The One We Feed

by Kristina Meister

  The jhana allowed me to explore, to seek out any and every part of the place I entered, the smells and sounds as perceived by the minds I touched, but this chilling state of observation was not only detached, it suffered no interference. Either I found what I was looking for, or I did not.

  Petula.

  The already muted tones dissolved in the swirls of water-shadows, and I was left staring into a shifting darkness. After long moments of staring hard, I pulled her face from the moving shades and miniature currents. A movement of my hand brought her to life, and the scene of her captivity evolved through the fractal flickers from under the door.

  She was strapped onto a gurney with thick leather and buckles, and I could instantly see why. Her room was tiny, the walls the same pale green that was the color of all institutional hothouses. Somehow, Petula had found a marker and had decorated, coated, and successfully disguised them with scenes of native simplicity dominated by eyes. Eyes in pairs, of all sizes, a single eye crying dark tears, orbs with no pupils, and eyelashes like broom bristles; they were everywhere, in every nook and spare space. But on each wall, as central and as dominating as insect queens, were a pair of narrowed eyes separated by a dark dot, brows arching largely like crescent moons, a swirl like a question mark where the nose should have been. Like markings of the cardinal directions, they looked at each other, their knowing gazes crossing her futilely as she stared upward at nothing. Her chest was heaving, her curls were damp and stuck to her forehead, her cheeks were flushed, and whatever demons had possessed and driven her into bondage, seemed to quiet with each deep breath.

  She could feel me.

  The image faded like ink diluting, and I came from it shivering.

  Could it be that in that brief period of exposure, I had somehow acquired Petula’s gift?

  I thought of the man I’d killed. I had known instantly what his gift appeared to be, and then….

  I sat up in the water, numb, steaming with the heat I now gave off. My heart was pounding, my head throbbing, not with exposure but with the thought the perhaps, somehow, I had misjudged even myself.

  I was almost positive that I had come into my powers by purely non-invasive means. If I spent enough time with a person, I simply grew into them and took on the characteristics I admired or feared. It was memetic, ideas transferred to me over time, ideas I transmitted to myself at the Crossroads, ideas that turned to structures in the brain, and from them to chemical cursors, and then to a shift in DNA. At least, that was how Arthur had made it seem; but what if that was all some kind of insulation he provided. What if it was all much more nefarious?

  I thought back, running through the twisted corridors of my weirdly constructed memory like a crazy person.

  Ursula was the first. I didn’t exhibit her talent until long after her death, but what if that was just because I was still growing? I had stabbed her while injured. It was possible that her blood and mine had mingled.

  My hand rose to my mouth. Karl had shared blood with me in that kiss. But I remember feeling like I could see his gift and resist it before he actually used it on me. That had been a vision, something that had never happened. I’d thought it was a warning of Jinx’s immediate danger, but what if that vision carried far more information than I had been able to interpret in the moment? Could it have been some kind of foretelling, a future echo of the gift I was going to inherit?

  I had wiped blood from Moksha’s face, just before I’d found that I could mimic his gift.

  William had handed me his knife and I had used it to cut the stitches on my scarificator wound. A miss-flick of the wrist, some hateful self-mutilation; could it be that his blood had been on the blade?

  But Jinx, what of him? I had kissed him too, that night in his house, when the soldiers were running about, automatic weapons cradled like children. How had I exchanged fluids with him? Then I thought of his numerous piercings that seemed to constantly be shifting and sprouting on his always-new features. Could that be the way?

  I thought of the bloody smudge on my face, of Petula’s hand stapled to my chest; two new gifts in one day, sudden and perfected in so little time.

  But if it wasn’t a place to make myself, then what good was the Crossroads? What had it given me? If I was just a butterfly collector, pinning specimen to wooden plains, if I was just a monster, feeding off the protracted miseries of others, then there was no higher good, no perfect grace. There was no enlightenment.

  I gasped and covered my face, cold in the water though it still put out clouds of humidity that twisted around me magnificently.

  I had once entertained the notion that the Sangha was a conspiracy to conglomerate wealth in the underworld, but I was beginning to think that AMRTA was an exception, that somehow the organization—as disorganized as it was—was the most impoverished, destitute, morally bankrupt group of creatures ever to be pitied. Karl had been the elite all along, since it seemed his counterpart in California had very little resources to work with. He hadn’t even bothered to move Petula to some other secret location, and why should he when it would be so easy to hide her among humans that humanity wouldn’t even acknowledge?

  I rose from the tub and perched on the cold plastic of the toilet, dripping.

  There had to be something I could do to help her, but all I could imagine was reaching out to Karl. He had offered me his resources, was it so wrong to use them?

  I snatched the thick robe off the door hanger and wrapped it around myself in an unfeeling frenzy. I grabbed the telephone from the counter where I’d left it and texted Jinx.

  “Send me Karl’s #.”

  It was but a moment before he replied, “Just ring him on psychic hotline.”

  “Fuck U. Send now!”

  Ten numbers blinked back at me. My phone dialed them at a touch.

  To my surprise, it was not a secretary who answered but Karl himself. He seemed upset, and in his voice I heard frustration, something he could no longer hide so easily.

  “Karl, it’s Lilith.”

  The clouds immediately cleared. “I was worried. You left me so quickly, I thought I’d made it all….”

  “Listen to me,” I nearly shouted. My strides were carrying me back and forth in front of the beds, in front of the many mirrors I tried hard not to look at. “Petula, the name I said before, do you know her?”

  “Yes. She’s a remote viewer. We’ve been employing her talents since about 1890.”

  I took a deep breath. “Don’t ask how I know, but she doesn’t have talents to be employed anymore.”

  He said nothing. I could hear his breath coming in shorter rasps.

  “She’s in a mental hospital here. Find her. Get her out, somehow.”

  “Done. Anything else?”

  “Find out what went wrong.”

  “I had already begun. I only needed more….”

  “I know. Find William and do….” I halted and waved an arm around uncertainly. “Do whatever tests you need to, I guess. A full physical. See why he’s still...functioning properly. I need to be sure.”

  “As you wish, though he’s been quite clear that he wants nothing to do with me.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  I hung up before we got into anything deeper than that. My mind was running laps, pieces of it surpassing others, a tangled relay that made no sense.

  “Matt,” I texted, “Karl will call 2 run tests on Will. Make Will do it. Please 4 me.” As soon as the message was sent, I collapsed onto one of the beds and felt exhausted.

  “Petula,” I whispered, “from the Latin ‘to seek.’”

  Perchance to find.

  Chapter 9

  The Savage Beast

  It all came back to the girl I wasn’t meant to know about, the tiny, dark-skinned girl I’d first seen in my strange vision. I didn’t even know if she was a girl or if she was some new kind of monster; after all, she had shape-shifted. Was I meant to save her, steal her gift, or kill her? I had no clue, but it was sure th
at if I didn’t seek, I’d never know.

  I looked around the hotel room. I was alone with nowhere to be, nothing to do. There was no way out of it.

  I lay down on the bed, still draped in my bathrobe and slightly damp. What was I afraid of? I was here and she was…wherever she was. If anything, being inside her head would help me to understand her better and be less afraid.

  I forced some deep breathing, letting each exhale take me lower and lower. By a slow process of selective sensation, I shut off nerves one by one, until I was floating inside my own body. I was lighter than air, and, suddenly, the air had me. I reached for her and within the thought was at her side.

  In the cruel light from the overhead florescent bulbs, she looked nothing like the snarling terror she had been. She looked dead. So many tubes stuck out of her that I became convinced that someone, somewhere was attempting to torment the real girl by sticking this one with cursed pins.

  Machines blipped and binged, registering different bodily functions. Several IVs pumped things in or took things out. A catheter bag hung on the edge of the metal table, right next to the thick strap holding her in place.

  So this is what Petula meant by sleeping, I thought, as a momentary lapse of anger crackled my reception like a storm. They were keeping her subdued with chemicals and, when she had tried to fight them, had chained her to the table and forced her to submit.

  If the Sangha had counted her an enemy, then as far as I was concerned, the two of us were buddies.

  I could not recall ever having mind-melded with a coma patient, but it could not be any different from the time I’d learned Cantonese. After all, that gentleman had been very close to death. With her, there was no conscious mind, no interface to get in the way. I would not have to listen to the translation of her experiences. I could just see them as they had existed.

  I covered her brain like a warm blanket and set about lining my own thoughts up with her haphazard ones. I let her neurons lead the way, like little bobbins weaving a pattern in my thoughts. The memory came together slowly, like leaves falling mysteriously into place, fleshing out a scene.

  It began with a photo, wreathed and set atop an easel.

  My heart sank.

  “But our sister, Esther, was not just a woman of God. Like every member of her family before her, she had dreams! She had plans! She was going places, and she was taking her daughter with her.”

  I could feel the girl’s emptiness and knew it well. It wasn’t just loss; it was the burden of a person that was the last in her family. The only stories that could ever be told had to be told by her. She was a personality afloat.

  She looked to her left, at the tired social worker waiting to take her to some place that was not her home. She looked back at the podium, feeling so blank and dispassionate about the whole thing that she hadn’t even heard the Reverend introduce her.

  He beckoned. She turned around. The whole crowd was looking her way expectantly. The social worker gave her a nudge.

  “It’s your turn, Reesa,” she said.

  Reesa looked with distaste at the fingers that had dug into her ribs. “Don’t touch me.”

  She got to her feet before the woman could reply and pulled a paper out of her pocket. When Gran had died, her mother had spoken at the funeral. She’d talked about all the important things Gran had done, but everything she’d said was some kind of twisted version, like she was using the facts of Gran’s life to prove some kind of point, make an argument about how the world really worked. But Reesa remembered how that pain felt, and there was no argument, no point. It was all just a bunch of bullshit.

  She turned and faced the crowd of people she only half-knew. Some of them had been people her mother hadn’t even liked. So many different types of people, and yet they were all dressed the same. They had no right.

  The Reverend handed her a microphone.

  “Go ahead, Honey.”

  She looked at him, her inner fire of indignation stoked a little higher.

  “Don’t call me Honey.”

  The words rang out over the speakers. There was a smattering of uncertain laughter. Reesa ended it with a sharp glare.

  “You don’t belong here, none of you.”

  Several shifted uncomfortably.

  “You think sittin’ here is gonna do something for you? It ain’t. My mom got shot in the head by someone who didn’t even know she was there, someone who was trying to kill someone else. She’s dead. Here you are looking at me like I’m supposed to tell you all about her. Like I’m supposed to have an answer or maybe tell you that even though she’s dead, she did all sorts of amazing things. You think I’m gonna cry, and you’ll all feel better about the fact that there ain’t no one here for me. Well, I ain’t.”

  With an embarrassed lunge, the Reverend moved to take the mic from her. She jerked it from his grasp and stepped away from him, keeping him back with just the look on her face.

  “Don’t you dare! After this, no one’s gonna even know I exist. You’ll all go away and feel better, like you said your goodbyes. You’ll all go home with clear consciences and I’ll still be here with my dead momma and my dead Gran. I’m gonna say what I wanna say. If you don’t like it, you can go get one of your relatives shot and get your own mic.”

  The congregation was so quiet that it seemed as if they weren’t even breathing.

  “My mom and I fought all the time,” she said, pulling the cord away from the Reverend’s feet, just in case. “The truth is, she didn’t want to even have me. My dad was a loser, all the way up until he died by fallin’ into a ditch, drunk. She thought she did the best she could, but it never felt like that. If she didn’t have Gran, she wouldn’t never have finished school. She quit every job she ever had. She was an angry person and always said that everyone else was tryin’ to keep her down. She never spent any time with me. She never took me shopping or out to play. She never even brought me to church.”

  A few people had begun to mumble or whisper to each other, shading their mouths with the program emblazoned with Esther’s face.

  Reesa began to shake. She clutched the mic like it was a lifeline.

  “My mother was not a good person.”

  The Reverend again attempted to cut her off. “It isn’t good to talk about the dead….”

  “What, honestly?” Reesa shouted. “I ain’t talking for her. I’m talking for me. No one can talk for her, because we ain’t her. I’ll speak my mind, so you shut your mouth and let me finish.”

  There was a collective gasp. Some older women sitting close to the front were shaking their heads. Reesa forged ahead, determined to finish her eulogy. She held up her paper and took a deep breath.

  “My mother was not a good person, but she wanted to be. She hated evil and injustice, whether it was real or just in her head. She studied all the time, because she thought that if she just kept looking, any question she put her mind to, she could answer. She knew how to put on a bandaid or tie a shoe. She knew how to write song lyrics and poems.” Her voice broke.

  The throng was a field of wax sculptures, staring at her in awe.

  “She made cookies on Saturdays. She watched old movies with Gran. She danced in the rain in our backyard.”

  Her vision misted over. Droplets smeared the words on the page. She wiped her face and shook it off with a few shudders.

  “I will miss the arguments she used to have, the way she could make any person feel stupid for even questioning her. I don’t know why. I’ll miss waking up to find her asleep on the couch with the TV on infomercials. I’ll miss Pizza Thursday, blanket forts, and when she sometimes put makeup on me.”

  She shook her head and looked out at their anonymous faces. She just didn’t care anymore.

  “My mother is dead. No one is ever gonna know what she might have done or who she could have been. I’ll never get the chance to make friends with her or like her and that…that’s what makes me sad. People are gonna say, ‘oh what a shame,’ and try to make her dea
th into some kind of example for how to make the world a better place, but if you need an example to make the world a better place, then the world ain’t never gonna be a better place.”

  She summoned the Reverend with a glance. “You all go to your potluck now.” Then she handed him the microphone and walked down the aisle toward the door, the social worker running to catch up.

  The memory faded. She had been so hurt that she hadn’t really thought much on the situation, ruminated on the casket or its grisly contents. Yet I got the overwhelming sense of a deep and wise person germinating within her, filled with emotion but never overtaken by it. After how I had been feeling recently, like a rag doll tossed on the tide, it was almost comforting to hold onto her.

  Her mind wandered for a while, cutting together clips of foster homes, of fights with other children and the horrible people who were supposed to take care of her, of the social worker and her exhausted face. It went on and on, until it came to a halt in a bus-station garbage can.

  Reesa was digging through it, forcing herself not to throw up at the smell. She didn’t like what she was doing, but it was necessary. Over and over she repeated the mantra, that no one would ever take care of her, that she had to do it herself.

  There was no moon. The bus depot was almost deserted since transportation shut down around ten. It wasn’t safe to be out, but she was hungry. If she didn’t find something soon, though, it would have to wait until the morning. She had to go back to her hiding spot, or someone would find her. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  She found a half-eaten sandwich that didn’t smell too bad and was about to slip it into her backpack when a hand closed over her mouth. A larger body jerked her backward toward the alley behind the bus park. She didn’t waste time. She didn’t think about being afraid. She opened her mouth until a big lump of flesh was inside it and then bit down with one hundred percent of her strength.