The God Who Stood Alone

The young man sits on the park bench, his legs folded one over the other and his head tilted back so that his matted blonde hair rests against the wooden back of the bench. The heels of his black shoes sit against the ground,and one of his hands beats out a rhythm on his thigh. The rhythm, played by fingers and thumb, with the occasional tap of a palm, is one of patient reverie and a tribute to rhythm. Licking his lips quickly, he can taste the salt in the cool summer wind. Overhead, the leaves are a shimmering blanket of green and gold. The slight wind which twists through the tree trunks and rusted play structure of the park causes them to shift and whisper against one another in a constant, calming cadence of sound. The grass at his feet was thick and green, not yet touched by the first fingers of August chill, reserved yet by the air. Once in a while, a fallen leaf will pick itself up and skip a few feet across the grass before returning to its rest among the stems. A few flowers bloom from the grass, explosions of pink, purple, and white above the green; tulips.
The young man himself is tall, with gaunt features and expensive clothes. Wind-bleached skin, with narrow eyes and sunken cheekbones protruding from above a sharp nose and full pink lips. His blonde hair, streaked through by thin gray hairs, is the color of sunlight. It is pushed back over his forehead in the way of being gelled, but natural. The entire figure of the boy is striking, fierce, but not yet having reached the point of being stunning. His body was long limbed, his muscles lean and defined, giving the promise of attraction with age. Though he was slender, almost delicate looking, there was also a sense of strength about the young man. This showed itself in the way he held himself, his back straight and his chin slightly raised as though surveying the world from some great height. The boy seemed straightforward, his gaze steady and certain, given without complexities or shame. Proud, as though he could complete any task simply by studying it for long enough. A sense of self-assurance that ran through the young man's veins and turned his backbone into a steel rod.
Some people say that Amadeus Devores looked like the kind of person who played with knives for fun. People often found the young man insolent, even insulting; intimidating, intense. There was in intelligence in his gray eyes, twin stars the color of slate, that spoke of deeper knowledge. If he was sometimes cruel, it was only because others were stupid.
Shifting in his seat, the young man sighs lightly and folds his feet in toward his body. Placing one palm on the rough wood surface, he pushes himself to his feet and tucks his hands into the voluminous pockets of his black wool coat. It drapes his upper body, crossed in the middle with black-painted wooden buttons and falling to his knees. The collar rose up to his cheeks, fanning outward slightly. When he walks, the coat splits down the middle. Turning away from the sand pit, covered almost completely in slightly damp leaves, with its great metal play structure – a tangle of steel bars and girders, all painted cherry red at one point but now chipped and flecked with age – the young man begins walking slowly down the path. His black suede shoes click slightly on the smooth, ground cobblestones. The wind picks at an edge of his coat, and ruffles his blonde hair slightly as he walks. He breathes deeply, drawing the wind into his lungs where it sits and burns for a moment before entering his bloodstream and turning it to fire. He cannot say what is so invigorating about the wind; the temperature, the emptiness, the quiet resilience, the unstoppable nature of it. He shivers slightly as the air finds his spine and trails cold fingers down it, stopping and circling each vertebrae in a shiver before moving on.
As the boy found the road and turned left, beginning the long walk back to town, he let his eyes roam where they would. First they found an enormous oak tree, rising from the side of the road above the cover of the smaller oaks and maples. It's knotted trunk supported dozens of twisted branches, each a shower of green leaves spattered with gold. Next his eyes moved to the road in front of him, the gravel and dirt surface crunching lightly underfoot, interspersed by the cracking pop whenever he stepped on a particularly loose piece of gravel and sent it skittering away across the roadway. Above him, the sky was open and blue. A few white clouds trailed across the pale azure surface, looking as though they were made of whipped fluff.
The boy walks slowly, each step long and purposeful. His every stride carried him closer to his destination. His pink lips were pressed together to form a line against the wind, his eyes creased at the edges and his brow crinkled with strain. His breathing was a steady and light as he walked onward. He was quiet, but he was not peaceful, today. There was a sort of causeless restlessness about the young man, which betrayed itself in small glances toward the sky and the turn of his sandy pink lips. It was as if he had so much to say that his mouth twisted itself tightly shut, struggling to harness the almost nuclear force rooting itself in his thin frame. Like he didn't dare to breathe through his mouth in the fear it would blow him wide open. It was strange; the perfect coalition of intensity, passion and rage hardened until it was iron, and gentleness. At this moment, he was not a living, breathing person; he was art.
He arrived at the town a few moments later, pausing for a brief heartbeat to study the sign before moving on. The town of Windiago was a strange place, having reached the 70s years before its time and been unable to shake the decade from its shoulders since. The paved streets were bordered by ground cobblestone sidewalks. Glass-fronted stores with wooden frames and slanted, black-tile roofs displayed wares and blankly staring mannequins. These were neighbors to gleaming steel office flats. Each street seemed to be a mixture of 70s grunge-movement hippie and 21st century technology; a beautiful, uneasy marriage of old and new. It was one of the only standing cities – though it really was more of a town in truth, holding the small-town feel and friendliness – where you could find a group of coal miners sharing break time beer with multimillionaire neuro-doctors.
They had been a small town, once; an obscure dot between one place and somewhere else. Apple orchards, corn farms, and a small coal mine half an hour out used to power what minute industry and houses the town had contained. This was before the young man's time, being just before he was born. He had been born in the boom, the expansion; the tear down and the rebuilding. Mostly, it had been a meeting place where local farmers could gather to trade stories, goods, and drinks; the first and last taking unchallenged precedence. Then Dr. John Devores had arrived, and everything had changed.
Like the doctor he is, he had touched the town and new life had rushed into it. As if the small industries had been veins, and he was the heart which connected them. The tiny city, trapped for so long behind the walls of an era, exploded. Dr. Devores was the beating heart, and money was the blood which rushed to quench forty years of financial thirst. Business doubled, tripled, and then hit the markets hard enough to spin them on their axis and press the name 'Windiago' into them forever. Coal and oil poured from the ground like a torrent of black, energy which kept the great heart beating. Each barrel addressed as 'Devores'. Farms, once local, stretched shadows far enough to make competitors in other townships, miles away, fold into bankruptcy. And then it began: the research center. This was around the time Mr. Devores found a wife; Valery Lynne, an Englishwoman from across the sea. The Doctor paid a hundred million, and made it back triple inside the year the institute opened, eight months later. Not yet finished, but already becoming a sleek, industrial workhorse. Cancer; instead of the death it usually brings, gave the already thundering heart of Windiago a shot of adrenaline. German neuroscientists, Swedish investors and bankers, Cardiologists from China and Canada, cancer authorities and some of the greatest medical minds in the world, united in one place: Windiago. And the name, branded onto every discovery and research document, every business transaction, every bank statement, every life saved: Devores.
The headlines, of course, spread his fame to every corner of every continent: “Devores: Doctor, Businessman, Legend”, “The life and Times of Doctor Devores”, “Dust to Diamonds with Dr. Devores”, “Devores; the Building of a Medical Empire” and then, as with all icons risen too fast to fame, the critics: “Devores: Angel or Demon?”, “The Dark Side of the Devores”, “Devores – Institution of Death?”, “Devores: The Dark Face Behind the Mask!”.
This was his father's name. This was his name. This is why, as he walked slowly through town; seeing a clean white curtain blowing in one window and a planter of flowers tipped over on the side of the road, he paused momentarily to right the wooden bucket and pat the soil down gently. Wiping his hands together, he straightened to meet the eyes of an older woman. She had curly gray hair and gentle, kindly eyes. The curtain blew across the window once more and hid her briefly from sight, and the boy took the opportunity to dust his hands completely clean against his coat before tucking them back into his pockets. When the curtain returning to the side of the window, the elderly woman gave him a slight smile and a wave of thanks. He nodded back politely before continuing to walk. This was his town. He was the owner of the streets, the buildings; the silent caretaker. The Emperor, walking among the lives of his people. At the far end of the street, a brown-haired woman crossed from one corner to the next and disappeared into a shop front. A car rumbled across the intersection and vanished behind the line of buildings. He loved this town. He knew every side street, every seldom used road and back alleyway, every nook and cranny. He spoke to the people; faithfully, genuinely. He refused to become his father; rich and aloof, standing alone from people he once called his friends. He refused to become his mother; cold and proud, a statue of beauty surrounding a husk as empty as the jewels she wore.
The boy walked through the town, surrounded by people who were living their own lives, yet alone. Not lonely, but wrapped in solitude thicker than any coat he could buy. Occasionally, people waved from windows as they washed dishes or went about their tasks in a cheerful, carefree manner. He would nod back gratefully, but would not pause in his walking. He did not care, today, for conversation; trifling and unimaginably diffused by social expectations. He preferred to stay wrapped up in himself, in the quality of solitude which played like soft music inside of his mind. It was strange, he thought suddenly. There seemed to be something that other people, lost as they were in their everyday activities, seemed to understand which he could not grasp. Something that he was lacking that itched at him like a question he could not remember to ask, a song title he wanted to badly to hear, but could not remember the name of. Often, this is what drove him to his silent contemplation; his solitude. There was one person he stops for, however.
“Good morning, Charlotte.”
The young woman behind the small stand jumps slightly, wrenched from the reverie of her paperback novel. As she jerks her face up toward the young man's, her deep brown eyes are as wide as full moons. Her cherry lips part slightly in surprise, and she almost loses her grip on the book. Recovering herself, she reaches out and gently places the book on the edge of the counter, stands, and runs both hands from her stomach to waist. The action smooths the ruffles from her white satin dress, stitched with tiny flowers up each side; the pattern of rose vines. It is a beautiful piece, hugging her curved frame as she stands. She is tall for a woman, standing almost to his eye level, with a head of curly brown hair and large eyes, even when not startled.
“Good morning, Amadeus. Sorry, you ... startled me.”
“Love and War” he said, extracting one hand from his jacket and pulling a thumb toward the book she had just lain to rest against the counter, “great choice.”
“You've read it?” she asked eagerly.
“Only parts.” he admitted, shrugging slightly and tucking his hand back into his coat pocket. “I want to read it cover to cover some day. Just, you know, school and stuff.”
“Boring.” she winked happily, “I'll lend it to you when I'm done.” Then she raised her eyebrows in a sign of inquisitiveness. “Can I get you anything today, or did you just stop by for a chat?”
The young man chuckled slightly, the sound self-depreciating and almost apologetic in a way. “It was lovely speaking to you, but I actually came by to collect my usual from Nina. Where is she today, by the way?”
Nina, Charlotte's grandmother, was a tiny, frail-looking woman with bony fingers and curly silver hair identical in shape to her granddaughters. Amadeus came by their large wooden stand – it was not really a storefront, tucked in between a beauty parlor and a health food market, but it seemed somewhat like one - every day to collect food. The stall was normally shaded by a gray and green blanket, strung up between the two shops. Today, though, the blanket had been brought down in loo of the bright, pleasantly warm sunlight.
“She's out sick today.” the girl said; and then, reading the concern in the young man's eyes, quickly added, “Nothing serious! Just a cold. She'll be on her feet in no time.” the young woman returned his relieved smile with a light chuckle. “You know that woman.”
“And Phil?” he asked in curiosity.
Phil, Charlotte's father, usually filled in when his mother was out sick. As well as being a father and a farmer, he was also one of the towns on-call police officers. The young man wasn't really surprised, and a little relieved, that he had met Charlotte in her father's place. It wasn't necessarily that he didn't like the man; he just felt slightly awkward around him. He had never been in trouble with the law himself – at least, not seriously – but the other members of his family were notorious for it. Sometimes, speaking to the officer, Amadeus felt that the man was simply judging him, trying to decide when his bad blood would break out and turn him into another criminal. There was an unspoken tension in the air between the two of them. It could be attributed to the former, or the man's half-knowledge of he and Charlotte's friendship. The officer, like many fathers, was not keen on boys his daughter was fond of.
“At the station.” she said, giving a small half-smile. “He seems to spend more time there than at home.” Amadeus raises his eyebrows at the unexpected statement, and the young woman rushes to correct herself. “Not that I mind, of course! He's doing what makes him happy, and he really needs all of that he can get, these days.” Charlotte's mother had died a few months previously in a store robbery, prompting her father's sudden inclination to service. “Plus, it's kind of nice not to have him breathing down our necks at home. I love the man, I really do. But he can be ...”
“A little much?” the young man suggested, and the girl have him a grateful nod.
“Yeah, a little much.” suddenly she blinked, as if realizing she had gone on for too long about herself and becoming embarrassed of the fact. Turning, she grabbed a bag and called back over one shoulder as she disappeared into the darkness of the alleyway. “Sorry, Amadeus! What can I get for you today? I don't have my grandmother's list of regulars to go off of!”
The young man smiled slightly, watching the girl move. She held herself with the same grace that he did, if slightly more flustered. A straight back and easy step, coupled with those wide brown eyes – it was almost enough to make him think twice about the young woman. Her cheeks had a touch of pink to them, now, and he didn't hesitate long enough for her to become unsettled. Raising his eyes to the tops of the buildings, he cocked his head at a slight angle as he tried to remember what it was he usually needed for cooking.
“Leeks ... sausage ... apples ... rice ... curry seeds ... and whatever steak you have closest at hand.”
He watched as the young woman loaded up everything into a thick woven bag, with the words 'Albright Farms' stitched across the top in black string. There was a picture of an apple, surrounded by a four-pointed, yellow-white star. Heaving the bag up with both hands and pushing it across the counter, she blew out a breath between her cherry pink lips and gave the young man a warm smile.
“That'll be 23.75” she said happily, in such a way that the statement sounded much like an invitation.
Reaching into his coat pocket, the boy brought forth his wallet and flicked it open with one hand. Pulling out two twenty dollar bills, he passed them to the young woman and tucked the wallet back into his coat pocket. Reaching across the counter, he looped the handle of the knitted bag around his fingers and lifted it free. It weighed more than he expected, but he held it easily as he turned to go.
“Your change!” Charlotte called out to him.
“Keep it.” he said, stopping and turning to send a grin back over one shoulder. “Buy yourself a coffee of something, you deserve it.”
“Amadeus, this is almost twenty dollars.” she waved the money at him violently in her hand. “Take it.”
“Call it a down payment.” he winked, hoisting the bag more comfortably in his hand. “I still want to borrow that book when you're done with it. This wayI know I'll get it. Plus, you do deserve that coffee.”
She hesitated, and then gave an amused sigh. “You're not taking this money back are you?”
“Nope.” he said happily, spinning around and feeling the bag bump against his knee before coming to rest beside his leg. “See you around, Charlotte.”
“See ya, Amadeus.” she called after him.
The rest of the walk back to his house was filled by nothing but the sound of his footsteps, lightly echoing against the cobblestones, and his breathing, soft and steady. The sun shone from high above, casting the world in pale whites and pastel colors. At one point, a dog barked at him twice from an alleyway before turning and disappearing down the dark corridor. The young man turned toward the sound in surprise, but collected himself quickly and continued his journey. It took him approximately fifteen minutes to leave town and reach his house. As soon as he turned to enter the driveway, he saw the one thing that could instantly turn his morning from pleasant to horrendous:
his brother.