Refraction

by Christopher Hinz

  Loren frantically pirouetted his arms as he fell. Twenty feet down, his head slammed a rock with sickening force. A series of violent somersaults followed. He landed face up amid thickets at the bottom. It was obvious from the way Loren’s neck was twisted that he was dead.

  Henry felt faint, unable to process such madness. He wanted to sit down, wanted to eat something, wanted to ask why the world had stopped making sense. But he was too frightened to speak. His vocal cords refused to shape words.

  Greg whipped out his knife and fell into a defensive crouch. Nobe aimed his pistol between Greg’s eyes.

  “Not too smart. Drop it.”

  “Rot in hell.”

  Henry’s attention was drawn back to the figure, which was becoming increasingly translucent. In seconds it was gone.

  Greg kept his attention on Nobe, who seemed amused. Removing his backpack, Nobe tossed it and his gun on the ground behind him. He unsheathed a combat knife.

  “Like your style, mate. Let’s see what ya got.”

  Greg lunged, aiming for Nobe’s belly. But Nobe moved like a wildcat, twisting sideways and gliding effortlessly from Greg’s path.

  Henry watched in mute terror as the combatants warily circled one another. He knew he should be doing something, helping Greg somehow, maybe trying to reach Nobe’s discarded gun, maybe just running away from this insanity. But his fear was overwhelming. Muscles refused to obey.

  Nobe dodged another slash from Greg’s blade. In a blur of motion, he caught Greg’s extended forearm and wrenched his knife hand backward.

  Greg released a muffled scream. The knife slipped from his fingers. He leaned over to snatch it from the ground with his other hand. But before he could recover the weapon, Nobe grabbed him from behind in a choke hold and violently twisted.

  Greg’s eyes widened with shock as his neck snapped. His lips parted, as if trying to shape words. No sounds emerged. A shudder coursed through him. He crumpled to the dirt at the edge of the ravine.

  Nobe stuck a boot under Greg’s midsection and shoved the body down the slope. Greg rolled and tumbled to the bottom, landing a few yards away from Loren.

  Henry felt disembodied, as if he was another person, as if the horror and madness of these events were happening to someone else.

  Nobe retrieved and holstered his pistol. It was just the two of them now, alone at the edge. His captor offered an apologetic smile.

  “Sorry about this. Way it’s gotta be.”

  Henry knew he was going to die. But at that moment of recognition, some latent survival instinct took control of his frozen limbs.

  He pivoted and leaped off the edge, began running down the wall of the ravine. Surprisingly, he managed to stay on his feet for the first dozen or so strides. But then gravity and his out-of-control acceleration exceeded any capacity for remaining upright.

  He fell forward. His boot caught a rock. He tumbled down the last half of the hill with the fury of a dislodged boulder.

  He came to a bone-jarring stop against something warm and soft. A hundred pains tore through him. He knew he must be covered in bruises from head to toe. But, amazingly, no bones seemed broken.

  He staggered upright, saw that his right palm was covered in blood. The blood had come from Loren, whose body he’d plowed into. His friend had served to cushion his fall.

  Henry didn’t pause to consider his good fortune. Dashing for the trees on the other side of the ravine, he whipped his head back to the top. Nobe remained at the edge, calmly gazing down. But he hadn’t drawn his gun and was making no move to pursue.

  Why isn’t he coming after me?

  Loud crunching noises erupted from Henry’s right. It sounded like heavy footsteps on dry underbrush. He whirled. In one jarring instant he knew the answer to his question.

  Seven hundred pounds of grizzly towered over him. Somehow, Henry maintained enough presence of mind to whip the can of repellent from his belt.

  He never got the chance to depress the trigger. A four-inch claw raked his shoulder, knocking the bear spray from his grasp. He screamed as chocolate fur stinking of moldy earth enveloped him. The last thing Henry saw before the world went dark was a giant paw descending toward his face.

  TWO

  His world is green. He is its prisoner.

  Everything shimmers with verdant hues: limes and olives; mosses, hollies and teals; other green tints too obscure to merit names.

  The bars of his cell gleam emerald. They terminate overhead in a railing of jade. Above the railing, two men and a woman gaze down upon him like omnipotent gods, their faces blurred by a green haze the color of late summer grass.

  A female voice – resolute, commanding – emanates from somewhere beyond the three figures. The words seem familiar. Their meaning is cryptic.

  “Singularity beguiles, transcend the illusion.”

  Aiden Manchester snapped awake from the green dream to the wailing shrieks of a child. Rolling out of bed, he bolted into the second-floor hallway and dashed to the front of the house. Taking steps two at a time, he raced up to the third floor.

  Leah’s door was open. He rushed in, flipped on the overhead light. His seven year-old niece was awake and upright in bed, her tiny hands pasted across her chest, her elfin face twisted into a rictus of fear.

  “It’s all right, honey,” he said, peeling back a bedsheet patterned with Disney princesses to sit beside her. “Just a nightmare.”

  She wrapped Aiden in a bear hug and buried her face against his chest. He stroked her curly blond hair and whispered soothing words until her little body began to relax.

  “You’ll be OK now. It’s over.”

  She released him and turned to gaze out the dormer window. The golden light of daybreak backlit the gauze curtains. A Mickey Mouse wall clock with ridiculously large hands indicated 6:05.

  “Want to go back to sleep?” Aiden asked, stifling a yawn and hoping for an affirmative response. He’d gotten to bed late after polishing off the better part of a six-pack of Yuengling. The beer, along with a forgettable cable movie, had served to power down his consciousness. A few more hours under the covers before rebooting would be nice.

  “I want to get up,” Leah said.

  “Up it is then. I’ll go down and start breakfast.”

  “Can I have waffles?”

  “You had waffles yesterday. Sure you don’t want cereal?”

  She gave him the look, that blend of vulnerability and longing that melted away resistance. The look was so potent that it could get through to Aiden even on those occasions when he was nearly passed out drunk.

  “OK, but if you turn into a giant waffle, don’t blame me.”

  He ruffled her hair and extended his arm for their customary fist bump. Returning to his room, he slipped jeans over his boxers and trotted down the back staircase to the kitchen below.

  An unpleasant surprise awaited him. Overnight, a chunkie had manifested. The brown mass had touched down on the countertop next to the oven. Worse, it had made landfall right atop his sister’s new four-slot, Cuisinart toaster. She’d bought the appliance only last week.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  The toaster was ruined. The gelatinous glob had flowed down into the slots. Separating a chunkie from the inner mechanism would be a time-consuming task, likely requiring complete disassembly.

  And that presumed the mass remained malleable enough to attempt cleanup. Chunkies hardened fast from exposure to air. To scrape out every squishy bit, Aiden would have had to discover the manifestation within an hour or so of arrival. Considering that chunkies always made landfall while he slept, this one was probably too far gone.

  Probing with a fingernail confirmed his guess. Rock solid. Cleanup would require hammer, a chisel, and sixteen-grit sandpaper.

  His first thought was to replace the toaster before his sister got home from her night shift at the hospital. But that was less than two hours away. Nearby stores didn’t open this early. And Aiden’s sandy
hair likely would turn gray before Amazon drones offered ultra-express deliveries to small towns like Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.

  Which meant Darlene was going to bitch up a storm. His sister knew about his chunkies, of course, had come to accept the weird ability of her only sibling. But that wouldn’t stop her from reaming him a new asshole. These days she was touchy as hell, on his case about being always out of work and never far from a six-pack.

  He returned his attention to the manifestation. At inception, it would have had typical dimensions. Like all chunkies, it would have materialized in midair as a gelatinous brown sphere the size of a child’s soccer ball. Snared by gravity, it would have dropped instantly. Had the chunkie landed on a flat surface, it would have spread into a thick pancake.

  That hadn’t happened here, the toaster preventing such a perfect configuration. The bits that hadn’t fallen into the slots drooped over the sides. The impression was that the appliance had puked up its innards.

  Aiden was nearly thirty and had been manifesting chunkies in his sleep since age twelve – the onset of puberty and a scant five months before his parents’ untimely deaths in a car accident. During the short period Dad was still around, they’d set up video cameras and hooked Aiden up to an EEG monitor to try figuring out what was happening neurologically when a chunkie appeared. Dad was no doctor, but he’d confirmed that Aiden was the cause. The EEG exhibited unusual spikes when a manifestation appeared, always during Aiden’s deepest stage 4 sleep.

  But they’d never been able to figure out what those spikes meant. Even today, Aiden had no idea what chunkies were or where they came from, or why he had such a freakish ability. All they’d confirmed was that a chunkie originated no farther away from him than about ten feet in any direction.

  Fortunately, none had ever formed directly overhead and landed on him. But, having lived with Darlene on and off in various houses and apartments, they’d always made sure their bedrooms weren’t too close. When Aiden had been fired from his last job and forced to give up his apartment, Darlene insisted he take the back room over the kitchen. It was as much of a separation as her old house could handle.

  He peeled open a trash bag and eased the messy toaster into it, using moist paper towels to avoid touching the manifestation. A few bits of it might still be gooey. He’d once tried picking up a fresh chunkie and spent hours scraping the glue-like mass from his hands. The stuff adhered to flesh like Post-it notes from hell.

  He twist-tied the bag and set it by the back door. About the only good thing about chunkies was that he knew someone who would buy them. Cash was tight since that idiot supervisor at Hardware Haven fired him just for taking a quick nap behind the shipping dock.

  “Uncle Aiden, what’s that?”

  He whipped around, startled by Leah’s voice. She stood in the doorway in pink pajamas clutching her favorite stuffed animal, Grumpy Cat.

  “What’s what?” he asked, stepping in front of the bag in a futile attempt to hide it.

  “The trash doesn’t go out until Monday night and it’s only Thursday.”

  He loved Leah madly but didn’t like that she was already picking up some of her mother’s fastidious and rigid ways. What seven year-old was concerned about what day the goddamn trash was put out?

  “I’m just getting rid of some smelly stuff,” he lied.

  “Mommy uses the small white bags for the smelly stuff.”

  That’s not how Uncle Aiden does things, he wanted to retort, but held his tongue.

  Leah hopped onto her seat at the table. Her gaze went to the countertop, expecting to see her waffles about to pop. She frowned when she realized the appliance was gone.

  “Where’s the toaster?”

  “Broken. Sorry, kiddo, but no frozen waffles today. How about I mix up a batch of fresh pancakes?”

  “OK.” She brightened into a smile, for the moment forgetting about missing toasters and proper methods of trash disposal.

  He fixed breakfast. Leah poured an ungodly amount of syrup on her pancakes but he didn’t chide her the way her mother would have. Let the kid be a kid, he’d said to his sister in a similar situation last week, which had caused Darlene to go ballistic and pin him to the mats with one of her patented lectures about approved childrearing methods. He wouldn’t step into that takedown again.

  Watching Leah eat brought up a new concern. This was at least the third nightmare his niece had suffered since Aiden moved in. Darlene said they’d been happening regularly over the past year.

  He recalled having nightmares at Leah’s age. They’d ended around the time the manifestations began and seemed to have no connection to chunkies or his more benign green dreams, the latter plaguing him as far back as he could remember. Although nightmares might be typical of childhood, gooey brown messes and recurring fantasies of being in a verdant prison cell weren’t. And then there was the cryptic message from that female voice that always ended his green dreams.

  Singularity beguiles, transcend the illusion.

  He’d puzzled for years over those five words. They seemed endowed with significance at the moment of utterance. Yet the phrase regressed to caricature in the light of day, no more meaningful than a New Age bumper sticker.

  Darlene believed the words represented Aiden’s subconscious expressing his true desires.

  “It’s pretty obvious,” she’d explained in that annoying “big sister knows best” tone. “Singularity beguiles. That part means you’re too much of a loner and afraid to make a real commitment to a woman and start a family. The illusion you need to transcend is that life doesn’t have to be the cavalier way you live it.”

  As much as he resented Darlene’s armchair psychology, her analysis might not be total crap. Still, he had a hunch the words bore a deeper meaning, one that didn’t lend itself to such simple interpretation.

  His thoughts returned to Leah. Was his niece on a similar trajectory? Would her nightmares end only to be replaced by weird manifestations? Would chunkies become a curse on her as they were on him?

  Aiden needed to talk to someone about the possibility. He knew just the person, the same man willing to buy his chunkie. A trip to Washington, DC could serve as a twofer. As an added bonus, it would get Darlene off his back for a day.

  THREE

  Aiden walked Leah to the school bus stop. After seeing her aboard, he sprinted down the pavement. He was serious about his daily run and tried not to let bad weather or getting wasted the previous night interfere. Today was a pristine May morning, the sky a fierce blue, the temperature and humidity mild. Besides, he hadn’t downed enough beers to get close to a hangover.

  He passed vintage clapboard-sided homes similar to his sister’s and crossed the railroad spur that accessed a nearby quarry. The run felt good. It provided a temporary reprieve from dwelling on chunkies and green dreams, not to mention finding a new job.

  He’d been looking. But anything that paid decent wages was hard to find. Birdsboro and the surrounding region were rust-belt casualties, most good manufacturing gigs long gone. And getting axed from one-too-many crappy jobs hadn’t exactly shined up his resume.

  His lack of a college degree made any type of work higher up the food chain unlikely. He’d left college his freshman year after being berated one too many times by his roommates for leaving “gross-looking piles of shit” near his bed. A confrontation over the issue ended with Aiden punching a dorm proctor in the face, which prompted the school to “request” that he seek an education elsewhere. At the time, dropping out hadn’t seemed a big loss. He’d primarily been majoring in non-degree electives, such as beer pong, MMO gaming, and massively indiscriminate sexual couplings.

  Darlene was home when he returned. Still in her nurse’s uniform, she was marching through the kitchen, putting away groceries from two heaping cloth bags. Seven years his senior, she’d lost her youthful slimness but remained an attractive brunette. At least when she wasn’t scowling.

  She gestured to the trash bag. “My new t
oaster, huh?”

  “Sorry. I’ll buy you another one.”

  “I hope Leah didn’t see it happen?”

  “No. We’re good.”

  “We’re not good, Aiden. We’re barely OK.”

  He figured her mood wasn’t likely to improve so he went for broke. He told her about Leah’s latest nightmare and his concern that his niece might be carrying the same weird genes that afflicted Aiden.

  Darlene shook her head. “Not possible.”

  “Why not? Just because you don’t make chunkies doesn’t mean your daughter won’t someday get the curse? If it’s genetic, something carried by Mom or Dad, it could have skipped over you and gone straight to the next generation.”

  “She’ll be fine. You’re worried over nothing.”

  “There’s no way for you to know that.” He paused, took a deep breath and plunged into the heart of the matter. “I’d like to take Leah to see Dr Jarek. He might be able to run some tests.”

  She stopped stacking canned goods in a cabinet. Her lips twisted into a scowl. “Not a chance.”

  “C’mon, sis. Let’s at least talk about it without losing your cool.”

  “I am not losing my cool,” she said, slamming a can of soup onto the countertop. Realizing what she’d done, she forced calm.

  “Look, Aiden, I appreciate having you around to babysit when I have to work. But you can’t hold a job. You drink too much. The women you bring home throw up in my house.”

  “Gimme a break. That was one time.”

  “No, two times. She threw up again on the porch as she was leaving.”

  “She had a stomach bug.”

  “What she had was too many tequila shots.” Darlene sighed. “Look, I get it. You’re a great-looking guy and most women think you’re hot. But you’re also smarter than you give yourself credit for, smart enough to know that these endless one-nighters won’t ever bring you real satisfaction.”

  “And you know goddamn well why they’re one-nighters!” Aiden wasn’t about to risk a woman he’d just had sex with waking up covered in chunkie crap. “Besides, every woman I hook up with can’t be as picture-perfect as Darlene Manchester.”