by Wilson, Jay
"Very well. Speak the final words on that page. Once you free me, you may find what you're looking for." I said, twisting the truth.
He spoke another butchered version of my native tongue. As he repeated it, I felt the power surge deeper into my leathery skin, touching upon the place where I once had a soul. Immediately, a blinding pain consumed me. I screamed and deafened myself. I slammed my eyes shut, holding myself against the mirror, and felt my core burn as if no different from the molten core of Earth. It was a pain I never felt before, and when I opened my eyes, I was in the bathroom.
Brent had switched places with me. He stood on the other side of the mirror, within the darkness of Purgatory. Because I have no form in the human world, I took his. He remained the same as well. I watched him cry and pound on the mirror, because he instantly knew that I had deceived him. I smiled as several demonic hands wrapped in blackened skin grasped the poor man and dragged him away from the mirror. When I could no longer see him, I turned toward the filthy bathroom and ran my hands through my new soft human hair.
"Time to kill some humans." I said, and then left the bathroom.
Four, Six, and Three
Even before Rick put his hand on the doorknob, he knew something was wrong. The moment he placed his palm on the oddly warm brass, he became certain everything was wrong. He didn’t have enough foresight to turn and run, but even if he had been able to see the dark future, he knew destiny would never have allowed him the pleasure anyway.
He opened the door to his apartment and reached over to turn the light on. Before doing so, as he always did, he counted to six. Six was the magic number, and then he flicked the switch seven times to turn on the light. He believed that by counting and having a precise number of switch-flips, he might be able to avoid a terrible day. He used just write it off as one of his compulsive superstitions until they diagnosed him with an actual disorder. Despite that, he truly believed deep down to his core that he didn’t actually have a disorder, and that his rituals weighed heavily on the outcome of his decisions.
The light revealed his living room. It had modern design, mostly filled with furniture obtained from Ikea, so it had an obvious feel of minimalism, too.
He stepped through the door, and a soft shiver ran up his spine. It was the kind felt when alone in a room and a ghost has reached in and caressed the soul. The icy chill of death as it neared the body’s core. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and he closed the door.
Before entering the room, he pulled his shoes off. First, the right one, and then the left. One time he'd taken the left one off first and he slipped during his shower nearly killing himself. Ever since, he knew he had to pay particular attention to which one he put on and took off and in what order, always right first.
He crossed the living room, sneezed, and put his hands in his pockets to find a tissue. He was surprised to find paper in the front left, which was the prescription his doctor gave him. It wasn't strange that he had the note for medication; it was that he put it in his pocket at all. He kept his pockets clear of anything but tissues because they would inevitably lead him to a nightmare about his teeth falling out of his mouth. The one where the teeth seemed to crumble and dissolve, and the remaining holes in his gums would bleed for hours until his eventual death.
Damn it, he thought.
When he neared the door to the kitchen, he saw a flash at the corner of his eye. He counted to thirteen—the unluckiest number—to ensure that if there was bad luck heading his way the use of the number would surely cancel it out. When he finished, he turned to his window, and looked through it. At the horizon, too far away to be dangerous, a bright flash began to rise from the ground. He closed his eyes and turned away as the light felt hot against his skin. When he felt the intensity finally wane, he opened his eyes to a large cloud in the distance. It raised from the earth like a fist reaching to the sky, no doubt someone's furious attack for his or her perceived indignations.
"Oh my God." he said, and as he turned toward his room to put his shoes on (right, then left), the door to his apartment exploded open. Splinters of wood flung through the air like tiny spears, and four men pushed their way into the small abode. They immediately grabbed him, one of them injecting him with some kind of fluid. A moment later, the world fell dark, much darker than it was already.
~
When he woke, he was slightly bleary and disoriented. He sat in a chair wearing a soft one-piece white jumpsuit. His arms and legs had been strapped to the chair with thick cuts of buckled leather.
He looked around, and a woman was sitting in front of him in a wheel chair. She wore no smile, and it looked like she hadn't in some time. Wrinkles of joy had been replaced by decades of pain. Behind those dark fissures was a young woman, probably no more than thirty-five, but her hair was as silver as the skin of a shark—and Rick wasn't sure he could tell that she was any different from the oceanic hunter, either.
"Rick." She said, smoothing out the microfiber blanket covering her likely atrophied legs. "Did you see it?"
Her face molded with genuine concern, a face he thought she wasn't capable of having. He counted to thirteen, and said, "I don't know what I saw."
"You have to tell us, Rick."
"Where am I?"
"Focus, Rick!" Her voice commanded him with a presence he couldn't deny. "Tell us what you saw? Tell us where it is!"
Rick tapped his left foot seven times and his right six times. He took a deep breath and told her what happened in his apartment. Immediately after, she pushed a small stick and moved her wheelchair to a metal desk. She leaned near it, pressed a small switch, and talked into a microphone.
"We got it, James. Tell them that the bomb he planned to set off will detonate on June 7 at 1300 hours on the north end of the city. I'll transmit the coordinates to you. I pray to God you get there on time."
Rick wasn’t sure to whom she talked, but was certain of one thing: the world was going to suffer. He knew that in exactly thirteen days from that moment, on June 8, a nasty virus would wipe the planet clean. It would spread fast, and the only way to stop it was to destroy the city and all of its infected along with it.
“You can’t! You can’t stop the bomb!” He said, but that was the last thing he remembered before a man appeared next to him and used a needle to force him to sleep.
The Life of Kameron Carpenter
The days turn to night, but I do not see it. The climate changes from hot to cold, but I do not feel it. The holidays come and go, but I do not celebrate them. The only thing I know is the blackness when the lights go out and the small room I'm in when the lights go on. I know only four walls, the bed, and the three square meals a day that someone pushes through the small rectangle on the door. The extent of my human interaction is the occasional glimpse at the hand that feeds me, but other than that, nothing.
When you have nothing but time to reflect on your life, you eventually realize that you made a mistake—or several in my case. Hindsight is the unfortunate ruler by which we all measure our regrets, and my regrets span miles. My prison is only one consequence for the actions I regret. Everything else is internal and seem numberless, which I would gladly switch with all the physical discomforts and pain in the world if only to live a moment longer without this turmoil.
There is no clock in my cell, but after months in confinement, I know when it is time for the lights to go out. Your body has a way of becoming a biological alarm for consistency. Every day, as if controlled by machine, the lights fade. Hours later, I don't know the exact timeframe because I make myself crazy counting past ninety minutes, the lights finally return. For now, they are on, but they'll go out soon, and that's my favorite time of the day.
Seconds pass, and then darkness. There's no click. No Ring. No anything. Lights just douse and leave me in this inky blackness. This is the time I spend imagining my memories. Even though they may be a mix of good ones that I enjoy and the bad ones I'd rather forget, they are more than anything I could
ask for. I'm always afraid they'll take those away from me, too. Drug me until I can only think about this box, but for now I have a mental television that the loss of visual sensory allows me to enjoy.
I can't control which memories come to me, so I begin to think about my first day in college. I recall the warm September sun on my back as I entered the building, the smell of floor wax and fresh paint, the slight goose bumps I got from being excited. I see myself walking through the blue door, and actually feel what it was like to look upon all my fellow students for the first time. I remember the professor sitting at his desk playing with his cell phone.
My memory jumps ahead and I'm sitting in a circle on the floor. The professor told us about himself, and then asked the students, one by one, to tell everyone who they are. I only remember what Victoria said, because she would later become one of my regrets. When it got to me, I said, "My name is Kameron, and every day I play with purple and yellow bacteria."
At first, they were all confused by me, but I explained that I love science and that it was just something I studied. Most people thought it was strange, but not Victoria. She thought it was cool, which is how we came to know each other. That night we had our first date. It was the night everything went wrong. It wasn’t the first time things went wrong, it just happened to be the moment in my life things went very badly.
I open my eyes, or at least I think I do. I can't really tell because it is all the same kind of darkness. I blink a few times just to be sure, and then reach up to feel them open. The feeling of eyelashes against my fingertips is strangely sensual, and I immediately pull them away from my face. I do not like to feel things like that, because it takes me down a dark path that I cannot fully control.
I feel scared because I know that my memories this evening—or is it day because I cannot be certain—are going down the path of regret. I begin to think about her voice. Her laughter was musical, and she spoke wise words. I then hear her voice when tarnished with terror. I can't recall any specific words but I know they are the kind expressing her discomfort, fear, and even a little hate for me.
I suddenly hear the sound of shame and sadness, and when a tear rolls down my cheek, I realize I am the one making the noise. I wonder how I could be such a monster, but even as I ask the question, I can feel the tension in my pants. The stress of my shame presses hard against the fabric and pushes the elastic band away from my waist.
It is moments like these I hate myself the most. People never understand how I feel on the inside. I don’t believe that to be an excuse, because I know they’re right in calling me a monster, but there's much more to it than that. Everything that I feel is an action that I cannot control. Even at this moment, I want to satiate my hunger, to feel good, but I resist. I resist as I do every time it comes to me these days.
I reach to the space between my pillow and mattress and feel around for a small triangle. The edge pokes my finger, and I grab it. I obviously can't see it, but I know what it looks like. It has a silver polished aluminum surface, and I imagine it as I turn it over in my fingers. It was once part of a dinner plate they gave me two days ago, but now it looks and feels like freedom.
As the warm blood drips down my hands, I lay upon the hard mattress. For the first time in a long time, I weep with happiness. Not because of the freedom that I may or may not find when my journey in this room concludes, but because I am avoiding my physical freedom. I should not be out in the world where I may find myself in the same place I was in that dorm room. I will never be able to live with the uncontrollable monster that hides deep inside me, and I truly believe that no one else should have to live with it. Just as a disease must be eradicated from this this planet, so must I.
The pain in my wrist feels good. Eventually, the blackness around me somehow becomes blacker and...
The Men in Apartment 10C
I sat next to Frank on an uncomfortable steel chair while he took a long drag of a thick cigarette. He liked them wide and unfiltered. His excuse for destroying his lungs with such wicked sticks was that he could die at any moment so it was no use wasting time worrying about the little things. I sometimes agreed with him, but I enjoyed fresh air, so we often disagreed with his need to suck on burnt tobacco exhaust.
"You know why I don't shoot people in the head?" He said, looking at the smoldering end of his smoke, and then he exhaled onto it.
I turned to him as a thread of cancerous pollution burned my eye. The sting caused it to tear and me to squint like a pirate. I swiped at the air and said, "No, not really.”
He removed the nickel-plated pistol from his holster and pointed it at a poster of Coffy laying on a white bed. He closed one eye, and peered down the sight.
He said, "Because it makes a mess."
"I suppose that's a good reason." I said, rubbing the pain out of my eye.
"No, I mean it makes a huge mess. Look at this thing. It's a huge fuckin’ gun."
It was a huge gun. I once thought it was just compensation for some kind of male inadequacy. You know the type. Big trucks, cowboy hats, second amendment right protesting, and big big guns. However, I walked in on him after he paid for a private "lap dance" and it turns out he just likes big guns.
He took a drag of his smoke and blew it toward the ceiling. He pouted the last two with puckered lips hoping to make a couple smoke rings, but failed.
"It doesn't really matter where you shoot someone, there's going to be a mess." I said, pretty damn sure I had a good argument. I'd shot so many people in my lifetime that I was confident I had a solid grasp of what a bullet hole does to people.
"No. No, it's not even the same kind of mess, though." He said, and pointed the gun at the man we had bound and gagged on the cream leather couch. The man's eyes went wide, and then Frank stood and walked over to him. He placed the tip of the gun on the meaty part of the man's leg near his crotch. "Like, right here. That would be clean as fuck. Might still kill him, too."
"Look, it's still a big old mess. Say you get the artery? That things gonna bleed him out like a stuck pig. Blood's gonna get everywhere."
"See, I don't think so." He said, and then looked at Alex, our host. "What do you think? Do you think if I shoot you here it's gonna be a big mess?"
I didn't think the man's eyes could get any wider, but they quickly became large dinner plates containing little black olives. He shook his head disagreeing that it would be a bigger mess than shooting someone in the head.
"He isn't gonna tell you the truth, Frank. He just doesn't want you to shoot him."
"Yeah, maybe." He said, and tore the black tape off Alex's mouth.
Alex pleaded, "Please, please don't kill me!"
"Shut up. Shut up." Frank said, lazily pointing the gun at Alex's head. The guy zipped it quick. Frank continued, "Now, tell me, why do you think it won't make a mess?"
The guy pursed his lips, obviously still under the impression he needed to stay quiet. I said, "Just answer him."
Alex looked up at Frank who waved the gun in a circle and nodded his head as if to approve his verbal communication.
Alex said, "I... uh... the head’s got a lot of space in it. Like no cushion, man. It's like all thick in my legs an' shit."
The dead man had a good point, but that wasn't my point.
I said, "Frank, I agree that there'll be less projectile mess, but there's going to be a lot of bloody mess."
Frank tightened his lips and sucked his tongue. "You see, I don't think so."
"Oh for God's sake." I said, and pulled my much smaller caliber pistol from its holster and fired a round into Alex's leg. The bullet tore through the meat, and I was a good shot of course, so the bullet shaved right through the artery.
Alex screamed as blood squirted from his leg. Frank scooped an old sock off the floor, grabbed Alex's mouth, and stuffed the gag deep into it. He put the tape back in place to keep him quiet.
I said, "See that? He's making a mess all over the place."
"Listen, you're a damn
good shot, and I think you purposely made a mess. What's that like, one in a million that us normal people will get that artery?" He said, and fired three of his loud macho rounds into Alex's leg. "Look, three shots. No mess. No artery."
Alex passed out, and I said, "I'm not saying the leg will always make a mess, I'm saying that it can make just as big of a mess as shootin’ someone in the head."
"Okay, okay. Fine, but the head's still a huge mess." He said, and lazily fired a round into Alex's skull. The bone and brain fragments painted the wall, which if left to dry would require some serious scrubbing to remove.
I said, "Can we just agree it's going to be messy no matter what?"
Frank snuffed the cigarette out in a dish on a dark oak coffee table. He put his gun away, and his slacks sagged a bit from the weight.
"Yeah, fine." He agreed as I put my gun away.
We walked out of the apartment, and Frank pointed his finger at nothing in particular as he said, "Did I hear you say 'God' back there? ‘Cause I distinctly remember hearing you say it. You know why I don’t have a religion?"
The Ghost of a Murder Past
Chris was asleep in his bed when he felt someone straddle him. At first, he thought he was just having a good dream, but then someone forced something cold into his mouth, and he woke immediately.
"Hey big boy." The woman said, her voice salacious, reminiscent of overacting in an expensive pornography.
He squinted his eyes, but it was too dark to see her. The moonlight barely outlined her blonde hair, which appeared soft and slightly frayed by split ends. The whites of her eyes seemed to glow abnormally, and she wore a fragrance with which he wasn't familiar.