Murmuration

by T. J. Klune

  It continues.

  He’s Greg when he thinks, I had a dog. His name was Max. He was a great dog. I had him in college. He got hit by a car and they had to put him to sleep.

  He’s Mike when he thinks, He looked so good, stretched out in my bed. The way he tasted. The way his skin smelled like coffee and cigarettes. Right-o, daddio.

  He’s Greg when he thinks, I first fucked a woman when I was nineteen years old. I first fucked a man when I was twenty years old.

  He’s Mike when he thinks, The sun always had a peculiar way of hitting the store in the mornings. The light would reflect through the windows and the entire store would be bathed in gold, and it was always warm, it always felt so warm.

  He’s Greg when he thinks, This is a dream.

  He’s Mike when he thinks, This has to be a dream.

  DR. HESTER comes back.

  He brings a woman. She’s severe. Her hair is pulled back tightly, and she’s wearing a lab coat over a no-nonsense skirt and blouse. She’s in low heels and has red lipstick smeared across her frown.

  Mike and Greg stare at the ceiling.

  “It’s like it was before,” Mike hears the woman say. “When his eyes were open.”

  “It’s not, though, Julienne. You’ve seen the EEG. It’s different. He’s in a resting state. It’s not catatonia. There’s an alpha rhythm.”

  “Shock, then.”

  “I don’t know. It could be. Or the beta-blockers are circulating out of his system and he’s being bombarded by both sides.”

  “Which could be leading to the shock. Malcolm, I agreed to this because you said there was no chance they could wake.”

  “There are always chances. You know this. But they’re miniscule enough as not to matter.”

  “How do you explain him?”

  “Science. There are variables to everything. Something about the cryogenic suspension. Something about his brain waves. Something about the trauma. I don’t know. But the fact remains, none of the others have exhibited the same signs he has. He’s always been different.”

  A bright light shines in his eyes. He doesn’t even squint.

  “We didn’t plan for this?” the woman says, leaning back away from Mike and Greg. “You didn’t plan for this.”

  “How could we? He fit the criteria. He was comatose. You know that as well as I do. He was just like the others. Everything about him was just like the others.”

  “Except for the last year.”

  “Don’t you put that on—”

  “This is a clusterfuck, Malcolm.”

  “It’s not—”

  He drifts.

  THE NEXT time he wakes, there’s a man standing at the edge of the bed. He’s watching Mike and Greg, and they know him. They’ve seen him before. Mike has anyway.

  Greg thinks, Who is he?

  Mike thinks, You can’t see, can you? None of you can. You’re glazed over. Hollow on the inside. I see you in my garden, you know? You’re brittle and thin and won’t take much to break. You’d break easily, I think. Maybe not as easy as the others, but you would. Because when is a door not a door? When it’s ajar, but also when it’s been blown to pieces and there’s nothing between us.

  Greg thinks, What?

  Mike thinks, He stood at the edge of my bed once. In Amorea. He said I was in his garden.

  “I heard you were awake,” the man said. He gives a smile, but it’s slimy and makes their skin crawl. “I had to come see for myself. Never had a vegetable taken from the Garden.”

  Mike says, “Who are you?”

  Greg growls, “Tell me who the fuck you are.”

  The man flinches. “I am the gardener.” He snaps his fingers, like a tic. “I keep watch over the vegetables. You were mine once.”

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” a woman says from the doorway. Mike and Greg recognize her as one of the nurses.

  “Just got lost,” the gardener says. “Turned around. This place is so big. You know how it is.” His voice is high-pitched and he’s laughing a little, eyes wide and wet.

  “I’m calling Dr. Hester,” the nurse says, turning away from the doorway and disappearing. The gardener stares after her, wringing his hands and muttering to himself. Before he leaves, he turns back to Mike and Greg and says, “When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar and leads to somewhere else.”

  Then he’s gone.

  Dr. Hester’s in there moments later, chair whirring.

  Mike and Greg watch him passively.

  “What did he say to you?” Dr. Hester asks.

  “That I was his once,” Mike says.

  Dr. Hester turns his wheelchair around and leaves.

  “WHO ARE you?” the woman asks. She introduced herself as Dr. Julienne King. She said she’s a neuropsychologist, that she studies the function of the brain as it relates to psychological processes and behaviors. That she studies people who have suffered brain injury or neurological illness.

  Mike thought, What do you know about schizophrenia?

  “I don’t need a shrink,” Greg snapped at her before Mike could say a word. They both felt the same level of fear and anger at the implication.

  “Everyone needs a shrink,” she said. “But that’s not me.”

  “Who are you?” she repeats now.

  Greg dislikes her. Mike doesn’t trust her.

  She waits.

  “Mike,” he says.

  “Greg,” he says.

  He stops. He knows how that sounds. It sounds crazy.

  Let me, Greg thinks.

  No, Mike thinks. I don’t like you.

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Greg,” he says again as Mike is shoved to the rear.

  She nods, like she expected that. Like she’s almost relieved by it.

  He’s sitting up now, the hospital bed shifting up for his back and down for his legs, like he’s in a chair. He’s refusing to look down at his arms and legs. He knows how they are, those thin little things that look as if he’s a stick person drawn by a child. He’s got more movement now, and one of the therapists, a hardass named Leticia, told him the rule of thumb is that for every day he’s been under, he needs five days’ rehabilitation. Mike’s terrible at math. Greg is not and whispered in horror that it was going to take over fifteen years. The PT laughed. “I don’t think it’ll be like that for you. It’s different in stasis. Your muscles will remember sooner than, say, a regular coma victim. They’ll build back up, and you’ll be up and moving around before you know it. You’re a miracle, you know that, right?”

  He doesn’t know that.

  Because he doesn’t understand this.

  He doesn’t know what stasis is. He doesn’t know why his muscles need to remember.

  I’m real, Greg thinks.

  I’m real, Mike thinks.

  There’s a camera set up on a tripod, facing them. A red light blinks at the bottom. Dr. King said she needed to record this. Mike didn’t understand what that meant. Greg told him not to worry about it. Mike worried anyway.

  “And you know what year it is.”

  1954, Mike thinks.

  “2018,” Greg says slowly.

  “And the date?”

  “October….” He stops because Mike is pushing somewhere in his head. He’s thinking the Harvest Festival was on Saturday the second. He knows that for a fact. It was the first when he left, and he’s been here… he doesn’t know how long. What if he’s missed the dance? It had to have been hours, at least. Right? Time was a little funny to him, right now. “October second?” Greg knows that’s wrong, but Mike is chanting it now, like a prayer.

  She nods. “And how long do you think you’ve been awake?”

  He doesn’t know what time it is now. There’s no clock in the room and no one will tell him the time. “Half a day,” he guesses, because that’s what Mike thinks. Only half a day, which is fine. Sure, Sean is probably worried, but he still hasn’t missed the dance, and that is all that’s important.

&nb
sp; Dr. King says, “Okay. Greg, I want you to listen to me, okay? Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes,” he says, even though he hates the tone in her voice, like she’s better than him. Like she knows so many things he doesn’t. He’s always hated people like that, even if he can’t remember all too well.

  “It’s December 5th, 2018. You’ve been awake for two months.”

  Mike howls deep inside him.

  “Oh” is all Greg can think to say. “Merry Christmas.”

  Dr. King looks a little startled at that. “You too, Greg. Thank you.”

  No! Mike shouts. No! No!

  Greg winces, but he’s able to keep Mike back.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” Dr. King asks him.

  Greg wants to laugh. He’s got tubes shoved into his arms and his nose and his dick. He’s got something called a gastric tube jutting from his stomach that he’s told is feeding him nutrients because they don’t want to strain his throat yet. He thinks of all the days that have passed that he and Mike unknowingly consolidated into hours. “Yes,” he says. “But I doubt there’s anything you can do about that.”

  “I could give you a low-level sedative if you think that would help.”

  Mike breaks from his cries, voice furious. No. No more drugs. No more drugs. No more drugs.

  Greg’s inclined to agree. “No,” he says. “I don’t want anything.”

  Dr. King nods. “We can always come back to it later if you—”

  “Where am I?”

  She cocks her head at him. “What do you remember?”

  He scowls at her. He’s liking her less and less. “I asked you first.”

  She purses her lips. “How about this. I will answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine.”

  He glares at her.

  “Greg, I am not your enemy here.”

  “So you say. But I still have no idea who you are or what you want with me. So forgive me if I don’t quite believe you.”

  They Came from Outer Space, Mike whispers furiously. Ask her where Sean is. You have to find Sean.

  And it’s weird, for Greg, because he understands the pain in Mike’s voice. There is this divide, yes, this duality between them. A sense of separation, of distinct lives lived, but Greg feels it too, like an ache in his heart. He can’t imagine how it must feel for Mike.

  If he’s even real.

  I’m real, Mike insists.

  So am I, Greg replies.

  “Fine,” Greg says to Dr. King. “The camera. Who is it broadcasting to?”

  Dr. King arches an eyebrow at him. “Dr. Hester. Some associates of his. What do you remember before April 22, 2015?”

  He laughs bitterly. “You want my whole life story?”

  “No. I am specifically asking for what you remember before April 22, 2015.”

  He starts to sweat. He swallows around the lump in his throat. “It was…. There was Jenny.”

  “And who is Jenny?”

  “My wife.”

  I don’t have a wife, Mike says frantically. There’s only Sean.

  “Okay. Do you remember what happened to her?”

  He thinks, She came after me with that damn knife. We’d been fighting, and she came after me with that overpriced knife that we never use. We fell through the glass and onto the balcony. And then I—

  He says, “My daughter. My daughter happened to her.”

  Dr. King nods. “Your daughter. That’s right. What was her name?”

  They knew. Early in on the pregnancy. It was called ectopia cordis. Her heart had formed on the outside of her chest. They wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but Jenny said no, and Greg said, Sure, Jenny, sure, if that’s what you want. They were warned. The prognosis for ectopic heart was poor. Infection. Cardiac failure. Hypoxemia. Any number of things.

  She surprised them. She was a fighter. She had this smile, this beautiful little smile that broke Greg’s heart every time he saw it. Da, she’d say toward the end, attached to oxygen. Da. Da. Da. In the end, though, it was hypoxemia that got her.

  “Becca,” he says. “Her name was Becca. Becca Marie Hughes.”

  “That’s right,” Dr. King says. “That was her name.” Then she waits.

  It takes Greg a moment to realize she’s waiting on him, holding up her end of the bargain. “Where am I?” he asks.

  “You’re in a medical facility outside of Yuma, Arizona. It used to be a prison camp that belonged to the county in the seventies and eighties, but then it fell into disrepair and was eventually abandoned. It was bought by a private firm in the late 2000s and converted into what it is now.”

  “Yuma,” Greg repeats.

  Mike’s too shocked to say anything.

  “Greg,” Dr. King says. “Do you know what happened on April 22, 2015?”

  “No.” And it’s the truth. He remembers Jenny coming at him with a knife. He remembers the glass breaking. He remembers falling onto his back, but after that, it’s blank. “Is she here?”

  “Who?”

  “Jenny.”

  “No, Greg. She’s not here. I’m sorry to tell you that Jennifer Hughes has passed away.”

  He doesn’t know what to say to that. And he feels a crippling guilt mired in the relief that sweeps over him. “How?”

  Mike says, No, don’t ask that. Don’t ask that. She—

  Dr. King says, “Blunt-force trauma. Sustained from a fall from a ninth-floor balcony. Greg, you killed your wife.”

  Greg can’t help it. He laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs.

  Dr. King watches him.

  The light on the video camera blinks.

  “I killed her,” he says, choking on the words. “You’re saying I killed her.”

  “Yes. She died in August of 2014. You were arrested for her murder. You claimed it was self-defense. That she’d attacked you. The jury disagreed. Especially after they’d seen the video she’d recorded shortly before her death. In the video, she claimed to be scared of you. That you had a violent temper. That you’d hit her for years. That she didn’t know how to get out. That even if she did, she was convinced you’d find a way to come after her. You alleged the entire thing was fabricated. That you’d never lifted a finger to her before that day.”

  Greg was still laughing. “I d-d-didn’t. I n-never touched her. She made it all up. She was crazy and she made it all up.”

  “So you said,” Dr. King says. “And it was admirable in the face of such overwhelming evidence. Unfortunately, a jury of your peers didn’t agree with you. You were found guilty and sentenced to thirty years.”

  Greg loses control.

  Mike pushes forward. “Sean,” he gasps. “Where’s Sean?”

  “Mike,” Dr. King says. “Mike Frazier.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Nearby.”

  I killed my wife, Greg whispers.

  “Is he hurt?”

  “No. Same deal, Mike. Question for a question.”

  “I’m not making any damn deal with you. I want to go home.”

  “Mike,” Dr. King says. “Amorea isn’t real. At least not in the physical sense.”

  Mike snarls at her. The machines around him scream.

  His heartbeat is ratcheting up in his chest. He thinks it likely he’ll explode.

  “Where is he? Where is Sean?”

  Dr. King hesitates.

  He’s filled with Mike’s terror. Greg’s rage. He lifts his arm. It’s still sickly thin, but it’s more than he’s done on his own since he woke up. It’s not enough, of course. His legs are still useless, and she’s sitting too far away for him to even come close to touching her.

  Hitting her, Greg growls. We’re trying to hit her.

  No, Mike says. No. No.

  “The truth,” he says. “All I want is the truth.”

  Dr. King pulls a flat black rectangular object from her coat pocket (Smartphone, Greg supplies) and puts it up to her ear. She waits a second, then, “Did you hear?” There’s a pause. “Fine.
” She puts the thing back in her pocket. “Dr. Hester will be joining us.”

  “Fuck him,” Greg said. “And fuck you too.”

  She flinches.

  Greg glares at her.

  She says nothing.

  They wait.

  Eventually there’s the telltale whirring of a motorized wheelchair coming down the hallway. Dr. King gets up from her chair and moves to open the door. The old man enters the room, eyes on Mike and Greg.

  “The truth,” he says. “You want the truth.”

  Greg says, “Yes.”

  Mike says, “Now.”

  “Turn off the camera,” he says.

  Dr. King says, “But the board will be—”

  “Turn it off,” he says. “I’ll deal with the board.”

  She does. The blinking red light dies away. She sits back down in her seat and watches Dr. Hester.

  Mike thinks, I don’t want this. I don’t want this.

  Greg thinks, It’s the only way.

  “You’re both there, aren’t you?” Dr. Hester asks. “Greg Hughes. Mike Frazier.”

  “Yes,” they say.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I am truly sorry for that. This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were never supposed to be Greg Hughes again.”

  Greg’s voice shakes when he says, “Why?”

  “Do you know what cognitive science is? It’s okay if you don’t. Most people in your position wouldn’t.”

  “No.”

  “It’s basically the study of the mind and its processes. It focuses on how information is received. Processed. Transformed into language and perception. Attention. Reasoning. Emotion. And memory. Because memories are the most important thing a person can have. If you take away the memories, you are left with something uniformly blank. It’s our experiences in our lives that turn to memories that help shape us into who we’re supposed to be.”

  He gives a brittle smile. “Now imagine if you’re faced with losing a lifetime of those memories. If you live every day knowing that soon, everything you know about yourself will disappear and you will become a husk, a hollowed-out core. Call it Alzheimer’s, call it dementia, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it takes away the fundamental part of you until you’re nothing but a drooling, shitting machine that stares out the window for hours on end.”