by Quil Carter
The smell of bleach and antiseptic hit my nostrils, but as my shoes clicked against the hard linoleum, I realized with puzzlement that I could also smell blood. I continued down the empty hall, checking observation rooms and the kitchenette for Perish.
“You’re back already?”
I looked towards the direction of the noise and saw Perish approaching. He closed the door he’d emerged from behind him, and swept me up and down with his gaze. “Something went wrong… what happened?”
I stared at him, half of me still waiting for the realizations of my reality to hit me, that heart-clenching sense of panic, any damn emotion, but there was still nothing.
“I need you to remove the implants from my brain,” I said to him. “Destroy them. Make it so Silas can never implant them again.”
Perish cocked an eyebrow. “Easily done. After what you’ve done for me, I can certainly help you out.” He walked towards me, his eyes upturned and his expression holding curiosity. “Tell me, nephew… what did he do? You look… a little bit unstable.”
What did he do?
Oh, Perish, you know him… you know him more than I do. I never thought that was possible but here you stand in front of me. You know what that Mad King is capable of.
The black king has successfully moved around the board, breaking every rule there is. He shifted from right to left, white square and black, and proceeded to massacre every standing man I had.
And now he stands in front of the white king, with a thousand moves at his disposal, but with me… only one.
“You were right,” I said to him. Perish’s brows both raised. “He killed Finn. He killed Finn because he wanted me to be with Julian. Then after Finn was shot, he… he comforted me; he was there for me…” A cold laugh broke the deafening silence around me, one that echoed off of the push panel walls. “He made sure he was my support, so we could become closer.”
And it almost worked. It almost… worked.
I laughed again and shook my head. “What a crafty king he is!” I declared through my rolling laughter. Perish’s brows raised further, my uncle giving me a look like I’d just become best friends with insanity. “What a perfect plan. Oh, one day, one day, Perish. I’ll be able to outsmart him.”
Perish continued to stare. “Well,” he said. “Let us get those implants out then. Excuse me for a moment, my good surgical tools are in the storage room.” He walked past me, but as he did, I noticed something of puzzlement.
There were blue gloves sticking out of his pant’s pocket, surgical gloves.
And they were stained with blood.
My head shot to the room Perish had emerged from. It was… it was the fucking surgery room.
Mantis.
What the hell had he done to Mantis?
I quickly walked to the closed door and pushed it open.
What I saw, left me staring in stone-cold horror.
Mantis, a friend of the family since childhood, was lying on the metal surgical table. He was still, unmoving, with no tubes, no ventilator, no heart monitor. Uzeyer was lying there naked, with every machine necessary to keep him alive, pushed into the far corner, all screens dark.
And there was…
… there was no movement, no rising chest; his colour… grey.
Then I saw it… a stitched wound on his scalp, cutting through his bloodstained dark brown hair like railroad tracks.
Dear fucking god.
“You killed him?” I whispered. A hand rose to my mouth, the guilt and horror erupting from the calmed death my emotions had nestled into.
I’d freed a monster, and I’d left that monster alone with my friend.
What had I done?
Suddenly, a sharp prick of pain went into my neck, and behind me I heard a laugh that froze my blood.
I whirled around, and was face-to-face with Perish’s gallant grin.
“Four… three…” he began to say; an empty syringe being guilefully twirled around his fingers.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” I cried. I stumbled back, darkness quickly taking over my consciousness. “Perish… what the fuck did you do?”
“Two…” Perish chuckled. “One…”
My legs gave out from under me, and I fell to the ground unconscious.
After many confusing dreams and a more conscious grasp on my problems then I would’ve liked, I saw the light through my closed eyelids. I squinted, the light seeming to be brighter than I was comfortable with, and tried to open them.
Wasn’t I just here? That was the first thought to breach the foggy barriers that were enclosing me like an iron maiden. I was back inside of Perish’s apartment, lying on the couch with a short yet bitten conversation going on around me.
“It’s not a good idea. It’s not a good idea!”
My brow furrowed at the voice. It was one I recognized, yet in these strange lucid dreams I had concluded that I would never hear that voice again. The man was lost, and recently too.
“It’s better he knows,” a lower voice said. “He needs to know the extend of what Silas has done to him.”
Silas… uncounted questions flared and dimmed while I was unconscious, yet his name remained the brightest beacon.
But is that not the case for every person who walks this dead earth?
“It’s going to break him.”
“Oh, he’s more durable than you think,” the man I recognized a Perish chuckled. Then his voice rose. “I see movement. Are you joining the land of the living, Elish?”
I slowly sat up and looked around Perish’s modest living room. A tube television on top of a black entertainment center full of movies both educational and Hollywood. Then on both sides of it, two book shelves bursting with books, old papers, and laboratory equipment. What always stood out with Perish’s place, was the odd mixture of both extravagance and middle-class items. He had paintings on the walls that had once been in museums: frescos, Victorian portraits, Picassos, and Da Vinci, but in between these priceless artifacts were pinned up ramblings of the mad genius, mostly ideas for devices, spliced creatures, and even several drawings the younger children had gifted to him. Silas was also one to pin up the children’s drawings and creations; in between a Vermeer and a Titian was a framed drawing Artemis had made of the family when he was seven.
I believe he still has the drawings we–
Wait a second.
My attention shot to the area of the two voices, and I stared in gobsmacked shock.
“Mantis?” I said. I scrambled to my feet when my oldest friend gave me a welcoming smile, but no sooner had I stood, the room began to spin and I had to steady myself on the arm of the couch. “How the hell are you alive?”
Mantis and Perish had already shot up the moment I became unstable, and with twin chuckles, they helped me not make friends with the floor.
“Elish, I’d like you to meet the first mortal man to ever be turned immortal,” Perish said with a smirked smile. “You’ve succeeded, nephew. Your theory was correct.”
I was…
What was he saying?
I was right?
The dizziness upon standing held no candle to the emotional impact those simple words had on me. For a moment, I was at a complete loss, my own voice snatched away yet my mouth was still moving, like the thrashing body of a headless snake.
“He’s going to pass out again,” Mantis laughed. He put a hand on my chin and tilted it up. He appeared the same: charcoal grey eyes, thick eyebrows, and a heart-shaped face. Mantis didn’t look any different, still the spitting image of his father and my past psychiatrist, Zamir.
“You’re immortal?” I stammered. My eyes scanned him up and down as he grinned and nodded. I wanted to study him, stick a shot in his neck and saw off his skull cap so I could analyze the changes in his brain. He was my most prized test subject now. I had… he could…
Oh, fuck. I’d done it. I’d done it.
“A piece of living brain… a piece of living brain put into the cerebellum?
” I said, my voice still catching every stray emotion like it was magnetized. My hands were trembling. No, my entire body, my… Oh jesus fuck, I’d done it!
Perish nodded. He placed a hand on Mantis’s head and shook it back and forth. “The moment you told me your theory, something clicked inside of my head,” he explained, his ice-blue eyes two cold sapphires buried in pure snow. “It sounded familiar… and I was correct, it was. I’ve killed him twice now and within hours… he’s back.”
That was risky, too risky for me to have tried first on a human, but what’s done was done, and I wasn’t going to let semantics ruin my emotional high. I was floating a hundred feet off of the ground right now.
“The thermal… his body heated up like Silas’s? His wounds healed?” I asked, excitement saturating my tone like a levy had broken. When Perish nodded, I put both hands on my head, my eyes so wide my eyeballs started feeling dry. “I did it? I did it?”
Perish’s smile widened, then he laughed. “Yes, nephew, you really have done it. You’ve achieved Silas’s greatest dream… he’ll get to have his immortal chimeras.”
Silas.
Like a balloon being released of air, the smile on my face deflated and my feet slowly lowered me to the ground.
Yes, the incidents, the threats, the reason I myself had been knocked unconscious.
“My implants…” I said slowly.
Mantis and Perish’s smiles disappeared with mine. After a moment of celebration and euphoric success, reality had slithered past the mental streamers and confetti, and had sunken its fangs into my recovering emotions.
Perish patted my shoulder. “Come with me, Elish,” he said. “There’s something that I need to show you.”
“Can’t you just give him a day to be happy?” Mantis asked quietly. I looked over at him with simmering anxiety as we both walked behind Perish, the unease growing with every step I made.
“He doesn’t have a day, Uzeyer,” Perish said. He led us out of his apartment, and I realized he and Mantis both were dressed in full lab coats, both of their coats bloodstained, especially around the cuffs. I was still in my everyday clothes at least, but as I examined myself, I realized there was also spots of blood on my burgundy dress shirt.
Then I raised my hand and touched the back of my head, and alarm immediately found me when I realized there were no incisions.
“You didn’t do surgery on me?” I asked, both confused and dismayed. “If you think I’m going to be giving Silas this immortality secret in hopes that he won’t alter me… it’s not going to work like that.” My teeth pressed, the stress that had temporarily disappeared with the shock of my successful theory was back, and it felt like it had new armour on. “I’m not fucking telling him. I’m not fucking telling him until I think he deserves it.”
“Elish…” Perish began. We all entered the examination room of the laboratory, an area with light boxes on the walls for x-rays, a counter complete with a sink and cabinets, and a metal examination table in the far-left corner. “I think right now you should–”
“No,” I said, conviction hardening every word. I glared at the back of Perish’s head as he picked up a folder full of x-rays. “I’m not going to live the rest of my fucking life worried that he’s going to make me into his obedient dog. I’m not going to live the rest of my god damn, soon-to-be immortal life walking on eggshells because at the drop of a fucking hat, at the first hint of defiance, he’s going to make me into what we were for fucking decades! A mindless fucking cum whore, so fucking altered we willingly bend over to take his–”
“Elish, you were never implanted.”
The words stopped so quickly on my tongue that my mouth remained open.
“What?” I said, my tone low.
Perish remove an x-ray from the folder and placed it on the light box.
It was an x-ray of a human skull, and I recognized from the earrings in the ears, that it was my own.
And there were no anomalies at all inside of that head.
“I… didn’t do anything to you,” Perish began slowly. He stepped away from the x-ray to give me a full view. “It was another thing I only remembered once it was triggered… Silas, he was too scared to alter your brain; the digital surgery was too untested and he couldn’t go through with it.” Perish walked away from the x-ray as I stared at it, the stone walls of my resolve quickly crumbling around me like Perish’s words had been a 9.9 earthquake. I believe I could… physically feel the cracks appearing in my head again.
There was a sound of small beads being dropped in front of me. I looked down and saw that Perish had tossed a bag full of pills.
I recognized those pills – they were my morning and evening pills; the ones I’d taken every day after my surgery.
Except the marks on the pills weren’t buffed out. Every one of them had their inscriptions.
“Depending on what he wanted from you, he had you heavily drugged on everything from Risperidone to Chlordiazepoxide, Paxil to Clonidine,” Perish explained. “Or if he wanted sex out of you, it was just as simple as drugging you with ressin, or if you were resistant, ressin and scopa.”
I felt a hand get placed on top of mine, it was warm, perhaps because my entire body had become ice. “These are hardcore antipsychotics, pills used to treat bipolar episodes, schizophrenia, anxiety… they’re strong enough to royally fuck anyone up. Your mind may not have been altered, but he had you fucked beyond reason on way too many medications.”
“Elish… don’t feel badly about yourself,” Mantis said beside me. “These drugs will make even the strongest man not see straight.”
But I wasn’t listening to their justifications, their reassurances. I’d retreated into my own mind and was now witnessing in front of me, those eleven years of obedience play out like a twisted family movie.
Eleven years where I was his willing slave, his kicked dog. Eleven years of following him around with dumbshit admiration, with my ass in the air waiting to receive his affection, any fucking shred of affection.
And it had been me the whole time.
It had fucking been me the whole time doing it. No implants at all.
Just me.
At this realization, I burst out laughing.
“Oh, dear…” I heard Perish whisper. “I was worried it would be the crazy laugh.”
“Elish?” Mantis shook my shoulder. “It’s okay. You have the secret to immortality… remember? Who… who cares about the past. Let’s just move forward.”
“Move forward?” I laughed. Then, with an acidic spit of rage, I picked up the metal examination table and flipped it, causing it to go crashing to the floor. “Move forward?” I exclaimed. I whirled around, Perish and Mantis both standing side by side staring at me in shock. “He killed my fucking partner, Uzeyer. He took eleven years of my fucking life knowing KNOWING I was crippled enough to just fucking go with it for some god damn peace! FUCK HIM!” As I screamed the last part, I dug into my pocket for the two bullets I’d recovered. One that had almost killed me, and one that had killed Finn.
“Remember this, Mantis?” I snarled. I stalked towards the two of them, the bullets in my outstretched palm. “One for me, one for Finn. But, oh, OH! Mine was an accident! Just an accident. Because Finn, Finn leaned down for a moment, but no worries. No fucking worries. He was able to get him in the… in the…” My eyes caught something as I held out my hand. Something that… didn’t make sense.
For the first time, I looked at the two bullets I’d been carrying around, both side by side.
They were different. Different sizes… different metal. One was a shining steel… the other was tinged with copper.
These two bullets had come from different guns.
The only explanation that I have for what happened next, was that my brain had had enough, and had decided to abandon its post. It was sick and tired of not getting any answers, sick and tired of being shocked, of being played, of being barraged with new questions and mysteries – my brain had endured
a lot, and now it had decided it was going to shut off the lights, go dormant, and leave me with nothing but cruise control.
And what did I do? Did I murder these two immortal men? Light the lab on fire with a Jokeresque cackle?
No.
I dropped the bullets onto the ground, bid my friend and my uncle goodbye, and walked out of the laboratory.
Calmly I walked to Mantis’s red Ford truck and decided that I would borrow it. I got into the front, retrieved the keys from the driver’s side visor and started the engine.
It was afternoon I believe, late afternoon. This was puzzling since it meant I had been unconscious for the remainder of the evening, and a good portion of the next day, but my mind was in no state to dwell on such things. I pushed the curiosities to the side, which was easy to do, and drove to Alegria, a faint smile on my face.
Alegria had a roundabout right before the marble steps that led to the entrance of the skyscraper, and in the center of that roundabout, an impressive working fountain. I drove the truck along the roundabout until I was parked below the steps, and as thiens began to skitter down the steps, I popped open Mantis’s glove compartment, and was pleased when I saw several things of interest.
I hooked those interesting things to my belt and exited the car, just as the thiens stopped dead in their tracks upon realizing just who had parked in a zone reserved only for black cars belonging to the royal family.
“Keep an eye on my truck,” I said to them. “I’ll be returning soon.”
The two thiens, garbed in their combat armour uniforms with bushmasters strapped across their backs, nodded at me, their stances that of army men. “Yes, Prince Elish,” they both said in jagged unison, and I strolled past them and ascended the stairs.
Across the lobby I went, past the dark blue wainscoting on the walls, the impressive four by six paintings and the ancient marble statues, the rare palm tree that sat beside the receptionist’s U-shaped desk, and the black lobby cats who could usually be found sleeping on the leather chairs that surrounded a stone coffee table in the center. I strolled past them with a whistle, and got into the elevator.