The old man did not hesitate a moment longer. He yanked a small remote from his pocket, and slammed his finger onto the button.
Drusilla screamed and crumpled to the floor, covering her ears and writhing wildly. “Turn it off! Turn it off!” she howled.
He shoved the remote back into his pocket, and slowly walked towards the prostrate body. Reluctantly, he pressed his finger to Morris’s throat; the pulse still throbbed strong. “Alive,” the old man gasped in relief. “Thank goodness, too.” He glared at Drusilla. “You might have killed him, you stupid fool! What were you thinking?”
Her eyes flashed wildly. “You promised,” she growled. Saliva dribbled hungrily down her chin. “The blood! The blood, you bastard! Where is it?”
“All in due time, Drusilla,” he said coolly. “Blood is hard to get. You know that. Here—” he handed her a handkerchief. “For goodness’ sake, wipe that off your face. You look like a mad dog.”
Drusilla tossed the handkerchief aside, and grabbed the old man’s arm. “Four hundred million people in Pangaea,” she whispered, “four hundred million…and you still don’t have enough for me?”
The old man shook her hand away from his arm. “It’s not that simple, Drusilla. We can only take blood from a human every few months.”
“I’ve waited eight months now,” Drusilla hissed. “I know that you’re taking it all for yourself, and for your friends! I’ve seen you! But why? Why are you stealing it?”
“That is none of your business!” the old man snapped.
“Where is it?” Drusilla screamed. “You disgusting parasite! I need that blood to live! Give it to me! Give it to me—No! No!” the awful sound again pierced her eardrums, and Drusilla crumpled to the floor, howling and hissing like a wounded beast.
He pocketed the remote again. “How dare you command me?” he cried. “You don’t have any right to that blood! You don’t have a right to anything, you monstrous beast! I have a right to it. I am a human being. And what are you?” he sneered. “Both whale and human, yet neither!”
Drusilla clenched her fists. She seemed ready to murder him that instant, if it were not for that sonic device in his pocket.
“No more of your antics, Drusilla,” he said firmly. “I’ll get you your blood. I’ll bring you all the blood you could ever hope for. When the Outsider joins us, there will be enough to supply us for a thousand years. But you will be patient.”
~
“Good day, Miss Smith. I’m Advisor John, and I’ll be assisting you today. So, tell me: what brings you to us?”
Miss Smith shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and stared at the carpet beneath her feet. She had not wanted to come here, but her friends had pressed her. They said she was depressed. They told her she needed help—maybe even pills. And so she agreed to visit the Advisors. She had never been inside their building, but she knew it well: the small, unassuming brick building beside the Population Center. It had once been a house, Miss Smith had heard, in the days before Pangaea had built the tower blocks for everyone. Now, as she sat in the dim yellow light of this office, Miss Smith wondered who had once slept in this room. An old grandmother? A child? Was the former resident even still alive, now residing in a tower block, and recalling how they had once lived in this little brick house so many years ago? Did they miss it at all? What sort of memories were scarred upon these walls?
“You can open up to me, Miss Smith,” John’s voice whispered soothingly. “I won’t judge you.”
“But you wouldn’t understand. No one would understand, John.”
“Try me. You’ll never know if I understand unless you tell me what’s going on.”
Miss Smith sighed tiredly. As much as she hated to admit it, the Advisor was right. “It started a few days ago,” she began slowly.
John nodded his head, and scribbled a few notes onto his pad.
“I found a moldy coffee cup in the sink. It was strangely unsettling.”
He looked up from the pad. “Why?”
“Because I never let my coffee cups get moldy! I wash them as soon as I use them. But it wasn’t just the cup; I had a feeling of….oh, I don’t know how to explain it…lost time. Missing memory.”
“You mean amnesia?”
“Yes. Something like that. John—” she leaned forward and grabbed his hand—“I know it’s crazy, but I think someone hurt my mind. I think someone took those memories…maybe from several days. I can’t remember anything from that weekend!”
John chuckled. “Please, Miss Smith! Lots of people forget the weekend, if you know what I mean.”
“No!” she cried. “No, that’s not what I mean at all! Oh—” she groaned despairingly. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. None of you understand! Someone took those memories, and I just don’t know who, how, or why they stole them!”
“Be reasonable, Miss Smith!” John urged. He squeezed her hand comfortingly. “People can’t just take memories away. It’s utterly impossible. You know that.”
“No. It’s fully possible. And I don’t know how, but they did it to me.”
“No one did anything to you.”
“They did! They did! Why don’t you believe me?” she shook his shoulders. “You have to believe me!”
“Miss Smith—”
“I’m not crazy!” she shrieked. “I’m not! Something’s lost, and I don’t know what! Help me! Help me remember—!”
John gently took her hands in his. “Listen to me, Miss Smith,” he said, with a firmer edge in his voice. “No one took anything from you—least of all your memories. Do you understand me?”
“No. I don’t understand you, because you’re wrong. And I don’t care what you think of me, I know what happened to me. As long as I live, I’ll never stop saying it! Never! I’m not crazy!”
“You honestly believe that your memories were stolen.”
“Yes!”
“And nothing I say can change your mind.”
“Nothing. Because what I said is true. I know it’s true.”
John looked at her quietly for a few moments. He seemed to be struggling to formulate his next reply, because his eyes soon drifted away from her gaze and instead focused above her head. It made Miss Smith very uncomfortable.
“The least you can do,” Miss Smith huffed, “is look me in the eye, if you’re going to call me crazy. But what I say is the truth. And you can’t change the truth, no matter how you try.”
John’s eyes shifted back to her face. “I know,” he said calmly. “I know you’re not crazy.”
“I…I’m not?”
“No. But you are ill.” He stood up from his chair. “You have symptoms of sleep deprivation, Miss Smith. Since that moldy coffee cup, you haven’t slept well—is that correct?”
“Well…yes.”
He approached a nearby medicine cabinet, and inserted his key into the lock. The door opened. “What you need, Miss Smith, is a good night’s rest.” He removed one of the medicine bottles and a plastic bag. “This will help.” He shook one of the white tablets into the plastic bag and sealed it. “Here,” he said, handing the bag to her, “take this when you go home tonight. I guarantee that tomorrow you will feel completely recovered.”
“I will?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“But what about the lost memories?”
“Your mind is too exhausted to remember things now; but one night of good sleep will bring all those memories back, clear as day.”
Miss Smith tucked the bag into her pocket. “I hope you’re right,” she murmured. “I just want to get back what I had. I’ve lost things before, but this is even worse—to not even realize what you have lost! It’s more than my senses can bear.”
“I know,” John said gently. He squeezed Miss Smith’s hand. “I know. But soon the nightmare will end, and things will return to just as they were. I promise.”
10.
When she awoke, the first thing Clara noticed were the blades of grass sticking into her nostrils.
She rubbed her nose and eyes tiredly. It was exhausting to be repeatedly drugged like this over and again, to be treated like a mere piece of equipment. She wanted nothing more than a few moments to herself to spend as she chose.
“Clara,” Dr. Gilac called, “uncover your eyes. She is waiting for you to start.”
In a fit of stubbornness, Clara kept her hands over her eyes a bit longer as she stood up. Only afterward did she unmask her vision to see where they were.
It was a large grassy meadow with rolling hills, and a few scattered oak trees. The wind rippled across the overgrown grass, such that it kept sounding odd little whistles. Beside Clara stood Dr. Gilac and a woman. At the sight of Clara, the woman smiled greedily.
Clara recognized the woman as the same blonde from the party, the woman who had asked Clara to tell fortunes. The woman was clearly of good breeding, with her perfect blonde curls and expensive dress, and such a refined person would naturally be expected to have proper manners. But instead, the woman launched directly into her story, without giving Clara the slightest of greetings. “My great aunt died forty years ago,” the woman babbled excitedly, “she was buried in this field, but she never told us her gravesite. What we do know is that she was buried with a priceless jewel: the Florentine Diamond. I’ve hired dozens of psychics to help me, but they were all fakes. But if you succeed, you will be greatly rewarded. You may use this as your portal object.” She reached into the pocket of her dress, and removed a scrap of paper, shaped like a heart. “This was the object most dear to her.”
Clara took the paper heart. It was pink, but it had yellowed and become heavily creased with age. Scrawled in the center were the words “Be mine,” with the n written backwards. It was definitely a valentine of some kind from long ago; but from whom?
“Now get on with it,” the woman huffed impatiently. “I didn’t tell my family about this, and I don’t plan to, either. They return next Tuesday; by the time they come back, I don’t want any trace whatsoever that you were here.”
Clara closed her eyes and held the heart tightly, allowing the visions to flood her mind.
It was a classroom. Children were dashing round, dropping valentines on each other’s desks. Her eyes drifted down to her own desk; it was empty. So sad, so lonely…so dejected. And then suddenly, a pink heart dropped onto her desk. “Be mine,” it read. She glanced up.
It was a boy, with red curly hair and thick glasses. He smiled, and quickly dashed away before she could speak.
Harold, the ugliest kid in class?
Ashamed, she stuffed the heart into her pocket. Hopefully, no one saw Harold give that valentine to her.
…The classroom disappeared…
A field. Rolling grassy hills and oak trees. Beneath an oak tree stood a young man in a soldier’s uniform. He was about seventeen, with red-brown hair and glasses.
His eyes were very sad. “I might not be coming back,” he said. “But please…Promise you’ll never forget me.”
A rustle sounded, almost like the parting of leaves, and she looked down at her hand—holding the paper heart. Already it had yellowed, in just those few years. “I’ll never forget you,” she promised.
…The field faded away…
An overwhelming sadness, as though she had lost a piece of herself…something gone forever…someone had died…
…Harold...
The same oak tree appeared. She was collapsed beneath, sobbing. In her hand was the paper heart. I’ll never leave you…I’ll be buried here…I promise to never leave you.
Clara had fallen to the ground. She had not cried in such a long very long time, but now she was weeping…her entire body shook with grief. “Stop,” she begged, tossing the paper heart aside, “break the connection…the pain is too much…” she opened her eyes and gave a deep gasp, struggling to push the visions away. She remembered what Dr. Gilac had told her to do when the visions became too difficult to bear: Focus on the Present. Focus on the Here. She grabbed hold of the grass and held it tightly, willing her mind to settle back into the present reality.
“Where?” shouted the woman impatiently. “Where is she buried?”
“Here,” Clara mumbled to herself. She clung to the grass as though it were her sole lifeline to sanity. “Here. Now. Now. Only now…” Her cheeks, still damp with tears, chilled painfully as the wind struck across her face.
“Where was she buried?” the woman repeated. She turned to Dr. Gilac, her cheeks smarting red with anger. “You promised that Clara was the best one. You promised she would get me that treasure! What’s happened to her? Why doesn’t she answer me?”
The grave was just ten feet away, under one of the oak trees, but Clara could not bring herself to look at it. She could scarcely bring herself to look at anything but the grass between her fingers at this point. She could feel her mind spinning into madness.
“Clara!” a voice shouted.
But it was not the woman, or Dr. Gilac. It was someone else—
“Clara!” the voice cried again. “My god, are you hurt?”
She felt someone grab her shoulders and start to pull her to her feet. “No, stop!” she shouted. “I have to stay here!” She turned to see who had grabbed her.
It was Geoffrey.
He held her at arms’ length, his face twisted in deep concern. “What happened to you, Clara? Why were you on the ground, crying so hard?”
Clara broke into a fresh wave of tears, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
“Geoffrey,” the woman snapped, “what are you doing here? I’m trying to carry out some very important business. I was just about to find something that has been lost for a long time, and now you’ve ruined it!”
Geoffrey did not even look at her. “Dr. Gilac,” he said, “take Clara away from here. Now.”
“No!” shouted the woman. “You can’t just take her away like that! I need her to finish this job! I’ll decide when she leaves.”
“Go on, Dr. Gilac,” Geoffrey said firmly. “Take her home. I will handle Evie.”
~
Morris opened his eyes. A horrible stench of rotting meat filled his nostrils.
He was in a dumpster.
A rat dashed across his stomach.
“Get off! Get off!” he yelled. He leaped out of the dumpster and tumbled to the ground. The wind fled from his lungs.
As Morris gasped for air, he examined his surroundings. He was behind a warehouse, or maybe a barn—he could not be sure—surrounded by tall prairie grass. The daylight was dim—likely about six o’clock in the morning. The strange place was not Pangaea, he knew, because Pangaea had no farms: they grew their crops in hydroponic gardens, and had converted most of their farmlands into wildlife preserves.
How the hell did I get here? He had no memory of climbing into that dumpster; the last thing he recalled was that party at the mansion, and then Drusilla had led him downstairs to see that tank with the beluga whale…
His memory ended there.
Well, it was no use trying to remember the wild night now. Morris desperately hoped that he had made a good impression on those stars and producers, even if he couldn’t remember any of them. His attention then shifted to his tuxedo: it was covered with garbage stains, and two of the buttons were gone. “A thousand bucks down the drain,” Morris grumbled bitterly.
“Out of the way!” a voice shouted.
Something struck Morris’s leg, and nearly knocked him to the ground. As he steadied himself, he realized he was surrounded by a crowd of sheep, bleating and banging against his legs. There were at least several dozen, and they seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
“Step aside, mister,” the voice snarled. It was the shepherd, a surly boy of about fourteen. “Or you’ll get knocked over.”
“Sorry,” Morris mumbled, trying to walk forward alongside the sheep.
The boy eyed Morris’s rumpled tuxedo. “What is a city slicker like you doing in these parts, anyway? Is this some kind of fraternity hazing?”
The boy snickered. “Girlfriend, wasn’t it? So what did you do: did you, like, cheat on her?”
“Like, it’s none of your business,” Morris snapped indignantly. He decided to change subject, before the boy asked anymore questions. “So, where are you taking these sheep?”
“Today is the culling.”
“Oh. To slaughter, then.”
“No, that’s not how I cull my herd,” the boy scoffed. “When I cull, I don’t slaughter them. I sell them. Then the buyer can do with them as he pleases: shear, slaughter, or breed. Why would I slaughter the unwanted stock when I could get one last use from them?” Before Morris could respond, the shepherd had moved onward.
By now Morris’s right arm had begun to ache terribly. At first he had dismissed the pain as a cramp from sleeping in the dumpster, but then he began to worry it was a rat bite. Rabies would be the perfect ending to this epic night, he thought miserably. Reluctantly, he rolled up his right sleeve.
On his elbow crease was a large purple bruise. In the center was a dark purple circle, as though he had been stabbed with a pencil.
~
Clara glanced at the clock on Dr. Gilac’s office wall. She had been waiting in his office for three hours since they had come back, after that incident with the blonde woman. It had been very embarrassing for Clara; usually she did not react so strongly to those visions, but this time she had nearly lost all sense of sanity. How could she be expected to carry out these assignments longterm, when it seemed to be breaking her mind apart, piece by piece?
She stood up and stretched her arms above her head as she turned round the room, taking in every detail. Until now she had never been alone long enough to analyze Dr. Gilac’s office. And what first struck her attention was how messy it appeared: stacks of papers against the walls, books piled crookedly onto the bookcase, and several coffee-stained cups. But Dr. Gilac, she knew, was not a disorderly person. He often scolded Clara for not sitting straight enough, or if she put her cup of water onto his desk without a coaster. There could be only one reason for such a straight-laced person to have such a dirty office: if he were trying to hide something.
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