The Impossible Man Short Story Series

On the small Caribbean island of Canarda, there is a legend that is so old and so powerful, people all over the world who have no ties there whatsoever and has never even been to the country, has heard of: The legend of the Impossible Man.

In all honesty, no one knows who, or indeed what, the Impossible Man truly is or even what he looks like. What the legends do tell us though is where he comes from. Or at least it gives us a few ideas.

The first one says that at the beginning of time, after God created everything and decided to rest on the seventh day, he actually chose to rest on the island paradise of Canarda. The little island became so precious to the Almighty that he decided it needed to be protected and preserved for all time, so with a simple whisper of his voice, he brought a man into reality that would always and forever serve as the island’s protector. Legend has it during one of the country’s worst hurricanes in the 1950s, one that was forecasted to completely ravage the country, on the shore of what is known now as Down’s Bay beach, the Impossible Man appeared out of thin air from a bolt of lightning as though he was sent from Heaven. He waded into the water as strong winds caused trees to dance dangerously and high waves lashed with all the vengeance of mother nature against the shore, and using his God given powers and secretly watched by a few people hidden behind some trees, actually caused the storm to split and go around the island, saving everyone.

Another, more modern version of the legend says during world war two, a Cacardian soldier who had gone to fight with the Americans against the Germans was picked by allied scientists for a super soldier program using radiation and a secret government developed chemical. It resulted in the soldier being disfigured but manifested amazing powers. The story says the man, forever shocked by his revolting appearance, returned to Canarda to live his life in isolation. But sometime after his return to the island, a German U-Boat was detected on its way to the island to attack a US military ship that was docked at one of the ports. But before the U-boat could attack, it was bombarded and destroyed by some unknown force. Remains of the submarine can be found in the waters around Canarda’s south coast.

It doesn’t really matter which of the countless legends of the Impossible Man goes around. It doesn’t even matter whether or not people actually believe in him, but almost everyone in Canarda and millions of people around the world can admit that they do for sure know of the Legend of The Impossible Man.

* * *

I was going to die!

As hard as I had fought and as much as I wanted to live, I knew now that it was all in vain. But this kind of resolve was so strange to me because I wasn’t scared, or even angry. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I welcomed death because I was only fifteen years old and as my parents always told me, I had my whole life ahead of me. I would prefer to live if I had the choice. But that was the issue, the problem I couldn’t get past. I didn’t have the choice. I was trapped, cornered and this ten foot tall, fifteen foot long lizard looking creature was going to kill me.

I didn’t want to die, but after all the death I’d seen for the day, my will to fight was gone.

I didn’t want to die. I wouldn’t say I welcomed death, but as I could feel the creature’s foul smelling breath, as it growled at me while getting ever closer, blood dripping into my mouth from a wound that was apparently on my forehead that I sustained in the accident, I accepted death.

Being about nine feet away from me now, the creature stopped growling and ripped loose a roar that sounded as though it should be coming from a gorilla instead. Then … it lunged at me with lightening quick speed. By this time I’d already closed my eyes. I had already accepted death. Tears were streaming down my eyes as I held back sobs for everything I’d lost that day. Regardless, though, I was ready to die.

* * *

There was a strange knot in my stomach as I stood looking up at the blue-gray morning sky. It was a particularly cloudy Monday morning though there was very little chance it was going to rain, which disappointed me because the way I felt, I would have welcomed rain. Maybe if it fell hard and long enough I would’ve been able to stay home from school today.

That’s just how Mondays always made me feel. It wasn’t the usual Monday blues because I had a long week ahead of me. It was because Mondays meant there was a long week of insults and teasing for me coming at school. No sixteen year old would ever want to look forward to that.

I was standing at the bus stop in the small country village of Charlesville, dressed in my school uniform of a white button up shirt with a red tie, long khaki colored pants and black shoes, with my seven year old brother, Andrew (his school uniform was a navy blue short pants with a blue button up shirt). It was already six-twenty five and we were waiting for the six-thirty bus to take us into town where I would take Andrew to his school, which was just outside of Queenstown, then I would take a bus to my school.

Our little village wasn’t really so big, even by the standards of what constituted a small community in Canarda, especially as we lived far in the country. There were probably about one hundred buildings in the area and that included homes, a few village shops and one extremely small - I’m talking two aisles - mini mart. And completely surrounding the village at every point was sugar cane. It actually grew for at least a mile in all directions around the village, which had only one main road in and out of the community and that’s where the bus stop my brother and I were standing at was located, on the exact edge of our village. Directly a few feet ahead of us and around the corner where the road curved, was the cane field on both sides.

I hated it here.

Our house was, admittedly, one of the nicest houses in the village. It was a huge, green painted, two story house that was located through a little walking path directly across the road from the bus stop we were at. My mother was an architect at the biggest design firm in the country and my father was an airplane jet pilot for a small private airline. I liked to think that most other kids resented my parents’ ability to give us a better than average upbringing and that’s why they always picked on me, but I knew that wasn’t even close to the truth.

They could care less about the money. It was just me. I was five foot ten, lanky looking but the strangest thing about me was the fact that for a black kid, I had bright green eyes. My mother always said they reminded her of how pretty the leaves on the trees looked after a healthy dose of rain. That, along with the fact my first name was Walter, a name I hated because it was an old man’s name, was all the reason they needed to target me.

And I wasn’t much of a fighter either.

I suddenly felt Andrew tug on my left hand which pulled me out of my deep contemplation.

“The bus is coming,” He said, pointing at the big blue bus as it barreled toward us.

“Well, then you why couldn’t you have stopped it yourself? I don’t always have to do it,” I snapped at him, pulling my hand from his as I stuck my other hand out to indicate to the bus driver to stop for us. Andrew was long since used to my sometimes sudden grouchy behavior and even now as I glanced at him, just before the bus stopped in front of us, he looked completely unscathed by it, but I still felt a little bad inside.

Only a little though. Because while I did feel bad, I wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Once we got on and I paid our fares, my eyes quickly scanned the bus for seats and as it did so my heart sank. Three boys and one girl from my school where onboard this very bus, sitting in the back, but as soon as they saw me, they began to sneer in a mischievous sort of way.

At the front of the bus on the left and right side were five seats each facing the opposite sides rather than facing front. I would’ve preferred to sit up front here, where they couldn’t cause any trouble, but Andrew had already run to two empty seats in the middle of the bus.

The bus was just under half filled and the seats directly in front and behind us were empty, so as soon as I sat down and my backpack was in my lap, the others had jumped to occupy the seats so we where between them.

“Good morning, Philgram,” said a tall, dark skinned boy with braided hair named Josiah, from the seat in front of me. Everyone at school knew who he was. As for his three companies. I didn’t know or even cared who they were, especially when they started snickering at his little remark. But it was clear they knew who I was. Everyone did.

“Stop calling me that, I hate it,” I retorted, intending for my voice to sound a lot more forceful than it actually did. I didn’t even know how he managed to come up with that ridiculous name for me.

They clearly found my reply more funny than forceful.

“Hey, Philgram, turn around so I could see those pretty, little girl eyes of your,” The girl said from the aisle seat directly behind me. The chorus of laughter continued.

Without looking back at her I said, “Why, though? Do you like little girls?”

It pleased me to hear the laughter stop but then I felt a sharp slap across the back of my head.

I knew it was the girl.

“What’re you gonna do?” Josiah taunted with a nasty sneer on his face. “Go on, hit her back.”

“OW,” The girl shouted in pain but it wasn’t me that hit her. Andrew had stood up in his seat, balled his right hand into a fit and hit her on the forehead. I barely caught him in the final second, the guy in the window seat behind was about to hit Andrew but I actually caught his hand before he could.

“Don’t hit my brother,” I snarled at him as I forced him back into his seat. Both he and the girl seemed stunned by this, but either Josiah wasn’t or he recovered from it rather quickly, because he grabbed me by my hand and forced me back into my seat as I hand stood up to stop the boy behind us.

“Don’t touch my friends,” He said angrily.

“Then don’t touch my brother,” I replied, leaning forward so I was closer to him. Andrew was about to stand up in his seat again, because he probably wanted to back me up but I used my right hand to keep him seated.

At that moment, it occurred to me that by now others in the bus knew what was going on but made no efforts to keep things civil. Great, NOW people wanted to mind their own business.

“Or what? He hit me first” The girl behind me chimed in, as she lobbied another slap across the back of my head. The force and surprise of it made my eyes water which was too bad because I didn’t want them to think I was crying.

“Or I’m beating your ass.” That sounded lame to me and I’m sure it sounded that way to them too, but there was no laughter this time. We were all ready for this fight. We were all on our feet, wobbling as the bus soared on the early morning roads. Strange, considering I was just thinking about how I’m not a fighter.

I was standing, facing Josiah, but the girl gripped me in a headlock from behind.

“Let him go. Let him go,” Andrew was screaming and struggling as the boy behind him restrained him, admittedly with as little force as possible.

“I said DO NOT TOUCH HIM,” I roared, not trying to throw the girl off me. The boy in the aisle seat next to Josiah looked as though he didn’t know what he should do, but he didn’t have to wonder long.

We all lurched forward as the bus came to a sudden stop.

“ENOUGH,” Shouted the bus driver, and then he got up and walked over to us. I was a little embarrassed when the other passengers in the bus began to clap. “There will be no fighting on this bus. All of you.” He pointed to Josiah and his friends. “Move. Now.”

“But we didn’t start this,” The chubby boy next to Josiah said in a voice that reminded me of Mikey Mouse.

“I didn’t ask who started it. I’m telling you to move. Two to the front. Two to the back. NOW.”

Josiah looked the man up and down. The bus driver wore a blue button up shirt and black slacks. But even though his uniform was huge he still filled it. It was easy to till this was a powerful man. Not someone a kids like us should be even meddling with which, for some reason, I had the impression Josiah had considered.

But, thankfully, he seemed to have come to the same conclusion as me and silently got up and went to the back of the bus without even another look and me. His friends followed suit. The girl followed him and the other two boys went to the front of the bus. After, the bus driven shot me a look, then walked back to the front, sat down and moved the bus.

I was still feeling a little ashamed about what had happened – my shirt was a crumpled and was hanging out my pants, but I knew they were all planning to finish this when we got into town. My stomached started to rumble with fear. I looked over at Andrew. He was looking through the window, his little body shaking with anger. I bent down to pick up his red Spider-man backpack that was almost half the size of his body which had fallen to the floor. I dropped it in his lap. He then looked over at me and smiled.

I sighed. He was my younger brother but yet, sometimes I wished I could be more like him.

* * *

We arrived in Queenstown. The morning trips to town weren’t usually long because it’s so early the roads are usually clear. Today was different for some reason. It took us almost twenty minute longer to reach into town, but we finally made it.

We were held up in traffic in the area of Freedom Park, literally about a three minutes away from where we were to disembark. I was busy looking through our window at the public library outside when it happened.

BOOM!

Suddenly a huge explosion rang through the air as though a bomb had gone off. The sound was so painful that my ears felt as though little air bubbles had burst in my eardrums, sending pain shooting through my head, forcing me to clap my hands to my ears in an effort to both try to curb the pain and the block out anymore sound that could potentially follow, but that was it, there weren’t any more blasts that followed, though there was a high pitched ringing in my ears after the explosion.

After a few seconds, I took down my hands and strangely enough, even though I never lost consciousness or even closed my eyes, I realized I was lying on the floor, with bits of broken glass scattered all around me. Apparently that blast or shockwave or whatever it was seemed to have been so powerful that it threw some of the passengers out of their seats and shattered some of the sturdy bus windows.

I sat up and dusted small to medium sized shards of glass off me. The ringing in my ears finally began to disappear and as it did I found my mind and all my other senses seemed to return to normal, my brain finally started processing what was going on around me. Half the passengers had fallen to the floor of the bus; some a lot harder than me as there were people with small cuts and abrasions about their body. At the back end of the bus, two men were trying to assist someone who apparently was unlucky enough to receive a piece of glass to her left eye and an elderly looking man who was lying unconscious with a younger woman crying over him and other passengers trying to help revive him.

It shocked me to see the person who had the piece of glass in their eye was the girl from our school that was sitting with Josiah, who looked like he was suffering from shock, sitting wide eyed in the high seats at the back of the bus.

I looked over to my left towards the front of the bus, which was a lot emptier, I saw a few feet away from me, Andrew, now getting up to his feet looking as though he was also temporarily dazed by what happen.

I scrambled to my feet, confused as to how we got separated so far considering we were sitting together, realizing the blast had to be powerful enough to actually throw people around in the bus, but I pushed that out my mind to rush over to him and as soon as I was standing upright, I finally started to process all the sounds around, both in and out the bus. Car alarms blaring, people shouting in anger and confusion, people screaming in pain.

“Somebody call for help. Call an ambulance,” One man shouted as he tended to a dazed and crying woman.

“I’ve been trying for the last ten minutes,” Another woman responded. “But I think there’s something wrong with my phone because I’m not getting any cell service.”

“I don’t think it’s your phone,” A man in a black and white business suit next to me stated as he stood up on one of the bus seats. Out the side of my eye I saw him holding up two cell phones as though he figured the higher up he could get them the more likely they were to receive some sort of service. “Both my personal and company phones aren’t getting any service either. It’s like something’s knocked out or is blocking cellular service.”

I ignored all of it and the people trying to get my attention to help with the injured and rushed over to my brother. Seeing me coming towards him, he quickly got up and darted around the two other boys who were checking a pregnant woman in front of him to run to me. He wrapped his arms around my waist as though I was somehow able to confront him by just being there.

I didn’t pull him off. He was just as much a comfort to me as I was to him.

When he pulled away, over the roar of confusion all around us, he asked me, “What’s happening?”

The fear in his eyes made me feel so helpless.

Before I could respond I noticed that the noise around me suddenly had died down considerably to the point where the only voices I heard were of the people inside the bus with us. I turned to look through the shattered windows and noticed that everyone outside was looking up towards the sky, as though they were looking at something falling towards the ground. I moved to position my body through a window on the left side of the bus so I could see what had grabbed everyone’s attention. It would have been easier to go outside but the truth was I was too scared.

It was a crack.

Not a plane crashing down, not a building on fire. Nothing of the sort, like what I was expecting to see. Instead what we were all looking at was a literal crack in the sky as though there was some kind of invisible glass up there that something had smashed into. The crack itself was about fifty feet in the air, etched into the light blue sky, about ten feet long and barely a foot wide. It looked like a bolt of lightning had been frozen in time.

I would like to say I was scared, but honestly I didn’t know what I felt. And I knew it was the same for everyone because everyone just continued to look up at it and stare in fascination.

No. That wasn’t right. It took a lot of effort, but I managed to pull my gaze away from the strange phenomenon and looked around Freedom Park. Some people were running away. Only a few, but there were people jumping out of their cars and running in any direction out of town as though they somehow knew this was a foreshadowing of bad things to come.

I turned my head to the right to look at the traffic in front of us. There was another huge blue bus directly before us and even from behind I could tell it was completely packed but the back doors suddenly open and a slightly overweight woman emerged aggressively pulling two little children that seemed to be slightly younger than Andrew behind her. She wasn’t moving very fast, but she was determined to get away.

As she passed our bus, her face turned towards me, almost half my body hanging out the window now, and I saw the raw fear that was etched there. Her face, dark and plump with a big nose and circles under her eyes, became a message for me.

Run. Run now. Run far and fast.

I had to get away. Andrew and I had to run now and the only place I could think to run to was home. I turned and watched the woman and her two kids run for a few seconds then crossed to the other side of the road behind our bus.

As soon as she was out of my sight, I had moved to pull myself back into the bus to follow her lead, which was to grab my brother and find a way to get home. It was the thinking of a child, that something as delicate as a house could protect you from all the dangers of the world. But it was all I knew. Somehow getting home would keep us safe.

But before my head was back inside the bus, the air exploded with the screams of people in the streets. I didn’t have to look far to see what had caused this new round of trouble. In fact, others in the bus with me finally grew curious about the events that were occurring outside that they too had now poked their heads through the windows on my side to get a glimpse.

I was sure that I had somehow been transported to some kind of movie world, because there was no way what I was seeing could be real. No. it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

Two huge scaly claws, similar to a dinosaur’s, had forced their way through the cracks in the sky and had forced the edges of the crack apart a few feet to literally tear a hole in the sky. The clouds that were drafting past the fracture now seemed to disappear as the passed one end of the hole and reappear at the other end as though it was passing behind it. But I’d watched enough television to know what I was looking at.

A rift in reality. As unbelievable as it was, there was a hole to another … place, hanging in the sky above Queenstown in Canarda and inside that hole, after the claws had been withdrawn, was a huge eye yellow eye with a big black iris.

I pulled myself back into the bus and a few other people followed suit. I’d seen enough. I didn’t know how I was going to get there, but there was no longer any question about the fact that somehow, I had to get home.

Andrew was sitting in one of the seats by himself looking around more frightened than I’d ever seen him. I went over to him and grabbed his upper arm. This was no time to be gentle.

“What’re you doing,” Someone shouted at me. I looked back and realized it was Josiah.

“Do you see what’s happening out there? We need to get out of here, now.”

“And go where?” There was panic in his voice, but not only from fear, but for longing. He wanted somewhere safe to go too. Deep down, I felt the need to help him.

“We’re going home.” I looked down at Andrew. Were there tears in his brown eyes? Were there tears in mine? “Our dad’s a pilot. We can get out the country.” I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “You can come with us.”

Before he could respond, the guy with the two cell phones said, “So, what about the rest of us? Huh, are you gonna leave us behind?”

Suddenly a loud, nerve racking, tearing sound rang though the air, as loud as thunder during a storm, as though someone had tripped a building sized piece of cloth. Everyone who was able to move ran either to the front of the bus to see or looked out through the window. The crack in the sky now reached all the way to the ground, right in the middle of the road, between two cars that happened to be few feet apart, one in front the other. This caused both drivers to try to get as far away from the anomaly as possible, the driver in front slamming down on his gas pedal and weaving his way through the traffic jam with the others blearing their horns and following suit and the cars behind following and doing the same, only reversing so that there were a flurry of cars trying to reverse around us but instead of getting away, they only managed to make the things worse.

The rift itself was about one hundred meters ahead of us, and seemed to have touched down and had opened up in the middle of the road. And when I say opened up, I mean opened up, because the black lines of the rift had stretched apart and was not about a good ten feet wide.

People should be running, I thought to myself. And a few of them still were. But only a few. Most people had now got out of their cars and buses – including ours – to get a good look at what was happening, despite the fact that we’d just seen a huge eye peeking down at us from through the cracks of that very same rift.

Yet, I could understand the fascination. It truly was scary, but it was also amazing. Appealing even. The same way how people would swim for the lives to get away from a Great White shark but would happily watch one and even enjoy the terror it inspired from the safety of a shark cage. But there was no cage here. No barrier separated us from the terror that I was sure we all knew awaited us in the deep beyond that was the misty darkness that existed inside the crack.

A creature emerged from the rift.

It was a huge thirty foot high creature with gray skin, a face like a gorilla and a long scaly body like that of a reptile. And by emerged, I mean it crawled out on all fours, its huge four legs crushing cars as it came out.

But still no one ran. Well, a few people did. They turned and ran as though they were looking at the devil himself coming out of hell, but the majority of people simply backed away, as though they believed they were out of the creatures reached and simply just watched it it in fearful fascination.

“WALTER!”

I pulled my head back into the bus in mild surprised and looked at my brother who had tears streaking down his face. “I want to go home.”

It was like the sound of his voice, the urgency of his cries, pulled me back to reality. THERE WAS A MONSTER CREEPING OUT OF A OTHERWORLDLY PORTAL IN THE STREETS.

it was as though this was ringing loudly inside my head. I didn’t know if this was a hypnotic effect of the rift or just play human stupidity that made most of us stay and watch this, but a small part of me wished Andrew hadn’t pulled me out of it, because the fair that flooded my body now made me feel like I wanted to vomit, piss and faint all at the same time.

“You’re right.” I urgently told my brother. “We need to get out of here now and find a way home.” My words seemed to comfort him a little and he throw his spider-man backpack, which was in his hands, on his back, as though ready for a long journey.

For the third time this morning, screams rang through the air, but the only difference was, this time hundreds of people began running area from the area in all directions. People were running between the cars, some were even running over cars, others who had bigger cars, vans and trucks, began driving through the jam up of vehicles, knocking all in their path out of their way, even turning some upside down, while sustaining damage themselves. One particularly large SUV, managed to get through a few feet of vehicles before the driver lost control and the car spun out of control and ended up through the doors of a supermarket, knocking some people who were in the way and crushing others, leaving blood all around.

The creature had instantly begun eating people. As it emerged from the rift, instead of backing away like the others did, one man started to move closer to the beast, whether to get a closer look or test if it was aggressive, it was unclear. But without hesitation, the creature, without moving its huge legs, actually managed to extend its huge neck and held the screaming man in its jaws. As the bystanders around began screaming and running, the beast snapped down on the tiny human in its mouth, instantly killing him, then swallowed him whole, with blood dripping down its month.

“Get outta my way. I’ve gotta got out of here now,” Two cell phone guy shouted as the majority of people in the bus was shoving their way to the doors as vehicles scrapped the bus in their bid for freedom.

I had gripped Andrew and pulled him closer to me as people had been shoving and pushing others out of their way just to get to the some. A few had even decided to just jump through the windows and run.

“What are we going to do?” I heard someone ask me. I turned and saw it was a panicked Josiah, looking as though he was torn between wanting to join the others and just run or coming with Andrew and I.

“People, just stay on the bus, we can get out of here,” The driver was shouting, but no one was listening, everyone was rushing through the doors, trying to take the best chance to safety. Josiah’s friends all looked at him, even the girl who now had a handkurchif tied around her eye, all shrugged and left.

“Josiah, come on. Come with me, please. I – I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die today,” he said as he paused by the door, the last person to leave. But she didn’t even wait for his response. She just bolted out and headed across the huge bridge to our right.

She wasn’t telling him to come with her. She was apologizing for leaving her friend, I thought to myself.

Out of nowhere, a single bolt of lightning struck the ground about seven feet away from me. The sound of thunder that followed was so loud I was thrown of my feet and flew into the side of the overturned bus, the second time for the day I was knocked around by sound. Luckily for me, the creature was throw back, midair, nearly twenty feet away from me. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve side the lightning wanted that to happen. But I do know better.

I clearly wasn’t an expert on lightning, but this one was strange and very different from any bolt of lightning I’d ever seen before as, for one thing, it was particularly thick. In the fraction of a second I’d managed to see it, it looked one foot think and was actually blue-white. Another thing that was odd about this lightning about the lack of heat. As it struck so close to me I would have expected to feel its immense heat, but I didn’t feel it. Instead what I felt, was hope.

I felt it flowing through my body, my nerves, my cells. I felt it deep in bones. The pain from all I’d been through hadn’t been erased from my mind, but it no longer felt like I was drowning in that sorrow. Now, it felt like … I had a purpose, a reason to live that even if I wasn’t sure what it was, it was powerful enough to keep me pushing on.

When the lightning had struck the ground, it had made a small explosion, so there was still some dust swirling around there, but it quickly began to dissipate.

Even the giant lizard creature seemed to sense what I did, because I had already found its way back onto its feet, but was holding its position and was hissing and flinging its tail around angrily, but not at me. Its aggression was not aimed at the spot of the lightening impact. It seemed to sense the same thing I did. That bolt of lightning wasn’t normal and it had left something on the ground, hiding in the swirling dust.

Just as this thought passed through my mind, the thick brown dust finally cleared. I was seeing it, but I still refused to believe it. Kneeling there as if waiting to start a foot race, tall and muscular, dressed in strange clothing was a man. But the fact he appeared out of a bolt of lightning wasn’t the strangest thing about him.

This man, till kneeling before me, was covering in bright, white flames. At first it looked like the lightning had set him on fire, but then I noticed that the while flames were licking at his body, they were coming from his body.

“It can’t be you,” I whispered in awe, but even with the little distance between us, the hissing of the creature before us and all the screams from the people around us, he still heard me. He turned his head over to me, and bored into my eyes with a powerful gazed that seemed to lock me eyes onto his.

His eyes, I thought to myself, noticing his bright green eyes even from this distance. Their like mine.

“It has to be you! You are, aren’t you? You’re the Impossible Man.”

He pulled his gaze away from me and finally stood up, looking at the huge creature which was now roaring furiously.

It lunged at the man. He leapt forwards, literally charging towards death.

END OF PART 1