Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “That’s still low,” Augustus said, and leaned down to finish the last of his drink with a slurp that rattled the ice. “That’s a caterpillar with his legs cut off low.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said and slid the drink back from my fingers. I hadn’t shared a civil moment with my sister in months. She’d been isolated, alone. If she wasn’t an unfeeling monster, I’d been incredibly unfair to her, possibly driven her even deeper into her harsh shell. “Maybe I’ve been wrong about her all along.”

  “Damned right,” he said and stood up as I lay cash on the bar to cover our tab. “Because I guarantee you, wherever she is, she ain’t doing that shit to you.”

  20.

  Sienna

  “My brother is such an asshole,” I said as Brant nodded, taking it all in. “Such. An. Asshole. Let me tell you …”

  21.

  Benjamin

  The day dawned glorious blue, the sky adorned with white, fluffy clouds that rolled slowly across the cerulean backdrop at a slow, steady clip. Benjamin could see them from out of his window as he awoke in his car, sleeping on the top floor of a parking garage, just one level below the roof. He’d chosen it because it was a medical device firm that had a big enough workforce to justify a full parking structure, but not enough of one to justify a night watchman. He’d driven by this place countless times, enough to know it was dead as a doornail at night.

  Benjamin took a deep breath as he opened his eyes. The world of yesterday seemed very, very far away, so far away he was sure none of it had even really happened. His life was one of steady, boring predictability, after all, of routine and sequence, of work and home, of organized, tireless patterns that made him an effective employee and son.

  Benjamin took another breath, then another. The air felt different. His window was cracked, letting a little morning chill seep in. It was invigorating. His back didn’t even protest at the night spent in the car, and he felt … good. Everything that had happened had clearly been a bad dream brought on by allergies and travel exhaustion. He’d just walked out of the airport overwhelmed by pet dander, clearly. The hours and hours of tears, of sneezing, had conspired to make him sickly. Perhaps he’d even picked up a fever along the way, sending him into a delirium. That had happened once before, a fever so high he’d needed to be admitted to the emergency room. He remembered the feeling of it, that sweating, sickly sensation that reality was operating at a heightened and unreal state.

  Yes, he decided, that was what had happened. He’d been lucky to make it here. And so close to work, too. His office was just down the road, after all.

  Benjamin took another pleasant breath and stepped out of the car. He walked to his trunk and popped it open, finding exactly what he expected—his suitcase—waiting for him.

  It was going to be a much better day, he thought as he selected the first of his alternate changes of clothes from the top of the suitcase. Everything was neatly folded and put away carefully, strapped in so that even rough handling by baggage attendants couldn’t have dislodged it easily. The TSA had made a mess of his suitcase once.

  Benjamin saw a brief flash of red as he thought about that time, about finding the paper notice as he opened his suitcase to find everything shifted and pushed aside, his neatly folded clothes replete with lines and mess, the perfect creases lost to some ill-mannered lout’s fumbling fingers—

  Benjamin took another gulp of fresh air and latched on to the blue sky in the distance as he nodded while serenity returned. He picked up his dress shirt, his pants, his spare pair of shoes, his belt and socks, and zippered the suitcase shut behind him. Yes, today would be a better day. The air was clear and fresh, with none of that smoky scent he’d dreamed about during the night.

  He almost started to whistle as he got back into his car to change for his day.

  22.

  Sienna

  Blinking the sleep out of my bleary eyes, I awoke to the sound of gentle tapping. I stirred under a mountain of blankets, a sense of cotton stuffed in my mouth. I flicked my tongue around and realized that there actually wasn’t any real cotton, but my mouth felt like it was dry as a dusty desert gulch, and my head felt like it had been repeatedly punched from the inside by an Atlas-type as he grew to explode from my skull. It gave me a moment’s pause, wondering if maybe there had been some sort of truth to that old myth about Zeus’s kids springing forth out of his skull. Then I remembered that he had lived to be a massive dick later on, so probably not.

  That tapping came again and I lifted my hammering head to find myself in bed, at my cabin. The noise was coming from the door, light streaming in from the half-dozen windows around the cabin. I threw off my blankets and felt the morning air nip at my skin. It didn’t do much for my headache unfortunately, and I drew the covers back around me as I fought my way out of bed and staggered to the door. I unlocked it and tore it open as I clutched the blankets around myself before realizing that I was still wearing my clothes from last night. “What?” I asked with more than a little irritation as I pulled the door out of the way. “Holy shit,” I said as I took in the sight before me.

  “I know,” Brant said, deadpan as he stood on my doorstep, a small wax-paper bag in one hand, steaming cups of coffee borne in one of those recycled cardboard trays in the other, “I’m stunning in the morning, aren’t I?”

  “Not you, dumbass,” I said, stepping past him and dropping my blankets on the linoleum entry as I walked outside. Snowflakes drifted around me, framed by an orange sun forcing its way through thick clouds.

  “I bring you coffee and pastries to ease the passage of your hangover,” he said, letting that slight accent peek through again, “and I get called a dumbass. Bartenders are so unappreciated.”

  “It’s snowing,” I lamented, standing beside him, looking up at the unyielding sky with a certain level of annoyance that registered below that which resulted when someone punched me in the face but above when a reporter said something nasty about me. “In September.”

  “That does happen here sometimes,” Brant said, taking it all in with a steady nod. “But I have coffee and pastry in my attempt to appease the angry goddess, so maybe it’ll all turn out all right?”

  “Goddess?” I caught the humor in his look. “Well, that’s a start. I knew I liked you for a reason. Come right on in.” I stepped back inside and gestured toward the small table just to the left of the entry, a plain wooden thing that seated two. “Come, let us break bread together here in my meadhall or whatever.”

  Brant cackled. “And then, later, maybe we’ll tackle this Grendel problem that has the whole town in an uproar.”

  “What did you bring for pastry?” I asked, suddenly ravenous in spite of the pounding head and dry mouth. “Donuts? Long Johns?”

  “It’s a kind of Romanian sweet bread, actually,” Brant said. “Bakery here on the island does it.” I was too hungover to hide my disappointment, but he took it in stride. “Trust me,” he said. “Take a bite, you won’t regret it.”

  “Does it have copious amounts of sugar and carbohydrates?” I asked, tearing off a little bit of it. It reminded me of one of those grocery-store pastries that came in a baker’s pan and was suitable for probably five or six servings. Unless I got ahold of it, in which case it’d maybe last ten minutes. “Because those are the key ingredients for buying my love, and any food that doesn’t have them automatically loses points in my estimation.”

  “I can guarantee the presence of both those things,” Brant said, watching me take a bite. He revealed his nervousness as I chewed. “Verdict?”

  “Guilty,” I said, “and I sentence this pastry to be devoured whole, immediately.” I tore off another strip and crammed it into my mouth, waiting until I got it down before taking a drink of the coffee, which was perfectly sweet and heavily creamy, just the way I like it. “You are a good bartender.”

  Brant bowed with a flourish. “I do try. And I had feeling you’d be in dire straits since I did have to bring you home in quite
the state last night.”

  I looked around the cabin. “I notice you use the phrase ‘home’ somewhat loosely.”

  “Home is where you hang whatever you’ve got,” he said, and then looked to the coat rack, where hung … nothing. “Uhhm … well. I guess it’s not really your home, obviously.”

  “It’s not bad, though,” I said, shoving my last bite of the Romanian whatever into my mouth. I chewed slowly and when I finished swallowing, I studied Brant a little closer. “So, are you the lonely type looking for a friend, or were you just extremely bored this morning?”

  “You probably didn’t hear,” Brant said a little glumly, “but they shut down the ferry due to the weather. So my business is going to be somewhat … spare this morning. Not that it would have been overflowing with busy-ness anyway. More like a placid-ness, I suppose, during the week …”

  “No local customers?” I asked, sticking my fingers in the blinds next to my head and pulling them open enough to confirm that yes, it was still snowing, albeit gently.

  “Not many people in this tourist town are going to get out today if there aren’t any tourists,” Brant said. “Sarah and Jake might be the exceptions, but everyone else will probably shut the doors and hunker down ’til the storm passes. They’re predicting high winds and blizzard-like conditions, which, as I’m sure you know, is a real party-starter for most people. Just makes them want to get out and have a picnic.”

  “Ugh,” I said, tipping up the coffee and letting it wash down my throat.

  “What?” Brant sounded a little disappointed at my reaction. “I thought you were staying with us for a couple weeks anyway.”

  “I was planning to,” I said, letting the coffee cup radiate its heat into my hand, “but with this telepath thing going on, I don’t like to be confined. Freedom of movement is always a nice thing to have. Otherwise I start to feel trapped.”

  “You could always just fly off now, right?” Brant asked. “What with your powers being back?”

  I blinked. I hadn’t even thought of that. I reached down deep inside and whispered, Gavrikov?

  I waited a moment. The seconds passed, and no answer came.

  I was still without powers.

  23.

  “Sonofabitch,” I whispered.

  “So, that’s a no, then?” Brant asked, watching me nervously.

  I still had the remnants of the Romanian sweetbread mingled with coffee on my tongue, and the sound of my own blood rushing in my ears was heavy and pounding. I cleared my throat, mostly out of annoyance, as I answered. “It’s a no.”

  “That because of that drug you took or—”

  “The telepath might be restraining my power,” I said, trying to think this through. I was stuck on this island while this bastard messed with my mind, but I didn’t have to like it and I certainly didn’t have to take it lying down. I fumbled in my waistband for the familiar lump of my Sig Sauer P227 and exhaled when I found it right where it was supposed to be. I pulled it out as Brant’s eyes widened in front of me, and while pointing it in a safe direction ejected the magazine and confirmed there was a bullet in the chamber. I did the same for my secondary weapon, a Smith and Wesson Bodyguard .380 that I kept in an ankle holster, and then put it right back where it belonged.

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to have those on you while drinking,” Brant said nervously.

  “I don’t think it’d be smart for me to go anywhere without them,” I said, “and I suspect my drinking is over with until I’ve got this problem settled.”

  “Fair enough,” Brant said, looking like he wanted to run out the door but doing a remarkable job of resisting said urge. “I’m going to say something … a little strange right now, so bear with me.”

  I watched him carefully, waiting to see what he did next. “Go on.”

  “Come with me if you want to live,” he said and extended his hand.

  I blinked, then looked left, then right, waiting for either a camera crew to spring out of the bathroom or Arnold Schwarzenegger to come lunging out of the closet to whack him for misappropriating a classic line. “Yeah, no,” I said.

  “I don’t mean it in the, ‘Oh, come with me or you’re going to die,’ sense,” he said, still holding out of his hand, “I mean it in the sense that … I don’t think you’re really think you’re living your life.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “I’ve flown around the United States more times than I can count, traveled internationally to all sorts of different countries—”

  “Is that living?” he asked slyly and offered his hand again.

  “Some would say so,” I said carefully, staring at the proffered hand.

  “Would you say so?”

  I blinked and felt the twitch of my fingers. “I’ve kind of got a lot going on at the moment.”

  “Yes, indeed, what with your racking of guns and preparations to hunt ne’er-do-wells and whatnot,” he said. “But if you might spare … just a little bit of time before you set out on your quest for justice, I think it would be a good idea.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Because I think it’d be a good idea to find whoever is messing with my head and expose the interior of their skull to the snow so we can measure the depth of the fall, don’t you?”

  “We’ve got the weather service for that. And they do a bang-up job, really.” He paused, cringing. “Other than not being able to tell us this mess was coming before it hit.”

  “I always go after the threat first,” I said and started to move past him.

  “You do seem like a job-first kind of person,” he agreed. “But tell me honestly … how’s that working out for you?”

  “Just fine,” I said tautly as I stepped out the door. The snowflakes were falling a little more rapidly now, and they’d accumulated in very small patches on the already sodden ground. I stepped into a small dusting of white and heard it crunch underfoot. Brant followed me, and I whirled around as he came out and shut the door. “I’m doing important work, you know? It’s very taxing, and it requires a lot of time and focus.”

  “No doubt,” he said, standing there on the doorstep to my cabin, looking around at the sky, which was darkening by the moment. “Do you have any friends?”

  That one hit me like a bowling ball tossed by a meta. “I have a dog,” I said quickly. “That’s like woman’s best friend, next to my Sig Sauer.”

  “Huh,” he said, not taking his eyes off of me. “You’re lonely.”

  “I’m busy,” I said and started to pace away. I walked around the back of the cabin, not really sure where I was going. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a clue, couldn’t really run from what had happened here, and didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t even have anyone I could really call, other than Augustus, and I didn’t know if it was even time to press a panic button. What had happened so far, really? Voices in my head, that was what—of the unfamiliar variety. And of course, the absence of the voices of the familiar variety. That last part could have been explained away by me taking too big a dose of chloridamide, really.

  I came around the back of the cabin and caught sight of the vista spread out before me. It was Lake Superior in all its glory, with the haze of the falling snow coming down on the surprisingly peaceful waters. “Wow,” I said, not really intending to give that thought voice.

  “Not bad, eh?” Brant asked, catching up to me.

  “Not bad,” I agreed, stopped in my tracks. The ground sloped gently down about a hundred feet to kiss the waters of the lake, which was lapping at the rocks at its edge the way my dog licked at me. Green grass was mixed with white snow in a strange patchwork, and I stared at it as I took a breath. “I am lonely,” I said, watching my breath frost in front of me.

  “This important work you’re doing,” Brant said, taking it all in, the silent sentinel watching the world’s quietest moment unfold beside me, “maybe … you don’t have to do it? Maybe … the cost to you is getting too high?” He looked over at me, but I didn�
��t meet his gaze. “Maybe you don’t belong there anymore?

  “Maybe,” I said, looking out at the grey ceiling that hung over the world as the snows gently fell, pouring white out on everything. “Or maybe I don’t belong anywhere.”

  24.

  Benjamin

  Benjamin walked through the door with a smile on his face, not a trace of nervousness to be found within him. His back was straight, his head was held high, and the lobby of his workplace seemed filled with new life. It was the same old place, of course, but he hadn’t been in here in a week due to his little trip overseas, so it all seemed so fresh and vibrant. There were planters in the giant glass lobby, soaking up the sunlit morning. People were filing through the turnstiles as they scanned their employee IDs and moved in to go about their day. Benjamin pulled his from the lanyard around his neck and scanned it, listened for the beep that signaled him to enter, watched the little screen on the entry turnstile flare a bright, verdant green and smiled at the lady behind the security desk. Her head was down and she didn’t notice him, but that was just fine.

  It was going to be a good day.

  Benjamin stepped into the elevator just before the doors closed on a full compartment, and he didn’t even mind the person humming behind him along with the music. He almost felt like humming himself.

  He listened and waited through four different dings as the elevator stopped on every floor below his. That was all right, too. “The Girl From Ipanema” was playing softly overhead, and the fluorescent lights hummed pleasantly in the background, audible in the still and quiet between floors as the pulleys outside the box did their good work.

  Benjamin took in a deep breath and sighed it out in pleasant release as the elevator dinged that last time, and the doors opened on his floor. It was abuzz with activity, people moving to and fro in the cubicle farm that spread across the floor. Executive offices were situated to his left and right, but Benjamin didn’t directly report to anyone high enough up in the company to have ever been in any of those. No, he was a cubicle man, and a very junior one at that, which was fine by him.