Written for English class as a character study type thing. Same story, two different points of view. Enjoy.

Elements of the music video for the song "Amaranth" by Nightwish, and the painting that inspired it.

Graham

Glisser sur les ondes ensemble,

se dérober au monde.

"Gliding on the wind together,

shying away from the world."

-"Respire," by KYO

Life will never be the same, never can be the same - not since that day, when everything disappeared in a cloud of dust and emotion, when no one knew what to think when they suddenly woke up to a world in turmoil and problems so complex that no one understood them.

We were defenseless, armed with nothing but our own wits against something that seemed as mindless and lost as a minotaur in the eye of its labyrinth. No light, no darkness - just the dim in-between where it is hard to tell whether you are awake or asleep, just the twilight and the dusk, perpetually looped through time and physics.

When I first awoke, I realized I had no power in my apartment, no way to know what time it was until I found a watch and held it to the window to catch what little light there was. It was after eleven in the morning on a Friday, a day I normally spent playing a movie for my students at Kennent High School. Dimly, I wondered if school had been cancelled that day.

I moved through my apartment to the living room and tried to turn on the television – no luck. In the back of a closet, I found a radio and turned it on. As I listened for a broadcast, I leaned against the windowsill and gazed across the town: Everywhere I could see was the same dim twilight: there were no cars or buses running, no flickering televisions, no streetlights.

Just silence. Utter silence.

"Reports continue to come in from across the city," the man on the radio said. "I've been told that widespread blackouts have also been reported outside the city, as far away as Newfoundland. If what I have been hearing is true, the entire Eastern Seaboard may be without power." The eerie silence echoed behind his words, beyond the crackling and nerves.

"I have just been informed that the mayor will be holding a meeting in City Hall in approximately one hour," the man continued. "Provisions will be provided to those who need them. City police have warned citizens to take necessary precautions to keep their food and other edibles safe to ingest, suggesting that citizens keep their refrigerator doors closed…"

I tuned out the radio and continued to stare across the rooftops, wondering how long the situation had been present. Shaking my head, I decided to get ready to head for City Hall. The walk would be brief, but I wanted to get a better look at what was happening on the streets.

My shower still worked, dark as it was. After dressing, I pulled a jacket on and headed into the hallway. The numbered lights above the doors of the rickety elevator were out, and I hoped no one had had the misfortune of getting stuck there: the building was only three stories high, but the elevator was as many decades old.

As I came to the ground floor, I saw the open elevator doors and sighed, both in relief and preparation to venture outside. People milled around in the streets, meeting up with friends and neighbors and complete strangers to discuss theories or complain about the inconvenience. I wove my way around cars stalled in the center of the street – their density suggested that whatever had happened had taken place in early rush hour – and made my way to the intersection at the end of my street.

"Excuse me?" Someone touched my arm and I turned to look at them. A woman and a young child stood beside me, looking frazzled. "Do you know where City Hall is?"

I pointed to my right, down North Beaver Street. "First right, first left, then keep going straight."

"Thank you," she said, then took the child's hand and started in the direction I had indicated. I watched them go, then climbed on top of a stalled sedan to watch people pass.

The beginnings of mass hysteria had set in, and I knew from my extensive studies of history that mass hysteria never led anywhere good. Especially when the main theory was alien invasion. The second theory was a nuclear war with Russia or China, as if it would take power from over fifteen states while leaving us alive. I doubted any of us really had any sense of what was going on. We simply wandered the streets with hand-powered flashlights waiting until someone pointed us in the right direction.

After a while, I climbed off the car and followed the steady stream of people toward City Hall. I took a roundabout way to get there so I could explore a bit more. Everywhere, electrical devices were dead: lawnmowers sat still and docile in lawns, motorcycles lay dormant on sidewalks, heaters ceased to produce heat as winter fast approached.

I turned down an alley that would lead me directly to City Hall and came face-to-face with James Weedon, a blond figure I had hoped to forget at some point in my life. I jumped, shocked and startled; he simply looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

We had been somewhat of an item in high school, the first and last thing everyone spoke of each day. James had always been the one to play jokes and poke fun, and reappearing after almost twelve years in an alleyway struck me only as his most recent tada.

"Graham," he said, half surprised.

I looked away. "Yeah."

"What are you doing here?"

"I live here, James."

"Bitter, bitter." He grinned, his white teeth bright even in the darkness. "Wanna know what's going on?"

"Do you know?"

"I'm going to find out." He took me by the arm and pulled me back the way I had come. "I have a theory."

I shook my arm and he let go, stopping and turning to me. "What's your problem?"

The smile on his face dropped – I had called his façade. He watched his foot as he scuffed his sneaker on the asphalt and shoved his hands into his pockets. "I've been looking for Zoë's killer," he said. "Somewhere, I'm praying this is the answer."

"What?" I practically yelled the word. Zoë was his twin sister, our third Musketeer. She had been killed in our senior year. The police never found her killer, and James and I were never the same after that. He had moved away with his family directly after graduation, and I had not seen him since. "What does this have to do with her death?"

He stared at me, his blue eyes sharp. Running a hand through his hair, he looked around and sighed. "This isn't natural."

"No kidding," I replied flatly. I glanced behind me, to where the crowd was slowly disappearing into City Hall.

"Come with me?" James asked.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Where?"

"I'm not really sure," he replied. "Somewhere close, I can feel it."

Sighing, I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked over my shoulder again, making my decision. "How are we getting there?"

James smiled. "You'll see." He offered his hand, but I ignored it, walking along beside him. We walked through the streets, which were mostly empty now.

I checked my watch. "It's almost noon," I commented to break the silence.

"I haven't been hungry since last night," James replied, his eyes moving over buildings and cars as if he had never seen such creations before. "No one else has, either. Electricity, hunger, and light. Whatever's doing this is fascinating, far beyond anything I've tracked before."

"'Tracked'?"

James stopped in the lawn of a house just on the outskirts of town. He picked up an abandoned bicycle from the grass and offered it to me, pulling out his wallet and shoving a few bills into the house's front door.

"There's your transportation," he said, walking to the curb where another bicycle waited for him.

I looked at the bike. "You can't do that, James."

He rode circles in the street. "I paid them twice what it's worth. I think they'll understand. Now come on."

Rolling the bicycle to the street, I swung my leg over it and took off after James. "You mentioned tracking before," I said when I had caught up. "What did you mean?"

"Just what you think I mean." He coasted down a small hill. "I track the supernatural – and I think this counts as supernatural." For a few minutes, he was quiet. I said nothing for fear of sending him deeper into fiction. Eventually, he said, "I lied to you before."

"About ghost hunting?" I asked.

He stared straight ahead. "They found the guy who killed Zoë. A few years ago. The cold case crew figured it out. Remember that guy who used to live beside us?" He glanced at me and I nodded, watching him rather than the road. "Apparently, he kept her in his basement for a few days before killing her. They found blood everywhere."

I watched his stony features for any sign of emotion. He had always been good at hiding his feelings. I suddenly realized that he was not wearing a jacket, his red shirt instead blown loosely in the wind as he rode. He was still as slender as ever, no doubt helping the shape he was in to be able to pedal a bicycle from wherever he had been before to where he was now.

"He got life," James finished, and I realized I had not been listening to anything he had been saying.

"At least they found him," I said, focusing on the road again.

"Yeah."

"Do you seriously have no idea where we're going?" I searched his figure for a bag or a map or something that indicated that he knew what he was doing. I suddenly wished I had not decided to follow him – he was strange to me now, someone other than who I had befriended years ago.

He smiled. "It's just over this hill."

"Westminster?" I questioned, naming the small town he had mentioned.

Nodding, he glanced at me. "Why? Got a problem with it?" He shook his head as he pedaled up the hill. "Nah, it's where my investigation told me to go. I've been waiting for this to happen for a few weeks."

"And you never told anyone?" We crested the hill and began to coast down the other side.

"Who would have believed me?" he asked. "You don't even believe me and it's happened already."

"Do I have to believe you? It's probably something scientific."

James lifted himself off the seat, standing on the pedals as he shook his head. "I bet it's not. You majored in history, right? You always said you wanted to."

I nodded.

"Are you familiar with the Finnish painting 'Haavoittunut enkeli' - 'The Wounded Angel'?"

"I haven't studied it extensively, but I think I know it. The one with the two boys and the angel?"

"Yeah." He coasted past the first house, then sat on the seat again as he began to pedal. "I came across the painting on the Internet recently and it clicked in my head that this will not be explainable with science."

I looked through the windows of the houses we passed. They were as dark as they had been at home, but the town seemed even more deserted. A shiver ran up my spine, a mixture of unease and fear.

"They left a few days ago." James was watching me. "Electrical surges scared them off. It's how I knew to come here."

"What's gotten into you, James?" I asked. He always used to be so levelheaded when it came to the supernatural, and now he was chasing after it?

He shook his head and grinned at the street ahead of us, then slowed to a stop in the center of a deserted intersection. Looking around, he rubbed his forehead. "Where to go, where to go?" he said to himself.

In the distance, a bolt of lightning struck a roof. I jumped but managed not to yell; James simply swore and pointed before riding toward where it struck. I glanced at the sky as we rode, searching for clouds against the grey backdrop. Surprisingly, there were actually clouds gathered above the town, but I could make out little in the darkness.

James managed to locate the struck roof quickly enough, especially after more and more lightning connected the sky to the Earth. He threw his bike down on the grass, leaping over it and rushing for the front door. I followed him and waited as he knocked on the door.

The house was a strange-looking place: a squat, square building with a flat roof. The windows were wide and covered with thick curtains, and the bushes around the exterior seemed well cared for. The driveway was empty, and I voiced my concern to James.

"Must've fled with the rest," he said, stepping back to look at the roof. Standing on his toes, he still could not see what he wanted to see. He pointed around the right side of the house. "Look for a ladder or something that way."

I sighed and rolled my eyes, then moved off in the direction he had indicated. We met at the back of the house, neither of us having found anything. The garden at the back of the house was even more elegant that the bushes at the front: a menagerie of colors bloomed and sprouted, hanging or withdrawn in the absence of sunlight.

James went for the trellis on which ivy hung. I heard the weak wood creak under his weight, but it never left the house. When he was on the roof, he swore again, something like awe in his voice. He stepped away from the edge and out of my sight.

"James?" I called. "What's up there?"

"Come here, Graham," he called back. "You'll want to see this."

I took a breath and climbed the trellis, praying it would not collapse beneath my feet. James absently offered his hand to help me the rest of the way. I brushed off my knees, then focused on the figure in the middle of the roof.

On one hand, it was definitely a female figure. On the other, it was definitely not human. On its knees on the rough stucco, the being wore a silky white dress that blew in a billowing manner. A dark purple sash was tied at its waist, and another over its eyes like a blindfold; a third bound its hands behind its back.

"Nothing I've tracked has been real," James said quietly to himself, staring.

I looked at him. "What is it?"

He shook his head. "I don't know." Carefully, he stepped closer to the being.

"James," I hissed. "James, what about the lightning?"

After James' split-second glance at me, lightning hit the roof again – except it hit the being. It threw its head back in a silent scream, dark hair flying up as a sharp breeze replaced the lightning. Throughout the pain it must have been feeling, it remained completely silent.

James had yelped and prostrated himself when the lightning had struck. As the breeze cleared, he crawled toward the being and waved me over. I knelt beside him, wary.

"What are you doing?" I whispered as he reached out and tilted the being's face until it seemed to look at him.

"It's okay," he cooed to the being, shushing it while its breathing returned to normal. In his eyes, I saw great compassion, something I had seen only rarely before then. "It knows we don't want to hurt it," he said to me.

"What if we get struck by lightning?"

He glared at me for a moment. "Do you not understand the importance of this?" He brushed his thumb across the being's cheek, wiping away a tear that had gotten through the blindfold. "This creature is causing all this darkness. We help it, we help ourselves."

I watched him in silence for a few moments before asking, "How do we help it?"

James shrugged, shaking his head slowly as he gazed at the being's face. "I don't know," he admitted. "I'm trying to remember what I read about the painting."

"This has nothing to do with that painting," I said.

"Period clothing, possibly before electricity," he continued. "Maybe something like this happened before? The artist saw or heard about it, painted it."

"James!"

"Fire." He looked at me.

"What?"

"Fire. We burn it."

"James, that's insane," I argued. "We can't burn it – that's murder."

The being turned its head toward me, and I felt like it was staring directly into my eyes even through the blindfold. I paused for a moment.

"There was a music video created from that painting," James explained. "In the end, the angel was burned and its soul escaped. The painter used symbols in his work. Maybe he used an angel to hide what it really was?"

I shivered under the being's stare. "I'm not going to let you – "

"Graham." James stared at me. "You can leave if you want. Just help me get it to the street."

"Do it there so you won't burn down the house." I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "All right."

Together, we managed to get the being off the roof and into the center of the street. James sent me to loot around yards until I found a gasoline can, and I reluctantly returned when I had found one.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked one last time as James uncapped the jug.

He looked at the being's face and nodded, then stood and poured gasoline on it. I shoved my hands in my pockets and paced nervously, waiting for the police to show up at any moment. When James had finished with the jug, he tossed it aside.

I watched as he knelt and tilted the being's face to his own. "Say hi to Zoë for me," he said quietly, then stepped away. From his pocket, he withdrew a lighter and carefully knelt down to place the flame against a drop of gasoline that had slid away from the being.

It caught fire immediately and he jumped back, shaking his hand.

– – –

Minutes later, we sat atop the house, our feet dangling over the side. We faced away from the street and the crackling fire, trying not to imagine what was happening, what types of reactions and jolts were going through the being's body.

James seemed pensive, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he picked absently at one of his fingers.

I moved closer to him and put my arm around his shoulders. Although I still did not know if his idea would work, I said, "You had to do it, James."

"I'm not worried about that," he replied, looking down at his fingers. "'The never-fading rain in your heart.' That's what the song says, the one that used the 'Haavoittunut enkeli'." He sighed. "Now that I've found something beyond the realm of this world, I don't know what to do. Look for Zoë? Pray for something else like this to happen?"

I rubbed his arm. "You'll find something to occupy yourself. You always do."

He smiled. "Twins are supposed to stick together, you know. We're supposed to be with each other even if we're separated."

"Do you still feel her?"

"I think so." James nodded. "'Hearing voices of the never-fading calling.' Good song." He smiled. "She's here, but I want to be able to see her again. It won't happen."

I watched him calmly as he stared out across the line of houses. "How long do you want to stay here?"

"I don't know."

I moved even closer. "I'll stay here with you."