Divine Madness

by Harmon Cooper

  “What the…?”

  The second guard turned, slamming into the bars. The other one, the one near Lhandon, stumbled and fell next to the monk.

  I blinked my eyes open to see Lhandon drop his hand onto the man’s arm, the Druk guard twitching, his skin starting to turn blue.

  He started to gasp, his teeth chattering as Lhandon finally let up.

  The monk grunted as he pushed himself up to his feet. “Nick…”

  “Help me out of here,” I said, whipping my body left and right.

  Lhandon stumbled over to me, and was just about to reach my head when he slipped, falling to a knee.

  “Nick…”

  The second guard was cursing now, his hand over his eyes as he withdrew his sword. He swung his sword blindly, shouting for his companion, who was balled up and shivering.

  Lhandon crawled on the floor toward me, coming back into my view as the man swung his sword again.

  I heard a loud clank! as the guard’s sword connected with the metal bars.

  “Nick…” Lhandon stopped once his back was against the wall, the monk now looking up at me.

  His face was severely bruised, blood dripping from his chin, one of his eyes completely swollen shut already. There were lacerations on his body, large red marks as well.

  “I’ll heal you,” I whispered to him, and I tried casting up Healing Hand, only to realize that my power hadn’t refreshed itself.

  I heard the door into the hallway again, feet running in our direction this time.

  More guards flooded into our cell, one of them shouting at the man who had the sword. He immediately dropped his weapon to the ground, keeping his hands over his eyes he stepped to the far corner of the space.

  The two new guards grabbed Lhandon by the arms, and dragged him over to his drawer, both of them lifting him into it and shackling up his arms and legs.

  I screamed at them, told them to let me go, and for my efforts one of them punched me so hard in that side of the head that it ruptured something in my eye, my vision scratchy and blurred.

  It wasn’t long before they had Lhandon back in his drawer, the monk wheezing, trying to adjust to the pain.

  The guards left, two of them carrying out the man that Lhandon had nearly frozen to death.

  “Put yourself to sleep,” I told him suddenly. “You can do that, right?”

  Lhandon nodded. “Can… can I put you to sleep first?” he asked, the words fumbling out of his lips.

  “Yes, that’s fine, as long as you still will be able to do it to yourself.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  It was only a few moments later that I started to feel drowsy, sleep coming over me.

  I found myself behind Saruul’s home, blindfolded, the beautiful lioness at my side.

  “It’s time to practice,” she said, and rather than bring my fists up, I instinctively sat with my legs crossed under my body.

  I inhaled deeply, daring my enemies to come at me.

  I was back in the void, cognizant enough with what was happening to realize that I was meditating within a dream.

  It came to me at that moment that there were a number of things I could do, from levitating to changing the dreamscape, but rather than do any of those things, I focused even harder on my practice, once again envisioning the switch that activated my power.

  My real body was in a horizontal locker in a dungeon somewhere in Sarpang, yet my mind was still free, and since I had sent my double out, there may still be a chance for us yet.

  This meant that I needed to hone my practice, to be able to control my power once and for all, as there was a time coming that I would need it.

  Of this I was sure.

  And as much as I liked sitting in meditation, I knew it wasn’t going to happen this way in real life, not in a real fight.

  I removed my blindfold, and cast it to the side.

  The masked lion man sat in front of me, and as I stood, he too got to his feet, bringing his hands to the ready.

  I brought my fists up as he lunged for me.

  I stepped back, visualizing the switch with my eyes open and hitting it, the lion man freezing mid-punch.

  I swept him to his feet, time returning to its normal pace.

  He flipped himself back up, and as he did I stopped time yet again, delivering three blows to his stomach, and finally finishing him off with an uppercut.

  My opponent slammed onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  I waited for him to get up again, momentarily forgetting I was in a dream.

  He came at me with a spinning kick, a kick destined to never connect as I stopped time yet again.

  I took my position across from the lion man, and I was just about to deliver my final attack when a sharp pain woke me from my dream.

  Gomchen stood over me, half of my body out of the drawer.

  The stench of fish was heavy in the air, strong enough that it burned the inside of my nostrils for a moment.

  “Using a rune to fall asleep,” the evil monk said, a sinister smile taking shape on his face. “Again,” he told someone standing to my left.

  A leather switch whipped against my bare chest, the sting radiating to my back.

  “Fight me!” I screamed, the blood rushing to my appendages as I tried to break free from my shackles.

  “I have to admit,” Gomchen said, pacing now, “it is a good way to pass the time considering the two of you have been asleep for nearly a day.”

  “Yai!” Lhandon cried after one of the guards whipped him in the chest as well.

  “You nearly killed one of our guards,” Gomchen told Lhandon as he placed his hand on the monk’s shoulder. “That wouldn’t have been very karmically beneficial for you, now would it?”

  I could see several lacerations on Lhandon’s bare chest now, blood dripping down the side of his body. Purple and blue blotches lined his arms and shoulders, and while the blood on his face had dried, his bruises were practically swelling.

  I winced as the man next to me whipped me across the chest again.

  “Fuck you…” I said through gritted teeth, glaring at the reptilian guard.

  “I promised you I would feed you,” Gomchen said, a warm smile on his face. It was like he thrived off fear and anger, the man absolutely ecstatic at seeing us being abused.

  And before I could respond, a tube made of metal was placed in my mouth, a funnel on its other end. I tried to struggle, to spit it out, but a pair of hands clamped down on either side of my face, thumbs going into the sides of my cheeks and making it so I couldn’t move.

  As one guard held me down, the other poured a bucket full of minced fish mush in my mouth. I began to gag on the offal, and as I did, the hands holding my head tilted me up, forcing the ground bits of meat to go down my throat.

  I started to vomit; they simply poured more offal on me, the vomit meeting the ground up bits of viscera and spilling out of sides of my mouth.

  “That should be enough,” Gomchen said joyfully. “We don’t want the Exalted One to go hungry. Make sure you give them some water as well.”

  “Our friends will come for us,” Lhandon said, glaring up at Gomchen.

  One of the guards brought the switch against Lhandon’s chest again, the monk crying out.

  I was just spitting out what was left of the fish guts when a bucket of freezing cold water was dumped onto my head.

  “Pfff!” I gasped for air as another bucket was poured on my face.

  “Good!” Gomchen said, turning his focus back to Lhandon.

  I looked right to see one of the men shoving the tube into Lhandon’s mouth, the funnel on top.

  I noticed something was off about my vision, likely stemming from the punch I had received earlier. Knowing that I couldn’t do anything to help Lhandon, I turned away, wincing as I heard them force-feed the fish guts to him and finish off with two buckets of cold water.

  “How wonderful,” Gomchen said, rubbing his hands together. “Sona and Eva
n will appreciate that we’ve kept the two of you well fed. We’ll be back tomorrow for your daily meal.”

  As Gomchen said this, both Lhandon and I were pushed back into the wall, our heads sticking out again.

  I looked over to the monk, his face sopping wet, a lump of meat on his forehead, his eyes puffy. Lhandon nodded at me and tried to smile, the ends of his cheeks twitching and ultimately ruining his attempt.

  The cell door squeaked as Gomchen and his guards left the room. Once they were down the hallway, the sound of their feet diminishing, Lhandon spoke: “Heal yourself, Nick. I will put us back to sleep.”

  “I wish I could heal you,” I told him.

  “It’s fine… I’ll survive,” he said, with less conviction than he normally had. “We will just sleep. Roger and Tashi will come for us. I know it. I trust it.”

  I traced up Healing Hand, repairing my eye and the cuts on my chest, but not able to do anything about the terrible taste in my mouth.

  “We’ll make it,” Lhandon said again, his voice growing softer.

  It wasn’t long before I started to drift off to sleep, happy to be away from this terrible place.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Monk in Worcester

  I welcomed my dream state with open arms.

  Anything to be away from the dungeon, away from watching my friend be tortured, the terrible conditions, and the slop they were forcing down our throats.

  In here I could meditate, I could relax, I could travel anywhere, and after a spell of meditation in which I practiced turning my power on and off, including doing it with my eyes open, I decided to finally return to America.

  I found myself back in my apartment in Worcester, a note on the fridge telling me that my roommate had gone to Boston for the weekend to visit some friends.

  I took a deep breath in, feeling like I was home, like I was safe.

  I walked to the window and saw the highway in the distance, and knowing that it was a dream, I lifted the window and floated out, flying above the buildings and toward the highway.

  I circled back around, heading in the direction of Indian Lake, eventually lowering onto someone’s boat dock where I placed my legs in the water.

  Even though I could tell it was cold outside, the trees various shades of orange, yellow, and red, I wore shorts, my legs looking bleached beneath the surface of the lake.

  I looked out over the water to see Sears Island and the beautiful homes on it, old money on display as it often was in New England. There were a few ducks in the lake, happily dipping their heads in and coming back out, beads of lake water slicking off their bodies.

  A form began to approach me, a woman with white hair and elven ears.

  “You came,” I told Dema as she grew closer.

  She placed her hand on her throat, indicating that she couldn’t speak, a true sadness to her eyes. Dema sat down next to me, pulling her robes back so she could dip her feet in the water as well.

  My guardian angel reached out and touched my cheek, a warmth spreading over me.

  I could see my reflection in her eyes, but it wasn’t the Nick Barnette that I had grown used to seeing in Lhasa, the grizzled one in his monk’s robes. It was the Nick Barnette from Massachusetts, in an old Boston Red Sox shirt, clean-shaven, hair cut short.

  I opened my mouth to speak to her but stopped, not wanting to come off as pleading. I knew that there wasn’t much she could do from her world, not in the current situation that we were in.

  Looking back out of the water, I noticed a large wave coming my way.

  A rush of cold water tore me away from my dream. I gasped awake, and one of the Druk guards cracked me across the face with his switch.

  “Morning,” Gomchen said cheerfully, “actually, it’s more like afternoon. But it’s morning to you, I suppose. Awake yet?” he asked me, peering down at my face.

  I glared at him for a moment until I noticed two of the guards standing over Lhandon.

  “Leave him alone,” I said firmly. “Don’t hurt him. Hurt me instead.”

  One of the guards poured a bucket of water over Lhandon’s face, and the other cracked him with the switch.

  “You never told me where you were headed,” Gomchen said.

  “Don’t tell him, Nick!” Lhandon cried.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to suppress how much I hated the man.

  “I would like to know; I’m sure it’s something that Evan and Sona will find useful to their plans. I could reward you, you know. Give me a little information and I will give you some proper food.”

  “Not happening,” I told him.

  “I figured as much.”

  One of the men stuck the metal tube in Lhandon’s mouth, the funnel open at the other end. As his counterpart held Lhandon’s head steady, the guard started pouring in the fish offal, Lhandon choking on the rotten mush and trying to spit some of it out.

  He was rewarded for his efforts with another face full of freezing water, followed by more whips across his chest once they pulled him out of his drawer.

  “You fucker!” I said, glaring up at Gomchen. “When I get out of here…”

  “How are you going to get out? Sona and Evan are on their way, and your companions have abandoned you. This is your reality. And what I’m doing to you will be pleasant compared to what Sona has in store. So I would enjoy it if I were you, because I was with her when you and your companions escaped, which means I heard her speak about what she planned to do once she caught you. It is going to be very public; it is going to be very brutal. She will make an example of you. So consider this like…” The evil monk searched his mind for the right word. “An appetizer.”

  The metal tube was stuffed into my mouth, one guard pouring fish guts in, the other holding my head stationary, his thumbs keeping my lips open. I tried to spit some of the offal out, and as I did, a bucket of water was dumped on my face, followed by another one, giving me the sensation that I was going to drown.

  “I will see you two tomorrow,” Gomchen said, turning to the door. “If we’re lucky, Evan and Sona will be here the day after, or perhaps three days from now. Either way, it will be soon. Enjoy your rest.”

  He left the cell, followed by his guards.

  I returned my attention to Lhandon, who was looking even worse than he had the previous day.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him, and when he didn’t respond, I asked him again, louder this time.

  “N-Nick?” Lhandon blinked his eyes open and looked over to me. “I’ll be okay,” he said, taking a deep breath and wincing at the pain in his chest. I was too busy being concerned for Lhandon to pay attention to the cut on my face, or the blood running down my cheek and into my ear.

  “Just hang in there…” I said, wishing there was something I could do for him. “We’ll survive.”

  “We all must suffer,” he said with a nod, cringing again. “And I’m not the only monk to endure extreme hardships. I’m trying to think of all of them right now, to respect what they went through to honor the Path of the Divine.”

  “Sure, if it helps, do whatever you have to do to stay strong. I know that Roger and Tashi aren’t going to let us down, I only hope that my double actually found them…”

  “There was a monk named Milarepa,” Lhandon started to say, his jaw hanging a little loose. He spat a hunk of viscera out and continued speaking. “Milarepa was born into a prosperous family, and his relatives stole his father’s wealth when he was young. In his teenage years, he killed his uncle for robbing his father, and got away with it too. Eventually, he started to regret what he’d done, so he went to a famous monk named Marpa and asked to become his student.”

  “He was a murderer?”

  Lhandon nodded. “And Marpa knew this to be the case. Before he would teach him, he instructed Milarepa to build a tower by himself. Once he built the tower, he told the young man to tear it down brick by brick. He had him do this three times, and it took several years to complete e
ach of the towers. Eventually, he started work on the fourth tower and finished it. Once Milarepa was done, Marpa finally took him as his student.”

  Lhandon turned his head to the other side and spit blood onto the ground. He returned his gaze to me. “My apologies.”

  “It’s fine, man, this is incredibly shitty.”

  “Yes, it isn’t ideal,” he cleared his throat, his voice wavering as he spoke: “Milarepa was instructed to go into the mountains and meditate, which he did for years and years. I don’t know if you saw his picture at the monastery or at the temple, but you may have seen a monk with green skin. This is a representation of Milarepa, his skin color coming from the seeds he consumed during his deep meditation.”

  “The seeds turned him green?” I asked, ignoring the pain on my face and now trying to visualize what this would look like.

  “That’s right. He had one seed a day, a reward for a day’s meditation. He reached the stage of a divine master, but according to his teachings, he opted out of becoming a Golden One. Maybe he is still out there, on a different island, in a different incarnation still performing his work. The reason I’m telling you all this is because he suffered greatly, but he persevered in the end. So this,” Lhandon said, his eyes coming open as he looked at the wall and the way that we were detained, “is doable. It is part of my story, and your story as well. We must suffer. Suffering is a crucial part of anyone’s story who has ever gone on to change the world. We will make it through this, Nick, and if we don’t, we will come back and start all over again, trying to help as many as we can…”

  “We’re going to make it out, don’t start talking like we’re dying.”

  He coughed up more blood. “I think I’m ready to go to sleep.”

  “I’m serious, Lhandon,” I told him, my throat quivering. “I can’t have you dying on me. We have to get out of this.”

  “Heal yourself,” he said firmly, “and let’s sleep. We will make it through this, one way or another.”

  I returned to Indian Lake, to the dock where I’d sat last time. The fall colors reflected off the water, a few dark clouds overhead. I noticed a figure on the water, but it never came to me, so I decided to go to it.