The Brushers

By Claudia Geib

Have you ever had a brush with death?

There exists in this world a balance between life and death which must constantly be maintained. This scale is extremely sensitive; if tipped even by a little, the world falls into chaos. Of course, this balance doesn't tip on its own. There are champions of death, cruel and ruthless people who believe this world is theirs for the taking. But good has its champions too.

That's where my team comes in: were here to protect and defend life. If you live in New York City, youve probably seen one of us without knowing it; me, Jiff, Ryde, Luz, Tami, Taxi, and Gray are in charge of keeping Manhattan in order. Our job isn't easy, but we were made for it. You see, while alive, we survived a series of tests called "brushes" with death exceptionally wellso, when we died, we were given another life, as well as a few other gifts. Super-strength. Speed. Invincibility. Senses unlike any other. And my favorite part: wings. We became part of an extraordinary team built to fight against evila job which has recently become a lot tougher.

They call us the Brushers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450256124

Claudia Geib

Claudia Geib was born and raised on Long Island, New York. Her love of a good story compelled her to self-publish her first novel, Light Years, at age thirteen. She is currently a high school student living with her parents and sister. To find out more about Claudia, visit www.claudiageibbooks.webs.com.

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Contents

intro.

one.

two.

three.

four.

five.

six.

seven.

eight.

nine.

ten.

eleven.

twelve.

thirteen.

fourteen.

fifteen.

sixteen.

seventeen.

eighteen.

nineteen.

twenty.

epilogue.

Acknowledgement

About the Author

intro.

the test

Have you ever had a brush with death?

What we call a brush is one of those instants when one misstep sets your life hanging by a thread. A brush is when several paths are suddenly laid out to your subconscious, and the path that you choose to travel will either allow you to continue living your life or end it. This split instant is one of those instinctive moments in which you don’t have time to think, but time only to react. It isn’t a time where you can ask for help. Deep-seated instincts alone will guide you during your brushes, and it is only with these that you have hope of survival.

Most people don’t notice when they have a brush, though the average person will experience them a few dozen times in his lifetime. An individual may have a few more than normal if he’s some sort of daredevil, or particularly clumsy, or just an idiot. Somebody who lives to the average age and doesn’t go throwing himself out of planes too often will have about twenty brushes in his life. Many brushes will occur naturally… but some of them will purposely be created.

These brushes with death can be anything, ranging from traumatizing to unusual to normal clumsiness. They can revolve around buying bread that has been pre-sliced from the supermarket, rather than choosing bread which you must cut yourself, which could put you at risk for death by a knife wound. I’m serious—sometimes they’re that simple. They can also be more dramatic, such as choosing at the last second which way to duck when you’re being mugged. A brush could be something that city-goers survive every day, such as waiting those three seconds before stepping off of a curb as a bus barrels around the corner. It could be nothing more than staying inside during bad weather.

And surprisingly, most people don’t recognize these brushes. Some of the more extreme ones will cause tears, yet very few will trigger lasting damage. In the future, a few will become stories to caution your children and grandchildren with. But the average brush will only make a person pause, step back from his daily activities, and say Well, that was close, before he goes on his way. The majority of the human population barely notices as it comes but an inch away from dying.

It’s the people who do notice who are the important ones.

What most people don’t realize, as they move through life, is that each brush could determine what happens after real death takes them. I myself have no definite idea what happens to the majority of those who pass, the ones who haven’t become like me. But if you are like I was, after you die you will become something much more.

There is no true name for what we are; no title has been discovered and set down as official. But a group before my time jokingly began calling our kind Brushers, after our brushes with death, and the name stuck.

We Brushers are like something out of imagination. We are not alive, yet we’re still walking around. We aren’t ghosts; we‘re as solid and as visible as any human. Nor are we vampires, one of the recently popular living-dead legends of the human imagination; we would ten out of ten times prefer to eat a hamburger instead of a human, and we can walk around in plain old daylight without exploding into flames and burning to ashes (or sparkling, if that’s your idea of a vampire). If your gaze chanced across one of us on the streets, we would appear no different from any random stranger you’ve seen and almost instantly forgotten. Brushers may have incredibly important jobs on earth, but we don’t need to stick out. Camouflage is one of our best tools.

So really, we’re pretty much like everyone else on planet earth.

Well, except for the wings.

And the fact that we can’t die.

Almost like everyone else.

The duty of we Brushers, as far as we know it, entails the following:

Basically, our job has a few parts. Our main duty, the part that we assume we were truly created to perform, is to act as earth’s guardians. Throughout history, life and death have lingered in a delicate balance, with life usually in the majority. But in the modern day, death has become precariously close to overwhelming life and good. This is where we Brushers step in. We are keepers of the peace, tipping the scale in good’s favor, trying to keep the world from falling into chaos. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest job in the world, especially because there are so few of us.

Therefore, another part of our job is finding and initiating as many new Brushers as possible. The way we do so is produce the situations that I began by describing: ‘brushes’ or ‘death tests’. This part is difficult to explain, but I will try to lay it out simply.

The thing about Brushers is that we are also gifted with talents more frightening than flying and self-healing. For example, we can move objects without touching them. We can also influence people mentally, such as change a car driver’s mind to make him decide to go through a red light rather than wait for it to turn green—or, on the other side of the spectrum, give a half-conscious survivor of a car accident the physical strength to push her way out from beneath her car, if she has the will to live.

We use these ‘death tests’ to constantly look for the people who will be the Brushers of the future. Future Brushers are those who show the strongest will to survive, the intelligence to learn from their brushers and recognize their significance, and the mental strength to endure the trauma and terror of a brush and still come through unscathed.

Now, before you call us cruel for putting people’s lives in danger, you should first know that it really is for the good of mankind. Without Brushers keeping death in check, there would be a lot more of it on planet earth than there already is. (Scary thought, isn’t it?) You need us, as there are those who think that earth would be better if death had control.

The thing about these special abilities we are given is that they are supposed to be used in moderation: all Brushers swear to use them only when finding new Brushers, not for personal gain. (Kind of like superheroes, minus the secret identities and spandex outfits.) Usually, Brushers are plenty satisfied with their lives after dying, and choose not to use their given powers for their own reasons. Generally, having wings, super-strength and speed plus an amazing healing power is enough for most of us. But not all of us.

The last part of our job description has lately become the most important: relentlessly fighting off and keeping under control those Brushers who have ‘gone bad.’ Certain Brushers have rebelled against their jobs of keeping the human race thriving, turning their backs on their vow of using their power only towards the benefit of mankind. These people often become convinced that we Brushers are given our powers after death because we are superior to average humans, and that these powers give us the authority to rule over mankind. These Brushers are busy using powers that should be used delicately in dangerous and unorthodox ways, victimizing any human they take a fancy to torturing. We call these individuals Rogues. All of them started out as Brushers, but somehow along the way lost sight of their purposes, using their powers for their own goods and contorting the Brushers’ purpose on earth.

We try our best to help the people that Rogues go after. Have you ever heard of a miracle situation, where someone should have definitely died but didn’t? You can probably thank us for that one.

My team is situated in New York City, and we have a lot of work—Rogues love the Big Apple. We’re pretty good at keeping them at bay, but the tough thing about protecting this city from Rogues is that no matter how much we kick them around, the rebels always return to kick us back. You see, people like us are pretty much impossible to kill. Gray is the only one who has ever done so, and it nearly killed him, too, in the process. Especially because the person who he was trying to kill, a Rogue leader named Torrie, was his former best friend.

Anyway, there are seven people on the NYC team: Me, Ryde, Jiff, Luz, Tami and Taxi (the twins), and Gray, our leader. These aren’t really their names, of course, as most of us barely remember our old lives. In the end, when you wake with near superpowers, a super-amplified body and senses like no other, it seems a fair tradeoff for your memories. As far as we know, we look pretty similar to how we did in life, but we’re certainly stronger and faster than we were—more so than any human that ever lived. Really, we have never cared to know who we are, or how we came to be. The times before being a Brusher lose their meaning the first time you fly thousands of feet above a glittering Manhattan at sunset, or jump down twenty stories and land on your feet without breaking a sweat. Some of us remember little snatches of our lives, and a few vaguely recall certain brushes, as they’re directly related to our position now, or how we died. Gray remembers more, but he doesn’t ever talk about it.

As for me? I remember the last few minutes before my death, and that’s it. It’s a painful enough memory in itself, though most of it still makes little sense to me, even after everything that’s happened. Sometimes brief little flashes of my old life still come into my dreams, but I usually forget them by morning. Flying erases anything else. Fears, worries, heartaches; they’re all carried away. If I could forget about my job as a Brusher, forget about the future, forget about Rogues, and fly all day, I would—though lately that’s become more than a little difficult.

They call me Free.

one.

night watch

New York City at night is truly unique. Beneath that famous skyline, the nights are somehow different than those in any other city I’ve visited. There’s something about the city at night that makes you want to stand on top of a building and yell with excitement, as though electricity were running through the air and into your veins.

Even so, nighttime is also when Manhattan is at its most dangerous. Thus, each night has to be watched over by one of us, as a precaution against Rogues and the occasional human. We don’t mind; Brushers can’t feel cold or heat, and we don’t need to sleep nearly as often as humans. We never fully fall asleep, either; rather, we’re in a light doze, regaining spent energy yet able to spring into alertness the moment we’re needed. We can dream, though. Oh yes, as I know well, we can dream.

It was the night of November eighth, a night that I would later trace back to and realize to be the beginning of a series of events that changed my life. It was undoubtedly a beautiful night in the city of New York. Gray tissue-paper clouds moved slowly across an indigo sky, illuminated faintly from below by the glowing haze of light that hung constantly over the city’s buildings. The sounds of the city came from all around: the thrum of thousands of wheels on the road; the sporadic blare of car horns; the passing rumble of the subway; the whistle of the wind through the buildings. It was all music to my ears.

On that night, I had a dream. It had been a few weeks since I‘d had one of my dreams, but that night, one came on stronger than ever.

I’m alive.

I can see myself from above, as if watching the scene unfold in a movie: my tall frame is folded into a crouch, my dark brown hair messy and covered in a fine layer of dust; my hazel eyes are bloodshot and tired from worry and lack of sleep. And yet, at the same time, my point of view is constantly shifting; I can feel the dirt beneath my bare feet, and I can both see and sense that there is someone beside me.

It’s the boy, the one who I had seen in many of my dreams. We’re hiding behind a pile of rubble, gazing over its peak, waiting for something. He has hair that’s pure gold in the sunlight, even as ruffled and dusty as it is, and remarkably dark green eyes, the color of pine trees. And yet, his face is set so solemnly for someone so young. The worry on his brow makes my heart ache for some unknown reason.

I touch his shoulder reassuringly, trying to conceal the terror paralyzing me in place. The cause of this fear is obvious: the racket of gunfire is a constant clamor far too close by.

I watch myself close my eyes, as I attempt to rub away with one hand some of the dust and dirt that swirls around us like a storm, drying out my eyeballs. Suddenly I feel and see my hand fall away from where it had remained on the boy’s shoulder. I look up to find him running away from our hiding place, gesturing to me with one hand to follow.

Standing, I shout after him to come back, but over the racket of gunfire he can’t hear me. I see he is not going to return, so I start after him— yet I cannot move fast enough. Like in many dreams, though I pump my legs at sprinting pace, it is like moving through molasses.

Suddenly there is a roar as something detonates within a building behind us. The resulting explosion is tremendous, throwing me several feet backwards through the air. There’s fire and sound all around me, and I watch as a horrible, jagged pain enveloping every inch of my body thrusts me for a few minutes into unconsciousness. But when I come to again, gasping with pain, I can see the boy. He’s not far away—coughing, covered in dirt and soot, but alive still. He has escaped the explosion—in spite of my condition, he can still be saved.

Then the world erupts around me again, and this time, there is nowhere for me to go. It’s too late. Heat and light are all I know as the boy disappears before my eyes. I hope that help is nearby—I need to know the boy is okay, but I know I’m not long for this world—I cannot save him now…

I woke up cold.

Gasping, I opened my eyes to the darkness of the unfinished apartment that was our home, terrified at the horrid feeling spreading across my skin. For nine decades the sensation of temperature had eluded me; feeling it now alarmed me much more than it should’ve. It was as if a coating of frost was spread across my body, numbing my extremities, painfully pushing tiny needles of ice down into my skin. Swallowing hard, I pulled the meager blanket, which I had never before really needed, closer around me. After a few minutes the cold faded, my temperature restoring itself to normal. Yet the memory of that bitter feeling on my skin lingered.

Ryde was on duty for the night watch. He was already watching me as I sat up.

Free? Are you okay? he whispered. His deep voice was as loud as if he had spoken directly in my ear.

Yeah…just a dream again, I murmured back, still shaken. He nodded, his outline dark against the lights through the window. I could see him searching my face for a hint of my feelings.

Was it the same one? he asked grimly. I nodded, and knowing I wouldn’t be able to rest peacefully again that night, stood.

Hey, you can take a break from your watch tonight. I need a little thinking time, I said quietly, walking to where he perched on the edge of a steel girder, hanging out over the streets. He watched my every move.

Are you sure? I nodded, and Ryde’s wings rustled softly as he shrugged and stood. His eyes were shadowed so that I could not see their color, and though his hair was russet brown, in the yellow light coming through the window it almost seemed to be as gold as that of the boy in my dream. I shivered again.

Whatever you say, He muttered, patting my shoulder comfortingly before crossing the room and stretching out on his mattress.

Turning back to the window as Ryde drifted off, I watched cars and taxis below whiz by with unfocused eyes, a blur of color and headlights. In contrast, the dream of that night had been clearer than ever before. The boy’s eyes still watched me from the darkness, and the vision of his back retreating beyond safety wracked me like a physical ache. The thought that I’d been unable to save him was torturous. It was the strangest feeling I’d ever experienced, this consuming urge to rescue a boy who I didn’t even know.

There was a sudden rush of air from above, disturbing my thoughts and making me jump. Eyes wide, I leapt silently to my feet, jumping down from the ledge and back into the room. I knew that sound: the whoosh of air through wings. Somebody with wings was nearby. With my entire team sleeping, and no Brushers I knew given to creeping around buildings at night, there were very few options available as to whom the person might be.

I fell silent, cutting off my breathing and keeping very still. Whoever was watching did not dive again; instead, he landed on one of the girders a few feet above the open wall and fell silent, as if watching. Every muscle in my body was tense as I waited for the stranger to act—but strangely, he did nothing. My curiosity was sparked. Based on his or her apparent lack of aggression, a small doubt began to worm into my chest as to whether this was a Rogue at all—but if not, where had he come from?

I listened, the invisible spy’s breathing slowing until I could barely hear it. Meanwhile, the person himself rustled about quite a bit, peeking through the hole in the wall every few minutes before darting back out of view. After almost ten minutes, the visitor exhaled softly, and I knew that he had not seen what he had wanted to. Deliberately, I moved forward, letting my eyes and the top of my head come up over the edge of the low window-to-be. There, a few feet above me, was the outline of a crouched figure. I couldn’t see the stranger’s face, though, or the details of his body; I had to get closer. I very deliberately began to raise myself up onto the girder, moving as slow as I could and sticking to the shadows that clung around the window. As long as I moved with the utmost care, I knew that I would be invisible until I was almost on top of the person.

But then there was a sudden, tremulous whisper from behind me, calling my name. Free? The head of the figure on the ledge whipped around instantly, emitting a soft growl reminiscent of a cornered stray. The flash of a pair of eyes penetrated the darkness, making me recoil in surprise; then a quick whoosh of wings disturbed the air as the person dropped off of the ledge and vanished.

I stared at the girder above me for a few seconds more before turning to see who had awoken. It was Luz, the youngest of our team, having only been a Brusher for about five years. Being new to our life, she still slept fitfully, haunted by dreams of a family that she could not visualize in the day.

Luz? Are you all right? I asked her, trying not to let my distress show. Luz stood and crossed the room, sitting beside me on the hard ground.

I’m… I’m okay. I had another nightmare, she said softly. I turned to her, appreciating for the first time how young Luz really was. Only bearing the semblance of sixteen years, the dark eyes within her heart-shaped face were teary with the memory of her nightmare..

I can sympathize with you, I murmured, turning to stare out the window again at the place where our night-watcher had been crouched. I slowly exhaled the breath that I had been holding for the past minute. The flash of the stranger’s eyes I had seen had been like a blow to my chest.

They had been dark green.

two.

thanksgiving

The two weeks after the visit of the stranger at our building passed with very little incident. One lone Rogue made a stupid attempt at causing panic at a street fair by lighting a stand on fire, and a small group of the rebels tried to crash two packed 7:47 trains, but neither effort had any solid planning put into it, and both were fairly easy to prevent. The Rogues in question escaped with healing injuries and a definite understanding to stay away from Gray when he was irritated.

Though my days had become almost enjoyable, my nights were disturbed daily by the same dream. The only change was that now, just after my death at the end, I would visualize the Rogue watching me in a crouch outside our room. Moreover, in the dreams I could always make out those dark green eyes, like two emeralds piercing me through the darkness. The thought of the boy’s eyes in the skull of a Rogue would awaken me in the late hours of almost every night.

We were enjoying the days of relative peace, despite my own unsettling nightmares, but all of us knew that it wouldn’t last. The fourth Thursday of November was closing in fast: Thanksgiving was coming.

Thanksgiving in New York City is an extremely busy time for us Brushers; truly, the start of the busiest time of year, what with Christmas following less than a month after. With two to three