Beyond the Veil

I pressed the lock button on my key fob, ignoring the two short honks of my car horn as I walkd toward the automatic doors under the mostly glowing neon sign of Ultimate Cinema. So many of the letters had burned out, it looked like “U mate Cin a” from afar. Faded and peeling letters painted below say “Crestfall, MO’s best cinema!”—one of the biggest lies in advertising.

The doors slid open, scraping along the ungreased track as a crackling robotic voice chirped out, “Welcome to Ultimate Cinema!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. I heard the door try to close behind me, the motor whirring as it failed to move the door.

I looked behind the counter to see Margot, the manager and owner’s daughter, trying and failing to turn on the popcorn machine. A line of people stretched twenty back, all of them looking angry, like they might leave at any second. But they won’t. Our tickets are the cheapest in town for a reason.

“Oh, Damien!” Margot said, looking at me like an angel here to save her life. She walked around the counter and put her hands on my shoulders. “I have to go—”

“Margot, I stayed up late studying last night and had a really hard test today. I’m far too tired to listen to you making up a story about why you want to ditch me with all of your work on top of all of my work, so just go.”

Margot blinked several times, taking a step back. I ignored her as I took her place behind the counter, filling the popcorn machine with oil and kernels and flipping one of the only two switches on the machine. I looked past them, to where Margot stood. She was gone. People started complaining, but I ignored everyone except the first two in line.

Slowly, the line dwindled until the last customer walked into their movie. I put my head in my hands, resting my head on the counter, staring into nothingness.

Someone walked up to the counter. I didn’t look up from my examination of the carpet, but the cloud of marijuana smell told me it was Jared, our ticket collector.

“Margot is a fucking bitch, huh?” he said.

I grunted.

“You cool if I go out for a smoke break?”

Another grunt.

“Cool.”

I didn’t hear him walk away, but I didn’t care if he was here or not.

Movement near the door caught my eye and I watched as two teen boys walked through the lobby. Both of them were wearing long hoodies, which they bunched together at the bottom. The lumps under their clothes told me they were smuggling in snacks.

They approached the counter, looking guilty as sin. I thought I could see the outline of a liquor bottle under one of their hoodies.

“We paid for our tickets online,” said the boy with the hidden bottle. “I can show you the ticket on my phone.” He moved his arm, reaching for his pocket, crinkling whatever bags were under his hoodie. The bottle shifted slightly and he stopped reaching for his phone, halting the bottle’s progress.

“Just go,” I said, lifting my chin toward the theaters in the back.

As they walked off, I saw them look at each other, huge grins on their faces like they’d just pulled of some great heist.

I honestly don’t care about people smuggling in snacks or alcohol. I don’t care about the teens making out during the movie, or doing other stuff. I don’t care about—

A man ran into the lobby, his dark brown hair plastered to his face by a sheen of sweat. I stood up straight as he made for the counter.

“You have to help me!” he said in a loud whisper. His bright blue eyes were wide with terror. “They’re following me. You need to—”

“Kaden!” A shout came from the still open door.

I looked toward the door to see two men and a woman walking in. They looked immaculate.

The man was tall, much taller than me. His long blonde hair was slicked back over his head, the sides of which were shaved short. He was either powerfully built or wearing a shirt that was too tight. Maybe both. His brown eyes stared daggers at Kaden as he crossed the threshold.

The two women were identical twins, both shorter with dark red hair, piercing emerald eyes, and dark, dramatic makeup.

The man pulled something out of his pocket. It wasn’t very large, maybe the size of a skipping stone. A yellow light pulsed in it at regular intervals.

It’s a bomb. That’s what my brain thought.

He pulled his arm back, clutching the bomb tightly and threw it. The kernels in the popcorn machine began to pop

Kaden took a step toward the group of people and I reacted instinctively, reaching out and grabbing Kaden by the arm as if I had the strength to pull him over the counter. My hand connected with his arm at the same time the thing hit the counter.

A burst of yellow light bloomed from the object as it shattered. Everything went quiet, even the popcorn machine. I closed my eyes and yelled out in fear, knowing I was going to die, waiting for the explosion that would destroy the lobby.

But it didn’t come.

I opened my eyes and looked up to see the people by the door looking at me and Kaden. My and Kaden’s eyes met.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

I looked around. Kaden, the three people, and I were encased in a glowing bubble of golden light. It rippled like heat radiating off pavement. Everything outside the bubble was motionless. I stared, transfixed, at the popcorn suspended in midair.

The only thing that made sense was that time had somehow stopped. But that was ridiculous.

“He pulled him behind the veil,” said one of the women. I looked back at her in time to see her hold up her open hand and say, “Ehkahmahlayberif!”

A ball of fire formed in the palm of her hand. She swung her arm back and threw it.

I was frozen in place. Not by whatever had stopped the popcorn machine, but by overwhelming dear.

Kaden jumped over the counter, tackling me to the ground. An explosion sounded now as bits of wood exploded from the counter, raining down on us.

I looked into Kaden’s eyes. He swallowed.

“Take us somewhere safe,” he said.

“But—”

“No. Take us somewhere safe. Now. And don’t let go of my hand.”

Kaden reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those crystal things the blonde man had thrown and tossed it over the half demolished counter.

A cloud of smoke blossomed from the spot where the crystal shattered and spread throughout the lobby. The three people near the door started coughing.

“Now!” Kaden hissed, grabbing my hand.

Adrenaline rushed through me as I pulled Kaden to his feet and led him past the counter and through an employee only door.

As the doors closed behind us, I heard the blonde man yell, “Rhyatraylk!”

Air whooshed behind us, pushing some of the smoke through the crack of the door as it closed.

Kaden placed his hand between the crack of the double doors and said, “Ruudehtlace.”

The center seam of the doors melted together, sealing them together.

“How did you do that?” I asked. “What the fuck is going on?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Kaden said, looking at me. I gasped. His pupils had grown, enlarging as if he’d done some kind of drug. He grabbed my hand and pulled me down the employee corridor, toward an exit door and pushed me through it, setting off the alarm.

“Fucking great!” Kaden shouted as he pulled me along the side of the building.

An explosion sounded behind me, followed by the sound of metal fragments pinging against the wall.

“Quick!” said Kaden, digging in the pocket of his jeans. “Think of somewhere safe we can go. I’m not from here.”

Kaden threw the crystal he pulled from his pocket at the wall of the building. When it shattered, the swirling white light inside grew into a large disc of light, swirling against the brick. It expanded even further, large enough to envelope me and Kaden.

“What is that?” I ask as wind swept over us.

“There’s no time for that!” Kaden said. “Think of a safe place. Now!”

Kaden stepped up behind me and grabbed me by the shoulders, pressing his body into mine as he pushed us toward the swirling disc of light.

I turned to my right to see the blonde man and his companions run out as Kaden and I stepped through the light on the wall.

We were falling, but forward somehow. All sound was extinguished except a rushing whirlwind filling my ears. I thought of somewhere safe. The only place I could think of.

In front of us, a wall of light, somehow more solid than the light surrounding us, materialized. We were rushing toward it. I knew we were going to crash into it.

I closed my eyes just before we collided with it and turned around to face Kaden, somehow thinking it’d be safer to smash my back into it instead of my face.

I fell backward, landing on soft carpet with Kaden on top of me. I opened my eyes and looked into his. His pupils were still enlarged, his lips wet, a slight sheen of sweat covering his face still.

I felt an overpowering urge to kiss him, to pull him down into me and get lost into him. But that didn’t happen. Kaden pushed himself back onto his knees and looked around.

“Where the fuck are we?” he asked.

I sat up and scooched myself back, looking up at him as I said, “My house.”

Kaden looked up to the ceiling and let out a long sigh.

“Your house?” he said. “Why the fuck did you bring us here?”

“You said somewhere safe,” I said defensively, getting to my feet as he did the same. “What place is safer than my own home?”

“At the moment? Everywhere else in the entire world.”

Kaden started pacing around my living room, his hand wrapped around his forehead.

“Will you stop that?” I asked. Kaden stopped and turned on me. “Just tell me what the hell is going on. Who are those guys? What happened back there? How did we get here?”

Kaden sighed again and looked at me uncomfortably.

“’Those guys’ were Peter, Natasha, and Natalia, I ran into your movie theater to hide from them because they’re trying to kill me, and we came here through a portal.”

Silence fell between us as I felt my jaw drop at the absurdity of his words. A portal? Really?

Then again, what else could it have been? I just saw Peter make things stop around us and Natasha or Natalia—whichever one—throw a fireball at me. Plus, I live six miles from the movie theater, yet we came here in an instant.

“Magic is real,” Kaden said, as if I hadn’t grasped that already.

Then my mind exploded. Not literally, of course, but…magic is real. Holy fucking shit. Magic is fucking real!

“Okay,” I said slowly, “but why are they trying to kill you?”

“That’s going to have to wait. Right now, we have to leave this place. Portals can be traced. They’ll be here in a few hours and it’s best we’re not here.”

My face went cold. Those guys—Peter, Natasha, and Natlia—were going to find my home?

“They can’t come here,” I said, taking a step toward Kaden. “My roommate Sophia is in Florida with her parents for spring break, but she’ll be here in a few days.”

Kaden let out another sigh. How often does this dude sigh?

“You have a fucking roommate?” he said.

And why does he say “fuck” so often?

“Yeah. I’m a college student. You think I can afford a place like this on my own.”

“Great!” Kaden said, throwing his hands up. “Just fucking great. Another problem for me to solve. I’ve pulled one mortal into the magical world and now I have another who’s going to be murdered by my old collective. Okay, let’s solve the portal issue and figure out what to do next. Do you have any chalk?”

The question took me by surprise so much, I wasn’t able to respond right away. Kaden shook his head in a “Well?” gesture.

“Yeah,” I said. “We have some sidewalk chalk in the junk drawer.

I led Kaden into the kitchen and opened the drawer. He grabbed a piece of white chalk and took it into the living room where I followed.

“Hey, what are you doing?!” I asked as he began drawing on the wall where the portal was.

He ignored me as he kept drawing an intricate shape. I barely had time to inspect it before he jabbed the chalk at the middle of the shape. It glowed brightly and, like a vacuum sucking up dirt, the light was absorbed into the piece of chalk, leaving the wall as clean as it was before.

Kaden turned to me and held up the piece of chalk, which glowed faintly.

“I’ve absorbed the traces of the portal into this chalk. Eventually, Natalia will be able to find it and she, Natasha, and Peter will find us and kill us.”

“Woah, hold up—"

“We don’t have time for this,” Kaden said. “I’ll explain everything later. Right now, we have to get this somewhere else. We’ll leave your house and go a few miles down the road and toss the chalk into the back of a truck bed or something. They’ll follow the chalk to wherever the truck goes and we’ll be in the clear. Of course, if a truck doesn’t pass us then we might just have to throw it into the woods. Still, we’ll need to be a far way away from it after we do or—”

“—or we could just flush it down the toilet,” I said.

Kaden stared at me with a dumfounded expression.

“Well I thought it was a good idea,” I said after a few moments of silence.

“It’s…that’s actually a great idea.”

I pointed at the door to the bathroom. Kaden went inside and a moment later, I heard the toilet flushing.”

“Great, so we’re safe now,” I said. “What did you mean when you said they’d try to kill us? Aren’t they only after you?”

“Not anymore,” he said, sounding almost apologetic.

“You’ve been pulled beyond the veil, a metaphorical wall between the mortal and magical worlds. Now that you’re on this side, you can never go back. Not to work. Not to your friends. Not to your family. Peter, Natalia, and Natasha will try to find you and torture you for information about me.”

My entire world crashed around me at his words. How was I supposed to just leave my life? Sure, I don’t love my job at the theater, but I have tests coming up. My mom’s birthday is this weekend. Sophia comes back in a few days.

“I’m sorry,” Kaden said as if reading my thoughts. “You have to come with me so I can protect you. At least until this whole mess with Peter is over.”

“But I don’t know anything about you. Can’t you just cast a spell on me and make me forget I’ve seen this?”

“No. Nobody uses magic to mess with minds unless it’s to cause damage. The mind is a delicate thing, unfortunately. Some people admitted to asylums are because of magic done to their mind. Witches sometimes try to erase memories from mortals and it never goes well.”

“I still think you should leave. I can take care of myself.”

“Against three people who can throw fireballs, stop time, and move things without touching them?”

I stared at Kaden for several moments.

“Look, Damien, I’m really sorry about all of this. It’s my fault, I—”

“It is your fault!” I shouted. “You came in and asked me for help and now I’ll never see my family again?!”

“It’s not that you’ll never see them again. Your life will just be different. When you’re pulled beyond the veil, you start to see through charms we place to keep ourselves hidden from the mortal world. Once I’m sure Peter won’t follow you to your parents’ house and flay them alive with magic, I’ll let you go home. Until then, you’re with me.”

“Great,” I said, throwing my hands up, “just great. So what do we do next?”

“Next, I’m going to get some sleep.”

I glanced at a clock my dad insisted we hang over the TV.

“It’s six o’clock, dude.”

“And I’ve been up for nearly forty-eight hours. I’m going to take a nap. You do…” Kaden glanced around my messy living room, “…whatever it is you do.”

Without warning, Kaden grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled up, revealing corded muscles along the sides of his frame. He wasn’t overly muscular, but it was clear he took care of himself. No abs, but a faint V line with a happy trail of brown hair leading from his bellybutton to under his jeans.

The thing that really caught my attention was his scar. Kaden had a web-like scar that seemed to wrap around the right side of his torso. It looked like lightning. Not the jagged thing Harry Potter has on his head in the movies, but like crisscrossing lines of raised skin.

Kaden tossed his shirt to the side and I looked away from him, not wanting him to think I was checking him out. My eyes immediately snapped back to him when he hooked his fingers in the beltloops of his jeans and started to push down.

“Dude, what are you doing?”

“Relax, man. I sleep in my underwear. Well, I normally sleep naked, but I’m going to make an exception this time.”

“Just sleep in your jeans.”

“What’s the big deal? We’re both dudes. I mean, you are a dude, right?”

“Yeah but…” I took a deep breath. I’ve told this to many people before but considering this guy seems like my best chance at staying alive, I was worried about alienating him. “I’m gay.”

“So what?” he said. I let out a sigh of relief that turned quickly into sharp intake of breath when he asked, “You’re not planning on fucking me in my sleep, are you?”

“No,” I said, scathingly.

“Then there isn’t an issue.”

Without giving me time to say anything else, Kaden pulled his jeans down to his ankles and kicked them to the side. And holy fuck was his dick huge. His tight boxer briefs barely hid anything. I could see the bulge of his balls with his cock laying to the side. Either his underwear was so tight or his cock was so thick, or all of the above, that I could see the exact point where his head met his shaft.

“Dude,” Kaden said with a chuckle, “my eyes are up here.”

I slid my eyes up Kaden’s body, my eyes responding sluggishly to the signals my muddled brain was sending it before making eye contact with him. I felt something stir in my stomach. Embarrassment, I think. My cheeks reddened as my face heated up, confirming my embarrassment theory.

Still smiling, Kaden plopped himself on my couch, placed a throw pillow over his face, and let out a deep sigh.

I grabbed a book from the shelf and sat down in the armchair next to the couch. From where I sat, I could look at the book, but still see Kaden in my periphery. With such a good vantage point, I didn’t miss when Kaden got a boner in his sleep. Multiple times, I had to force my eyes back on the book as they kept snapping to his junk.

How on Earth are those thin boxer briefs holding that thing back?

Kaden mumbled in his sleep and his cock twitched, pushing the fabric to its limit.

I had to get out of there. I stood up, readjusting my hardening cock and went to my room, then threw myself on my bed.

My phone chimed. I pulled it from my pocket, glanced at the screen, and saw a text from Dad.

 

Dad: Don’t forget your mother’s birthday is this Saturday. You’re on cake duty. Chocolate ice cream cake. Love you, bud.