The Whisperer in Dissonance

by Welke, Ian

  “You already called her last night.”

  “Her?”

  “Your mom. She’s sending someone to come get you.”

  “I spoke to her? Really her? I can’t remember…” I look up. I delve as deep as I can into the blurry, swirling, nauseating memories of the night before. I can’t come up with any trace or even a flash of making a phone call, let alone speaking to my mom. The memories end with a vision of four of the nightmare-clockwork cops standing over me. “Where are the cops who brought me in?”

  “Oh…” He laughs again. “Their shift ended hours ago.” He cranes his neck reacting to a phone ringing down the hall. He goes to answer it.

  My head spins. More memories come in blurred flashes. The cops. Buzzing noise. Being sick on the floor of the cell. But there’s still no memory of calling my mom.

  I must have zoned out, because the deputy is back and is unlocking my cell. “Good news. Your bail’s paid.” He leads me down the hall.

  The jail is empty. It’s like the inverse of the police station where I reported my mother’s disappearance. Only about a third of the lights are on in the halls, and I only see one other deputy. He taps a pen on a clipboard as he walks through the cells. Is he tallying empty beds? Despite the lack of lights, the bright white in front of me doesn’t fade completely. And the smell… There’s a smell like antiseptic. That cheap, lemon-lime, chemical cleanser stench turns my stomach.

  The deputy opens the door to a waiting room. I rush in, hoping to see my mother.

  Pete stands there waiting. “Come on, Annie. I’ll take you home so you can get cleaned up before we go to the office. We got a lot to do today.”

  “Pete?” Light headed, I have to grab the back of a chair to catch myself. “What are you doing here?”

  Great, now I owe him.

  “I talked to your mom. She asked that I come get you.”

  “My mom? Do you even know my mom? How…”

  “She called me.” He folds his sports coat over his arm. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  ~

  I want to believe that it’s all been a bad dream, but there’s something off about the drive. Pete takes surface streets, making a comment about the 91 being closed for construction. Then he avoids the 57 saying something about an accident.

  “Shouldn’t the streets be clogged then? If everyone’s avoiding the freeways?” The streets are deserted. We drive by a BMW M5, a Mercedes S Class, a Jaguar XJ like Pete’s, but these are few and far between and every car I see has dealer plates.

  “Really?” He has a look on his face like a father who is about to pull the car over. “Your boss picks you up from jail, and you think this is the time to pester me with questions?”

  I don’t say anything. I toy with the idea of jumping out of the car at the first stoplight, but I feel like hell and I have a rule about not making rash decisions while hungover. If this is a hangover.

  When I get to work, the parking garage is empty except for Claire’s Mercedes and now Pete’s Jaguar.

  “Where is everyone?”

  He glares at me. He still doesn’t like answering questions apparently. “Almost everyone’s out sick. Feel lucky. We need you. Otherwise maybe I’d have just left you in jail.” He looks at me like he’s searching for gratitude. “But your mother was pretty insistent.”

  “Did my mom say where she is?” I get out of the car and follow him. He walks fast down the stairwell and through the door, and I have to struggle to keep up.

  He doesn’t say anything as he walks into the office. Despite the absence of workers, all of the lights and monitors are lit. That white light that’s been low in the background hits me more intensely. I put my hand to my forehead like I’m shielding my eyes from the sun on a bright day. It doesn’t help. Pete leads me past the offices and into the tech support pit. The light on my monitor flashes. Nine hundred-ninety-nine calls in the queue. “A thousand…” My voice trails off as I realize it’s more than that. It never occurred to the programmer who made our call log software that we’d need four digits for the call queue, so it stops at nine ninety-nine.

  I sit down and put on my headset and start taking calls.

  “Hello, how can I help you?”

  “I just wanted to call and tell you how happy we are with our service.”

  “That’s nice, but if there’s nothing I can do for you…”

  “Nope. We just wanted to call with our appreciation.”

  The next four calls are all similar. Two of them even ask to speak to my supervisor not to complain, but to suggest that I need a raise and a bonus.

  This can’t be real. It makes no sense. People calling in because they’re happy?

  “Annie? Annie? Can you come to my office?” Pete’s voice says over the PA.

  As I stand, there’s a strange medicinal smell and a burning in my head. By the time I’ve steadied myself, I’m standing in the doorway of Pete’s office. He sits behind his desk and motions for me to take a seat in an empty chair next to him. His posters have all been taken down and replaced with pictures of my favorite show, a cult favorite that I had no idea Pete watches.

  “Sit down, Annie. I think we need to discuss what we can do for you. What can the company do so that you can be happy?”

  I shake my head.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “This. This isn’t real. It’s transparently fake. What is it that you hope to gain by this?”

  I expect him to get angry, for his face to go beet red and for him to start screaming. There’s just the smallest flush to his cheeks as he says, “Well, if you don’t want to play along, I guess we can have you sent back to your cell.” He reaches for the phone on his desk.

  The door swings open. Michael stands in the doorway. Michael’s cellphone flashes and Pete falls to the floor. Michael grabs my hand.

  ~

  I don’t ask where Michael got the car, a beat up Toyota. He tosses me the keys. “You drive. I need to see if anyone’s made contact.”

  He sits in the passenger seat, eyeing his phone. I pull the car out of the parking lot, resisting the urge to floor it. I turn and merge with the sparse traffic. I drive straight for a couple of blocks. He glances at me between glimpses at the road and the phone in his hands.

  I make a couple of quick turns to get off the main road. Once we’ve gone a couple of miles without sign of someone following, I pullover under a large oak tree.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  He looks confused. “What do you mean? I rescued you.”

  “How did you even know where I was?”

  “At your office?”

  “In their dream.”

  He shakes his head. “You weren’t in a dream. I didn’t have to hack in. I just followed your boss.”

  “So we’re not in a dream?”

  “Now?”

  I glare at him.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. “We’re not in a dream. We’re on a side street somewhere in Orange County. Why would you think you were in a dream?”

  “I got captured. The police seemed in on it. They’re in league with the people who have that warehouse and that creature we saw at the mall. When I woke up, the police were normal people and were weirdly nice. Then I get bailed out. And work is a nice place to be. People were even calling in to compliment me.”

  “Was your boss nice?”

  “Even in a dream, Pete could manage to be a dick.”

  After reflecting for a moment he says, “I don’t think it was a dream. It was probably a setup though. Trying to get you to give something away.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to think that I’m there, at the warehouse. I don’t want my consciousness trapped in that meat vat.”

  He holds his hand up as if swearing an oath. “I am sure that you are not at that warehouse.”

  I let my breath out slowly and then inhale again before restarting the car. “So where to?”

  He looks back at me and tilts his
head like a confused dog. He checks his phone again. “Give me a second. Take us back to my apartment.”

  “Is it safe? Won’t they be looking for us there?”

  “We should be fine. We should be able to find what we need there.”

  “What do we need?”

  He stops and looks at the phone again. “I think I left a contact list there.”

  “Not on your phone?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer.

  I take a left turn and head back toward his place. The streets continue to be empty apart from the odd car that passes by. A large buildup of leaves blows through the intersection. It looks as though the street sweepers haven’t been through in a month.

  When we arrive at his apartment building, the lot is as empty as the street, but someone has cleared the cars from the front of the security gate, and I don’t smell smoke so I guess the fire is out. Michael sits in the car for a moment as though he’s waiting for me to do something. After several seconds he fumbles with his phone once more, before he gets out of the car and heads to his apartment.

  He turns the key in the door.

  “Aren’t you going to…”

  Flashes strobe as the cameras snap pictures of us entering the apartment.

  “I guess you don’t care if it takes your own picture.”

  He stands for a second, blinking after the flash. He starts going through the drawers of his desk. “Did you see where I left it?”

  “I still don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “I didn’t say where our safe-house is? Did you see me put away a file somewhere in my apartment? Didn’t we have a place to meet up if we got separated?”

  “Michael, how do you not know that?” I step back toward the door.

  The lights go black. Even the sun behind me. When the light comes back on it’s a surgery light in what I’m guessing is a hospital room, and I’m lying on my back. A man in a doctor’s smock and mask stands over me. There are things taped to my head. Disks stuck to my temple and neck. Cables tug taut and stop me from moving my head. In Michael’s voice the doctor says, “I guess that didn’t work after all.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I pull my feet off the cold tile and slide them into my slippers. My head throbs. I rub my gauze-mittened hand over needle marks on my right arm. I can’t see clearly, nor can I remember what Michael had said. I was talking with Michael, that much I know.

  The stench of something lingers trapped in my sinuses and melds with my headache. Pine. Or lemon. It smells like it’s been sprayed in here to cover up the reek of urine. I wince and rub my eyes. The room is dark through my blurry vision.

  “Anne,” Doctor Harris says, “Do you know where you are?”

  Doctor Harris is the psychiatrist they’ve assigned to me. He has a friendly smile and the most ridiculous comb-over I’ve ever seen. Combined with his bifocals, this makes him look comical. I wonder how patients take him seriously.

  I nod. I was brought here. They had to wrestle me to control me. I can remember these things, but something, probably the drugs they’ve given me, makes it hard to connect any of these events. “Los Alamitos Mental Health.”

  “Good. How do you feel? Have you been able to rest?”

  I nod again, but I’m not sure. The medicine they give me helps me sleep, but the sleep reminds me of drinking until I’ve passed out. I wake up knowing I’ve been out, but I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all. My throat is scratchy. My tongue needs shaving, and no matter how much I blow my nose, my sinuses smell like baby aspirin and that antiseptic.

  “Doctor, will my mother come to visit?”

  He pauses. “I imagine she will. She seemed very concerned when I spoke with her on the phone. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re able to send you home earlier than you think. When we agree that you’re ready, we can work together on an outpatient basis.”

  “Doctor, what’s happened to me?”

  “Are you familiar with the term cognitive dissonance?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think it meant something so severe.”

  “Normally, no. We think that you had a psychotic break, probably brought on by a number of factors, sleep deprivation being at the forefront of them. This may have put you into a delusional state.”

  “It seemed so real.”

  His pen scratches at the paper. “Of course it did. Your mind is powerful. It can imagine all sorts of things. If it imagines something that isn’t real, it’s quite easy for it to do so in a manner that you will not be able to differentiate from reality.”

  “How long do I have to stay here? If I don’t go back to work, I’ll lose my job and my insurance. I’m not sure my insurance even covers anything like this.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. Your insurance will take care of everything. What sort of society would we be if we just turned the sick out into the streets when they can’t afford to pay for treatment?”

  I shake my head. “The sort of society I saw in my delusion I suppose. It really did seem real.”

  My eyes focus and the blurriness decreases. The light is low. He smiles. He looks earnest and sincere.

  “Doctor, I can’t see too well. Is it dark in here?”

  He stops writing for a moment. “It is probably the side effects of the medication. We’ll try reducing the dosage and see how that works until we arrive at something that works better.”

  Sitting back down, I sink into the cushions of a sofa. I shake my head. I can’t remember why I was standing in the first place.

  “Tell me about your work,” the doctor says.

  “It’s kind of boring. It’s basic call center stuff. People call us with problems with their computers and we try to help them. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the hours are terrible, the pay is low, and there’s the threat they they’ll just outsource it all to Mumbai.”

  He scribbles on his notepad. With each note he takes, time seems to slip into slow motion. The pen scrapes the paper sounding louder than is really possible. The scraping sound works together with the droning of the air conditioner to form a strange duet. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Well, Mumbai might be a stretch. They may actually be paying us so little now that India might not be any cheaper, but you get the idea.”

  The doctor shakes his head. “I think you might be confusing your job with a delusional version of your job. There are rules protecting workers from such threats. This job where your quality of life is at the whim of a middle manager and where your low pay barely covers an exorbitant rent for a small apartment… There are protections in our society for such ills.”

  “It’s hard to tell where the nightmare ends and reality begins.”

  “Of course. The thing to do is to take this slowly. Maybe we should stop for now?”

  I shake my head hard. “If you think we need to, Doc, but I’m of the opinion that if talking to you is going to make me better, then I don’t want to stop until I have to.”

  He raises his hand covering his mouth. Did he just laugh at me?

  “That is fine. I think since you are eager now to continue, there is something that we should explore. It’s part of your escalated delusion. You said that you were with an old friend from college, but then you were reluctant to expand upon that. Perhaps we can delve into that now?”

  “I don’t know, Doctor.”

  “You would feel as though you were betraying someone’s confidence, even though you acknowledge that you have only spoken to that person in a state created by your own imagination.”

  “That’s pretty insightful, but I guess that’s what you get paid for.”

  He looks up from his notepad, eyeing me like he’s judging whether or not I can take what he’s about to say. “If it helps, we’ve already checked on Michael. I’m sorry to tell you this, but he passed away several years ago. He had an aneurysm. I’m sorry about your friend, but you see, it’s not possible that you spoke to him. And you have nothing to worry about, there is no one to betr
ay.”

  ~

  I stare at the opaque window in my room. The doctor said my headaches are due to photosensitivity from the medication, but I wonder why they don’t want me looking outside.

  Is the outside light that bright? Do they think my delusion will take over again if I can see the outside world?

  I can tell that it’s daytime, but the chalky glass blocks all other detail.

  Pain behind my eyes sears through to my temples. The more I focus, the more it wears me down. My mummy-bandage wrapped hands scrape against my skin as I try to massage my temples.

  What’s the rationale for these anyway? I haven’t shown any signs of hurting myself.

  I turn my head. Aunt Margaret paces between the chair and my hospital bed.

  How long has she been there?

  I can’t remember when she came in.

  Have we talked? We must have hugged hellos.

  Not wanting Margaret to think I’m more mentally ill than the doctors have told her, I speak quickly. “Where’s Mom?”

  She looks frustrated. Have I already asked that? Am I repeating conversations?

  Margaret calms and forces her expression from frustration to understanding. “She’s not able to come right now, but she says she’ll be here soon.” She looks up at me, but her eyes quickly drop back down, not holding my gaze. “We all love you and want you to get better. We have a card for you.” Margaret opens the get well card, and places it between my outstretched mittened hands.

  The names on the card, too many for the amount of space and more names than I can think of family members, swirl together. I blink several times, hoping the delusion will stop, but it doesn’t work. I look away before it forms the sigil from my dream. “Thank them all for me.” I set the card down.

  “You need to listen to the doctor. Your problem has always been that you think too much. Sometimes you just need to shut off your thoughts.”

  Stop thinking. What a great idea. Be just like you.

  A wave of guilt hits me as I feel horrible for even feeling sarcastic.

  She’s here visiting you while you’re sick.

  I start to speak, to say something, but I stop. A halo of light erupts behind Margaret’s head. Telltale signs of the onset of a migraine pulse into my head. I cover my eyes with both hands.