MirrorWorld

by Jeremy Robinson

  At least the people here understand me … not that they understand much of anything. But they accept me as one of them, even though I know, at my core, that I don’t belong here. Of course, most everyone here, save for Seymour, thinks the world would be better with them flailing through it.

  The view today is mostly primary and secondary colors. Blue sky. Green grass and trees. White clouds. Black pavement—they redid it a week ago. Couldn’t even smell that. Looking down at the parking lot, I see far fewer cars than usual. It looks like half the regular staff are missing. Also interesting is an orange car. That’s new, I think. I can’t tell the make or model, but it sticks out among the various shades of gray preferred by SafeHaven’s staff.

  “See anything interesting?” The voice is feminine. Quiet. My visitor has arrived.

  “Your car,” I say. “I like the color.” I turn around. My visitor is attractive. Blond hair, tied back tight. High eyebrows that imply a good nature. And a kind smile. But her outfit … “You look like a pumpkin.”

  Her smile broadens as she looks down at herself. “I do, don’t I?” She lifts her arms and the sides come up, like Batman’s cape, only neon. It’s a poncho. A bright orange hunter’s poncho.

  “They wouldn’t let me in if I wasn’t wearing it. At least it matches the car.” She lowers her arms, revealing Shotgun and Seymour standing behind her, one to a side. She senses their presence and flinches, stepping closer to me. A few eyes around the room glance up, and then turn back down.

  “She’s a doctor,” Seymour says, his fingers twitching madly in front of his mouth. “No, a specialist!”

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Shotgun says with a smirk and a confident nod.

  “An expert!” Seymour says. He’s getting a little too excited.

  “Can you give us some privacy?” I ask the pair.

  “Ex-girlfriend it is!” Shotgun says, pumping an imaginary shotgun, “Chick, chick,” and firing it into the air. “Boom!”

  As the duo retreats back to the couch-throne, the woman turns to me again, looking a little less sure of herself.

  “That’s why we call him Shotgun Jones,” I explain.

  “Right,” she says, straightening her pumpkin suit. Her smile disappears. The eyebrows descend. “Do you want to be here?”

  “I want to smell the new pavement,” I tell her.

  A mix of confusion and disappointment contorts her pretty face.

  “You know I’m crazy, right?”

  “With a capital C,” she says. “I’ve been told. But you’re not crazy.”

  “You know my real name?”

  “Lowercase c.”

  “Oh. Then what am I?”

  “I’ll let your doctor explain it to you. Later. Right now, I need a very plain yes or no answer. Do you want to leave this place? Or do you want to spend the rest of your life waiting to see who replaces Drew Carey on the Price Is Right?”

  “He’s funny,” I say.

  “Bob was better.”

  “I don’t really remember Bob.”

  “You don’t remember anything past a year ago.” She makes sure I’m looking in her eyes. “All but two days of your remembered life have been in this place. Before that was two days in a jail cell and an hour at a bar. Am I wrong?”

  “No.”

  My eyes turn to the floor and then back out at the view. “Would I be leaving today?”

  I see the motion of her nod in my periphery.

  “Yes,” I say. “I want to leave.”

  “First,” she says. “I need proof.”

  “Of what?”

  “Step one. What do you think of me?”

  I look her up and down, appraising her. I stop on her eyes. “You’re intelligent. Driven. Brave. You’re also hiding something, but who isn’t?”

  “Is that all?”

  “I’d also like to sleep with you, but you already knew that.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asks.

  “Have you looked in a mirror? Who wouldn’t want to sleep with you?”

  She looks down at the bright orange poncho. “Most of me is covered.”

  “Your face would more than make up for any flaws beneath it, and not everything is hidden.” I glance down at her chest, from which the loose poncho hangs, and am only slightly surprised to find my right hand cupping her left breast. A complete lack of fear means that I sometimes act without thought. Fear acts as a social buffer, giving most people time to contemplate their actions and the ramifications. Not only do I lack that buffer, the potential negative effects of my actions don’t faze me. Only my strong moral code keeps me in check, but on occasions like this, it’s all hindsight.

  “Very good,” she says, like I’ve passed a test.

  I withdraw my hand and apologize, but she waves the words away like they’re some kind of stink. “Step two.” She reaches up and slides her fingers beneath the collar of my shirt. For a moment, I think she’s going to repay the fondle with one of her own, but she takes hold of something that she shouldn’t know is there. The chain slides out from under my shirt. Having it is technically against the rules, but the few times they’ve tried to take it, I’ve gone actual crazy. I don’t know what it is, where it’s from, or why I cling to it, but I know I can’t live without it. And that I would kill to retrieve it.

  The pendant at the end of the chain falls free, hanging on the metal links. It’s a colorful mash-up of melted plastics formed into a crude circle.

  “Are you afraid?” she asks.

  “I’m resisting the urge to break your hand.”

  She turns the pendant around, reading the single word etched into the flat backside. “Evidence.” She frowns for a moment but covers it up quickly. “Do you know what this is?”

  It feels like my soul, but I know that’s ridiculous, so I shake my head. “It’s the craziest thing about me, so you better put it back.”

  She does, slipping it inside my collar and letting it drop.

  “Now, step three.” The vinyl of her poncho makes a shhh sound as her arm rises. Her hand emerges holding a ceramic three-inch blade. “Stab yourself.”

  “Why?”

  She squints at me. “Are you afraid?”

  “I’m not stupid, if that’s what you’re trying to figure out.”

  She looks out the window to the long driveway that ends a quarter mile away, the gates blocked from view by lush oaks. “There is an ambulance waiting at the end of the drive. They’ll be here within minutes. You’ll be rushed to the hospital.”

  “Only it won’t be a hospital,” I say. “Where will it be?”

  She smiles; this time it’s forced. “Won’t be here.”

  I reach out and take the blade from her. “Run.”

  She looks horrified for a moment, hearing a threat where there was none intended.

  “This isn’t going to go over well.” I look around the room.

  Understanding widens her eyes. She backs away slowly, turns around, and hurries for the metal chain-link gate, which Chubs opens from the other side.

  Knife in hand, I look out the window. It’s a beautiful day. I bet it smells wonderful.

  A scream tears my eyes away from the window. “Dollar ninety-five! Dollar ninety-five!” It’s Seymour, repeating what he’d just seen on TV. Both hands flail in my direction. At my stomach. “Help! Help! Help! Dollar ninety-five.”

  “Chick, chick, boom!” Shotgun says, shooting his imaginary weapon straight at me, his face twisted up in horror. “Chick, chick, boom!”

  As the large room explodes with activity, I look down. Two inches of the knife’s blade are currently buried in my torso. Someone’s going to have to clean this floor tonight, I think, and fall to my knees.

  3.

  “Do you know what you did?” the paramedic asks me, her thick British accent distracting me from the question. Her face is hidden by a surgical mask and thick glasses. An explosion of hair frames her nonface. Graying. Maybe fifty-five. Despite the accent, I hear the bewil
derment in her voice and replay the question in my mind.

  A full twenty seconds later, I lean up and look down. My shirt is missing, but the plastic pendant still hangs from my neck. Which is good for everyone in this ambulance. I turn my gaze lower. The knife handle sticks out of my gut like the first skyscraper built in Dubai. “I stabbed myself.”

  “More accurately?” she asks.

  “I stabbed myself in my right kidney.”

  She presses on my torso with her gloved fingers, feeling all around the wound. “Actually, you missed it. Nothing but muscle and fat. Mostly muscle.”

  “Even better,” I say.

  “But why?”

  “Because I wanted to leave.”

  “What I meant,” she says, “is why did you choose to stab yourself in the kidney?”

  “You mean, why did I choose to stab myself next to my kidney?”

  “Right.”

  I shrug. I don’t recall making the decision, but I understand the logic of my subconscious. “If I missed and struck my kidney, who cares? I have two of them. If you ever need to stab yourself, keep that in mind.” I lean back. “I can’t feel the wound.”

  “I’ve given you a local anesthetic so we can take care of this.”

  I look around the ambulance’s interior. It’s what you’d expect, except I’m alone in the back with this woman. I think there are usually two people in the back. But what do I know? Aside from where my kidneys are and what Dubai is like. While I don’t remember the events of my own life, I know a lot about the world. “Aren’t you a paramedic?”

  She pulls out a hooked needle and thread. “I’m your doctor.”

  “My doctor?”

  “For now.” She threads the needle, ties a knot, and cuts the remainder. “Not afraid of needles, are you?”

  I motion to the knife in my gut. “I stabbed myself.”

  “I was joking.” She places the needle on a tray as the moving ambulance bounces over something in the road. My doctor leans toward the front and raps on the door. It opens a crack. “We’re starting now, so do try to avoid any more bumps for a few.”

  “Trying,” says a man. “But it’s hard to with all this—”

  She shoves the door shut. “Right. Enough of him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Your driver,” she says. “Try to hold still.” Before I realize it, she’s dousing the knife with alcohol. “Still nothing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Wonderful.” She takes hold of the knife and slips it out of my gut. The ceramic blade clangs against the tray, and she scoops up the needle and thread. She leans over my exposed stomach and starts sewing. Her hands move quickly and efficiently. She’s done this before. Not just stitching a wound, but while on the move.

  “You were in the military,” I say.

  “Handsome, fearless, and perceptive,” she says without looking up. “My, my.”

  She’s clearly not going to say anything more, so I don’t bother digging. There’s something else I’d rather know. “Why am I fearless? The woman I met told me my doctor could explain it.”

  “The woman?”

  “Who told me to stab myself.”

  She gives the needle a few tugs, cinching my skin together. “You trusted a woman, whose name you didn’t know, who asked you to stab yourself?”

  “I don’t know my own name,” I tell her. “Or yours.”

  She pauses, turns to me, and offers me a bloody gloved hand. “Doctor Kelly Allenby, at your service.”

  I shake her hand. “I’m Crazy.”

  “With a capital C,” she says, the phrase old hat.

  My mind freezes up for a moment. How did she know? Before I can ask, she turns to me and says, “Winters filled me in. She’s the woman you met. Jessica Winters.”

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  “Not my place to say.”

  “You’re avoiding my question,” I tell her.

  “Winters will brief you later,” she says.

  Brief me. Definitely military.

  The ambulance sways from side to side for a moment. I hear the engine revving loudly. We’re moving fast. But the siren isn’t wailing.

  “I wasn’t talking about Winters,” I say.

  She smiles at me. I can’t see her lips behind the mask, but her eyes crinkle on the sides. “Short-term memory seems to be fine.”

  “Please.”

  She turns back to stitching. “Do you know what the amygdala is?”

  “A region of the brain,” I say, though I have no idea how or why I know the answer to this question.

  “Two regions,” she says. “On either side. The size of almonds. Part of the limbic system. Not very big, but they regulate a few functions that are applicable to your situation. Memory and fear. Typically, a condition like yours is the result of Urbach-Wiethe disease, which destroys the amygdala. The result is a complete lack of social, emotional, and physical fear. But you’re not like a sociopath. You still feel other emotions, like empathy, sadness, and joy, and you understand concepts of right and wrong, though in your case that sense of moral judgment is a bit exaggerated.” She glances my way. “I read your file.”

  “You said ‘typically.’ Are there other ways to destroy the amygdala?”

  She pulls the line tight and ties a knot. Scissors appear in her hand and she cuts the line. She turns away from me to put the needle and thread beside the discarded knife. “Brain trauma could do it, but it would have to be one hell of a coincidence to destroy both amygdala on either side of the head without turning you into a vegetable.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  “Anything is possible,” she replies, taking her bloody gloves off and tossing them atop the tray. The mask and glasses follow. “But that’s not what happened to you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you’re sitting here having a conversation with me instead of watching The Price Is Right every day, or just plain dead.”

  “My file is pretty detailed,” I say.

  She turns back around and gives me a tight-lipped smile, the kind a mother might when her child is being naughty while simultaneously adorable.

  “I’m not adorable,” I point out.

  She laughs. “Far from it. It’s just … it’s good to—”

  The ambulance sways hard to the side. Tires squeal.

  Allenby leans forward and opens the door a crack. She gasps. “What’s happening?”

  “They’re everywhere,” says the man behind the wheel. “I don’t know if I can find a way around them.”

  “Can we stay here?” she asks. “Wait for them to pass?”

  “I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “What’s happening?” I ask. I turn my head back, but the upside-down slice of the world beyond the ambulance is just blue sky.

  “Just relax,” Allenby says, patting my shoulder. “We’re fine.”

  I push myself up, inspect the expert stitching on my abdomen. “I wasn’t worried.”

  Allenby is so entranced by what’s happening outside, she doesn’t notice me moving. I slide up behind her, angling for a view.

  “We should be okay,” the man says, “unless they get hungry for ice cream.”

  Ice cream? “What is it, a Little League parade?”

  Allenby jumps, placing a hand to her chest. “Bloody hell. You shouldn’t be up. I still need to cover that.”

  I push past her. The man in the front seat is short but fit. The kind of guy who’s got energy to spare and can eat entire pizzas. But he’s not young. Despite the full head of dark hair, the crow’s-feet framing his eyes and flecks of white in his goatee give away his age.

  When the driver swerves again, I look up.

  The street is filled with angry people. Some carry picket signs with slogans like: RAISE MINIMUM WAGE, NO MORE PROPERTY TAXES, and my favorite, NO MONEY, LESS PROBLEMS. Some carry bricks. Others wield guns. Their voices rise and fall, repeating some kind of chant, muffl
ed by the vehicle’s thick walls. On the surface, they’re protestors, but they feel more like a mob. The violent tension brewing outside is almost explosive, a powder keg just waiting for the fuse to be lit.

  We pull to the side of the road and stop. It’s a downtown area. Tall brick buildings line both sides of the street. Looks familiar. Manchester, New Hampshire, I think. The driver raises his palms to the people outside the vehicle, mouthing the word, “Sorry,” over and over until they’re placated and move on. But there are more where they came from. Many more. All of them angry. Afraid.

  “We’re in an ambulance,” I say. “They won’t move if you hit the siren?”

  The driver just shakes his head.

  Allenby puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s best to—”

  People move for ambulances. It’s a universal fact. I’m not sure why I believe this so soundly, but I do. If staying here is a risk, then we should use the tools at our disposal.

  “No, don’t!” the driver shouts.

  My finger is already resting on the switch for the siren. I flip it.

  The siren blares to life.

  But it’s not a siren.

  It’s a song. “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”

  The plucky tune puts words in my head. “Do they waggle to and fro?” I look at Allenby. “We’re in an ice cream truck?”

  But she doesn’t respond. Her eyes are locked straight ahead on the frozen mob of more than a hundred people, all staring at us with hateful eyes. The signs lower. The chanting stops. These people have no real cause. They’re just afraid and angry, expressing it as a hot-button issue bandwagon. But the violence in their eyes is different from the eyes of people with a cause. There is nothing righteous in these people’s eyes. Instead, I see a kind of vacant mania that was commonplace in SafeHaven. These people just lacked an outlet for their pent-up violence. But now I’ve given them direction. The jingle of the ice cream truck, its jovial blare like a mocking voice, has lit the fuse. All of this comes clear to me in a moment. Only one mystery remains. “Why are we in an ice cream truck?”