by White, Gwynn
Or die trying.
Sunny witnessed her own self hastily shaving the hair from her body. First her head, then her legs and arms and vagina. The razor snagged flesh in the effort. Valuable time was consumed, but it was better than taking the needle.
“Your success is much improved in the tank,” Dova had told her.
A harness was fastened under her arms and around her waist. She dangled nude for the world to see. There was no one in the warehouse, only curtains that hid what she assumed were more tanks. Hanging naked and alone, all sense of dignity shed away.
Her toes were the first in.
Sunny watched the oxygen-rich slime ooze up to her knees. She remembered the sensations—the bathwater temperature, the stinging bite where the razor had cut. A cool sensation passed through her flesh, a mentholated burn permeating her calves, penetrating her shins. A vapor leaked into her femurs.
I’m breathing through my skin, she had thought.
The liquid reached her groin. This was the moment it became very real. The walls of the tank were all around, the buoyancy of the solution releasing the pressure of the harness. Her breasts spattered with bubbles. The pungency filled her head, clinging to the back of her throat in a thick coating she couldn’t swallow.
She lifted her chin and closed her eyes.
“Allow the tank to breathe,” Dova said.
Sunny could feel her final breath beginning to burn. The liquid passed her lips, filled her nostrils and popped in her ears. It slid over her freshly shaved scalp.
The harness released her.
Sensation was lost in the floating darkness behind her eyelids. She held her last breath until instinct took over.
The liquid gushed into her mouth.
She opened her eyes, thrashing against the glass wall, the thick fluid slowing her panic, a liquid straitjacket of claustrophobia around her. The blurry world dimmed. Numbness filled her from the inside. Momentarily, she began to sink. Her arms lifted above her head.
A drowning ballerina.
A matrix of thin filaments was imbedded in the walls of the tank, a Faraday cage that would wirelessly hijack her senses. The tendrils reached for her, caressing her softening flesh like fiber-optic seaweed that would complete the connection. As her body succumbed to the oxygen-rich solution, a matrix of her identity was captured.
Her awareness leaped.
She was back home, staring at her son as milk soaked into the carpet. She would call Donny. He would bring over Barry. And the hunt would begin.
Sunny was still in the warehouse, staring at her floating body. The atmosphere began to shift. The curtains billowed; the ceiling darkened. She witnessed in elapsed time the lifetimes she would experience once she had been inserted into the Maze. All of her attempts to find her son passed through the dilated dimension of the Maze, each lifetime respawning at the moment of coming home with groceries. Each lifetime yielding no answers, finding no hope. She would die and live, die and live. The cycle of rebirth.
The snake eating its tail.
The highlights of her incarnations sped around her, the details of multiple deaths that happened in the streets or alleys, in rooms or hospitals. Some passings were more peaceful than others. But she never escaped, never saw the clues.
Never found what she came for.
She lost count of the lives she lived and the deaths she died. All the variations of suffering she endured, all the times she’d kidnapped Barry, the man named Ax. There were times she beat him; times she lost control and stabbed him. There were times he escaped and hurt her.
That was why she was careful with the knife.
“If you want to find me,” he sang, “I’ll see you at three, but not a minute before, you walk through the door. You won’t find me, so you can’t be free…”
With each lifetime, she grew older and lived longer. The futility of her efforts were etched into the fabric of her consciousness, the memories wiped away before respawning to do it again, but never completely forgotten. Her efforts were indelibly branded into her soul.
She eventually surrendered to futility. Hope extinguished, she gave herself to the Maze and merged into the present moment.
A kaleidoscope spun, the speedy winds of time circling around the eye of existence until Sunny witnessed herself as an old woman withered by eternity and carved with wisdom. Slightly bent, the old woman stood on the city’s corner. A peaceful smile dug through her wrinkles.
Her emerald green eyes glittered.
The moment of her enlightenment—the point where she embodied the wisdom of the sages, the harvest of grinding through lifetime after lifetime, when there was no separation between all those lives she had lived and no separation between her and the Maze—had arrived. How many lives did it take to reach this moment?
A pointless question.
Time, she had come to realize, was an illusion. It was the point of view taken only from the self. She didn’t need to escape the Maze to find her son.
The grand illusion of time had revealed its true nature to her on that street corner, its unwinding bestowing transcendence of the mortal coil. She had become everything. The Maze was not a dream. It was a parallel reality as valid as the flesh reality. And she was not separate from it.
This realization transcended rational thought. She had opened the secrets of the Maze, understood the secret of time, and escaped the bindings of its illusion. She was not separate from anything; therefore she could choose to be anywhere.
Choose to be anytime.
On that street corner, she lifted her eyes to a clear blue sky and slipped through the fabric of the Maze. The buildings faded into pixelated clouds. The sidewalk and streets undulated into grassy slopes. A meadow lay across the land with willowy clouds on the horizon.
The old woman stood in a field.
She had transformed the stuff of the Maze into this peaceful setting. Sunny was next to her. Heavy snowflakes fell around them, dampened the atmosphere, and stuck to their hair. A smile touched the old woman’s eyes, snow reflecting deep in her pupils and covering the world around her.
Sunny was holding her hands. She looked into her emerald eyes. The old woman held a pair of oversized sunglasses that once hid her eyes. She had removed the silken scarf that had covered her head and the jagged scar near her hairline. They weren’t in the snow-covered meadow anymore.
They were in a room.
Sunny was still holding the hands of Marie Jones, the old woman who lived across the hall from her. Marie Jones, the homeless woman with a yellow flower in her hat.
I am Mrs. Jones.
Jones, her maiden name. Marie, her middle name. Sunny Marie Jones.
A snowflake landed delicately in the old woman’s cupped palm. The crystalline flake remained perched upright and did not melt. She curled her fingers around it.
Paper dolls were all around.
At the moment of enlightenment on that street corner, Sunny could have had anything she wanted, could have been anywhere she desired. She could have escaped the Maze. She came back to find herself, to guide herself to the truth, to close the loop, to stop the searching. Because there is no search. Nothing is lost. I am the light that needs not to escape, but shines on everything.
The last beep sounded off on her wristwatch.
Sunny was alone, hands out.
Footsteps echoed down the hall and slowed on the approach. The preacher stepped into the room. He was wearing a checkered shirt tucked into pressed khakis with black dress shoes.
“Most unfortunate,” he said. “You seem to have missed an opportunity.”
Sunny looked around the room; the beds were empty. She could hear the snoring of all the lost in the shelter, felt their breath in her chest. All had been revealed; nothing was separate. Not for Sunny Grimm.
He stepped aside and let her pass. The childhood door was closed. The keyhole was dark. She peeled a strip of paint from the trim and let it flutter to the floor. Nothing was singing inside the room.
/> Not anymore.
“Is that yours?” the preacher asked.
The bag was in the dorm room. One with a flower on the side. He picked it up, the contents rustling. A paper doll escaped. It was full of them.
“Are you real?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
She looked around with beginner’s eyes, a child seeing the world for the very first time. Whether he was real or not depended on one’s perspective. He believed he was real. If he was not, then neither was she.
“You know the way,” he said.
He was referring to the moment she’d opened her childhood door and gazed into the white light. That was the way out of the Maze. She had found it but didn’t take it. Mrs. Jones—her own self—had come to remind her that she didn’t need to leave the Maze. One reality was the same as another. And she came here willingly.
She knew why.
Every incarnation Sunny had experienced in the Maze now held this knowledge. It was their moment of enlightenment. All of her incarnations would find it with the help of her own self. They would all know why they were here. There was no reason to escape, nowhere else to go.
There is just here and now.
The preacher walked with her toward the big room. They stopped outside the big room, beneath the clock pointing at three o’clock.
“Perhaps tomorrow night,” he said.
He expected her to return to bed and sleep another night, to wait for the digital watch to signal another opportunity. Sunny unbuckled the wristwatch and gave it to the preacher. Confused, he watched her walk out the front doors.
Rain dribbled through a rip in the sky blue awning. City lights cast a gray glow on the night sky. She held her hand out to capture the rain. A small puddle splashed in her palm. When she looked up, the sky cleared. Stars danced on a celestial canvas. The road was streaked with streetlights and passing cars. The moon glowed in the puddles.
The snake graffiti was on the brick pillar with its tail in its mouth.
Sunny reached into the large bag and scatter the paper dolls. They fluttered like moths. She walked down the middle of the street with a cloud of magical paper dolls hovering overhead. The early morning traffic went around her without honking, without cursing. She simply wished for them to avoid her.
And they did.
This was the Maze. It was an experiment that only included her and her son. What the investors wanted to find out was not readily apparent to her. She came to find her son but found herself instead. She would thank them for allowing her this opportunity to find true freedom, but she still harbored anger. Willing or not, someone forced them into this eternal search. She would keep her promise to the white-haired man. Someone would pay.
But first, her son needed to awaken.
32
Hunter
After the Punch
The clouds lifted.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Hunter reached for his chin, the stubble thick and stiff, grinding in his palm. His hand felt as light as a whisper, a phantom limb that floated toward him.
A beam of hard light cut between heavy drapes. Dust particles were effortlessly suspended.
Where am I?
He took for granted that memories awaited him upon awakening. The day. His name. Only emptiness and cutting sunlight greeted him this morning.
Sunlight.
It was gray where he was, where he’d been. It wasn’t sharp. Not illuminating.
He sat on the edge of the bed, fully clothed. His shirt was damp with body odor. His head levitated on his shoulders. He gently rose onto his feet and split the heavy drapery, birthing the daylight on his cheeks.
Buildings and cars. People moved like insects.
An ache lingered behind his eyes and spilled into his forehead. He hid behind his hand, deep breaths soothing the pain. He searched for aspirin in his luggage, a loose duffle bag dumped in the corner.
His name came back to him as thoughts drifted out of early fog and landed with a delicate touch, presenting him with who he was and where. He grimaced. Something was missing.
The itch.
He couldn’t remember how he got to his bed or the days preceding it, but he remembered the itch that had plagued most of his life. His hand crawled over his jaw, crept behind his ear and through his hair, searching for a place on the back of his head where once he slid a needle.
And found nothing.
A bump, perhaps. A mole. But his fingers did not find what they were expecting—the port of a stent that extended between the two hemispheres of his brain to reach his frontal lobe. He turned his hands over, as if the answers were tattooed on the backs, as if the bulging arteries would divulge hieroglyphic answers, when a text arrived.
Who is this?
It was the same number he’d blocked a dozen times. All the messages had been identical.
Who is this? Who is this? Who is this?
The aspirin lodged just below his Adam’s apple. He went to the bathroom and scooped water from the faucet, spilling it down his shirt. He threw his head back to swallow and jumped.
He had expected a tired face with bags weighing down his almond-shaped eyes and frayed black hair. Instead, a vibrant complexion appeared. It was the distillation of happiness. He searched the mottled irises for missing memories.
And then he remembered them.
The needles were broken. It opened a trapdoor of withdrawal, a meeting with a white-haired man, the pulling away of a bus, and the reaching for a car. He was going to surrender to Dova and Micah.
But there was the old woman.
And then everything was consumed in a white background. Everything except her. She was still there because she felt like she was everywhere. Micah had said this world was his. Hunter didn’t know what he meant by that. His statement was authoritative, as if he didn’t own it with wealth but had created this world as if his hand was the hand of God.
It didn’t feel like it anymore.
* * *
The smell of flowers pervaded the elevator.
The doors opened. He went to the kitchenette, mouth salivating for the feel of breakfast, and returned to the front desk with half a bagel and a glass of orange juice. Faint conversations tumbled out of a back room. He knocked on the desk.
“Yes, Mr. Montebank?” A young woman appeared.
“Did I, um, check out?”
She looked down. Keystrokes peppered the background conversations while her lips silently moved. He stared at his phone while she searched. There were no missed calls, no messages. He punched the number for the cybercrime office, listening to it ring while the girl shuffled through papers. If he still had a job, he could explain the unexplainable. It was a hallucination brought on by the needle. He would have to come clean about his past, at which point he would definitely not have a job.
The call continued with no voicemail.
He reached for the back of his head. The mole wasn’t numb or tender. It was just a slight aberration. How could the stent just disappear? How many times had he driven the spike into his head, waking to live another day without the itch? Could it have grown over?
Not overnight.
“How long have I been here?”
“Pardon?” she said.
“How long have I been in this hotel?”
She mumbled through another series of keystrokes and frowned. “Weird. Let me—”
“What’s it say?” He stopped her from walking off.
“Um. I don’t see a date when you checked in. I mean, you have the room, I just don’t know how long you’ve had it.”
“I never checked out?”
“No. Do you want to?”
“How did I get here last night? Did someone drop me off?”
“I wasn’t on duty.”
He finished the last bite of breakfast and wandered off, a man lost in a flurry of thoughts and slippery memories. The young woman was still talking as he drifted toward the sliding front doors. Outside, the sunlight had turned a dus
ty orange. The glimmer of daylight was fading into dusk.
How long have I been here?
The street was dry. No puddles or streaks. The air smelled lightning-struck.
He stood on the curb and thumbed his phone. The calendar was up to date. He’d had an appointment at the police station with inspector Freddy ten days ago. The days following, though, emptied rapidly. Only the one entry since then.
Dova.
The woman with curving hips and strong arms. The way her fingers slipped over his shoulders and pinned his hands. The promises she made.
The needles she broke.
“Mr. Montebank.” The young woman from the front desk stepped onto the sidewalk and handed him an envelope. “This was at the counter.”
His name was scrawled on the front. The flap was sealed. A metal object was inside, the edges easily revealed. He tore it open and poured a key into his palm. It was nothing of significance. He held the envelope up to the dying light. Something was written on the inside as if someone had turned the envelope inside out.
Only the reflection, you’ll see. Of the one you seek.
Only then you will be, the one who is free.
The refrain was familiar. Where had he seen it? His phone went off.
Who is this?
It was the number that couldn’t be blocked. He tapped it this time instead of attempting to block it again. The dial tone rang. It clicked into silence after the fifth ring. A car locked the brakes. The tires skidded on the pavement as his thumb searched to end the call.
And then he heard the voicemail, an alluring voice that seduced the caller to leave a message. Hunter’s thighs weakened. He knew that voice well.
She’d been texting all this time.
33
Hunter
After the Punch
The stars drilled a million holes between the staggered skyscrapers, a wisp of condensation smearing the backdrop. He’d forgotten the stars, the celestial jewels concealed by the city’s humid breath, her steady exhalation of exhaust fumes and foulness. But they were always there, hidden away, now exposed.