Good and Evil : Freeland - Part Two (9781628547375)

by Pulver, William

  Brody certainly came back to life handicapped but only as handicapped as he would let his mind be convinced. His flaws were only more noticeable to him now, nothing anyone could see. The deafness was invisible to anyone else. The chronic ache in his lower back, just the same. Treach, Lars, and Robber, the damaged portions of his brain, all of it was not noticeable. Only he could see the pains, and only he could control them, control the intensity of the pain, not the personalities: not through medicine, not through drugs, but through biofeedback. His escape from all that was natural. This acceptance eased the external pain he would re-greet every time he came out of his temporary escape from awareness.

  Brody sat up and looked around; the jelly dripped down from his slope of a nose. Everyone was gone. The tubs were empty. He blinked a couple of times and tried to wipe the remaining jelly from his face to see if it was making him see things that weren’t there, but should have been. He looked again. Still no one was there. The hyper color jelly in the other tubs was stagnant. It was unwavering, as if no one had ever been in the bathing pods. He felt abandoned.

  Brody arose from his vat and stepped out onto the sealer floor. The ooze slid down his eel-skin suit and was quickly dissolved to vapor once it hit the walkway.

  Why do I have to walk alone? Where did everyone go? I feel so lonely. He knew that he couldn’t let himself keep feeling this way. There were lots of people pulling for him. He just couldn’t figure the last part out: re-entry. The word kept flashing in his mind: re-entry.

  The message was one that kept coming up in intervals of mental flashes. Brody walked back down to the Creator Level to see if his dad breaking out of the tank was merely created in his own mind. As he approached the door, he looked inside, and to his surprise, the tank was empty. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was for real. Chester was still at the controls, looking out the front window. Brody looked behind him; Chester had Treach and Lars in there with him. They were bound to vertical tables, strapped in by ankles, wrists, and forehead. Brody looked a little closer and saw that each had Soma plugged into them. Chester was picking their brains to add strength to his mental power. Chester was doing exactly what Brody thought he had just done. On the third table farthest back in the row was Harmonia. Chester had kidnapped her too, while Brody was out.

  Brody’s eyes revolved to the tinted window, looking out into the cave system. He could see that the other pillars of Larami had arrived. They were all together, reunited for the final time. Now that each had the other’s back, this band of metal brothers were set to conquer the evil of planet Trendago. Now, the devil was in for his last go around.

  Pillar Three jumped up and pierced a small attached piece of the cave ceiling with its head. Light came beaming through as the non-glasses-wearing Pasties grew thinner in numbers. Their gems were scooped up by the other pillars, like they were kids collecting candy at a parade. Up above, people were falling through the holes of the crust, landing softly on the turned over dirt. They were running for their lives, scared as all get-out. The barrens were now teeming with human-headed grasshoppers and locusts. Plagues of hydraulic-legged insects, bearing the face of man, came crashing down through the hollows. Every hop they made was another hole in the ceiling. They were killing their own with light, indirectly.

  Brody extended the aardvark snout of the death laser to the room Lars had been in. He noticed a hole in the middle of the racecar-video-game-looking booth where the eye of the telescoping snout fit perfectly. He overrode the switch from the laser tank to enable him the ability to operate it from the racecar booth. Slipping inside the seat, he reclined it and lay back to help the humans out of their potential carnage.

  One at a time, sometimes two if they were lined up right, Brody zapped people that he knew, or at least recognized, disintegrating them where they stood. Turned to molecules, they were sucked up into the belly button of the robot, where Brody was redirecting them heavenward after storing them in the other room-entering pods that were behind the doors, now all around him. He could fit thousands of disintegrated people in each time-released capsule.

  There were starting to turn up people of all races, people Brody had never even seen before. Even people from the dark poles of the planet were coming together to fight off the evil that was now spread the circumference of this globe. The Pillars had metaphysically corralled them to this point in the barrens where the final battle was to decide the fate of planet Trendago. This battle, known as the Battle of the Barrens, became history in the making, and the mind of sixteen-year-old Brody Baumkegen was in control of it all.

  In the midst of the all-out Armageddon, Brody found a piece of folded paper laying on the floor. He reached down to pick it up. The message was a poem that read:

  Evolution:

  Adam and Eve, were the first to perceive

  the acquisition of knowledge we would later receive.

  They didn’t have any idea their curiosity would lead us astray;

  we give thanks to their generosity, why did they influence us the wrong way?

  There isn’t any use blaming them for wanting to know more;

  they are our ancestors, every successor abides by lore.

  Take this in and analyze the fact that our generation inhibits change;

  it is up to us, we have advanced our mental range.

  The answer is in front of us; we have to open our minds

  to the nature of life, it is the tie that binds.

  Be gentle with and take note of the truth;

  people are beautiful, their lives always having been looked after by an omnipotent sleuth.

  —Chester Baumkegen

  The message was indistinct in its boundaries but did hold light to what was going on all around Brody.

  None of this would have happened had Eve not partaken of the golden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Humans as a whole would have never evolved into the chaotic state they have pushed themselves to, if Adam would have not let himself be overcome by a woman. Both denied what God had wanted, and so has everyone else since the beginning of time. Being human is more a hindrance that only offsets reality from spirituality. Our quest for knowledge is eventually going to delete us entirely. We are the controllers of our own fate. God already has this figured out, Brody thought to himself.

  Brody took the note and burnt it to remove any evidence of anyone else figuring out this truth. He was now in control, even though his father was the one behind the wheel at this point. He had to delve deep inside himself in order to regain position and get his friends out of their inner-darkness.

  Brody returned to the door of his father’s Creator Room. He got into position and unraveled the rolling lock; the door eased open with a creak. He tip-toed in as Chester, head forward, was steadfast in his mission of gathering the Dilators for his army. The Dilators were starting to enter the stalled machine from the bottom of the back of the left ankle.

  After undoing Lars’s and Treach’s restraints, Brody whispered to them, “On the count of three, we are all going to wrap our arms around different parts of Chester’s body. Don’t look him in the gemstones if he turns his head toward us. We will all be condemned to suicidal thoughts. It’s his way of calling his team of the lessened.” Brody looked left, then right, and finally straight ahead.

  Chester never knew what hit him as he kept to his gathering. Treach went low, Lars in the middle, and Brody attempted to rip the non-human’s head off—no such luck. Mysteriously, he was too swollen for them to do any damage.

  “Quick, hand me the oxygen tube on the floor over there.” Brody instructed the only one who could let go and grab the vent.

  Lars handed the tube to Brody and turned on the apparatus. In seconds, Brody had it strapped to his father’s mouth, where it filled him up rather quickly. Lars tried to hold on to the expanding chest cavity, but it was too robust. In a matter of seconds, it exploded. L
ice, flies, earthworms, maggots, even a black-with-red-sides salamander came out of the center of Chester’s half-human, half-Pastie body. Neither of the three had a clue to what was keeping this thing alive.

  Treach let go of Chester’s legs to avoid the falling sludge of slimy, glistening insect waste pellets. He stood back, exhilarated by the malodorous content of Chester’s burst belly. It smelled worse than sun baked fast food that had been left outside in a partially-open garbage can on an overly-hot summer’s day. Needless to say, Brody still had a hold of the head, squeezing with all of his might. He wasn’t about to let go. Chester would have gotten up and forced them to look into his Hope diamond eyes. That would have been the end of them. Not this time, though.

  Brody and Lars got on either side of the head, making Chester hunch over. A sidewall-vice was brought out by Treach where it was placed like a halo on Chester’s swelling head. After activating the spinal injury halo, the pins pushed in from all directions and the gems pushed out. It was over; Chester’s soul was removed through his head. The diamonds fell to the ground, rolling around like gyroscopes midair, two inches up from floor contact. They spun faster and faster, seeming to create a rebirth of Chester, but only apparition-wise. He was no longer a physical body, but held just as much threat. The gems kept spinning until the soul was spun into a rich, foamy lather. It was sucked in and pushed back out until it created something dense enough to make up matter. It resembled red, mashed potatoes that had been whipped from chunks to near butter, with the skins still intact. The eyes lifted, and a scowl now spanned Chester’s red-tinted, transparent, face.

  Lars could only think of one place within the entire treatment facility that would be able to harbor such a malicious case of evilness now standing taller than before, hovering over the three adolescents. It was time to run.

  All three raced up the stairs until reaching the top, where they turned right and sped quicker to the laboratory. The crucifix-shaped rooms of DSOH was their saving grace to what was now a satanic stalking.

  Chester floated ever so fast through the solidity of the walls and floors that made up the structure to this towering facility. He arose through the cataract that was sprouting up through the glass-ceiling container of the entrance quarters. The water turned red from his presence.

  The cataract was nothing more than a churning ground for the lost. It was Chester’s previous creation that would enable him not only luck, but longevity, once the soul was separated from the body. In his case, it was nourishment that would strengthen his ability to stalk his prey. It gave him clarity to their whereabouts; within this water fountain were many wishes and prayers that had been kept inside from years of adolescents, and staff alike, who had used the waterfall as an escape from reality, a wishing well. Their deepest-kept secrets now exposed, Chester was several up on the prophetic visions of Brody.

  Brody took Harmonia by the hand and escorted her to the center of the internal crucifix. He grabbed the Good News Book, three glass beakers, and several tubs of holy fluid blessed from the words of the Good News Book. With these in hand, he set the book down at the foot of the main double doors and devised a booby trap with the holy fluid in the beakers to suppress Chester’s demon from causing any harm. In the meantime, he was forcing everyone to think about baseball to wane Chester’s ability to read their thoughts and divide their wishes until each person was hidden.

  “Batter up, top of the second inning. We had three up three down last inning. It’s time to turn up the heat with the bats.” Brody spoke out loud to distract the others. “We have beaten this team several times before, and now isn’t going to be any different. We have to hit them hard and hit them fast. Runs people, runs! Treach, I am giving you the green light to go. Hit away.” Brody hid in one of the five rooms as he instructed the others to do the same, motioning them with his hands to the other vacant ones.

  Lars was in a trance, standing out in right field, chasing a butterfly around. Baseball wasn’t his forte.

  Lars entered the same room as Brody, and so did Treach. All three were in the same quarters even though Brody thought he was alone.

  “Hark, who goes there? Is it our friends Treach and Lars?

  “Not now. Shut up. They aren’t in here. It is just, well, I guess it’s just you and me. Keep it down. The last thing I need is for Chester to find me because of you.”

  Robber snapped back, “What exactly do you think the wire and holy fluid are going to do to a ghost outside of a mortal body? Those are going to be useless against him. Just his apparition coming into the crucifix is going to be enough to dissipate himself.”

  “Where were you about ten minutes ago? I could have used your advice before I wasted all this valuable time. Just go away. I don’t need you now.” He looked out the darkened window toward the front doors, thinking bad thoughts of capture out of his head.

  “Okay, but did you ever stop and think of the meaning of a crucifix when it is turned upside down?”

  “What? What do you mean?” Brody beckoned for Robber to come back, but it was too late. He pondered on the comment for a second, and then he began to think.

  What was the significance of the cross within the head of the robot when I saw the diagram on the cave wall in my dream? Why was it upside down? Why didn’t I catch that at the time? Maybe I thought it was just me who was turning it upside down in my mind. What is the difference if a cross is upright or upside down? It’s still a cross? Wait a second—one of the signs of the beast is an upside down cross. Right side up is holy, so upside down must mean unholy. Oh my! Brody just realized that he had trapped himself inside the heart of the beast. He took four others with him into the mouth of Satan where, now, there was no escape. He was being held spiritually captive, and Chester was going to destroy the good of the bad on the planet. There wasn’t anything he could do at this point.

  A flash-bulb effect in mind sent Brody to his knee. He grabbed his head and looked around through the dark. He could barely see the dark reflection in the mirror. It was the same mirror that ran the entire length of the conveyor belt on which he was standing. He looked deeply into it, allowing his eyes time to adjust to the dim light, and there was Treach looking back. Brody almost fell over backwards in awe.

  “How did you get stuck in the mirror? The devil must have already gotten to you.” Brody looked longer as the image flickered back and forth from him to Treach. He felt indifferent inside, almost revealed.

  Brody forgot about anything else up to this point, all that was going on around him, and walked down the length of the mirror to try to find a light switch. When he finally found it and turned it on, Lars replaced the reflection of Treach and Brody was now dumbfounded. Both of them were trapped in the mirror. Brody felt cross-eyed when he looked into the mirror because the images were fluxing back and forth from inside him to outside and next to him. Treach came through in the dark, whereas Lars appeared in the light.

  Echoes of Robber came back around and clamored, “See, I told you that the crucifix is upside down. You aren’t trapping Chester. He has trapped you. He is in your head, so are Lars and Treach. Lacey as well. You killed her. She was your sanctity from loneliness. You have major issues and are in a world of hurt, my friend. You don’t even have control of yourself, let alone the rest of us, like you think you do. This has all been a delusion. You have deluded yourself from reality after the wreck. That telephone pole stole more than just your consciousness. It has also stolen your mind.”

  “But what about my friends? They are real!”

  “No, they are not. They are figments of your imagination that you have devised to create light, your escape from your darkness.”

  “My darkness?”

  “Your sleep.”

  “My sleep?”

  “Yes, Brody, you are in a coma, or at least, your body is.”

  “No, I’m not. I am walking around. I would have b
elieved you if you said I had an ongoing concussion from the wreck that will never go away. Are you retarded?”

  “Denial! You aren’t aware of your body in reality.” Robber spouted back.

  “In reality? This is reality. You aren’t in my reality. By the way, where did you come from? Aren’t you supposed to be my voice of reason?”

  “Now, who is the moron? If you think you have a voice of reason, and you listen to it, that makes you schizophrenic.”

  “No, doe-ass, the voice of reason is my internal contemplator, the one I like to argue with during times of problem solving. The voice is still mine. I just decided to name you, for sake of someone, in reality, who has yet to show his support to me in everything I love to do. His name is Robb, but since you steal my sanity every time we talk, I just call you Robber.”

  “Really, you don’t think I am real? If that is all I mean to you, Voice of Reason, then forget about me helping you, anymore. I’m out of this head.”

  “Good, drama queen! The world needs less of your type. You never really helped me, anyway. All you ever did was get in the way. Trust me, I can make it alone!”

  “But you can’t make it, lonely.” Lars spoke through the mirror as Brody felt his own mouth moving. “I won’t leave you.”

  Brody turned off the light again and Treach reappeared, “Like I said before, I won’t leave you, either.”

  It was all coming together now; the voices always reverberated to Brody as his own whenever Treach or Lars talked.

  But how? Lars and Treach were just as real as anyone else around the treatment facility. Was it all make-believe?

  Brody left Lars and Treach in the mirror and crept out of the conveyor belt room. He tip-toed to the scorching laser ray room and looked in—nothing. The dentist’s chair room was empty. As well, the electrical impulse dungeon was unmanned, or in this case, unwomanned. His last chance, the blind fury room, was vacant as well. Now, Harmonia was gone. He really was all alone. The sound of the knobs slowly turning on the double doors pushed him into the darkness of the blind fury room. In the shadows, he held his breath in wait of who was behind the doors.