by Micah Thomas
Thelon said, “We want this to stop. We want you to come with us.”
Cassie Prime held the skull up to show them. “This is the head of the last man who told me what to do. I tore it from his neck with my hands and he was a God. Be careful with how you make demands.”
Cassie said, “He’s not making demands. We are begging you.”
Cassie Prime smiled sadly at her double. “You do not understand what you are asking.” She added, “You should not be here.” She extended her hand and Henry Prime took her hand.
Thelon was scared. He was far from certain that whatever protected them could withstand the apparent might of these two. Still, he said, “We do. You don’t have to do this anymore.”
Cassie Prime said, “You are not the first to come.”
Thelon asked, “What happened to them?”
“Oh, they are running around here. Lost forever to this place. Technically, dead.”
Henry said, “We’re different. That’s not the plan, man.”
Henry Prime smiled and joked, “Convince us?”
Three black rectangular doors rose from the floor before the throne, a few feet away. The intention was clear: they were to go through and prove some point, and Thelon was afraid of what might be behind his door.
“We shouldn’t split up,” Thelon said.
Cassie looked at him and shrugged. “I don’t think we have a choice. It’s their terms and I think they’re serious about death being an option.”
Thelon addressed the Primes. “Do we really need to be so fucking weird? This isn’t a game or movie. We’re just people. Can’t you see they’re you? You know why we’re here, and you can just stop it with this…with the bullshit.”
Cassie Prime stood and let the skull clatter down the steps. A magenta glow suffused the room and vibration radiated through the air, triggering sparks against the thin bubble around Thelon. Oh, snap!
She said, “You—the instrument of my doom, the catalyst of my torture, an ignorant pawn of petty men. You fucking dare to pretend we are friends who should talk it out?”
“Fuck it,” Henry said, and sprint through his door into bedlam.
~
I’M IN A hospital.
It certainly looked like a hospital, lab, or some cross between an emergency room and a mental institution. Running around wearing patient drapes, asses hanging out the back, loitered dozens of Henrys. Each ranted to themselves about not wanting this and trying to get out. Henry walked in awe, a little wobbly as if getting off a boat or an airplane after a long flight, but the world was tactile and solid, so he went with it.
Orderlies, doctors, nurses, or whatever chased the Henrys and jabbed them with comically large syringes full of God knows what. Henry sighed. Poor bastards. He felt invisible, out of scene, and no one acknowledged him. He tried to leave through the heavy doors, but found them locked with a key card access point. He scanned the disordered mess of clutter on the floor and picked at paperwork crammed with data that didn’t make sense: statistics, heat measurements, progress reports in pie charts and stacked graphs.
“Yo.” Henry got in front of an orderly dude on his way to a prone and crying Henry. “Hey you, got a key?”
“You aren’t supposed to be in here,” the dude said.
“Yeah, exactly. I need you to let me out and then I won’t be here anymore.”
The man made like he was going to jab Henry with a needle and Henry wasn’t having it.
“Fuck you, dude.” Feeling mighty strong, he kicked the hand holding the syringe so hard the bones crunched like they were made of candy.
The reaction was weird, but so was the setting. The man shrieked bloody murder, then got on the ground and stopped moving; he just continued making freaky mouth sounds. Henry took a deep breath, snagged homeboy’s keycard from his belt, and went back to the door to let himself out.
It was quiet and empty of Henrys in the next room, which consisted of rows and rows of cubicles and clear-windowed conference rooms like some sort of nightmare call center. Henry sighed when he read the corporate name in large bold letters, stylish and formal: The Black Star Institute. Oh, fuck a duck. Given he and his mother’s history, he fucking hated that Henry had been in a place like this. Some God forsaken paper pusher controlling his fate and permanently fucking up his mind and body. Good for you for getting out, bro.
“Hey, Henry,” he shouted, “if you’re in here—and I’m guessing you are, and that this is your nightmare world—can you give me a hint as to what the fuck I’m supposed to do?” His only answer was the ding of an elevator which he found down a hallway near the bathrooms. “Thanks?”
The elevator scared him—like, what if this was a death trap—but he didn’t really see any sense in doing anything else, so he got in, listened to the cheesy Muzak, and it automatically moved upwards, taking him to the highest possible floor. A hallway awaited him, and through the door at the end, he was on the rooftop of a skyscraper, in a city consumed by flame.
“If this is all to make me feel bad, I don’t claim any of it! I don’t judge you either, Henry.” He felt weird saying his own name while addressing someone else, but he tried again. “Henry?”
He explored the roof, looking for a problem to solve as if this were a test or puzzle, but he found nothing, so he walked to the edge of the building and gazed the many stories down, resulting in dizzying vertigo.
Hot wind and the smell of sulfur whipped around him, crackling the air with sparks, but he didn’t burn in this dream—if it was a dream.
Henry said to anyone listening, “I need to jump? Is that it? A leap of faith? If I jump, I’ll either die or wake up. I’ve seen this part of the movie before. Nothing cool is happening up here where you apparently wanted me, so I have to do something different. Meet the crazy with crazy.”
He gathered up his courage and stepped a dozen paces back from the ledge. “Okay.”
Henry had only just started his sprint when someone behind him shouted, “Wait!”
He turned and saw Cassie. She wore her hair in a bob and wore a big leather jacket and black jeans. She held a motorcycle helmet at her hip. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “Come over here. Let me get a look at you.”
She touched his shirt, the nice one Thelon had bought for him so he’d make a good impression. “Oh, you’ve been taking care of yourself. That’s good.”
“Nice jacket,” he said and let himself be touched. “What are you doing here? Did your door lead up here, too?”
“The jacket was my uncle’s. I stole it one night a long time ago.” She gently stroked his cheek. “You’re different than the others down there. More like my Henry.”
It dawned on him now: this was the other Cassie; Cassie Prime. He took her hand from his cheek and held it in his palm, loose and sweating. “What should I call you?”
She shook her head. “Do you love her?”
Henry looked into her eyes—the eyes of his Cassie—and saw a glimmer of her there. “With all my heart.”
“Hmm…” She pulled away and gazed out across the mountain of flame and smoke against the night sky. “This hasn’t been easy.”
“Yeah. I’m getting that.” Henry held out his hands slightly.
“Henry, I’m scared and I’m tired.”
A vibrant, violet tornado tore down a building off to their left a dozen blocks away, sending a shockwave of energy across the rooftop.
“What the fuck was that?” Henry asked.
She looked at her boots, examining the worn heels. “That’s also me over there. We are a package deal.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh is right. She will always be a part of me.”
“Well, people are complicated. Look, the other you—the one I met—she’s capable of violence, too, but let me tell you, she used it to save me.”
“Show me?” Cassie stepped close to Henry, intertwining their fingers. “Show me who I can be again. Will you show me the love we made?”
Henry closed the small distance between them and leaned his forehead against hers, thinking, remembering, and recounting all the small moments they had shared. Then the world around him went dark.
~
BACK IN THE throne room, Cassie watched as Henry strode into his door and disappeared. Not to be outdone in bravery and sensing her Prime was about to act in anger, she launched herself towards her own door, summoning up the courage she brought to the battlefield once upon a time.
Once through, she stood in a modest but charming home. Following instinct, her eyes swept the room left to right, checking for danger—which she felt, but did not see. There was a living room with a flat TV on the wall, a long blue comfy couch, and in a corner, a small stack of kid’s board books. She stepped back through the open floor plan into the kitchen and a pain went through her chest, taking her breath away. She leaned over the sink to catch her balance and saw empty bottles and breast pump parts unwashed in the basin. Okay, okay, where am I? Cassie Prime has some issues with maternity. I can deal with this.
But she could not. Not really. She knew she was in a pressure test and she knew that Cassie Prime had been through some shit, but so had she. She carried her alternate iterations of Cassie with kids who were no longer real after the integration, Cassie with miscarriages, Cassie with abortions, and in all, Cassie with a problematic relationship with her own mother.
Cassie turned away from the sink and pushed the intrusive memories aside. She had a job to do and this house was saturated with some species of sadness she had to resist. Check the rooms. There should be a clue. If this is a test, there will be a clue.
She found a bathroom of no consequence with dated sink fixtures and cute shower curtain, but no one lurked behind it. Down a short hall was an office, cluttered with clothes, laundry baskets, and books. College books. Someone had wanted to go back to school. Was it me or Henry? Probably Henry. But maybe Cassie. She pushed away from that thought; it felt like a trap to wallow in regret.
There was an unlit master bedroom to the right, but she couldn’t enter—not yet—because to her left, the source of the pain called to her like the glow of a night light. The nursery.
The ache overwhelmed her as she entered the small room. Her fingers grazed the changing pad on the table, her eyes went to the empty crib, and then she collapsed to her knees and wept. We lost a baby. This was a home that never was. No little one ever gurgled and smiled up at her from that tiny bed. Cassie’s jaw ached, connected to her heart, and the lump stuck in her throat came out with a hoarse sob. She let the grief for herself, Cassie Prime, and all Cassies wash over her, and her hair stuck to her wet cheeks. Clenching her fists, she forced herself to her feet.
“No. Things happen, but they don’t define me. What I do defines me. Not my pain, not your pain, not the horrors in life, but the love we make.” She said all this to the room and let one more spike of pain enter her arms; an echo of a warm weight in those strong arms. She exhaled and let go.
Cassie closed the door gently, all the way until it clicked shut and went into the master bedroom. The aches and agonies subsided and with a clear head, she straightened the duvet over the wide bed, but stopped herself from tidying any more than that. She looked out the large window, curtains pulled aside, and saw only darkness beyond. This isn’t a real house. I’m in some sort of memory or dream or something.
She tried the door to the connected bath, but it was locked. Whatever she needed to do, it was in the house, not outside of it. A line came to her—something from a poem—but she didn’t know what it meant. Henry was still Henry—the love of her life, a ghost with memories and desires—and she was his haunted house. This wasn’t Cassie Prime’s mind. This was Henry Prime. She knew it was true.
Armed with that knowledge, she went back through the house, searching and seeking something for her hands to hold. After a full inventory of the single-story home, she returned to the master bedroom in a panic of hurry and saw something entirely out of place that hadn’t been there before. Like a sore thumb was a glass-encased axe on the wall. Along the front was written: BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
“Welp, this certainly suffices,” she said to herself. Taking a shirt of Henry’s from the drawer, Cassie wrapped it around her hand before striking the glass. It shattered and she retrieved out the axe, savoring the heft of it. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”
She tested the axe against the windows but was unable to make a scratch; same results with the doors.
“Fuck!” In frustration, she swung the axe at the entire wall of the living room and it sunk deep to the head, punching through the drywall. She yanked it back out and peeled at the wallpaper and crumbling drywall with her strong hands. Peering through the small crack, face pressed against the unnatural darkness there, she smelled fresh air and water. There was some place behind this wall; she knew it. She again drew fury from wallowing in the sadness of this home. All the things taken from her—from the other hers. These evil fucking things fueled her muscles and she threw her weight behind the strikes as she demolished the wall.
Once the hole grew big enough for her to muscle through, she said goodbye to the little house and went away to a land of dark skies, distant twinkling lights which were not stars but an archipelago of tiny islands of thought entities. Cassie walked along a path lined with floating colorful fish, and at the end of the path, up a small hill, a tree with large, leafless branches extended into the sky. At the foot of the tree, a man—her man—sat cross-legged, hands on thighs in meditation. A fiery heart like a religious icon slowly spun and cast loving licks of fire across the lashes of his closed eyes.
“Hey, boy,” Cassie said and knelt before him.
He spoke, in a quiet voice, eyes still closed. “Combustion is my only respiration. Let me burn. Let me burn everything away until there are no more faces. I’d burn every book. I’d burn every man on Earth, and I’d do it because I can.”
“No. Wake up, Henry. I’m here to talk with you.”
Slowly, his eyes blinked open and she saw pain in them.
“Do you know what I’ve done?” he asked.
“Henry.” She took both of his hands in hers and let sparks burn her; the fire cared little about what she had to say. It burned like a cigarette cherry falling on her skin, but she pushed through it to hold those hands. “Henry, lover, I know.”
“Leave me here.”
“I have an idea. Stand up.” She stood and waited for him to do the same, and he did.
He was taller than her and the fire now sparked against her face and singed her hair. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his lean frame. Squeezing tight, she held on through the pain, sending all the love and forgiveness she had for Henry—her Henry, all the Henrys. The world went black and the pain stopped, replaced by a vulnerable stillness.
~
THELON WATCHED AS his friends disappeared into their respective doors to their personal hells. Henry Prime and Cassie Prime looked down at him, curious expressions on their faces as their minds went to work in other places with their other selves.
Something has changed.
Thelon squinted up at them. What could they test him about himself? He didn’t have another double to face—not like his friends did. He was only part of their story as a side character, albeit one who had grown to love them both. He waited a moment after Cassie disappeared and then walked himself, mechanically, feeling his body resist the gravity of his door, but forced it to the precipice. Here we fucking go.
He stepped through, and though he experienced a change in atmosphere, temperature, and hue, to his surprise, he was still in the throne room. Cassie Prime and Henry Prime were gone along with the three doors, but he was still there.
“Okay, what the fuck?” he asked the empty room and looked around.
“I barely caught you in time,” a voice, educated and erudite, said from behind him.
Thelon turned on his heel and saw Wiseman—Black Santa—wearing his Black Star dud
s, barefoot and smiling benevolently at him. “What?”
“The fated lovers had some psychodrama for you to act out, but I felt it was a waste of time, so I plucked you just before you pressed play on their recording. You should thank me. It was going to be unpleasant, reliving of shame and guilt. You’d persevere, of course, but to what end? They don’t know what your problem is. Not like I do.”
Thelon sat on the steps to the throne. “So, we’re just gonna kick it until they’re done playing with themselves?”
“No. We are going to close the gate. That’s what we are here to do, Thelonious.”
“Where is it? What is it? How the fuck do we close it?”
“All exceptionally good questions, but I was hoping you’d know. As the trite saying I so love goes, the answers are inside of you, and have been all along.”
“Mother fucker, can you talk without riddles or is that some sort of medical condition?”
Wiseman stepped into his personal space and held Thelon’s head between his hands—warm, soft hands—and peered into Thelon’s eyes. “Come out. I see you. Come out of there.”
Thelon shook Wisemans off. “Dude, what?”
“Nestor, come out.”
Thelon flinched with that horrible anxiety in his chest, pressure and itching along his neck and the back of his head. The beast that had been haunting him since he woke at his parents’ house was there! He coughed and spasmed until his chest rattled, his lungs ached, and he retched out black and murderously red phlegm which congealed on the floor in growing, wriggling slop piles.
The mess of sick on the floor pulled itself up into a man’s shape, arranging particles of muck until it formed a twisted mirror of Thelon himself.
Thelon gasped for breath and rubbed his red and wet eyes. Like after a good vomit when sick, he’d purged, cleansed, but he remained baffled.
“You mother fucker,” he said.
Wiseman beamed with a smile. “Now we can talk openly, without, as you say, riddles.”
Nestor was Thelon, but he needed a haircut—more than a haircut; dude was ragged. Wiry grays poked out more like Don King’s hair than Thelon’s, and while he wore the same clothes, Thelon understood why Nestor’s voice was always so fucked up. He’d been through some shit. Scars crisscrossed his face, arms, and hands. Some were raised in smooth keloids, but the worst was the left side of his face, where tight and painful looking old burns started at his cheek beneath his eye and ran down in rivulets to his lip. Then there was his neck—oh God, his neck was a mess of burns and cuts; to Thelon, it looked like he’d at one point been decapitated and roughly sewn back together.