Strangers in the Night

by Flex, Raymond S

  Apparently distracted by something which Mitts would never be able to see.

  “It’s a dream about a man—and a woman—and it’s New Year’s Eve, and they’re standing up on a balcony, with the sounds of a string quartet in the background, and it’s all dark . . . and then . . .”

  In a single, swift, violent gesture, his father arced back his arm and tossed the metal cereal bowl hard against the wall.

  * * *

  The bowl bounced back with a metal clatter.

  It tumbled down to the laminate flooring.

  The spoon tinkled as it landed.

  And then, all of a sudden, everything was still.

  Everything was quiet.

  Mitts stared in horror at the bowl.

  Stared at the large dent in its rim.

  Mitts could feel his cereal returning up his throat with a burning sensation.

  But he swallowed it back.

  He tasted those oats one more time, and the sour flavour of the powdered milk there too.

  When he breathed in, he noticed the air stunk strongly of disinfectant.

  Of radiation.

  His father sat still for a very long time, staring in front of himself, clutching his knees as tightly as—it seemed—he could possibly manage.

  Mitts felt a quick, uncontrollable tension seize his chest. His breaths came in gasps. When he examined his father’s face in profile, he saw that he was mouthing along something.

  That he was speaking words.

  Words which Mitts was never meant to hear.

  It wasn’t until after a little while that Mitts’s father seemed to remember Mitts was there at all.

  When his father did, he turned his head around and looked closely at Mitts. “I’ve been thinking about how to . . .” his father lost his stream of thought for a moment then continued, “. . . what I should say so that it’s clear so that to a . . . to a child it should be clear.”

  But Mitts thought that he already knew.

  Mitts swallowed hard, making sure his cereal wouldn’t make another reappearance, and then said, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  His father didn’t seem to hear him at all, he just continued to stare into nothingness.

  Finally, his father stiffened slightly, turned to meet Mitts’s eye, and said, “Yes.”

  His voice cracked about the edges, but the word was spoken strongly enough to be understood.

  The two of them sat for a long while in silence.

  For so long that Mitts wondered if his father even recalled that Mitts was there.

  If his father recalled that either of them were there at all.

  “Dad?” Mitts said.

  No response.

  “There’s something else too,” Mitts continued, “something else, along with those dreams, of the man and the woman.”

  Again, his father gave no indication of having heard.

  But Mitts knew that he needed to tell him.

  “When I fell from the stool,” Mitts said, “from between the time when I fell off and the time that I hit the floor, and blacked out, I saw things . . . there was . . . I don’t know how to explain it . . . some sort of . . . different place.”

  Mitts studied his father’s face for any sign that he might’ve heard a word of what he had just said.

  But his father just kept on staring. Apparently none the wiser.

  “These dark-purple hills,” Mitts went on, “these winds, really strong winds.”

  His father sniffed a couple of times.

  His shoulders shook a touch and then, all at once, buckled completely.

  His father crumpled over himself, his hands rushing up to cover his face.

  But Mitts could still see the tears creep out from between his father’s fingers.

  Mitts wanted to be able to say something to reassure him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay, to have him stop what he was doing, but, at the same time, he knew that there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do.

  Because, soon enough, Mitts wouldn’t exist any longer.

  He would return to . . . wherever it was he had come from in the first place.

  The two of them sat like that, with his father crumpled up over himself, and Mitts wrapped up in his blankets, shaking all over.

  Mitts wondered if someone might come along to interrupt them.

  If his mother might appear in the doorway.

  But Mitts knew his mother was too sick to come and see him.

  That she had another child to take care of.

  The one inside her belly.

  Smelling the salt of his father’s tears on the stilted air of his bedroom, and feeling the warmth slipping out through the surface of his skin, Mitts wanted to tell his father all about his dreams.

  All about those visions he’d been having.

  About those purple hills.

  Those cutting winds.

  But his father wouldn’t hear him.

  Not now.

  Mitts could see that.

  With the taste of the oats from his cereal still in his mouth, and the smell of that slightly sour-flavoured powdered milk thick in his nostrils, Mitts managed to keep his voice clear and straight, and directed at his father, “Dad?”

  His father didn’t react.

  “How long have I got?”

  Nothing from his father.

  Mitts thought he might have to repeat his question.

  But he didn’t think he had the strength.

  And then, quivering, and reedy, but there, his father replied, “. . . Doctor Heinmein, he thinks . . . thinks you might have about a week.”

  Mitts breathed in deeply, neither really absorbing the words or the true depth of their meaning.

  He gave a nod, unseen by his father.

  A week.

  He could get a lot done in a week.

  * * *

  About half an hour later, there was a knock on Mitts’s bedroom door.

  Those twin clangs of human knuckles on metal.

  Heinmein appeared there, in the doorway.

  Feeling a little more clear-headed, Mitts reached out and gave his father a prod in his upper arm.

  His father, apparently having drifted off, stirred with a slight mumble.

  He seemed to recall where he was.

  He blinked away his daze.

  Looked over to the doorway.

  He got to his feet, allowing Heinmein to take up his position on the camp bed.

  As Mitts looked over Heinmein, he saw that he had brought a serrated metal case with him.

  Heinmein laid the case across his lap.

  For some reason, Mitts’s hatred for Heinmein—for the man who’d taken them away from their home—faded somewhat.

  He almost took the man in with cool detachment.

  Almost as if Mitts could pretend that he didn’t smell those cheesy feet of his, or that rotten stench of oranges.

  Couldn’t taste those things in his mouth.

  Feel them suffocating him.

  Heinmein popped open the case, and Mitts examined the contents.

  The interior of the case was lined with a gunmetal-grey foam, separated into compartments.

  Each compartment held a tiny glass vial or else a metallic component.

  As Heinmein popped the pieces out of their places and assembled them with expert precision, he appeared to cast off the shell of his previously detached personality. “It shouldn’t hurt,” Heinmein said, “I have spent the time in the past few hours perfecting the dosage, creating a bespoke formula based on your own blood.”

  Mitts just nodded, feeling detached from the scene.

  It had taken the most part of his strength to speak to his father. About his dreams. About the visions. Now he was paying the price.

  So Mitts just sat still.

  Like a good boy.

  Heinmein constructed what Mitts recognised to be a syringe.

  He filled it with a light-orange liquid from one of the glass vials.
/>   He turned to Mitts, looked into his eyes.

  And, even then, in that moment, Mitts realised even Heinmein’s black eyes couldn’t hold him at a distance any longer.

  Mitts had some feeling inside, one which he would never be able to shake.

  The feeling told him he needed to trust Heinmein now . . . if not ever again.

  Mitts glanced over Heinmein’s shoulder, to the door, to where his father stood.

  His father propped himself against the wall, chewing on his knuckles.

  Just staring into mid-air as he had done earlier.

  How could Mitts expect his father to understand?

  How could his father know what it might be like?

  To see these things in his own mind, and so clearly?

  But some things, Mitts supposed, could never be explained.

  Having prepped everything that needed to be prepped, Heinmein examined the syringe.

  Flicked the needle.

  “This,” Heinmein continued, stone-faced, and looking Mitts in the eye, “needs to go into your spine.”

  With a slight nod to Heinmein, Mitts turned his back.

  He waited for the sharp, puncturing pain.

  * * *

  For the first few hours following the dosage, Mitts could hardly sit in one place. He felt too restless to do anything other than tread back and forth, burning off energy.

  It felt like his blood was fizzing.

  He could almost hear it gurgle through his ears.

  Heinmein had asked Mitts to think of a fire, to think about the difference between a blazing fire and one which smouldered along; quietly crackling every now and again.

  Mitts had felt like he was back in school.

  As if he’d been kidnapped for some elementary chemistry lesson.

  But he had paid attention to Heinmein.

  Put those smells of rotten oranges and cheesy feet out of his mind.

  The point which Heinmein had been trying to make with the fire was that when fire burns more strongly—more brightly—it uses up a larger amount of fuel.

  Before Heinmein had gone, he had made it quite clear to Mitts—said it in so many ways; and so many different terms—that what he had administered him was not a cure. That there was no hope of Mitts getting better. And that, now Mitts had been given this injection, he would have another week’s worth of full strength life.

  And then, one day, sometime next week, he would drop dead.

  Heinmein had clicked his fingers to get across that point.

  Mitts recalled looking across the room, at that precise moment, and seeing his father flinch at Heinmein clicking his fingers.

  For all he knew, Mitts had flinched too.

  Mitts lay on his side, a position he never found comfortable to sleep in. He rubbed at the spot on his spine where Heinmein had given him the injection. He could feel a welt there; a seemingly ever-growing lump. When he placed his fingertips over the form of it, he could feel his heart beating through an obtrusive vein.

  He almost thought he could feel the serum—or whatever Heinmein had called it—billowing through his bloodstream.

  Heinmein had told Mitts to expect to feel weak for a long while. For perhaps several hours. As the serum took hold, Mitts would feel as if someone had blown air into his lungs.

  As if he had been brought back to life.

  Right now, though, all Mitts felt was the need to sleep.

  He could still sense his father, slumped over on the plastic container in the corner, reading the book by torchlight. His eyes mechanically wandering over the black lines, processing them all—and even Mitts could see this—without so much as a single one entering his consciousness.

  When Mitts came around again, he felt an odd prickling sensation, all through his body. As if he had a battalion of sewing needles all attempting to poke themselves out through the surface of his skin. He itched at the welt on his spine, felt that the swelling had diminished a good deal. He unfurled an arm. Reached out for his wristwatch, lying beside his bed.

  It’d just gone three a.m.

  That would explain the darkness.

  Mitts glanced about the room, taking in the shapes. He stared over into the corner, where the plastic container sat, and he waited for his eyes to adapt to the gloom.

  Soon, he saw that his father was no longer there, that he had left his book lying, face down, its pages splayed, on the container. The narrow outline of the torch was there too.

  Mitts turned his attention back inward, to that prickling sensation.

  He itched at all the places on his skin which felt like they needed itching.

  But new itches would spring up elsewhere.

  No matter how much he scratched.

  It might’ve been an hour before Mitts finally felt the sensation leave him. When he no longer felt that prickle frustratingly just below the surface of his skin. He peeled off his blankets, used his bathroom, and then trod about his bedroom, experimenting.

  Just as Heinmein had said, the dizziness—the nausea—had gone now, and Mitts could see perfectly straight, albeit only into the darkness.

  When Mitts thought about it, he realised that the prickling sensation had retreated, but hadn’t entirely disappeared. It had been replaced by a throbbing. This sense that something, within his blood, was now giving him warmth. It was resonating with a sort of energy, pouring it directly into his skin.

  Mitts had the urge to run.

  He wanted to burn off some energy.

  He felt so alert.

  After brushing his fingertips over the welt on his spine, Mitts eased himself out through his bedroom door. Bare-footed, he gazed up and down the corridor—lit with an eerie, imitation-twilight glow.

  He picked a direction.

  Beat one foot after the next.

  He took paces larger than he ever would’ve thought himself capable.

  * * *

  Mitts returned to his bedroom. He felt the sweat ooze out of his skin. His heart wouldn’t sit still. It continued its merry jig against his ribs. Not content to allow him any rest.

  He sniffed at the air.

  There . . . there it was again.

  That odour.

  Disinfectant.

  The one which he had reported to Heinmein earlier . . . the one which his father had forced him to report to Heinmein.

  Mitts thought back to how Heinmein had administered the dose. All things considered, he had really been quite caring. Perhaps Heinmein wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.

  Maybe, because Mitts was dying, their relationship had thawed.

  If Mitts cropped up in the doorway of Heinmein’s office, maybe Heinmein would acknowledge him.

  Ask him what the matter was.

  Just because Mitts was dying, didn’t mean he could forget about protocol.

  Protocol was what had kept his family alive thus far.

  But what would Heinmein do?

  Even if—and that was a big if—Heinmein deigned to come and check out Mitts’s bedroom, it would only be for him to bring along that device of his, the one which emitted the electronic groans and whirrs.

  Heinmein would screw up his eyes, staring at the dial. And then, a few minutes later, he would trudge on out of Mitts’s bedroom, leaving Mitts none the wiser.

  Not even bothering to tell him whether or not there was anything to be worried about.

  Mitts turned his attention up toward the ventilation hatch.

  He glanced down at his wristwatch.

  Saw that it was a few minutes past half four in the morning.

  His father would be knocked out—comatose.

  He had been up caring for Mitts for so long. He wouldn’t stir until the lighting system gently woke him. Mitts had until sometime between seven and seven thirty.

  So Mitts had the time, and, he believed, the strength, to investigate for himself.

  He had to take his chance now. He would be dead next week.

  Mitts turned his attention to the plastic contain
er on the other side of the room. He looked to his father’s book, its pages all splayed.

  Then he glanced to the torch.

  He snatched it up. Slipped it into the waistband of his pyjama bottoms.

  Then he dragged the plastic container across the floor.

  Left it beneath the ventilation hatch.

  He stood back from his work, thought about what he was doing.

  Wondered if it was the right thing.

  But then, what was he meant to do now?

  There was nobody to tell him either way.

  Right or wrong.

  Mitts cracked open the lid of the plastic container.

  He dug about inside.

  He cast aside clothing, books, other assorted oddities he had dragged along with him to the Compound. He located the screwdrivers.

  They were where he’d left them.

  Stuffed into a pair of socks.

  The fact that they were still there, in his container, suggested that no one had uncovered them.

  Or, at least, nobody had thought there was anything untoward about him having them.

  Mitts leaped up onto the plastic container, feeling invigorated now.

  As if his whole body might shudder from the shock of the new energy burning through him.

  Flipping on the torch and then laying it at his feet, Mitts reached up, undid the loosened screws from the ventilation hatch, one by one. He dropped each, in succession, onto his camp bed.

  Taking extreme care, Mitts peeled back the ventilation hatch itself.

  He laid it down on the laminate flooring, just beside the plastic container.

  It would be easy to find when he returned.

  That done, Mitts gazed about his bedroom, half expecting to see either his father, or mother, or Heinmein standing in the doorway.

  But nobody was there.

  He was all alone.

  In the dark.

  * * *

  Mitts lay on his front. He could feel the cool metal, even through his fleecy top, and through his pyjama bottoms.

  As he crawled his way along the air vent, he could hear his hands and feet making muted booms against the metal.

  It smelled strongly of ammonium—what Mitts had learned was the smell of ammonium.

  It caught at the back of his throat, leaving an almost fishy taste.

  But even the smell of ammonium was overwhelmed by the odour of disinfectant now.