Chapter 24: Untitled [finale]

The tower behind Russell turned on and his face burned. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as electricity pounded up the broken structure. Lester screamed out loud, raw-throated, and went into seizure, electricity burrowing up inside him and arcing over his fingers and toes. Russell could feel the surge of power behind him and lowered his head. There was nothing he could do. If this worked, and even if it didn't he had to take Melanie home, back to the hovel they lived in, where every table, ornament, door, floor, bloodstain, reminded him of his wife. He would live on the sofa forever. He would binge on saturday night television and diet on friends. He could see his old life behind him, and saw it cloned for his future. His stomach lurched. He felt nothing.

Lester slumped in the harness, his arms stretched out and legs flopping together. He had crucified himself for his island. Then his face twitched. Then he screeched, a high cold cry that rattled the foundations of the tower. Despite himself, Russell turned and he saw a demented face, Melanie snapping at him and at the harnesses that bound her. The metal surrounding her cuffs began to melt away.

Far below, Sebastien narrowed his eyes and gasped when he saw. “Its happened! Lester has switched again!”
“What?!” Belle cried out.
“Lester warned me this would happen.” Sebastien muttered, his face set. “Theres only one thing I can do.” His hand reached for the switch.
She saw what he was going to do and whispered “No! You can't kill him!”
Sebastien snapped back “He said himself that there was no choice. He went up there to die. I just don't think he expected it so soon..” Sebastien closed his eyes tight and flicked the switch. There was an immediate pitch increase above them. The humming of the tower became much louder, rattling the water around them into little waves and Melanies screams reached an ear-splitting pitch. The tower rattled and shook and sparked at its tip and foam spluttered from Melanies mouth as she roared incoherantly. She shook and began to burn, her face visibly reddening and crisping and her clothes burst into flames around her. The tower became a massive funeral pyre and Russell could see his daughter clinging to life in the middle of it, screaming and crying.

Then, from behind the both of them, something crawled out of the water. Wires slapped wetly onto the top of the hill and began climbing the tower. They crawled up the girders, snapping onto the soaking rusted monstrosity. Slowly, magnificently slowly, a head rose out of the water. It glittered a dirty silver and it was wreathed with thousands of thick wires. It looked magnificent as it reached out of the boiling sea beneath. The metal babies head shuddered and its eyes flashed crimson beneath the reams of water dripping from every orifice. With one sudden thrash, it threw out a thick wire and it snapped the top of the tower off, so the platform was the highest point on the island. The winds and rain put Melanies fire out and she turned, naked, shaking, to the head floating before her.

“Wh-what are you?” Lester moaned out at it.

The baby said nothing for a long time. Eventually, dreadfully slowly, it crunched through broken lips: “I am the island.”
Everyone gaped at it.
“The island?” Lester repeated, amazed.
The head said nothing.
Then, it spoke.
“Why won't you let me die?”
It spoke again. Every sentence was entirely discrete. “Why won't you let me die?”
“I did everything I could.”
“I stopped more children being born to sterilise myself.”
“I raised the tides to drown myself.”
“I inhabited a corpse and lied to shame myself.”
“I killed hundreds and decimated myself.”
“I ripped holes in myself.”
“In the end I mutilated myself.”
“Why do you still continue?”
“Why won't you let me die?”

After a moment Lester shouted over the winds, “You're trying to commit suicide?”
“It is my time,” replied the island eventually.
“But what about my family? The tides drowned them! And all those people – in Steamham, in Oceanside – you drowned them, and killed them!”
“It was their time as well.”
Lester dropped to his knees in front of the gargantuan. “Was it always going to be this way?”

“Yes.” replied the island. “It could have gone no other way.”

“Couldn't I have done anything any different?” he asked it, sadly, quietly. It heard him and responded: “You did the best you could to save your friends. I saw you, from beneath, and smiled on you.”
Lester beat his fist to the ground. “But I spent 20 years trying to save this island! You can't come and tell me that its all for nothing! You can't!”
“It is.”
Lester sobbed in a heap on the ground, lying prostrate before the island, who he had devoted his life to. Russell felt a bang below them. Belle and Sebastien had leapt on the tower, as they couldn't tread water any longer. They were kicking the water as it rose, scrambling up the tower.
Lester raised his tear-stained face, and asked the island: “So does this mean that I'm not responsible for killing the island?”
The island thought for a long moment, and water leaked from the baby and dropped into the water.
“You are.”
“Though, you couldn't have done things any differently if you tried.”
“Your curiosity, your personality, and your situation determined your actions. That you are still responsible for them is a necessary, if sad, consequence.”
Lester looked up, confused. “So am I responsible, or not?”
The island thought, for the longest time yet.
“I relieve you of it.” it said simply. When Lester lowered his head this time, he smiled. He didn't beat his fists, or fight it. He just died, justly, satisfied. Finally.

Russells eyes flickered right, and he saw Lesters – Melanies – corpse.
“And what about me?” He asked it.
“You have a simple choice.”
“Though we both know already which one you will pick.”
“If you want, you can leave here without your daughter.”
At mention of the thought which Russell had refused to entertain since his wife had died, perhaps even before, perhaps even at the hospital she had been born in, a great weight was lifted from his back. From his throat. From his stomach. From his lungs. From his muscles. For the first time in five or six years, he managed a deep breath.
“You failed in your responsibilities.”
“Your daughter doesn't deserve a father like you.”
“Everything you do, you do out of guilt and not love.”
“Nobody deserves a father like that.”
“If you aren't mature enough to father a child, then you shouldn't.”
Russell breathed deeply again. He could feel the winds of change, and they were warmer than anything he had felt before, warmer than the hell he found himself in.
“You can save her a life of neglect right now.”
“You can save her soul for someone more caring.”
“All you have to do, Russell...”
Russell held his breath.
“Is walk away.”

He smiled, and looked down at Sebastien and Belle, spluttering near him.
“Sebastien! Belle!” and he looked back at the corpse of his daughter.
“Lester!”
He grinned.
“Its been fun, it really has. I've enjoyed hanging out with you guys. But I don't want to overstay my welcome.” He looked down at the water, and felt it lapping at his feet.
“The hour is late, and I have things to do!” He looked into the horizon, and saw no sun or moon in the sky, just a jutting, broken hinge. “So many things.”
“And I'm getting nothing useful done here!”
They looked at each other in confusion.

He readied himself to jump into the freezing water, but as he made ready to leap, he heard something behind him which made his blood freeze.
“Daddy?”
He stopped. His heart stopped. His veins tried in vain to push icicles round his antarctic aorta.
“Mel!” he turned slowly, and saw his daughter, sitting up, rubbing her eyes, and staring around her in wonder.
“Mel...” he licked his lips, readied himself and made his decision.

“Mel, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

And then he dived into the water. And then blood. A scream started up behind him as Belle twisted round and leapt into the water after him. Sebastien gasped as she tore past him.
Russell dived one metre, two metre, and saw the world underwater. His breath held. He looked to the right as he kicked down and saw a junkheap underwater, towering girders, wires floating, propellers still resolutely twisting in the currents. There was a light emenating from under the water, as the moon glowed under mounds of rubble and illuminated his path. Behind him, lazy wires reached for and grabbed Belle, and pulled her back up above the water. His breath held. He thought of Juliet, and Melanie, and all the good times, and for a moment he was tempted to go back and hold Melanie forever and treasure the few good moments they had had together, but realised that it was better to find new moments than to treasure old ones. His breath held. The vortex opened in front of him, and sucked water in. He winced gratifyingly and looked back at the wire forest and thought a quick 'thankyou' for the vortex. He held onto the roof of it and looked one more time at the wonderland behind him. He would be glad to be rid of the place. He kicked his feet, and dived into the portal.

THE.
END.
TGIO.