by Yuli Ban
She nodded vigorously. "Oh yes. Sam was the angriest man I've ever met. He still is, but he also was. And somehow, he managed to use his anger to evolve his El Sexorcisto form. Turn it into something much more vicious."
"Quaint. We'll cross that bridge when we reach it. Now then, where exactly is Johnic's apartment?"
"About twelve blocks down." She pointed down the avenue, past all the black-suited men and dress-clad women and heavily armored robots. Gaslamps lined the street beneath oaks and junipers, and the middle ground was a wide stretch of green roleplaying as a forest with breaks every other five hundred meters. There was a motley of cars parked, most of which bore much in resemblance to the Model T but did not seem to correlate to a model I recognized. There were a few that were wholly vintage cars.
We passed at least five Nash Ambassadors— all of which were a pale puke green. As we walked passed an oil-faced shoe-shine boy reading a paper, I noticed a Pontiac Streamliner parked right in front of him and adored the curves and hubcaps before moving on. Then there was one that I knew was a Bugatti but could not place the exact model. Another, one which wore Art Deco like a uniform, had to be a Chrysler. And it made me feel like I was using virtual reality for the intended purpose for once— experiencing history personally. My father and grandfather would have loved to be where I was at the moment. Sure, they wouldn’t have been any more mentally collected knowing that Mya had been taken, but besides that there was a nerdy satisfaction in coming across so many symbols of a time long past.
Ana pointed out to me the street names— the one down which we walked was named ‘Vermillion Boulevard.’ Several of the connecting roads had names such as Amethyst Avenue, Citrine Road, Crimson Street, and Carmine Way. The pedestrians we passed were special NPCs that would only spawn here and spoke in perfect affected accents to accentuate the time period. All the men sounded like radio announcers, all the women sounded like Marilyn Monroe, and all the cops were Irish. Everything was old-timey for the sake of it, a theme park of what someone who had never been to America thought the 1940s and 1950s were like. No building looked modern— all had the old Chicago School look, complete with the gridded windows and Art Deco obsession.
After our jaunt, we came upon one fifteen-story construct. Wide and tall, with ornate decorations upon the doors and bannisters, the hotel seemed to have been a resident of retro Manhattan.
We walked in and immediately smelled the acridest atmosphere. In the lobby and living room, there was a collection of faces all united in sucking ash and blowing it back out to pollute. One heavy-faced woman switched on a radio and found a music station playing Bing Crosby's "You Made Me Love You." To her side was a Life magazine, complete with a brunette bombshell on the cover. While listening, she glanced over to me and spouted some nasty quip.
Ana was at the front desk, asking for Johnic's room to the ASIMO behind the desk. Another ASIMO sat next to a switchboard that was as large as the wall, setting wires to new locations and switching on certain channels as it saw fit. It waved to me and I waved back through another cloud of smoke.
I peered through the window and saw a '46 Chevrolet Stylemaster. Everything about it was vintage— its sleek rims, chrome body finish, and sadly windshield. A man with handsome features, combed hair, and a military garb jumped out of the driver's side and danced to the passenger door, helping out his belle in a waltz. Ana adored their giggles, the sense that this was a rising action towards a night of hot climaxes. What war this man fought in was a mystery, but perhaps the very existence of Violence Online was enough of a war.
When Crosby's sexy crooning ended and to no offense of Doris Day, we departed towards the stairs and found our way up to the thirteenth floor. As she walked, she materialized a glass of Romanée-Conti into her hands and asked, "Want some?"
"Certainly." I snatched the entire thing, took a heroic swig, and handed it back. She finished the bottle in one fell swoop and shattered it in the trash.
“We won’t stay for long. And once we’re done, we can go straight to Shotgonavan or take a detour if you want.” She shook her hips with that last sentence, making me wonder what her intentions were in saying it.
I pat her chest with the back of my hand and said, “Should we have left your sisters so blasély?”
“Oh, p’shaw, they’ll be fine.”
Another ASIMO greeted us as we walked up the stairs, tipping his bellhop hat and saying, "Pleasant evening! Don't mind Batzor."
As we passed it by, I leaned over and asked, "Batzor?"
She shrugged and shook her head. "Maybe it's a new carpet?" Something about the way she said that rang hollow to me. I was used to her bubbly cheerfulness well enough to know when she held back other emotions and knowledge. But I wrote it off.
As we finally climbed onto the thirteen floor, I opened the door for Ana many seconds too late as she simply opened the other one and let herself in. I frowned and followed and soon began to grin again as I realized I was behind her.
The hallway itself was drab, lined with cheap leaded paint that gave the air a sickly odor. Atop the ceiling, spaced every twelve feet or so, there were electric lights that threw onto the hall a most curious mood— as if the light itself was struggling to resist the darkness.
Another rumble of thunder shook the floor. Ana asked, “Did you see the clouds out there? They were starting to look real wicked.”
I looked to the ends of the hall at the draped curtains over the windows and noticed myself that there was a night-like blue behind the pale peach fabric. Yet as I recalled, I awoke quite early in the morning— Maria’s eyes gave me quite the fright— and not more than two hours had passed since. As if life could not give me a more ominous spoiler, it was brighter outside earlier in the morning.
“I’ll get a good look of it in your friend’s room. Come on, come on.”
“Ah, yes. Room 13…19, here we are.” We stopped upon the door bearing the heavy numerals ‘1319’. She pressed the buzzer and we waited. As we were close enough, I decided to betray my earlier words and amble towards the window. As I gazed to the clouds, I started. If there ever was a time to call a sky ‘sinister,’ this was it. A horrible and deathly green had replaced the earlier slate blues and greys, and I felt a great trepidation over the way so many clouds twisted and convulsed.
The word, “Tornado” fell from my lips quickly. And the winds were blowing fiercely. However, I did not fear for our safety. The walls of the building would surely stand.
“Alex, come over here!” I jogged back to Ana and got a faceful of haggard hipster when Johnic bore his teeth with a smile and extended his hand. I noticed that tuft of blue-black hair around his ears and the chrome-dome up top complimented by the loud, blue sheet of hair on the opposite side. Then I noticed his outfit— that black tattered government suit, worthy of James Bond. What’s more, his shoes clacked along the wooden floor but they seemed to be weathered and torn and— during every sliver of time I could see the heels, I saw nothing that suggested he could make such a hard step.
“Hello, hello, hello.” All I could think about was that Ana said this man was cute. Well, she had a progressive sense of ‘cute’ at least. I shook Johnic’s hand, and he let go quickly and pulled himself out into the hall. “Pardon me, but— you two haven’t gotten a chance to see the weather outside, yes?” And that’s something else that struck me. He had the sweetest British accent imaginable, one that actually complimented his face. Not so much his icy blue undercut, but I overlooked that oddity.
Ana bounced over to a bean-bag chair set against a brick wall. When I looked perpendicular to the both of them, I saw that here was a dappled brown wooden wall leading straight into the bricks, a microfridge filled with any number of alcoholic elixirs, and other symbols of sleaze— pinups of gorgeous blondes, sexy neon legs hanging on the wall, and a sad grunge literally upon the walls in dirty, oily splotches.
“Wait, now. Dagnabbit, you’re kidding me. How do you live in this here apartment without any window,
my good man?”
He responded with a flap of his hand and lifted a Cuban to his lips to choke on that ashy cloud.
Ana bounced in the bean-bag and said, “So, like, I wanted to stop by to tell you I’ve gotten Alex.”
Johnic coughed several times and said something, but my ears were not listening for him.
The wannabe-assassin still on my mind, I muttered, “This is worrying. I’d rather be able to see outdoors.” But neither listened to me in return.
“Alex is the new El Sexorcisto.”
Johnic sniffed and made no motions. Then, several seconds later, the words seemed to get through to him as he coughed again, though not from smoke. He stuttered and spat, “This young man here? He is taking Sam’s place, then. Is he the one responsible for the havoc last week, then?”
She nodded. “He did a fantastic job, if you ask me. The very first day, he killed 14 Rocket 88 Nazis.”
“I recall that number being 15.”
Johnic nodded and scratched his stubbly chin. “Quite right, then…” Then he pointed a finger gun at me only to walk onwards to his microfridge. From inside, he pulled a bottle of Coca-Cola, except the liquid inside had a certain tenebrous hue that shone in light like oil. “If this is true, then why not begin the little ritual now? After this, I can finally say exactly for sure what I know. Consider it a fine little concoction that ought to—” he coughed into his arm and went on, “ought to make those abilities a bit more latent and controllable next time around.”
Ana pat her thigh and laughed. “Oh boy, it was a bizarre ride when he first came into the form. None of the Crue knew what was happening at first. Not even Sam was that crazy!”
With hesitation, I took the elixir. For many more minutes, I investigated the bottle’s form and listened to the contents swish about as I shook the thing. Johnic and Ana talked about the previous week’s events, with Ana noting that the Wytches Crue had done little ever since they arrived in town as a means of not drawing attention upon themselves. Yet I noticed a tiny hint of briskness in Ana’s motions, as if she was eagerly awaiting something and could not wait to leave this place. To that end, I didn’t blame her— the grime bothered me. This was not the room of a man who wanted to be loved.
Johnic spoke at length about the state of de facto martial law that we wrought upon the city. He spoke of Humvees, APCs, black cars with black-tinted windows, and a sudden increase in red-and-green hurricane flags hanging from windows. Helicopters beat against the grey sky, gunshots rang from the alleys, televisions watched their viewers, and radios listened on their audiences. Anything to find us. But my ears picked up on a curious little quirk— he kept saying ‘we’ whenever mentioning the Hurricanes. Yet nothing about him suggested he worked for them. Not until I reminded myself that he lived in a room with no windows.
The Hurricanes wanted to crucify me, and they were willing to tear apart the city to do it as they knew that I and my harem had to be here. Yet we hid in plain sight, living for a week in a motel not far from a high-traffic avenue. None of it made any sense— exactly as normal.
I wanted to bring up to him that he lived in such a depressing abode in the hope that this would spark exposition.
Johnic then turned to me and asked, “You try to look all competent and mighty, but I can see it in your eyes that you’re lost and confused. Let me guess, you are waiting for someone to help you out and are scared that you might be forced to find your own way by yourself.”
I unfolded my arms and dropped my mouth. “Uh, no, that’s—”
He got more forceful with his words to say, “You want to fight but you don’t think you’re strong enough. You don’t trust in your own power, your own strength, because you don’t believe any of this is really happening.”
I looked back and forth. “What are you even talking about?”
“Drink that elixir, El Sexorcisto.”
I looked down at the stuff and suddenly felt and urge to keep it away from my mouth. The way he ordered me to drink something is what made me suspicious more than anything rather than the consistency of the elixir itself, though watching it slosh around didn’t fill me with confidence that it would be anything but an awful experience.
Johnic cringed, snatched the bottle, and shoved the neck down my throat, gripping the back of my throat like a cat. “Stop being a babe and drink it, you simpleton.”
It stung going down. I’ve never ‘tasted’ a color before, but the bitter sting of the drink tasted exactly like a combobulation of black and green. Half the vial of the vile bile remained as I began to gag and choke on my vomit.
I ran to the bathroom and spat what I could out into the sink, and I swore to myself that I saw a bit of red in there as well. Again, I began to feel a rising urge and I dropped to my side and rolled prone.
“Oh Lord Above, I’m going.”
“You’re not going, you pansy,” came that dulcet Liverpudian tone. “Now bring yourself over here and finish the rest. It’ll start tasting like sugar in a minute.”
I wiped filth from my cheek and said, “It will?” as if I didn’t want to clock him into next Tuesday.
His eyebrow lifted. “It will what?”
“You said it would start tasting like sugar.”
He smiled and his other brow lifted to give him an insane appearance. “When did I say that?”
I raged, “Just now, good sir!”
His brow furrowed once more. “Are you putting words into my mouth?”
‘Oh no. He’s demented.’ My eyes found Ana’s breasts first and I forced them up to her face, but she came over and tilted my head back down to her breasts. Johnic rammed the bottle up my mouth again and plunged the ghastly brew down my throat. Somehow, it tasted worse. As I dribbled upon its lips, he managed to push the shaft deeper down. I could not breath as the elixir found its way into my lungs as much as it did my stomach, and I gagged on the girth. He started pumping it back and forth whenever I attempted resistance, bucking it until it tickled my uvula as it spurted more and more that I could not swallow.
But swallow I did, and as I realized that he had managed to pin me down, I attempted to let my body go limp as a means of throwing off his defenses. This only made him more aggressive! By the end of it, the body of the flask pushed at my lips and I gargled bubbles up the throat. Slowly, he pulled out and let the rest leak into my orifices.
“There, now swallow it!”
Ana stood on the sidelines as I drooled. I gurgled something that was an attempt to say, ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ and she looked at me like I was a victim.
I pulled myself away and crawled out of the bathroom.
Johnic stepped over me and asked Ana, “We’ll wait for him to digest that one. Now, tell me, what’s the weather like out there?” I couldn’t tell what he looked like this time, but his words rang as carrying a hint of paranoia.
Right before she could open her mouth, my world lifted from itself and I fell into a dream. Repetitious monstrosities incepted into themselves and spiraled into and out of spherical forms. I could not believe what I was seeing.
My mind! I was looking at my mind! But before I could reach out and touch the folds, I flew up against my will and found myself standing before myself.
Where is my mind? Where is my mind? Where is my mind? Where is my mind? Where is my mind? Where is my mind?
I swore under my breath and touched my own face, and as I did, I felt my fingers against my cheek. It was my visage, my body— everything I was one week prior, including the white t-shirt and blue jeans with which I spawned. However, some of my dimensions were much smaller— my arms were thinner, my face less angular, and more fat upon my midsection.
This was how I remembered myself. And when I realized that, I understood exactly my plight, just as I said I had before: this was a memory which I had lost.
Immediately, I stood and looked around the skybox. But there was nothing there. I, and my younger body, floated within a black void. The volume of this void,
I could not ascertain.
Yet it was the next events which shocked me the most— surrounding my younger self were shadow people, innumerable and fleeting. Whenever I made the attempt to look upon their forms, they slipped from focus and vanished. I could only scarcely guess that there were two dozen such figures, but it was possible that only one existed and simply diffracted in the ether. More certainly, it was possible no such entity existed in the first place and the specter was a hallucination, perhaps even another version of myself from another time existing in the same moment. All of which seemed to me to bear much in resemblance to an alien abduction.
But then as I started to dwell upon the reason for existing in this void, I began to hear a voice calling from beyond. Someone was speaking. I focused my ears and listened in. The psychotic babbling made no sense to my ears as if I were listening to a French-Canadian talk in cursive. Yet something about the words sounded familiar.
—revealed itself to me like a red crack exploding through my brain. RPG statistics floating in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye, hanging off of a cold screen with no interactivity. The repetitious act of grinding, farming for gold, looking for loot, following an epic story that existed only for one person. My own face controlling a body that looked exactly like mine with sexier details to satisfy someone else’s fantasies. Words written by someone else falling from my mouth. Gorgeous women without conscious minds of their own following a script whose words only appeared as I looked at the page, a script that imprisoned them to follow me without reason. A tragic backstory I wouldn’t explain until convenient for the plot. I was in a LitRPG harem novella. Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Something about what I just heard perturbed me, eliciting a terrible tremor rooted from my very core. But as I found my senses, I managed to calm myself before I panicked and, as I took control of my emotions, a wave of understanding washed over me.
This… this is the game lobby!
When I looked back at my body, I started. Where did I go? I vanished like the gun.