I didn’t greet Ms. Brown, and after ten minutes of knocking she returned to her apartment. In a haze, I performed my get-ready-for-work ritual, then placed myself before my TV with a bowl of cereal.
Cindy “big tits” Merchant chuckled about something and leaned forward. I think I was in shock, because at first I didn’t remember anything from the nights before; not the ankle, the teddy bear, or the newspaper. I went about everything as I would on any other day, but as though I were hung over. I didn’t really feel the shower water as it washed over me, or taste my cereal, or watch the news for enjoyment.
My eyes were fuzzy and only half opened. The room started spinning if I didn’t take care to move very slowly. I was gone, almost oblivious, and I’m sure that if the habits of my everyday life weren’t so deeply engrained into my being, that I wouldn’t have been able to do much but drool.
But that changed when Cindy gave the spotlight to none other than Ronald Burgess. For a moment, I stared stupidly at his idiotic, smiling face, as if it were really a bear on TV relaying the news and wondering why I hadn’t known of such a development until now. Then I remembered and I almost fell off my stool. I teetered backward, and then fell forward, hitting my bowl and spilling the contents across the table. Milk ran over the edge and hit the linoleum.
I stared at the screen, shackled to the face of that prick Ronald. The pain of the ankle incident was recalled, although only in quick recognition, as was the teddy bear held by the boy walking into the ice cream shop with his mother, along with the newspaper and its pretty surprise from yesterday. But more than that, Ronald—who was smiling wide to show his unnaturally straight, white teeth, emanating insincerity like light from the sun—reminded me about little Enrique.
All of it suddenly made a crazy, irrationally reasonable, superstitiously obvious, impossible sense. And as I thought about Enrique and his own teddy bear, but more importantly, about the thing he wanted more than anything in the whole wide world, I felt very foolish for tipping over my cereal bowl because I wanted more. A bunch more. I pictured the little boy’s dirt smothered face and thought I could eat the entire bag full, and when done, continue on to the remaining two bags I had atop my fridge. My stomach growled its agreement.
I got up to do just that, when the words of the savant himself reached my ears. “…So, as you can see, Cindy, the house was reduced to nearly nothing.” On the television, background to Ronald, stood the blackened remains of what used to be a house. Ronald glanced back at the charred mockery, then shook his head as if saddened more than words could convey. He said, “A terrible, terrible misfortune. The entire Mallory family perished in the fire…”
But I heard no more because every nerve of my body became tortured by that blaze. My skin screamed as the feeling of it melting upon the muscle and bone beneath occurred, but it was only a feeling. Intermittently, during my thrashing, I saw between the vision of what happened and my real world that my skin was fine and appeared normal, just as I knew, although couldn’t see, that my cooked innards were also physically unscathed.
Only a feeling—but entirely real.
I felt my blood boil and my being enveloped. I opened my mouth to scream but was voiceless and instead inhaled a plume of smoke. On the ground I writhed and flailed, burning and burning while not burning at all.
After some time the blazing sensation stopped. Cindy was discussing another story. I was fine again. An aftertaste of memory remained, and I wanted to cry. On shaky knees about to give, I rose from the floor and studied myself with a look I would expect to have if I woke one morning in someone's body. How could I feel such pain and appear normal, untouched? Uncooked?
I held my hands out before me and examined the backs of them, then my palms, as I had my body yesterday, as though my brain weren’t registering correctly or was slow in processing a reality that had to be even though I couldn’t yet see it. I felt my face, searching for signs that it might not have all been a feeling, that some part of me was surely burnt. I ran my fingers over my trembling lips, eyelids, nose, and was touching my cheeks when a blast to the side of my head brought a flare of pain to my temple. My ribs began to suffer under powerful, unseen blows. Something crashed into my stomach with the force of a bat swung for the fences.
Cindy was telling of one Mr. Burrows, who had been mugged last night by three teenagers.
Two of my fingers snapped like twigs during an assault I couldn’t see or defend against. I envisioned them crooked, but they were straight. And the feeling was there. More blows rocked my head, making me dizzy. I tried to cover my face and curl up, but it didn’t help. I saw the hologram of one of the kids; face a snarl, swinging downward. I felt blood drip over my chin, but when I opened my eyes there was nothing there. No blood, no spit—but I could feel it, a frightfully creepy sensation.
The pain switched. My stomach and chest were pierced and torn with hot steel that burst through veins, cartilage, bone, and ultimately, me. Muscles cramped and blood flowed thick over my back and front in hot rivulets. As I breathed, my lungs filled with a warm liquid, choking me.
Cindy was talking about one Lisa Rackety, who was shot to death by a jealous ex-boyfriend a few weeks ago. The sentencing date had been set.
It hurt so bad. So, so bad. I don’t know if I cried, if I were even able. All I remember is the pain. The feeling.
There was a lull in my anguish as Mark Vullick took his turn and discussed the weather. I took the reprieve to stop Cindy from relating any more tragedies. I scrambled to my feet, blubbering incoherently as spit dribbled from my mouth. I grabbed the TV and shoved it from the counter, where it shattered on the floor.
I began to shake. Silent tears ran down my eyes and my lip trembled. Slumping against the counter, I slid to the floor and let misery enfold me.
~*~
As I sit at my desk, typing this, I am listening to music. Loud music streaming from my iPod into headphones buried in my ears. It keeps my thoughts from straying, mostly.
It has been a few days since demolishing my TV.
I haven’t worked since the day Teresa and I had our date. I’ve ignored Ms. Brown’s knocking the last few mornings. I told Randy there’s been a death in the family and I need a week off; I didn’t wait for his response and hung up. I left Teresa a message; she’s called back but I can’t talk to her. I don’t trust myself. I can hardly believe it. I’m sequestered inside my apartment for now until I can figure something out.
Isolation hasn’t helped much, though. The day after I smashed my TV, I discovered that thoughts alone held the power to transmit others’ pain. A visual or verbal description became unnecessary.
I made this discovery while thinking about Ray Charles. I don’t know why I was thinking about Ray, but seconds later the world became a dark place for me and I felt a desperate hunger for heroin. I remember standing up and losing my balance, and knowing a need that sucked at my veins. I was disoriented like crazy. I opened my eyes; shut my eyes; opened my eyes; shut my eyes—it was the same either way. I couldn’t see—just blackness. I ran into the walls a few times, and once stumbled over something and fell hard. After some time, I kept my eyes shut because having them open to this unending black was too much. All was gone, seemed to have never been, and without sight I felt as if I were spinning nonstop.
After a while, the feeling of spinning influenced my thoughts, I started to see amusement rides, roller coasters and straight drops and twirling machines, and the digression returned my sight and non-addicted-nerves because Ray no longer commanded my attention.
My respiration quickened as fear laced its rotten fingers around my heart. This development held terrifying possibilities. It was getting worse and worse. The amusement rides didn’t last long, because my eyes wandered to my broken TV.
And it only worsened after that. I was unable to keep my mind on thoughts of painless situations for long because I soon became a victim of the undeniable rule that the harder you try to avoid a thought, the more unavoidable it becomes.
/> I thought about a psychopath’s victims who’d been strung up in a garage and cut up like puzzle pieces while alive. I thought about the incendiary bombing of Tokyo during World War II, along with the Nazi death camps that Jews were subjected to. I thought about rape victims…school shootings and terrorist bombings. I thought about starving children and maimed soldiers. I thought about viruses: Ebola, cholera, and aids. I thought of the black plague and massacres. I couldn’t stop.
Drownings. Hangings. Stabbings. Strangulations. Bludgeonings. Tortures. Shark attacks. Cannibalism. Chronic Arthritis. Starvation. Mutilation. Hypochondria. Paralysis. Urinary infections. Labor. I thought of schizophrenia, psychosis, dementia, paranoia. I thought of phobias.
I thought and thought and thought, and with each thought, I felt and felt and FUCKING FELT!
Before this week, I’d always known of such horrors, but it was disassociated; it wasn’t me, my world; stories in which I wasn’t a character. Before this week, I’d never known that life included such agony, that I myself could become victim to such pain.
It lasted for several days, because one thought led to another, and I was helpless to stop it. It was as though I’d knocked over a single infernal domino in a line of Hell.
Oh, there were breaks between the images and feelings of those enduring radiation poisoning, cancer, deformations, drug withdrawals, and depression, but they didn’t last long. I grabbed a few pills when they did and crashed. Other times I’ve gotten lucky, like earlier.
Somehow, I found myself watching a horror movie in my mind, something of which I’ve forgotten the name but saw in my early teens. I saw scenes of mangled flesh and blood, but felt none of it. I kept thinking of the movie, confused. Then I knew. The movie was just that: a movie, a production of fictional scenes. All acting—it had never really happened, that’s why I didn’t feel it. I smiled at my good fortune, but stopped because this respite would be brief at best.
I continued to watch the movie in my head and became aware of my only option because I knew, that as with the impossibility of watching movies in my head all day, I couldn’t hope for a normal existence. No matter how I lived, I wouldn’t be able to avoid it. And I knew I couldn’t endure such complete isolation as what a cabin deep in the woods entailed because it would involve a great deal of loneliness. And even if I could somehow avoid thoughts of others’ suffering, that loneliness would begin to itch at me, then become more persistent and lacerate my skin, and finally tear into my mind and drive me crazy. And would that be real?
I am unsure where to go from here. I can’t stay, though. This is bullshit. When I think of a wedding, or a couple making love, or a child eating warm, home-baked cookies, I feel nothing! I get nothing!
It saddens me, and that’s a feeling all my own, one I cling to.
I think of little Enrique again: his dirty face; his puffy red gums. I wish the reporter’s superficiality hadn’t bothered me. I see the proffered teddy bear; the boy’s acceptance; my subconscious initiative…volunteering more than I ever wanted to. I wish I weren’t holding Misery’s hand, with the image of that teddy bear always in my peripheral, reminding me of the invitation.
I got this down, however, and this comforts me because I don’t want to be a question to those left behind. It has been hard. Very hard. I know of one way only to let go of her hand, and I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t see what other option I have.
If there is a Hell and I’m cast there…well, it’s only fire.
SYMBIOTE
by
L. T. Getty
They say you can’t tell the difference between a holograph and the real thing when it’s being streamed digitally. It’s more than easy enough in real life; the holograph behind the counter just morphed from generic white girl to ambiguously brown male. “Is the coffee hot?” I ask.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.” The holograph flickers. “Can you repeat the question?”
“Do you have any fresh wraps?”
“You want a bag?” asks the holograph.
“Nevermind. Two coffees, cream and sugar on the side.” I waive my card in payment, but he keeps smiling until I’ve gotten two cups of java before pleasantly fading out of existence. I grab a vacant bench that has a good view of the holo-projector; they’re showing the Stegarzki interview. The time reads 04:02, 04/10/32; I think it was streamed live midnight. I think you can tell she’s not real when the journalist keeps getting younger and can’t shake the guest’s hand.
“My guest tonight needs no introduction,” says the holograph of Vivian Poeger. “Wilbur Stergarzki, long-time Undead Rights activist and first outed Vampire to hold a chair in provincial riding joins us. Good evening, or is it morning for you, Wilbur?”
“It would normally be considered my morning, Vivian.” He’s too good-looking to be human, but that doesn’t mean it’s him, they could both be holographs. It’s hard to tell with vampires.
One of the nurses does a search for the weather – I should tell him it’s been raining all night. Someone else starts streaming in – some trashy soap, so I dawdle to the truck, pick up my cylinders, and then head to the oxygen bay. I don’t even have to fill up the cylinders, so it’s an easy job while I the real girl behind the desk does it for me. I stream into their wireless with my handheld, do a search for local news, just to see what they’re telling the populace about the barricade around Winnipeg. It’s too depressing, so I see what they’re deciding for us in Ottawa.
This one’s a real journalist, but he’s had plastic surgery. No one’s got a chin like that. “We can’t confirm nor deny that Minister Chakowruk’s family was flown out of the city just before the ban, however if anyone was flagged from Winnipeg, they are under quarantine.”
He goes on about the localized outbreak. Kyoli-4: a respiratory disease wreaking havoc in the nursing homes, viral last I checked. I get to bank extra vacation being a shuttle to the morgue. People like me are weathering through it, but they still make us walk around with masks on, and any time there’s any respiratory emergency, it’s Kyoli until proved otherwise. I overheard our supers talking; most think it was from that microbiology lab downtown, and in almost forty years, this would be the furthest leak. I can’t help but think that we keep pumping in the antibiotics, and get evolved superbugs. Maybe that’s a little cold-hearted, but I can’t look too far without seeing people stabbing one another over nothing. What can I expect from bacteria?
I stream back to the interview with my handheld while I restock the ambulance. My handheld is supposed to be for scanning ID chips and streaming building layouts, but it gives me a good enough holograph and the show’s been uploaded onto countless servers. Vivian and Wilbur are talking about the long struggle for vampiric rights, akin to racial segregation and the old arguments against polygamy.
I know Henri’s there because the radio changes. Talk radio. “This coffee sucks,” he says. “You clean?”
My hair’s still damp. “Think we can grab a bite on the way back?”
“Eat when you’re off shift,” he says. “I ain’t having you throw up again.” Henri checks the weather, and goes back to the interview.
“All I’m saying is that it would be selfish of us not to try to help,” Wilbur says.
“But you yourself don’t quite understand vampirism,” Vivian says. “It’s origins, and what exactly vampirism is, is still up for debate.”
“Just as humans are still arguing whether or not they have a common ancestor,” he said, “or if aliens had to seed you. Perhaps we should talk about the many mythologies of human origin.”
“You were human, once.”
“That was over two hundred years ago. The statue once had to be marble, but no one goes up to Michelangelo’s David and admires the raw beauty of the stone.”
“Beatrice, are we almost ready?” Henri asks. He makes no effort to check, so I roll out of the bay into light drizzle clouding the skyline. Time reads 04:27. Henri says he hates technology, but he’s got m
y handheld. I think he’s doing a search on lottery numbers, but he leaves the audio interview on for me.
“But there have been studies, and it shows that people who get, as you put it, ‘marked’ by vampires become somewhat subservient,” Vivian says.
“It’s symbiosis,” Wilber says. “You can’t expect two organisms to go back to the way things were before they started working together. Besides, it’s not like it doesn’t have an effect on the vampire.”
“No wonder he keeps getting elected,” Henry said. “Probably had every soccer mom in his riding offering herself up as a beverage. Inoculation. More like less objectionable snacks. They better find out what caused it before those pencilnecks in Ottawa push it forward.”
“They’ve only been studying vampires for what, ten years?” I ask. “I heard there’s like ten different things streaming through them. If the government can’t control it-”
“Vampirism goes back in every culture,” Henri said. “Science can’t explain everything.”
“Science seems to do a good job so far,” I say, before radioing into dispatch. “This is Beatrice Tenaeus, reporting Car 57 clear, en route back to Home Base. We are ready for next assignment.”
There’s only two choices as to when we’ll get our next assignment. Cities under siege go squirrely fast, and Winnipeg’s default is nuts. “Location?”
“Leaving the St. B; coming up to Portage, on Main,” I say.
“Mugging on Balmoral, near the University. We’ve got fire and an ambulance on scene, they need back up. Scene is secure.”
I flip on the lights but not the sirens. There’s not enough traffic to warrant waking the dead of downtown.
“What are you trying to do, kill me?” Henri asks, grabbing the panic bar before taking over the radio.
Lights flashing. No blue, just red and white. “Would it kill the cops to show up? Slow down!” Henri shouts, but as soon as I slow down he’s out of the ambulance and arguing with whoever’s in command. It’s an alley between two buildings – at least the overhead keeps us from getting too wet, but there’s still the spaces in between the roofing where the drizzle and runoff look like rain. “How many are there?” he asks the captain.
Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation Page 24