The One Who Endures by Patrick Spiker (howl and other poems .txt) 📕

cannot refuse. You’ve already begun to change. All you need is a transfusion of some of my energy and you will be one of us.”

“But my friends...!”

“In time, you will realize that concepts like love and friendship are still possible, but you will no longer experience them as a human being. You will be one of us—a being who can feel and experience in more grand scope than you can imagine. You will come to understand that your human friends were nothing to what you feel with us. And in a way, you now carry their energy, as it was fed into you. We even have a name for you: Ilian, the One Who Endured.”

The proper thing, the humane thing—indeed, the human

thing—to do would be to fight Alnan and, if necessary, commit suicide before the transformation was complete. There was still the gun, which he had dropped across the room near the blackboard. He doubted if it could hurt these tribesmen, but he was yet made of flesh and bone. He could die. Or, if he acted quickly, perhaps he could escape into the darkness of the tunnel. The creatures would follow, but there remained a chance that he’d find some

way out. Or, damn it, he could yank the wires from his body and hope that he had been right, that they were barbed and capable of gouging through his organs.

In some part of his mind, he knew those ideas could never happen. The creatures were too powerful and strong to let him end his life, certainly not when they had expended so much energy thus far.

He didn’t move.

Will didn’t feel anger or horror, even though he wanted to. He clenched his fists and affected a scowl, but it felt as unpracticed as Onon’s smile.

Alnan’s words had thrummed against his bones, enlivening the hairs on his arms and neck. Try as he might, he was intrigued what was being offered. Already he felt like so much more than when first waking in the room—cold, scared, and clinging to false hopes—that becoming stronger was almost intoxicating. He had, it now appeared, been on this path for some time. And what would he be doing by refusing? Nothing but perhaps prolonging his agony.

He thought of Marta. Her quick wit and toothy smile. Of Derek. His muscular body and wicked-smart brain. Of Anna. Ditzy, comical, yet tempered by ambitious lifelong dreams.

They were his friends. They were the means by which he had ascended this far. And if keeping their spirit alive meant climbing higher, reaching farther than anyone had ever done...well, who was he to fight?

Alnan and Onon waited. They seemed to have interminable patience.

“Okay,” he whispered at last, glancing again at Marta’s bled-out corpse. “Show me what they died for.”

Again, the phony smiles. This time, Will tried joining them.

9

My name is Ilian. I am not one of you.

I used to be normal, like you. I had a human name and a human life, and I was bound by the chains of morality and mortality—like you. Convinced of my superiority over the world: the birthright of humankind that seems synonymous with arrogance. You dream and you plan and you love, but all the accomplishments in the world cannot equal what I have become. What I know. I understand the world in ways no scientist ever will, and I travel to places no explorer will ever visit. I am part of a great brotherhood that has existed for millennia, that will continue to exist no matter what befalls you.

We rule the night.

We ride as one over fields. Houses. Cities. The entire human spectrum is ours to explore.

If you listen closely, and if the wind is turned a certain direction, you can hear us.

Imprint

Publication Date: 12-23-2012

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