Mike was flabbergasted. “Original thought... all this because I questioned what you were showing me?”
“Sadly, Michael, it starts with just such a thought, or a realisation that is of the nature of the one you just had, and it grows from there. It is, and always will be, our job to control what you see and feel. What outrages you and what brings you joy. We are the flag you fly outside your door, the music you listen to as you drive to the job we supply you. We are the prison, and your thoughts are the prisoner. And when one of you reaches deeper into yourself, just as you have today, it is imperative that we maintain the balance. The alternative is revolution - a tearing down of our impeccably constructed system.”
Terror pounded on the doors of his psyche now. Tears beginning to flow unnoticed as he listened, and the reality of his predicament clenched at his heart.
He could hear his daughters’ laughter echoing through his mind and wondered in horror if he’d ever see her again.
The unholy creature being transmitted into his once seemingly safe and secure living room continued. “When you took the first step to suspecting that I - or we - were lying, you essentially broke the spell that lends itself to our cause.”
“Which is?” He was shaking from head to toe, dangerously close to hysteria.
“A global technological prison society, of course...”
Suddenly he was shocked to find himself laughing. Am I losing my fucking marbles here? “Of course...”
“The wars we fight cannot be fought without the consent of the people, Michael. The illusion of democracy and of a free society cannot be maintained while the populace remains awake to our plans. All over the world right now – France, Britain, Australia, Germany – similar systems to our own are working in tandem with us to bring about our new world. The process is a long one and requires arduous strictures on the populations’ perception of events as they unfold on our planet. It’s unfortunate that we have to clean house so often. We can thank the internet for that. People just as yourself are even more problematic – you arrived at your conclusion fully formed and without any research or any pre-emptive insight.”
“Speak English, bitch. I'm not Bill Gates.” He hissed.
“You’re a potential freedom fighter, Michael. And that's unacceptable.”
She paused, and Mike felt like the air was so thick that he’d choke, turn blue and fucking die right there and then.
“If all this science-fiction mumbo jumbo is true, then where the fuck does that leave me?”
The woman – if she could even be called such a thing - smiled that vacant, emotionally derelict smile, and replied, “It leaves you at a dead end. Both figuratively and literally, I'm afraid...should you choose unwisely.”
***
Mike felt his asshole clench. All his muscles simultaneously tensing as he instinctually poised himself for flight. Had this bitch just threatened his life? What the hell was he going to do?
Without another thought, he lunged forward and reached for the neck of his trusty guitar, which sat rested against the arm of the chair, within easy reach for when the mood took him. He grabbed it in both hands, sprung to his feet, and screamed. “Get the fuck out of my living room, bitch! Just leave me the fuck alone!”
The construct rolled her eyes. “Mike, do you really think smashing your own television will save you? We control everything - every channel and every radio broadcast – we watch you from all sides at all times. From above, from below, and from all around. If you think you can escape by simply smashing this current form of communication, please feel free, but the information I’m about to give you could prove to be important to you...very important. I’d strongly advise for your own safety that you, lower the instrument, be seated back on your couch, and listen more intently to me than you have ever listened to anyone before.”
“You threatened my Rebecca!”
“I assure you, Rebecca is safe for the time being. Our interest at present lies only with you and with your on-going awakening. Though it must be stated, your process of illumination carries far less nobility and grandeur than we are used to. It’s a great disappointment for us to lose your support, Michael. Your mindless machismo is among our most desired traits in our serfs. It’s a real shame.”
“Yeah, well...”
“That said, the consequences for your non-compliance will be severe. You now know we are watching at all times. We are everywhere, and you have no way out. Your daughters agonising death is merely one order away, and I’m tiring of our little charade, now sit down. You have five seconds.”
Mike braced himself. Torn asunder by terror and confusion.
“5...”
He gritted his teeth, readying himself to smash the bitch’s digital face to kingdom come.
“4...”
He gripped the slender neck of his prized guitar tightly and raised his arms for the swing. The demonic transmission remained unfazed, of course.
“3...”
He saw sweet Rebecca’s smile in his mind’s eye.
“2...”
He heard her laughter echo in his ears like all the heavens angels in their heavenly choir.
“1.”
He closed his eyes, felt the adrenaline flee from his shaking limbs, leaving him weakened and in a state of half-life.
Rebecca...
He lowered his impromptu weapon, knowing as he did so that its use would be less than futile, and that it would likely herald the murder of his little girl.
He threw the guitar aside, and acquiesced to the constructs demands - fell back onto the couch, took a deep breath that felt so chillingly like his last expulsion of free air, and raised his hands in supplication.
“I’ll do what you want. Please...please just leave my daughter alone.”
The digital nightmare being beamed into his home smiled, knowing the fly was inextricably caught within the web. Mike realised in that moment that it would always be love that the unseen controllers she represented would use against men and women like him. It would always be the goodness that lay in a man’s heart that would tear him down at the last. He knew, as he gazed into what passed for this soulless constructs eyes, that there would be no pleading and no bargaining with real evil.
The devil would thrive on man’s good intent, and in her smile he saw the devil.
It was without horns, nor tail, nor fiery red eyes.
It was the numb comfortable banality of following the pack.
It was countless digital images beaming into the human heart and usurping truth with derelict dreams of the material world and hatred for ones fellow man.
It was the education system, the military, the quiet corruption of churches in small towns and the proud wasted greed of the bankers on Wall Street.
It was every single time a good man saw evil and done nothing to stop it.
And above it all, directing the people into accepting the devils dreadful blueprint, was the media.
The television eye....
In that moment, Mike realised that what the nightmare on his screen had said was all true. He had seen through the veil, and could never ever see the world as he’d seen it before. Of course people with clarity of vision could never be afforded a chance to thrive in the society that was being built by the very hands of those it would imprison.
He fleetingly envisioned a world where truth was law, and managed to smile briefly before a deep despair settled in his soul.
It’s too late. I’ll never get to experience the world as it is. All I can do now is try to save my baby.
“What do I have to do?” he asked.
A moment passed in eternity before she replied. “We can’t have you seeing the world with brand news eyes, Michael. Therefor we need to spoil the view. Go fetch your sharpest knife...”
***
The kitchen knife rested in Mike’s cold, sweating palms. He stared at it, taking in its terrible smoothness as the morning light shone off its steel blade.
It was the sharpes
t he could find amongst his meagre assortment of utensils.
He’d used it on many occasions to skin rabbits or even the occasional deer after a long, leisurely days hunting with his friends. It had served him well, and he prayed to a god he was rapidly losing faith in, that it would do its job as quick and sure as it had so many times before.
As he stared into its steel, and seeing the promise of pain untold, he feared his strength would flee him, and that he couldn’t go ahead with what the evil witch on his television demanded of him.
“You can survive this, Michael. A phone call will be made on your account advising that there has been an awful occurrence at your address...that of a complete psychic breakdown. You will spend the rest of your existence in a mental hospital, right alongside the other raving lunatics who scream and claw at the worlds veneer. Your words will fall on death ears, but your daughter will live.”
“Then please...why can’t you just have me locked up and be done with it?” he begged. “Why take my sight?”
“We’re all about symbolism, Michael. You'd have come to see such things were you free of your predicament. The removal of your eyes by your own hand is a most satisfactory act, symbolically and as causality for your imminent incarceration.”
“Please...”
“You need not go ahead with the act of self-blinding, but should you choose to break your orders I can assure you that what will befall your daughter will be far, far worse. I will spare you the details. After all, we are not heartless.” She paused momentarily then said, “Do not push in too far, or you will puncture the brain - best that you simply burst the eyeball and move onto your right. Now...Begin...”
I have no choice, he thought in abject horror, they’ll kill my little girl.
The media sentinel sat quietly, watching as he raised the knife to the soft, jellied flesh of his left eye. Nothing more was to be said, he realised. He would either follow her orders or the only thing in this world he held more dearly than his own life would be cut down - her innocent life torn from her in ways he could barely stand to imagine. There was no way out of this.
He knew now that eyes were upon him, watching not only from the flickering portent of death that had become his TV, but perhaps from satellites soaring high above, or drones zooming in so close they could detail the sweat running into his eyes as the knifes razor sharp point drew ever closer by his own hand, poised to steal from him all light and all beauty, once and for all. Should he survive this horror he would be condemned to darkness, a lifetimes worth of abysmal emptiness.
But Rebecca would remain in the light.
She would remain unaware and would, he prayed, grow up never to question her world.
His blindness would be her sight, and his own self-inflicted fate would be the conduit for every precious day she enjoyed on this planet.
Please God, help me find the courage to do this. Please...
Closer...
You can do this.
Mike pushed the tip of the cold blade into the white of his eye, just below his rapidly flickering pupil.
Closer...
He felt only a subtle pressure as the blade pressed against the sclera. The tissue was incredibly tough, prolonging his terror.
He pushed harder, the pain now beginning to register in nauseating waves....
The point of the blade slid along the wet surface of his eyeball, scratching the thin film as its tip found the pupil.
With the knife now centred, he applied more pressure.
He pushed hard.
Suddenly Mike was howling as the tough exterior gave way and the knife point punctured the tissue of his cornea; his eyeball burst in a geyser of gore; the blade piercing the soft jelly of his lens as he pushed in further.
There was awful scraping sensation as the blade sliced through the skin of the eyelid as he plunged it deeper; fresh blood mixing into the viscera of the deflated orb.
He wailed in agony as the slick fluid ran down his trembling cheeks like bloodied egg yolk. It ran into the contours of his lips and he tasted the foul slime on his tongue.
Despite the horror, he could sense the chill of the evening air push into the hollow chasm of his socket, and take roost there. The semen-like mess that was now dripping onto his lap with a rhythmic ‘plop’ remained warm as it splashed onto his legs.
Mike screamed then, so loud and so despairing that, had he been aware of anything other than his own torment, he’d have heard the crows that housed in his garden taking flight into the morning sky, as if in terrified retreat from the evils within their proximity.
The tip pierced the soft membrane of the socket, sending fresh jolts of burning pain through his trembling, juddering body.
When he was sure it was done, just as she had ordered, he finally removed the now slick steel.
The knife slid from the ruin of his eye-socket with a vile sucking sound, carrying with it the remaining fluids.
It dropped from his hands to the floor as Mike instinctually clawed at the cavernous hole in his face, trying to tear the pain from his skull. His nails dragged and ripped at the skin of his cheeks, drawing white-hot lines down the mess of his features.
Mike clenched his mangled eyelids closed, desperately trying to dull the waved of stinging fire coursing through his head like red-hot needles; the hurt only increasing though he was powerless to stop. He could feel the last viscous remnants of his eye ooze through the cut lids.
He fell to his knees, howling and with his one remaining eye streaming tears, he fought to look up at the monster that was a spectator to his torture, and though he could no longer find words, he begged as best he could with his right eye to be spared from any more of this hell.
“Now the other.” she said.
***
Mike lay curled on the rug in a foetal position. What remained of his once sky-blue eyes was smeared between his fingers and the rough-hewn weave of the fabric he rested on. Shock had sent his mind on a journey into nothingness after the slow, torturous removal of his right eye, but the excursion was painfully short-lived.
As his mind fought to push through the mental fugue that had enveloped amidst the suffering, he was dimly aware that he felt like he was crying, and he wondered if he could even shed tears anymore.
Blackness, impenetrable and all consuming, had followed Mike back from the depths of his psyche, and with it came the full atrocity of what this monstrous woman and her masters had inflicted upon him.
He would never see again. No more sunrises. No more morning hunts in the local woodland....
No more Rebecca...
He would never see her life-affirming smile again.
Never see her eyes light up like the heavens every time he picked her up from her mothers’ home. He’d never haul her into his arms again and tell her he loved her, and be able to see without question in the depths of her pale green eyes, that she loved him back.
He lay on the wet, sticky rug and wept.
But she’ll be alive, Mike. She’ll be alive. She’ll see all those sunsets for you. She’ll see all the worlds’ wonders that you were too damn stupid to pay any attention to. Rebecca will live a full, beautiful life, blissfully unaware of the corruption that lies just beneath the cold surface of her world. All she will see is beauty. The entire world in all its glory...
She’ll live, Mike, she’ll live...
With his ruined face pressed against the brush of the rug, Mike found he could smile. He would live out his remaining years in this cold darkness, and would never utter a word of any of this to anyone. He’d allow his own daughter to believe him insane and he’d push through what time he had left wrapped in the sanctuary of knowing she was safe from harm. It was a huge price to pay, but one a good father would never back down from. He’d proven his worth as a man and a daddy, even if the world would never know of it. And that would be his sacrifice - his small but vital victory over the newfound oppression that had torn his future from him with such ferocity and speed.
&n
bsp; “She’ll live.” He whispered into the darkness.
“Yes, Michael. About that...” she said, in her ever-so concise and pristine voice. Letting the words hang in the air with cruel relish.
Her...
The reporter...
The construct...
The devil...
Mike slowly raised his head in the direction of her voice, an instinctual action as prey seeks to maintain a visual on the approaching predator. The threat in her words tore through his soul like a razor-blade through a tendon.
“What?” he implored. “Tell me!”
“You see, Michael. It’s been brought to my attention that there has been a slight indiscretion in the handling of your case. Your actions have proven very noble indeed, and we truly are thankful for your co-operation with our literal and figurative removal of your sight. The operation went swimmingly, and it really does appear you’ll survive this trauma to fight another day, with the proper medical attention, of course. Alas, it pains me to report that there is a problem with our agreement...”
“I – I don’t understand.”
“I’m sure you do not. You are without doubt a man of your word, and a man most willing to sacrifice himself for the ones he loves. It’s a rare trait, and one that makes men like you our most lethal opponents. People such as you inspire goodness in others. You would have gone on to do so yourself, had you been given the chance.”
“You’ve already taken it from me, you fucking monster!” he screamed.
“Ah, you see, Michael, we haven’t taken it completely as of yet. It’s a widely regarded belief - among those in the higher echelons of our system - that goodness, temerity and, to coin a phrase, ‘the will to be free’, are traits that are often passed down from father to son.”
Consumed - Volume 1: An Extreme Horror Anthology. Page 12