Veil

by Aaron Overfield

  “Oh … yeah,” Hunter shrugged and proceeded to pour himself a drink.

  Roy figured Hunter would ask for the key back someday; he probably hadn’t gotten around to it.

  “So … hello,” Hunter growled as he prepared his alcohol. Slouched over and mid-pour, he glared up at Roy and raised his eyebrows. Roy hadn’t said a word, and Hunter still had no idea why the man was there, in his kitchen, plopped down on a stool … and … just … staring at him.

  “Oh!” Roy snapped out of it. “Hey, Hunter.”

  “Yeah. Hello.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Roy—why the fuck are you here? What do you want?”

  “Oh! Yeah, sorry … sorry. It’s Suren. She wants to see you, Hunter. She sent me to come fetch you.”

  Hunter plunked the half-empty bottle onto the counter, and his face flushed. “God only she would send somebody to go fetch someone for her. Like she’s still the fucking Great Widow Tsay or some shit. No one cares about that crap anymore. Go be a good doggy and tell her I said she should go fetch herself, and then she can go fuck herself.”

  “Hunter—”

  “You know I don’t do this kind of shit, Royce. I’m not going to be ambushed in my own home and if you’re trying to play on my heartstrings, you already know—I don’t have any. So don’t waste your time.”

  “She’s dying, Hunt. Suren’s dying. Soon.”

  Hunter slammed down his glass and clamped his hands onto the edge of the cold granite counter. He bowed his head and shook it.

  “Ah, damnit,” he groaned.

  After twenty minutes of silent tension and four more drinks, Hunter scowled at Roy from across Ken’s old desk. Roy followed Hunter into Ken’s office because he didn’t know what else to do. He sat in silence because he didn’t know what to say. Roy’s fear of saying the wrong thing and inflaming Hunter prevented his brain from offering up a single word.

  Tired of the quiet—and annoyed by Roy’s vapid stare—Hunter opened his mouth and released the inner rant he produced for at least … well, he didn’t know how long it had been, but he knew he was into his fifth drink. Or maybe it was his sixth. No, it was his fifth. Anyway…

  “Why should I give a fuck? Seriously, why should I give a fuck at all? I have no fucks to give that wretched woman.”

  Roy still didn’t know what to say but it didn’t matter.

  Hunter ranted on, “It’s her fault. It’s always been her fault. And she knows it. She knew it then. She knew I had every right to never speak to her again. She knew I had that right, and that’s why she never once tried to contact me. She knew I would reach into the back of her throat and rip out her fucking spine.”

  Roy still didn’t know what to say and was still afraid of saying the wrong thing. He was pretty certain the only appropriate thing he could do would be to reach up his sleeve, pull out Suren’s spine, and present it to Hunter like a magician extracting a colorful string of silk handkerchiefs.

  “You know what?” Hunter pointed at Roy, using the index finger of the hand that held his fifth drink—really, it was his fifth drink. “She’s my Lundy. Suren is my Lundy. She all but killed Ken, and she knows it. That sick bitch is Lundy.”

  Roy realized he didn’t need to say anything. Hunter wasn’t actually talking to him; he just happened to be in the room.

  “And now, after—what? twenty-five years?—after twenty-five fucking years, I’m just supposed to come to her? Because she’s beckoned? As if I’m one of her little lapdogs, like you are? Well … a black lapdog in my case. But anyway—why? Why would I ever go to her?” Hunter asked the air and took one last gulp before clonking down his empty glass.

  Roy’s eye twitched. He focused on blinking at regular intervals, so it would seem like he was paying attention and/or thinking about what Hunter asked. Roy blinked at Hunter in silence. As the silence grew, Roy felt threatened and compelled to avoid eye contact.

  “I said fucking why!” Hunter yelled. He leaned forward and refused to break their gaze.

  “Uh—uh because … because Ken would’ve wanted you to go?” was all Roy could think to say.

  Actually, he thought Ken would’ve also pointed out that, technically, Hunter was only a half-black lapdog, but Roy knew that would be pushing it.

  Hunter stared at Roy with drunken fire in his eyes. He bowed his head and shook it. He hated how dumb people like Roy could resolve conflicts using nothing but morals and stupid, basic facts. Ken would want Hunter to go; Ken would think it was the right thing to do.

  “Ah, damnit,” Hunter groaned again.

  “You go away. This is between me and her,” Hunter ordered as Roy closed the opulent doors to Suren’s palatial home. He swore each door was heavier than him.

  Roy was quite happy to remove himself. From his wing of the mansion, he wouldn’t be able to hear if Suren and Hunter killed each other, let alone be forced to listen to their inevitable and incessant bickering. If Suren needed or wanted him, she could simply press the buzzer and he’d make his way back to her wing. Roy figured he did his part. Let the two crazies go crazy all by themselves. Roy happily waddled away from Hunter.

  The house smelled like an old-folks home. Hunter made a mental note to smell his house really, really good as soon as he got home. He wanted to make sure it didn’t smell like that. He’d be damned if he lived in that smell. Even if no one ever came to the house, he would not live in that smell.

  The odor soaked into the clothes like gasoline, or like smoke from a campfire. It followed and permeated everyone and everything. It was the smell of old, of urine, of ointments and medication. Hunter smelled the smell of things that were kept too clean, because one stray germ could mean death. To Hunter, it was the smell of things that would be better off dead, and it burned his nostrils. The smell burned like rubbing alcohol and reminded Hunter he needed a drink.

  He threw open Suren’s bedroom door and immediately wished he brought the calendar with him; he kept a calendar in Ken’s desk and could use it to calculate the number of days it’d been since he’d seen or spoken to Suren. He figured it was around twenty-five years. He went with that estimation and decided the bitch looked like shit for her age.

  Look at her…

  She was all laid up in bed, lifeless and pathetic and forgotten and unwanted. There was an oxygen tank next to her and some tubes coming out of her. He wondered if there was a tube going up into her hoo-ha, so she could just laze around and pee.

  Ewww, she nasty.

  In addition to the smell—which was bad enough—her hair was all grey and dull. It reminded him of ashes from the bottom of some annoyingly happy family’s barbecue grill. Suren was once so famous for her hair. Its impossibly deep blackness made its ability to shine seem paradoxically unnatural. It resembled the smooth, hard, black acrylic from which the original vCollars were made. Women often publicly envied how, from underneath the large hats that guarded her, Suren’s hair would drape her shoulders with cascades of unattainable elegance. Hunter sneered and shook his head. Now look at the lady those women all desperately tried to emulate. Pitiful.

  Her skin was pale—even for her—and all wrinkled. Hunter always thought Asian folks were like black folks when it came to their skin. How their skin stayed soft and smooth beyond their years, but once the wrinkles did hit … boy did they hit hard. His mother was that way, and she prided herself on her smooth, juicy skin. She claimed she looked half her age compared to them white ladies. Them old white ladies did tend to look dry, wrinkled, haggard, leathery. Their skin didn’t have the right type of oil, or their pores didn’t produce enough of it. Them poor white ladies.

  However, as they did to every woman, the wrinkles eventually caught up to his mother. Once that happened, she decided she was going to will herself to death. She would just sit in a chair in the middle of the kitchen, and she would will herself to death. When that didn’t work, she became obsessed with that Flori Roberts beauty shit.

  “You need Febreze up in here.
And Avon. Or whatever you Asian bitches use. Pearl Cream.”

  “Hello, Hunter.”

  “Suren,” he hissed.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m old.” He paused and then added, “And doing much better than you. I see you must’ve met my good friend, Karma.”

  “Yes, apparently so.”

  He folded his arms and glared at her from the foot of her bed. He made sure he appeared sufficiently disgusted with her.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “I did it for Ken. He’s the only reason I’m here. I did it for him.”

  “I figured if you did come, he would be why.”

  “Well obviously you’re too damn weak to have it out, so why did you summon me? What do you want?”

  “Please, sit down.” She patted the edge of her bed.

  “Bitch, I ain’t sitting on that urine soaked petri dish. You’ve been fermenting on that for god knows how long,” he crowed while he scanned the room for a chair. He spotted one in the far corner of the room and pushed a pile of folded clothes off the seat. As he walked back toward her and positioned it next to her bed, Suren flashed to the times she arranged Jin’s clothes on that same chair each night, so they’d be waiting for him in the morning.

  She closed her eyes and walked herself through the evening ritual.

  First were his slacks, which she folded along the crease in front and draped over the seat. Atop his slacks, she piled his boxers and undershirt, both neatly folded—she made sure his undershirt always covered his boxers, since the sight of his own underwear embarrassed Jin. She then draped his suit jacket over the entire pile, long ways and folded down the center, so the lapels touched.

  On top of all that, she splayed out his starched dress shirt and tightly tucked its edges underneath the entire pile to encase it. Suren topped off the bundle with Jin’s tie and placed his shoes and socks underneath the chair. By the time Suren was finished, Jin’s pile of clothes was a compressed origami of meticulously stacked and utterly unwrinkled business attire. She started that routine well before they married, and she performed it every evening.

  No one—not even Ken—knew how Suren continued that routine every night following Jin’s death, until she moved out of the Old Tsay House. Each evening, she set out his clothes, only to put them away the following morning. When she moved out of the house and into the mansion, she brought a single arrangement of Jin’s clothes with her and put the rest in storage. She left the clothes piled on that same exact chair, which had been placed in the corner of her new bedroom.

  It was the pile Hunter thoughtlessly threw to the ground.

  “So … what?” he barked after he plopped down. Her eyes were closed, and he wasn’t sure if she bit it right there in front of him. He wondered if that was her plan all along: get him at her side and—poof—up and die. Maybe so her soul would escape and soak into him through all his pores or some shit. That way, she could live underneath his skin like a creepy ass Suren ghost suit.

  Ohhh, I just know that bitch is going to haunt me.

  No sooner than he wondered if perhaps he should hold his breath, so he didn’t inhale her spirit into his lungs, Suren opened her eyes. Thankfully. Hunter exhaled.

  “I’m sure Roy told you, I’m not long for this world,” Suren sighed.

  “Spare me the theatrics, Margaret Cho. You and I both know that I don’t care how long you have. Not in this world or in any other. Why did you want me here?”

  “Hunter, what I mostly want to get off my chest—”

  “No! You know me well enough to know this isn’t some fucking Oprah moment filled with unicorns and cupcakes. Where we bare our souls and make amends.” He paused to catch his breath. Then, to cover his paranoid ass, he added, “And to be clear, this ain’t no Touched By An Angel shit, either. You’re not haunting me until I admit I was wrong to hate you, so your soul will get set free. I hope I was wrong about religion, so there really is a hell—and you go there and burn.”

  “I know.”

  Hunter leaned in and lowered his voice. “You know I hate you, crazy old woman.”

  “I know. I know,” she shook her head and almost produced a laugh, but the tightness in her chest and throat stifled it. Despite the little death show she attempted to put on for Hunter, Suren had been feeling rather weak and ill. Her doctor put her on bed rest and fluids. That was what the stupid drip next to the bed was for: to rehydrate her or something. Although, now she didn’t mind it so much. It helped her put on her little show for Hunter.

  “Then what? For the last time, why did you call me here?”

  “Because Hunter, they’re coming for Veil. The wolves are coming back for Veil,” she frowned and pointed over his shoulder with a wrinkled, bony finger.

  Hunter rolled his eyes and swung his head around. He really didn’t care what the Crypt Keeper was pointing at, but finding out meant he thankfully didn’t have to look at her old, raggedy bones for a minute.

  On a shelf next to the bedroom door was a glass skull that contained an artificial brain. Next to the skull sat a small, shiny, black box, inscribed with large gold letters.

  The box read “KEN.”

  Peyton Waymon knew all she had to do was wait. Problem was, she didn’t want to wait, and she didn’t think she should be forced to wait. She didn’t want to wait for the antiquated icons and pioneers of the New Veil World to dry up and wither away. She also didn’t want wait for more and more old people to die off, until anyone and everyone who cared about the stupid Tsay Legacy was dead and gone.

  People her age didn’t care about the damn Legacy; it was something they had to Veil about in social studies and history classes. Learning about the damn Tsay Legacy was a field trip during Veilementary school; it was required Veiling at the vAcademy. Other than that, the Legacy didn’t really mean anything to her or anyone she knew, so why should the Tsay Legacy suffocate her art? Why should her genius be held hostage by the grip of the irrelevant Tsay Trustees?

  As far as Peyton was concerned, it was all Ken Wise’s fault. It was all his doomsaying and predictions about the so-called Veil Apocalypse. It was his stubborn, archaic vision of some future world that may or may not happen if people were allowed to store and stream neuroelectrical patterns.

  Without the ability to store neuroelectrical patterns, as an artist, she was limited. Limited to the point of being smothered. Smothered by the paranoia of a dead Tsay Trustee. With The Jin Experience bill looming over her head, the Veillusions that Peyton Waymon dreamed of making—Veillusions she knew she was capable of producing—would never be possible, and the New Veil World would never know what it was missing out on.

  The Old Time Veillusions she heard older people rave about sounded so pathetic. In the early Veil Years, people would Veil with actors to shadow them as they performed roles from a script. For Old Time Veillusions to work, everyone involved had to block out reality sufficiently enough to convince themselves that what was happening in the story was real. Not only the audience but the actors themselves as well.

  The better a Veilactor could lie to themselves and fully believe they were their character, the more convincing their performance would be—and the better their chances of becoming some famous Velebrity. That always seemed to be the goal: to become a Velebrity. Then, maybe move on to becoming a Reality Velebrity. That was the ultimate measure of ‘success.’ Countless people would Veil you because of who you were, just so they could be you. Damn, the whole thing sounded so pathetic.

  To Peyton, the entire setup smelled of boredom in the form of unrealistic, bad writing and laughable, ridiculous performances. Old Time Veillusions sounded no better than those “movies” and “plays” and “television shows” people used to watch. The only difference was Old Time Veillusions played out in the mind through Veil. To Peyton Waymon, the idea of having to sit through an Old Time Veillusion sounded about as fun as staring at a “movie” screen and watching a story with your own eyes and listening to it with your own
ears. Besides, if someone had to convince themselves a story was true simply to enjoy it, what was the damn point?

  At least the Tsay Legacy provided them with the future. Well … besides providing them with Veil itself. Still, without trying, the Legacy handed them the future of Veillusion in the form of The Jin Experience. Without The Jin Experience, her vAcademy Veillusionism professor explained, the technology that transformed Old Time Veillusions into the Veillusions of the day might have never happened. If by chance it did happen, it might not have happened for decades—possibly centuries. Although The Jin Experience bill imposed pretty significant and devastating limitations onto their craft, the technology that accompanied it changed the whole field of Veillusionism.

  He—if it was a he—was only ever identified as Yoko. If anyone knew his or her real or full name, it was lost somewhere in the shuffle. Yoko realized that the technology used to create The Jin Experience demonstrated how a brain could be artificially stimulated by neuroelectrical patterns—patterns that could be artificially designed and produced. Yoko figured, in order to learn how to speak the brain’s language and therefore, how to manufacture experience itself, perhaps all someone had to do was decode those patterns. Yoko discovered it was possible to author experience itself and deliver it to someone else through an artificial brain, exactly like how someone could write music and use an instrument to deliver it to ears—exactly like how Ken Wise and Hunter Kennerly authored and delivered The Jin Experience.

  Peyton learned in Veillusionism class that Yoko’s discovery meant Veillusions didn’t have to be written on paper, memorized, and acted out. Veillusions could be written in the language of brain patterns and experienced by the brain as reality. Yoko theorized—and quickly proved—with enough knowledge of neuroelectrical patterns, it was possible to create fictionalized experience. It was possible to write a story using digitized neuroelectrical patterns, which The Witness could then deliver to the brain. The brain would experience that story as a reality. All Yoko needed to do first was construct an artificial brain, a vBrain, like the one in the Tsay Temple that housed The Jin Experience. So, Yoko did.