by Dima Zales
“I think this would go a lot better if I didn’t have these on.” I jiggle the handcuffs and try not to look too eager.
Agent Lancaster betrays his excitement again by getting up and walking over to my side of the table. Heart drumming, I watch him take out a key and undo the cuffs.
As soon as my hands are free, everything around me comes into focus to the point where I momentarily feel as though I’ve regained internet access and my brain boost. In less than a blink, I relive the moment Agent Lancaster slapped me in the face and the indignity and pain I suffered while strapped down in that cement room. The awful recollections culminate in the memory of that feeding tube going into my nose, and my slow-boiling anger explodes with the force of Vesuvius.
My left hand forms into a fist, and I punch Agent Lancaster in the crotch—a move made easy by his current stance. Something soft crunches under my knuckles, and I almost feel male sympathy for my enemy.
Almost, but not quite.
A grunt escapes Lancaster’s lips, and he begins to double over.
Then again, maybe he isn’t doubling over. His hand is balled into a fist, and I suspect he’s planning to hit me back.
I turn my head, and his fist whooshes past my right ear. I grip the pen in my right hand and randomly stab the source of my angst in his quickly approaching face.
The aviator glasses fly into the mirrored glass on the right wall, and the pen tip enters his eye with a stomach-twisting squishy noise.
Agent Lancaster’s scream is inhuman, and I gape in horrified trance at the damage I just wreaked. Again, more thoughts than normal swoosh through my mind, the main one being a conviction that my usual PTSD nightmares will expand to include this scene—assuming I ever get to sleep again.
To his credit, despite the agony he must be in, my enemy uses my hesitation to reach into his jacket for what I assume is his weapon.
If I survive the next moment, I’ll have to build Gogi a statue for all the disarming drills he had me do. I leap to my feet, and my hands move with practiced confidence. As soon as I see the gun gleam in the halogen light, I twist Lancaster’s right wrist, and the gun clanks against the table before falling onto the chair and then hitting the floor with a metallic, tile-cracking sound. Continuing almost on autopilot, I put my foot behind my opponent and push him.
As Agent Lancaster’s body flies into the mirror, I hear the door behind me crack open.
I leap for the gun.
In the mirror, I catch a glimpse of someone wearing SWAT gear, but I still hold a glimmer of hope. Maybe I can get the gun and somehow shoot my way out of this mess.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality of this universe doesn’t comply with my hopes. Something bites painfully at my right shoulder. The impact is too mild to be a bullet, though. The prongs of a Taser, perhaps?
I grab the Glock’s handle and begin to pivot, ready to aim. But before I’m even halfway facing my opponent, fifty thousand volts spread through every muscle in my body.
I drop the gun as my body jerks uncontrollably. My vision blurs as pain spears through my body, but I make out a shadow looming over me.
A needle pricks my skin, and a hard boot connects with my head in a violent kick.
My world fades to black.
Chapter Twenty-One
I slowly become self-aware, but my mind is hazy to the point where I can’t tell if I’m awake or dreaming.
Figuring the solution is simple, I open my eyes.
Though it takes great effort to think, I still have enough wits to note that if the last room they kept me in was cliché, then this room outdoes it in strides. I’ve never seen a closer representation of an insane asylum with padded walls. Everything around me seems to be made out of cheap pillows in gray pillowcases, including the floor.
There are no cameras that I can see, but I feel someone’s unfriendly eyes watching me.
As I could’ve predicted, when I look down, I see a straitjacket binding my upper body, with my arms forcefully crossed in front and secured in the back. Now that I think about it, I also feel something on my face, and there’s a pulling sensation at the back of my head, as if I’m wearing that signature Hannibal Lector mask.
My sense of being watched gets stronger, and I feel like bacterium under a microscope as I try to puzzle out my strange surroundings.
Once I start looking around, I find that the action of thought is getting harder with every second. My senses seem to blur, and I swear I see the restraints holding my arms sprout tentacles of warm light. They paint a pretty mosaic across the room, making it momentarily less gray and unhealthily cheery. The nice colors make my paranoia subside, and I feel good for a moment.
Unfortunately, the warm light soon turns on itself, and it looks as though the room is surrounded by a herd of miniature black holes—places in space determined to suck in all the light and warmth in the universe. Worse, eyes of dark intelligence stare at me from the event horizons, and I get the urge to crawl under the floor pillows.
“Einstein, am I sleeping right now?” I ask out loud and realize that to someone who doesn’t know about Brainocytes, this question might seem as crazy as everything else in this room.
Neither the AI nor the real scientist named Einstein reply. From some remnants of critical thinking, I recall this was a way I could tell if I was dreaming or not. Then again, wouldn’t the realization of being inside a dream wake me up? And if not, wouldn’t my current level of panic accomplish the same trick?
“Is this really happening?” I ask myself, but nothing happens—nor did I expect anything to happen since I can’t have a pre-cog moment without a brain boost.
In grim wonder, I watch the black holes turn into smaller black dots. The dots stream toward me to cover my skin like insects.
I wish I hadn’t thought of insects, because as soon as I do, my skin feels like an army of spiders decided to battle centipedes on the outer and inner surfaces of my dermis.
If I hadn’t been restrained, I’d be clawing at my skin to get rid of the creepy crawlers.
As my breathing speeds up in panic, I tell myself there’s nothing on my skin and certainly nothing under it. I tell myself I’m sleeping, but the experience feels more visceral by the second.
I begin screaming, and the bugs fly back into the air and merge into an amorphous malevolent presence in the room. The presence oozes gray colors that spread everywhere, including into my nose and ears. I inhale the gray colors and feel like I’m being polluted and turned into something less human. I try to cough out the poison, but only suck in more grayness into my lungs.
“If you bite off a bolt from a choo-choo train, how does it affect the price of a kilo of hotdogs?” a loud male voice booms all around me. “Keeping in mind that a brick is floating on the glass river, of course.”
I’m attempting to compute the question or statement I just heard, when an even louder female voice demands, “What are you not thinking about right now?”
I feel like my head is about to literally explode as I ponder the second question, but the burst is prevented by a chorus of new voices that boom, “This sentence is false.”
I contemplate screaming again, but it seems impossible to drown out these voices, especially a moment later, when they all begin speaking out of sync with each other, each voice louder than the next, each statement like a knife stabbing into the remains of my fragile sanity.
I no longer feel paranoia. Paranoia is what I am, and she feels me.
I try to ignore the visual and auditory onslaught and meditate, but it’s a disastrous idea because it allows me to pay attention to the bodily sensations that, like everything else, are out of control. I’m a beehive of aches that swiftly turn into pains in my right shoulder, which morph into a vaguely pleasurable sensation in my left toe and finally circle back into the pain spreading evenly throughout all my extremities. The rest of me feels like it’s made out of clay that someone cured into a solid state and shattered against the wall.
I
then try using pure willpower to ignore the sensations and voices, but it’s hard. The walls in the room breathe in and out, as though they’re the stomach lining of a giant squid that has swallowed me whole and is about to digest me. However, when I close my eyes, sunspots form images on the insides of my eyelids. They remind me of fairies having a rave, followed by an orgy, followed by a laser lightshow. The visuals assault my eyes even through the closed eyelids.
“Have my Brainocytes gone awry?” I ask someone mentally, though I only half recall what Brainocytes are and have no idea who I’m talking to. Realizing questions have a higher chance of getting answered if I ask them out loud, I add, “Have I gone insane?”
“No,” I mentally reply to myself. “Can’t even think about insanity right now, because if I think it, I might summon it.”
The feeling of being watched intensifies, and because I have nothing better to try, I roll on the floor. The movement instantly triggers the feeling of dropping through a soft surface and free-falling like during the HALO jump. Until this moment, that was the worst experience of my life.
As I fall, the air around me takes on the putrid, sulfuric stench of the color gray, and I can taste the pungent sourness of the number twenty. In the next moment, my thinking clears enough for me to recall that colors don’t smell and numbers have no taste—but Wi-Fi networks do. Piggybacking on this moment of clarity, I wonder if the voices and tricks of light are somehow being introduced from outside my brain? Are projectors and speakers surrounding me? Or is all this stuff being fed directly into my noggin? Something tells me nothing good can come from theorizing about thoughts being put into my brain, as that road leads to tinfoil hats. Then again, something also tells me that a properly insulated tinfoil hat made out of something suitable, like lead, could cause my brain to experience connectivity problems.
Realizing my eyes are open, I close them again, and it eases the feeling of my mind melting into a puddle. The free fall turns into a feeling of forward movement, and I swear I’m about to drive into a tunnel made of a kaleidoscope of bright symbols.
With my eyes closed, I wish I could close my ears too, because voices are still assaulting me. In fact, I’d give anything to simply put my hands over my ears, and it’s maddening that I can’t. I can’t even recall the reason my arms are stuck in place, refusing to move. I just know it has nothing to do with aliens.
Actually, the reason is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite remember it. Maybe my arms belong to someone else for the moment?
The cursed voices are now speaking as though from underwater, giving me the conviction that time is slowing around me, a feeling I’m familiar with, though I can’t recall why.
“I’d like to wake up now,” I yell the next time I feel a moment of clarity, but nothing changes and my journey into hell continues unabated.
What feels like a month later, I develop deep revelations about the ultimate nature of reality and wish I had a pen, paper, and hands to write them down with. I feel connected to a web of conscious beings that create the fabric of what we all know as existence. I realize that my world, such as it is, might only be a glorified videogame meant to amuse godlike intelligences that exist outside this plaything universe.
Soon, I understand that these metaphysical musings are there to mask a fear I’ve been unsuccessfully ignoring. It’s a rather familiar fear—the fear of losing my mind. In fact, I recall that this is something I’ve been worrying about since I learned I had a half-sister with schizophrenia. What really bothers me, though, is that I have trouble remembering what my half-sister’s name is or what her symptoms are, for that matter. Part of me even doubts I have a half-sister. I’m certainly not used to the idea of having one.
As soon as I allow myself to consider the possibility of insanity again, panic grows like a parasitic worm in my chest. For a moment, my rapid heartbeat silences the voices, and all I feel is the need to throw up.
A couple of dry heaves later, the sense that I’ve completely lost my mind grows stronger until it’s a conviction deep in my bones. My biggest worry seems to be how my mom will react when they tell her I’m genuinely crazy. What will she say?
“Make it stop,” I yell and roll on the cushioned floor. “Please. Someone. Make it stop.”
As though in reply, the voices get louder, and the lights in the room flicker from blindingly bright to nearly pitch black with increasing speed. I soon realize that the lights are speaking to me in Morse code, revealing important secrets only the chosen few are supposed to know. They tell me that the experiences in this current life can have a deep impact on the person you might become in the next life.
After what feels like another few years, the lights stop, and the voices speak at a lower volume.
I realize my eyes are open and I’m staring at the door to my room—though I could also be staring at a supernova that’s about to explode.
A figure is standing in the doorway. The bright light behind her makes me think of saints or angels, though there’s something more reminiscent of an alien visitor about the figure.
The being or person gets nearer. Though her edges are blurred against the gray backdrop of the room, I discern with some disappointment that this is merely a human woman plodding toward me.
A spotlight falls upon the woman’s face, and it takes me a only few moments to recognize her gently smiling face. She looks exactly like the therapist I visited a lifetime ago, though it could’ve been yesterday.
“Hello, Mike,” she says calmly. “I’m Dr. Golovasi, your psychiatrist.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Memories flood my consciousness.
As I recall Ada, a galaxy of warmth dances through my heart. I float in happy feelings related to Ada until I remind myself what I’m seeking in my memory. Ada made me see someone named Dr. Golovasi. It had something to do with me having problems sleeping. Ironically, there’s a high probability I’m inside a bad dream at this moment.
“Hello, ma’am,” I mumble through sandpaper lips. “Are you really here?”
Dr. Golovasi smiles sadly at me. The problem is that her large white teeth seem to come alive and grin at me, though their smiles are more sinister for some unfathomable reason.
“Do you know where you are?” Dr. Golovasi asks.
As though scared of her presence, the cursed voices stop screaming in my head long enough for me to consider her question.
“I’m in a government facility,” I reply, almost on autopilot. I don’t know how I arrived at the answer, but I feel a conviction that it’s true. My convictions might not be worth much, though, because I’m convinced the doctor’s forehead just sprouted a third eye that can see inside my deepest inner thoughts. The rest of her face looks confused, so I clarify my earlier statement by adding, “I think I might just be inside my head.”
Instead of saying anything, she walks over to where I’m lying and helps me sit up. Her hands are soft, and I feel their psychiatric healing warmth spread into the shoulder. I end up sitting in a crouch on the floor. The position is more comfortable and could come in handy if I decide to do some sit-ups later, though I guess it might look crazy if I suddenly started exercising while wearing a straightjacket.
“How would you feel if I told you this is a private mental health institution?” Dr. Golovasi asks, all her eyes, even the third one, radiating caring warmth. “Do you recall getting committed? Do you remember our sessions? What’s the last thing you recall?”
“It’s difficult for me to think,” I say, and the effort required to give her this answer makes me want to rest for a while. Since she just stands there, patiently looming over me, I do my best to recall more. “I remember how I was sitting on a comfortable couch in your office, and we were talking about Russia.”
“Yes.” She crouches and sits in a lotus pose on the soft floor. Her face is closer to mine, and this makes her third eye dissipate. “That’s excellent. Anything else?”
“I recall vague flashes of violence,” I
say and realize that talking like this seems to make the world around me more solid—proof that talk therapy works miracles, I suppose. “Did that violence really happen?”
“Some of the violence was real.” She fiddles with her glasses, her face the epitome of concern. “That’s how you ended up in this room. Most of the violence you recall, however, is part of a persistent delusion.”
“I hurt someone,” I whisper, half to myself, half to her. Images of bitten fingers and stabbed eyes flit through my mind, jacking up my heartrate, and I dry-heave again before gasping out, “Is Ada okay?”
“Ada is taken care of.” Dr. Golovasi’s posture and serene face make her look like a saint again. “Ada misses you and wants you to get better. We all do.”
“What’s wrong with me?” I take a breath in an effort to calm my racing pulse. “Actually, wait, I’m not sure I want to know.”
“You had an episode,” the doctor explains. “You got some ideas in your head that made you distraught. You attacked one of the nurses at this facility and badly injured one of the guards. Do you remember any of this?”
Something about what she says rings at least partially true. I do recall biting someone’s finger and stabbing someone with a pen—classic mental patient behaviors. Part of me rejects something about her explanation, though. On some level, I feel like the people I hurt deserved it. They were after me—but could this be my paranoia talking?
“You’ve been having persistent, intrusive thoughts,” Dr. Golovasi says when I don’t answer. “Thoughts about being followed, thoughts about a big conspiracy where the government wants something from you. You made progress on some of these issues before the last episode. Does this ring any bells?”
I consider her words, then shake my head. My heart is still thudding against my ribcage in a mad rhythm. “It’s all muddy in my mind. It’s like what you say sounds familiar, but I don’t think it’s the full story.”