Entanglement

by Drue M Scott

  Before he could fully dress himself, “Hall of the Mountain King” began playing on his LG. It was the ring tone he had assigned to real_soul22. Meeting each other by accident on a now dead chat room, real_soul22 had always been helpful with info about Jacob and other happenings in America. He was the primary reason that Mathieu had been able to catch up to his revenge object in Oregon. Despite not knowing exactly what gender real_soul22 was, Mathieu had always just figured the person behind the screenname was a guy. Most of the people he ran into in chat rooms and underground meet-ups were guys, so it wasn’t a leap. Either way, girl or guy, the messages were extremely cryptic and always spot on.

  “2-7, 4-18, 1-76, 3-99” The code from real_soul22, started flooding in on Mathieu’s IM. It wasn’t a particularly complicated cypher, but it was virtually perfect given it changed with every new city Mathieu stopped in. The creepy part was; how does he know where I am?

  Struggling to pull his jeans on over his loose-fitting boxers, a necessity since anything tight in the area still hurt, Mathieu brushed up against his testicles with the hard hem of his pants. The pain sent him swiftly to the floor. The wound Margo had caused, pulling the blade across the backside of his scrotum had healed, a gift from Malachi. There wasn’t much the doctors could do beyond saving his genitals, but Malachi had mended them. The scar, though, still held a sensitivity that was painful in more than just a physical sense. Hypersensitive and easily offended, his balls regularly reminded him of what he lost that night. Not to mention ejaculation was beyond painful. “Fucking hell!” Mathieu cried out slamming his hand down to the stained, outdoor carpeted floor. Instant regret shot up through his wrists and forearms as he realized there was no padding beneath it. “Hall of the Mountain King” continued repeating on his phone.

  “Jacob has assumed the identity of John J. Lannister. 221 Pinewood Creek Dr.” The message detailed once Mathieu was able to get his copy of the local newspaper and match the page and word numbers up. The uneasy thought of how real_soul22 knew where he was in order to base the code on the local newspaper momentarily haunted his thoughts. Then again, with everything he had seen over the past year, was anything really all that shocking? Gently buttoning his jeans and adjusting his tender area for comfort, Mathieu threw down the phone and made his way over to the room’s decrepit dresser. The drawers protested more loudly to being opened than the box spring bed did to his movements, but he wasn’t all that comfortable just leaving his guns lying around. His favorite, the Glock 40 he bought from Georgie for $100 and a date night, rested nicely beneath his pillow and was never really that far from his reach. But some of the more sizeable guns were kept out of sight. Mathieu couldn’t help but giggle at the idea of buying a gun from a paranoid in-the-closet guy who wanted nothing more than a hundred dollars and a pizza night with ice cream in his hotel room. Clearly, a date night on the town was out of the question. It wasn’t that Mathieu would have said no to it, but Georgie insisted that being seen in public together might rouse suspicions. What or whose suspicions Georgie referred to was unclear, but Mathieu consented with a smile and played along.

  Having retrieved his sawed-off shotgun, one flare, and his date-night purchase, Mathieu snatched up his phone. There was one more encrypted message. Quickly following the cypher, he tore up the newspaper and headed for the door. Pausing only briefly to jot down the result on a sticky note, Mathieu queried the meaning. “Girl in photo not innocent,” it read. I guess we’ll see. His words echoed off in his mind as he flung his room door open. It, too, desperately needed some WD-40.

  Chapter VI

  No Return

  The Beginnings of an End

  “WAKE UP! Pussy-boy,” Devin’s distinctly malicious voice echoed in Brennan’s mind.

  There was no mistaking that Devin had assumed control over his physical body. Brennan could not feel his limbs or the air that filled his lungs. He was locked away in a place void of all that was human. He could see through his own eyes, but it was more like watching a TV at the back of a long dark room: detached, but horrified at what played out on the screen.

  “Should I give you your sense of taste back so you can experience the sweetness of this man’s blood?”

  His laughter sickened Brennan, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “Witness what a real man can do with a body like yours, with power such as yours.” Devin ripped a hole in the young victim spilling what should be safely held behind bone onto the floor.

  The images flooding Brennan felt like the highlights from a gore-fest marathon. The dying man screamed; his cries were muted. The red spewing forth as a fountain drenched his face, but the horror and pain could still be viewed beneath its drenching effect.

  “Do you think his soul is still in there?” Devin forced his hand into the man’s chest.

  Brennan tried to curse in disgust of Devin’s jest.

  Rooting around the bloodied cavity as if looking for a lost set of keys, Devin continued laughing. “I bet it is. We just have to look a bit deeper.” Shoving the length of his arm into the now corpse of the young man—he couldn’t have been older than eighteen—Devin yanked free each organ inspecting it as one might look for imperfections in a flawless diamond. “Soul, are you in there?” Questioning the liver, “Maybe you’re in here.” Lifting the intestines out and fumbling them like spaghetti. “Oh! I know!” Pausing to suck the blood from his fingers as he slapped his forehead in mock forgetfulness, Devin giggled. “You’re hiding in the brain.” Grasping the man by his head Devin went to remove it forcibly.

  “STOP!” Brennan tried to scream.

  His protest was little more than a twinge in Devin’s thoughts. “Just wait till you see what I do to your sweet little Mikale.” Devin hesitated. He knew Brennan would surely be suffering at the sight of this man’s death. But more importantly, he knew that any mention of Mikale was certain to trigger his captives. “I wonder. Do you think he would be hurt more if I killed him as you, dear Brennan, or as his lost love Jason?”

  “Goddamnit!” Brennan continued to scream and, in some way, try to impact what Devin was doing. “Fucking STOP!”

  In a flash of gory light, as Devin crushed his victim’s head like a watermelon slammed on the concrete, everything went black. There was no more TV in a dark room, no sight at all. It was as dark as his first awakening in Idir. But this blackness was hell. There was no ease to be found within it, no solace to be found.

  “It’s useless, Brennan.” A still faint voice pricked his mind. “You’ve no more control here than a child in the womb.”

  “Jason?” Brennan quickly questioned the darkness. “Are you here?”

  “We are here.” Jason replied angrily. “I am here because you refused to release me when you could. You are here because you fucking deserve to be.” Though his words were not far from the truth, Brennan felt they were not all that fair either.

  “Did you not understand why I kept you?” If he were capable of crying in such a state as he was, tears would have certainly been visible. Brennan knew within every fiber of himself why he wanted Jason’s energy within him, but why that knowledge had not been transferred to Jason, he was unsure. “I needed you here.”

  “Mikale needed me more, you selfish motherfucker.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t you fucking say you’re sorry. Mikale begged you to release me, and you did nothing.”

  “I don’t know how, okay?” The panic and defeated tone to his words began to slowly break through to Jason. “I had power, but I didn’t know how to use it. Devin’s understanding of power is what I had to call on. I could barely keep my own physical form together; I would have had no luck safely separating your life-force from the swirling maelstrom coursing through me.” A distinct waning of his energy dipped as Brennan continued. “I wanted your love; I wanted his love to save me.”

  “So, you trapped me in here with that fucking monster so that I would love you? Brennan, you are not that fucking stupid.”
Jason’s words though still stern, lightened momentarily. “I could see in Mikale’s eyes that he loves you. I could sense in your regard for me that there is love intermixed within your anger, but…”

  “But I am a fool.” The defeated composure of his words hurt. “I thought your goodness would overpower his evil. Merging with my spirit and becoming a complete soul again weakened me more than I… I was certain he was weak enough to…”

  “He was,” Jason interrupted, “until you started using him to help you with showing off.”

  Shame flooded Brennan as he understood Jason spoke the truth. “But I…” Everything Brennan wanted to say was trapped behind a wall of regret. He wished he could rightly explain that the hate Melissa infused him with took every ounce of goodness he had to quell. His very being wanted to beg forgiveness for allowing the weakened, vengeance-driven anger inside him to cloud what he knew he should have done from the very beginning. All he could manage was, “I’m sorry.”

  “You fucked up. It’s as simple as that, and now he is going to kill my love.” Jason’s anger began to rise again, “and if he does, I will find a way to kill you in here. If I have to wait a thousand years, so help me god I will fucking destroy you.” Despite knowing that the same anger he felt in the moment was exactly what Brennan had fought against and lost, Jason let his hatred boil within him. “You caused this,” Abruptly fading off, Jason went silent.

  “I will help you find a way to destroy me,” Brennan hesitated for a moment, “I deserve your anger and hate, but more than that, I deserve death.” He knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do to stop Devin from hurting Mikale. He loved Mikale, second only to Victoria. Life had not dealt him the best of hands and falling in love was something he knew nothing of, but he emphatically understood that he would have died for Victoria, and he would willingly die for Mikale. That must be love.

  Unable to respond, Jason remained silent. His own thoughts were caught up with how much he cared for Brennan. It was disorienting. He had grown to love him. Having access to his memories for a time, being intermeshed with his soul, albeit very briefly, had a profound impact on him. What Brennan felt for Mikale was something similar to what he felt for his love. It was different in that it felt raw and unbound by flesh or human delineation, but it was love. He had made mistakes, but at his core, Brennan was a good man—deceived, deteriorated in some ways, but a man worthy of forgiveness. At first there had been no pain, no torture. Jason began recognizing how much his anger hid portions of the truth. Brennan had sealed him up in a way that blocked Devin out. He had even shared the pain of his greatest loss, Victoria. Was his plan altogether something different than what happened? Did he intend to save me? Jason couldn’t know the answers to these questions, but the knowledge that these ideas could have been actuality, softened his course energy. Would I have known what to do if the same thing happened to me? Wasn’t I the one who left Mikale to begin with?

  Unable to bear the silence, Brennan desperately cried out to Jason. “Can you forgive me? Will Mikale forgive me?” There was nothing Brennan could think of beyond their mercy; it is mercy. His own thoughts began to run wildly. I’ve no right in asking for their compassion. Sparks vibrated momentarily in the darkness as his life-force pulsed with the joyous pain of knowing finally what he desperately wanted—needed—from Mikale and Jason. I deserve their hate and retribution, but I long for their love. He couldn’t have explained to another living soul what he was feeling, but it wrought havoc on his weakened energy. Could they? The questioned sparked hope that their love and pity was further reaching than his own had been.

  “Mikale has already forgiven you, Brennan.” Jason’s friendlier composure replaced the anger and radiated through them both. It washed over the angst building within Brennan. “That man forgave you two seconds after we disappeared.” Jason could sense how his words calmed his fellow captive. Both of their life-forces were gaining a peaceful strength, a resilient hope. “That is just who Mikale is. And I…” Jason wanted so badly to see Brennan. He wanted to touch him, wrap his arms around him, but in the corridors of a walled-off jail in Devin’s now superior energy, darkness would be eternal. The understanding of it hurt, but he knew Brennan needed the words, and he needed to say them; the hug would have to wait until they managed to break free. “I forgive you, too.”

  ##

  “Mikale!” Tears rushed down Haley’s face. The emotions Stewart felt overpowered his host. Haley was gaining her strength back, but she could not take control of her own body. “Fuck! What have I done?” Leaning down to kiss Mikale on the forehead, Stewart let go of his control over Haley’s body. His own life-force diminished quickly under the weight of his guilt-ridden sorrow. The consequences of his actions, of everything that had happened since inhabiting Mikale’s body, took hold of his soul with relentless ferocity. I should have simply healed him and been on my way. Each second exponentially increased the weight of his responsibility for all that had occurred.

  Haley, pushing past her grogginess, spoke up, pulling Stewart into the moment. “Is he dead?” She cringed at her own words. The question was not intended to be so cold. “I, I mean…”

  “I don’t know,” Stewart interrupted. “I don’t feel his energy anymore.” The tears that flowed freely dropped on Mikale’s softened face. Mikale was motionless, and his expression was peaceful. Turmoil he hadn’t felt in ages uncounted assailed Stewart forcing Haley’s shoulders to slump. Whether true or not, knowledge that Mikale had passed from this plane, engulfed Stewart’s emotions. Unable to hold up under its weight, Haley’s body fell into convulsions. Twitching uncontrollably, she could no longer embrace Mikale in her lap. Flopping over, she hit the hardwood floor. Stewart was screaming in pain. It was a pain she had never known to be possible. It overpowered her senses turning the room white. Rapid-fire images of past transgressions, faults, and missteps ran unencumbered through her consciousness. She couldn’t see anything, but the emotions of each and knowledge of them made pictures in her mind: a portfolio of self-disgust. Everything Stewart hated about his actions and choices swamped her. She was trapped in the calamity of his erratic energy.

  “Hello?” A stranger’s voice rose above the high-pitched ringing in her ears. It slowed the ferocity of self-damnation but didn’t bring resolution.

  Haley couldn’t tell from where it came, but it echoed throughout her senses.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  STOP! Haley hated the harshness of her demand, but she had to discover who was speaking to them. Breaking free of Stewart’s deafening emotional breakdown, she lifted herself from the floor. Weak and confused, she fumbled upward breathing heavily. Her legs wobbled beneath her and threatened to send her back down, but she steadied herself placing a hand to the bed. Sight faded in and out with her heartbeat, which pounded loudly in her ears. “Here.” The only word she could manage vocally fought past her lips. Instantly, she regretted identifying her location when she was still so weak.

  “Merde!” The man’s voice rose in timbre and crashed heavily in Haley’s ears. His French accent only confused Haley further, but she was happy something had finally broken the incessant pounding that drowned out other sounds.

  Rushing to her side quickly, Mathieu surveyed the room. “What the hell?” He questioned, swiftly catching Haley beneath her arms and resting her back to the low-set mattress. He instantly recognized her from the photo, girl in photo not innocent. His thoughts stirred. What did that statement mean? The picture of chaos which lay before him, bloody and confusing, only lent further credence to real_soul22’s warning. Was it a warning? So often the hacker’s messages were so cryptic. They had always panned out and pointed to something important. Mathieu’s mind refused to slow. Peering down at Mikale with concerted effort, his shoulders dropped, and chest hollowed back. “Who is…?”

  “Please help us!” Haley shot back before Mathieu could finish questioning. “He’s been shot, and I…” She paused.

  Mathieu still held her in place o
n the bed. It wasn’t forceful in nature, but he clearly maintained contact with her in a way that aroused suspicions as to his intent. Haley didn’t fight back, primarily because she was continuing to weed through what were truly her own emotions and fears and which ones were those of Stewart’s, but it was clear, an additional distress was creeping into her pile of other concerns. The emotions Stewart felt and the emotions she herself felt were blending together so heavily her composure faltered. Tears began flowing freely again. “I don’t know if he is still…”She couldn’t say the words. She knew the intent of her statement, but Haley refused to let the words pass her lips.

  “He isn’t dead,” Mathieu said, calmly letting go of Haley. He knelt next to Mikale. The injured man before him, motionless and pale, reminded him of Aiden. They were not physically similar, but something about his face touched Mathieu’s heart. Did Aiden appear so peaceful? He couldn’t stop the question from forming in his mind as he lifted Mikale to pull him closer. Gently moving to a seated position with his legs outstretched, Mathieu drew Mikale up to him as far as possible. I wish I could have held Aiden. His heart sank, threatening to fall deeper into despair. Mathieu had not forgiven himself for what happed in Paris and regularly imagined himself standing on the edge of a molten lava pit waiting for a reason not to step into its burning embrace. Did I save his soul? The never-ceasing question threatened to control his every action, his every thought. In some ways, the question wrought the smallest of silver-linings though. What Mathieu had learned over the past year and how he applied it to helping himself had the fortunate side effect of helping others. What he knew would certainly help the man dying in his lap and possibly provide him more answers to finding the devil he sought. Resting Mikale’s head on his lap just at his waist, he ran his right hand over the dying man’s cheek. Brushing back hair that had become stuck to Mikale’s temple, Mathieu whispered, “Don’t leave us.”