The Lost and the Damned

by Dennis Liggio

  PATIENT: No, no, stop! This is wrong!

  DOCTOR: Please relax and allow the stimulant to remove any lingering effects of the sedative from your system. We want your consciousness clear and alert.

  PATIENT: No! Sedate me already! Don’t you understand?

  DOCTOR: I don’t understand, do I? Why don’t you show me?

  PATIENT: No!

  NURSE JOHNSON: Sir, are you sure? He looks as though he is entering a seizure.

  DOCTOR: I’ll not be lectured by a grunt nurse. I will tell you when you need to step in.

  PATIENT: I… I can see.

  DOCTOR: What can you see?

  PATIENT: I can see. I can see.

  NURSE JOHNSON: Sir?

  NURSE JOHNSON: Sir, what is this?

  NURSE JOHNSON: I have a bad feeling about this. This was not in the briefing.

  NURSE DAVIS: I can see.

  PATIENT: Can see.

  NURSE JOHNSON: What did you say?

  NURSE JOHNSON: I don’t think you should do that.

  NURSE DAVIS: It feels warm and pleasant. Squishy.

 

  NURSE JOHNSON: Oh… Oh… Oh fuck, oh fuck. Oh fuck.

  DOCTOR: What are you doing?

  NURSE JOHNSON: We’re not doing anymore of this fucking stuff. I’m sedating his ass.

  DOCTOR: I order you not to do that.

  NURSE JOHNSON: Yeah, well, feel free to fire me later.

  NURSE JOHNSON: What did you expect to happen here?

  NURSE JOHNSON: Did you know that we were in danger? I’m a nurse, not a test subject!

  NURSE JOHNSON: What the…

  NURSE JOHNSON: Let me out! Let me out of here you fuckers! Let me out!”

  NURSE JOHNSON: Please! Open the door!

 

  DOCTOR: My God, it’s beautiful.

  I again fell through a now uncomfortably familiar blackness. My mind was afflicted with an oppressive blankness. Every thought was squeezed out of my mind the moment it formed, leaving my mind forcibly emptied as I fell without falling through blackness, knowing what was waiting for me, knowing where I was going to end up. Even though I could not form the thought, there was a dining room in my future, with pain and suffering.

  I touched down in the all-too-familiar dining room with the boy and the young girl, knowing I was going to go through this all again. He walks into the room, she says something to him, he walks into the living room. Once again I tried to not follow, digging in my heels as something pulled at me, trying to tear me from the spot where I stood and yank me into the room. I was able to resist it longer, my muscles tensed and my jaw clenched. Then the little girl turned and looked at me and said something.

  “There could be an end to this. Some things can be forgotten with the right assistance.”

  The moment I took to just stare at her in abject confusion was enough for my concentration to be broken. Like the release of a stretched rubber band, I was yanked from my spot, hurtling through the air at great speed to land gently next to the boy in front of the man in his work clothes. They had their conversation again as I watched the boy, just feeling pity for what comes next. The same thing I have to experience with him.

  I feel the savage beating the boy felt, his embarrassment at the situation, his betrayal by the man he trusted, the growing hatred, and the acidic desperation that took root in the boy. I welcome the moment when it all went black.

  I woke up under a tree. It was actually quite pleasant. I was stretched out with my head resting on the bottom of the tree, as if I fell asleep reading a book. I almost expected to turn to my left and find a novel or a college textbook. Instead I saw only grass and realized I was neither on holiday nor regressed back to my college days. I got up and stretched, my muscles less sore than I remembered.

  I was in some sort of public space. I could see that plainly from the trails and the occasional benches. The trees were well-kept and well-spaced. It was early fall and the leaves were just starting to fall off the trees, fluttering to the ground in a gentle breeze. It was warm, but the breeze was cool. Around me, people sat on the grass reading or talking. They were mostly in their twenties, leading me to wonder whether this was a park or a section of a college campus. Either way, this was the most pleasant place I had been since the start of this long nightmare.

  I strolled down the trail, glancing from side to side at the trees and the lazy park goers. When I examined them closely, I realized most had half-formed faces like in the library. It was basically a face, but things were too smooth, features were missing. But I was enjoying my stroll, so I did not look too long at any of them, just feeling comfortable with the quick gestalt of their form: lazy recreational loungers, laughing and talking, studying their books, napping on the grass.

  I knew I was still in someplace that was very wrong. The half formed faces clued me into that, if the waking up in a place I didn’t recognize hadn’t tipped me off. I knew I needed to get my bearings, find Katie, get out of here and somehow save the day. While I knew all of these things, this place was pleasantly non-hostile, idyllic, and clean. I breathed deeply of the crisp air, pushing memories of the steam tunnels far from me. For now, I wanted to enjoy the moment. The wind blew gently again and I stretched out my hand, feeling the breeze between my fingers as I walked.

  The relaxation of this place made strange thoughts rise in my mind. How did I get here? Not here in the park, the steam tunnels, the hospitals, the insanity – though that was a worthwhile question as well. No, I meant how did my life bring me to here? How did things work out like this? As I looked around, I remembered going to college and hanging out on college campuses just like this. I remember reading while sitting on the grass, studying between classes, as well as staring at pretty girls and never quite figuring out what to say to them. It wasn’t perfect, but there were some good times in there mixed in with the bad. For all it was, I still wondered how it came to this. When I was in college, I never thought I’d be doing this, neither the detective work nor the search and rescue in the Twilight Zone. I didn’t have a clear plan what I’d do once I got out. I had a liberal arts major, which wasn’t preparation for a specific career. I thought I’d figure out something, but I never thought I’d be a private detective. That was the stuff of noir movies and Magnum PI.

  Yet here I was, on the job, tracking down a lost girl for money. This one was high profile and for an international record company, but it was still a detective job: I was still getting paid to find someone. And this was one of the better cases, one of the more interesting ones. This time I wasn’t peeping in somebody’s window with a high tech camera taking pictures of them boffing their secretary. I’m sure there were half dozen of those waiting for me at home. If I were lucky, I was finding someone, finding something, helping to keep someone out of jail, hell, even finding a lost cat. I still loved that work more than the surveillance. If the interesting work dried up, things would be tight, but I’d still get by. If the nosy photographer work dried up, I wouldn’t make rent. I hated that. That’s not the detective I wanted to be, that’s not the man I wanted to be. I wished I didn’t have to make most of my money airing people’s dirty laundry. This job might give me the funds to get a better operation, but I bet I would still be taking pictures.

  I looked around and remembered college. So I was a slacker in college, I couldn’t deny that. But what if I had done things differently? What if I made different choices in college? Would the road still have led here, an inevitable conclusion? Or would things have been different? Would I have been a different man? A strange thought entered my head. We were going through the past. What if we went into my own past? Then I could see the events of my life laid out before me. Could I change the course of my life? Would I change the course of my life? What kind of man would I become if things changed? Would I be willing to take a gamble to find out who I would be once I changed the past?

  I shook
my head and sighed, sticking my hands in my pockets as I strolled through the park. Those types of thoughts didn’t do me any good. I couldn’t change who I was, even if it were possible. Some would say I wouldn’t make that gamble, that I wouldn’t risk becoming a worse person than I am. While that could happen, that wasn’t the reason. No, the real reason is a lot more arrogant than that. I have a real strong sense of self, in the strong willed, stubborn, screw-you type of way. My edges have smoothed a bit since college, but I’m still very wound up in the whole me-vs-them. My experiences are mine and the building blocks of just who I am. Every event of my life shaped me into the man I am. Even if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing. Anything different would make me less of me, even if I was objectively better off. I would be losing some of myself and that is unacceptable. I love myself too much, warts and all, to change who I am. I would only acknowledge the possibility of changing who I could become tomorrow. But not the past.

  My vision passed over a half-faced man, more detailed than some of the others, sitting against a tree and playing guitar. A semi-circle of what were probably pretty half-faced girls sat around him, fawning over him as he played guitar. I shook my head again. If I changed the past, I might end up being that guy. I always hated that guy. He’s somewhere on every college campus. Playing guitar while the girls fawned, slacking and charming his way through college. There’s no way I wanted to be that guy. I kicked a pebble down the trail and walked on by.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to retrieve some of the relaxation I was feeling when I first started this walk. Memory lane or not, this was a nice place and I’d just come out of hell. I could idle a few minutes here. Then I’d find Katie. But right now I could do with some relaxing.

  The leaves were still falling gently and I watched one trace a back and forth path to the ground before settling at the base of a tree. I heard the faint chirping of birds behind me. I heard some rustling in a tree and cocked my head, watching the branches. In a moment, I saw a small brown squirrel taking his time crossing the branch to the trunk. Once there, his little paws held up an acorn that he had brought. He began to take cute little bites out of the acorn. I was reminded of my own cat, Mr. Smith. He wasn’t the same as a squirrel, but watching the squirrel hold the acorn reminded me of Mr. Smith with his little white paws, his left eye covered with a black splotch that covered both his ears. Right now I missed him. He was my one link to normalcy, both from this place and from my job. Coming home at the end of the day to an appropriately furry kitty made things not seem so bad.

  A second squirrel climbed out on the branch, joining the first. However, this second squirrel was partially obscured by the tree. Thinking the two of them standing there must be a cute scene, I walked around the tree, keeping my glance on the squirrels to get a better view. The second squirrel was now sniffing the first squirrel, and they were just adorable. I had seen squirrels before, but these two were so cute that I felt relaxed just looking at them. And now they were doing the most adorable thing they were –

  I tripped and fell on my face.

  I knew I tripped over something. I picked myself up and turned around. When I saw what it was, I cursed. Every muscle in my body went tense again.

  I had tripped over a body.

  Again.

  Seriously, tripping over two bodies? Sure my foot only tapped against the body of Nurse Phillips in the old hospital, but it was kind of a trip. Tripped over two, found four total. Why me? Why am I the one just falling over these things? You’d think someone would have run through the park shouting, “Hey, I found a body!” Or “Call the police!” Maybe a blood curdling shriek. Was I really the first person to find the body? Am I just that person, the one magnetized to them? John Keats, Finder of Dead Bodies, Admirer of Squirrels.

  Once my initial shock and incredulity had worn off, I looked closer at the body. Female, multiple vicious stab wounds. She had been bleeding out for a while, her clothes were soaked and now my pants were stained. Hair was matted over her face, which I cautiously brushed out of the way, wanting to touch her as little as possible. Her hair was sticky and wet as I moved it out of the way; blood was now on my hand. I immediately knew I had seen enough. It was the librarian from the desk at the library. Helen, if I recalled right.

  I stood up. Great. My stomach felt a little sick, but it passed. I was getting too used to this. So once again things came back to Max. He was the common link here. He knew her. I bet if I asked around or looked long enough, I’d find that he had been here or was still here. I looked around. I was off a little ways from most people in the park, but not too far. The body was semi-concealed, but not really. There were two people reading books that had a clear line of sight. But no one reacted. It was like before – the world could be collapsing around them, but they didn’t react. They were placeholders, background, extras. I couldn’t count on much from them.

  A murder. We were already to that. Katie had theorized how these scenes were playing out and I was beginning to see she was right. It was some sort of sadistic Shakespeare in the park, which was ironically appropriate considering my current location. First we woke up in a new place. Somewhere in that place, some sort of drama was playing out. Once that was over, things would quiet down for a while. Sometime during that time a murder would take place. We’d find the body and shortly afterwards the monster would show up. Cue the running, cue the whiteout. Then it was a matter of just wandering around until the fade to black.

  I was beginning to doubt whether this was time travel. It was not time travel as I would have conceived it. There was an inherent wrongness in the events we were witnessing. But I just didn’t have a good alternate explanation yet. These events were too constructed, too plainly framed for this to be The Past As It Happened. There was some distortion going on, but I wasn’t sure what it was or what it meant. I knew some of the rules of what was going on, but that didn’t mean I knew what was going on.

  What I did know was what cue we were up to. The murder was done and the body was found. Any minute now whatever sinister logic this place worked under would send the monster here, looking for Max. I still wasn’t sure what the monster would do to us interlopers, and I was not about to find out. Time was short. I needed to find her.

  “Katie!” I called out, cupping my hands around my mouth to project the sound. I heard no response. I didn’t get a second look from any of the people sitting under trees and on benches. Not a flick of their eyes, not a moment’s hesitation in their reading. I might as well have not existed.

  I began jogging down the trails, shouting for Katie. Far behind me I heard the first thunderous footstep of the monster. It was a long way off, but I knew it could close the gap quickly. Its stride was probably enormous. I’m sure if it started running after me I couldn’t outrun it. Hiding and getting out of here quickly would be the best option. But I needed to find Katie.

  I wasn’t sure if she was here. I hoped she was here. I hoped there was only one of these scenes, these places, at a time. If she was in fact somewhere else where some other person was getting murdered, we might never find each other. I had to hope that Katie, me, hell, even the girl with the dark hair in her face were all getting moved to the same place, just spread out all over. I was just the lucky one who found the bodies. I had found the body here, so I guess I had done my part and this play could move forward. Unless there were multiple bodies. Wouldn’t that be frightening?

  I shouted for Katie again, still jogging around the park. I laughed to myself the irony of me jogging in a nice suit looking for Katie when some would jog here in their exercise clothes, maybe looking to hookup with some attractive member of the opposite sex who was also running. I would hope their lustful looks and initial chatting would not be interrupted by falling over a body. This place might be full of them. The trees were alive with the mounds of corpses.

  Panting, I stopped and caught my breath. Would I find her in time? The blood was pounding in my ears so I couldn’t hear the monster,
whether it was far or near. I wished these damn people around me would react. That would tell me something. How unimpressive would Godzilla be if people weren’t running from him?

  Gathering my breath, I called for Katie again. It was a horrible shout, my voice hoarse and cracking partway through. I would be surprised if anyone near me heard what I was even saying, much less it carrying across the park. I leaned forward with my palms on my knees, breathing slowly. Strangely enough, that hoarse scream was the one that provoked a response.

  “John?” I heard the voice calling from not far away, distinctly feminine, distinctly familiar.

  “Katie?” I yelled, immediately running in that direction with new energy. I ran for a bit before faltering and losing the basic direction I should go. “Katie?”

  “John!” I heard from close to me. I swung around and saw Katie. The real Katie, looking just as I had left her. She leaped into my arms, hugging me tight and leaving the ground. “It’s so good to see you!” She held me for a long moment where she gripped me tight and I was confused. It felt good having her against me and something rushed through me. But I was still confused by the sudden closeness and affection. Then her body tensed and she stepped back, standing awkwardly before me and not making eye contact.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah…” she said, still staring at the ground, a confused look on her face. Then her face brightened a little. “John, I found the doctor!” she said, gesturing behind her.

  Behind her was Doctor Merill, looking a little more ragged, but the same ruddy round face I had left in the bathroom. His suit was torn and I noticed blood on his pant legs. He stretched out his hand to me, saying, “Hello again, Detect-“

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence because I punched him in the face, causing him to crumple to the ground.

  I’ll admit it, it felt good.

  Katie immediately ran between me and Merill’s prone body, putting her hands in front of her to wave me off. “No! He’s okay! He’s not dangerous!”