“Roger Fulright, I am President Darelle, leader of the Obawok, and you have been brought here because of your refusal to choose an appropriate path. In three days you will be sent out to take the Mezoglike. Do you have any further questions?”
“What happens when I complete the test?”
The President’s face lit up with a smile that made Roger’s stomach turn, and the room, which had been too cold only moments before, was now the temperature of molten lava. Beads of perspiration immediately collected at the small of his back and across his brow, and he wondered if this was what the other guy felt as he stood here in front of this odd tribunal.
An image of a man strapped to a metal table surrounded by a bright blue light and hooked into a giant metal machine popped into his mind. A putrid mixture of decaying meat assaulted his senses when he breathed in through his nose and mingled with the vision.
Roger reminded himself that it was only his imagination, but even this belief shattered when he looked up at the President’s smirking face. A thin wafer of cigarette like smoke was coming form the President’s mouth and reaching for him. Panic rose in him like bile as the smoke lengthened its stride and he frantically searched the room, but none of the others seemed to notice anything.
When the smoke’s fingers caressed his skin, he cringed and bit down on his tongue to keep from crying out. The tendrils coated his skin with a mixture of decay and tension.
Blood filled his mouth and his throat cinched together. Just as Roger thought his lungs would implode, the President leaned back, and reality snapped around Roger. The smoke dissipated from the air, the vision of the man receded, and molten air escaped Roger’s lungs as he remembered to breath.
When he looked at the councilmen, he saw a dark, circular form now hovered in front of many of their faces, turning them into featureless puddles.
Not real…not real…not real…ran through his head like a child’s litany against the boogeyman, and Roger turned to Firturro and the other watchers and was again shocked. Unlike the councilmen’s puddles, most of their faces shone with a simple brilliance that made him think of cherubs.
Roger shook his head, turned back to the councilmen, and noticed that some of their faces were also slightly glowing. When he looked back at the watchers, he noticed that some of them also had the dirty, hovering blotches consuming their faces. Tigaffo was one of the few watchers now consumed by the greasy blob, the features on his face almost indistinguishable under the dirty haze.
Roger looked to Firturro and just barely caught the slight nod of his head.
A child’s reality is all that matters.
The phrase echoed through his head, but its meaning was still elusive. If this was really happening then he didn’t want to think of the horrific possibilities that a child’s reality might entail.
Then, as he was looking at the councilmen’s faces, the dirty haze broke into fragments of dust and fell to the floor, dissipating in much in the same manner as the smoke.
“If you make it to the end of the test, you will be rewarded with any life that you choose. It will be based on your ideal version of life. But most importantly, once you choose, there is no going back. You will be forced to remain in that life until you die. So says the words of the ancients,” the President said.
“So says the truth.”
The sudden chorus startled Roger. The voices rose and fell in perfect unison like the obligatory ”AMEN” one heard at the end of a Southern Baptist sermon. Each Obawok now raised their hands, palms forward in some kind of gesture. For a few seconds the air felt alive with electricity as piercing as shards of glass.
Firturro stood on Roger’s right hand side, but he hadn’t bothered to open his mouth or raise his hands. The President had also noticed and openly glared at Firturro before turning back to Roger.
“Do you have any other inquiries?” the President asked.
“No.”
“None? Are you sure? This will be your only chance to directly address the council.”
Roger saw that his refusal to ask any more questions, especially those the President could use as an example against humanity, had obviously depleted his enjoyment.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Roger answered.
“Okay, just remember you chose this.” The President looked at Firturro again. Roger noticed this time the blatant hostility from earlier was better masked, but it was still very much present.
“Firturro and Tigaffo will now lead the human back to his cell. The test will begin in exactly three days to the hour,” the President said before clucking his tongue and dismissing them.
“It has been declared!”
Firturro gently placed his hand on Roger’s back to lead him from the room. Tigaffo stood just behind them, and Roger could feel Tigaffo’s hateful eyes boring into the back of his skull.
Roger didn’t want to think about how he knew this without looking, didn’t want to think about the images that had plagued him a few moments before, but he knew something was happening. These weren’t merely nervous hallucinations.
A farfetched possibility began to inch its way into his mind. ESP was a bunch of new age hoopla, but what was happening to him now lacked for any other explanation. He’d begun to wonder about supernatural occurrences during the trial, but had kept the strange idea at bay. Now he was beginning to think differently.
The big question, apart from Is this really happening? was whether or not the President knew about these visions. If he was indeed experiencing some kind of precognitive abilities, then the key to his survival lay in keeping them a secret. The President would no doubt be keeping an eye on Roger, and Tigaffo would most likely be his watchdog.
These details were so vivid because he could sense them: the lingering, horrid stench that had been emanating from the President; the small brown patches of decay on most of the councilmen; the dirty halo-like appearance surrounding Tigaffo; and the warm, rich glow emanating from Firturro were all signs. Hazy and unclear signs, but signs all the same. He just hoped that he was interpreting them correctly.
That night Roger stayed awake, pacing the floor for hours. The disturbing events at the trial made him wonder if he had reached his breaking point. If not for the fact that these hallucinations had started after he’d been pulled through a mirror, tossed through a black hole, bitten by a yellow gnome, and introduced to small green trolls, he would’ve thought he’d gone insane.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head over the back of the chair. The questions danced behind his eyelids, haunting him. If Obawok believed humans could possess these awesome powers, then the very basis of their beliefs and the sacredness of the ancients would be wrong. Humans wouldn’t be inadequate beings, but rather ones that had abilities even Obawok seemed to lack. He thought about it again and sighed. His brain felt like it was swelling inside his skull.
In an attempt to get some relief he made his way to the bathroom and stood in front of the tiny shower stall that was in the far corner. The light didn’t extend all the way into the back of the stall, and when he opened the door, he saw that most of the area was actually bathed in shadows, but that was probably for the best. He shuddered at the thought of muddy walls and water that was probably pumped in from some pungent underground swamp. Compared to his aching muscles and dirt-scrubbed skin, the dark uncertainties of the shower weren’t so horrible.
While the water streamed over his body he felt his muscles relax, and he found himself reluctant to leave. There weren’t any towels, so he dried off with the sweat suit shirt and hung it up over the shower stall to dry before slipping into the pants. The light switch for all of the electric-powered lamps was on the outside of the door, and the guards clicked them off as he emerged from the bathroom, reminding him again of how much they considered him either a prisoner or a child. Or maybe both.
Sighing, he shuffled across the dirt floor in the dark to the bed. He lay there for a long time with his hands behind his head staring up into the darkness, rememb
ering his mother and wondering what she would say about this situation. She always found the humor in everything; even when she’d been so weak that she could hardly move, she’d never lost her sense of humor.
He smiled as he thought of her and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Firturro met with Omiralle that night at his apartment. It was not uncommon for watchers whose humans were about to undergo the Mezoglike to discuss their participants. This meeting, however, was different. Their hushed voices echoed across the room before falling flatly through the stale air.
“I’m positive Roger’s been experiencing the precognitive flashes. I gave him the whistle to try and reassure him, but I’m not so sure it’s working. There were a couple of times during his meeting in front of the council when I thought he was going to faint,” Firturro said as he poured another cup of Kalika.
“I thought the same about Trey, but he managed to ‘be cool,’ as he says it.”
“I wonder what they see when they have these flashes? Trisinna’s text only mentioned that the humans she observed had overpowering psychic flashes. It never mentions exactly what they see,” Omiralle admitted, referring to the text they’d literally stumbled across when rearranging books in the watchers’ library.
“I’ve often wondered the same thing, but I daren’t ask them directly for fear they will speak of it in public and admit to our knowledge of it under intense interrogation by the President. If he knew that we’d found the secret text, it would be the end of us, despite our meager protection.”
“Right now the only protection we’ve been afforded is the fact that most of the watchers have banded together, and he knows it. Without our united front, we would surely crumble.” Omiralle sighed and looked around the room as he rubbed the perspiration off his brow with the back of his thick hand. “Do you truly hold out any hope that one of our humans will be able to make it to the end?”
“Not much,” Firturro admitted, “but something’s changing, something feels different this time, and I just hope it’s something good.”
Omiralle nodded his head in silent agreement. They had started on a path they could not turn away from the moment they’d read Trisinna’s text and realized that the history they’d been given wasn’t merely wrong but a travesty to what the ancients had truly believed. Whatever came now was unavoidable.
207
Six
Conversations with the dead
Eleven years earlier…
The yellowing rose covered wallpaper mocked him with weathered strips that curled off the sheetrock, and he couldn’t remember how long he’d been in this room of death.
She had been dying for a while now; Roger just hadn’t wanted to admit it. His mother was all he had left. As far as Roger knew, the bastard he’d once called dad was out fondling the new breasts on that truck stop slut of his. Hell, the idiot had stopped by the hospital once, and the stench of whiskey was so strong Roger had practically gagged.
Now Roger sat in the living room listening to her shallow gasping and the steady hum and click-click of the machines they had her hooked into. Because it was such a small house, and he was only five feet away from her door, he couldn’t help but listen. A nurse stopped by twice a day to check the machines and make sure his mother received her daily round of injections and pills.
Snatches of memories came to him in an onslaught, floating up and mixing together like the colors in a kaleidoscope whenever he closed his eyes. He could remember them dancing around the living room to her old 45’s of The Beatles, Manfred Mann, and Jimi Hendrix. He could remember making Christmas cookies and falling asleep on the couch together waiting for Santa. But each of those memories, no matter how happy, was now tainted with the memory of her lying in the next room, waiting to die.
There was a part of him, as deep and hidden as it might have been, that just wished she would give up.
If she would just go….
An irregular click on the machine brought him from his thoughts. Roger’s head tilted toward the room. When he heard the strange sound again, he stood on unstable legs and wobbled to the bedroom door. He stood in the doorway and silently watched his
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mother. Several seconds later, she took a deep, ragged breath, and the monitors went back to the regular click-click and hum that he had grown so accustomed to hearing.
When he was reassured that she was still alive, he returned to the couch. As he walked across the room, he noticed that the TV was on. The land that spilled across the screen was covered in pale, puke-green sand, and the picture quality had the gritty and realistic look of a documentary.
The camera panned across the horizon, revealing two suns, one on each side of the screen. One was a bright orange-red fireball that lit the room up with its glare. The other looked a lot like the normal sun, except for the static-filled picture.
The picture zoomed in on what looked like a bug nestled on the ocean of sand. Roger leaned into the TV, his body drawn and crouched, like a panther waiting to pounce. He turned up the volume until the neon green bar read that it was all the way up, but he got only a sharp, loud burst of static in return.
The scene was moving at an alarming rate of speed, and the dark spot took the shape of two men. One was on his knees, his upper body hunched over as if he was trying to vomit while the other lay motionless on the ground. Just as it looked like the camera was going to run right into him, the poor creature looked up, and Roger let out an involuntary gasp when he saw his own face looking at him.
He was older, and there were lashes of thin blood leaking out of several cuts, but it was definitely him. Roger leaned in to get a closer look, but the picture went black just as the machinery in his mother’s room began to shriek.
The dark TV screen stared back at him as the reality of the alarms registered. He ran toward the urgent howl in one swift movement, every muscle in his body suddenly on fire. She looked at him with the wide, red-rimmed eyes of a prisoner as her breath escaped from her body in sharp, harsh barks. He maneuvered through the network of equipment until he reached the side of the bed.
“Just take slow, deep breaths. Remember, that’s what the doctor said to do when you felt one of these attacks coming on. Just try to focus on your breathing.”
“I can’t…It won’t matter…just, need…bow out,” She managed to croak out between each gasp.
“No, no you don’t, remember? You don’t believe in giving up, remember?” Roger said as his mind filled with panic.
This wasn’t his mother. It had to be someone else, this had to be happening to someone else, because…because she couldn’t leave him now. As he watched, her breathing became less and less harsh.
She smiled, and for a second her face was transformed from the haggard and tired face he had grown so used to seeing into the beautiful, vibrant person he remembered, and he realized that he was already missing the woman he was so afraid of loosing. She had been buried under pain and tranquilizers for so long he’d forgotten about his real mother.
“I love you.” He leaned over and whispered into her ear as he slipped his warm hand inside her cold one, her skin a paper-thin shell beneath his fingertips.
She held on for a while longer, but she didn’t talk anymore. Tears of pain and freedom streaked down her sunken cheeks.
It’s just another attack. It’s just another attack.
They sat there, his mother’s limp hand locked inside Roger’s firm one, both of them as still as stones for fifteen minutes before she went. There was no fanfare, no dramatics. She just simply stopped breathing.
Roger leaned over her lifeless form and cried. He didn’t move to shut off the shrieking machinery that heralded his mother’s passing. It no longer mattered. Their sounds blended in with his hiccupping sobs, and he liked it better that way.
The man from the strange TV show was promptly tucked away into a mental filing cabinet Roger tried desperately not to think about.
Now….
“No one can help you. Can’t you see that?”
Roger opened his eyes to a cold, harsh, unfamiliar room and immediately rolled over and put his feet on the cold floor to reassure himself that the nightmare hadn’t chased him into reality.
In the dream his mother had been barely alive and he was holding her hand, much as he had the day she’d died. As she’d lain there, emaciated to the point of terminal dehydration despite the IV’s, she’d insisted he was the doomed one.
Even though his blood pounded through his tingling palms he knew this was a dream. The muscles across his entire body were bunched together, but he’d been unable to move even one finger. The fierce grip of terror closed in around him, and panic raced through his veins like poison, each pulse roaring through his body like incoming waves on an ocean beach.
Then, in the dream, her face began to change in front of him. The sunken skin around her eyes caved in, revealing a fresh, wet mess of newly hatched maggots. He tried to scream, but the weak squeak that came from his throat was overtaken by a sound like paper being waded up and thrown into a fireplace as her skin cracked and dried across her body, turning her into a living mummy.
Roger managed to shake himself out of his stupor and yanked his hand away, taking some of her skin with him. When he tried to run, he found that his legs still weren’t responding, and when he tried to shut his eyes hot needles forced themselves in, making him turn back to her. His muscles were so taunt he could feel them straining against his skin, jumping like a horde of fleas.
He watched in mounting horror as her fingers reached out to him. He didn’t want her to touch him, to mark him.
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