The Mind is a Razorblade

by Max Booth III

  “Holy shit,” the Rev says, looking at the shotgun, then back at the headless goon. “That was gross.”

  I manage to stand back up. “Thanks, man,” I say. “You just saved my life.”

  “Like it’s the first time,” the Rev says. His face is pale and sick as he stares at the gore decorating the kitchen. “You can repay the favor by making sure nobody ever shoots me. That seems like it would really hurt.”

  A gun goes off behind us, and the Rev shouts, “Shit! Someone shot me!” Then he collapses.

  I don’t think. I just react.

  My vision narrows in on the goon shooting at me. The bullets disintegrate to ash before they reach their destination. The guy’s eyes widen in horror as an invisible gust of wind punches him in the chest and sends him flying against the wall. The sound of his back snapping in half is loud and permanent.

  For a moment, my chest is an inferno. Flecks of my heart fall apart. I take a deep breath, focusing on putting myself back together. A moment later, I’m able to breathe without it hurting again.

  I look down at the Rev. He’s lying there, crying. Molly and Jed slowly enter the kitchen, guns aimed and ready to blow somebody away. A little too late, though.

  “Oh my God,” Molly gasps. “Rev got shot!”

  “He’s fine,” I say. “It’s only his ass. He’ll live.”

  “No I won’t!” the Rev cries. “My arse! My beautiful arrrssse!”

  “Oh, shut up,” I say. “Hey, did you see what I did?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I did it. The telekinesis.”

  “You didn’t do shit,” the Rev says, using the edge of the sink to pull himself to his feet.

  “Stop bickering, we gotta go,” Jed says. “Who knows how many of these bastards are left.”

  “Hey, wait,” Molly says, staring at the floor. “Where’s Lamb?”

  She’s right. He’s gone. Shit.

  “He can’t be too far,” I tell her. “Dude has to be bleeding out. You stabbed him pretty good.”

  “Just keep your eyes peeled,” Jed says, leading us through the kitchen. The cabinets have all fallen to the floor and shattered, either from the goons searching the place or from the grenade. We go through the backdoor one at a time, slowly, expecting to find a thousand more gunmen outside waiting for us.

  We don’t find any gunmen, but we don’t find nothing, either.

  The night is no longer so dark. Up ahead, between us and the toolshed, a cloud of white floats. No, not a cloud. Just three creatures, three pale mysterious beings.

  “What the fuck is that?” the Rev asks, gripping his shotgun tighter.

  “Harvies,” I say.

  “They’re beautiful,” Molly says.

  I look at her and raise my eyebrow. “Beautiful?”

  She nods. “Yeah. Beautiful.”

  “I’ve never been so close to one before,” Jed says. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I guess we should shoot them.” The Rev raises the shotgun, but before he can pull the trigger, he’s knocked off his feet and thrown across the yard.

  “Shit,” Jed says, and raises his own weapon. His arm freezes halfway up, and his body goes still. We all go still. I try to move, but I’m locked in place. The harvies stare at us and slowly glide closer. Underneath their surgical masks, I know they’re smiling. No, smiling isn’t the right word. Snarling, maybe.

  The three harvies surround Jed, leaning over him, breathing him in. Molly and I are trapped, helpless. From my peripheral vision, I watch them circle around Jed. He grunts and moans.

  “Ah, damn,” Jed says, and howls in agony.

  “Stop!” I scream, but the rest of my body refuses to move.

  The sound of bones shattering silences his screaming, and Jed collapses, broken from their death gaze and free to decompose in peace. And I know, without even having to look, that they’ve cracked his sternum. Not only that, but they’ve pulled his goddamn heart out.

  This is what they’re going to do to all of us, I realize. One by one, they’ll take our hearts and deliver them to Indigo.

  With Jed out of the picture, the three harvies move to the next person in line: Molly. She whimpers as they sniff in her scents. Any moment they’ll rip out her fucking heart. She knows it, I know it, they know it.

  But fuck that.

  And fuck them.

  This time, when I try to move, I don’t just try. I do. I turn my head to the side, forcing my body through a strong, phantom current of wind. At first, they don’t notice that I’ve broken their spell, but they start to pay attention when their pale, milky white skin begins flaking off their faces. They release their grip on Molly and turn toward me, making a disgusting hissing sound through their surgical masks. I feel my heart chipping away, piece by piece, but I fight through it and concentrate every ounce of energy on ripping these harvies a new asshole.

  I refuse to blink. Blinking means defeat. I stare, wide-eyed, mouth in mid-scream, sending enough power to fuel a tsunami into their rotting, spider-infested minds. I don’t know how long we stay like this. It feels like days, but realistically, probably just a few seconds.

  The harvies howl something wicked and their bodies explode simultaneously, leaving behind a cluster of tiny black spiders. They scurry away in the grass, toward the forest, in search of new hosts to consume. The world spins and I feel my eyeballs rolling into my skull, and I’m falling to the ground, my body weight greater than the density of a dying sun.

  When I reawaken, Molly’s on top of me, crying and begging me not to be dead. I start coughing, and my chest is still spinning, trying to stitch itself back together. I hadn’t passed out. No. I think I literally died for a few minutes there. But whatever’s inside of me, it’s not giving up that easily. Even when I’m dead, it’ll still fight.

  The bullet Lamb put through my heart is going to affect me for the rest of my life. Every time I try to use my telekinesis on something else, then that means I’ll no longer be focusing my energy on keeping my heart in one piece. So, basically, if I’m going to use these mind powers, it better be fucking worth it.

  “Are you okay?” Molly asks.

  “No,” I tell her. “But that doesn’t matter.”

  I force myself to sit up, then climb to my feet. Everything is still spinning and I feel like I’m one violent cough away from ripping my chest in half. But Molly’s next to me, grasping my hand, telling me how much she loves me and how she thought I was dead. I hold off on telling her I was dead. I don’t think she’d be able handle it. Shit, I can’t even handle it.

  I refuse to look down at Jed, because I know if I do, I’ll see what the inside of his chest looks like, and I just can’t handle the image. I save the memories of before the ambush and throw away everything else. Jed saved us. He gave us shelter, food, hope. He was going to deliver us to safety. He died helping us. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.

  “Oy!” the Rev shouts from behind us. “Look who I found!”

  We turn around. The Rev’s stumbling toward us, dragging Lamb by his feet through the grass. His body squirms as he attempts to break free, but he’s too weak to really do anything. The steak knife still sticks out of his back. When the Rev stops next to us, he bends down and pulls the knife out, and Lamb screams.

  “You’re all a bunch of bitches!” Lamb shouts. “Every last one of you! Bitches!”

  “How are you even still talking?” I ask. “I thought I shot your jaw off.”

  “Not all of it, motherfucker.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, then,” I say. “I guess I don’t have the best aim.”

  “What do you think we should do with him, Bobby?” the Rev asks. He holds up the steak knife, indicating for me to stab him a few more times.

  “Just shoot the fucker and let’s get out of here,” Molly says. “We have to find Ezzy.”

  “Which is exactly why we need him alive,” I say. “We’re going to use him.”

  “How?” Molly ask
s.

  “We’re going to trade him to the Refragatio in exchange for leading us to Indigo’s casino.”

  “Do you think they’d want him?”

  I stare down at him and think about boiling pots of water. “Yeah,” I say, “they’ll want him.”

  Molly touches my cheek and looks deep into my eyes. She’s crying, and so am I.

  “Is Ezzy going to be okay?” she asks.

  And I know she doesn’t want this kind of answer, but it’s the only answer I can give her:

  “I don’t know.”

  3.

  “Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

  “You forget some things, dont you?

  “Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

  - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

  chapter twenty

  One by one, we crawl under the toolshed and climb down a long ladder leading into the tunnels. Before I follow the rest of them, I push Lamb down and smile at the sound of him briefly screaming, then landing roughly below. The odor makes us gag: it’s a combination of shit and vomit and then more shit. I get the feeling that if there was actually any lighting down here, we’d see many rotting animal carcasses.

  “Stand up,” I tell Lamb.

  “Suck my balls.”

  I shove the machine gun in his face, and he decides to stand up after all. I grip his dreadlocks and push him forward, the muzzle of the machine gun nestling comfortably against his spine. If I let go of him for even a second, I’ll easily lose him in the darkness.

  “I don’t suppose anybody thought to bring a flashlight,” Molly says.

  I sigh. “Let’s just move forward. Molly, keep your hand on my back, and Rev, keep your hand on Molly.”

  “With pleasure,” the Rev says.

  “I can easily shoot your other ass cheek. Don’t forget that.”

  “Point taken.”

  “What’s the plan, then?” Molly asks. “Just keep walking until something happens?”

  “Bingo,” I say.

  “We’re all going to die in these tunnels,” Lamb says. “The only shit we’ll find down here is our own nonexistence.”

  We push onward into total darkness. Once in a while we walk into a wall and take it as a sign to turn left or right. Anything could be here in the tunnels with us, slithering along the floors and ceilings, preparing to attack. But nothing tries to eat us, so we continue. Lamb attempts to talk more, but shuts up once I tap his knife wound with the machine gun.

  “Man, we’re not gonna find this place,” the Rev says. “We don’t even know what place we’re looking for. We’re fucked.”

  “We don’t have any other choice,” I say.

  “I’m sick of walking. My arse is killing me. Shit, it might literally be killing me. What if I’m bleeding to death? Ah shit, I don’t want to die from being shot in me arse.”

  “You’ll live.”

  “Easy for you to say. You have the anti-bullet powers. What do I got?”

  “My friendship,” I say.

  “Just admit that we’re screwed. Jed said that even he had trouble finding their hideout, and he’d been there before. What does that mean for us?”

  “It means we keep moving.”

  “This is bullshit, man,” the Rev says. “It’s not like we’re just gonna suddenly stumble across it. Something like this is top secret, yeah? It’s not gonna be as simple as turning another corner and walking right into it.”

  We turn another corner and walk right into it.

  “Oh,” the Rev says. “Well, never mind then.”

  The tunnel’s wall breaks off into an expansive opening, where hundreds of candles are on display. The candles devour the darkness and reveals all the faces of its inhabitants. People who don’t really seem to give a shit about us one way or another, as they’re used to strangers just passing by. Or maybe they’re used to these specific strangers—specifically, me. They sit on couches, playing ping pong, sleeping on mattresses, reading books. They are all naked.

  Their heads turn toward us as we approach.

  We stop, frozen. A part of me anticipates a bullet to the head. We don’t know these people. We’re strangers in their eyes, and we just walked into their home.

  I slowly wave at them and say, “Uh, hi.”

  “Yo!” the Rev says.

  “Fuck,” Lamb says.

  Some of them nod, a few grunt, then return to what they were doing.

  A man with a rather grotesque dong approaches the end of the station and indicates for us to not come any closer. He waves a machete in front of him. “The fuck are you?”

  “Well,” I say, nodding at my hostage, “this is Lamb, and I have a feeling you two might have a lot to talk about.”

  The man gasps at the name. “Lamb?”

  I nod again. “Yup.”

  The man looks at his machete, then at Lamb, then back to his machete. He smiles.

  “Fuck,” Lamb says.

  The man gestures at the rest of us. “And who are you?”

  “I’m Bobby, this is Molly, and this is...uh, the Rev, I guess.”

  The Rev bows, then says, “Is this like a nudist camp or something? Because this is awesome.”

  “I apologize for anything he says,” Molly says. “He’s actually been shot, and we were hoping you might be able to help patch him up.”

  The man nods. “Of course, ma’am. Right this way. By the way, my name is Samuel.”

  He leads us through the hideout and motions for the Rev to lay down on a dirty, bloodstained mattress. He snaps his fingers at a man sitting on a sofa, reading a magazine about motorcycles called Vroom! Vroom!. “Sly!” he shouts. “This man needs help, he’s been shot.” He turns to the Rev. “Where were you shot?”

  “My arse.”

  “Gross.” He turns back to the man. “He’s been shot in the ass. Take care of him.”

  The man nods and gets up, grabs a first aid kit from the wall and attends to the Rev.

  “Finally,” he says. “I’m only bleeding to death here.”

  “You guys go ahead and have a seat. I’ll go find Mercedes. She’ll want to meet you.” He looks at Lamb and smiles. “Especially you.”

  “I can’t wait,” Lamb says.

  We all sit down on these foldable chairs that smell like trash, but are at least somewhat comfortable. I guide Lamb to sit down on the floor beside me, and I keep the machine gun pressed against the back of his skull.

  “You know, this ain’t gonna end well for any of us,” Lamb says. “I might die right now, and that’s okay. But you? Boy, you are gonna suffer a fate worse than anybody. Conundrae is gonna personally shit in your mouth, son. You ready for that?”

  “Hmm,” I say. “I suppose so.”

  Samuel rounds up some food and water for all of us and says Mercedes is on her way. I don’t pretend to understand what is in the bowls he hands us: it’s some kind of thick liquid, almost like oatmeal. It smells horrible, but tastes pretty okay. We eat it like we haven’t eaten in ages. Once in a while the Rev curses the man fixing his wounds.

  “Quit being a pussy,” Molly says.

  “You try getting shot in the arse!”

  “I know I’d at least have some balls about it,” she says. “Jesus.”

  The Rev chooses to not say anything else and closes his eyes, wincing at the medicine the man pours over his opened wound.

  Samuel returns with a naked woman at his side. The woman, who I take to be named Mercedes, stares at me like we know each other. Then she looks at Lamb and laughs.

  “You always said one day you’d bring Lamb down here. And now you have. Color me impressed.”

  Molly turns toward me. “Do you, uh, know this woman?”

  “I...I don’t know.

  Mercedes shakes her head slowly. “It must be terrifying, losing your memory. I can’t even imagine.”

  “I’m making do,
” I tell her.

  “Tell me,” she says. “What do you remember?”

  “I don’t remember you, that’s for sure,” I say, trying not to stare at her breasts and failing. Molly notices and elbows me in the side.

  Mercedes laughs, then looks down at Lamb again. “What, oh what, are we going to do with you?”

  “I guess you could suck my cock?” he suggests, and Mercedes laughs for a good couple seconds before lifting up her foot and driving it into his face. He falls down on his back, either unconscious or dead. Blood streams out of his face, as if she kicked his nose into his brain.

  “Well, now that he’s out of the way, we can really talk,” she says. “Tell me, where’s that beautiful daughter of yours?”

  “They took her,” I whisper, trying to ignore Molly’s sudden sobbing. “That’s why we came here. We need your help. We have to get her back.”

  “From where? The casino?”

  “Where else would she be?” I ask. “She’d have to be at the casino, right? Can’t you take me there? Surely there’s a path in the tunnels. There has to be.”

  Mercedes nods. “Yeah, there’s a path. If your memory wasn’t so wonky, you’d remember taking it.”

  “Well, that’s the point: I don’t remember, but you do.”

  “And do you know who I am?” she asks.

  “Someone named Mercedes. You’re connected with the Refragatio. According to Jed, you can help us. You’re the only people who can help us.”

  “You’ve talked to Jed? Where is he?”

  I don’t respond, I just stare at her, unable to say what needs to be said. But it’s enough. She lowers her head. “Goddamn them. Goddamn them all.”

  A moment passes, and she clears her throat. “All right, there’s nothing we can do about Jed now. But there’s a chance we can still save your baby. So let’s focus on her instead.”

  “Thank you,” Molly says.

  I reach over and hold Molly’s hand. She squeezes it back.

  Lamb begins stirring back away and Mercedes stomps his face again. She sits down at the table with us, thinking for a moment, then says, “Look, there’s this grate in the casino’s laundry room. It leads into the sewers, which lead to these tunnels. It’s the way you’ve traveled from here to there and there to here in the past.”