Wrath of the Lamb

Prologue

We Are…

Olin avoided the light as he walked, afraid its ceaseless stare might give him warmth. His footsteps pressed into the snow, leaving breadcrumbs of dripping blood that led to home. Home. The word used to have a name. Now, that name was dead. All that remained of home was a tombstone. The writing on it was faded, etched with hope but left as a witness to despair. Olin’s mind was trapped in the fallen building while his body walked through the frozen wasteland of Helena.

The snow had brought the city to the end of the world. Windows were dark, streets were flat and white. Everything had been consumed. The city was a ghost town occupied by wraiths. The population followed Olin and possessed him with memories of their deaths. Soon, those memories would be buried, leaving only what lingers to know they were ever there.

Emotions sank into Olin’s marrow and expanded against his constricting skin, revolting against a body trained just to kill and survive. Only so much time can pass before silence has a sound, and it was deafening to Olin. His ears screeched from a lifetime of violence, and his brain vibrated from its echoes. The blood that flowed down his right leg and to his ankle had crystalized, biting his skin.

He thought about the bar, but whatever name it was given, it was always Gethsemane to Olin. He remembered the drinks he shared with Lucas, his oldest friend. They’d known each other since they were kids, but that was almost twenty years ago. They were too young to be allowed in bars, but that didn’t stop their ambition. Faces would smile when they walked in, and there was always business for them to cut their teeth on. As the years went by, so did the burdens. These burdens took the shape of missing silhouettes, funerals and wordless goodbyes. But, like everything else at the end, Gethsemane was just a memory they tried to live inside.

A bit farther, Olin whispered in his head, but even that took the same energy as shouting. He was afflicted with an exhaustion that came from a lifetime of searching for something, and a moment of losing it all. Olin was so tired he knew that if he bent his knee on the curb, he had become a part of the scenery. A statue for strangers to gawk at and take photos of; ones that got buried in a box left inside a closet.

Olin’s back was hunched over his stomach, but he couldn’t stop walking. Not yet. Left, right, left…right—the mantra continued while his thoughts percolated like syrup in a funnel. He couldn’t arrange the words properly, but he kept their emotions close like a hearth. They knew what he wanted. He wanted to go home, where it had been so long ago.

He knew what home felt like. It was a comforting swell, like being embraced by an omnipotent body that wouldn’t let go. Drifting into the unknown and a guiding hand to take you there. It sounded like a bird’s song that enveloped everything. There would be nothing unknown there, nothing to fear, nothing to be lost or taken away. She was paradise.

Olin returned, unsure if he had passed out or dissociated and stood forcibly. He expected to be in front of the cigarette stand, one he would walk past this time, but as his legs strained against gravity, he realized he was standing in front of a playground.

Colours and shapes danced across the metallic structures along with the stars that had started revealing themselves through the silver clouds. Slowly, the memories came back. The amorphous forms of children playing—without him—grew accents with their childlike laughter, and their giggles pounced around the growing chorus. He had to convince himself that he was alone, that kids wouldn’t be playing in the aftermath of a midnight blizzard, but memories always had a strange way of becoming real. He heard a thick thump as a child fell. Then, he was on the swings himself.

The instinct to kick his feet spoke, but his limbs were helpless as any blood left in his body collected in his chest to keep him breathing. Olin wasn’t concerned about help—he’d already done all he could. Anyone who could save him was either dead, asleep, or already helping someone more worthwhile.

Olin’s eyes were heavy enough to pull him off balance and onto the gravel, but a boy pushed him back on the swing. The stars in Olin’s eyes became black holes, swallowing his vision. His bones began to freeze together, ice sharding its way from his capillaries into his nerves. The encroaching vignette reminded him of her frosting window with white claws spidering to the center. He hoped that when his vision was gone, he would be too.

That circle is all that remained of his sight and Olin lifted his head to place the face of the boy who held him up inside of it. The boy was maybe twelve, with short blonde hair that barely hid a scar. He was meek and thin, but his grip on Olin was as confident as his face. He reminded Olin of a popsicle stick—wait…Olin knew this boy. He smiled, and when Olin went to smile back, he found his muscles were already tensed. Suddenly, Olin was washed in a wave of euphoria that collapsed into a hollow core he knew as hate. A deep burning brought life back into his fingers as they clutched and buried his nails in his skin.

“Lucas.”

Part I

Cloudburst

Chapter One

Walking down a residential street canopied with yet-to-bloom trees, Olin was preparing himself for another attempt at making friends. Olin Adamsson was thirteen years old in 1996, and every day after school he would walk from the elementary hallways he associated with torment to a playground on his way home. The sun was scalding, which was unusual for Helena, British Columbia in February.

He’d stand idly by the borders of the playground, never stepping past its black tar outline, hoping someone would invite him in. He was afraid that if he did step onto the playground without a proper welcome the kids would either run away or attack him. To Olin, most situations only had these two options, and because of his unusual image, many kids did run away from him.

By the time he was eight, Olin was already five feet tall. He shot up like bamboo, needing a new wardrobe seemingly every two weeks. His father would go door-to-door to ask anyone for spares, as the cost of new clothes, along with raising him alone, quickly became too much for his salary in construction.

Olin had a memory of running home crying to be taken somewhere where people were nice and wanted to be his friend. His dad leaned over and gripped his shoulder. Soft at first, comforting his son, but like most soft moments with his father, they didn’t last long. “There’s no place like that here, Olin. All you can do is get stronger. That’s what growing up is.” But Olin didn’t want to grow up. He just didn’t want to be alone.

In moments like these, Olin felt like a ghost. Nobody could see or touch him, and he could just enjoy being around life. He had watched Ghostbusters with his dad a couple of years ago and now it was his favourite movie. Sometimes he would dream he was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but instead of destroying the town, he would help everyone. But awake, he knew he was Slimer; a disgusting blob that not even the Ghostbusters wanted around.

“Excuse me, sir?” a feminine voice said from behind. Olin turned to see a woman who let out a surprised gasp realizing he was a child. “I’m sorry, are you…Where are your parents?” She tried to cover up her embarrassment with her hand, but her cheeks flushed red before they could.

“My dad’s working. Am I not supposed to be here?” Olin asked sheepishly. Whenever Olin spoke to someone who wasn’t his father, he’d become quieter as the sentences dragged on.

“No, it’s fine. I was just wondering what you were doing.”

“I wanted to play, but…” Olin mumbled into silence.

The woman let out a chuckle of relief. He was just a boy. She centered herself and searched the park for her own son. “Connor, come down here for a second.” A boy from under the slide stopped long enough to get tagged by another kid. Connor yelled that it didn’t count because his mom was calling and he jumped down. “Connor, this is…” Olin didn’t know how to take the cue to introduce himself. “What’s your name?”

“Olin. Nice to meet you.” This last bit of manners had been broken into him by his father.

“Olin? What kind of name is that?” Connor chided. Olin didn’t understand. What does he mean ‘what kind’? It’s mine.

“Let’s be nice. Why don’t you take Olin and play with him?” She said, and the gavel struck. Connor let out a shallow sigh, worried his mom would notice, but Olin was beaming.

Connor rolled his eyes as kids do, with his head included, and started for the playground. Olin stayed put, fearful of the black, rubber border like a line of salt to a demon.

“Are you coming?” Connor asked without turning back. Finally.

Olin took his first step onto sacred ground, and it felt like he was reborn. He could feel his limbs again, and his heart was beating out of his chest. He rushed onto the playground, unsteady on the unfamiliar gravel, but he quickly learned how to run and caught up with Connor. Connor led them back to the jungle gym and met up with the two other kids he had been with.

“Another one?” said Ray, the first new face, in a snarky tone. He giggled while the second, a meek blonde boy, maybe a year younger than Olin, watched without saying a word.

“Can it, Ray. This is…Ollie,” Connor estimated, forgetting the tag-along’s name already.

“It’s Olin, actually.”

“Olin? I’ve never heard anyone called that. Was your mom a Red or something?” Ray was purposefully sharp. Olin tried not to think about his own mom, but it’s hard to avoid.

“No,” Olin answered as Connor and Ray laughed. Olin knew they were laughing at him.

“I bet she was ugly as a rat. Musta’ been big as a whale too!” Ray nearly fell off the metal bars laughing at his own joke.

“Shut up already, let’s play. Who’s ‘it’?” Connor stopped the cycle feeling Ray was going a bit overboard but not minding too much. Connor and Ray argued about who was the last to be tagged. While they did, Olin caught the eyes of the third boy, who hadn’t moved or stopped staring at him. For some reason, Olin couldn’t look away either.

“Who cares? Just let Godzilla be it,” Ray quipped, being fed up.

“You know how to play?” Finally, the third boy spoke. Olin wasn’t certain but weeks of watching different kids playing games gave him a good sense of the rules.

Olin nodded readily, excited to begin his first playground game. He still felt the anxiety of being a part of something he wasn’t meant to be, but he figured that after today they’d warm up to him. Another of his dad’s adages rang in his head. Not everyone will like everyone, but everyone needs someone. Olin would just have to be that person for someone.

“One, two, three…” Olin started counting and the boys split up across the park. He continued, his smile growing with each digit. “Eight, nine…Ten!” Olin burst toward Connor, who was crawling near the top of the slide. With too much energy, Olin’s foot slipped on the gravel and flew out from underneath him. His hands caught him, only to hear Ray cackling.

“Ain’t used to your human legs yet?” Olin knew he lumbered around like a grizzly bear, and that his body would grow again before he had mastery of it. But something about being called Ollie bugged him. Olin loved his name and the way it sounded. He even liked dotting the ‘i’ and found some solace in the lonely speck his name couldn’t be complete without.

Olin pushed himself up and chased Connor. Connor was fast, weaving through the barriers and jumping between structures. Olin had none of his grace and thought he never would.

“Holy shit, he is like Godzilla. You’re slower than my grandma,” Connor heckled.

A clump developed in Olin’s chest, that same one that told him it was time to go home. He finally got what he wanted but wasn’t this supposed to be fun? His tongue was fat, and he tried to swallow the lump, but it just seemed to grow.

Olin’s head hung as Ray and Connor met on the multi-level structure. There was a small, open space underneath. The first level could be reached by stairs and the third had access to a fireman’s pole with a silver, enclosed slide at its apex. The two boys were laughing at jokes about Olin, but the third boy was still atop the large jungle gym. He must have known Olin would try for Connor or Ray first, electing to expend as little energy as possible.

The climbing frame was a half-sphere, netted with metal rods that Olin thought looked like a spiderweb reshaped into a ball. Olin decided that Connor and Ray were no better than standing alone, but he wouldn’t give up until all three rebuked him.

Olin started toward the webbed structure with the third boy patiently waiting at the top. Climbing was difficult for him. His feet would slip, and his upper body strength hadn’t caught up to his size yet so pulling himself up was a challenge. The boy was enamoured by Olin’s tenacity, and he could see the anguish on his face. Olin wasn’t just climbing; he was overcoming something. What that was, the boy wasn’t sure, but that just made Olin more interesting.

“Olin,” the boy said, and Olin stopped his climb to look up. The boy crooked his head through the remaining bars. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you can tag me, I’ll get them back.”

The boy gave Olin two things in the deal, which didn’t seem fair to him. First, he said his name correctly, and second, vengeance. The exact thought of ‘vengeance’ didn’t occur to him, but the excited feeling of redemption did. That’ll show them came instead, and Olin wasn’t sure if it should feel this good.

The boy waited with a playful smile as Olin rekindled. Muscles snapped into place, his bones straightened, and for the first time in weeks his body moved how he wanted. At twice the speed, he was able to climb the peak where he came face-to-face with the boy. Olin pushed his hand out to tag him but stopped when he saw the boy was already extending for a handshake.

“My name is Lucas.” This was the first time he’d shaken someone’s hand who wasn’t his father’s friend. Olin grabbed Lucas’s hand and nearly crushed it in excitement. His eyes went wide with fear as Lucas pulled his hand away and flexed it to inspect any damage. But, instead of yelling at Olin like he expected, Lucas laughed.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“That’s pretty good. I wish I was as strong as you,” Lucas said with a hint of wistfulness, but Olin was jubilant. He hadn’t messed it up. “Now you’re supposed to say ‘tag, you’re it’.”

“Uh, tag, you’re it?” Olin stayed on top of the jungle gym while Lucas dropped off and sprinted with impossible dexterity toward Connor and Ray. Lucas reminded Olin of a tamarin, a small monkey he learned about when he watched nature shows with his father.

The tamarin bounded around the park, seemingly unburdened by gravity, swinging from pole to pole and encroaching on the boys. Lucas cornered Ray at the tube-slide, and the only way was down. Ray couldn’t jump and he couldn’t run past without getting tagged. It was over.

“Fine, nice one,” Ray said, trying unsuccessfully to hide the venom and he held his hand out for Lucas to take. Lucas stepped forward and Olin tried to see, but they became obscured by the slide’s entrance. Olin could hear some mumblings, but nothing distinct. Connor must have noticed something was off because he hopped from the swing set on the other side of the park.

Olin felt the same thing, a feeling that if they went to where Lucas and Ray disappeared that they would be gone. Connor tried to keep walking, but it was like an invisible wall stopped him. While Olin was climbing down, he glanced at Connor and noticed his knees were shaking.