R³, page 10
It’s 7:01 PM.
Mechanically, he walks through the darkness towards a table obscured by a layer of sprawled books. He immediately notices the MONADOLOGY book sitting wide open—out of place. A page dances erratically, pushed by a nearby air-vent.
As soon as he picks up the book, he spots the old manuscript inside. Having never seen it before, he examines it closely, flipping through its fragile pages.
Most look like diary entries, with a few rough diagrams. What catches Dr. Hammond’s attention is the last page—the last diary entry—, which only contains the letter d at the very top, like the beginning of an unfinished word. Curious, he flips to the previous page, and reads the last few sentences: The answer to everything, to every single question. The secret to all life and the universe. We are…
“We are all born to…”
He flips the page: d?
As if suddenly remembering my somber words, Dr. Hammond reads aloud. “We are all born to … die?”
All my furniture—meaning a dinning table, three chairs, and a stool—is propped up against the front door in an attempt to keep everything and everyone out, or perhaps to keep me inside. Either that or my living room has become an open space for safety. The white tiles are cold, but not too cold, the perfect, soothing amount of cold. My knees curl up into fetal position as I stare at my glowing fingertips—residuals from the electrically charged fork and lightning bolts shooting through my fingers.
My head is empty with shapeless images.
My head itches. I scratch it, and I scratch it hard. The pain feels good, almost orgasmic, simultaneously mitigating the itch.
Fresh blood drips off my twiggy fingers. When did they get so rawboned?
I swing a flashlight over my head, hunting for the bloody itch in the mirror. It flickers off, so I constantly have to jolt the batteries inside.
There it is. A spot directly at the top of my head, covered with dry blood and a halo of irritated skin.
This can’t be good.
I push my short hair out of the way in an attempt to get a better look, but it’s useless. Like anything obstructing the truth, it had to be removed.
A razor quickly does the trick. I wipe the loose hair and shaving cream off with a towel, doing my best to survive without water. I finally reveal a gash about three inches long atop of a conveniently placed, bulging lump. I stick my skeletal finger into it. It squishes in, gruesomely causing a yellowish, viscous fluid to ooze out. It hurts like a bitch.
Mental note: don’t do that again.
I wipe again, toweling off the residual dry blood and yucky ooze. I somehow manage to make a mess on my head, mashing together the dry shaving cream and loose sticky hairs. I can’t win. Blood dribbles out again.
A soft knock at the door brings me to a halt. Have they been knocking for a while? Isaac stands against the wall, eyeballs bulging out, following my every move.
Are you expecting someone? I ask him.
It takes a few seconds to move the barricade of furniture off my door… I open the door a crack, wide enough to display the ridiculous towel turban currently sitting on my head.
“What?” I growl.
An average looking man with a studious but friendly face looks into my bloodshot eyes. He looks like a teacher, or perhaps a scientist of some sort. His demeanor softens, allowing pity to take over the expression in his deep wrinkles, milestones, seventy years or so of living, as he nervously readjusts his blue bowtie.
Harmless, I think. I let him in. Stupid.
I pull up a chair and drop, observing him closely. He looks around, surely having second thoughts, yet he decides to stay and sits on the chair opposite mine. I leave the flashlight on the floor facing up, beaming like a lighthouse calling out ships lost at sea. Call it mood lighting.
“Well?” I ask, while coughing up blood. Hmm, that’s new.
“I’m here to help you.”
“You freak-ee religious-man?”
“No. You seem to be falling apart, isn’t that so?”
I take a second to chew on this. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice.
“My name is Dr. Walker. I want to help you,” he continues, “put a lid on this... thing you started.”
“Yapping trap-tap, you saying?” in my defense, all of these words sounded perfectly coherent in my head before they casually slipped out between my ensanguined lips.
“Your physical body will soon not belong to this world. We can protect you. We can make sure no harm comes to you.”
Who’s we?
“Can you bring back Mr. Normal?” I ask.
Dr. Walker wipes the spotless lens of his round glasses as he lets out a soft sigh. Must be a thing he does.
“There is no ‘normal’, Mr. Hammond,” he begins. “This—is the new normal. The world in your memories no longer exists. However, only you possess the ability to stop it from spiraling out of control. You can shift it back on track.”
What’s he talking about? Why me? Why is it always me?
“Who izzz you-sa?”
“I’m but another spinning wheel, behind a powerful organization.”
“You made the dreamer juicy-juice?”
“After the incident there was a vacuum. Dreaming was gone. Not-dreaming is a sign of a reality in decline. Our reality as we knew it had changed, yet we weren’t equipped to notice the long-term differences. My wife, Cassandra, was one of the first to identify the new patterns, but even her sophisticated brain was not strong enough to endure such a void… it drove her irrevocably mad. Lost her forever to the streets. The world was entrapped in shadow; that was until Nina… Nina was different. She appeared to suddenly fill that void. We tried creating imprints out of her dreams, but their life spans were short of a few seconds once separated from her cerebral spine fluid and the other chemicals produced by her brain. That’s why we synthesized R³. That’s why it only works in liquid form. It’s not enough to input it into your brain. Your body must absorb her in order for it to work. You have to be in communion with her. However, she wasn’t enough. The well ran dry and she turned into something along the lines of a black hole. She was stolen from us. Now our existence is way off balance. Balance must be restored, Mr. Hammond. We’ve been watching you for a while.”
“Maybe dreamerssss not need any longer—maybe the dreamers izz what we become. We be the dreamsesss.”
“Mr. Hammond, you have no idea of the extent of the repercussions your actions have created,” the doctor’s voice cracked in fear. “This is beyond Pandora’s Box. You’ve unleashed a monstrosity.”
“By popping the dream-ee juice?”
“By procreating with Nina.”
What…?
“She’s an anomaly. We are the white cells fighting back, trying to survive. No one is safe. Your loved ones are in danger.”
“But—you’re help, you say?”
“We can offer personal safety. No harm will come to you, if you come with us.”
“Others?”
“We cannot guarantee their outcome. There are powers at play that neither you nor I can command.”
Grumble, grumble. “You speakerssss in abstractions, Mr. Help. Smoke screens and riddling threats. What does Mr. Help says it wants we forrrr?”
“We?” he pauses. “We need you to terminate Nina.”
I laugh. At least I think it’s a laugh, yet it sounds more like a squealing pig on its way to a slaughterhouse. The old man recoils, second-guessing his every decision.
“Not possible, Mr. Help,” I mumble.
“Very much possible. She’s both a door and a whirlpool, sucking everyone at the edge towards the center. We lost her once. This is unprecedented. You are the only bridge connecting us to her. You are the key. You need to stop this while you’re still part of this world, only then will this mess begin to unwind. We are running out of time!”
“Nina is no more!” I spit out in an unexpected outburst of frustration.
“That’s not entirely true. There’s nothing left of her but her dreams,” he begins, “however, she will come to you, and only you. It is imperative that you do this, Mr. Hammond. We will protect you. You will be safe.”
“Just we-sses?”
“Just you.”
We-sses, me-sses is not enough.
Mother? Bill? Dr. Hammond? Everyone.
Me-sses is not enough.
I get up and away from the man.
“Leave me-sses.”
“Dreaming comes with a price,” he stammers, not taking ‘no’ for an answer. “Your journey will bring you a lot of pain if you don’t cooperate. You will endure intense physical... and emotional pain. The pain of feeling lost—alone in the world.”
“Leave,” I whisper amidst a cacophony of sanguinary coughs.
“John, you are making a terrible mistake!” yells Dr. Walker, springing up from his chair, trying to reach me. “Things have to go back into order…” but his yelling and reaching stops.
His skin is boiling red. His white eyeballs are squeezing out of their sockets. A force around him is suddenly holding him still. The old man stands, immobilized midair, chocking violently, suffocated by an invisible grip.
I don’t have to move. I can feel the particles vibrating around me. The strings of creation hastily unraveling at the seams, the design collapsing like a house of cards. Oxygen slips in and out of his throat, the old man inhaling but a sliver of a drop. His color changes, red dissolving into purple. Tiny veins crown his gouging eyeballs distorting his face completely. His body rises… the tip of his feet barely touching the ground.
He is going to die.
I know he is going to die.
He knows he is going to die.
“Ple—ease…” the sound wheezes out, barely intelligible.
This man will die.
But not today.
The old man drops on all fours, gasping loudly for air. Oxygen, a simple element, speedily pours into his lungs once again, quenching his thirst for the world of the living. His face goes back to its normal color. His eyes decompress and fit back into their sockets.
More terrified than satisfied, he jumps to his feet and scurries, crushing his glasses on his way out.
Drawn to the second most interesting thing, I look at my fingers. One of my nails has turned slightly purple. It’s quite a beautiful discoloration.
I snap it off with ease.
It barely bleeds. Yellow liquid oozes out of it.
Am I slowly rotting?
Falling apart, Mr. Help said.
Fall-eeeen—aaapppppp—
—tart.
Chapter 18: A universal joke.
A universal joke.
Wrapping, wrappy, wrappity-wrap, around my knocker, around my finger.
I pace back and forth, looking for something, or not looking, but only pacing, as there’s nothing there to look for.
Can’t leave. Must leave. Not safe outside. Safe Inside. Safe inside. Can’t leave. Must leave. Can’t leave. Must leave. Can’t leave. Must leave.
The dead man hovers behind me, pulling me back, reeling me in. But the dead man doesn’t know better, he’s dead.
Yes…
…John knows…
…outside will consume me-sses.
Must leave.
I fall in and out of light, dragging my left foot, pushing myself up with a crutch down the concrete sidewalk. My heavy breathing, practically wheezing, stings like shards of glass slipping into every crevice between my ribs.
The towels wrapped around my head feel heavy, but it’s the cloudy darkness creeping into my eyes that has me worried. Like farm oxen plowing the fields, I can push through until my spine snaps, but without my sight, I feel lost.
I’m running out of time, steadily falling into a pit of darkness. I can feel my eyes fading, turning into rusty pearls. I don’t want to go blind.
The homeless woman sees me limp from down the street, her eyes following me with caution. Awake. Alert.
“We are perpetual living mirrors of the universe,” she says. Cassandra…
This time, she doesn’t laugh.
The joke is over.
There’s an unusual stillness that screams to remain undisturbed. The grandfather clock tics away deeper than ever, like a heartbeat underscoring a Hitchcock movie, guiding your hero into a bottomless pit. My mother’s living room has become a cavernous lair for shadows, kept at bay only by flickering candles and a blazing fireplace, crackling furiously. It’s the epicenter of this new world, like a burning sun, facing my mother who is as poised as a statue.
“Mother-er?”
“Oh, sweet bug! Is it you?” she turns, revealing her mud-mask covered face. It’s nerve-wracking. She wears a crimson silk robe and a cucumber slice on each eye; yet, she can feel my presence, following my every move with her vegetable goggles.
“I’ve missed you terribly! Sit. Let me look at you.”
I limp over, weary, taking a seat next to her on the couch. She, however, does not remove her cucumber spectacles, but still finds a way to see. This feels like a cruel joke based on my increasing blindness.
“I have a romantic rendezvous with a very fine gentleman tonight,” she says placing her perfectly manicured hand on my knee. “The nanny will be here shortly.”
“Danger is here. Cometh with me-sser, keep you safe,” I try to sputter out sentences, but incomplete words take their place, so I tug at her arm in an attempt to get her immediate attention.
“I’m not going anywhere!” she shrieks snatching her arm away. “Don’t be ridiculous. Didn’t you hear? I have to get ready for my date.”
“I must stay with you, mother-er.”
“Nonsense! I’ll give you some cough syrup and you’ll sleep like you’re dead. A sweet, dream-less, sleep.”
“Falling apart, everything. No time. Running!” I beg. “The red juice trickling. Look at me!”
She does, but doesn’t—only her cucumber eyes. “You look fine! Stop being so self-centered. It’s my night. I have a date with a doctor. I have to look good for the doctor. He’s a doctor, you know?” She goes off on a looping tangent. “I have to look good for the doctor. He’s such a dream!”
There’s nothing I can do, not with this strength—or lack thereof—, not while holding myself up with a crutch. The possibility of other exit routes seem to fade away as she swims in the interiors of her subconscious—the new reality, the new world, kicking from the inside like an unborn child, dying to come out.
As I limp towards the front door, I take one last look at the fading shell of what my mother used to be. Responding to my mental longing, she turns, but she’s not her anymore. Nina has taken her place.
I slip in a panic when I try to race over, landing on my back with a dry and chilling crack. Air wheezes out of my lungs as I roll on the floor in excruciating pain. Every last inch of me has shattered. It even sounded like I shattered.
Glass. Crystals.
But it wasn’t me that crashed. My crutch had shot out from under me and into the wall, producing shattered edges around a beaming hole—as if a rock had been thrown through a window, except this was supposed to be solid concrete. The edges of this glass-like wall glow, creating flickering shards, fireflies flashing like broken pixels. Light beams out as I peek inside, blocking the intense whiteness with my hand, my pupils dilating in a frenzy, unable to focus.
Holding my back in pain, I look up, my eyes searching for Nina, but as expected she’s long gone; the back of my mother’s head remains… a ticking bomb.
I manage to crawl into the shattered exit, leaving my mother and this world behind.
Sandy snow wraps around my feet. The horizon extends into nothing, leading to more nothing towards nothing. I’ve never seen such a clean field, free from any obstructions, free from any imperfections.
A layer of crystalline snow mist sits dusted atop my turban hat. It trickles down my neck, icy, melting against my relatively warm body. Yet I don’t feel cold. I can’t decide if it’s a magical quality of the place, or if my body has fallen into a state of perpetual numbness. I remove my shoes, suddenly feeling the urge to sink my toes into the plush snow; so frosted, so immaculate, no trace of impurities—no dirt, no mud. My feet on the other hand, are disgustingly imperfect. My toenails have grown into black and blue claws, and my feet have a general overtone of yellow. I bury them under the snow.
Hiding them.
Better.
The world behind me is not the same. Protruding from under the snow, crystal shards grow upright, resembling glass cacti. I wrap my hand around their surface; firm and clean. An unexpected level of warmth seeps through my fingertips.
That’s when I see her, staring out at the blue sky, her fiery hair flying wildly among the gentle snowfall.
She smiles wholeheartedly as I approach. Her warm, delicate hands wrap around my face, holding it lovingly, with no shred of judgment. I can feel my incredulous eyes bounce back and forth, unable to move, unable to speak.
“The end. Is it now?” I finally manage to say.
“The end isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.”
Rose’s Date
ROSE’S DATE
My robotic mother wraps her arm around Dr. Hammond’s like a starving octopus. He lets her, captivated by the scene unfolding before his eyes.
Consumed by his own haunting obsession, Bill’s eyes have developed a white layer on them, turning him partially blind. His followers hum and chant their usual, dissonant melody.
Bill wraps his spotty hands around the metallic sphere, reading the geometric frieze with his fingertips. Dr. Hammond’s eyes are instantly drawn to the unusual object. He doesn’t know why, but amidst the chanting frenzy, he can’t stop looking at it.
