To be Told, Sarah Hozumi

Reagan stood on the sidewalk of a deserted street in what should have been a  crowded city, considering the desolate forest of skyscrapers surrounding her. The  familiar cacophony of cars blaring their horns, of people engaged in animated conversations as they walked, of sirens overlaying the tapestry of distraction with  pointed interjections of chaos – all had fallen away into unnatural silence.  And what city was this?  

She glanced around, noting the stillness with a brief flush of instinctual fear.  Opposite the road devoid of vehicles was a shuttered store offering high-end bags; beside that, a building with ridged columns holding aloft a triangular roof boasting the  words “The Great Library of.” The final word was nothing but a pile of rocks and dust resting on the sidewalk below. 

She was alone, with neither cars nor passersby to distract her from an inward pull she felt that was calling on her to ignore the series of questions now illuminating her thoughts like sparklers in the deep of the night, and, instead, look up. It should have  been obvious to her from the start, but her eyes had been on the city, not on what lay  above, smothering it.  

The sky – usually a flat, calming blue punctuated by passing white – was  plagued by rolling waves of fire languishing in crimson above. Looking up was little  better than opening the door to a burning house simply to marvel at the destruction  within.  

Truly a wonder, she thought.  

The heat radiating from it clawed at her skin, and the pull she’d felt to look up  changed course to a row of glass doors leading into the building beside her. Reagan shielded her face, her arms now burning in pain, and a door leapt open to let her  through.  

No one was inside to stop her from running across the polished marble floors,  her footsteps ringing out into the profound silence. She came to an abrupt stop at a  hallway lined with seven sets of doors, all elevators promising to take her up.  Why am I here?  

She felt at any moment surely security or the police would arrive and escort her  away for trespassing. How could she possibly explain why she had run into the  building? She had no idea how she had even found herself on the sidewalk outside in  the first place. 

And why was she going up? There was an innate desire to head to the roof of the  skyscraper, which was counterintuitive to her instinctive need to run from the sky’s  flames. The confusion flickering within her consciousness, Reagan stood before the button to call the elevators with her hand frozen midway to pushing it. What was this  need?  

A lone voice, deep and beguiling, floated into the air around her.  

“You want to reach the roof.”  

But why, Reagan thought. 

“You have to reach the roof.”  

The pull, which felt like a fishhook tethered to the back of her brain, coaxed her  into finally pushing the button. She closed her eyes and tried to remember anything  from before standing on the sidewalk just outside. 

The voice was as intoxicating as it was relentless in pulling her from her  thoughts.  

“There’s no time. The elevator is here.”  

The doors opened, and Reagan stepped inside while still trying to remember  anything from before this. What had she been doing? Had she even existed before being  outside? 

There were supposed to be others. Weren’t there? 

As the elevator lifted her into the sky, beautifully aligning with the pull, Reagan closed her eyes again. There was something buried within her mind, behind the hook.  The feeling of being pushed under against her will. Reagan put her hands against her ears to block out the sound of the elevator cables creaking, and she could almost  remember hearing people around her talking. 

The voice was a trumpet blasting apart her focus.  

“Concentrate on this.”  

On what?

A gap in the doors led her directly out to the roof. Alone atop the skyscraper, Reagan felt her lungs shrivel under the weight of the burning sky that loomed more  closely over her now. It wasn’t natural, she decided, seeing it ablaze like that. The way  the flames burst like cracks of lightning and raked across the sky reminded her more of  how the earth should behave than the atmosphere wrapped around it.  The sky was supposed to be beautiful. Wasn’t it? 

The weight of the heat drove her to her knees, her head bent low as her breath  grew shorter, more desperate.  

“Look up.”  

Reagan forced herself to look back to the roiling heat of the wounded sky.  If she closed her eyes, blocking out the feverish fury thundering above and her  body’s cries for air, she could faintly remember a group of people had been standing  over her. They had been in a darkened room, and the group of people had been  discussing her while she had lay sprawled at their feet. She could remember the carpet – the way the red lines clawed at the dark blue patterns.  

“Reagan, stand up and say it.”  

The pull to the back of her mind knocked aside all thoughts but one: Speak. She rose to her feet and spread her arms wide, as if embracing the searing sky.  Her lips parted, and words she couldn’t understand poured like lava upon the aching  ground before her. The building’s roof began to shake and sway. Above, she could see a  crack rip through the sky as if she were observing a volcano being torn apart rather than  what had once been a glorious sky.  

Were her feet really beneath her, weighing her down to the earth?  

What’s happening? 

“Keep going. Only you can end this.”  

End what?  

“Keep going.”  

Reagan managed to crouch down, however, and she closed her eyes. This wasn’t  what she wanted to do. She could remember fighting the group of people who had been  discussing her. They had been talking about her power while her eyes had been on the  strange carpet and its colors smeared against her face. Her great, unnerving power. They  spoke of her, she knew, as many lovingly spoke of weapons.  

To this, the voice changed from its deep and soothing undertones to one closer  to Reagan’s, and she felt her ability to concentrate on the carpet she had seen begin to  dissipate beneath the weight of its familiarity. Was she the voice? 

“You already started. Look.”  

Her eyes fluttered open to take in pieces of the sky falling like glass, emptiness  replacing where the shards had been. She stood to watch them break against the  buildings, to admire how the contact sent the skyscrapers thundering to the ground.  “There is no one around.”  

Indeed, the streets were deserted. It was safe to cause this kind of destruction.  “Stand up.” 

United in their cause, the voice and the pull twisted around one another in her  mind, and they attacked her sense of reasoning as a thick fog, distorting it. Reagan found her footing again, and she spread her arms wide. More words she couldn’t  understand flowed from her mouth like mutilated water, touching the burning sky as it  broke. The earth shook, the sky shattered, and every building but hers lay in ruins. She felt she couldn’t stop. Not when she had already started. 

Reagan went to the edge of her skyscraper, where in the distance she could make  out patches of untouched sky and signs of civilization. It was a pristine landscape,  waiting in longing for her to break it. Her fingers twitched.  

No…no this is wrong.  

Reagan wrenched herself away from staring at the city off in the distance and,  ignoring the voice that might have been her own and the demanding pull, managed to  close her eyes again. She poured the power she felt flowing from her hands into her mind, and the pull shattered. Her consciousness dove deep into depths hitherto unknown  to her, with nothing to demand she stop. When she felt herself hit the bottom, her skin  observed the sensation of carpet gently pressed against it. Every ounce of her concentration became dedicated to opening her eyes within this new reality, but they  ignored her commands. Yet she could see. 

She was in a darkened room, a sole desk lamp atop an enormous table carved of  wood serving as the only light. The red and blue carpet snaked its way across the length  of the room, biting at the ankles of four people standing in the far corner, huddled as  one. Their eyes were on her alone, and she rose from the floor, her limbs shaking from  the effort, to face them. To punish them. 

One woman approached Reagan from where she had been standing by a door.  She gave a swift, gentle smile to Reagan, and she held her hand out as one would have a  wild cat. The smile encouraged trust.  

“You are truly a wonder. Please, allow me the honor of congratulating you.”  Reagan turned from the woman to the group in the corner, one openly crying.  “Please.” The woman’s voice beguiled.  

She cast another glance at the four people, then back to the woman. 

Though slow to move, Reagan took a step toward the woman, and she took hold  of the woman’s hand. With a brilliant smile, the woman pulled Reagan to her, to  embrace her. She had one hand around Reagan’s waist, but the other made its way to  Reagan’s eyes, and she covered them, blocking out what Reagan understood to be an  office.  

“You’re almost there,” she murmured into Reagan’s ear. “You must continue.”  The pull made its triumphant, noble return to Reagan’s consciousness. No. This is wrong.  

“This is your fate,” the woman said. “You must do as fate has commanded.”  It’s not what I want to be.  

Reagan silently pleaded for mercy as she felt her mind being thrown back to the  roof of the empty skyscraper amid a fallen sky. Her limbs weakened in the woman’s  arms, who helped guide her back to the carpet. She felt her skin register the feeling of it  against her arm as she was once again on her side, but she failed to feel the woman  remove her hand from covering her eyes.  

Eyes opened again to the skyscraper before her. The sky was crying out now,  begging for an end to its suffering, and the pull was unrelenting. Reagan had no choice.  It had been decided before she had stepped into the city, in the office, into the arms of  that woman. She was born to destroy what was unwanted – what was deemed a blight  on the earth.  

Still, she stood on the edge of her willpower, barely conscious of the smoke  rising around her skyscraper. She needed only the slightest touch on her back to send  her either falling into the depths of what she had fought for so long to deny or to claw  her way back to what may have been reality. And in that moment of silence, Reagan gazing at the horizon and the buildings resting there, the final words sent her freefalling.  “You have already started.”  

The sounds of broken buildings settling into the ground below filled Reagan’s  ears as she lifted her head and looked toward the untouched city on the burning horizon.  She raised a single finger toward it, and within minutes, all that remained was  ash and smoke to join the destruction she had already wrought. The sky above  blackened before pieces fell where the city had once proudly stood, destroying whatever  remained. Quiet rushed to meet the suddenly vast, broken sky as Reagan forced dust laden air into her lungs, a smile running through her lips.  

This was truly what she had been longing for her entire life. She was free to  finally freely use her power for its true purpose. 

“But you’re not finished,” she heard the woman say. “Keep going.”

About the author:

Sarah Hozumi is a writer who has lived in Japan for about sixteen years. To see other short stories she's written and to read her blog about Japan, please visit sarahhozumi.com. You can also follow her on Instagram @author.sarah.hozumi