She reached down and squeezed Chris's hand.
Across the room, the door to the reception office clicked open; the receptionist leaned into the waiting room. "The doctor will see you now."
Helen turned to Eric and touched his girlish face. She let her hand linger on his well-formed jaw. "Cut it out, Ma!" He backed away.
The receptionist drummed her fingers on the open door.
Helen stood. Her purse lay on the floor by her feet. She picked it up and felt the weight of her deadly "ticket out" as it shifted against the loose change and wads of Kleenex that lined the purse's bottom. Funny, she'd almost forgotten the thing was in there.
"Please hurry," said the receptionist.
Helen bit her lips as the purse's taut strap tugged against her shoulder.
The receptionist stepped aside as Helen crossed the room and entered the office. Beyond the office stood a short hall and a closed door. The receptionist pointed to the door. "He's waiting," she said.
Helen carried her heavy purse into the room beyond the door.
▼
The doctor sat writing at a small desk inside the examination room. At his back stood a door with a translucent window. Beyond the glass, shadows moving through a dim hall. Helen imagined the shadows belonged to office workers—healthy, normal-looking people rushing to catch elevators and busses. She tried not noticing how hunched the shadows were, or how the silhouetted shoulders rolled with the weight of elephantine arms.
"Sit down," said Dr. Salvador.
Helen moved to a chair that sat across from Salvador's table. The chair looked comfortable, but the moment her back touched the cushions she knew the seat's dimensions were all wrong. She tried settling in; the chair wouldn't yield.
Salvador looked up from his pen. Helen met his eyes. A wave of relief washed over her as she saw the strong, well-defined chin that lay beneath his beard.
"When you called," he said, "you mentioned something about being afraid,"
"Yes."
"Why are you afraid?"
"Things keep changing."
"Changing how?"
"Getting different."
"Different how?"
She bit her lips.
Salvador said: "When did you first notice these changes?"
"Yesterday morning," said Helen. "Things were bad yesterday morning. Then they got better. Now they're getting worse again."
Salvador picked up his pen and wrote something. When the pen stopped moving, he asked: "Have you mentioned this to your husband?"
"I... don't have a husband," said Helen.
Salvador wrote.
"I mean," said Helen, "I had a husband, but he left two days ago and—" She looked at the floor. "My husband has nothing to do with the problem."
Dr. Salvador leaned forward. He removed his glasses, folding them neatly in his hands. He looked her straight on and said: "Do the people around you seem to be changing?"
She froze.
"Answer my question," said Salvador. "Are the people around you turning ugly?"
"Yes."
"Why do you hesitate? Aren't you sure?"
"No," said Helen. "I'm sure. But how do you know about the changing? Do you see it too?"
"I see a great deal," said Salvador. "Tell me about your children. Have you noticed similar deformities in them?"
"Oh no! Not my children! They look as normal as I do. As normal as... as normal as you. They brought me here, you know?"
"How old are they?"
"Six and ten."
"And they brought you here?"
"Yes. There've been moments during the past two days when they've seemed very mature."
"Mature?"
"Yes. This morning, for example, after I found—" She glanced at her purse.
"Go on," said Salvador.
"This morning it was Eric who told me I needed a psychiatrist. He found your number in the book. He made me call you."
"And this strange maturing is the only change you've noticed in them."
"Yes," said Helen. "But the maturity doesn't last long. Usually they act like kids."
He picked up his pen. He wrote. "What about everyone else—people other than you, me, and your children? Is everyone else strangely deformed?"
"Yes," she said.
"Has this changing accelerated since four o'clock?"
"Yes."
Salvador wrote. When he spoke again, he said: "Do you consider yourself suicidal?"
Helen's eyes darted to her purse.
The intercom buzzed.
Salvador turned to the speaker. "What is it?"
"Your colleagues are waiting."
"Thank you." He turned to Helen. "I have a meeting with some field workers, but I want to see you again tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"We open at nine," said Salvador, "but I want you back here at eight-thirty."
"But—?"
"Tomorrow. Eight-thirty."
"But there's something else you should know," she said as he led her to the door. "You asked if I considered myself suicidal—"
"We can discuss that tomorrow."
"Why won't you help me now?"
He pushed her through the door.
"Tell me," she said. "If I'm crazy, just tell me. It would make things so much easier if someone would just tell me—"
The door snicked shut.
Helen stood alone in the silent hall.
▼
She returned to the waiting room. Misshapen chairs crouched in the darkness. Beastly faces leered at her from the covers of dim magazines. Only the hum of ductwork broke the silence.
"Eric!"
No answer.
"Eric! Chris, honey!" Her fingers brushed the waiting room's wall, hunting a switch until—click—the lights came on and she looked around to find her children gone.
Outside, in the main hallway, a ringing bell cut the silence.
She ran for the door.
"Eric!"
The waiting room's carpet gave way to gray linoleum as she hurried into the hall. Fifty feet away, a coat-draped figure moved toward an opening elevator door. Helen recognized the coat.
"Hey!" Helen's voice trembled as she ran. "Wait a minute, please!"
The thing stepped into the elevator. The door began closing.
"Wait! Please!"
A black glove reached out, catching the door and pushing it back as Helen drew nearer. The receptionist, even uglier than before, squinted out into the hall.
"Going down?" it said. Its sloping forehead ended in a matted brow. Its chin was gone. Its face came to an impossible point. It spoke with a heavy grunt that distorted the words nearly beyond recognition.
"Where are my children?" asked Helen.
"What children?" Watt chill'n?
"My children!"
"Sorry, honey. I didn't see any children." Soree,'onny. A'dn't s'any chill'n. The receptionist pulled its gloved hand away from the rubber bumper on the edge of the door.
"Wait!"
The door closed. The car descended. Elevator cables clicked and hissed, and, like all powerful things in the world, the sound of that descending elevator was disturbingly masculine; it seemed to be speaking to her. It seemed to be saying: "Purse... purse... purse!" It sounded like Eric. Big Eric. Eric, Sr. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the sound. And then, from farther down the hall, Helen heard the gurgling whoosh of a flushing commode.
▼
Helen's heels rattled on the hard linoleum as she hurried toward the men's room.
"Chris!"
The churning rush of another commode echoed through the hall.
"Eric!"
She rounded a bend in the hall.
The men's room door came into view. The sound of churning water gurgled behind the door; the kids were in there, the two of them, being bad, flushing the toilets one after another.
Ka-WOOOSH!
Ka-WOOOSH!
Ka-WOOOSH!
"Eric! Chris! Stop that!"
She opened the door and stepped into the harsh, blue smell of cleanser and disinfectant. At first she saw no one, but the flushing continued; the sound was coming from beyond a row of gray-colored stalls—from somewhere in the back of the room.
Helen peeked around the stalls. She saw a shadow—short and bloated as it slid like a flattened toad across the tiled wall. Then, in a mirror, she saw its face. It had a mouth like a toad. No teeth. No cheeks. No chin. Its nose rose out of its upper lip. Its eyes, like blisters, stared at Helen from either side of its flattened forehead. A tuft of green hair grew on a hump between its eyes.
"Looking for someone?" Oookin'er umm-un?
"My children," she said.
"Children?" Chill'n?
She grew bolder. She walked forward until she stood a few feet from the toady man. "I'm looking for my children!"
It shook its head.
For the first time she noticed its clothes: bib-overalls with an oval name tag. The thing was a janitor. Its name was Ron.
"Were they in here?" she asked.
Ron scratched thoughtfully at his crotch. Then he shook his head and turned away.
"Will you help me find them?"
Ron pulled a rag from a stained pocket and turned back toward the urinals.
"I'm asking you a question," said Helen.
No answer.
"Why are you ignoring me?"
Ka-WOOOSH!
Helen shifted her purse to her right shoulder, and once again she felt the awful weight shift inside. The weight... her "ticket out."
("Use it!" said the voice in her head.)
Helen reached inside the purse and pulled out the gun.
▼
Like the receding jaws and sloping foreheads, the gun was not part of her normal reality. This morning she had discovered it lying like a metal penis on the bed beside her. Beneath it she had found a note telling her how to release the safety and cock the chamber. The note had referred to the gun as her "ticket out," and it assured her that the jacket was loaded with a single, hollow point bullet—the kind of bullet that would enter small and exit large. All she had to do was put the gun in her mouth and pull the trigger; after that, the madness couldn't touch her.
("Ticket out!")
Helen released the safety. She cocked the barrel. She raised the gun, aiming at the back of Ron-the-janitor's head.
The man-thing turned. It saw her. It saw the gun. Helen waited for fear to spread through its froggish face, but, instead, the thing waved her away with a dripping rag: "Get out of here!" it said. G'outa ear!
Helen placed her finger on the trigger.
The thing turned, giving Helen its humped back as it went back to scooping crud from a urinal.
"Hey!" Helen yelled. "Look at me!"
Ka-WOOOSH!
"Damn you! I've got a gun! LOOK AT ME!"
Helen stood, watching as the thing moved indifferently to another urinal.
("It doesn't care about you," said the voice.)
The gun grew heavy. Her hand trembled. Her arm dropped to her side. The weight of her own insignificance sent her running from the room.
▼
The hall had changed.
She stood outside the men's room, trying to make sense of her new surroundings. The hall had narrowed. The ceiling hovered less than seven feet from the ashen floor. The elevator was gone; in its place stood a steel fire door and a red sign reading: THIS WAY TO EGRESS.
Helen slumped back against the stone wall. "When's it going to stop?" she asked.
("When you use the ticket," said the man in her head.)
"I need it to start making sense! Please, God—make it make sense!"
("Kill yourself!")
She slammed her head against the cinder-block wall. Yellow pain flashed behind her eyes...
And then, from down the hall—coming muffled through the translucent glass of a distant door—Helen heard a voice say: "Yeah sure!"
She leaned toward the sound, holding her breath, cocking her head, listening.
Another voice spoke. A younger voice. Chris's voice. Helen tried making out words, but all she heard was: "psychosis."
Psychosis? It was happening again; her six-year-old was talking like an adult.
("And he's talking about you!")
Helen shook her head, trying to drive the inner voice away. Her brain shifted, thudding softly inside her skull. She shook harder. Shards of light danced on the edge of her vision. The inner voice died and was replaced by thudding pain.
From the translucent glass came another voice—Dr. Salvador's voice: "Do you think she'll do it?"
Helen moved toward the voice.
"Yes," said her older son. "We haven't left her much choice."
"I think so too," said Chris. "I only wish we had given her poison instead of a gun."
"She won't take poison," said Eric. "She has a compelling need to do something aggressive, even if that something involves putting a bullet in her own head."
"How many bullets are in the gun?" asked Salvador.
"One," said Eric. "That's all she'll need. Provided she doesn't miss."
"And provided she uses it on herself," said Salvador.
Helen crept slowly, silently down the hall until she stood three feet to the left of the door with the translucent window. She held her breath, listening, waiting for the conversation to continue. Please, she thought, please let me hear them say what's wrong with me.
"In a way," said Chris, "I feel sorry for her. It's not her fault she descended."
"It's no one's fault," said Salvador. "Descent from the higher realities is neither fair nor unfair; it's a fact. It happens. It's up to us to deal with it, not to pass judgment on it."
"Do you think maybe it was her husband deserting her that caused her descent?" asked Chris.
"That's possible," said Salvador. "Have you read Dr. Pico's study on Traumatic Descent?"
"No."
"Do so," said Salvador. "If you're going to make field work a career, you'd be wise to keep up on the literature."
A moment's silence, and then Chris said: "I just keep thinking that it'd be so much better if we could elevate her back to her own reality."
"Yeah sure! How're we going to do that when we don't even know which higher reality she came from?"
"We know a little about where she came from," said Chris. "We know she had a family. We know she had two boys, Eric and Chris. We know she loved them."
"We don't know that," said Eric.
"We can infer it," said Chris. "Haven't you seen the way she looks at us? It's different from the way she looks at other things. When she looks at us, she's seeing the children she left behind."
"She told me about that when we talked," said Salvador. "She also told me that I looked normal. I also believe that she only heard half of what I said to her. She's having auditory as well as visual hallucinations."
She slammed her head against the wall. Sparks erupted behind her eyes. Dizziness swirled through the center of her brain, but somehow she remained standing, holding her ground while Chris asked: "Are we sure suicide's the only solution?"
"It's the only practical one," said Salvador. "There's a slight chance—a theoretical chance—that she could return to her own world, but that would require a resilience she doesn't have."
"So we have to kill her?" said Chris.
"No," said Salvador. "She has to kill herself. We're physicians, not murderers."
Another awkward silence, and then Chris said: "Where is she now?"
"Outside," said Salvador. "In the hall. Listening."
"You're kidding," said Chris.
"Open the door," said Salvador. "See for yourself."
▼
Helen froze.
Inside the office, heavy feet shuffled against the floor. She wanted to run, but she could only brace herself, leaning back against the cinder block wall while Salvador said: "I'm sure I heard her moving out there." The voice changed as it spoke. I'm sure I'er
d'r mooen'a'der.
Helen raised the gun, holding it high with her right hand while her left hand reached for the knob on the office door. Was it locked? She turned the knob. The latch clicked. The door slid inward, swinging wide to reveal a distorted examination room. Oddly shaped furniture crouched beneath a low ceiling. In the room's center, three bug-eyed toads stared at the open door.
▼
She raised the gun. When she squinted, two of the toady shapes looked almost like Eric and Chris. The third toad had to be Salvador. She turned the gun on that third shape and squeezed the trigger:
BLAMMMM!
Flame shot from the barrel. Her hand jerked. A third nostril opened in the center of Salvador's nose; he jerked away while the back of his head exploded. Strings of sludge slammed the wall, fanning out while the toad-like body struck the floor.
One of the kids said: "Oh shit!"
She turned to the kids. "Who said that?"
Eric met her gaze. Chris looked away.
"Chris!"
Chris turned his blue eyes toward the smoking gun.
"I warned you, Chris. I warned you about that kind of talk."
Chris looked at Eric. He seemed to say: What now?
She crossed the room, taking Chris's hand. (It felt warm and soft in her closing fist.)
"Come on," said Helen.
"Where're we going?" asked Chris.
"Home."
She pulled Chris toward the door.
Eric followed.
They descended the stairs to a door that opened onto a filthy street lined with sooty buildings. Toad-like men paused and shied away as they noticed the gun in her hand. A bloody sun lay low upon the city's domed roofs; ashen moons rose in the west.
("You're totally mad. It's all insanity. The only thing real is your madness.")
When she squinted, the rusty, iron sidewalk looked almost like the road to home.
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