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By the time Zacharie reached the Room, he was sure that the Batter was already there, though in what part, he could not say. Zacharie knew the secrets of this place, though, and he knew what he was after. Barriers melted away before him, shadows whispered and caressed his arms and face as he strode forward. The Room was alive, and it knew him. It loved him and trusted him in a way it trusted no one else.
Zacharie stopped in the doorway. Hugo sat in the center of his tiny room, drawing on a pad of paper with a fat black crayon. He looked up when Zacharie entered, and smiled widely.
“Zacharie!” he cried, stretching his arms out toward the merchant. Zacharie leaned down to scoop the boy up in his arms, swinging him around as he shrieked and giggled. “Zacharie…”
The merchant stopped spinning, lowered Hugo to the floor, and sat cross-legged in front of him. Hugo fiddled with his crayon.
“They’re all gone,” he said after a moment.
“I know.”
Hugo looked up at him with wide, red eyes. “I’m scared.”
Zacharie gathered Hugo up in his arms. “I know.”
“It’s all falling apart,” the boy mumbled into Zacharie’s shirt. The merchant sighed, stroking Hugo’s nearly-bald head.
“Perhaps it was not meant to be. From every dream one must eventually wake.”
“Not every dream…” Hugo whispered. Zacharie hated the fear in his voice. He wanted to crush it and frighten it away and see Hugo smile again. But he was right. It was all falling apart, and though it was soon to end, perhaps there would be no waking.
“Sing me that lullaby of yours, Hugo,” Zacharie murmured. Hugo began to hum. Zacharie’s eyes fluttered closed behind his mask. He leaned into the melody. When the Batter had found that music box in the bowels of Zone 3, he had refused to sell it. The puppeteer had perhaps realized its true value was more than a few paltry credits. He’d longed to hear that song again. It made him feel wanted. It made him feel loved.
Because Hugo did love him, more than anything in this mostly fabricated world. The mother he longed to see did not exist in this world. Though he waited for her, she could not return to him. In his loneliness, he’d created the Queen, a silver puppet of a mother who spouted aimless gibberish—things a child imagined a mother would say or things he remembered her saying, all put into slots to be spoken when they seemed most appropriate.
She was a doll and nothing more, but Zacharie was real in a way that she was not, and that made Hugo feel safe. But Zacharie could not keep Hugo safe. When the Batter had come into existence, Zacharie’s purpose as Hugo’s guardian had been compromised. The Batter was also one of Hugo’s creations—a conglomeration of his distant, threatening father, the villain from his comic book, and Hugo’s own desires and insecurities.
Everything the Batter was had come from Hugo. His apathy, his violence, and his driving need to purify—all of that had come from the frail boy singing softly in his lap. The poor child had not intended to create such a monster and set it loose upon his carefully constructed and ultimately neglected world, but that is what he had done. He had let his fears take hold of him and now they had rooted out every hiding place. They would be coming soon, and there was nothing that Zacharie could do anymore. He could not protect Hugo from himself.
And yet, the Batter was more than the sum of his parts. Unlike the Queen, he had sentience to him that even most Elsen lacked. He had humour, though it was dry as bone, he had opinions, he had desires, and he truly believed that he was doing the right thing. There was an aura about him that commanded attention, inspired awe, and invoked a strange infatuation. Zacharie did not—could not—hate him, for more reasons than one.
“I have to go now,” Zacharie said gently. Hugo looked up, wide-eyed.
“No, no, no. You only just got here! Please stay…”
“I cannot.”
“But he’s coming,” Hugo sobbed, burying his face into Zacharie’s shirt. His tears stained the pink heart red.
“I know. I have to meet him.” Hugo looked up again, suddenly hopeful. His eyes were red and puffy; snot and tears ran down his face.
“You’ll stop him?” he said with a hiccup.
“I’ll try.”
Zacharie tilted his mask up and kissed Hugo on the forehead, then gently lifted the boy off his lap and back onto the floor. He got to his feet and made his way to the door.
“Will you come back?”
Zacharie stopped, one hand on the doorframe. His grip on it tightened. He refused to turn around and look Hugo in the eye. He couldn’t bear to see that hopeful face, those wide eyes. Was it better to tell the truth, or leave him with a few more minutes of hope?
“Have I ever not?” he said, hating the taste of the words as they left his mouth. He didn’t wait for the reply, couldn’t bear it. He left and shut the door behind him. The floor and hallway rippled around him. At once, the corridor opened up to a small, dark room ringed with water. A red cube floated nearby. Zacharie took his place by the entrance to the hall, and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The Batter appeared in a white light, his add-ons looping around him. When he had fully materialized, they faded out of sight. The Batter looked around, sighing. It must have appeared to him as though the Room would never end. Zacharie wondered if he knew just how close he was to the child he desired so badly to purify.
“The end is near, my friend,” Zacharie said as the Batter approached. “I believe what’s floating behind you is the final save block, you might want to go back and record your progress. Before you enter that door… And face the queen… “ He chuckled as was his custom, though it felt hollow and left a bad taste on his tongue.
“I have already done so. I have no fear of the queen,” the Batter replied. Zacharie nodded.
“The time has come, then, to spend the golden fruits of your carnage.” The uttered that last word with a bitter smile as the Batter began examining his wares. He purchased a handful of fortune tickets and some new colours and equipment for his add-ons. Then he pulled out a Michael bat and proffered it to Zacharie.”
“I’ll sell this.”
Instead of taking the bat from him in exchange for some credits, Zacharie simply stood there, watching the Batter as confusion and then frustration flitted across his four, blood-red eyes.
“Do you ever stop and think,” Zacharie said at last, “about how odd this world that we live in is?”
The Batter blinked. Zacharie was amused to note that he did not close all four eyes at once, but first the upper set and then the lower one. “Not really.”
“Ah, of course not,” Zacharie said amiably, bobbing his head up and down. “Monsieur Batter is a simple man, though not at all simple-minded! Why ponder the metaphysics of the world we live in, eh? Why not just live? Sadly, not all of us have a mission quite as straightforward as yours.” He eyed the batter carefully from behind his mask. “Of course, something tells me that your mission is perhaps not as simple as you would lead us to believe.”
“I will purify the world. That is all.”
“That is what you believe. But let us talk, for a moment, about facts.”
“Facts,” the Batter repeated—his inflection more annoyed than questioning.
“Oui. Take that bat you are holding, for example. The Michael bat. You would not question that it exists, would you?”
“Experience has shown that it does.”
“Yes. Though, what is the purpose of a bat?” The Batter was silent.
“Well, perhaps I should rephrase. Purpose is a balance of two things, isn’t it? I am speaking about use and intent. The intent of a bat, a baseball bat, is to be used to play baseball, and nothing else. Use, however, well, there are any number of things one can do with a baseball bat though it was never intended to be used in such a way. Like purification, for example. Can a baseball bat never touch a baseball in its life and still fulfil its purpose? Do you see what I’m getting at?”
The Batter’s gaze was level and emotionless. “You are saying that purpose is relative to the nature of an object, but not always synonymous with the original intent of that object.”
“Exactly, exactly! What we intend to do and what we actually do, they are not always one in the same, are they?” The Batter was once again silent. Then he spoke.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I am saying, my dear Batter, that though your intent is to cleanse what is indeed a world full of problems and impurities, your use, your actions, are not quite in alignment with that intent. When intent and use do not align in some way, can purpose ever be fulfilled?” The Batter sneered at him.
“Your rambling is irritating me. I am fulfilling my purpose, my intent, through my actions. Your intent is to buy and sell merchandise, though you don’t seem to be doing that at the moment.” Zacharie laughed.
“Intent can change, my friend, and so can purpose. But that alignment is key. If our actions do not match our intent, one of the two must change, or we find ourselves in opposition with our very nature,” he leaned in close, so close that the Batter could see through the eye holes of the merchant’s mask to the dark, dark eyes beneath.
“Hand me that bat for a moment, will you?” he breathed. The Batter narrowed his lower set of eyes, and did as he was asked. Zacharie took the bat without a word and twirled it between his fingers, rubbing at a bloodstain in the fine-grained wood.
“Wood is hard to get, you know,” he said. “There’s a finite supply of it left in the world. No more trees, no more earth, no more water…” The Batter folded his arms across his chest.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course. My apologies,” Zacharie said. He fiddled with the bat for another moment in uncomfortable silence. “Do you know what an angel is, my friend?”
“Yes.”
“Michael is the name of an angel. One of the seven archangels. Michael was the greatest and most powerful, next to Lucifer of course.” The Batter just stared at him with those unblinking crimson eyes.
“What I am getting to is that I, like this bat, am named for an angel.” The Batter’s interest finally seemed piqued by this small revelation, so Zacharie continued. “The angel Zerachiel was also one of the seven archangels. He was an angel of judgement, and of healing. And he was also the angel of children, particularly children of parents who have sinned.”
He paused, and looked up at the Batter, whose eyes had widened. “Your intent is clearer to me than perhaps you realize. And my purpose… Well, perhaps I have been misleading you about being a simple items merchant.”
“If you oppose me, I will destroy you.” The Batter told him. There was no malice or anger in his voice, just unwavering conviction.
“Of that I have no doubt. But why must our purposes be in such opposition? It is a cruel world we live in, pulled about like little puppets and doomed to dance the same dance again and again and again. I can never fulfil my purpose, Batter. The game will not allow it. Do you pity me for that?”
“To be unable to fulfil your purpose is not a fate I would wish on you, Zacharie.”
The merchant was actually surprised at this response, most certainly because it had been directed at him instead of being a general statement. It implied that the Batter had feelings for him of a personal nature. No matter how shallow or how small those feelings were, they existed, and that thought gave Zacharie an acute, and ironic, sense of pleasure.
He had every reason to hate the man standing in front of him. The Batter’s very existence made fulfilling his purpose impossible. He was fated to destroy what Zacharie had been charged with protecting. And yet… there was another problem with his purpose, unique as the fact of the Batter’s existence was unique—as he was neither father nor child, and yet both. Who was the sinning father and who was the child to be protected? Hugo had created the Batter to be his father, which made Hugo in turn the Batter’s Father, as well as his child.
So here Zacharie stood, torn by a paradox and unable to eliminate he who would destroy what Zacharie treasured most because somehow, somehow the Batter was also a person Zacharie felt compelled to protect. He was cold, he was apathetic, and he was cruel, and yet somehow Zacharie treasured him. Somehow, he wished to see the Batter smile and hear him laugh.
What a twisted game this was, that the only road was sorrow.
He laughed.
“If wishes were fish, why, I’d buy another theme park. Wishes don’t add up to anything in the end. The only real things in this bleached white world of ours are you, me, and those credits burning a hole in your pocket.”
“He is real,” the Batter said. Zacharie was silent for a moment. He’d never heard the Batter refer to Hugo before. At times he’d wondered if the Batter even knew, or cared, what price he would have to pay to complete his mission or what that mission’s ultimate result would be. Now he was certain. The Batter knew. The Batter had always known. The puppeteer, however, he knew had been kept in the dark. What a vile revelation it would be for them, that the only way to complete the game would be to murder mother and child!
“And you will soon fix that. Even real things—like wishes—must fade, it seems.”
The Batter looked down and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the music box and offered it to Zacharie.
“You didn’t use it?” Zacharie asked.
“It has more value to you than to me. Take it.”
Gingerly, Zacharie took the precious item from the Batter’s hands. Their fingers brushed in the exchange. The Batter felt frigid and lifeless to the touch. He was a shell of cold resolve, anger, and pride. Zacharie had never met a more unsentimental person. And yet…
“Thank you,” Zacharie whispered. The Batter pursed his lips into a thin line, and Zacharie thought he knew what was going through the other man’s mind. He felt sorry for what he was doing, but he would never apologize because he still believed with all of his being that what he was doing was just.
The Batter pulled his cap down low, and turned towards the doorway. Zacharie continued to gaze at the music box in his hands. He wound it gently, and the melody began to play. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks, hidden by his mask.
“Bis Vincit, Qui se Vincit in Victoria,” he said. He conquers twice, who conquers himself in victory. The Batter’s footfalls did not falter. He knew, as Zacharie knew, that this victory would cost everyone everything. The world would unravel in a torrent of blood, tears, and irony. It was funny, really, how they would all die and why it couldn’t be stopped. So Zacharie laughed to himself, alone, after the Batter’s footsteps had faded away. He sat down with his music box and tried to drown himself in the melody so that he would at least be unable to hear Hugo’s cries.
What a sad, funny world it was where children were gods, merchants were angels, and baseball players were messiahs. Or was it the other way around? A world where gods were merely children, angels were just merchants, and messiahs were only baseball players?
Maybe it was just a world where gods were sick and lonely, angels loved too much and smote too little, and messiahs were monsters. A world where children were abandoned by their parents, guardians could not protect their charges, and fathers would murder their sons. A world where gods could not create or sustain life, angels had no wings, and saviours purified through violence.
There were too many contradictions—rots that ran too deep into the foundations. No matter how much they rebuilt, the sickness of this place would always grow again. This was a world too damaged to continue. Maybe that’s the real reason Zacharie could not stop the Batter, because he knew that even though the price of purification was steep, the price of continuing—spiralling further and further into corruption, paranoia, and self-destruction—would be even higher.
“Maybe it’s better that way,” Zacharie said to himself as the music faded and the world went dark.