Through the tears and heat-misting gauze of gut-wrenching sorrow I see things as they are, as they have always been. I am a pawn. I could no sooner stop this car and wander into the deep desert, pray and give up then I could buy Annabelle and me a couple of plane tickets to Siberia. There is no escape. I am a slave to emotion and the evil gestating inside me.
“Please don’t cry,” Annabelle soothes.
It sucks we can’t touch. This sounds pretty hokey, but I could sure use a hug right about now. “I’m okay,” I answer through sniffles.
“We are almost done. I know it’s hard. The dreamer is asking a lot of you, but in the end it will all be worth it.”
“In the end we will be dead and there will be nothing.” My sorrow turns to annoyance. How will any of this be worth anything? We are being used.
“True, but you’ll see, Charles, there’ll be a moment of exquisite clarity. It will all make sense before long and you will understand how valuable you are.”
No more anger, no more sorrow—just pervading numbness and a readiness for the end. I embrace my burgeoning indifference and say, “Whatever.”
“For now”—Annabelle smiles—“but you’ll feel different. You’ll see.”
We drive in silence for a couple minutes before Annabelle speaks again. “Allen suspects that I have told you more than I let on, and of course he’s right, I have told you way more than I let on, but I played dumb and pleaded the fifth. I expect you to do the same. When we get to Hollywood, you have to promise me not to say anything to him.”
I grunt.
Annabelle ignores it. “Anyway, what happened to you? One minute we are in heaven, the next you vanish. I was going return to the room and look for you, but Allen summoned me. He had something important to tell me.”
I give off more angry vibes at the mention of Allen’s name. Annabelle acknowledges it this time and talks faster, “Which I am about to tell you so just chill out. And remember, not a word of this to Allen. He doesn’t understand our bond. He doesn’t understand that I can tell you anything. Agreed?”
I nod and she’s off: “It’s going down tonight. Tonight we save the world! Aren’t you excited, Charles? I’m nervous and scared, but ecstatic and oh so ready! Allen also warned that the humans will stop at nothing to sway you in some way or another, so we have to be careful. We have to watch out for them and be extra cautious.”
“No airports?” I ask.
“Oh no, we still have to hit the airports, just in case things don’t pan out tonight. We have to ensure the infection is spread far and wide. The airports should do it. Once we finish with them it’s only a matter of time.”
I’m thinking there isn’t much point in telling Annabelle about Clarence, but then again I don’t want to hold anything back. She’s defying Allen by telling me inside info he doesn’t want me in on for some reason or another, so it’s only fair that I keep her posted.
As expected she fumes and her empty eyes flare at news of my conversation with Mr. Jackson. “Pathetic,” she seethes. “What else did they tell you?”
“Nothing.” I left out the God stuff, the value stuff and the “will of the human spirit” type stuff. I left out that it has had some sort of impact on me. “They’re aware of me. They’re scared of me. Mostly they just want me to think twice about whose side I’m on.”
“Ridiculous!” Annabelle shouts.
“Exactly,” I agree.
“Really, Charles?”
“What?”
“Do you really think it’s ridiculous? Have you thought twice about whose side you are on?” Annabelle’s voice goes low and kind of scary. I picture her striking her mom with an axe. I picture her binding her dad and torturing him.
“Of course it’s ridiculous.” I try extra hard to sound sincere. And I am, sincere, mostly.
My brain throbs and before Annabelle has a chance to respond I work at changing the subject. “Do you know what I really want?”
“What?” She plays along.
“What I really want more than anything in the whole world? My last request, so to speak, seeing as how it’s all going to be over soon?”
“What?”
“I would love it if you and I could pretend that we are normal. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just let go for a few hours? No more death or dream talk, just you and me and who we were a couple days ago?”
Annabelle doesn’t say anything.
“You know what I’m gonna miss?” I ask.
She still doesn’t say anything.
I go on. “I’m gonna miss my days off. When I managed to hold down a job and it got to the point where going to work became an everyday routine, it was really nice on Fridays, if it was a Monday-through-Friday type job, right around quitting time because everybody felt so good. There was this wonderful vibe in the air. Fridays on a payday? Smiles everywhere. And there was a strong sense of camaraderie, a feeling that we’re all in this together. A feeling that included even me. Those Friday paydays were the coolest. I’d sail through my lonely weekends high on goodwill. Monday it was back to the same old shit, coworkers snickering at me and mostly ignoring me, but Friday was never too far away.”
I look over at Annabelle and she smiles weakly.
“I am also going to miss getting a job. The firing I could do without, but getting a new job was the best feeling in the world. It’s tremendously validating.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Annabelle says coldly.
So much for casual conversation. I give up and say, “This doesn’t feel very normal, does it?”
She shakes her head no.
“I just wish we had more time to get to know each other.” I take my eyes off the road and look into her blind eyes and ask, “Aren’t there things you are going to miss?”
I don’t want to bug her and I don’t mean to sound whiny or weak, but for some reason I really need this. It’s like I have lived a mostly crappy life, but it was life just the same. It was filled with ups and downs, more downs, but there are definitely moments that stand out as good. There were triumphs, no matter how small, there were things worth talking about and I really want to hear about some of Annabelle’s.
She answers, “I miss being able to see, but then again I’ve missed it for so long that I don’t really miss it. I can’t even remember what it’s like.” She shrugs her shoulders and makes it painfully obvious that she isn’t into this.
I push anyway: “What about your dreams?”
“They’re just dreams, Charles.” With a frustrated sigh, she says, “I’m not normal. I don’t have experiences like you. You get to look around, look at me, and try to have a normal conversation. I get to try back, but half the time I am wondering what I’m missing. It’s hard. It feels forced. I’m fucked up.”
“I don’t think you’re fucked up.”
“Well, I am. I am fucked up and unhappy.”
“Sometimes you seem happy.”
“My parents taught me that one. If you were to meet them, you would have loved them. Everybody does. They smile and laugh and act like compassionate royalty and the idiot populous of planet earth buys right in. Behind closed doors it’s a different story.”
“That’s the way it goes for most of us,” I interject.
Annabelle shakes her head. “I didn’t just murder and torture them for kicks, Charles. I didn’t do it because ‘that’s the way it goes for most of us.’ I did it because they deserved it.” She lays her head against the passenger-side window and mutters softly: “I couldn’t go on knowing that they would die like everybody else. It wasn’t fair. They deserved to suffer a little bit.”
“As long as you feel better.” It comes out wrong, almost sounding sarcastic, but I really mean it. Not that I agree with it. I’m not sure what I think about it, but as long as it makes her feel okay I don’t care. I say it again, this time with the proper inflection and cadence to imply I am serious.
Annabelle makes a strange face—sour, sad—and then says, “I don’t f
eel better, Charles. Nothing can make me feel better. People look at you funny and they don’t accept you and it hurts your heart and you withdraw and now, finally, here you are in a position to get back at this fucking cesspool of a world. People never had the chance to treat me like they have treated you because my parents kept me locked away. They looked at me funny and they didn’t accept me and they hurt my heart and they did so at close range. I got all the shit you got, magnified by a thousand.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter what we were. There’s no going back, is there?” I want so badly to pretend everything is okay, but there’s no pretending, not after what we’ve been through, not even for a few hours. I was hoping to hear some nice things about Annabelle’s life, something to humanize her and give my love for her some real-world weight.
“It’s too late,” she agrees. “Besides, I like who you’ve become much better than who you were.” She smiles big and it is positively radiant.
“I am pretty cool,” I joke.
“You are very cool. If things were different… Boy, oh boy.” She raises her eyebrows playfully.
“What are you implying, miss?”
Annabelle growls and we both start laughing and damn destiny, damn perception, for a few hours we maintain something special. We maintain a friendship and no matter the inevitable end, for a few hours all feels right with the world.
Chapter Nineteen
The Once and Future King ( I Am Eternally Lost )
The airports were rather uneventful.
Thankfully.
The vibe was strange though. Different from Arizona or Vegas or any other time I initiated a mass killing by touch. Or the same, but different to me, now that I know what I know. All eyes on me. For lack of a better word, the situation has become…uncomfortable. But hey, who’s complaining, the airport sweeps went off without a hitch. I have officially destroyed the world (in an eventual sort of way). Smooth. And all of this, despite the inevitable woeful wealth of death and destruction, is a good thing. It’s like I’ve done my job and now I can relax a little. The last thing I need is more stress mucking up the insides of my skull. The guilt factory, churning out eyes left and right, has already got that covered.
Walking the long terminals of Ontario International and then those of the world-famous LAX, brushing, touching, breezing by the scrambling hordes (the steadily climbing death rate, dare I say “epidemic,” has the airports packed) I could feel the eyes, I could feel the recognition. In the car I had changed into the gas station attendant’s ultracasual (by Jim’s suit’s standards) getup—blue jeans, Minor Threat T-shirt and a dirty gray flannel—but the disguise did me little good. The dreamers were out in full force.
Not that every patron of the airport was in on it. Plenty of people were oblivious, unsuspecting and unsure, but a large number knew the story. A large number looked me over with sad, fearful eyes. They watched closely, dread rimming their sockets, as the touch fell upon them. The dreaming masses, like lambs to the slaughter, no, like monks setting themselves ablaze, were well trained and resigned to die. They knew not to make a scene or alert me or set me off in anyway. They knew that it was better to sacrifice themselves rather than risk pushing me to the point of explosion.
Unease abounded—thick, in the air, in the minds of the masses, in my head. Well, almost. What the fearful dreamers didn’t know was that I was nowhere near to losing it. It would take a whole lot more than some silent screaming and inner panic to get me anywhere near redlining anger. The reason? My lovely Annabelle. From Arizona to Ontario, from Ontario to LAX and now from LAX to the Hollywood Roosevelt, we’ve talked and talked and have gotten along swimmingly, fabulously, dreamily.
Doing the death walk—my mind a deep, dark funnel, my tendrils barely containing themselves, the eye wall crowding my thoughts—I am floating. I am unaffected by the recognition or the desperate souls of the dreaming damned. Ordinarily I would care. The unease would have gotten to me, and who knows? Maybe I would have backed out and made Clarence proud. Maybe I would have felt sorrow or remorse. Maybe. But fuck it, I am in love, or at least I think I am, at least it feels like I am (which is good enough for me). She loves me. And I love her. And nothing can fuck that up. Nothing. Not the quivering-eyed patrons of a thousand airports. Not the cries of the doomed. Nothing. I plan on sailing these feelings all the way to the bitter fucking end.
Pulling into the Roosevelt Hotel, already four in the afternoon, still no dead rising (maybe Clarence was wrong), I feel more alive than ever. Maybe Annabelle is right. Maybe nobody’s right. And one more thing—an interesting notion—Annabelle believes in the dreamer, and Clarence believes in the dreamers. Maybe they believe in the same thing, like when somebody whispers in your ear and then you whisper the same shit into someone else’s ear and on and on until it mutates into something similar, but fundamentally different (maybe this is the secret of life).
Soon to meet Allen Michael, I am surprised by my confidence; nothing can fuck this up. Annabelle is smiling, chattering about wonderfully inane, everyday things. Nothing can fuck this up.
I park the car and let her know we have arrived.
“We’re here?” she asks with disbelief, widening her useless eyes.
“The Hollywood Roosevelt, madam,” I say in a horrible rich Englishman’s accent.
“This is too fucking much, Charles! This is really happening.” Annabelle’s face is a wonder, alight and glowing. “This is it! This is our destiny!”
I nod and murmur my approval as convincingly as I can. Unfortunately, I don’t share her enthusiasm.
Nothing can fuck this up?
Nothing except for this.
Nothing except for the end.
I want more time.
This is destiny?
This is, at long last, the end, and after thirty-three years of hoping for something like this to come along, something that makes me important, vital to the world, a household name so to speak, something that defines my value and worth as a viable person, I don’t want it to end. I want to go on feeling important and special. I want to start the car and drive to a faraway place where nothing can fuck this up. I want more time with Annabelle, feeling human, doing what humans, what normal humans do, what normal humans have been designed to do.
I want, I want, I want.
No hand, no seizures, no worries and now I want to live.
A couple security types—dark suits, earpieces, tree trunk necks, unintelligent looks plastered across their faces—meet us in the lobby.
“Mr. Baxter,” Security Type Number One says in greeting, “Mr. Michael is expecting you.”
Security Type Number Two takes Annabelle by the arm and says, “This way, ma’am.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise, my wrist buzzes and I am about ready to go off when Annabelle calms me down. “It’s okay, Charles.”
“Yes, Mr. Baxter, we have been instructed to separate the two of you for your own safety,” Number Two says robotically.
I try to coax my wrist into relaxing. “Where are you taking her?” I ask.
“Don’t worry,” Annabelle says as she is led off by Number Two.
My stomach twists up. I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to be alone.
“We’ll see each other soon,” she says before disappearing into a doorway marked stairs.
“This way, sir.” Number One motions for me to follow.
“Where is he taking her?” I ask again.
“Same place we’re going,” Number One assures.
I nod and follow and am ushered through the lobby into an elevator.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To meet Mr. Michael.” Number One keeps his distance. He leans against the far wall of the elevator and as I shift my weight from foot to foot he appears to recoil. Sweat trails run down his temples and he nervously keeps checking my position from the corner of his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask for fun.
“Fine. Um, nervous,” he st
ammers.
Well, at least he’s being honest. “Of what? Of me?”
“A little.”
Silence between us as the elevator keeps climbing. Number One stares anxiously at the door.
Changing the subject, smashing the tension, I say, “Mr. Michael’s got a penthouse or something?”
“Try the whole top floor,” Number One responds.
As if on cue the elevator dings and the doors open. More security types, a few press types, a publicist type or two and some TV people mill about. Stepping into the hallway, all eyes settle upon me. Number One leads, I follow, head down, and the mini media circus flattens itself against either side of the hall giving wide berth. The uneasy vibe from the airports is in full effect. It is quite obvious that everyone here knows exactly who I am and what I can do.
At the end of the hall, Number One is about to knock on a large set of double doors when they swing open. The sudden action startles Number One and he jumps back a little. Standing in the doorway—smooth, slick, dressed to the nines, skin aglow, smile so wide it’s a wonder how his head stays hinged—is Mr. Allen Michael. His mouth widens even more and through the toothiest, most affecting grin I have ever seen he enthusiastically shouts, “Mr. Baxter!”
I nod, Number One regains his composure, and Mr. Michael raises his right hand. Immediately, three security types rush from somewhere within the room to his side, two to his right, one to his left. That booming, soul-galvanizing voice pours from his impossibly wide grin yet again. This time it says, “Gentlemen, it is undoubtedly him.”
Allen crosses his arms over his chest and stares at me for ten uncomfortable seconds. I’m not sure if I should say something like Hello, or Fuck you, when a quiet thump rings out. Number One groans and then wobbles and then falls to the floor like a sack of potatoes. The smell of gunmetal stings my nostrils. The lone security type on Allen’s left is holding a pistol capped with a silencer. A waft of smoke snakes from the barrel.
I Will Rise Page 29