The Hallucigenia Project

by Darren Kasenkow

  The silence was broken with the sound of Samael’s cane tapping on the floor in quick spurts. He wasn’t smiling, but even with a face full of red cuts there was a strange projection of satisfaction as he made a soft smacking sound with his lips before easing the cane still.

  “So close to a glimpse of eternity and yet so very far,” he said. “But then, what else is death than an abrupt change of plans?”

  “Enough with the philosophical bullshit,” Rodney spat. “I’m not fucking stupid, I know who you are, what you are. You sit there like a fucking extra from a bad stage play that thinks he’s got the lead, but really you’re a pathetic kid who likes to pull wings off bugs in a big man’s body.”

  “You really think you know who I am?”

  Rodney could feel an avalanche of emotion rumbling down the edge of his spine, forcing him to clasp his hands so that they wouldn’t visibly shake. The tips of his fingers were ice cold. Crushed glass in his throat was all he could taste.

  “Military went to a lot of trouble to keep your file buried, which is pretty fucking stupid considering the skills that brought us here in the first place. Then again, maybe they wanted us to find out about you.” Simmering rage added a hoarse edge to his voice. “Violent from the age of four. Disowned by your carers at six. Recurring visions that could leave you in a trance for days, followed by the same mad ramblings over and over again about the death of God and visiting aliens with a mission to collect souls. How am I doing so far?”

  “Not bad I suppose.” Samael lifted his hand to the top of the cane and ran an inked thumb along the silver cone. “But please, do tell me about me.”

  “When the state kicked you out of the system at eighteen you bought yourself a busted up Winnebago and spent the next five years holed up in the Arizona desert. Residents of the nearby town torched it to the ground when they realized you could drive for miles and not hear a single dog bark. Bobcat went through and found the bones.” Now Rodney was almost shouting and there was no stopping his hands from shaking. “You celebrated your twenty fourth birthday by storming a small, country town church and gunning down everyone inside except for the local doctor’s daughter, who you raped repeatedly until the blood loss was too much.” He slammed his palms onto the edge of the chair. “Sent to a concrete cell for the rest of your fucking pathetic life where you cried and cried that the voices made you do it, and then some low life lawyer waltzes in to lodge an appeal and arranges for medical tests. And that’s when they found it.”

  “That’s right,” Samael grinned, “they did find it. Truth. One little vial of blood and all the rules suddenly changed.”

  “Well aren’t you a special snowflake,” Rodney smiled venomously. “A bona fide brain damaged psycho with a broken DNA sequence.”

  “Broken? Oh Rodney, I know you’re smarter than that. Enhanced is the word I think you’re looking for.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. We know now that what’s bouncing along those veins of yours can be found in the blood of other hardcore psychopaths that feed off pain and fear. The suits might think you’re special but looking at you, right here right now, all I see is twisted kid that should’ve had his head dipped in a bath until the bubbles stopped.”

  A surprising flash of anger darkened Samael’s eyes. “I am special Rodney, and you know it. It’s the visions you see. They’re not born of misfiring neurons like the books you scientists worship declare, they’re as real as the electricity running along the nerve cables buried deep in that spine of yours. What’s inside me is nowhere else to be found.” The cane slammed onto the floor with a loud crack. “I’m in charge now for two simple reasons. I alone can talk to the stars, and I alone can make the tough decisions that are needed.”

  “You mean slaughtering everyone in the facility? Or maybe you mean ordering the release of mass killers all across the state.” Rodney caught a glimpse of confusion in his expression. “Oh, you thought I didn’t know? I followed the breadcrumbs and found the authorisation codes you sent to a serial killer’s top ten list of maximum security prisons to die for. Hard to be special when you need to bring your friends along.”

  “What you choose to study, we’re bound to live.” Samael rolled his chair until their knees were touching. “What you hope to find, I already know. Maybe you’ll understand things a little better if you taste a little yourself.”

  “Mania tends to leave you feeling as though the answers are all yours,” Rodney dismissively.

  “And ignorance brings in the inability to see what’s really there.”

  With impressive precision Samael pressed his thumb along the edge of the silver pine cone so that the top half yawned open, revealing a small pool of liquid that gently rocked back and forth like jelly on the tip of a spoon.

  “True vision isn’t reserved for the eyes,” he continued, “but waits quietly in the darkest of realms.”

  As quick as a striking snake his hand shot forward and clasped Rodney’s neck, seizing his breath and forcing his mouth open. With cane resting on his leg he lowered his little finger into the pine cone and used a long nail to lift a small droplet from the pool. Rodney instinctively grabbed at the arm disrupting his air but it was like trying to pry a steel beam embedded in concrete, leaving him with no choice but to watch as the long fingernail with the raindrop like globule inch towards his mouth. It paused once the tip pressed into the skin of his lip.

  “You’re alive because I’ll be needing your services,” Samael hissed. “Now you get a glimpse of what I see, and perhaps then you’ll find the right attitude.”

  Rodney squirmed and thrashed in the chair but it was pointless. His brain was desperate for oxygen now, and there was a sharp bitter taste as the droplet splashed onto his tongue. For a brief second the grip around his neck tightened even more, and then Samael let go and leaned back into his chair with a soft smile. Rodney had the sudden urge to run, but he couldn’t move. Like the flick of a switch, every muscle in his body had gone offline.

  His eyes closed, ushering in the darkness. A strong pressure formed at the back of his skull, and with it came a whining pitch that seemed to come from all directions and none at all. There was panic to be sure, but then panic required conscious thoughts in a logical stream and, with every beat of his heart, an overload of memories ignited like fireworks against a setting sun before the connections severed and he was left clinging in the dark to images that quickly fell away like melting snow through the branches of a tree.

  Maybe he’d always been here, drifting in the nothing with moments of electricity erupting across the eternal, where dreams came bound in flesh and bone only to be forgotten upon the return to the dark and formless where time was merely a figment of the imagination.

  But who’s imagination? How does no time emerge into time, or nothing into something when nothing holds only… nothing?

  Then the colours appeared, bright and vivid like rainbow drenched lightening squeezed into microscopic cellular tubes that twisted, pulsed and slithered into complex displays of geometry that defied all possibility and burrowed into eternity with evolving coils that left light speed in the dust. Whoever Rodney was, whatever he was, cried out for a beauty that tore into every molecule and every remaining sliver of thought.

  Deep in the spiralling multi coloured lightening fractals there was a white light that was everything. It reached out for him, it called for him, promised him a new universe for every moment in an eternal time with no moments.

  But it wasn’t to be. He was going the wrong way.

  The light was spiralling further away as time and space rushed past his backward projection. A thousand oceans of loss that came with the disappearing bliss and exit from what was surely his destination squeezed and crushed his every essence. It had been so close and now it was so very, very far.

  Screams.

  Screams suddenly exploded all around him, becoming him, screams of a burning suffering that knew no end. The sound of pain was all there was, growing more frantic and des
perate with each explosion of darkness that washed away the light. Within the screams a voice began to emerge. It was as familiar as the skin he once knew and yet unlike anything he had ever experienced, whispered in many languages and none at all.

  “The universe is a prison… and the stars your sentence. Burning balls waiting for souls in the dark cold of death. Take my hand. I’m taking over…”

  His eyes wrenched wide open. The screen induced blue hit his pupils with a sting as time and reality came rushing back like a sledgehammer to the back of his head. And, as if gouging into the fresh wound with a jagged blade, the return of his vision was marked with Samael’s grinning, scar carved face.

  “Quite a revelation to discover space and matter have conned you, isn’t it? No true exit and only the promise of pain, but I know how to change the rules.” He flipped pine cone closed and winked. “It’s my way… or a whole lot of fire on the highway.”

  It took a few more seconds for Rodney’s lungs to settle. Memories and thoughts were coming back online. There was one thought, however, that was screaming ahead of the rest.

  His left hand dropped over the edge of the chair. “The voices in your head forgot one minor detail,” he sneered.

  “Then perhaps you’d like to enlighten me,” Samael laughed with a tap of his cane.

  “There’s a little girl that’s got you beat.”

  Before he could suck in another breath he snatched the scalpel from the desk and opened up his throat with a quick and precise flex of the arm. Thick warm blood gushed in an instant, spilling down the inside of his shirt and rushing towards his waist like a morbid waterfall. His skin grew cold and his eyes heavy, and in the moment of twilight before his lights were extinguished he saw Samael yell something that made no sense as the sound of a dog barking emerged.

  Then there was nothing…

  Chapter 33

  They made it back to the hotel. It hadn’t been easy, and it sure as hell hadn’t been pretty, but they made it.

  Forced to burrow through endless side streets and secondary highways bloated with traffic, John and Vanessa had kept silent in response to the contrasting visions that had shadowed their every turn. On one hand it had become a normal sun kissed day, and on the other a brightly lit nightmare.

  Air traffic had been reduced to low flying military helicopters that rumbled to pockets of fire and smoke like moths in search of moonlight. The news report had confirmed at least four city skyscrapers hit and an estimated death toll of at least sixteen thousand, including those left burning on shattered roads or crushed in homes that were supposed to be safe. To John the city had appeared as a strange war zone with some areas untouched and others in a state of chaos. If the coastal metropolis had a mind, it was very much in a state of shock.

  Now Vanessa squeezed in between a long silver limousine and a scratched up sports truck and killed the engine. It was a lucky break. There were buses parked by the foyer doors being filled with anxious hotel guests being herded like stunned cattle by arm waving porters, and a continuous stream of slow moving cars that announced frustration with sharp horn blasts. To add to the frenetic stage show, throngs of people darted in all directions as though each knew just where to go.

  “If things get much worse we’re gonna be quicker on our own feet,” she thought out loud. “This is total madness.”

  “I can’t see things getting much better so I’ll make this nice and fast,” John replied.

  “Just like we said?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed the tip of his nose where the sunglasses had pinched. “If I’m not back in ten minutes with a half blind cookie muncher under my arm, something’s wrong.”

  “The clock’s ticking mister policeman.”

  John jumped from the car with chest racing and pushed his way through the crowd and into the foyer. Above the frantic banter a swelling siren looped and then the penny dropped. Of course, he realized, they’re evacuating the building.

  He took a few bumps to the shoulder before breaking through to the passageway and staggering to the elevator doors. There was barely enough time to catch his breath as fear soaked faces spilled out onto the polished marbled floor, suitcases held tight with white knuckled hands and sweat glistening on skin. An elegant lady with greying hair and diamonds caressing her neck stopped for just a second, glanced at John with a concerned sadness, and then rushed by.

  Going up he was all alone. He figured he had about eight minutes before Vanessa thought anything was wrong, but that wasn’t as pressing as the worry about whether Candice was waiting for him or not. As for what he was supposed to tell her well, he’d work that out as he was dragging her and Bobbie back out the door.

  The chilled air tickled the edges of his cheeks and the skin at the back of his neck pulled tight. He marched along the hallway to the hotel room… and could hear voices beyond the door. In an instant blood rushed from his stomach, triggered by the fact that voices couldn’t be a good thing. The day, he was sure, wasn’t finished with him yet.

  He ever so quietly let himself in and edged down the shade of the hallway. When the gold of the afternoon sunlight ignited his senses it revealed Candice sitting straight backed with Bobbie held tight against her chest. The red of her hair was backlit and bright and in sharp contrast to the fear clear across her face.

  She wasn’t alone.

  John recognised the back of Special Agent Devilian’s shaved, scarred head propped against the sofa. A dark suited man stood beside him with hands on hips. To the right, leaning against the wall by the bedroom doorway, the flushed and unhinged face of Nick the Russian eyeballed the room while seemingly trying to avoid the sunlight. As John reached the end of the hall the room’s attention turned his way.

  “Yebat menya!” Nick exclaimed with a push of the wall. “He shows his face.”

  John ignored him and looked to Candice. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” she replied with obvious concern and a dip of her face. “I’m sorry John, I should’ve know they’d come looking for me here.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he replied before glaring at Nick. “Federal agents I can understand, but what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Johnny boy, business brings me here. As for you…” He waved a fat finger to accompany the knowing grin creasing his face. “The touch of a beautiful woman comes always with trouble, true no? This here, this is trouble, but lucky for you I have soft spot for trouble.”

  “Always the showman,” Devilian dismissed the Russian, twisting his neck to bring his attention to John. “I’m afraid there’s nothing pleasant about this visit, but there’s no reason we can’t keep professional about what happens from here.”

  “Then perhaps you’d like to explain,” John said through clenched teeth, “just what the fuck you think happens from here.”

  Suddenly Bobbie released a small cry from Candice’s lap that quickly turned into a soft whine. Instinctively John began to march across the room, ignoring the fact that the agent standing silently beside Devilian placed a hand on the gun clipped to the side of his belt. He was surprised at the rookie mistake but glad he now knew which hand he had to watch out for, as well as a good idea of the number of bullets at the ready.

  He reached the sofa by the balcony entrance, ran a hand along Candice’s cheek and scooped up Bobbie who was quick to balance his weight on John’s shoulder. There was an instant sense of relief at the touch of his best friend, though the relief was encased in a growing world of anger.

  “I’m not sure if I was clear before,” John said slowly while holding Bobbie close, “but I want to know how the hell my hotel room’s turned into a party for a whack job of a crime boss and a couple of federal agents.”

  “You are man with cat on his shoulder!” Nick grunted. “I am not a whack job, and this is not party.” He closed his eyes for a moment, rubbed the side of his temples and released a long sigh. “You’re angry, I can understand. Maybe I am crazy, but crazy is not stupid.”


  “Listen John,” Devilian cut in with a sense of authority, “a whole lot has changed since I last sat in this chair. You know it. I know it.” He leaned forward and nodded slowly. “You know what you did. I know what you did. You’re not a tourist anymore. You’re in a river of shit so deep you’re going to need a straw to breathe.”

  “Get to the point,” John said.

  “Well, I’m here because the good doctor beside you took something that doesn’t belong to her and assumed, stupidly I might add, that we wouldn’t have the hotel under surveillance. It doesn’t matter how smart someone is, when panic sets in silly mistakes are made. As for your friend Nicholas over there,” he said with a shrug, “I guess it goes to show you should always expect the unexpected. We were just discussing how strange it was to meet like this when you walked in the room.”

  Candice lifted her face from her hands and peered up at John with rubbed red eyes. “I thought it was you coming through the door but it wasn’t. He said he was a friend of yours, but everyone in Miami knows who he is. Then before I knew what was happening, in walk the suits. This is my fault John, I’ve got something they want.”

  Across the room Nick shook his thick head. “No no no, I told you beautiful girl, I come only for him!”

  John could feel the back of his skull threatening to crack. What the fuck was happening? What did Nick mean, and why was Devilian sitting there like a smug asshole? He rubbed the back of Bobbie’s head and quickly sized up the third cog in the wheel. The guy had to still be in his early twenties, with a clean shaven baby face that hadn’t so much as blinked with gun still stupidly exposed at the waist.

  “It seems your boss have change of heart,” Nick continued. “Your contract is terminated. I have been reimbursed what is owed to me, and now I have job. First? I get back his money any way that is necessary. Then…” He shrugged his shoulders with palms turned out. “FBI here means nothing to me. I already knew they were coming, but still I am here first. I am first because my business comes first.”