenting.

I knew our neighbours three streets over better than I knew them.

I didn't want to do that to my kids. I wanted to be who they needed, when they needed me.

Mara, Angie and I were done already when she asked me to move them. We were in the car with the stink of the loser she left me for still all over her.

He bailed at the start of the fighting in Niagara On The Lake. So, yeah, I went down to help.

You really did that?

And I told bad jokes the whole time.

Distracted the kids. Kept Angie from falling apart.

What if it's me that needs you now?

Oh, I know you need me now.

I need you to stop stepping on this blanket so I can fold it.

Putting things in piles and folding blankets distracts them. They leave their gear hiding in the office behind the desk where they slept.

Before they want to, it's time to evacuate the safety of their temporary home into the unrestrained morning light.

They walk north along the river's raised edge on sandy soil past patches of spruce and even more patches of poplars.

The colours of the world are tinted to burning gold at the tree tops, some bronze, some rust and dim greens on the ground.

Marshland and wet muskeg start to take over, making the walking laborious.

The stunted skeletons of dead trees rake the horizon view like silver barkless cadavers warning away trespassers.

Misplaced dead things in the middle of vibrant, living color.

Slipping and splashing from a mottled-green lichen mat into the bog, MARA curses.

WIN helps MARA back to her feet.

We could go back for the boat.

I'm fine.

Let's go.

Soaking and chilled and sweating from the effort, WIN and MARA come to the edge of the woods.

Instead of a view of James Bay, a cacophony of architecture scattered in an assortment that some massive hand let roll out upon the earth.

All of them raised on stilts. Smooth, dead, silver, barkless trees pounded into the wide mudflats at the lowest point of the Arctic Ocean.

Wood cabins, Panabode, and timber frame.

Victorian Shingle and Gothic Revival.

Japanese Engawa modern. Sukiya-zukuri traditional.

A patchwork of styles from every corner of the world.

In the middle of this mess sits a massive Mayan stone temple.

Water flows through gaps in its foundation.

The temple stands at the river's estuary, where the water opens into the bay, mudflats spreading out on both sides.

This isn't a town.. It's some kind of necropolis

A what?

Everything here feels like death, dead things.

These aren't homes for living.

The buildings are like empty husks, like shed skin.

(pause)

Coffins with windows.

I literally don't see anyone.

I'm going.

As WIN once did, hiding behind a tree at a campfire where MARA needed him, MARA looks back at the direction they came from, considers her decision, and follows WIN.

I'm right behind you.

They walk exposed now, visible to anyone who cared to look.

The same blue sky that gave them freedom from darkness now turns in attitude and oppresses.

A ladder made of rope and bound femurs and humerus for steps hangs from the building closest to them, A log cabin.

WIN climbs it, helping MARA up when he reaches the top, a front porch.

WIN looks around the corner of the building.

Each building has a ladder but otherwise seems unconnected.

Right hand on the door handle and his left behind him holding MARA's hand.

I'm going to open it.

Opening the door didn't sound like a latch or a lock or any normal door opening.

Like fingers snapping, the world became darkness and WIN and MARA find themselves inside a dark cabin with the door closed behind them.

The windows on each wall look out on the blackest, moonless night.

The fuck? What the fuck?

Smells like fire.

Like more than one.

A shuffling sound behind them stops MARA.

She pulls WIN's arm.

What?

(whispering)

Listen.

It's like.. rubbing your fingers together.

The sound continues.

They turn to the door that just closed behind them.

A shape in the darkness like an empty shirt, twists in the air.

The skin of a young woman with its hollow face floats there, its arms raising and flapping emptily towards MARA.

Horrific recognition in MARA's eyes.

At the empty holes where CASSIDY's eyes used to be.

MARA screams from the bottom of her lungs.

WIN pulls MARA away to the far end of the cabin through a kitchen to a backdoor.

The skin follows them to the door reaching out one wavy hand as it slams shut.

Sunlight stings WIN and MARA.

The porch is flipped or reversed or from some other place, a likeness not a replica, of the one they'd spent so much time on.

The dead-tree stilts that hold up this house are some meters higher than sensed from far away and the only way off is to jump to the next building's front stoop.

We have to jump.

The weeping racks MARA's body.

She is inconsolable and collapses.

WIN holds her firm.

Both of them now sit. The loose porch panels they sit on slide up and down on their nails with each reverberation of MARA's grief.

The cloudburst subsides and MARA pulls calm back into herself like it was a weight being pulled up hand over hand from the bottom of the ocean.

We can leave.

We can run.

There's nothing out there for us.

We go forward.

That's all we have.

It's all we ever get.

We just go forward.

Until we die.

They both look to the door across the chasm between buildings.

And to what might be on the other side of that brass knob.

On a building that shouldn't be in that place

In a place they wish they weren't in.

In here the weather is deep winter and the snow falls from within.

The space is wide and full beyond the borders of what any building would actually be.

Above, faint borders of massive limestone blocks can be just barely deduced by the eye.

On the ground is a town square from any small town in North America.

There is a fountain and there is a gazebo where a group of five Nordic-looking men loiter in Inuit fashioned-furs.

The people of this town number in the dozens.

They list and lean like they're all 3-bourbons deep and all of their eyes have the same abyss-black construction that VENDETTA and his gang of Ojibwe have worn.

Deep wells of liquid midnight for souls intoxicated by death.

Like light bending through a glass of water reversing the appearance of objects on the other side, this place is bent into another time and place.

The edges have a chromatic aberration, visual abrasion, reality at a remove from itself.

From the gazebo, a tall white man in furs approaches WIN and MARA.

He holds a Viking style sword but made of soapstone with the word Ulfberht engraved upon its blade.

You're looking for something.

Is that a question?

Look to the building across town before the river.

Cut.. straight across ..through those people there.

Ok. Let's go, Mara.

She stays.

WIN opens his mouth to object but the man raises his hand to silence him.

You go. She stays.

It's ok.

A fluffy white snowflake falls from the sky, from such a great height above them, it falls and falls until it is almost upon them. Almost about to land on their hands.

WIN and MARA's joined hands raise, and the fluffy white snowflake falls directly between them as they separate.

It lands among the piled others on cold concrete.

Take this.

From his belt, the tall UNNAMED man, in eskimo style furs, still holding an improbable sword, produces a battle axe, a crescent-shaped iron blade, and hands it to WIN.

Uncertain, he takes the weapon.

He looks into MARA's eyes, one last time.

She holds his gaze and nods permission for him to go.

WIN walks hesitant steps into the crowd until he is lost among them.

At first WIN tries to not disturb them.

The listing, abyss-eyed townsfolk, in their random attire and their random make-up and skin, personalities like a costume put on in a rush.

Half-way through the crowd before he's shoving them without protest.

Until he emerges from their line as he once did from a tree line outside a mostly smokeless town.

His feet crunch in the snow.

His shoulders have blood on them as though in his traveling through the crowd he rubbed up against bleeding people.

Storefronts face him with no discernable depth or end to them.

Like the eyes of the townsfolk, each of the store windows is glassed abyss.

A commotion behind him he looks to where he left MARA.

The snow blows in front of his eyes so he returns to his search.

Walking to a building shaped exactly like the one hid in when he discovered GRIP, three flames inside are lit one by one.

WIN walks up to the glass.

In the detritus of a torn down pet store, among knocked down shelving and bags of food and many colored toys are three evenly dug graves with fresh dirt and unmarked headstones.

No.

WIN turns away from the window to face the edge of the crowd.

It's a trick. This place is an illusion.

They're here.

They're fine.

Tell me they're fine.

Approaching WIN now is the tall, almost albino white man, wearing an ill-fitting seal and caribou Inuit parka and pants.

This is the man WIN has been hunting.

They aren't and this isn't.

(through tears)

How do you know?

We're in a snowstorm..inside a building.

Are we?

I know because I helped them.

I was in a position to help them along and so I did.

It was always going to end this way. If it wasn't me it would have been something else.

What are you telling me?

Who the fuck are you?

The blade of the axe dips and vibrates. WIN's grip tightens.

(CONT'D)

(yelling)

What are you?

You thought you'd what? Find me, kill my friends, kill me, run away with your wives and your kids?

You couldn't kill me if you tried.

Or anyone I run with.

Your only role here is to die and get out of the way.

Just get the fuck out of the way.

Tell some jokes.

Be a joke to others.

WIN's head shaking in disbelief, confusion.

His target in front of him looming, enormous.

What did you do to them?

Nothing you could ever have stopped.

I could remind you about how you failed to fight at all when another man came into their lives.

You made your choice. You let it happen.

And now you can make another.

You can take that axe and draw it across your own throat.

Or.

You can just make up some reason to go on. Maybe collect spoons from around the world.

Maybe Mara needs help in the garden.

Or you can just end it right now.

The sickness came upon WIN easy. Lubricated by the laceration in his heart.

His son playing in the sandbox with his toys.

His daughter on a park swing.

His wife laid in pieces upon the red snow.

WIN raises the ax blade to his throat, he winces.

On the wind, a sound catches WIN's ear, he leans to hear it.

It is a scream.

MARA faces the UNNAMED man but watches WIN walk away, across the crowd and be swallowed by its number. The man stands tall over her and she is unaffected. Calm. Waiting.

And now you.

Now me.

The face sitting deep in the UNNAMED man's hood pulls, stretches and finally becomes that of a face MARA hoped she'd never see again.

And now me.

I wanted someone else.

That one also found his way here. This very place.

I want his head.

What you want and what you need are two different things.

And today you get neither.

MARA sinks but recovers when VENDETTA notices.

He's already dead.

Life happens to us all.

It's a painful, miserable existence and you're supposed to be grateful to be alive.

Are you grateful, Mara?

For a long time I thought I knew what I wanted.

You only hate him for the memory of your own crime.

My crime? My crime?

What fucking crime did I commit?

Who told you you could have a child that lived?

Your crime, the same crime of all your parents before you is hope. Unjustified, hollow hope.

MARA sways and her eyes find the ground and the crowd and the snow falling from darkness where the ceiling should be.

With the speed of a wild animal, MARA plunges her fingers like daggers into the abyss-coloured eyes of the figure in front of her.

She tears at them; she pulls out an eye and the optic nerve until it pulls his head.

Her scream is heard across the town.

VENDETTA makes no sound, taking no effort to protect himself.

Hands pull on WIN's shoulders and the top of his head and his neck from all angles until he shakes free enough to cut a face open lengthwise.

Still the crowd comes for him.

Another skull and then another is split in two.

One by one he makes space to swing wider and run further.

MARA!

Mara where are you?

Behind WIN is a long line of split and torn bodies leaking blood and black oil.

This town square looks like a battlefield in some dying sadist fever dream and the enemy keeps coming at WIN from all sides.

VENDETTA picks up MARA by the back of the neck with one hand and brings her face right into his. Close enough to see the light shine everywhere off him but the black of his remaining eye.

What are you doing?

Giving you another reason.

Confusion in MARA to match the wincing from pain of being squeezed at the neck.

She doesn't see the axe until it splits VENDETTA's arm and she drops almost three feet.

The severed forearm and hand gripping her neck only releases and falls to the ground from the percussion of her drop.

MARA watches a fire hose of blood blow from the wound on VENDETTA's arm.

And from that wound to his indifferent face to his other outstretched arm.

To the dagger held flat and deep in between WIN's ribs, right through his lung.

WIN is held wide-eyed and mouth agape by the pain and the shock.

The axe slips from his hand.

By the time MARA reaches him he is on one knee.

He tries to move away from the pain but the dagger is still deep in him and VENDETTA's hand is locked to the blade.

They both try to pull him away from the blade.

VENDETTA is immobile.

Stop. Stop moving. I'll do it.

Leave it in.

Get his stinking hand off it.

One oversized finger at a time, MARA forces a bone to break to release the blade.

With each vibration WIN gasps and more blood flow from the wound.

We can't walk with it in you.

Do it. Here. Right here.

Wait. Not yet. Look at me.

I'm here.

I'm just really really glad I met you.

Stay. Please stay, please, please.

Don't leave me here.

Fixed on a point in space only he could see, WIN drifts away riding the wave of his last exhalation.

The sourceless light in the town dims.

Every body including VENDETTA, walks away, disappearing between cracks in time and space MARA's human eyes can't see.

Covered in blood and shock, she looks for an exit.

In a dark shadow away from the gazebo, gold sunlight from the rising sun traces the outline of a door.

A half mile down river from the strange collection of town facsimiles and its dead inhabitants, MARA turns to look at it.

Only one cabin remains. The cabin that they stayed in together. The last chance MARA had to feel safe.

She turns south and with no hurry, walks the uneven ground.

Past the places she and WIN fell, disturbing the ground. The steps they took.

The mess they made as they tried to move forward.

She stops, winded. Wincing from pain, she looks to the sun, closes her eyes and lets it warm her face.

The earth is dark and dewy where MARA checks her mint bush in its oversized pot.

Her hair is much longer, with grey winning over her natural tones.

With a quiet huff, Titan, a young German Shepard, raises his head from resting on his paws.

Without turning away from her mint, MARA moves her apron out of the way to switch the safety off of the handgun stuck in the belt of her jeans.

Hey there!

Hey yourself.

MARA counts the strangers and notices they are positioned covering a wide area.

At least two of them are hiding their hands.

One hides their hands under a poncho and the other behind her back.

We're just heading south - can we walk through your yard here?

Sure.

The world is coming back together again, did you hear? The New Canadian government is throwing a big celebration.

(smiling)

I don't care.

The strangers, all young, filthy, crazy at the eyes with a false casualness.

They're all smiling at her.

And MARA is smiling back.

Enormous dark cold water waves, overlapping and fading in and out of each other.

Again, and again.

They crash and they move and they crash and they move.

THE END.