“What makes you think he’s not here?”
“I can feel it. The connection is broken. That’s how I know you’re not actually the same person as he is… otherwise I might suspect differently. He’s in another world.”
“Do you have a device? How did you get here?”
There had been a device. Severn couldn’t find it anymore - he woke up outside, under a red sky and in a field of black dirt. Monstrous clouds sped by overhead, as black as the ground upon which he lay. White vehicles sped toward him, this pale imitation of Victor inside one of them, ready to capture him. The device was gone, which might mean that he was trapped here forever.
“There was a device, but I don’t have it anymore. I don‘t know what happened to it.”
“I see,” the alter replied. “And why were you chasing this other Victor?”
“He destroyed my universe, and a myriad of others. Shortly after he travels from one reality to the next, wherever he has left simply breaks, disintegrates. Pops like a bubble. He’s breaking the laws of physics. He’s ripping holes in each world when he leaves, and he’s done it hundreds of times already, perhaps more. It strains the fabric enough to materialize in a new world. Leaving it causes too much stress on existence. So it ceases.”
“You’re saying that when you leave this world it will end?” He seemed enchanted. The heat was still coursing up Severn’s back, and it was starting to burn. The effervescent glow of the emerald light-bulbs still glazed the room with juicy green contrast. The rubbery alter-Victor stood like a sci-fi mannequin, impossible to read behind his Martian reflectors, waiting for an answer.
“Within a cosmic instant,” Severn replied.
“You will show me how to do it,” Victor commanded. “For every hour it takes you to get us out of here, a joint of each finger will be removed from your body.”
This might be a problem, thought Victor.
The alter walked toward him, reached in the pocket of his coat and pulled something out, something that Severn would recognize in any world: a syringe. He struggled, but Victor grabbed his hair, penetrated his throat with cold steel; he felt the shot like ether, and floated away in a jet stream of bubbles and green gasoline.
4. Fingers
Over four and a half fingers later, Victor was finally starting to get the picture.
“You don’t know anything, do you?”
Severn nodded his head slowly, drunk with pain. His dismembered fingers twitched only a few inches away from his cuffed, mutilated right hand.
“Why did you lead me to believe otherwise?”
“Didn’t know what else to do,” he mumbled to the alter. The green light still drowned them, more potent now than ever that Severn’s broken nerves had altered his state of reality.
“So what now?” he asked. He suspected that Victor would simply eliminate him immediately - for which he would be grateful. The pain had exceeded his thresh-hold of sensitivity - now it was a dull, monotonous shriek, not even stopping for breaths. Though he used to the torment by now, he would have no objection to its ending in any way possible. It was a red lump, throbbing, pulsating, and bleeding where his intact right hand used to be.
“History would dictate that we simply use your body for scientific research,” the alter said, looking down at Severn’s bleeding hand all the while. “However, I believe it’s possible that you know more than you realize.”
“What do you mean by that?” Severn asked, half out of reality already, and dismayed at the fact of the matter: he really knew nothing else, no matter how much flesh Victor carved from his body.
“Further exceeding of your limitations may yield interesting results,” the alter replied. “I suppose that’s a kind of scientific research…”
Severn said nothing. He was not screaming with delirious horror yet, little that Victor could do would cause such a shift in his state of being. He was beyond the danger zone - now Victor would only see cool, numb nihilism. It might make things worse for him in the end, but it was not like he had any information to give up anyway. Victor’s frustration would be Severn’s reward, his revenge as the alter slowly killed him. The green light burrowed into Severn’s brain, and in the mean-time Victor cut off an entire finger from his left hand. He didn’t even scream. Picking it up and waving it in his face for a moment, Victor was not satisfied with the look of horror, and poked his subject in the forehead with it.
“Wake up,” he commanded.
“Sorry…” whispered Severn, his lack of blood finally beginning to have a seriously degenerative effect on his brain. He saw Death in the shape of a man standing behind Victor, scythe poised overhead; he knew it had come for him.
“Why were you following this other version of me?”
“Told you… I was going to kill him…”
“What good would that do?”
“He’d be dead…”
Then Severn realized that Death had a face, one which he recognized: his own. Victor saw the recognition in the eyes of his subject, smiled, and removed his white-lensed glasses. In this world, his irises were white, like galaxies as blank as purgatory.
“See someone you know?” he questioned.
“The devil…” Severn answered.
His doppelganger smiled at him. “That’s right,” his own face told him. “It appears that you are familiar with this concept of the devil being your own reflection as well… interesting. You will have to tell us about the worlds you’ve visited.” The double sounded like a scientist, excited to have a new subject to poke and prod.
“Interesting, indeed,” Victor added. “I wonder what other similarities you two share.” Without further adieu, he walked up behind Severn’s reflection, withdrew a blade and cut his throat. Severn’s startled alternate clutched his neck, blood black under the green glow of the room’s strange light. Alter-Victor smiled as his shocked victim collapsed to the ground, bleeding out the fuel of his body onto the cold, cracked concrete floor. They watched as he died, twitching on the rock.
Victor looked up at Severn, smiling. “Were I to slit your throat, would you die just as quickly?” he questioned. “Logic would suggest you both would die in a similar amount of time, but I wonder if there would be even a nanoseconds difference. What would cause it; some greater resolve to live, on your part; a static cling to existence? Or perhaps you would die faster, having become… disentangled, from the object of your hatred: my alternate.”
Severn said nothing to him. The alter leaned in and quickly cut off his right hand. It took a few minutes, and Severn found himself looking through burst blood vessels, through a red lens into a green room, milky as absinthe. The world swam, and he looked to his right arm - his bleeding had been staunched, the stump bound up, black as the pool of blood surrounding his reflection’s corpse at his feet. He didn’t remember being bandaged up, and realized that he didn’t know how much time had passed. He looked around, but Victor was gone.
The world went black.
When he awoke, the alter was staring into his eyes with his own milky white albino orbs. Victor backed off, smiling like a jackal.
“We found the device,” he told Severn. He held it up to his subject’s face, and Severn recognized it immediately - Victor had left a number of them behind after departing from his original bubble, shortly before it popped. “How does it work?”
Severn leaned forward and vomited upon the cold corpse of his copy, wondering how long the body had been laying there, retching again at the mere sight of the congealed blood upon the floor. He was returned to sentience at the sound of Victor laughing. The alter held the device up to his face again, pointing at a button, above which a small screen with a long string of numbers was placed.
“What does it do? How do you work it?”
“I don’t know,” Severn answered honestly, managing a full sentence before gasping for breath, reeling at his recent loss of blood and flesh.
“How did you follow him? How could you possibly coordinate to land in the
same universe he was heading to without a) knowing how to work this and b) where he was even going?”
“I told you…” Severn repeated, exhausted. “Quantum…” He took a slow breath, long and deep, and the world went black for a second and re-assembled itself before him, crystallizing white light into matter and symmetry. “…entanglement…”
“You seem particularly uneducated,” alter-Victor snapped. “How would you even understand such principles?”
“Not as stupid… as you think…” Severn managed. The world threatened darkness again, and he wondered if the blood loss would do him in before alter-Victor could torture him any further. As if responding to his thought, the alter slapped him across the face.
“You will NOT die on me,” he commanded, and he lifted the stump of Severn’s left hand, shoving his finger into it. The pain dragged him screaming back into Victor’s bubble, and delirious with terrific sensation, he shouted ceaselessly into the small room. He felt blood issue forth from his wound, pouring over the chair and adding to the congealed gravy of his doppelganger beneath. Victor backed away, surprised, clearly not having achieved the desired effect.
His face swung apart before Severn dissolving, becoming a drawing of lines to dots, shapes of color in between. Time spun away like an atom out of order, a quark bouncing between parallel lines. Severn felt his oil depleting, sinking like sand into the chair. As the world went black, he heard the sound of a bubble popping, and then he was in the place between worlds, dead.
Devil’s Work
You may call me Satan. It’s as good a name as any.
A report slides across my desk. One of many. They seem to never end. “EBOLA-C NEARING 100% MORTALITY RATE”. Good. Africa has ceased being useful and has no further place in the long-term Plan.
My eyes scroll down the letters, page after page. Taking it in. I don’t really care. Success, which is all the report means to me. The details I absorb for later use. Idetic memory is a trait of my genetic predisposition. The Asian continents, excluding China, shall go next. Perhaps Russia. I haven’t decided yet. Eventually the taint of plague will reach the shores of America, and I’ll finally release the cure. It will not be priced appropriately by any means, but debt itself is more valuable than the gold used to bury it. My knowledge of this fact is one of the many reasons why I am the most powerful mind on earth.
I drop the paper into the waste-bin, then stare at the stack to my right. I’ve glanced through many of them. Reports on developing viral cures, new strains of plague, economic projections, and private data on individuals of my particular interest. A few celebrities, but mostly millionaire’s, billionaire’s, the power-brokers of the world. My assistants. Some of them unwitting.
I could throw all of it away. It seems half the time I don’t know what I’m doing, as if some master hand controls my own fingers, signing away genocidal death warrants, starving nations, enriching others. Chaos rules the day. To buffer the dread at this knowledge, I have plenty of whiskey. I can’t help it. The ruler of the world would be expected to be perfect, singular of mind, by the masses. I have conditioned them to think that way. The truth is, I’m a wreck. Hell, I wiped out Bosnia last week, and that wasn’t part of the Plan. I did it because I had a killer hangover. Thankfully, it was just Bosnia, and I didn’t do something stupid like take out Venezuela, as I nearly did last Christmas prior to a pathetic, half-assed suicide attempt.
I really have to get myself under control.
It’s Tuesday, and that means I have to do some pop culture work. It’s better than viral contagion Mondays, and Wednesdays, which involve political sex scandals. Thursday and Friday vary through lesser realms of interest, but those that are still important to the Plan. I maintain that regardless of my own shortcomings, my ancestors would be proud of the legacy that they have created, and that within the next four generations the Plan will be fully implemented. If only I could be alive to see it.
Setting aside yesterday’s work, I can finally begin to ponder at what point I will force Justin Bieber, through social pressure, to do a sex scene while displaying fully the Jesus tattoo which he was strongly encouraged to get by his agent, an employee of mine at Disney. I wonder how this fits into the Plan and how I came up with the idea in the first place. Throwing aside my dis-ease, I decide that the ayahuasca has guided me correctly.
The answer comes clear to me. A year and a half.
I sort through the files looking for lists of upcoming films. There are short, one-line synopses, but I pay no attention to them, minding only the titles. I find one, initial “JB-N” and cite the page number and date of the docket for further planning.
The next report involves Britney Spears’ getting an abortion. Should I have her get pregnant in order to do it? The answer doesn’t seem clear this time. The question, in fact, confuses me. How did it get to this point?
I get out the whiskey. Take a shot.
Maybe pop culture Tuesday isn’t as great as I thought.
I take another shot or six.
I pick up the reports, sliding them open toward the middle, around page 600. Should Lindsay Lohan overdose yet?
No, too soon.
What about Charlie Sheen?
Hmmm… yes. It’s time. He’s really fucking embarrassing me.
Political sex-scandals… oh, God. I don’t think I can take any more of it.
The U.S. President fucked over six-hundred boys last year. I’m doing the best I can to keep it out of the tabloids, but there’s only so much six million of my employees around the world can do. Once the rumor starts, the sheep will believe it immediately - especially if it’s a more extreme rumor. This sort of non-sense can be used to great benefit, or it can be quite troublesome. The only solution, should the rumor come out, would be to spread many other rumors of similar absurdity - perhaps even a few of which are true - and let the general intelligentsia proclaim that they’re all non-sense so that the reality of the situation is willingly forgotten.
That’s not as easy to arrange as it sounds.
This mother-fucker of a President is causing me more trouble than he’s worth. I think I’ll have him replaced at the next election. It’s too early to tell with whom. I can bury him by simply giving up my media protection of his secrets. A president involved with boy-whores would probably be the biggest political sex-scandal of all-time. Of course, it’s not unprecedented. Some would say that compared to a Kennedy, it’s actually quite tame. I’m not inclined to disagree. At least with the present Commander-in-Chief, there are fewer raped corpses.
Cable news network Thursday. This comes once every two months, alternating through Thursdays. Nancy Grace sits before me, a moldering Larry King beside her. Fumes pour off of the two of them. Bill O’ Reilly stands in the corner of the room, as far away from both as possible. I glance at him, and he begins to tremble like a puppy.
“That bit about ocean waves and the moon proving Jesus exists was great. Excellent improv,” I tell him.
“What’s improv?” he asks, still terrified of me.
“Never mind. I want more shit like that. Amp it up. Really go on the offensive. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” he snaps back, obedient. “Yes, sir!” He salutes me, like he would the flag.
“Say something about how it’s strange that humans don’t fly off into outer space, that it must be Jesus. Can you do that for me?”
“You know it, sir,” he says.
I dismiss him, then glance at Nancy Grace. “Nancy,” I tell her, “You’ve been a great employee. You’ve worked very hard over the years to make me happy, and I appreciate it more than I can ever tell you.”
“Thank you, sir,” she says, batting her giant, greased-black eyelids.
“However. Your usefulness is rapidly decreasing. You are still a somewhat effective manipulator, but your audience has diminished greatly. Now we will have to go after your lowest-common-denominator, if you still wish to be of any use to me. I want you to host a syndicated court sh
ow called ‘Swift Grace’ where paid actors will pretend to be experts, and one of them will be named Laurie Dyke. You will not laugh when saying her name, ever, or you will regret it highly. We’re going to slowly phase you out of the spotlight, but you’ll make a lot of money from the residuals. It may sound humiliating, but I am not giving you a choice in the matter. Do you understand?”
She looks upset, black beams of mascara trail down her face, dripping off her chins. “Yes, sir…” she says, holding back tears.
I glance at Larry, noticing he’s not breathing.
“Is it dead?” I ask Nancy. She pokes him, he falls out of the chair, a cold corpse thumping to the carpet. There is an awkward silence. Finally, Nancy gets up and leaves, wiping her eyes, forever fated to be the host of a syndicated illegitimate court show. Larry continues rotting, although death seems to slow it down a bit.
Friday is rough. I had forgotten that it was that time of the year. I’ve spent the last twelve hours planning the MTV Video Music Awards. Selena Gomez will die for the anxiety I have suffered today. I hate crashing entire planes, but sometimes I just need to vent my anger. Better Selena Gomez than Paris Hilton.
The weekend arrives.
I sit in the park like I always do on Saturday, reading from the Watchtower, drunk in Central Park.
A camera-crew stands in the distance, filming a live segment. I know because I put them there. They’re talking about a young woman found murdered here recently. That was my doing. The victim was a gift from me, a favor for an old friend. Here he comes now, walking up behind the camera crews, shouting his victory. He grins like a shark at the cameras, forever out of the grasp of punishment - stayed by the hand of yours truly.
Strange Violence Page 7