by Jared Ravens
"What are you thinking about?"
Genesee was sitting on a chair, peering into Felix's eyes thoughtfully. Felix sat on the edge of a stone table with his shirt off. Around them in the darkness beyond the lamp light, people buzzed quietly, preparing.
"I feel I'm headed towards a wall really quickly, and I just want to get through to the other side of it."
Genesee nodded. As much as Felix wanted to like Genesee, the man confounded Felix. Genesee was attempting to be comforting but he came off as cold. His questions were formed to be inquisitive but Felix felt the scientific nature in Genesee coming out. He felt like an experiment.
"Do you have any pain right now?"
"I'm too scared to feel pain.”
“What does that mean?” Genesee asked, leaning away.
Felix looked at him. His joke was too subtle for Genesee to pick up.
“I want you to feel relaxed and comforted,” Genesee continued. “Do you feel that I have your best interests in mind?”
"Yes," Felix replied, lying.
How did he get here? What was he doing here? When Genesee asked him what he was thinking, Felix had to ask himself that same question. No coherent answer came back. He felt his head getting larger as if it was a rock on a hill, ready to roll off.
"I do have your best interests. Our interests are the same. Safety, security, progress."
"Progress." such an interesting thing to think he was interested in. Was love one of Genesee's interests as well? Compassion? Felix felt light headed but his skull was heavy. Interesting.
"Progress of the all things. Progress of people. Progress for all of us. But we need security to make this happen. Safety. For us and all of you."
Felix felt his body getting light. He moved his hand in back of him so he wouldn't fall off the table. He breathed and looked up. In back of Genesee were a set of guards. In the darkness he saw the glittering of their helmets, and a pair of eyes looking at him. They gleamed, too. The guard nodded at him.
"Huh," Felix replied. He felt safe now. For a moment. The world was spinning, and so was the guard's face.
"Do you trust me?" Genesee was asking.
No. but what choice do I have?
The words were there but they may have only been thought. he was there a long time staring at Genesee, who had no response and no movement. He sat like a statue, and the dimensions faded away and Genesee became flat, like a painting, and then that became a textured image, extremely still and dull.
Felix looked at the image, flicked away the rusted paint with his eyelashes until it was a shadow of a figure. Only he remained.
What choice do I have?
The mystery was whether he was saying these words or if someone else was. He separated from his body and floated, his mind as blank as the darkness around him. He shut his eyes and they disappeared, and what appeared inside his head was as bright as daylight. Lines formed into squares, moving from the sides of his vision into the foreground. The lines drew rooms in front of him and a chair for him to sit.
This is how it's done, said the thought he thought.
Exactly.
He thought of a field and the lines moved accordingly and a bright green field rolled in with the wind. He was there, but also a part of it, falling to the ground and becoming green himself. he felt the wind become him. Using his mind he moved the room onto the prairie and walked through its door. His chair had become a throne and he sat on it, feeling a thrill he hadn't thought he could feel.
He understood that what had happened was a response to his question. He understood this inherently now.
There came through the door of the cabin two men, one short and one tall. The short one looked squat, as if a person had been squeezed using some sort of a lever. He did not have the correct proportions of a human with limbs that looked too thick for his torso, like sausages attached to a balloon. He dressed in an elegant cloak and strutted in front of the tall man. The tall one, walking step for step in back of the short man, wore something glittering but it was difficult to make out. There was a glimmer to his garments that blurred when Felix looked at too hard.
"Finally! We meet," said the short one.
"I am glad too," replied Felix from his throne.
"You know both of us," said the tall one in a deeper voice.
“I am sure of that," Felix replied.
"I'm glad to have you," said the short one. "This has been a long time coming."
"Indeed," Felix replied.
"So you go forward! There are lessons for your Masters to learn."
Felix nodded at the short one, vaguely understand that the short one was only tangentially aware of the person in back of him.
“Your lessons to learn as well,” said the tall one. The short one looked around to his sides. Felix mentally questioned the short one’s awareness of his surroundings. And the Tall one smiled at Felix’s thought.
"You have your answer?” The tall one asked.
"Yes."
"Yes to what?" the short one said, not able to hear what the tall one had said.
"Yes to my mission!” said Felix, seeing his purpose with greater clarity he had been able to before. It laid out perfectly before him.
"You're going to teach them a lesson," said the short one.
"You're going to learn worthiness," said the tall one.
"You're going to be what is needed said the short one.
"You're going to be what you always wanted to be," corrected the tall one.
"You're going to be of great use to them,” said the short one, but Felix could hear 'them' being replaced with 'me'.
"You're going to be a great use to yourself," said the tall one. “And everyone will benefit from it."
The short one looked around, again unsure of what he was hearing. Felix smiled.
"I get to chose," Felix said.
"I chose you," corrected the short one.
"You chose to cooperate," corrected the tall one.
"Why does he not hear you?" Felix asked the tall one.
The being shrugged. “The same question to you: What do you not hear that is being said?”
“I heard you before, but I didn’t see you.”
“Yes, you did,” the tall one replied. “Now you can perceive me in more ways.”
“No, you didn’t,” said the short one, confused. “Not like this."
“Who are you?"
The short one smiled, proudly: "The creator!'
The tall one glowed with pride: "I simply am." It replied.
The tall one moved away from them, back towards the door, becoming brighter and more transparent.
"You should visit me sometime," it said.
As it disappeared into the a thin veil of yellow Felix felt a warmth overcome him. When the cloud over his vision dissipated he looked at the short one, who seemed to beam with pride. He was planning, and Felix could read his thoughts.
"You wanted to be powerful?'
"Yes."
"You will be."
"Yes."
"You want to go back?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Felix felt warmth. It was the feeling of being perfectly at peace and perfectly still. Everything seemed possible. He saw, through a portal in his head, a small black worm crawl through the air, slithering towards him. It flew into the portal in his mind and its featureless face consumed him.
The warmth disappeared. A mask fell down on his face and the heaviness of a personality was thrust on him as if a weight had been dropped from the sky. His body, revealing in lightness just a moment before, was sudden in a wretched psychic pain he could not describe.
His body was a fire. It flew up through the darkness, flying or dropping, he could not tell. It lit up every corner and sent creatures around him in fear. He felt all of their fears build into his pain. His joint retched as he heaved his arms forward, trying to stop the coming wall. It drew forth in a heartbeat. He smashed into it, sto
pping before it, and for a small moment every feeling disappeared.
He was screaming, an inexhaustible stream of air pouring through his lungs. He didn't feel in his body, or in his body. What he felt was a different body, as if he was something caught inside a body. Whatever the body was, it was not his, and whatever the thing that called itself Felix was, this was not it.
Things fled around him. He heard noise and the crunching of metal. He saw flashes of faces, the ones from the paintings he had seen, all moving in anguish. He thrust his head around violently, attempting to focus his eyes. They filled with the image of a bald man in round glasses. Felix hesitated for a moment.
Then a bolt of energy ignited him.
He rushed forward, thrusting himself onto the small man and pushing him into a pillar. The man hit the pillar so hard that that rock fell from the ceiling onto them.
There was a singular moment, a collective holding of breath from everyone who saw it.
Felix had been laying there, still as the dead. No matter what they tried, they had been unable to revive him. They had waited, most believing the surgery had been too brutal and his sleep too disorienting to return from. And Genesee, bloody hands in a bowl of water, had turned to Wilcox, and told him to try harder to bring him to.
Wilcox had done so with trepidation. He had put the ointment under Felix’s nose once to no effect, then twice, and then, at Genesee’s insistence, had splashed it on Felix's face.
And then his eyes had flickers to life.
The chains tying Felix to the bed were broken and Genesee was on the floor, his back against a pillar and blood on his mouth. Celia, at the back of the room, had inflated herself without even knowing she had done so. Her head his the ceiling and she cursed. Spaulding, the closest being to Felix, was no larger than the boy. By the time the panting, naked man had turned to his next target it was too late. Felix leaped at Spaulding, putting the bearded one was on his back and being pummeled.
The young man had a fury running through him that baffled everyone. Celia rushed forward towards Felix and grabbed him his by the shoulder. Felix seemed to sense her movement and thrust his hand out, bending her finger back. As she drew back Felix turned and threw himself towards the rapidly growing Curson, crushing his shoulder into his breastplate. It knocked Curson to the floor. Felix ran up his chest and beat Curson’s face with his fists until blood ran into Curson’s helmet. Hearing the guards behind him Felix leaped over Curson’s head and grabbed the axe Curson had dropped when he fell over.
He was breathing heavily, an axe nearly the size of his own body resting in the crevice between his huge shoulder and his his head. Feeling tiredness for a moment, he took the time to look at his own body. He saw the red scars that ran down the length of his sides. His ribs were now thick and welded together and his legs were longer and thicker. He was a squat person with trees for limbs. The feeling of shock that had reverberated across the collective group now entered him. He had an image flash into his mind of what he once was. Only a moment. And then the memory faded.
From the ceiling there a voice huffed:
"WHAT. IS. THAT?” It asked in growing tones. The first thought to come to Felix’s head was whether it was a rhetorical question. As Felix looked up, he saw fury in the woman's face high above him. Mixed into Celia's reaction was a twist of fear, enough that Felix could taste it on the edge of his tongue. It was enough to give him a glimmer of confidence, and he smiled up at her, not quite understanding who she was.
She drew from behind her a gigantic spear even longer than her body. Its gold tip scrapped the ceiling as she thumped towards him. The confidence he had just felt diminished as the being nearly ten times his height lunged towards him. But as she came within two of her huge strides to him and the guards closed in around his back, he felt the a sensation ripple through body. Her movements became slow and his mind calmed, and he was able to see every weakness in her hurried attack.
As her enormous boot crashed before him he timed his axe to meet it at the perfect time. It slid through her foot and buried itself up to the end of its handle into her flesh. The scream that came was matched in intensity by the cacophony of sound as she plunged backwards into a pillar, knocking it in two.
Felix hadn't the time to retrieve the axe, so he ran up the length of her body as she fell, reaching her torso as she hit the ground. The pillar fell to her right side and he looked up, seeing the roof collapsing above them. Standing on her chest, he looked into her eyes as she lay on the floor. He saw that fear appear again. The feeling in him multiplied, and he smiled uncontrollably. He kicked her in the nose and jumped over her head as blood spurt out of it, just before the marble and tile from the ceiling came falling down on her.
Ever being rushed for shelter. The rain of material thundered against the floor, burying everything in its way. Felix clung to the wall, coughing on dust and waiting for the storm to subside.
The noise stopped and a silence ensued, punctuated by the high ring in Felix's ears. The area was a fog of white dust. He put his hand out and stumbled through it, not being able to see more than an arm's length in front of him. He climbed over the rubble, looking towards the bright glow of the windows. He coughed heavily, leaning on a mound of rock to hack up something from his lung. The ringing subsided and it seemed quiet for a moment. There was a murmur of many people behind the pile of rocks.
And then was a scream and a rain of red droplets. Something fell, dropping before him in the dust with a heavy metal clang. It was the axe, dripping with blood, coming to a rest atop white rocks. He reached for it, balancing himself on the ruble as he leaned over towards it.
A thick hand shot out of the fog and grabbed his wrist. He was pulled onto his back and hauled over the rock. He guarded his face and lashed out with his other arm but couldn't find anything to hit. Felix felt the cool marble beneath him as the hand eased its grip and released him. When he opened his eyes there was less dust and more light and swords. Spaulding stood over him as did a dozen guards pointing weapons at him.
He saw curiosity and bewilderment in their eyes, and he knew he must look quite strange. He had a desire to find a mirror and look at himself. He became aware of a conversation somewhere to his right, near the windows, both male and female voices arguing.
"You should have known this was going to happen.."
"Its not predictable, that's the nature of what is happening."
"I could have predicted..."
"We did nothing to make him this agitated, right Martel? This was a symptom of something..."
"Get over here Wilcox! What was he given?"
"I was normal..."
"It wasn't normal, does that seem normal?"
"Why are we arguing? This has to end. You have your experiment.."
"It's not going to end, don't be so rash.."
"If you don’t do it then I will."
He saw the face of one of the guards over him wince at this remark. The visage was familiar. As the heavy feet came walking towards him, the guard withdrew. In his place was a larger face, the bloodied head of Celia. With the sight of her emotions boiled and he began to heave. She was covered in brown and white dirt and red streaked across her cheeks. But like the guards she looked more curious than angry. She bent down, her face close to his. It seemed that she might be taunting him but she was examining him.
"Pick him up," she said finally. "Let's get this over with."
Dani ran down the stairs as fast as he could, recalling his path from the night before. He stumbled around corners and caught his dragging feet before he could fall. He would have lost his way but the noise guided him without fail. He could hear the banging of the cage every step of the way.
The guards were running towards the metal door in hast. It had no time to slam shut with so many people running into the room. Dani threw it open and thrust himself into the horrific smell and well of noise. Bautomet was banging against his bars with his two free hands. If he had sense he would have used the free ha
nds to attempt to unlock his ankles but he was excited as could possibly be imagined.
His eyes were nearly rolled to the back of his head and he grinned so electrically that he seemed be having a a breakdown. Around him soldiers beat him with clubs and swords, trying to force him back into chains. Even with all the distractions around him his head followed Dani as he ran across a walkway to The Beast's left.
"I can feel it!” Bautomet yelled. "You saw it??"
"They're goin to kill him.” Dani responded
"Yes!" he yelled licking his lips. A sword hit him in his hand, cracking open a knuckle and causing him to draw back for a moment. "You can feel it too?"
Dani hesitated, watching the scene of chaos below him. Bautomet grinned at him, his beady eyes following him carefully.
"You go after them, not Felix!" Dani yelled. A few of the guards heard him and looked back at him in disgust, imploring him to stop talking and come down and start fighting. Bautomet grinned but didn’t answer.
"No one but the big ones,” Dani repeated. “Just them."
Bautomet grinned even larger. It seemed like a nervous tick. He knocked down a group of soldiers and then looked up at Dani on the swinging metal bridge.
"I don't make..." He stopped short as a sword cut into his chest.
"You can't lie on this. You have to do what I say..."
"I don't make deals," he screamed. "I go there because I want to! Does he do what he's supposed to do? I want to find out!"
I want to find out. He said these words with an energy that fired across the cave. He was smashed across the face just after he said this and, as he fell, a loose arm was caught by several guards. They were holding his arm and neck, pulling them towards the chains to bind him again. His free hand lashed unsuccessfully at them. As the bodies pulling on him tensed against his body they all resembled a bow ready to release. Bautomet was still smiling despite the pressure, just lust a little.
"If you don't do it, then he'll die," Bautomet choked out, barely able to breath. Dani swallowed hard. The one thing that could challenge the managers was also the one that could kill his friend.
The thoughts came and went. Dani rushed across the walkway and down the stairs. He ran up to the cage on the cave floor. Two dozen men and women were muscling The Beast back into its place. Some of them saw what was happening, but they couldn't move without allowing Bautomet get free another way.