The Little Demons Inside

by Micah Thomas

  "Oh man, I must be tripping. There's a moon here! Was this here before? It's huge."

  "Focus, Erik."

  "Yeah yeah. But man, the sky just cleared up. You gotta see this."

  "Are you walking again?"

  "No man, I'm floating... with the fucking fish. Mind if I just chill here? It's nice."

  "Do you see the islands and trees or not?"

  "Yeah. The grass is soft enough to sleep on, if I could just float down a bit and touch that dewy gentle grass."

  The tech spoke to Cynthia in a whisper, "I think we over did it."

  "No. It's fine," she tersely replied.

  "Don't you miss something? Don't you want to burn?" Cynthia urged.

  "Yeah. That'd be good."

  "Then go find your friend beneath the tree," Cynthia said.

  "I'm here, there. Whatever. It's just me and the friendly fish."

  "What do you see, Erik?" asked the tech.

  "Fuck off. This is cool."

  The tech smiled. Back in familiar, Erik territory.

  "There's so many of them, like stars in the sky, each a jewel of light in the dark sea."

  "Are you sure this is the same island you've been to before?" the tech asked, looking to Cynthia.

  "Yeah. My special friend burned a hole right here. I feel myself here from before. And someone else. An echo of him."

  "You never mentioned this before," the tech said and looked through past notes.

  "It was my special, not yours."

  "That's fine, Erik. Can you try calling to it?" Cynthia said.

  "Hello, friend. Burny hurty friend? Nobody home. Just me and the fishes. And Mr. Scary."

  Cynthia and the tech exchanged glances.

  "Guys? Wake me up now, please. Take me down. Whatever. Cancel it."

  "What's happening?"

  Erik's high degraded again into panic. He felt his own mind, the presence of a dread monkey on his back and now a monstrously loud voice threatened to explode his ears, "WHO IS THERE?" Rage etched in every syllable.

  The lights began to flicker off in the induction room. The laptops shut down and Erik flopped like a fish, slamming his face into the table and hands into his ears. Cynthia rushed into the room as the walls themselves were vibrating in an angry hum, and jabbed Erik with a syringe of antipsychotics and sedatives. She slapped Erik hard across the face, "Wake up!" Only then did the vibration cease. The lights flickered on at full illumination.

  Erik looked at her angrily, "You fucking bitch, you hit me."

  "We'll try again tomorrow," she said and gestured to the tech to wrap it up.

  Erik glared at both of them. He had expected this to go down differently. They were supposed to be burnt biscuits by now. They'd try again and then see who has that condescending look on their melted faces.

  ***

  It was there in the cool desert nights, in the warm of dawn, in the fuck-all blistering heat of the day, there mid-thought, mid-dream, mid-taking a shit, always, the flames were with Henry in some way. A word on the tip of his tongue, the ease of an imminent sneeze. The arcs of flame within saw opportunity to exploit and come alive in all things and would threaten to bulge into Henry's vision, edging into frame, then jittering off, unsatisfied. To Henry, it reminded him of a nic fit, the on-again, off-again sensation of wanting a cigarette before remembering that you quit.

  "I don't know if this is a good idea, Del," Henry said.

  "We aren't going to try to dig that deep today. Let's just do some meditation. You're looking real good, buddy."

  They'd hiked the canyon rim in the relative cool of the early morning, a sweaty steep walk, gravel sprints, to an enclosure of over cropping rock. A large red cave of sorts that protected Bobbie, Del, and Henry from the sun. Del has laid out a couple mats and bottled water. Bobbie sat cross legged and gazed at the blue sky through the opening.

  "It's good to be here today," she said.

  "Why? Is this place a vortex?"

  "What crystal-staring, New Agers have you been talking to? Vortex. Keep that shit in Sedona. No. I meant, it's a pretty day, and this place is nice and shaded. There's a spring down the other side. It's good for skinny dipping."

  They'd been hiking together for the last week as Henry regained his strength, but Bobbie had still not warmed up to him. Meanwhile, Del had been basically putting him through a rehab program. Meditation, lots of water, hiking and talking about their feelings. Henry acquiesced as he had nowhere else to go. Del had bought him a razor to shave his face, a fresh set of clothes from the country store, and put down Henry's protests to drop him at a bus station. Bobbie tolerated Del's rehabilitation efforts because she knew it was meaningful to him, but she still gave Henry suspicious glances. "There's something he's not telling us, Del." The mystery of Henry's arrival was still not a topic they'd broached, and Henry felt the weight of their unasked questions.

  "Here's the thing. And I'm talking literal, not some psychoanalytical metaphor. There's something inside of me. It used to be far away, but it's closer now since, since something happened in Phoenix. Before, I'd black out, have a seizure and people would get hurt."

  "Do you think you'd hurt us, Henry?"

  "It's not me."

  "No? Maybe it's part of you that you don't like to admit is there. We all have dark places."

  "It's not like that at all."

  "What is it like then?"

  Henry could not get the words out without feeling like he's a crazy person. "I don't know."

  "Have you ever thought about something, an alternative therapy using something like mushrooms or MDMA to help you open up?" Del asked.

  "I'm pretty much against drugs these days, but sure, I've tripped before."

  "Not like that. I'm straight edge, too, but there's three classes of usage that I think are pretty distinct. There's recreational, like you've had before. Ceremony, which is deeply rooted and culturally specific. And there's therapeutic, small doses, controlled setting."

  Henry really hoped that Del wasn't going to offer him anything today. He was already feeling a certain anxiety welling up inside and shook his head, "No, Del. I don't think that would ever be a good idea for me."

  "How about we meditate a bit, check in with each other and talk about what feelings and dark places get stirred up?" Del said.

  In the shade of the cavern, Bobbie led them through a breathing exercise. "Feel your breath through your body. Exhale deeply through your mouth, making small Darth Vader breath. Feel a light at the top of your head, radiating health through your head, neck, and down to your shoulders."

  She continued, but Henry felt his back ache, and the only thing on his shoulders was sunburn. Bobbie took the meditation deeper, visualizing the act of putting one's troubles in a bottle and sending it out to sea. Henry tried to fart, and also tried not to think too much that this was bullshit hippie shit.

  Then, without much warning at all, he was somewhere else. The meditation had unlocked some control panel in Henry's head, maybe because it was so similar to something he'd done before, but he didn't know. Here, he was in an interior landscape of his mind. He knew he wasn't astral projecting or shit like that. This was familiar, but in a different way. He was in himself and knew it, selecting memories for review like it was a Netflix queue. Next up, the lab room at Black Star. Henry was both observer and observed as his awareness switched perspective; one minute himself and then floating above himself, his body strapped into a chair in a padded, asbestos-insulated room. A technician in an observation room repeating some long-winded guided meditation, not too different from what Bobbie had done. Henry could see the thermometer reading climbing, and when it reached one hundred degrees in the room, an alarmingly loud bell rang out. Henry saw his body twitch as electrical shocks were remotely administered, pulling him out of the trance.

  "Fuck, that was close," he heard the tech say. Is that what the fucking bells were about? Some warning that was conditionally programmed? Is that fucking it? Goddamn amateurs, Hen
ry thought. For sure, he had imagined something more complex. Did they even know what was happening behind the scenes inside him? Did he even have seizure before all of this? He didn't think so. Was he just a Pavlovian dog or was there something about the... his thoughts trailed.

  The alarms stopped and the guided meditation began again, and the whole cycle repeated itself. The tech, the temperature, the alarm, the shock, the calm, the increase in drugs, the repeat and repeat.

  A warm wind kicked up inside of the desert enclosure. Henry's eyes opened, suddenly aware and not dreaming, as he looked and saw Del and Bobbie going through their own little meditation exercises in slow motion. He shuddered and the light in the cavern increased unnaturally.

  "Babe? Something is happening!" Bobbie felt the heat first and was instantly alarmed.

  Henry shuddered again and sparks jumped to life around the three of them in an arc of firecracker dazzlers, blinking in and out of existence along an unseen path. Licks of flame, a sunburst of plasma and tracers igniting the air in small sparks.

  "Del!" Bobbie leaned over and grasped Del, who was looking on in amazement.

  Henry couldn't talk but he wasn't seizing either. It was different, very different, more awake, but he didn't know why. The bells in his mind faded to nothing and all he felt, sensed or perceived in some mental vision, was exalted pleasure as the molecular opportunities were found and exploited. Energy flowed around him, from him and was him. Fiery bands of energy popped once more into intense heat, cracking stone around them, but not entering their close circle. His awareness doubled and he saw, again not really saw, but perceived with his mind directly, the excitable instability in matter. In this perception, his companions were chemical vats of fat and meat, and beneath that, molecules of potential. The realization that he was awake, really awake and influencing the path of the fire thrilled and terrified him. The pulsing intensity of the flames locked in step to his own heartbeat. He felt the mountain beneath them, the sky above them, and wanted to set it all free in flame and explosion.

  Del's screams of terror reached Henry, coming to him from a great distance of awareness. Henry felt a deep sense of guilt at his excitement, like getting caught masturbating, and something about this guilty feeling let the heat pour out of him with a sense of relief and then it was over. A sudden rush of hot air leaving the enclosure raised dust and sand. Del took Bobbie's hand and together they dragged the stumbling Henry into the clearing and down the gravel slide to the spring below. Henry blinked and his awareness returned to normal. Del splashed water on his face repeatedly.

  Bobbie broke her silence, "Dude, I wish you the best, but you have to go."

  "I know," Henry said.

  "That was so fucked up, I don't even know what I saw," Bobbie said.

  Del was more philosophical. "God damn. Think of the implications. What are you?"

  "I was a lab rat. I tried to tell you. I don't know what they did to me. But it's this thing. I'm really sorry guys."

  "We can take you to the bus station, but I just, I just don't want any part of whatever that was." Bobbie was shaking with emotion, "Fuck!"

  "I know."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BACK IN SEATTLE, Sanders and Dan were finishing their room service breakfast, even that artisanal and very PNW, locally-sourced and humanely-butchered chicken in their sausage, huckleberry preserves spread on gluten-free waffles more than an inch thick. This was their last day in the city before returning home and Dan still wanted to get in more sightseeing, but Sanders was buried in his computer.

  "Please get off your laptop," Dan implored again.

  The typical internet delay before Sanders replied, "One more minute."

  Sanders was a distracted vacationer. After all, he had done what he came to do, despite having taken the Duck ride across Lake Washington, and ridden the Ferris wheel and gone up and down the Space Needle. All tourist obligations had been performed with an attempt at amusement, his mind was still on his other task.

  "At least let me help you. Watching you hunt and peck on the keyboard and fight the internet frustrates me just watching!"

  Sanders had tried to keep Dan out of this part of his fool's errand, but maybe it was time to open the door and accept help.

  "Ok, here's what I want. There's this private research lab in the city, and I want to find some loose lips online, find out what they are really doing."

  "Interesting. Obviously, this is about your relationship with Henry. And I'm fine with that. You did humor me a lot these last few days. Have you tried forums, like Reddit?"

  "Is that like Facebook?" Sanders asked, genuinely uninformed.

  Sanders had either spent wisely or wasted the stolen minutes away from Dan. As Dan waited in line for a fabulous coffee creation, he'd gone outside and talked to homeless; Dan took a shower, and Sanders took a stroll and asked more questions. Did anyone know Henry? "Yeah, I know him. He was sweet." Emphasis on 'was.' No one kept close tabs on each other. As far as anyone knew, he'd just gone, but there was a bit of a mystery. About a dozen homeless friends, folks that camped together, loosely associated with Henry, had disappeared. Rumors of alien abduction, of police roundups came out as Sanders handed out dollar bills and cigarettes. Lights in the sky, conspiracy, and the small details backing up what Sanders had already learned, that Henry was a smart guy, that had gotten into some trouble, a girl, her parents' money, some quantity of drugs, and an overdose and Henry left the scene shortly after. Sometime later, his whole crew got disappeared. Ghosted homeless in a city with a surplus. What do you do with that?

  "No. Reddit is... it's not Facebook. Users are anonymous, mostly, user names and virtual identities make them pretty bold, especially about socially unpopular opinions, and sometimes open up about their employers. Like elementary school teachers in a forum about wanting to beat the tar out of kids. Racist stuff, too."

  "How do you use it?"

  "Here, give it to me."

  Sanders handed his laptop over and let Dan do his thing. With a sense of wonderment, Sanders watched Dan's fingers gracefully glide over the keys and navigate the web. He felt such love then for his husband that could have very well justified being pissed about using his vacation for work.

  "What's the name of the place?" Dan asked.

  "It's called Black Star. The Black Star Institute."

  "Great. Got something."

  "Already?"

  "Yeah, in a subreddit for Seattle conspiracy theories. Urban legends. Data is almost always available, if you know where to look. I mean, what were you doing using Bing and Yahoo search engines anyways?"

  Sanders shrugged and leaned in to read the screen.

  R/GlitchMatrix/Seattle * DysonSphere72 * Theory

  BlkStr - It's where they store UFOs. Area51 is a shill globalist front

  BarneyLives_DOnkparty - It's totally where they took ALF

  KarensMom65 - ALF! Missing neighborhood cats?

  ServsNone- ALF ate Garfield

  ServsNone - OT. Did you know ALF was an acronym? Alien Life Form.

  WetBlanks - The more you know

  BitsuiMAGA - I don't know about aliens, but I took one of their surveys there. It was like scientology shit.

  DysonSphere72 - Prove it

  GrateGastpy - What did they ask?

  BitsuiMAGA - It was just a psych profile like those quizzes on okcupid. I didn't meet some secret criteria, but got a month of free internet service.

  DysonSphere72 - Comcast?

  GrateGastpy - Proof they are in league with the devil and dark forces. Comcuck sucks!

  78.Oneiros - Bullshit

  GrateGastpy - Isn't calling bullshit on a bullshit thread a recursive loop of shit?

  78.Oneiros - Here's the truth, you work 65 hours a week with no OT. Nobody understands anything about anything anyone is working on, and then you get yelled at for not doing it right, whatever it was. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  The scrolled through multiple pages of more and more ridiculous entries. Dan
explained internet trolls to Sanders, who didn't get it at all, but they found nothing else credible and went back to 78.Oneiros.

  "The time stamp, see, it's from this year," Dan said.

  "What does the name mean?" Sanders asked.

  They googled it and read the first wiki response.

  "It's probably just a cool sounding name. Look at the rest of them. I wouldn't read much into it."

  "Fine," Sanders said, finding the lesson in internet etiquette entirely strange, "Can you contact this 78.Oneiros? They are the only one that seems, I don't know, more real. It's a statement about working conditions and not about aliens."

  "Yeah, but, this was their only post. Looks like a burner account, and it could be bullshit."

  "A burner what?"

  "Even though its anonymous, especially sensitive posts are usually made from temporary accounts. Messages might not be monitored, but it's worth a shot. What do you want to say?"

  "How about, 'Dear 78.Oneiros, I want to talk to you about Black Star. This is a serious inquiry. I had an encounter with Henry.'"

  "Sent. Now we wait, and go out for a cocktail, something with expensive ingredients!"

  For the rest of the day, Sanders compulsively checked the email account Dan had set up for him on his phone. He finally understood the craned neck, drunken sailor walk of the cellphone addicts. They'd finished brunch and were just getting to the airport when he had a reply.

  "Dan."

  "Yes?"

  "I have to stay one more day."

  Dan sighed a heavy sigh, "Love knows no bounds."

  They embraced, openly and awesomely, enjoying the freedom of what it must be like to live in Seattle and not Phoenix.

  "Just one night?"

  "Right," Sanders said, hoping he'd be able to keep his word.

  ***

  Henry rode in the back of Bobbie's sedan, staring out the window, kinda sad he fucked things up again, but not surprised. The desert should have been stunning, he'd heard people go on about the natural beauty, but Henry hated it and hated himself.