Reflections in the Mind's Eye

by Stuart Young

  For reasons which she couldn’t explain this concept sent a chill through Laura. The idea of hands joining together stirred a deep atavistic terror. She sat for several seconds, unable to move. Recovering, she shook her head, annoyed at the way she had allowed a simple bodily response to dictate her emotional state. It was sheer coincidence that she had shivered at the moment she read the hand-joining metaphor. Her body didn’t know anything that her conscious mind didn’t already know.

  Then she looked down.

  Without realising it she had clasped her hands together, wringing them in despair.

  Laura trudged along to the bus stop, doing her best to ignore her hangover. As her hangover consisted of a fierce throbbing that felt as if large quantities of TNT were being detonated inside her skull on a regular three-second cycle ignoring it was a considerable feat.

  Fortunately the Sunday morning roads were pretty empty, reducing the amount of noise she had to contend with in her delicate state.

  Granted, she usually drank rather heavily at the weekend anyway and so was somewhat used to her condition. But normally she stopped before consuming half a bottle of Southern Comfort. And normally the amount of food she ate before drinking consisted of more than a solitary chocolate Hobnob.

  But this wasn’t a normal weekend.

  The fear that gripped her as she had read the computer printout refused to dissipate, instead nagging at her, quickening her heart and twisting her insides.

  Previously she had felt that understanding was the key to this affair but now she feared that pursuing the hidden meaning of the symbols would only lead to further horrors, ones which she would not survive.

  So now she attempted to erase the past twenty-four hours from her mind. This whole ghastly chain of events had been triggered by curiosity over the strange symbols, if she just left well enough alone perhaps everything would go back to normal.

  Her reasoning was as shaky as her hands but she could think of no other plan of action. Just keep busy and try not to think about it.

  Reaching the bus stop she checked the timetable. Forty minutes until the next bus. On Sundays buses were rarer than gold dust. Should have booked a taxi. Sighing, she leaned against the bus shelter.

  At least collecting her car from the sport centre would keep her occupied for a while. Assuming it hadn’t been clamped, stolen or set alight by teenagers fuelled by boredom and alcopops. And even if the car was in a fit state to drive Laura wasn’t. She would have to call her brother, Dave, see if he could pick it up for her. No hangover for Dave; he had a proper grownup life full of meaning and responsibility. He would be up early on a Sunday morning, taking his kids for football training over the park. Hopefully one of the other dads could be roped into giving Dave a lift to the sport centre.

  Laura revelled in the banal logistics of the salvage operation. Her life might be boring as hell but she didn’t want it to end. Even if the next forty or fifty years consisted of mind-numbing tedium at work and maudlin solo drinking sessions she wanted to experience every last moment of it. No matter how crappy and miserable her life might be it was her life and she would cling to it for all she was worth.

  Other people might still be curious about the symbols but not her. No way would she take the notebook to a research centre or university and ask a scientist to unravel the symbols. She doubted if any scientist could anyway. The symbols and equations she had managed to identify came from cutting edge physics yet they were child’s play compared to the others; whole new levels of sophistication were involved. One website she had visited described string theory as 21st century physics that had fallen into the 20th century but the mysterious symbols appeared so advanced Laura guessed they must have come from the 37th century. At least.

  She shook her head angrily. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this stuff. No more worrying about equations and ice and cones.

  Scowling, she turned her attention to the grocers on the opposite side of the road where the owner, a Turkish gentleman, adjusted a sign in the window. Laura read the sign to distract herself from thinking about the symbols.

  Two words were emblazoned across the sign; “ice” and below it “cones”.

  Fear clutched at Laura’s heart.

  Then the man stepped aside to reveal the rest of the sign: “Cinnamon and Spice on our Scones”.

  Laura gave a nervous giggle, relief flooding over her.

  Then she saw the sign displaying the headline for the local newspaper: “Mysterious Symbols Linked to Record Number of Suicides.”

  The giggle died away.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  The newspaper had come out on Friday. So people had been killing themselves over the symbols before Laura had ever seen the graffiti on the road sign.

  How far did this madness extend? She started towards the grocers, fumbling for change to buy a newspaper.

  Reaching the kerb she stopped, thrusting her purse back into her handbag. She wasn’t getting involved. She didn’t know what was happening and she didn’t want to know. She just wanted to live her life, no matter how much of a mess she had made of it.

  No more symbols. No more ice. No more cones.

  The grocer came strolling out of his shop, walking backwards.

  Oh no.

  Laura gasped, suddenly unable to breathe, the air turning to poison, filling her chest with noxious fumes. Wispy tendrils of gas floated before her as she fell to the ground; ethereal threads of toxicity, burning her nostrils, her throat, her lungs.

  Mountains rose up about her, cones of purple rock reaching up to the seven yellow moons that filled the sky. The ground turned to jagged transparent pebbles. Diamonds. Cold to the touch; stretching away to the horizons, a priceless, icy desert.

  Gravity crushed down on Laura, pinning her to the ground, threatening to grind her bones to powder. Diamonds skewered her, slicing deep into her flesh, puncturing skin and muscle. Blood spurted, flowing between the diamonds, creating a crimson sea. Laura sobbed as she felt the diamonds drive up into her cheeks and temples, the jewelled spikes grinding up against the bone, only seconds away from reaching her brain.

  It was a mercy when she passed out.

  A faint rustling sound, catching at her ears, teasing them, daring her to deduce its origin. Gauze cocooning her body, along with a layer of cloth that shifted as she twitched awake. Something cold and hard clamping down, covering her nose and mouth. Prising open stiff eyelids to find blurry shapes wavering in front of her, blobs of colour; green, white, black.

  One of the blobs spoke. ‘Ah, you’re awake.’

  Laura blinked, her vision clearing. The talking blob turned into a tired looking young man with sandy hair and freckles, his youth only slightly offset by his doctor’s coat. He consulted the chart in his hand then tried out a reassuring smile on Laura. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

  Laura didn’t answer, instead staring about the room. One bed next to her: empty. Two beds against the opposite wall, one occupied by a grey-haired old lady; the other by a plump middle-aged lady, snoring away gently. Drips and monitors surrounded all the beds making the room look like some kind of futuristic cocktail bar that specialised in minimalist décor and intravenously served cocktails.

  ‘How long have I been in hospital?’

  ‘Paramedics brought you in this morning. You spent a couple of hours in ICU then came along to our charming little ward just after lunch. Lucky for you someone – a shopkeeper I believe – saw you collapse and was able to staunch the blood until the ambulance arrived.’

  Laura touched her cheek. Beneath the oxygen mask the left side of her face was swathed in bandages.

  ‘Ah, yes. You received severe lacerations all over your body. Fortunately no internal organs were punctured and the injuries to your muscles should heal given time and a course of physiotherapy. We’re, uh, we’re still waiting to see if there’s any nerve damage.’

  Tears pricked Laura’s eyes. A sob escaped her lips, turning quickly into a c
ough.

  ‘And you’ve inhaled some sort of smoke or gas. Your condition’s stable but we’re still awaiting X-rays to confirm the full extent of the damage.’

  Laura’s body shook, her face contorting with emotion, the straining muscles pulling against the bandages covering her cheek.

  The doctor waited until her emotional display had subsided. Then: ‘There was nothing at the scene to indicate how this happened to you. Do you remember anything? Anything that might help with your treatment?’

  Sniffing, Laura wondered what to say. That she had been transported across time and space to an alien planet?

  The grey-haired woman in the opposite bed waved to the doctor. ‘I remember what happened to me.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Thomas, you’ve already explained in great detail how you were attacked by a horde of giant metal insects.’ The doctor gave Laura an apologetic shrug. ‘We’ve got an epidemic of patients coming in with all kinds of crazy stories. We’re totally backed up; I don’t normally even work Sundays.’

  ‘The insects wouldn’t have been able to attack me if it wasn’t for the tachyons. Particles travelling faster than the speed of light.’

  Something clicked inside Laura’s head. ‘Relativistic effects such as time dilation increase as objects approach the speed of light.’

  ‘Exactly. Now, normally quantum nonlocality is limited to the sub-atomic level but super-cooled Bose-Einstein Condensates allow objects to exhibit quantum phenomena beyond the sub-atomic level.’

  ‘So charging the BEC with tachyons results in …’ Laura tailed off, a gaping hole suddenly appearing in her scientific speculation.

  Mrs Thomas gazed at her expectantly, waiting for Laura to complete the train of thought. When she didn’t disappointment settled upon Mrs Thomas’s face.

  The doctor looked from Laura to Mrs Thomas. ‘How do you both know all this gobbledygook?’

  The two women gaped at each other, one bond between them severing as another one formed. They both spoke at the same time, their voices tinged with an identical amount of fear and wonderment.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Darkness covered Laura, the uncomfortable inky blackness that clung to her whenever she awoke in a bed that was not her own. Silence reverberated around the hospital, increasing her sense of unease.

  She wanted to get out of here. She wanted to go home. She wanted everything to go back to normal.

  But normality was now beyond her reach. Even if everything else returned to how it should be the scars on her face would mark her with a reminder of the strangeness that had exploded into her world. And that was before factoring in any possible nerve damage; she might be crippled as well as disfigured.

  She choked back a whimper of despair. She refused to allow the only sound in the ward to be the sound of her crying.

  Desperately she sought memories of happier times, anything that might buoy her spirits. Holding hands with her first love; dancing with her friends at a Boyzone concert; buying her first car; playing with her old dog, Scruffy.

  There were so few happy memories and all so far in the past. They had been superseded by the way they had all ended in misery. Love turned to heartbreak; friends abandoned her to start families; repairs to her car bled her finances dry; Scruffy died, joints stiff with arthritis, organs failing due to diabetes.

  Happiness never lasted; it was inextricably linked to despair.

  She wished she could be more like her brother Dave. When he visited her this afternoon he had been cheerful, laidback, surrounded by his loving family. But Laura was uptight, didn’t want children and had yet to find a man who was prepared to stay with her for more than a few months, the pretence of love fading once the novelty of the relationship was replaced with mundane reality. And with her face slashed and torn the likelihood of romance became even more remote. Old age and spinsterhood beckoned. Then finally a cold, lonely death.

  Tears trickled down Laura’s cheeks. She wanted the madness of the past few days to end but she didn’t know if she could face living the life to which she was condemned.

  If only she hadn’t seen the symbols perhaps none of this would have happened.

  It wasn’t as if the bloody things even made any sense. Apart from the odd moment of revelation they remained beyond comprehension.

  Only the simplest elements of the concepts could be grasped, the bulk of the theories lying hidden beneath the surface, ready to smash anyone who dared attempt understand them. The ideas were icebergs, Laura’s mind the Titanic.

  A sudden noise on the far side of the room caught her attention. The sound of thrashing accompanied by a low, frantic moaning.

  Laura switched on her bedside light. Just on the edge of the bulb’s reach she saw Mrs Thomas, cloaked half in light and half in shadow. Wailing in distress Mrs Thomas kicked the sheets from her bed and cowered in the centre of the mattress.

  Laura fumbled for the button that summoned the nurse. Repeated jabs of the button brought no assistance. Mrs Thomas continued to whimper. Laura looked over at the plump woman in the next bed for help; she remained fast asleep.

  Swearing, Laura eased back her bed sheets and slid painfully out of bed. The coldness of the tiled floor shocked her and she pulled on the slippers Dave had brought in. Agonising, shuffling steps carried her over to Mrs Thomas’s bed. Pushing aside the wheeled table beside the bed she leaned forward.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Mrs Thomas grabbed Laura’s hand, clasping it tight, grinding the bones together. ‘Do you see it?’

  Laura followed Mrs Thomas’s terrified gaze to an empty spot on the far side of the room. ‘See what?’

  As she spoke Laura noticed Mrs Thomas’s table moving, shifting backwards to its original position.

  The air crackled and she felt static electricity plucking at her hair. A strange creature materialised before her, floating in midair. No limbs or head, just a lumpy, spherical torso with transparent skin revealing multiple stomachs in the process of digesting something unidentifiable. An array of wire-like filaments bristled around the creature, sparks crackling between them. The acrid stench of ozone filled the air.

  Laura shrank back. Electricity pulsed across her body, tickling, shocking. The intensity of the voltage increased as the creature edged closer.

  Laura’s pulse quickened, slowed, quickened again; gaining a frighteningly erratic new rhythm which she doubted could sustain her body. Her temples throbbed, thoughts and images exploding through her mind too rapidly to be identified. Vicious shudders shook her body so hard they threatened to tear her skeleton apart.

  Then it was over.

  The creature vanished, Laura’s head no longer throbbed and her heart regained a steady, if frantic, tempo.

  Gasping for breath she glanced down at Mrs Thomas.

  The old lady was dead, a look of abject terror frozen onto her face.

  Laura tried to back away but something held her in place. Slowly, past the fear and adrenaline, she realised that Mrs Thomas still gripped tightly onto her hand.

  Even in death the old lady refused to let go.

  Laura stumbled down the corridor, praying that her gas-polluted lungs didn’t give out before she could find help. The lights kept flickering on and off, creating a strobe effect as they alternated between sheet lightning and blackest night. It was disorienting as hell and the pain from Laura’s wounds didn’t help matters but she wasn’t staying in that room.

  She had called hoarsely for someone to free her from Mrs Thomas’s grasp, her raspy shout fading to a dull whisper. Desperate, she kicked at the woman sleeping in the next bed, hoping to rouse her.

  The plump figure rolled over and Laura saw she wasn’t sleeping.

  The woman’s face had been burned off, only a few remnants of charred flesh still clinging to blackened bone. Wisps of smoke drifted up from her skull, the stench of burning fat beginning to overpower the last vestiges of ozone left by the creature.

  Laura screamed, leaping back, away fro
m the melted face. The violent movement dragged Mrs Thomas up to a sitting position but then she acted as an anchor, arresting Laura’s flight.

  Lacking the strength to drag her from the bed Laura clawed at the old woman’s fingers. Still she failed to dislodge her. Finally, in a mad frenzy, she forced Mrs Thomas’s little finger back – further, further – until the joint snapped. This loosened the grip a little and she set to work on the next finger and the next, popping them all out of place until she could escape.

  Now she staggered along the hospital’s corridors, searching for someone to make sense of what was happening.

  She looked through the window into the next room. A patient writhed on the bed, screaming as a doctor wearing a cravat and a blood-spattered apron sawed off the patient’s leg with a hacksaw. Stumbling on to the next room she saw a figure in a hooded robe, gloves and a ghastly, beaked mask, applying leeches to a patient’s stomach. In the next room she found a gleaming robot plunging its arm into a patient’s chest without puncturing the skin or even leaving a mark. A second later the robot withdrew its arm clutching the patient’s still beating heart. Picking up a device of shining chrome and circuitry the robot again reached into the chest cavity without leaving a mark and set about attaching the device to where the patient’s heart had been. The fact that the patient had died of fright when his heart was removed appeared lost on the robot.

  Aghast, Laura limped down the stairs and out of the hospital. Once outside she pulled up short wondering if she might have been better off staying in her bed.