by Fynn Perry
John didn’t have an answer and Nikki clearly wasn’t waiting for one. “It’s because they have no predators on Earth to keep their numbers in check and stop them from destroying their habitat. Nature grossly underestimated humanity’s desire to reproduce, which has vastly outweighed their desire to kill each other.” She paused then smiled as she said, “So you could say we’re giving mother nature a helping hand.”
“You’re telling me that you invented The Game so we could kill each in greater numbers so we don’t overpopulate the Earth?” he asked incredulously.
“Think of it as a highly sophisticated and rather elegant cull, John. By utilizing a species’ own propensity for murder, we are protecting them from extinction.”
“So, you’re orchestrating these horrendous massacres for our benefit?” John said, outraged.
“Well, we do have a vested interest. Without any mortals, the Game wouldn’t exist, which would be a pity, because it happens to be highly entertaining. It’s gratifyingly complex. There are so many factors at play to strategically manage in making a narrative successful! Not to mention the greatest challenge, which is to keep an exponentially increasing mortal population in check. We have to be constantly thinking of more effective and productive narratives. The existence of The Game really is a ‘win-win’ for us and the mortals,” she smirked.
“It’s barbaric!” John protested.
“Maybe so, but it seems we Voids still share a character trait with the mortals in that we find such battles against adversity fascinating to watch and to manipulate like any good board game.”
Nikki stood studying John’s expression of shock. “Any more questions?” she finally asked.
“What about Santiago?” John managed to ask, trying to focus on an immediate threat amid a sea of bizarre and horrific revelations.
Nikki smiled as she gave her response. “Juan Santiago had a well-deserved reputation for ruling his drug-trafficking empire with extreme cruelty, but as a mortal he didn’t live long enough to expand beyond Miami. We have big plans for him now that he’s a spirit—we’ve made him the leading player in a new narrative.” There was an edge of increased excitement in her voice that John found disturbing. Then her tone changed. “Unfortunately, we see Santiago’s need to carry through the vendettas left over from his mortal life, and that includes the one he seems to have against your girlfriend’s father, as an unnecessary distraction. We have decided that he should finalize them quickly so he can fully apply himself to the new narrative. After all, The Game must go on!”
John was astonished. “And you’re fine with just… just letting it happen?”
Nikki gave a shrug and raised her eyebrows. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game…That’s what the mortals say, isn’t it?”
John said nothing. The phrase, so ordinary in his mortal life, now had a much more sinister meaning.
“You’re in a precarious position, John. There are some people who make it back from a coma. You could be one of the lucky ones. But as of now, in your current state Santiago is a double threat to you. He can terminate what’s left of your mortal existence by finding and possessing a mortal capable of committing murder—let’s say a doctor or nurse with a God complex, who will then target you, and he can extinguish your existence as a spirit. Remember your little drama on the freeway?”
John remembered it only too well. “But, why does Santiago want me dead?” Nikki ignored the question. “You know, in rare situations earthbound spirits have been briefly seen by mortals who shared an intense emotional bond with the person who died. It really is quite touching to watch. Then there’s the matter of your girlfriend, Jennifer Miller.”
“What about her?” John snapped.
“It would be a shame to lose a mortal who has the gift to permanently see earthbound spirits. It’s a real rarity—a gift or a curse, I suppose, depending on your perspective. I’m sure she told you of the sighting of her dead grandmother in her youth, but that wasn’t because of her gift. Spirits who leave Earth with a strong emotional bond to someone can appear very briefly to that person.” The girl spirit paused before continuing. “It was Jennifer’s fall and concussion at your stabbing that made the gift come to life. We have no idea what is causing it to remain in play.” Nikki paused. “She’s very interesting…as are you, John.”
“Interesting? As players in your sick game?”
“No,” she laughed. “Although if you, as a clearly resourceful spirit, had the right mindset, I could start you off with a small role and gradually build you up to greatness. Who knows, you might enjoy the power.”
“Never,” John said adamantly.
“You’d be surprised, John,” she interrupted, “given the right set of circumstances and emotions, how many spirits, just like mortals, forsake their morals and are ready to contemplate evil acts. Some have those tendencies naturally, while others develop them bit by bit. I’m going to hold out for you, John. In the meantime, I can tell you that you and your girlfriend make an interesting little sideshow.”
“Just tell me why Santiago wanted me dead,” John asked, trying again to focus on what mattered most to him.
“It wouldn’t be much of a game if I gave you all the answers, would it? It’s much more entertaining to see you try and figure things out. Count yourself lucky that I have helped you as much as I have.”
“So, what the hell can you tell me?” John exclaimed, frustrated. “Why have you appeared to me like this?”
“I can tell you only this, John. It’s unlikely that your girl will stop seeing spirits. Another hit to her head could do it, removing the power, but the trauma would have to be exactly the same. Either that or she becomes possessed.”
‘Why would that cause her to stop seeing––”
“––It’s too complicated to explain to you,” Nikki interrupted. “Way above your understanding.” With that, Nikki disappeared and John was left standing on a dimly lit street, partially educated about the new world he now found himself in, but mostly feeling more confused than ever before.
“Wow!” sighed Jennifer. There was a distant look in her eyes and she rubbed her arms absently. John had just finished telling her, in broad and basic terms, about The Game and the Voids who control it. They sat in silence in her room, at a few minutes past eleven, mirroring their disbelief and digesting what Nikki had told John.
“So dead people in the afterlife…” Jennifer eventually said, then corrected herself. “Voids…are the reason why 9/11 and other terrible acts take place in the world?”
John nodded.
“And they’re doing this for their own entertainment?”
“And to save us from ourselves. ‘Win-win,’ Nikki called it,” John said. He looked at Jennifer, who was now deep in thought, knowing the kind of mindfuck she must be going through. Yet he had more to say.
He proceeded to relate everything that had happened since he’d last seen her, from the aggressive behavior of the drug-affected man at the club in the Meatpacking District to the transportation of the guy’s brain-dead body and its arrival at the hospital for organ harvesting. He also told her about his shocking discovery of the way in which the corpses of those killed by the Spider Bite pills were used as drug mules in Vargas’s empire.
Jennifer stared at him, stunned. “OK, I thought I was over the worst shocks you’ve delivered as a spirit, but it seems you can still freak me out,” she confessed.
John nodded. “I knew that El Gordito was behind the overdose victims who went missing,” he said with satisfaction. Jennifer could tell he liked to be right, even if it was about something as horrific as this. He went on with his theory. “There was another body in the van leaving the club. A young guy, maybe a bit older than me. He was much better dressed, obviously richer. He must have been brain-dead, too, but they didn’t bother with a ventilator for him. They just dumped him in an alley, like garbage, making no effort to hide him! Instead, they took the body that I had possessed. He looked to me like just a r
egular guy. No expensive clothes or jewelry like a watch worth a few thousand dollars. "I think that they’re––"
“It’s obvious,” Jennifer interrupted. “They’re taking victims for organ harvesting who they think will easily be lost as just another statistic among thousands of unsolved missing person cases in the city. But they’re dumping victims who they think might come from rich and powerful families. Families that could have the connections to force a prioritized investigation from the police and demand greater resources to find their son, daughter, brother or sister. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to take on that kind of liability to their business.”
“Exactly what I was thinking! John enthused. “But they couldn’t just rely on appearances; they can be deceptive. The bouncers at the clubs must be checking the victims’ backgrounds somehow. . .” he pondered.
“Like getting their details from IDs and then researching them online?”
“Assuming their IDs are not fake, which they could be if they’re under twenty-one and shouldn’t even be in the club.” John paused as a new thought came to him. “Maybe they have some kind of facial-recognition software to ensure they get to the true identity of each guest.”
“It’s definitely a possibility. I read that the cartels are just as advanced in IT as the FBI.”
“Did you find any stories where overdose victims were from wealthy families?”
“A few that made news headlines but none of them went missing. They were found, usually not far from the club, just like you thought,” Jennifer answered.
She looked at the list of names that she had compiled from news reports on drug-related deaths or missing persons and in which DNA or Mayhem had been mentioned. She typed into her browser the first name on the list ‘Dwayne Rogers’ and the words ‘drug overdose.’ “This is the most detailed story I could find, and it’s not a death—he actually survived.”
She let John read from her screen:
ALAN ROGERS’ SON RECOVERS FROM DRUG OVERDOSE
Dwayne Rogers, the son of successful IT businessman and founder of MediaWerx, Alan Rogers, has made a remarkable recovery in the hospital, seven days after initially being diagnosed brain-dead following his collapse as police officers attempted to restrain his drug-induced violent behavior at an apartment in Upper Manhattan. A source close to the family stated that without the rapid response and decision of the paramedics to intubate their son, he would not be alive today. The Rogers family is registered with a premium Manhattan-based ambulance and ER concierge service, which is said to have state-of-the-art ambulances and diagnostic services. Police believe that Rogers had purchased the drugs from someone at the Mayhem club on Washington Street in the Meatpacking District.
“He was lucky and survived, but most didn’t,” Jennifer said. “Here’s another one featuring a rich kid.”
TYCOON’S DAUGHTER, 22, DIES OF DRUG OVERDOSE
The daughter of a property tycoon was diagnosed brain-dead in the hospital two days ago after suffering an adverse reaction to a new type of drug on the market. Hannah Morgan, 22, was believed to have purchased the pill known as Spider’s Bite from a dealer operating outside the popular Mayhem nightclub in New York’s Meatpacking District. Clubgoers at Mayhem, who wish to remain anonymous, saw Morgan acting violently at the club before being removed by security around midnight. She was found unresponsive at around 2 a.m., a few blocks away from Mayhem. EMTs took her to the nearest ER, but on arrival, she was diagnosed as brain-dead. Her parents kept her on life support for two days before finally deciding to take her off it. She was buried a week later.
The management of Mayhem released a statement stating that the safety of their patrons continues to be their highest priority and they deeply regret and vigorously condemn the widespread epidemic of drug-taking in the city.
“Sure, they do!” John muttered sarcastically. “Odds-on they just left her for dead in an alley like they did with the kid I saw.”
Jennifer went through the other names of OD victims who were the sons or daughters of prominent professionals or high-net-worth individuals. In the majority of cases, the violent episodes had occurred at DNA and Mayhem, and the victims’ bodies were found in the streets surrounding the clubs. There was one other case similar to the Rogers’ where the victim had bought the drugs at the club but collapsed in another location, where he got immediate medical treatment and then recovered fully, this time after six days.
“What about people who are still missing after going to the clubs?” John asked.
Jennifer typed in the keywords ‘Missing Person,’ ‘Mayhem,’ and ‘DNA.’ It yielded hundreds of results, most of them irrelevant. She finally found some posts on a few NYC nightlife-related forums and minor news articles describing situations where persons reported missing had visited one of El Gordito’s clubs on the night of their disappearance. In the majority of cases, witnesses reported suspected drug-taking by the victim and violent behavior necessitating removal from the club by security staff.
“They seem to fit the pattern. None of them is mentioned as being wealthy or coming from wealthy families.” Jennifer paused and continued slowly, pointing at the screen. “There were some sightings of the missing persons at places as far away as Harlem and Staten Island after they left the club.”
“I’m guessing these sightings are most probably fake and in reality, those victims were probably already on their way to the harvesting factory,” John suggested. He paused for a moment as the vile reality of what he had seen sunk in. He then he explained to Jennifer that Nikki had told him about Santiago being a leading player in an important narrative. “The drug manufacture must be the narrative, Jen. El Gordito’s new drug will cause massive addiction and create new drug wars––it’s a perfect scenario for The Game, which is all about causing maximum suffering and death. And what better pairing for the storyline than El Gordito possessed by Santiago’s spirit! Two villains in one!”
“What about the organ trafficking—do you think that’s part of the narrative?” Jennifer asked.
“I don’t know, seems like it could be just as lucrative as the drug business. In both cases El Gordito has very low costs, he brews one of his products and steals the other. Plus, with the organ harvesting, he uses the empty bodies to ship the drugs.”
John’s tone then changed as he relayed the bad news that Santiago’s vendetta against Jennifer’s father was of little importance to the Voids and they had no interest in stopping it.
They chewed on that for a minute before Jennifer’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Wait a minute,” she enthused. “You said that Santiago is a key player in a narrative. I think I’ve cracked it. The way to beat Santiago is simple. It’s… The Game! The Game is the answer!”
“How so?” John asked, confused.
“In every game you have winners and losers, right?”
“So?”
“So, what happens if one of these spirit players fails to make their host achieve whatever goal they were supposed to achieve? I mean, what if we, somehow, get El Gordito arrested and his operation goes down? Santiago would fail—he would lose—and a loser would no longer be allowed in The Game, no longer be allowed to play, right?”
“Right!” John recalled the words he had heard during his meeting with Nikki: Failure to realize their roles in a narrative will result in the spirit’s immediate and permanent removal from Earth. “According to what Nikki said, Santiago would get banished from Earth. And when you think about it, it wouldn’t make much sense to reward a spirit who’d failed by letting it stay on Earth to deal with unfinished business. But it would take more than El Gordito merely being arrested for his empire to collapse. He’s been arrested and acquitted countless times.”
“We have to get Vargas arrested with evidence so overwhelming that they’ll put him away and close down all his operations. That would end the drug manufacture, causing a complete failure of the narrative.”
“That’s brilliant, Jen!” John announced, but he could see
from her expression that the enormity of the task wasn’t lost on her. “We can’t do it alone. Now’s the time to tell your father everything. His life could depend on it, and he might be able to help us.”
“How the hell am I going to do that? I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have me committed to a psychiatric facility, but still . . .”
At times of stress, hunger would drive Jennifer to the kitchen. To her, there was nothing more comforting than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Eager to help and to practice his dexterity, John picked up a knife from the drawer as Jennifer filled the kettle and placed it on the stove in readiness to make her favorite tea.
Too quietly to be heard by either of them, at that moment David Miller opened the front door with his keys. With their backs to him, neither of them saw him enter the kitchen. If they had, John would have stopped what he was doing immediately. As it was, David became the unintended witness to a knife, seemingly on its own, entering a jar of peanut butter and spreading a dollop of the contents onto a piece of bread. He stood hypnotized for a second and then coughed––a habit he had when nervous. The knife dropped to the kitchen work surface.
Jennifer looked around, startled, and saw David with an understandably bewildered expression on his face.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, flashing a concerned look at John. “Come and sit down.” He gave only the barest inclination that he had heard her, so she led him to one of the couches in the family room.
David didn’t respond. His eyes remained fixed on the knife and peanut butter. He assumed that he was so tired that perhaps his mind had been playing tricks on him.
“He’s in just the right mood for the talk,” John whispered.
David sat down. He wanted to ask about the knife but couldn’t bring himself to do it. As it turned out, he didn’t have to.
“I know you saw the knife in the air, Dad . . .”