* * * * * * *
At the same moment, a young man sat focused on a task in a room on the second floor of a second-rate hotel in New York City. He was Sik.
Next to a small glass coffee table was an unconscious woman. She lay on the floor in a position as though she had collapsed where she stood.
Sik sat crossed-legged on the floor between the woman and the table. On top of the table was a small bottle of black ink. Beside it was a homemade tattoo gun he had assembled using the body of a pen, a long sewing needle, a small motor from an old cassette player, and a cell phone battery charger.
He had already drawn a pattern of a symbol on the inside of both of her wrists. Now, with one of the woman’s wrists on his lap, he was about to ink the symbol. Taking the tattoo gun in his right hand, he began to heat the needle with a cigarette lighter, slowly waving the flame back and forth across the end of the needle. He peered intently at the heating tip as it began to glow red. The shining bright metal triggered a memory.
Fighting it, Sik said to himself, “Don’t go there. Concentrate on the task at hand. Don’t go there.”
Nevertheless, the memory was too strong, and it kept coming.
He remembered his father standing just a few steps from him. He was a young boy and possibly had just begun the first grade. It was a summer day. In the middle of a grassy field, surrounded by shrubs and trees in a military base, a speaker stood at a podium with ten men flanking him. In front of them, their well-dressed family members occupied all the rows of chairs.
From his seat in the front row, he watched his father receive a medal from the speaker. The boy gazed at the medal as it was being pinned. Moving side to side against his father’s uniform, the medal reflected the bright afternoon sun. The light stung his eyes, but he didn’t want to squint or shut them. He wanted to remember the sight of the medal and of his father. He was in awe of his father, the Marine.
After the ceremony, his father carried him in his arms. Around them, other families were gathered together. Small groups of people walked toward a building at the perimeter of the grassy field where the reception was to begin.
After the ceremony, he asked a question similar to what many other little boys asked their fathers. “Daddy, could I be like you when I grow up and get a medal like that?” With his father carrying him in his arms, he again gazed at the medal at his father’s chest. His tiny forefinger moved across the face of it, feeling its contours.
His father responded softly, “Sure son. You can be whatever you want to be, and you’ll be so good that they’ll give you lots of medals. But whatever you become, I’ll always be proud of you.”
Soon, the vision of the shining medal in his memory burned away, and then it was replaced by the reality of the glowing needle before him.
Attempting to brush the memory aside, Sik refocused, and then mechanically removed the flame from the needle and turned off the lighter. Expressionless, he continued with his task. Holding the tattoo gun in one hand, he lifted the woman’s wrist and began to ink it.
Later, he stood motionless in the stairwell at the second floor of the hotel. He had positioned the woman on the landing of the stairs, right at the corner where the two bare concrete walls met. With her legs folded underneath her, her back was against one wall and her head leaned on the adjacent wall. He had placed her arms at her sides so that both her palms pointed up, revealing the newly tattooed symbols. She was alive but still unconscious.
He stood just in front of her, with his arms folded at his chest and his biceps rippling over his hands.
After a few moments, he uncrossed his arms and withdrew his father’s dog tags from under his shirt. He rubbed his thumb over the imprints of the metal, and then stopped and read the name on it.
He breathed in deep, slowly exhaled, and then said in a whisper, “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m nothing like you.”
Calmly, he hid the dog tags under his shirt once again. Next, he stepped toward the woman.
A short distance away, further up the stairs, the arriving dark entity hovered to oversee Sik’s progress. Its black sand-like particles made a dull hiss as they collided against each other, while expanding and contracting its form.
It was this entity - this being in the darkness - that seeped its way into Sik’s life, through an open fissure in his psyche, and into a raw deeply seeded emotion of vengeance. Once there, it tempted him with its cunning words, and it promised him an ultimate day of justice in return for these deeds.
* * * * * * *
Getting into his Mustang, the football fanatic persona of the longhaired man quickly vanished.
Nevertheless, his mind was focused on one mission: to get the beer.
As he drove closer to the T-intersection leading out of his neighborhood, he heard a race of an engine. The road was two-way, having only one lane for each direction.
Allen revved the engine of his mother’s BMW as he veered onto the adjacent lane about to pass the red Mustang. The longhaired man reduced his speed to let the teenager pass, and then Allen quickly went by.
Just ahead, Allen watched as the light turned from green to yellow. He needed to make a left turn. As he turned up the volume of car’s stereo, he punched the gas pedal down to the floor and raced into the intersection. The light turned red. He hit the brakes but still wanted to make the turn. Quickly, he shifted to second gear and spun the steering wheel left. With the engine revving high, the high-performance car made a brief screech over the asphalt while making the turn. Straightening the wheel, Allen hit the gas again and sped away. He loved feeling the rush, the speed, and the Gs.
“Dumb teenager,” the man mumbled, as he watched Allen. When he got to the intersection, Allen was almost out of sight.
On his way to the grocery store he frequented, he drove his Mustang past a small convenience store called Qiki Food. He had never visited Qiki Food; he figured the prices were too high for alcohol and snacks. However, he thought that if he went further to the grocery store, he’d miss the football game’s second half kickoff.
Immediately, he slammed on his brakes and made a U-turn. Swiftly, he pulled into the small Qiki Food parking lot.
His actions were perfunctory as he left his car, walked inside the store, grabbed a boxed twenty-four pack of beer, and waited in line to pay for it.
Momentarily, three teenage boys walked up and stood immediately behind him. Each wore dark shirts and loose jeans, and one, standing the furthest behind him, held a skateboard. They were loud, laughing, and teasing each other. The boy immediately behind him gripped a small bag of chips and continually flicked it with his fingers, creating popping sounds.
Unaffected by the activity of the boys behind him, he fixed his gaze forward, waiting for the remaining person in front of him to step up to the counter.
The laughter of the teenagers grew louder, and they began to playfully shove each other. The shoulder of the boy behind the longhaired man briefly touched his back.
They started to get his attention. Without turning his head, the man glanced behind him from the corner of his eye.
Soon the laughter became constant as the boys shoved each other much more vigorously. Once more, the boy’s shoulder touched the man’s back, but this time it dug into his ribs with enough force to shove him forward.
The longhaired man had to take a quick step forward to keep his balance. Then suddenly, with a quick turn of his head, he growled a single, stern, harsh word that delivered a command of finality, “Don’t!” With a blazing fire in his eyes that could burn any soul and a cold willingness in his heart to carry out any threats yet unspoken, his eyes seared into the eyes of the boy that had shoved his back. In an eerie half-whisper he concluded, “Don’t touch me.”
Frightened, the boy took a step back and said, “Sorry, man, we were just messing around.” Another added, “Yeah, sorry, we didn’t mean it.”
Without changing his fiery, cold, and steely look and without acknowledging their apology, the man very slowly tur
ned away from them.
Awkward silence overcame them all.
The customer in front of the man paid, and then hurriedly left the store.
As the longhaired man stepped forward, the cashier asked, “Hi, everything cool?”
Setting the pack of beer on the counter, he did not answer.
After leaving Qiki Food in cold silence, he got in his car, started it, and made his way to the road.
Quickly, his mind dismissed the event he had just left behind. All became forgotten as he focused on the anomaly to which he was returning.
Minutes later, he opened his apartment door with the box of beer under one arm. He turned on the lights and closed and locked the door. After tearing open the box, he set three cans on the coffee table. The rest he arranged in the refrigerator.
He paced to the couch, sat down, popped open a can, and drank. Now, he was ready to seriously think. He said, “How does this physically occur? I mean physically - physics. What did you learn in college physics?”
The well-known Einstein equation, E = mc2, came into his head.
With the arsenal of his multiple college degrees in the sciences, he thought the idea further. “Energy, E, can be transformed into matter, m, by a factor of the speed of light, c-squared. I remember that energy can be transformed into matter. The trick is: you need an enormous amount of energy to create matter. And in the opposite direction, when you transform matter into energy, it releases tons energy.”
He paused, and then concluded, “But the fact remains: matter can be transformed into energy and energy into matter.”
Surprisingly and uncharacteristically, with his mind singly focused on thinking through the idea of energy and mass conversion, he had forgotten about the football game. The television remained off.
He took another long drink. Placing his hands above his head, he leaned back and continued his brainstorming. “So, the TV remote is a little heavier than my keys. So, when the remote turns into the keys, there’s left over matter from the remote. And it’s that left over stuff that turns into the pure energy of bright white light that flashed in front of me. It also gives off heat. That’s what I felt when the room warmed up.”
Suddenly, he remembered the time, a few days ago, when he was parked at the beach and tinkered with the quarter in his fingers. “Whoa.” he blurted. “That quarter. I made that quarter disappear. I thought I saw a flash of light, then afterwards the quarter was gone.” He leaned forward, picked up the can, and took another drink. “So, I could do it back then,” he said quietly as he leaned back once again.
Then, he realized it. The childhood memory he often used as an escape to make himself feel, for a fleeting moment, that he was more than human was indeed true. He had made that mantis disappear, and truly, there was something in him that was more than human. He asked in wonder, “Am I really doing this? Am I really something different?” Shaking his head, he added, “This can’t be. Gotta think about this more.”
Finally, remembering the mantis, he looked around and said out loud, “Hey, bug. Where’d you go?” He propped himself up on one knee on the couch and peered around the room for something small and bright-green.
There was no bug to be seen.
He sat back down. Not caring much that the insect was gone, he began thinking once more.
“So, when the smaller keys turned into the bigger remote, it definitely needed more matter to make the conversion. Where does it come from?”
He drank from the beer can once more and emptied it.
It came from the air, he thought. That’s why it felt like the air was being sucked into the keys. The air particles made up the difference. And also, heat was taken from the air, making the room cool. That was it.
He popped open his second can of beer and drank. Then, he said out loud, “So, how am I able to make this happen? What can make something physically turn into something else?”
He sat for what seemed like ten minutes, pondering the question and searching for answers. He had no answer, so he joked instead, “Superman can do it - I think. Can’t he? I remember he turned that lump of coal into a diamond by squeezing it real hard.” Then, he dismissed it, “Yeah, but that’s not the same thing.”
He decided to see if he could to it again, and if he could, he wanted to experiment. Positioning the empty can of beer in front of him on the coffee table, he thought, “The can’s not heavy - not much matter. What can I turn it into that’s about the same weight?”
Then, his mind went to a tangent, and he said, “Oh, side thought: if I take something that’s huge and heavy and turn it into something tiny, I bet I’d get tons of light and tons of heat as a byproduct.” Concluding, he said with a sly grin, “Wow, that would be like a bomb. Sweet.”
He shook his head a few times to clear the idea from his mind. “Anyway…back to the task at hand,” he said, and then after pouring some beer into the empty can, he asked, “How about turning this into a tennis ball?”
Locking his eyes on the beer can, he concentrated and said the words in his head.
The can transformed into a yellow-felted tennis ball. There was a brief flash of light, but it was an unremarkable amount. He had correctly gauged the proper size of the ball.
“Cool. I still got it.”
Excitement slowly built within him. Each time he changed the object’s form, he felt a sense of giddiness. After quite a few more times, giddiness and excitement overtook him, and he eventually seemed to lose control.
He began to seize items in the apartment - plates, forks, spoons, knives, glasses - taking them from his kitchen, putting them on top of the coffee table, and changing them into different forms.
Well into the night, he performed his experiments.
From outside his window, flashes of light could be seen, and now and again, a maniacal laugh could be heard from outside his front door.
Eventually, he was able to hone his ability to take one item and make it into something else without generating much light, heating or cooling the air, or even creating movement in the air.
Without him knowing it, midnight came.
Within his apartment, the kitchen drawers and cabinets were flung open. They had been emptied. There were no plates or knives or forks or spoons or glasses or cups or eating utensils to be found; they were all his test subjects and all were transformed into something else.
Clothes were on the floor and on the couch. A basketball and a rubber duck stood at the edge of the coffee table. Plastic tubes, wood, boxes, metal pipes, books, and other odd objects were strewn on the floor.
He sat on the couch, very pleased with himself. He had drunk all three beers plus several more, and the cans were nowhere to be found. He was tired and fatigued, but the late night didn’t cause this weakness and neither did the beer. After every handful of transformations he made, he could feel his energy level drain, forcing him to concentrate a little harder each time afterwards.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t yet willing to stop.
Still elated and dizzy with delight, he sat and pondered what else he could do. Then, he thought, Can I make a living thing? A playful chill went through him, as he pictured himself as an evil scientist. He raised his hands and arms into the air and cackled his best evil scientist laugh. “It’s alive!” he exclaimed.
Excited, he reached for a container of vitamins with tablets inside that he had earlier made. He weighed it in his hand, and then set it down in front of him. Focusing on it, he concentrated, saying, “Living mouse.”
Within a second, it transformed into a mouse.
“Oh, my!” he exclaimed. He bounced up and down on his couch, very excited as he gazed down at his creation.
But as he examined the mouse further, his bouncing slowed then stopped. He peered closely at it. It was on its side, not standing, not breathing, and not alive. A dead mouse lay on his table.
He blurted, “Oh, that’s just gross. Why did I even do that? Get that thing out of here.” Quickly, he changed the dead
mouse into a Rubik’s Cube.
He sat back and paused for a moment.
As he stared at the table, his excitement suddenly disappeared and his playfulness vanished.
Sometimes the sight of an object or a scent of an odor or a peculiar sound can immediately and unexpectedly trigger a memory. The object in front of him, the cube, had done just that.
It was a deeply seated memory: his son had been attempting to solve the cube while they were in the car, just before the accident five years ago.
Frozen, he stared at it, and a long moment passed.
His eyes examined with familiarity its different colors and its black plastic edges.
But he didn’t wish to revisit the memory of the last moments with his son.
Slowly, he blinked once.
He blinked again.
Shaking his head, he regained his thoughts.
Leaning forward, he lifted the cube with his hand and held it in front of his eyes. Studying it, his fingers slowly rotated it around.
The cube was scrambled with each side having squares of different colors. Like the mysterious power he now wielded, it was a puzzle that still needed to be solved.
Not alive, huh, he thought. Good…I didn’t want the responsibility anyway.
That night, he fell asleep once again on his couch.
Just before slipping away into a deep sleep, time seemed to pass slowly as he struggled to keep his thoughts alive. Along with the waning excitement of the late evening, the amused and lighthearted personality that accompanied it faded back into the recesses of his being. That lightheartedness was from a persona that was a deep facet of his nature and a persona that these days rarely surfaced. Moreover, it sought comfort in the darkness.
As he fell into his dreams, a quite different personality materialized to reestablish itself in the seat of his mind, during the remaining moments of consciousness. It was a personality waxed into existence by the recent years of emotional pain and mental anguish. It was one nurtured and grown not by the warm friendships and engagement with others, but by the empty, cold of his apartment room, by the vacant darkness of his solitude, and by his withdrawal from the living world.
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 8