by Gwynn White
Freddy has seen the newsfeeds, at the very least the gossips. The survivors that came out of the Maze sometimes sliced the flesh off their arms and fried it like bacon or jumped off buildings Superman style. Those were the ones that left their minds in the Maze and couldn’t distinguish real life from a dream. This isn’t what’s sitting in front of him.
He’s too calm.
Sunny Grimm wasn’t the typical Maze candidate, but there are plenty of those stories, too. One day, a family man is balancing the company ledger, the next he’s punching a needle in his forehead. Maybe it’s the pressure, the boredom. A secret fantasy.
Who knows why anyone does anything?
“She didn’t escape,” Grey says.
“That’s right.” The kid is on the verge of accepting reality. He needs to do it somewhere safe; maybe that’s why he’s here. Freddy isn’t good at this. “Listen, this isn’t the Maze, kid. You’re not in a parallel world so don’t go leaping off buildings. You won’t fly, you won’t bounce. You won’t respawn. This is the skin where the dead stay dead.”
“What is death?”
Freddy waits. This existentialism is getting tiresome. Grey pushes his phone to the center of the table. The spray of water droplets he flicked on it earlier have evaporated. They went from liquid to vapor.
“It’s a change of states,” Grey says.
“No, kid. Death is the final stop.”
Grey looks around the room, slightly whimsical. Slightly disturbed. Freddy hammers the table. He’s reached the end of his goodwill. This isn’t a homeless shelter or a confessional. Freddy has played bad guy to move things along plenty of times. That, he’s good at.
“I can throw you in a holding cell until the feds get here,” he says, “if that’s what you want. You can sleep off the guilt, if that’s why you came here. I really don’t care, kid. I suggest you sleep it off in your own bed.”
Grey drums his fingers. A darker pall falls over him, the serious overtones that possessed him when he first arrived.
“Someone is guilty, Kaleb. That’s why I’m here.”
Part I
LOST IN REALITY
1
Sunny
After the Punch
Henk can’t find out.
Sunny Grimm found her son comatose, and her first thought was to keep it from her ex-husband.
Priceless.
She came home with groceries. Dirty dishes were in the sink, the orange juice was left out. The mail was on the kitchen island, along with half a dozen dead cans of energy drink. He had a list of chores that was still there, stuck on the refrigerator, held in place by yellow flower magnet. And all he did was grab the mail.
She didn’t bother setting down the groceries, went to his bedroom and kicked the door open, expecting to find him hunched over a laptop or dumping his brain in that virtual reality headset, slack-jawed and stupid. This would be the last time.
She was right about that.
The gunshot sound of the door smacking the wall would make him scream. He’d start promising to clean up, like always, swear that he lost track of time, like always. He didn’t know her shift was over. Was it morning already? Sunny was going to break some shit.
She dropped the milk instead.
There was a thing around his head. It wasn’t a chunky headset or VR goggles. It looked new and dangerous. She’d never seen it before. A ghostly shiver pulled the short hairs on her neck.
“Grey?”
His arm was tacky; his shirt sour. His chest slowly was rising and falling, long and methodical. She hesitated to touch him, afraid his flesh would be room temperature. Instead, he was feverish.
“Grey? Honey?” she whispered. “What are you doing?”
She tapped his chin, traced his cheeks. His eyes didn’t jitter beneath the lids; lips didn’t twitch. That thing around his head, she didn’t know what it was—a hefty knob centered between his eyes, his brown hair curling around a thick strap holding it snug. A cable was plugged into the knob and ran beneath the bed. Black equipment was hidden in the corner, lights blinking, drives breathing. She didn’t know what the box was or the thing on his head, but she knew the symbol embossed on them.
“No. No, no, no.”
She held up her phone, thumb over the glass. She’d heard rumors about the symbol, that it was not wise to search about comatose teenagers and malicious knobs connecting their foreheads to modded computers. People listened closely to those searches. What people, she didn’t know. The police, the feds, or someone worse, it didn’t matter.
She needed that thing off his head.
She deconstructed his bedroom, kicking dirty clothes, pouring desk drawers on the floor, turning over milk crates and boxes of discarded gear. His desk was cluttered with empty cups and plates with dried ketchup. A pile of papers of a scattered research project on something called Foreverland.
A wristwatch was balanced on a tin box, the digital numbers turning over. Masking tape was wrapped around the band, small letters stenciled in black marker. For Mom. It was how he labeled his presents. Last Christmas it was a cuckoo clock in a plastic bag, tape pressed on the side.
For Mom.
The tin box rattled onto the floor. It was his old vape pen holder with weird stickers of a serpent eating its own tail. The vape pen was on the desk, a shiny metal pipe that looked dangerous. She thought he’d quit after her nuclear meltdown a year ago.
She paced the room and dialed. “Pick up, Donny. Pick up, pick up, pick up—”
“I’m off the clock, Grimm.”
“Donny, come over, now.” She could hear him sucking on the long end of a hookah. “Donny?”
“I’m waiting for the punch line.” His words were smoke-filled.
“I need you here, now.”
“Use a hairbrush or a showerhead or whatever works down there, Grimm.”
“Stop—” Her hair was too short to grab. “Just listen to me. I’m calling you a car.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.” Her lips pulled into a thin line.
“Why can’t you talk?”
“What don’t you understand, Donny?”
“You’re on the phone talking and you can’t talk is what I don’t understand.”
She breathed into the phone, a wounded animal not to be mistaken for one in heat. Donny would be the last person to call to get laid.
“Goddamn it.” He sighed.
Sunny killed the connection. She picked up the half-empty milk jug and closed the bedroom door to put the groceries away and start some coffee. Pretending her son wasn’t a breathing funeral display, she lit a vanilla-scented candle and went for the aspirin above the stove.
The time was flashing three o’clock.
The mail was on the counter. An empty package was left open, the address label ripped off. No return address. No invoice, no instructions.
She went back into his bedroom, hoping this was a dream, that he’d be sitting at his desk. She would hug him even if he was packing a bong. Everything needed perspective. She came back to the kitchen with his phone, laptop and the silver pipe. A tiny light glowed as she sucked a blue cloud of cherry menthol. The urge to vomit swelled in her throat.
She took another hit.
His browser history was clean. The email log was empty. His phone was locked and she didn’t know the code. It wouldn’t matter. What was she going to do, call a random friend?
Hi, this is Sunny Grimm. Grey’s mom. Yeah, have you guys been experimenting with awareness leaping wetware in, say, the last twelve to twenty-four hours? Oh, Grey is sleeping, I just thought I’d ask. No worries. Please don’t tell your parents or call the police.
Who was she kidding? Grey didn’t have friends except for Rachel and she hadn’t been around lately. Her son was a loner bored with school. He wasn’t much crazy about people in general.
Nut, meet tree.
It was all the same reasons Sunny had quit medical school. Well,
she’d stopped going in the first semester, so she was hardly a med student. It was a career plan that didn’t make much sense for her. She needed something that minimized human contact, someplace she could get paid to push a button. She had lowered the bar until it lay on the floor. Sound choice-making was not a skill set she’d acquired.
Sunny did everything on her own because no one did anything for her. Never had.
Maybe she deserved it.
The world isn’t going to hell. It’s already there.
She cleaned her face, washing off the smell of third shift, a plastic odor that followed her home. The yellow bandana around her neck smelled salty. Three stories below, the asphalt shone with brake lights. Her streaked reflection looked back through a haze of cherry menthol. What few tears survived childhood had dried up in a sexless marriage.
The sky cried for her.
Her eyes stared from sunken pockets, verdant green with light spokes radiating from large pupils. Her graying hair was cut near the scalp. A horizontal scar was high on her forehead, just below the hairline—a jagged gash that was more Jack Ripperish than Harry Potterish. It was where her uncle dropped her, or where she fell off her bike, or was bitten by a dog. No one really knew.
She vaped and watched cars pass through watery lines as she strapped the digital watch on her wrist, leaving the masking tape in place. The old pawnshop cuckoo clock Grey had bought her for Christmas was stuck.
She didn’t bother winding it.
Donny arrived thirty minutes later. Or maybe it was an hour. Time was warped from the heat of desperation, stretched and pummeled until it stood still or raced past. Sunny watched him through the distorted window, rain slashing his grizzly frame crawling out of the compact automobile.
He grunted when she opened the front door.
Sunny stepped aside, eyes pried wide, heavy words stuck on the back of her tongue. She pointed at the bedroom. Donny, half-lidded and unshaven, smelling of spiced apple and peppermint, dragged his feet through the apartment. He was weary when he arrived, grumbling when he walked inside. He never went straight home after third shift, not even after a double. It was straight to the café for a hookah to calm the nerves. Now he was wide-eyed. Almost hyperventilating.
“Holy shit.”
He stood in the doorway, fingers fluttering over his mouth. Somewhere in those thick whiskers, his tongue darted over his lips, something he did when he was in trouble at work.
He hit a soggy spot of milk, looked at his shoe, and kicked a pile of clothes. She told him to look under the bed. A few minutes later, he came out with a velvet bag with a loose gold drawstring.
“Where’s the box?” he said.
“Box?”
He pointed at the mail. Sunny stepped away. He studied the torn label, turning it over. The velvet bag in his hand was empty. No tag, no logo.
“You better sit down.”
“What the hell is going on, Donny?”
He took the pipe from her and sucked on it hard. Thin clouds streamed from his nostrils. He nodded, pulling a deeper drag.
“A punch, Grimm.”
“What?”
“That thing around his head…”
She knew it. Just needed to hear someone say it out loud, confirming this wasn’t a dream. Awareness leaping was more alluring than any drug invented by God or human, a new addiction that never gave back its victims. Twelve-step programs didn’t exist for it.
Wealthy addicts used submersion tanks and respirators, sensory manipulators that drew them into a lucid dream as real as the rug under her feet. When the dream was over, they were hoisted out and returned to the skin. Some claimed it was nothing more than a recreational addiction. A good time. Drinks with friends, a day trip to fantasyland.
Most people couldn’t afford tanks. There were places that leased trips, but those were inaccessible and legally questionable. There were other ways to get there, one-way tickets that transported the awareness through a cable and left the body behind.
Heart still beating.
“How can this be?” she whispered.
“It’s automated.” Donny tapped the package. “Grey must’ve known someone to have it shipped to him. You don’t just order this online. Even if you get one, it’s the access—”
“That’s not what I mean.” She raked her scalp. “This is my fault. This is all my fault. I never should’ve—”
“He’s eighteen, Grimm. He’s not a kid.”
She started walking. The urge to destroy the apartment tremored in her joints; the compulsion to drive her elbow into something clenched her fists. She needed something to blame, something to punch.
Besides herself.
“What are we going to do?” she said.
“Not be hasty, that’s one. You were right not to talk about it on the phone. That’s a hot word.” He tapped his forehead, referring to the symbol on Grey’s forehead more than the punch. “The government listens for it. And don’t search about this on the Internet just yet.”
“And just sit here?”
“For now, yeah. You can search his room—”
“For what, Donny? An off switch? A fucking suicide note?”
“Keep your voice down.” He handed her the pipe. “Listen, this is illegal. You need to think about every move you make right now. It ain’t easy to escape. Come up with some generic search words for an Internet search, something that sounds like research or game play.”
“It ain’t easy to escape? Escape what, Donny? What are you talking about?”
“What do you think I’m talking about?” He jabbed at his forehead, referring to the punch that had emptied her son’s head.
“Oh, God. I’m a horrible parent, a terrible mother. Oh God, oh God—”
“You’re not a terrible mother, Grimm. You can’t isolate him from the world. He was going to do something like this sooner or later. They all do, they’re kids, stupid as hell. I’m surprised he made it to eighteen.”
She rubbed her face, a spring suddenly welling up. She swallowed it back and clenched her teeth. “I just want him back. I don’t give a damn what happens to me, just… we got to get him out, find help.”
Donny sighed. He didn’t answer that. Because people don’t come back from this.
“What am I going to do?”
“I know someone from the Glass Jar,” Donny said.
“The gay bar?”
“Yeah, the gay bar. Let me make a call. Keep this quiet for now, see what our options are, all right? Stay off the computer and phone until we get some answers.”
She nodded blankly.
“People make it out, Grimm. They do.”
That was what you tell people to help them shoulder the impossible weight of hopelessness. Donny would talk to someone and Grey would make it back to the skin and everything would go back to normal. Sunny would sit down with her son, tell him how worried she was, how he needed to live a better life, a happier life. He needed to stop doing bad things.
Because that’s exactly how parenting worked.
Donny made a call, speaking in hushed tones. At one point, he giggled and made a promise, bargaining for counsel on behalf of Sunny. It sounded more like a date. They ripped through all the ecig fluid waiting for whomever he called. Donny went back into Grey’s bedroom in search of more.
A second pot of coffee was cooling when someone tapped on the door. He was short, very short, and wearing a beret that was stupid. His facial hair was tightly clipped. Sunny was hunched on the kitchen stool, her knee fueled on adrenaline and several charges of ecigs. Donny helped him with his coat and held his beret, introducing him to Sunny.
Neither of them said anything. Not even a nod.
Then the short, stout man walked like a royal asshole into the bedroom and tiptoed around the dirty clothes. From the kitchen it looked like he was studying an abstract sculpture, as if he were there on behalf of a collector. Then he blurted into the hand holding up his chin, “Is he an idiot?”
The stool
fell behind Sunny. She launched herself at the bedroom. Donny roadblocked the doorway, hands up. His little friend had squatted down to examine the black knob on Grey’s forehead, peering from three angles, leaning in to give it two quick sniffs.
“No stent, no medical support. No bedsore prevention.” He wiped his palms on his thighs. “This is suicide.”
Sunny shoved into the room and snatched the back of his sleeveless vest, the tendons springing from her wrist. She was aiming for his ponytail but had a firm grip on the slick fabric, not sure what to do next. On his toes, he was almost to her chin.
“Donny,” he said, “calm your friend.”
“Ax?” she said. “Your name is Ax?”
“You can let go, Mother. I’m here to help.”
“Then stuff the snipe and tell me what the hell to do.”
Donny put his hand on Sunny’s arm and lowered his friend with the fake name to the carpet. She retreated to the doorway. The little man cleared his throat, brushed the wrinkles from his vest and fluffed his ponytail.
“I’m sorry for being so blunt,” he said. “I didn’t think there was time for sweet talk. What your son did was stupid.”
“Just tell me what to do.”
“Right.” He looked around the room. “You did the right thing, by the way. This is illegal, I’m sure you know. He’s in your house, under your supervision. All of this equipment will get you fined, maybe worse.”
“I don’t care.”
He squatted by the bed. “How’d he get the needle?”
“The needle?”
“The one that is currently in his brain.”
Needle. So far it was just a knobby strap that kidnapped her son. The image of a needle piercing his forehead kicked at the back of her knees.