by Gwynn White
She lifted a middle finger.
He stayed by her locker and thought about posting a note to beg her to watch the videos. Maybe she did and that was the end of it. Instead, he shot her a text.
Sorry.
The worst part was losing her. He’d already screwed things up when he’d kissed her and then convinced her to give the girlfriend-boyfriend thing a try. Of course, he’d almost got her killed, there was that. Now she was drifting off and he was standing by her locker all alone.
When the weekend arrived, he did what every loner did—sat in his room. He used to whittle away weekends online, gaming or otherwise. Now it all seemed pointless. Who cared if jonnymcpothead69 won? There was no money in it. There was just teabagging your opponent. None of it made any sense.
Not after the lake.
What do they want?
He loaded a jump drive. Before entering the password, he looked out front. His mother was in the kitchen. Popcorn was dancing on the stove. She had a night off, which meant lying on the couch and talking to the television, telling characters not to open a door or repeating their lines until she fell asleep.
He left the door halfway open. She was twice as likely to come knocking if he closed it. He lay on the bed, laptop pointed away from the door, sound muted, and opened the jump drive. Thumbnail icons lined up. He’d been through them a hundred times.
Had Rach even seen them once?
There was no doubting what he researched. They might as well be documentaries. The first file was named History of the Punch.
Computer-aided alternate reality was first achieved with the insertion of a three-inch surgical steel needle into the middle of the forehead. This required an implanted stent for repeated access, which left an obvious port for everyone to see.
The needle accessed the frontal lobe, essentially networking the brain—what some referred to as an elegant organic computer—with servers. The five senses were hijacked, the awareness teleported to an animated reality, one in which the user couldn’t distinguish between dream and flesh.
Grey knew all about the Foreverland incident, backward and forward. He was obsessed with the tropical island where boys were told they were in an accident, that their parents sent them there to be healed only to be lured into taking the needle and eventually erased from their bodies.
Grey often wondered what it was like to be one of those boys, waking up confused. Some of them were saved, but they were never normal again. The needle was illegal after that. But technology like that wasn’t going to just go away. Heroin and meth were still a thing despite drug dealers clogging prisons and addicts overdosing. Because people wanted it.
So innovation prevailed.
The needle diameter was reduced to a tenth of a millimeter. Stents were not required. A trip into the needle went undetected. With the aid of the punch, the proper location was accurately located for the needle’s insertion. Thoughts could be accessed; the senses expanded. Memories downloaded or uploaded.
Or changed.
Universities were proving the technique was effective for treating trauma victims of abuse or the horrors of unfortunate events. Legalization was close, according to reports. Means of monitoring the use of such technology was required to avoid another Foreverland.
But people wanted it.
He watched the insertion of one of these new age horsehair needles. There was no blood as it was pushed into the forehead. The participant’s eyes were closed. Soon, they began the dance of REM, seeing dreams that came not from the imagination but whatever was on the other end of the needle.
Grey touched his forehead. It was still sensitive, slightly sore. They were able to relocate recent memories, reformat and upload new ones. They created a new scenario of a boat hitting a rotting pillar at the boat landing instead of racing toward the cliff.
But why just Rach?
“Hey.” His dad stood in the bedroom. “You all right?”
Grey slammed the laptop shut. The door was still ajar.
His dad was wearing dark blue scrubs, fresh from the office. He looked down and grinned. “Had a late emergency, thought I’d stop by on my way home.”
A late night affair wasn’t out of the question, a little doctor-patient role play in the dentist chair, maybe. But this wasn’t on the way to his apartment. It was in the opposite direction.
“What do you want?”
“Truce.” He put up his hands. “Your mother let me in. We thought it would be good if you and I cleared the air, talked a little. How have you been?”
“You mean since you deleted me? Fair to horseshit. You?”
His dad stepped over dirty clothes, looked around the room but didn’t say anything. He put his hands on his hips, glanced at the door and said, “I know about the boat.”
Grey stared for a moment, waiting for more. His dad glared down. He didn’t look angry. His lips weren’t pulled across his teeth; his forehead wasn’t tight. In fact, he looked like a man he’d never seen before.
Concerned.
Grey put the laptop down and gently closed the door. Mom was on the couch, the television splashing her face.
“What were you thinking?” his dad hissed.
“How do you know about it?”
“How do you think? You could’ve died out there. You would’ve if they didn’t save you. Listen, I don’t want anything to happen to you. We haven’t always gotten along, I get that. Part of that’s my fault.”
All of it’s your fault, Grey thought. But he knew that road went both ways.
“I could’ve been a better dad. A better person.”
He sat on the pillows. The bed squeaked under his weight. He was nodding, thinking. Agreeing with himself.
“What are you doing at that house?” Grey asked.
“You know what I’m doing.”
“It’s my money you’re using. I should have a say.”
“I’ll get you through college, don’t worry about that.”
“I’ll tell Mom what you’ve done.”
“You haven’t yet.” His eyes sparkled. “Why not?”
He called his bluff. Grey wasn’t going to tell her for a thousand reasons. He didn’t want to put her through it, sure. But more than that, he wanted to know what was happening out there. He wasn’t welcome to go to the house alone, that much was obvious. He hoped, maybe, his dad would take him. It would be different if he did.
“I’d rather you not tell her,” he said, “but I understand if you do. I’ve hurt you two enough already. I got us into this mess. I’ll get us out.”
He looked at the floor, elbows on knees.
“You’re going into the Maze,” Grey said. “Admit it.”
Maze money wasn’t what it used to be. In the beginning, it made the family rich, win or lose. That was when it was straightforward, a big production people could torrent. Now the money wasn’t always a jackpot. But it still paid a lot of bills.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” his dad said. “None of us do, Minnow.”
A chill gripped Grey. Not because his dad sounded like he was about to weep. He’d called him Minnow. That was his nickname when he was little. Load the game, Minnow, he would say, before your mom wakes up. He couldn’t remember the last time he heard him say that. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw his dad struggling.
“Let me help you,” Grey said.
“No. This is my situation.”
“Dad, I can help, I swear. I know how the Maze works.” Grey sat next to him. His dad shook his head and paused to say something before shaking it again. He took a deep breath and shuddered.
“Only if you don’t go back,” he said. “You understand what I’m saying? I’ll let you help if you promise not to go back to the lake house. They’ll let me in as long as you stay away, son. Don’t mess this up. It’s my last chance.”
He was worn out. The stress had smacked him around and drained him. It added a decade of wrinkles. Grey hardly recognized him. He was a far cry from the
days of Minnow.
“Look.” Grey opened the laptop. “I’ve got a thousand videos on tanking. There are tutorials on how to awareness leap, how to relax into the drop. If you’re still having problems going under water, there’s a whole section on—”
“There’s another way.” His dad looked at his forehead.
Grey frowned. “What?”
“They say it doesn’t hurt, that it’s automatic, just sucks you right into the game. You can even do it from home. I need to find out more, but I think that might be the way in.”
He still had the dad-smell, the manly musk that reminded Grey he was safe, that his dad was there to take care of things. He was the one that stopped the monsters under the bed. He had the answers to nightmares that kept him awake. As long as his dad was in the house, there was no need to worry.
At least when he was Minnow.
“Hey, creep.”
Grey spun on the bed and, for the second time, slammed the laptop shut. Rach was leaning into his room, her hand on the doorknob. He hadn’t heard the door open.
“Your mom let me in,” she said.
Grey leaped off the bed. His mother was talking to the television. He pulled Rach into the room and closed the door. This conversation wasn’t for his mother.
He noticed she was relaxed. His dad always made her edgy. She didn’t smile as much or talk when he was around. He sometimes wondered if his dad had done something that she just wouldn’t admit, something she thought was better to bury than air out.
“You all right?” she said.
The bed was empty.
The pillow wasn’t even dented. Grey picked up the laptop like a full-grown man might be hiding beneath it. He looked under the bed.
“He was just here, Rach. When you walked into the room…”
“Who?”
He rubbed his face. It was getting hard to breathe. His forehead was numb, the sides of his head tingling. He paced back and forth, struggling for air.
“How could you not see him?” he said.
“Grey, I—”
He grabbed her arms and squeezed too hard. She twisted out of his grip and pushed him against the wall. She watched him slide to the floor. He was afraid he would keep sliding and never hit bottom.
“No,” he muttered. “No, no, no…”
He touched her. She was real. He could feel her, he could see her and smell her and touch her, and that meant she was real. He didn’t touch his dad. But I smelled him. I saw him and talked to him.
“Are you real?” he said.
“What?”
“Are you real, Rach? Are you really here?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. She only had false memories that she believed. They’d planted a fake scenario, making her believe she never crossed the lake. She just had wrong memories.
He was talking to his.
29
Grey
Before the Punch
Rach’s fingers were like twigs, the kind that might snap if she cracked her knuckles. Grey had laced his fingers with hers before leaving the apartment. She promised not to let go. Squeezing like a man hanging from a ledge, he was afraid he might break them.
He hadn’t slept in a while.
The floor would dissolve when he would close his eyes, the bed would rotate and the sheets would twist into serpents. He would jump out of bed, sometimes scream into his pillow, and pull on his hair to bring the world back to normal.
He had refused to come out of his room and would only answer his mom through the door. Maybe that was her on the other side of the door, her voice calling out, asking if he was hungry, if he was all right.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Rach was all he had now. She was the only one he could trust. His dad, the ghost, the make-believe person he’d had a conversation with, the hallucination that had called him Minnow, disappeared when she arrived. When Rach was in the room, the floor would stop rotating and the walls would quit melting. The sheets were sheets. She would sit on the bed while he paced, and asked questions he didn’t hear.
When she was gone, the fun house was back.
His mom was starting to worry. He played off sick that week, pretending to sleep when she was home. That wasn’t going to last. And she was still asking about his dad. At least, he thought it was her asking. He couldn’t face another ghost parent of his imagination.
Grey still hadn’t talked to his dad. That was the worst part. It wasn’t the threat to his sanity, not the convincing presence of someone that wasn’t there. It was that the ghost dad that came to visit him wasn’t real. He never was. The caring, listening sort of dad, the support kind of man never existed. Grey really wanted him to be real.
The dad he always wanted.
“I just… I need to see him, talk to him,” he had told Rach. “He can make things right.”
“How?”
Part of Grey hoped the hallucination was more of a vision, that maybe his dad had changed. One look was all he needed. He wanted to believe the hallucination.
Grey was right about the needles and the lake, he was sure of it. All of that happened. They’d crossed the water and crashed near the shore, woke up with tiny holes in their foreheads and different memories. They’d done something to Rach.
What they did to him was different.
“What’s your dad going to do?” Rach had answered.
“I don’t know. I just need to see him.”
That was the truth. He wanted to see him, talk to him. He was compelled to find him; it was all he thought about since the imaginary conversation. He dreamed of him, talked to him, hoped he would call him Minnow and play a goddamn video game with him or something. Anything. But there were no answers to his texts, no messages from his dad.
An itch he couldn’t scratch.
He paced the room faster, couldn’t see any other way out of this trap, no one else to talk to. Not his mom. She was singing the other day. First time in a long time, she was shaking popcorn and humming along. His dad was the one who would help him. He knew the people at the house; he would know what they did to him and why. He was the only one who could get him out of this.
So he and Rach locked fingers.
“I’m heading out.” His mother looked in the bedroom with her factory ID strung around her neck. “Make sure you clean up after yourself. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She glanced at their hands. She had always thought they were girlfriend-boyfriend, before and after they tried it. Her eyes lingered on him longer than usual. Maybe she was considering telling Rach to go home. Leaving them in the apartment all alone seemed a little risqué. She was a single parent and he wasn’t a child. He wasn’t going to stay in his room that night.
And he wouldn’t see her in the morning.
The fun-house engines were warming up.
Grey was attached to the elevator, banging his head on the back panel. The hallway was stretching, his dad’s door getting farther away. If he didn’t tear away from the wall, he would never reach it.
“Grey?” Rachel’s knuckles were grinding between his fingers. “Hey, we don’t have to do this.”
Sweat broke on his lip and matted his hair to his forehead. His determination drained away. All roads led to his dad; this was where it started. He had emptied the college fund, went neck deep in the Maze, and Grey followed right along. Only Grey was in over his head.
I have to do this.
He shoved out of the elevator. He stared at the carpet, boots floating over the floor, the steady bum-bum of his heels beating down the hall. When he looked up, they were in front of his dad’s door.
His breath was raspy.
He reached up and rapped lightly. The sound echoed and his arm tingled. He knocked a second time. She stopped him after the third.
“Do you have a key?”
Grey stared at the spyhole. His dad always took a peek before opening. The light never changed. He wasn’t in there, but the door moved. A slight crack appeared.
/> Rach opened it. “It’s unlocked.”
Grey was drawn inside. Rach turned the deadbolt behind them. They stopped and listened. The kitchen faucet dripped. There was a box on the table, one of the flaps open.
“Dad?”
Rach peeled his hand from hers one finger at a time. His joints ached. His teeth hurt. She walked with him to the bathroom. The towels were folded, the drawers open. The scuba gear gone.
Sheets were wadded on the bed. Clothes were hanging in the closet, DVDs scattered on the floor. The giant red suitcase was gone. So was the pistol. Rach pulled open the chest of drawers, each one empty.
“He’s gone,” he said.
He’d packed the suitcase and enough belongings to get far away. He was scared. Something happened and he ran. He was good at that. He’d packed up and bailed, leaving his problems behind. Including Grey.
Not the first time.
Rach went to the bathroom. Grey’s thoughts began to cycle. Is he standing right in front of me? Is that Rach in the bathroom? His senses were all he had to determine the here and now, what was around him. He had thought his dad had come to his bedroom, had even talked to him. Maybe his dad was in the room right now and he didn’t see him. But Rach would see him. Unless they screwed her head up too and she just didn’t know it yet.
Do you trust your senses?
He went to the kitchen for a glass of water, sat at the table—wide-eyed and tense. His mouth was dry, ears popping. Sooner or later, Rach would have to go home. She couldn’t hold his hand forever. She would let go and leave him alone with his thoughts. What would he do if he couldn’t trust himself? What if there was no way out?
He spilled the water.
It spread across the table and soaked the corner of the box. The address label had been peeled off. Grey pulled the flap open and reached inside. It was a velvet bag. He untied the drawstring. Chills trickled through him, settling like wet sand until he was heavy and full. What he pulled out had a strap and a knob. This time, the symbol wasn’t disguised on a card.
It was right out in the open.
Grey had seen this thing used in video torrents. It was for those that couldn’t stomach the tank. This was another way. And his dad was too chickenshit to use it. Maybe it was too real, or the thought of putting that thing on his forehead and imagining the silver tongue darting out was just too much. He’d packed up and never looked back.