Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller)

by Harmon Cooper

  Yours and yours and yours and yours and yours and yours and his and hers and ours and theirs.

  A neckless man staggers through the hall with a Japanese woman on his arm. He’s old and jelly roll, walrus skin. She’s young and fresh bun, model thin. Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt – who’s taking advantage of whom? The man smiles. Boy wants to push him away. He wants to paint his face Persian Red. The woman makes eye contact. He wants to grab her hand and shove her down the fire escape.

  Instead he looks down at the fugly hotel carpet. The floor is my shepherd. His Converse-shielded feet kick forward. The entrance to the stairwell is two agonizing yards away. Boy feels a presence behind him as soon as he pushes open the door. The presence hovers over his shoulder: ghost hands, phantom tentacles, cold nails sharp.

  Glass Wings. The pursuit begins.

  Not here. Not here. Not here. Boy swallows his fear like it’s a brick and begins his descent. Thirty-nine floors to go, how stupid of him. His feet windmill down the steps. His shoelaces flap left and right like a happy dogs’ ears or angry dread locks. Behind him the sound of dragging glass. He picks up speed.

  Thirty-six floors to go.

  Wind chimes from hell. Exhalations of the damned. You. Stalking. Sick. Monster. Sick. Demon. Sick. Teeth. Sick. Cat eyes. Sick. Pick legs. Sick. Black tongue. Sick. Boy’s heart jabs against his throat; his ribs squeeze until his lungs give way.

  He’s taking two steps at a time now. He sees himself land on his heels, almost topples over, catches himself, and picks up speed. Glass Wings is huffing behind him now, chasing him. The creature is raspy, angry, terrible, malodorous.

  Thirty-third floor.

  Forward momentum makes him want to grab his knees and roll down the stairs. To be sane, to be normal, to not see these horrible things, to not have his hallucinations augmented by a strange Japanese woman, to live in a place without monsters, to not be chased by Glass Wings down a stairwell – what Boy wouldn’t trade for this.

  He fought back, so many years ago, but something was different this time. Something has been different ever since Glass Wings last visited him in New York.

  What happens if I just let the creature catch me? The thought is new; the utterance of a desperate mind. It’s a hallucination. If it isn’t real, it can’t hurt you.

  But it is real.

  How can it be real? Megumi saw it. She didn’t see Glass Wings, but she saw Penelope. Penelope and Glass Wings are one and the same. Not possible. Not Possible.

  ‘Possible.’

  It’s Penelope’s voice and it’s in front of him. Boy bursts through the sound like it’s a cloud of smoke. Glass Wings breath is hot behind him, stale and musty and fetid.

  Twenty-seventh floor. Faster. Twenty-fifth floor. Too fast. Life is a camera in catapult. Twenty-fourth floor. For a second, Boy thinks Glass Wings has stopped chasing him. For a second he feels safe; for a second, things become clear. His thrumming heart slows and he begins to reduce his speed.

  Behind him a sickening yelp. The yelp turns into a low rumble and then into a piercing roar. An elephant meets a lion inside the fiery belly of a giant T-Rex whose father is a bellicose dragon. The sour taste of adrenaline washes over Boy’s teeth as he advances.

  He tumbles forward, catches himself on the railing with an extended hand. Crack! He’s back to his feet in seconds, nursing his wrist and pummeling down more stairs.

  He shakes his wrist out. Not broken, maybe broken. There’s no time to figure it out.

  Do not turn and look. He hears Glass Wings’s pick legs stab into the cement stairwell. He hears his wings shuffle. He imagines bloody saliva dripping from the creature’s mouth. It’s there. He doesn’t need to verify it.

  Sixteenth floor and he wishes he had a bat. One swing would do it. Kill your demons, drive a spear through your sharks, rip out their teeth and make a pretty necklace. Wear that shit to a party.

  Boy wishes he had an ax – slice the creature’s head off and watch it bounce down a flight of stairs. Kick it once it has settled and hawk a loogie in its eye. He wishes he had a bazooka – leave a crater-sized hole in Glass Wings’s chest. You shouldn’t fight what you cannot destroy.

  Boy is like a spiraling helicopter barreling down the dark side of a jagged mountain. He’s out of breath and his calves are piping hot. His wrist aches from catching his fall. He coughs and his lungs taste like steamed blood. How long will he have to run? The stairwell dwindles on indefinitely.

  Around him, snowflakes of glass twirl in the air slow motion. Each footstep is like a surly rock skipping across a calm body of water; running through glittering champagne showers is exhausting. What he wouldn’t give to escape all this.

  Eighth floor. Boy’s never moved so fast. He’s a torpedo; a sperm cannonballing towards a bubbling egg; a fruit bat diving head first into a bottomless well; a burning car soaring off the edge of a cliff. Boy will always be Glass Wings’s prey.

  Behind him monster, in front freedom. It’s true dammit, it’s true.

  Reality is a blur, a television covered in grease, a cracked computer screen that keeps refreshing. Do not feed the hallucinations or they will feed on you. Pray not to become prey. Glass Wings’s shadow looms over Boy now. He’s closer than ever, inches away.

  If only this made sense. If only there was a switch Boy could strike to power Glass Wings down. Quell the intensity and abhorrence, mollify the nascent brutality. Stick your hand in the machine and watch the blender shred it to bloody pieces.

  Stop. Do not stop. Fifth floor – closer than an electron to its nucleus. Life is an atom bomb, desire a mushroom cloud, reality the bomb’s wake, debris the loose ends not worth tying. It ends in an explosion.

  Glass Wings is closing in, gritting his crooked teeth, bellowing, breathing down the back of Boy’s neck and spoiling the skin that safeguards his brittle spine.

  Boy pushes further, sprints faster. His head throbs from the bursts of oxygen and the subtle change in altitude from the thirty-ninth floor to the second floor. One more floor to go.

  Sharp wings scrape against the walls of the stairwell. He hears more glass shattering behind him. Do not look! Needles on a lie detector test jump up and down. He wishes he were lying. A hundred glass flowers bloom and vomit filthy shards of awfulness. His skin crawls like a destroyed formicary.

  It’s now or never, never or now.

  ₪₪₪

  Boy skids into the lobby.

  He’s greeted by an eerie quiet and a buffed marble floor. He topples over his own feet, falls forward. A clerk runs over to him and helps him up. Boy’s breathing hard, his chest heaving up and down. The clerk keeps his hand on Boy’s shoulder, tries to make sure he’s stable enough to stand on his own.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Boy says to the concerned clerk. ‘It’s fine, sorry. Sorry, arigatō.’

  Do not go in there, he wants to scream. Instead, he turns awkwardly to the revolving door of the hotel, nursing his injured wrist. On his way past the concierge desk, he grabs the hotel’s card just in case he gets lost.

  ₪₪₪

  Outside Tokyo drizzle overcast.

  What now? The question has plagued humankind on the eve of every discovery. Boy’s hallucinations are back and Megumi can see them. Can she see Glass Wings too? The question would be answered soon enough.

  Stop thinking about it. Think about something else. Breathe.

  Boy crosses the street. His hair is now wet and his heart is still agitated from running down so many flights of stairs. With no other options for refuge, he dips into a convenient store called Family Mart. Zinc White and Diarylide Yellow – stale WalMart blue over the layout of a 7-11.

  Naturally, Boy heads straight to the juices and latches onto a white bottle with a perspiring orange on it. No tamales in sight and it doesn’t matter, he’s still full from the okonomiyaki. In the checkout line, a Japanese youth in a maid costume palms an energy drink. Boy remembers where he is and it’s frustrating. Why is Glass Wings here? Why can’t he just enj
oy himself?

  The man at the register bows as Boy approaches. He’s wearing a surgeon’s mask and his hair is shoulder-length, bleached at the tips. Longhorn Orange. Boy smiles at the thought. He’s a long way from Texas.

  After paying, Boy hovers near the door until the rain lets up. He looks down at the hundred yen coin in his hand. The flowers on the back of the coin remind him of Flowering, his piece that somehow sparked all this. Outside the convenience store, the teenager in the maid costume texts rapidly on her flip phone. He exits and stands near her as he drinks his orange juice. He stretches his fingers wide, checks again to make sure his wrist isn’t broken.

  Hotel. It’s large and looming and beautiful. Taxis wait in front and people drift in and out living their lives. Boy decides to walk for a little bit. Pacing down the street, he comes to a small restaurant with plastic replicas of dishes offered. The pieces are behind a glass display case that is now dappled with rain drops. Almost art.

  The forces that twist this world on its axis are as mysterious as they are trivial. Die and let someone else rattle the shaker for a while. Die and let someone else build a statue to celebrate their supposed ingenuity.

  Something calls Boy back to the hotel as a woman pushes past him on a bike. He suddenly wishes he could jump in the basket hanging from the handle bars and ride away with her.

  ₪₪₪

  Oggie sits on a butterscotch leather sofa in the hotel lobby scrolling through some pages on his tablet PC.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he says, looking up at Boy.

  ‘How did you know I stepped out?’

  He tries to wipe his face clean of the mixture of worry and exhaustion that has spread across it.

  ‘I stopped by your room.’

  ‘Oh… was someone there?’

  ‘Why would there be someone there?’ Oggie waves the question away. ‘I figured you’d gone for a stroll or something, then the lobby guy told me what happened. Is everything all right?’

  Oggie eyes him curiously. Boy has wondered from time to time if Oggie knew what was wrong with him. If he did, he did a pretty good job of glossing over it with a grim smile. Oggie was used to dealing with eccentrics. One could argue he was in the business of dealing with eccentrics.

  ‘Everything’s fine. Just…’ Boy hesitates. Do not tell him the truth. Do not reveal your demons to your sponsor.

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Just stressed out about the opening. That’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Boy says.

  ‘You don’t normally stress over openings…’

  ‘I know, maybe I’m jetlagged.’ Boy glances away from Oggie.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Everything will go as planned. Also, I want to discuss one of the pieces I’d like to take from you this year.’

  ‘Sure, which one?’

  ‘The sculpture you made. Glass—’

  ‘—No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Glass Wings…’

  A sinking feeling pulls his heart to his knees.

  ‘Yeah, that one,’ he says, not noticing Boy’s dismay. ‘There’s something about that piece. I’ve been looking at the picture I took of it before we shipped it to Tokyo. It’s the one.’

  ₪₪₪

  Boy pauses outside his hotel room door. Oggie can’t have Glass Wings because he planned to destroy Glass Wings. He built a monument to the creature and now he wanted to destroy it. Simple as that. The fact that Glass Wings had reappeared in his life only augmented his desire to eradicate the piece. Destroy. Destroy.

  ₪₪₪

  ‘You’re still here?’ Boy asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Megumi says on the tail end of a yawn. She’s sitting on his couch with a Japanese fashion magazine across her lap.

  ‘I didn’t expect…’

  ‘Expect what?’

  ‘For you to wait. Sorry I left like that. I just… I just needed some fresh air.’

  ‘I was about to leave. You were gone for a while.’

  ‘Did you hear someone knock?’ Boy asks, coming around to the front of the couch.

  Strange thought – Maybe Megumi isn’t real. Maybe Megumi is like Penelope, Lucy and Glass Wings. Boy approaches her cautiously. Maybe.

  ‘Yes, someone knocked on the door.’

  ‘Why didn’t you answer it?’

  Outside thunder rumbles violent. A streak of lightning splits the Tokyo skyline in half. Snare drum flams and electric paradiddles. The sound startles Boy. Megumi doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I didn’t know who he was,’ she says after the thunder subsides.

  ‘Look,’ Boy says, turning to her. ‘I’m sorry I left. I was just… I was just freaked out because…’ Boy’s voice drops to a whisper. ‘How many have you seen?’

  ‘It’s been a while since I saw one. Your Penelope is the first in maybe two years.’

  Imaginary friends. Why can’t Boy be the only one who’s crazy? He doesn’t want to share his hallucinations with anyone. He doesn’t want others to suffer alongside him.

  ‘Is Penelope here right now?’ He remembers that Megumi can actually see her – no sense in talking in hushed voices if Penelope’s not here.

  ‘No, she followed you out.’

  Strange. Something’s not right, but Boy can’t quite place his finger on it. Sleep could help. Figure this out another day. Only problem: he’s not that tired. Only problem: he’s on edge his skin is prickly and hot.

  Is Megumi real? Stupid question. She’s sitting right there. He can reach out and touch her. A stupid question, but still, the thought lurks at the back of his mind in the rafters of his troubled psyche.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Megumi says. ‘Is it ok if I sleep here?’

  Black olive eyes. Boy takes another look at Megumi. He swears her eyes hollow and dull for just a moment. No, maybe not. Why here? Why must his hallucinations reappear here? Cruel, really. Cruel and horrible.

  ‘Sure,’ he says.

  He turns to the bedroom and falls backwards onto his bed with his arms spread wide. His sore wrist bounces against the soft mattress and he cringes. Minutes later, a warm body curls in next to him.

  She’s real dammit. Tears well.

  Boy suppresses the feeling. Not now. He wraps his arm around her waist and realizes she’s taken her green dress off. Her cold skin twitches as his arm presses against it. Dammit, she’s real.

  Boy kisses her forehead and tries so hard not to sniffle that he hiccups. Megumi laughs; he doesn’t say anything. Words are serrated and ill-omened.

  ₪₪₪

  No trace of Megumi the next morning. The rising sun outside the floor-to-ceiling window is warm and daunting. Sparks of light flicker across his eyelids and his wrist still hurts.

  Of course she isn’t there. Why would Megumi be there? She isn’t real.

  ‘Penelope?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dammit! Dammit! DAMMIT!’ Boy screams, burying his face into his pillow.

  ₪₪₪

  Boy and Oggie take the subway to a sushi place Oggie likes in Shibuya. The Tokyo subway is eerily quiet. Not like New York, where people yell, talk shit, rap out loud, cuss at their children, complain and sing aloud like there aren’t fifty people huddled into the same cramped subway car.

  Across from Boy: a Japanese woman wearing flower print leggings and Doc Martins plays a game on flip phone. Above her: an advertisement for a resort on some remote Japanese island that looks like a volcanic crater. Standing and holding onto the railing nearby: a Japanese man keeps his grip firm around the arm of a blind youth.

  Even though he knows it’s not possible, Boy scans every woman who gets on their train hoping it will be Megumi. He distinctively remembers her face, her long neck, the sharp cut of her hair. She’s not real.

  ₪₪₪

  Outside sweltering humidity. The back of Boy’s shirt is drenched with sweat. No matter how much he fans himself with a paper fan, he still can’t seem to coo
l down. The sake he had with Oggie for lunch has him feeling loose, a little sick to his stomach. He holds his nausea in as they take a taxi to Akihabara.

  Boy’s pretty sure he sees Megumi in Akihabara. She’s walking briskly, wearing a lime green shirt. He raises his hand at her, but she doesn’t see him.

  ‘Who are you waving at?’ Oggie asks. There’s a little sweat on his brow. Other than that, he appears absolutely comfortable in the blistering humidity, even though he’s wearing a vest and thin black tie.

  ‘No one.’ Is she really no one? Was she ever real? Boy burps and feels his stomach wind into a knot. He’s forgotten it’s possible to eat too much sushi.

  Tully’s coffee shop. A Japanese woman wearing a kimono and listening to a pair of pink earbuds waits for both of them to enter before exiting past them. Beethoven’s Sonata # 14 trickles out of the loudspeaker above them. The cool air meets Boy’s face and he wonders what Beethoven would think about his music playing in a coffee shop in twenty-first century Japan.

  Funny how humans cling to certain works and quickly forget others. And what’s not to like about Beethoven’s most famous piece? Is it sad or hopeful? Is there a discernible difference? Isn’t sadness based on the deterioration of hope and hope based on the eradication of sadness?

  Too much to think about – Boy wants to paint. Instead, he drinks coffee. Instead, he listens to Oggie talk about an artist from Georgia he hopes to meet when he gets back to the States. Instead, he watches a Japanese teenager enter the coffee shop decked out head to toe in anime-themed clothing. Instead, Boy waits like a sniper for his sweat to dry and the coffee to pacify his sake buzz.

  ₪₪₪

  Never having a proper vacation, Boy isn’t a very good tourist. Of course he enjoys the humming Tokyo scenery, the lights and peculiar outfits, the Japanese script plastered everywhere, the vibrancy, the quiet jostle. It’s new, it’s unique, it’s otherworldly, but so is Boy’s other world.