The Wounded World by Aladdin, Chapter 2

Printer-friendly version

THE WOUNDED WORLD
A Story of Mantra

Written 2006 by Aladdin

Revised and Edited (with the permission of Aladdin) by Christopher Leeson, Aug 21, 2020
Revised Sept 6, 2020
Revised Sept 22, 2020

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

She went out in Morning
Attired plain and neat.
"Proud Mary's gone Mad,"
Said the Child in the Street. 
 
William Blake

"Did -- Did he hurt you, darling?" I asked.

Evie shook her head. "No, but he chased me and he said he was gonna hurt me. Then Laddin came and Lauren helped them beat up on Gus and take him away to jail."

Somebody wake me! Gus tried to murder Lauren, and then she got the help of somebody named Ladin to take my son to jail? Who in hell was "Laddin?" Was he some friend of Lauren’s from school?

Suddenly, I got a horrendous idea!

“Was Laddin not just one person but a group of people?”

Evie nodded.

"Was their name more like ‘Aladdin'?"

"Yeah, that's it!"

Worse and worse! Aladdin was the government agency that I worked for. It was just about the dirtiest outfit in the Deep State. Once I’d been hired and found out some of the things they were involved in, I stuck with the job, but only to keep an eye on them. The Aladdin people never stopped! I’d managed to foil a treason plot of theirs earlier in the summer. In facing off with them every day, I felt so alone. I couldn't go to the Justice Department. The Attorney General had been turned into a figurehead. The shifty assistant A.G. held the real power!

When the name Aladdin comes up, it's always like a cold shadow has walked into the room. Where had Evie learned Aladdin’s name? I was always careful never to talk shop in front of Mom -- Barbara Freeman, I mean -- or the kids. I let them think that I worked for the C.I.A, whose rotten existence was at least publicly known.

"Is Lauren okay?" I asked.

Evie nodded again. "She visited Monday, remember? She wanted you to go back to being Mantra, but you said you couldn't. You told her that she had to be Mantra now."

What had been going on for the last few days? According to Evie, Lauren now knew I was Mantra, and somehow she had become a new version of Mantra? How could Evie have come up with such a bizarre idea -- unless it was true? I felt like I'd fallen down a rabbit hole.

"Pumpkin, where is Gus? What do you mean that he's in jail?"

Evie started to cry.

The little girl seemed so fragile, so afraid. Did Aladdin really have Gus? Was he charged with attempted murder? Who had he tried to kill, besides Lauren? And how could a little boy of twelve have become a public enemy?

And how how had Aladdin get involved? It existed to monitor ultras, not to enforce the law.

"M-Mommy," Evie stammered, "is Gus ever gonna get out of jail? He isn't gonna be a -- a lifer, is he?"

I held her close. "I don't know, darling. I don't know anything about what happened. I just can't remember."

"Did you stop remembering because Gus hurt you so bad? Does your head ache?"

"No, sweetie, my head feels fine. How did Gus hurt me, Evie?"

"He zapped you."

I kissed her wet cheek. She settled in against me and, holding her, I tried to reason things out. Gus had tried to kill me? Why? He was a heedless, lazy, and sometimes rebellious boy, but he'd never displayed a wantonly violent nature, not even against animals. And what did Evie mean by "zapped"?

I could hardly take it all in. I had lost my magic, apparently after an attack by Gus. I’d known for months that Lauren had dormant magical abilities, but now it seemed that they somehow had resurfaced. On top of that, why weren’t we at home in Canoga Park instead of occupying a motel room in San Francisco?

Nothing wasn't adding up. Would I have to get Lauren Sherwood to explain things?

But was I letting myself get worked up over nothing. After all, I only had the testimony of a second-grader.

"Evie," I asked, "did Lauren look like herself, or did she change to look like me, like she did last time?"

The tyke shook her head. "She didn't change. She just got magic. Mommy, why are so many people getting magic?"

"Gumdrop, who else got magic, besides Lauren, I mean?"

"Gus got magic, but it made him angry and mean. He hated everybody, even you. It was awful!"

Was any of this true? It made no sense. The Blakes were a magical family, but I’d never heard of a male of the bloodline inheriting sorcery. Was it possible that Evie was telling me about a nightmare that she'd had, confusing it with reality? But if so, that wouldn't explain how I had lost my ultra abilities, or why we had made this inexplicable relocation.

I needed more information – and I gladly would have taken it from anybody.

"Where's Lauren?" I murmured out loud.

"She must be in school," Evie replied. "That's where I wish I was. All my friends are there, Mommy. I also miss Grandma, Aunt Lila, and Mrs. Griswell."

I petted her hair. "Poor little thing. Can you tell me why we’re here in San Francisco?"

She bit her lip. "You said you wanted to work in Sanfrisco, so you could visit Gus at Laddin every day."

Could Aladdin really be keeping Gus in custody? If he’d turned into an ultra, they certainly would be motivated to. They’d lock him up for study. San Francisco was the Aladdin's Western Regional Headquarters, and also the location of a secret Aladdin prison. If Gus was a captured ultra, relocating him to San Francisco would make sense. The only good thing going for us was that I was a trusted Aladdin employee and could probably gain access to the boy on a regular basis.

A strange thought now came to me. What if Gus's powers had originally been mine? Could my magic have inexplicably been transferred from me to him? That would explain a lot. Maybe if I could take my Mantra abilities back from him, Aladdin would have no reason to keep him locked up.

What was I saying? How could I be speculating on fixing something that shouldn't have happened in the first place?

"Evie, darling, I'm going to talk to Lauren after she gets home from school. Maybe she and I can make everything okay."

Suddenly the seven year old was all eagerness. "Can you make all the bad things go away?"

"I'm not sure, but I promise to do my best. Tell me, was everything still good with our family after you and me and Gus visited the Kid's Club Thursday night?"

She looked confused. "You're forgetting again, Mommy."

"What am I forgetting?"

"Gus wasn't with us.”

I was incredulous. "I don't understand. I know we were all three there shopping for school supplies. Don't you remember how you two were talking about ultra ladies in the Target store?"

Evie shook her head. "It didn't happen that way, Mommy. Maybe you dreamed it."

Somebody
had to be dreaming; I was willing to grant that much.

“And Gus didn’t need school supplies,” the little girl added.

“Why not?”

“The don’t want him at school, because he’s so ugly that he scares the kids.”

Eh?

"What are you saying about Gus being ugly, Button?"

That put the tyke over the edge. I let her cry against my shoulder. "There, there, honey,” I said at last. “If it's too awful, you don't have to talk about it."

"It was the bad fairies," she finally whispered.

"Fairies?
"What bad fairies? When?"

"Last spring. They caught me and Gus in the garden and took us away to fairyland."

This just had to be a nightmare, either Evie's or mine. "What garden?"

"The big one that Mrs. Dimsdale has. I thought I saw fairies hiding under the flowers and I told Gus about them. He didn't believe me and I took him to show him. When we were looking through the leaves, the ugly fairies got us."

No! That hadn’t happened. Gus had been fit and fine all summer. And Mrs. Dimsdale had never once let on that her garden was infested with supernatural creatures.

"What happened after the fairies got you, Cupcake?" I coaxed.

"The good fairies saved me, but the bad ones took Gus away. You came into fairyland to get us, but you saved me first. By the time we found the bad fairies, they'd done some magic on Gus to make him look ugly like they were."

I grew calmer, but only because I no longer believed that Evie was telling the truth. Maybe she was ill. Maybe I had brought her to San Francisco for an appointment with a child psychologist.

"Why would the bad fairies do something so nasty to a little boy?" I asked softly.

She sniffed. "Gus said they wanted him to be the fairy king. We brought Gus back, but he still looked like the ugly fairies. He was so sad. He didn't think anybody could love him anymore -- not you, or me, or even Grandma." She shook her head. "I don't read fairy stories anymore, not since I found out how mean fairies are."

I held her cheek against mine. Before I let myself jump to any conclusions, I needed to get somebody else’s version of what was going on.

I looked around the room. "Evie, do you know where I put the cell phone?"

She hurried away and retrieved the missing device from the nightstand drawer. "Thanks," I said.

I wanted to talk to the children’s grandmother. When I punched in the memorized number, the screen told me that I was dialing a phone that didn't exist. Didn't exist?

"Evie, the operator says that Grandma's number is bad. Why should that be?"

"I dunno."

I brought up my phone's "friends" list. While I recognized many of the names, the numbers were all different. It was looking more and more that the person who was dreaming was me.

Barbara Freeman's name was opposite a number that I had never seen before, but I tried it anyway. The sound told me that I had reached a real phone. The ringing stopped and I waited with bated breath until Barbara's voice came on.

"Hello?"

"It's me, Mom. Are things okay there?"

"I'm fine. Is Evie all right?"

"Oh, yes, but, Mother, there's a new problem."

"What?" she asked edgily.

"This might sound strange, but all of a sudden I'm having some pretty bad memory-loss problems."

"Memory loss?" After a pause she said, "Well, I don't wonder, considering what you've been through. Do you need me to come up to San Francisco to help?"

"Maybe that's an idea," I said, wanting to humor her. "What bothers me most is that I'm beginning to wonder if some of the things that I still remember are actually wrong. Mom, didn't you used to have the number 818-346-8357?"

"For heaven's sake! I don't know how you could have come up with anything like that. I've had this same number since before you and big Gus were divorced."

I continued my cautious questioning. "Mom, Evie said something about Gus -- little Gus -- that I don't understand. It's about him becoming ugly last spring. The last I remember, he was looking just fine. Do you know why she would say such a thing?"

A deafening silence answered me.

"Mom?"

"Eden, you’re in a bad condition! Is there anyone in San Francisco that can take care of Evie while you're getting some help?"

"Mom, why do you say that? Is Gus all right?"

"Eden, you must be having a breakdown. Gus did change. We don’t know what happened, except that Evie and Gus said that some fairies had kidnapped them. Mantra got involved somehow, too. Eden, please stay indoors and try to rest. I'll fly in as soon as I can, but don't drive to the airport to meet me. You might lose control in the unfamiliar traffic. Give me your exact location. Until I get there, be very gentle with Evie; do not get impatient or excited around her. You're just not yourself!"

I obligingly told Mom that I was looking forward to her visit and that I'd be very careful with Evie. After we disconnected, I just sat there, trying to make sense of the senseless.

"Mommy, you look so funny," my daughter said.

I was getting another idea now, and I didn’t like it at all. What if this child was not really from my own family?

If I wasn't delusional, I could have been that I'd into an alternative reality. It wouldn’t be for the first time. I'd been temporarily trapped inside a parallel dimension a few weeks earlier. While there, I'd even met another version of Evie, one who looked and acted just like the girl I knew. Thankfully, in that dimension the girl's real mother had never died. I’d been able to talk to a living Eden Blake face to face.

Evie was looking oddly at me, probably alarmed by her mother's strange expression. She would have been horrified had she known that the most important person in her life had suddenly become a stranger.

On the good side, maybe the Eden Blake of this world was hail and hearty, and she would suddenly walk in our motel room door carrying boxes of food from the Jack-in-the-Box restaurant. If that happened, I’d be able to leave her daughter with her while I headed out and tried to get a handle on my own problems.

But wait! The situation might not be so simple. Evie had said that her mother had lost her powers, just as I had. If we were two different people, why should the same disaster have happened to both of us at the same time? Instead, could it be that my spirit had somehow possessed the body of my counterpart in some alternate dimension?

Considering the life I had lived, this guess wasn’t as crazy as it would have sounded to a stranger. I had lived in hundreds of different bodies over the last 1500 years through magical transmigration. But I'm not able to make such a thing happen on my own; my wizard master, Archimage, had run the body-switching operation. But he couldn’t be responsible for what had hit me today; he'd been dead for months, or at least he was dead in my home world.

I can’t image what my expression was just then, but Evie suddenly drew back, looking startled. With a forced a smile, I said "Easy, Pumpkin. "Life hasn't been nice to us Blakes lately, but we're tough people and we're going to get through this all right. Grandma said she’s coming to see us tonight. She'll help me take care of you until my memory comes back."

"She's coming? That's terrific!"

"Yes, isn't it?" I said with reservation. From the start, Barbara had been trying to figure out why I’d been acting so odd over the last couple years. So far, I had considered it best that she didn’t find out that her real daughter was dead.

Just then, Evie’s little arms encircled my waist. Despite all the tragedies of this version of my family, she was, in fact, very like my own daughter.

I gazed out the window. Why had this thing happen to me, and what was going on back in my home world? Was I the victim of some abnormal glitch of Nature, or had this situation been brought about by some malevolent mind? Who could have done such a thing, and why?

"Dumpling," I said, "did I mention earlier what was I going to do today? After breakfast, I mean."

"Uh-huh. We were going to talk to a man about getting us a new place."

"Do you know the name of the man?"

"Uh-uh, Mommy. You just called him a man."

"Did I talk to him on my phone?"

"Yeah."

I thought it best to call and postpone that appointment. If it should turn out that I needed a new apartment – heaven forbid – I’d get back into touch. Consulting my list of recent calls, I chose to ring an unlabeled number that was the next previous call that I had made.

"International Exports," came a receptionist-type voice on the other end.

This reply didn't throw me. I knew that "International Exports" was the dummy company that served as a front for Aladdin in San Francisco. It figured. If this world’s Mantra had transferred to Frisco so she could be near Gus Jr., she naturally would have been in contact with the local office.

"Ah, this is Eden Blake. I'm a new transfer. May I speak to my unit chief?"

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Blake," the woman responded. "Just one minute."

Very soon, a new voice came over the line; I recognized it. "Sarn here, Blake."

Dr. Sarn had been the hard-as-nails field division supervisor back in L.A. I didn't know what she was doing in San Francisco, so I chose my words carefully, trying to feel out the situation.

"I was wondering if there were any new developments. You can imagine how worried I am."

I hoped that such a question made sense. If Gus was being held at Aladdin, as Evie implied, Sarn would assume that I was talking about that. If she didn’t know what I was going on about, I could make up something.

"Your boy has been conscious periodically," the Aladdin official answered. "We’d like to have you here soon during one of his lucid episodes. How are you doing with your move?"

"It's going slowly. There's just so much on my plate right now. I was set up to talk to a real estate man today, but I'm not feeling well and I'll have to reschedule. I'll need some time off."

"More than the week you asked for?"

"I hope not." So, Eden was on leave. Well, that made sense.

"You really do sound stressed, Blake. You ought to see a company psychologist. Until then, be careful what you say to outsiders while you're so vulnerable. Your work is heavily classified."

Was everyone on this weird planet assuming that I’d gone nuts?

"I've never believed in psychology, Dr. Sarn. I'll only go that route if I have no other choice."

"Yeah, I know how tough you can be, Blake. Play this thing as you see best. But don't push yourself too hard. You're not a superwoman."

These days I certainly wasn't!

"If Gus wakes again you'll give me call, won't you?" I asked.

"Naturally, naturally," replied Sarn, her clipped tone telling me that her well of sympathy had run dry. "Be sure to file your report on Sunday's mall fiasco when you come in."

What mall fiasco?

How was I supposed to file a report on something that I knew absolutely nothing about? If this nutty situation was going to end well, it would take a miracle.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3....

up
57 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

Thank you for continuing Lukasz/Eden's story

I'm thankful this story even exists! Poor Eden/Lukasz never got a proper send off in the comics. Lauren was a poor replacement, and there was so much to Lukasz's story left to tell. His promise to Eden had him accepting Eden's children and his new gender to a certain degree. There was still plenty to mine from there. Thank you to Christopher for taking the time to properly edit the story as well. Looking forward to more!

Dang brain fog,

I tend to forget anything over a day. But I keep going on going on. Had a stroke five years ago left me pretty messed up.