The Rage Room

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “Do you have any rope?”

  “Why would I have rope?”

  “Ties then? Come on, Sharps, whatever, think! We need to tie him up first, just in case. Otherwise it will be like those horror movies where they come back from the dead and kill you again.”

  I crawled upstairs and grabbed a fistful of ties. My heart fell like a lump of lead when I passed my boy’s room and my girl’s. My babies. I paused at the entrance of Bax’s room, and I heard Shasta’s voice.

  “Hurry up, Sharps! Don’t leave me down here. Come on! What are you doing?” She sounded increasingly frantic. “He’s moving! Sharps! Where are you?”

  And then I heard the shot. It was more like a weak firecracker than a bang, but I knew what it was.

  I dropped the ties and ran down the stairs. Jazza was slumped on his side, blood pooling on the carpet. His right eye was a gaping black hole. Shasta had shot him at close range. I noticed that Jazza’s gun had a silencer on it. He had indeed been ready to kill my family. But regardless, I had needed him alive.

  I sat down. “Oh shit,” I said. “I had a clear directive from OctoOne to NOT kill him! Shit, Shasta! WTF! How will I clear my name now? I can’t prove he did it now! And I’m never going to get this carpet clean. What were you thinking, shooting him? I needed him! He had to tell them it wasn’t me! Before, with the suicide notes, he told them what really happened. Now you’ve killed him and it all points to me. And you don’t exist, so I killed him. Not only am I a thief, I’m a murderer. And a wife beater. And I’ve lost my children.” I jumped up. “I have to find Norman. Oh god, my head is killing me.”

  “Our Norman? Where is he? How much time do we have left? Here, take these.” She held out some tablets.

  “Yes, our Norman. He’s in a rage room. I don’t know how long we have left and I don’t care. Hours. Who knows? What are these? This is all so screwed. We are so fucking screwed.”

  “Take the pills, Sharps. It’s codeine plus a bunch of other stuff. Chew them. Trust me.”

  I took the pills and chewed them. Chemical chalk dust filled my throat, and Shasta ran to get me a glass of water.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  I ran out to my car, and Shasta followed me. She was shivering. It was winter and she and I had both forgotten that. We’d travelled from the stifling, stinking, forty-degree heat and we were freezing.

  I struggled to get the car started and I balked at having to touch the cold steering wheel. “We should go back and get some warm clothes,” Shasta said, and her teeth were chattering. We both looked at the house. “I don’t want to go back,” I said. On a good note, the pills she had given me were helping. The pain was there but wrapped in cotton batting.

  “I don’t either. But I don’t want to freeze to death. I need more than a T-shirt and your boxers.”

  We got out of the car reluctantly, and rushed back up the path and inside the house. I looked over at Jazza. He had died with a look of surprise on his face and his legs twisted under him in an awkward way. His sweatshirt was askew and his very lacy lavender bra strap showed. And then there was the gun.

  I went over and grabbed it and I ran upstairs. I grabbed socks and sweaters and a pair of sweatpants. I yanked off my vomit-smeared clothes and got changed. I tucked the gun into the front of my trousers like I’d seen tough guys do in the movies. I just hoped to hell that tough guys didn’t shoot their balls off.

  Shasta gratefully pulled on one of my hoodies, pulling the drawstring tight. She tugged a thick scarf from the rack by the front door.

  “Here.” I threw a coat at Shasta and pulled on some boots. Then, just as we were about to leave, a figure appeared in the doorway. It was Strawberry Merv, my Christmas lights rival. He stood there, looking into the house, over at Jazza’s body and the vast pool of blood around it. His gaze moved to Shasta. “Hey,” he said, “you look familiar?”

  Shasta shrugged like a sulky teenager called into the headmaster’s office.

  I was at a loss. This was so bad. Strawberry Merv had seen Jazza. “What’s going on here?” He came into the house. I looked at Shasta. She shrugged.

  “Who’s this guy?” Strawberry Merv asked, pointing at Jazza.

  “We had a home invasion,” I said. “A drug addict from Dukes Road, I bet. He burst in with a gun, and he held me and my daughter hostage.”

  “Daughter? She’s not your daughter. I know who she is. She used to live at the corner house, the one with the big gables. I remember now. She ran away years ago. And now,” he said to Shasta, “you’re back.”

  Oh shit. I’d screwed up big time. “You know what Merv, this is none of your business. Why don’t you just leave?”

  But Merv had taken out his portable comm. “I’m going to call the SSOs,” he said, pursing his prune-ass little mouth.

  I had to stop him. I reached for the gun and got tangled with my hoodie, fumbling underneath it, finally grabbing the gun from my waistband. Oh shit. How do you even shoot a gun? Right, get the safety off, yank things, just do whatever, keep trying. I finally got it right. I shot him and I heard myself panting like a dog that had run too fast and too hard.

  I’d had no choice. The stupid man.

  Strawberry Merv made a grunting noise as he fell to the floor, like the wind had got knocked out of him. Oh shit. Another body to deal with.

  40. BACK TO THE RAGE ROOM

  I LOOKED AT SHASTA. “YOU HAD NO CHOICE,” she said. “Listen Sharps, don’t worry about any of this. It isn’t real, right? We go back, it resets to what it was.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” I was hysterical. “Not exactly. Every time I visit, things change in ways I can’t control. Some uncontrollable variable sows the seed for future disaster. Or present disaster but in another present but not the same virgin one it once was. Every time I come back, it’s different. What happened here moves forward, or some tiny random part of it does. That’s the whole point—it’s random. As of now, my kids are with my pervert wife, and I’m a thief and a murderer.”

  “And you killed Knox in the future we came from,” Shasta said and I was startled.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “It was everywhere. He was a doofus, but I liked him. He was kind to me.”

  “Yeah. I’d forgotten about that. Well, sorry, what can I say? I thought he was an annoying prick, and he was trying to steal from me. There I was, buying him drugs out of the goodness of my heart and he tried to rob me! But yep, I killed him. And I killed my mother.” I pulled on my jacket. “It seems I’m pretty darn useless at everything except killing. Who knew? C’mon, help me get this guy’s legs out of the doorway.”

  We pulled Merv into the house and drove off, leaving the door unlocked.

  “So we’re going to find Norman?” Shasta was huddled into her seat, her coat zipped tight, the fluffy hood pulled close to her face. The car was still freezing. She was wearing Celeste’s couture MountainFeathersFleece coat. I guess warmth and survival had triumphed over her hatred of the woman and anything associated with her.

  I nodded curtly. She settled in and stared out the window, and I drove to the rage room only to find that Norman wasn’t there. I was running out of time and I couldn’t find a key player in the game.

  To my credit, I stayed very calm. I didn’t raise my voice when I told the attendant that I needed a room and I needed it now. He told me all the rooms were booked. I looked at him very calmly, showed him the gun, and told him to make a room available pronto.

  Which he did. He asked me which soundtrack I wanted, and I said I wanted silence.

  I refused the white suit, the gloves, and the goggles, and he didn’t argue with me about that either.

  I went into the rage room and pointed the gun at the ceiling. “Janaelle! Are you there? I know you’re there! Tell me I’m not losing my mind! I know you’re watchin
g. If you’re real, then you’re watching! I’m on The Eye—I know I am! Talk to me!”

  But nothing happened. I waited, and I shouted again and still, nothing happened.

  “There are no cameras here, buddy, you know that.” The attendant and Shasta hovered in the doorway.

  “There are! They hacked in. They gather the data and they use it. The Eden Collective’s going to destroy the world as we know it, and they use the data. I’ve seen the lab! I’ve seen The Eye! I know about the World Wide Warriors and what Head Office is going to do to the satellites!”

  I realized how insane I sounded, and I slumped down. “I’m going to leave now,” I said. “Are you guys going to let me go or have me arrested?”

  “I’m happy to make like this never happened,” the man said. He looked at Shasta. “What about you?” he asked.

  “I’m going with him,” she said. She must have found a pack of Celeste’s gum in one of the pockets because she was snapping her jaws like a sea turtle, wafting grape scents as she spoke. “I want to.”

  “Whatever.” He ushered us out.

  “I’ll drive,” Shasta said, and I gave her the fob. I didn’t care where we went.

  “You got any cash on you?”

  I dug out my wallet. “Can we stop at a Silly Bunnies?” she asked, and I laughed.

  “No, Shasta, we cannot. By now they’ll be looking for us. Strawberry Merv’s wife is as nosy as he is. Dollars to doughnuts she was hot on his heels, found her dead hubby and dead Jazza, and rang every alarm bell she could. Fucking great. Now I’ll be wanted on both sides of the time zone.”

  “So if you go back and then you come back here again, what will the situation be?” Shasta had momentarily forgotten her drive-thru idea, for which I was relieved.

  “I don’t know. It changes every time. The first time, in pure untouched real time, Jazza killed himself and I found him. Then I used his gun to kill my family and went on the run. Then when I jumped back, the first jump, I tried to change things at grassroots level and not kill anybody. I came back much earlier, thinking I could nip this thing in the bud, before Sophie was even born. But that failed. Then I came back and Jazza killed my family and he killed himself. This time, Celeste took the kids and you shot Jazza and I shot Strawberry Merv. And I’m guilty of stealing the money and everybody will think I killed Jazza. And I also learned that the love of my life is an avatar from a video game and none of this is real.”

  “I’m really hungry,” Shasta said, hunching over the steering wheel, her hood still pulled high like a cowl.

  I stared at her in disbelief. “I’m so glad you’re tuning in to just how bad my life is. Thank you, Shasta, for being so fucking sensitive and AWARE.”

  I hit the fuzzy yellow dashboard, but Shasta didn’t flinch. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “You do realize there’s a good chance we’ll get stuck in displaced time when we jump back, thanks to you? You’ve added weight, and the program wasn’t built for two bodies. When I started, I was here for a week, but my resilience is failing. This time I’ve only got a twenty-four-hour limit, and you screwed it up. Who knows, I might not even be able to come back for jump four, if we even make it out. Do you want to be stuck in displaced time? Apparently it’s the spinning ball of hell and you’re stuck in a fog where you can’t see anything and you can’t breathe. That’s what Sting Ray Bob said anyway.”

  “Sting Ray Bob, Strawberry Merv. The names you guys come up with. Maybe we should drive down to Cherry Beach and kill ourselves.”

  “What? No! Why?”

  “Because we are all so screwed anyway. Look at me. I ran away—that guy was right. I’ve been living on the streets since I was fifteen. And no, it wasn’t just what your wife did to me, but she factored in. I’m only seventeen now. I look older; you would too, if you were me. Your wife had her lick-fest porn sessions when I was fourteen, and I tried to tell my dad after my mother told me to shut the fuck up, but he said rubbish, Mrs. Barkley is a bastion of Christian charity and didn’t I know that her father, Mr. Williamson, was a head honcho at Integratron and he’d get my father fired if he said anything? So best I keep my mouth shut. And then my brother pimped me out to his friends to score money for drugs, and that’s when I left.”

  “But you work in a bar! You must have papers, be legal.”

  “I screw the guy. He thinks I’m older. I got fake ID.”

  “How can you afford coke?” It was a stupid question, and I regretted it. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I’m really hungry,” she said again.

  “I know!” I shouted. “But what are we supposed to do? I just don’t think stopping for takeout is a solid idea.”

  “We need to be together when it’s time to go,” she changed the subject, gnawing on a thumbnail that could ill afford it. “You can’t leave me. What will happen if you go without me? You’ve freaked me out about getting stuck in a beach ball fog for the rest of my life. What’s the time? Why aren’t you keeping better track of things?”

  I checked. It was four in the afternoon, and it was getting dark. “I’ve got no idea how much time’s left,” I said honestly. “I wish I did. Oh God. My head’s killing me again. My brain’s probably dissolving inside my head. A puddle of mush is all I’ll be left with. A puddle of mush that hurts like hell.”

  “I’m stopping at the next Silly Bunnies.” Shasta’s hunger trumped my intercranial bleeding. “They’re the best bet. I have to eat. Look, there’s one. I’m pulling over. Don’t shout at me.”

  Defeated, I slumped down and pulled up the collar of my coat. As if that would help disguise me or fix the situation. Shasta looked over at me. “You’re getting really grumpy. It’s time to bring out the big guns.”

  She took two pills out of a large baggie, and I wondered when she had pocketed it. She was right. The pills I had taken were wearing off, and the pain was making me punchy. “What are these?” I asked, looking at the pills.

  “It’s old school fentanyl. I lied earlier when I told you I gave you codeine. That was fentanyl too. But by now you really need to eat or it’ll hurt so bad you’ll think you’ve got stomach cancer. Don’t take them till I get back.”

  I watched Shasta go into the Silly Bunnies. I hated the place. All the servers wore rabbit suits. Rabbit suits in the fast-food joints, rabbit suits in the rage rooms. We were all just fucked up rabbits hopping around never-never land. Why did I even want to live? It was a good question. I had lost everything. It was so messed up. I studied the tattoo on my wrist. I dug at the skin, but the ink was real. The tattoo looked new and fresh. I had to have done that for a reason. But Janaelle didn’t exist. Jazza had said so. Who was the woman I had met? And who were Jaxen and Sting Ray Bob? They weren’t based on any video game. They were real too; I couldn’t have just imagined them. And would we make it back through the jump okay? I wasn’t lying when I told Shasta she had added weight to the load. And I hated to think of landing back in that station. And I’d need to jump back immediately because there was no way I was living in that shit-infested hole filled with the dregs of desperate humanity, waiting out two healing weeks before I could return. But what was my plan? I didn’t have a plan.

  My heart ached when I thought about Janaelle. She felt far away, like a movie that I’d watched a long time ago. Being happy and safe and clean and warm felt as alien to me as my former life. I wondered how Bax and Sophie were doing and if they even missed me.

  Shasta arrived with lattes, wraps, doughnuts, jelly rolls, and cookies. I made her drive around to the back of the strip mall, and we fell on the food like starving piranhas.

  “Good thinking,” I said with my mouth full, but then I spotted an SSO car gliding around to the front of the mall. “They’re most likely getting a coffee, but we should go somewhere else, just in case.”

  Shasta shot up, put the car into drive and pulled out smoothly, still chewing on her doughnut. I ha
d to hand it to her, she was great under pressure. She drove to the outskirts of St. Polycarp and turned into another small strip mall.

  “How many nail bars do you think there are in just this neighbourhood?” she asked, finishing her coffee.

  “Not a clue. Maybe they’re all money laundering schemes or something.” I looked at the dashboard. “I’d say we’ve got about four hours to go,” I said. “But really, I’ve got no idea.”

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “Food coma. It’s been a crazy day. I need to sleep, Sharps.”

  “Tell you what, let me put the seats down in the back and we’ll lie down and tie our feet together and one wrist. That way we’ll be ready to go together. I’m exhausted too.” The food and drugs made it hard for me to keep my eyes open.

  “Can we keep the car running? It will get so cold.”

  “Then we both need to be in the front. I can’t risk you being in the back and me being the front, in case it happens.”

  She tilted her seat back and we tied our wrists together, her right, my left. I wanted to stay awake, in case anyone rapped on the window and asked us why we were parked there for so long, but I fell asleep and when I woke it was with a jolt. My wrist was screaming and the ground was wet with recent rain and we were standing in the mud of an open field.

  41. ALTERNA INFERMA FOR REAL

  “WHAT HAPPENED?” SHASTA ASKED, and I looked around in panic. “We must be stuck in displaced time. Oh shit. Let’s look for shelter or something.”

  “There!” Shasta pointed, and she pulled my wrist high with hers.

  We ran toward an abandoned red brick fortress that cast a dark shadow, a shadow that ate up the earth and left a dark stain. The place was as inviting as a shark’s mouth, with jagged broken glass windows. I didn’t want to go in, but there was no other choice.

  “Can we untie our wrists?” Shasta asked, and I tugged at the shoelace that bound us together, wishing I hadn’t done such a firm job of securing it.