Annie and Jack
What happened made sense in some ways. After a particularly bloody night Jack went to lay down with Annie and one of her earplugs fell out. Her unconscious mind began to listen to the Replacement System as she slept, which eventually woke her up with a frantic fit of tears.
Just so you know, me and Jack had become irritated with the constant playing of the Replacement System so we wore earplugs regularly to dull out the sound. It had been a few weeks or maybe a few months since we’d been doing that.
Now when Jack woke up she was feeling horribly guilty. She had a sense that she was becoming a monster. It was more than an overwhelming feeling she was experiencing... it was also physical. Her body felt unhinged. Jack held onto Annie to keep from shaking. She wished more than anything for Annie to be healthy... "But you’re not healthy, Annie. You can’t talk anymore. You can’t walk anymore." Jack was crying. She whispered and whimpered to Annie’s dead ears, "I’ve killed a lot of people since we’ve been split up, and now I’m not so sure they deserved it." Jack held her tight and then broke down in quiet hysterics, "Annie. Annie... I cut some guy’s dick off the other night. He was still alive for it... it was bad. He was crying like a little girl, and now- I can’t get it out of my head that maybe he was a little girl. It doesn’t make sense but... Somehow I’ve been cutting myself into little pieces all along, ‘cause I feel bad for each one of them now!" Jack broke down crying with random emotional utterances. She whispered apologies over and over and over again, clinging to her damaged lover as the music broke into her. She wouldn’t put the earplugs in and so she couldn’t help but focus on the words...
"Gone impure in the back of my mind
There is no place to rewind
There is no time to make it clear if it was born it will stay here
Until the day we meet again
I let you down inside my head
There is no change I will resist
To replace the bridge between our ships, baby... save me-"
Jack whispered the chorus to herself and gently squeezed Annie’s arm each time she whispered, "Baby, save me. Chain me to change. Baby, save me. Save me again..." Jack fell asleep in her repetition.
The Next Day
I’m not sure how it happened, but from that next morning and for a week after we could hear Annie and Jack screaming back and forth at each other regularly. Somebody tried to get in the room to see Annie for themselves but the door was barricaded. After a day, some of the Others slid snacks through the door crack but for a whole week there was no communication between them and our outside world.
It really pissed me off that Jack shut down for that whole week because she missed a pivotal night. Before invading a large convention center that night, some members of our squad approached me. They told me that they had thought I was turning evil or insane before- because they saw the torturous works of art Jack and I had arranged using corpses. Then they said that word of it spread across the country in a matter of weeks and that now the satellite picked up broadcasts of it around the world. Private broadcasts-not public... but the powers were afraid... their minds had changed about me and Jack- they wanted in!
There was nothing to it really... everyone becomes enraged and sickened in the presence of true horror. I told them to go along with their feelings and that the rest would take care of itself. It did.
3 Weeks Later
I wasn’t alone anymore, although being alone had never bothered me. I was in the company of 10 or 20 people most of the time... and they wanted me to tell them what to do. I was leading what seemed like a small militant army. Fifty of us had killed with new eyes in 3 short weeks... I even saw my own picture on a billboard. I was an enemy of the man in the gray hat now.
I was thinking about a truly expressive image. I wanted to collect all of the heads from a viosex center and put little gray hats on them. Then we’d break into a closed office building and put a head on each desk for the first shift to discover. We were all conspiring in a group when Jack walked up and asked to speak to me alone.
What Was Said
"We went evil", she said. "I didn’t know until I really listened to The Replacement System."
"Why’d you do that?", I asked.
"I lost an earplug for a minute and started to understand."
"Understand what?", I asked.
Jack broke down, "That we wronged people! We tortured and murdered people who we could have saved! They were sick..."
I knew where she was going so I beat her to the punch, "Do you think I’m sick, Jack? Do you want me to take my earplugs out so that I might see the evil of my ways? Don’t you Jack? Don’t you wanna bring me... into the light, Jack?"
"I wanna let you know that you’re losing yourself. I was almost gone, I could feel it."
"How’s Annie?", I asked, "I heard she was awake?"
"She can’t walk but she’s all there.", answered Jack. "She was there when I came to, but she wasn’t all there until I woke up the next morning. She’s-"
"She’s what Jack?", I interrupted, "She’s still alive? How long is she gonna live for if I stop protecting us from them?"
"We weren’t protecting anybody !", she yelled, "We can’t control what’s happening out there! The whole fucking world has turned into a machine and the more we play with it, the more we relate to it! You won’t get it ‘til you pull out those damn plugs!"
" Hey Jack", I said calmly, "Why don’t you get out of the fucking room...", I chuckled about it really. Jack didn’t though... she was a fucking wreck.
"You’re whipped", I added, "When she lets you off your chain come see me."
No response... for the first time- I really wanted to fuck her. It was confusing for me. She was so upset when she left, and I found it kind of amusing. She was doing just what she was programmed to do- I thought it was cute of her.
For the rest of that night and for what seemed like every day afterward, I was horny as Hell. The sexual urges that started with Jack spread to all women in general. I started having random sex with people in the Warhouse, but I tired of that real quick. The viosex centers became a real draw. I fought the attraction for awhile but it was too great. I treated everyone with respect at first, but eventually I let go bit by bit until I thrived on their weaknesses. I came and I killed. Soon, everyone who followed me did too.
I just want to take a second and make it clear that you can’t get something for nothing. If you relax and let life do what it does you’re gonna get slapped in the face. Standing up for what you believe in is the most difficult thing to do in the world. I made a pact to defend my friends, and I stuck by it. Novocaine, Jimmy and the rest of them couldn’t take the pressure. They couldn’t handle the compromise.
The sad difficult truth is so similar to what Jack said. In order to save your friends you have to sacrifice part of yourself. She was right... I had to get to know the enemy in ways that I wasn’t comfortable with... but only a few of us can be trusted with the delicate balance between greater goods and evils. The idea of love is so much more complicated than it’s surface seems. You can’t know love without hate. How can someone do something good for someone until they understand what’s not good for someone? I now know that the pain I am forced to internalize will be what saves us all.
What’s Going On
When Jimmy noticed Darkwing gaining consciousness, he left the rooftop. His old friend had begun a new path and Jimmy knew that he’d be eager to get right on it. Jimmy could almost smell coffee brewing in the warehouse and took that as a sign to return to his routine. He wouldn’t be leaving the monotony after all.
Pops was asleep when Darkwing woke up. He took in his surroundings more like an animal would... then say a man. The huge black wings were the only difference in his physical appearance, but something was quite altered in his demeanor. The way his body moved when he walked seemed almost surreal. It’s as if each minor movement was purposefully guided. His eyes were glowing although he was silent after he came to. They were momentarily ominous until he broke into honest laughter. Darkwing shook his wings off as he walked to the edge of the roof. They didn’t hurt anymore– now that he understood them, and they took him into the air to find her.
Tyrone and Novocaine were hanging out with Pat and Danny regularly during music breaks because they quit going on missions. Jimmy joined them after Darkwing’s departure and together they discussed how they now feared me.
The 50 or so Others that were willing to kill opened up a new, yet smaller warhouse. We called it Hell.
The original warehouses were still full of spiritual and personal conflict but everyone was excited about the prophesy of the fish. Even a fish religion was created and people wandered the sewers trying to catch a glimpse of one.
As for the Lobe Finned Fish, they were traveling through the sewers and working their way through plumbing until they reached bathrooms. They waited until someone used the toilet, shower, or sink and then they expelled their tiny, fetus wrapped selves into any available human orifice. After taking control of the human they traveled from human to human, or returned to the sewer system. They were highly efficient and ahead of schedule.
Che’ra was put in charge of basic operations in Miami, as well as her Albany project. Most of the sleep she got was between plane rides.
Word of the Miami Big Business Torturers spread across the mindset, and the man in the gray hat tried to block any transmission of that information... but he had no intention of halting the slaughters. Those particular non conformers were more efficient than his own Peace Force!
Annie and Jack were nursing deep wounds. Annie couldn’t feel her legs just as Jack cringed with pain every time she felt her own soul. Purposefully blocking out The Replacement System seemed to increase her feelings of guilt tenfold. Both of them were still in shock.
The divine yet wild part of Sir Jane was having the time of her life flying all over the world and learning what she was capable of... She was capable of just about anything. That part of her didn’t remember anyone at all, even the part of herself she left behind.
The Accident Again
Ray was waking up from a dream. He was walking through a forest that grew in the sky. The roots formed clouds that extended everywhere like grass. Ray got down on his knees and pushed his face into the ground until he felt it break through the cloud covering. How he knew how to do that, he did not know. Ray’s exposed head opened it’s eyes to see water and land mass thousands of feet below. He felt the rest of his body sinking through the cloud and he tried desperately to move but his body sunk like a board. Ray freaked out, failing to scream until something pulled him swiftly from the cloud cover. It was Sir Jane... or at least something like her!
It was a woman wearing no clothes, but her body was extremely muscular. Parts of her seemed to be formed of flourescent liquid, swirling in different patterns, and parts of her seemed like particles of light. The dominant color was a flourescent green but it was contrasted against a museum of light. There was an eye in the center of her forehead, but it was closed.
They stood and looked at each other for 2 seconds, and in that time a mischievous grin formed on Sir Jane’s face. She lurched forward, grabbed Ray by the arm, and dragged him through the clouds until she came to this particularly fleshy looking tree. Ray looked down and saw that he was naked. In a flash he was pressed face forward against the tree and he could hear her eerie giggling behind him. To Ray, the tree felt like a soft warm body and in a short time he noticed that his penis was inside of it. He panicked for a second but the pleasure did put him in a somewhat euphoric state.
Slowly, he noticed that the tree was sweating and he could feel it react with the movements of his own body, but something terrible happened. The rage started to stir up inside of him like hot lead being poured into someone’s ear. He struggled against the tree and began to scream in rage and horror, but the tree wouldn’t let go... And there protruding from the trunk of the tree, smiling with those mischievous lips, was Sir Jane. Even as he went into a mindless fit of rage she clung onto him. Those manipulative eyes examining him in such a distant glaze...
Ray woke up screaming. The screams turned into tears after a few seconds, and his body was shaking uncontrollably. He felt dizzy and a wetness in his crotch area which turned out to be his own genetic soup. "I came.", Ray said inside of his head. He hadn’t done that since the white room...
The White Room
After Ray completed the chemical interrogation, he was brought into another white room for phase 2. Electrodes were placed all over his body and someone from a control room could run electricity through them at will. Ray was injected with new chemicals which kept him sexually aroused- always physically, but mentally he was off and on.
The entire room was turned into a movie of Sir Jane. They had extracted images and sounds from Ray’s head and then pieced them together for a very accurate audio/video projection of her. The walls doubled as large screens as did the floor and ceiling. No matter where he stared... She was going to be there.
Ray was tortured like this until he was close to cracking up... right at the brink. The chemicals in his body made him orgasm every couple minutes for the first hour or so, and then it slowed to every 10 minutes. The ejaculations themselves were unnaturally forced and became quite painful after the first couple of hours. To increase the efficiency of the operation, the controller electrocuted Ray at the point of ejaculation- each time.
Back to the Accident and Ray
So Ray had come, and now he was staring at a corpse. "Peace Force...", he whispered to himself, "I remember." Ray looked over at the tree line and saw the gaping space that broke into the forest. He stumbled quite a bit trying to get to his feet which made him think that he must have smacked his head pretty good. Sure enough, it was crusted with blood when he felt it.
After a few steps Ray saw her. She was naked and unconscious ... and nothing like she was in the dream. Sir Jane looked frail. Ray could feel the chemical dream stirring up inside of him. It wasn’t overwhelming but he could tell the violent impulses were directed at her. He took off his big black leather coat and wrapped her in it. She seemed so much smaller than he had remembered. "So this is the demon whore...", rattled off somewhere in the back of his head.
Ray threw her over his shoulder and guessed she probably only weighed about 100 pounds. She had withered away since the last time they had met, but Ray... Ray had almost doubled his size since then. He carried her over to his motor board and pulled the remote control from the coat wrapped around Sir Jane. It started right up, and Ray took off with Sir Jane into the horizon.
The Institution
"Jane...", whispered a calm and familiar voice, "It’s time to wake up, Jane."
It took her forever to open her eyes... when she finally did her body stiffened and her bowels released. It was him! The man in the gray hat. "You’ve wet yourself, Jane.", he said gently but cooly, "Try to relax yourself." She felt terrified. "Do you remember how you got back here?, he asked. She said nothing. "My son Ray had to find you and bring you back. You gave us quite a fright... Really Jane, running away like that.", the man in the gray hat answered for her. He was wearing a suit and tie with a white lab coat over them. Impeccably white, sterile. She could see his face now, so lifeless... so dry.
"I can see you’re still unstable, Jane.", said his monotone voice, "I’m afraid we’ll have to leave your restraints on until you’re feeling better." He pushed a button on the intercom and asked for a nurse to come down. Both of them were silent until the nurse arrived. "She’s wet herself.", he said to the nurse and then to Jane he said, "It’s good to have you back, Jane." She could tell he really tried to mean it when he said it, and then he left the room.
"Are you doing OK, Jane?", the nurse asked as she changed the gown and sheets. Jane tried to say something but the words just wouldn’t come out. She wondered why. "Cat got your tongue?", the nurse asked. No answer.
Jane knew she was drugged. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, even her thoughts. She was very weary of the man in the gray hat but she knew practically nothing about him. Who was the man in the gray hat?
The whole day went by in slow motion with only occasional visits by the nursing staff. Three of them... and each one acted as if they knew her. The last nurse asked her what she was doing back but Jane couldn’t even express her confusion. The nurse before that one just said, "Hi", in a friendly tone that suggested familiarity. All Jane could do was lay in her hospital bed and watch the television that was always on. They were all reality shows and newscasts, except they didn’t seem real to her at all.
One was called Greatest American Family and they followed the lives of each family member throughout the day. It seemed unnatural to Jane that throughout the day there wasn’t an interaction between any two family members. A group of men and women showed up at the family’s rather small apartment dressed in uniforms that read "Peace Force." One "Peace Force" person knocked and entered the room of each family member, with a case strapped to their chest. Each family member used a credit card to purchase food and drink, or pills from the vender. Then the family members were led separately from the house to their routines. The kids went to different schools, and the parents to different buildings. From there it showed clips of each kid learning attentively at school and the parents eagerly working.
The husband was an upper class worker so they included a clip of him walking into "The Unwilling" room. The clip showed him wink at the camera as he entered, but the rest wasn’t shown on television. There was a caption that read and said, "You’ll know when you get there!" His wife was shown trying to promote herself in the room of "The Willing". After going down on one of her employers she recommended, "Soft drugs for personal and professional enhancement!" The kids were brought home by the "Peace Force" venders and they remained in their separate rooms until the end of the show. When the husband and wife arrived, they too attached themselves to computers and cell phones in separate rooms.
Jane thought the show seemed darkly surreal, but then, her life seemed a bit unreal itself. She clearly remembered meeting the killer in the shack and everything that happened afterwards. Before that it was more bits and fragments that she couldn’t recall enough to paste together. Did she really dream up that hulking figure in a hockey mask... who turned out to be someone she cared for? She missed him– and the man in the gray hat... she feared him.
The television shows she saw that first conscious day were single dreams compared to her fragmented world. She had clues as to who she was but never a complete idea. The people in the television were just the opposite. They had an idea of what they were, but they didn’t seem to be aware of even fragments of their individual selves. The shows all appeared connected in theme, as if they joined together to force a particular idea. It was glaringly apparent to her. One show was "Greatest American Family" so another was "Best Japanese Mother" and "The Ultimate CEO’s".
The First Dream
That night Jane had a dream after she dozed off. The television had still been on when she slept- they always left it on.
The dream was very realistic. She was in her hospital room when the man in the gray hat entered and turned on the light. She tried to move, but she still had the straps holding her down. He walked over and pulled her blankets off. To Jane’s surprise, her body was incredibly muscular and dark in color. She lifted an arm and it easily broke the strap. The man in the gray hat looked annoyed at this. In a scolding voice he snapped, "No! You’re just Jane!" She could tell that she wet herself again, and when she looked down at her body it was frail and white. Then she woke up. She had wet herself... but in the bedpan.
A Place Called Hell
This was my place. I created it. I accepted the responsibility that only a few can be trusted with- the delicate balance of real power. There was no need to question my motives for taking control. The control was placed on my shoulders from those around me. I was appointed unanimously with no need for documentation.
It was a hell of a thing to carry the stares of those who depended on you. I had finally learned the greatest joys and dilemmas of leadership- those stares. They looked differently at me than they used to. I had been a leader then and they looked to me for direction. Now I was a symbol and they looked at me in an attempt to see themselves. I learned this... and the day I became aware of it was the day I became a symbol.
Hell, as we called it, was decorated with living trophies. The cruelest men wearing the finest suits were chained to various areas throughout our small warehouse. We glued earplugs into their ears so they had no chance of hearing The Replacement System, although that music had never been set up to broadcast in Hell. Our walls were decorated with these men. Men. Men...
Men. I noticed that the higher up the ladder we hunted, there were less encounters with women. There were no women chained to the walls of the place we called Hell. I was convinced it wasn’t for a lack of cruelty that we hadn’t apprehended a true female predator. The truth was becoming observably clear- Women weren’t trusted with the responsibility of holding dominant positions. True dominant positions of the unfolding world required a steady use of cruelty and if women held those positions, they too would indulge in the cruelty process... equally. The mindset did not include women of rank... and so we mainly hunted men.
While I was taking all of this in I became confused. Part of me was arguing with Jack in my head about the effectiveness of cruelty. I was glad she backed out when she did because she could have taken some committed members of the Warhouse out with her if she had waited any longer. She was convincing. So convincing that I could see her point of view with a great deal of clarity sometimes. I didn’t want to use violence the way I had been. I used to avoid fights before this mindset started to ravage all I knew; then I was forced to fight the fights that others weren’t capable of.
I understood the mindset enough to realize there was something wrong about me also. I was male. A male in a world of men... and it stung! Someone could always tell me that I’m doing whatever I’m doing partly because I am a man. They could say I’m tied into the evil around me and they’d be right.
After a while the burden of this knowledge started to burn a hole in me and I spent more and more drunk nights trying to put the fire out. My anger was increasing though. I still made personal use of the viosex centers and afterwards I would carve apologies into my body as punishment. I was learning about pain... in order to eventually end the reality of pain for us all... eventually.
The businessmen chained in Hell eventually starved to death and we replaced their bodies with fresh ones.
The Institution
Jane woke up harnessed into her hospital bed as a nurse was replacing her bed pan. The nurse then pulled out a coil of tubing and said, "You’ll need a catheter for awhile, Jane. You’re still making a mess from tossing around at night." As the nurse inserted the catheter, Jane became nauseous and panicky. She threw up on herself as she was trying to articulate how she was feeling to the nurse. No words came out. The nurse looked at her coldly and like a mother to a brat said, "Cat got your tongue, Jane? If you ask me, I think you’re being a big baby. We all know you can talk. You talked before, Jane." The nurse wiped off Jane’s face and then paused, "You can teach a dog to stop pissing on a carpet if you rub it’s nose in it. We’ll see if we can’t teach you how to speak again." The nurse left the room without cleaning up Jane’s puke.
She was left there strapped into her bed with the smell of vomit for hours. She couldn’t tell how many. The TV had been on. The TV was always on, growing brighter and louder with the hour, or at least so it seemed to her.
He walked into the room, the man in the gray hat. Instead of a white coat he was wearing slacks and a green sweater today. Attached to the green sweater was a gold pin. It read, "Counselor of the Month." As he walked up to her he noticed the vomit on the sheets and his eyes squinted like a repulsed cowboy’s. "Jane, who did this to you?!", he asked with an intensely soft tone, "Tell me who did this to you and I’ll have them stoned... I’ll have them fired, Jane."
She just stared at him open eyed without even considering a reply. Something wasn’t quite real about her situation. She found herself staring at the man in the gray hat and then over just a few feet at the television. ‘They’re both quiet now’, she thought.
"Well Jane", said the man in the gray hat, "There’s only so much I can do... without your help." He walked to the other side of the room then turned his head so Jane could see his profile lined up with it’s silhouette. "Silence is the refusal to encounter one’s own life." He walked back to the door, "I’ll do what I can to help you, but you must trust me Jane. It takes two to build a relationship." With that said he left the room and immediately a nurse entered and changed Jane’s sheets and gown. The nurse chatted with her about nothing in particular and then left.
The 2nd Dream
Jane was laying in her hospital bed staring at the television in her dark room. She imagined yellow buttons in the back of her brain which she mentally pressed until they lit up. When they lit up she felt her body relax and a rather transparent body floated up out of the original one, still strapped to the bed. She felt herself float straight up through the ceiling and enter another room. The room she entered looked just like her own and there was a young man standing in the middle of it. He had a dead expression on his face as he stared at the television, which hung only a few feet away. She felt her body float over and then get sucked into the television. She saw his dead pan expression wake into an intense stare and then she woke up. It was morning.
The Above Room
The room that Jane entered in her dream was an actual room, and the young man she saw was actual as well. His name was Domingo. Domingo Carter Santiago. He was a "patient" at the hospital just as Jane was, and he was just as silent as she. It had been a number of years since he was first admitted. He had been emotionally and mentally shut down for most of that time as well.
The night that Jane’s presence entered his room, Domingo was doing his usual. Not really sleeping, not really awake. He stared. Sometimes at the television, sometimes at the wall or a spot on the floor. He didn’t talk to himself as he had before... too much time had passed and there was nothing to talk to himself about. There was a lingering awareness left inside of him that hadn’t quite faded away, and maybe that’s why he chose to make sense of what he saw.
That night as he stared past the television something jolted his attention to the screen. There were words on the screen that spelled, "Domingo’s Big Break!" Then he saw himself fighting the school bully the way he had years before. As he watched himself dodge the impact of each punch, the muscles in his immobile body spasmed accordingly. The expression on Domingo’s face woke up into the storm. He let the tears flow as he watched himself on the screen. "Welcome to Miami", the screen read and then it flashed to a sewer cap. There was light and music escaping from just around the sewer cap, and then the screen went blank. Domingo remembered himself and he felt an incredible urge to get to Miami. Miami was his big break...whatever was under that sewer cap!
Still standing there, Domingo deadened his expression. He knew there was a possibility that he was still being watched. The moment they saw the slightest bit of life in his eyes it was over for him- he knew it... there would be no hiding how he felt from them. Perhaps they weren’t paying much attention to him? It had been a matter of years since he had given up. His eyes drifted to the window- no bars!
Domingo Santiago did his best to look like a patient as he slowly made his way to the window. He felt it. It was glass. For the hell of it he tried, and to his surprise, the window opened. He peered down to see that he was 10 stories up. It was the first time he had ever looked out of that window- to actually look at something. The next story down had a window with a small 1 foot ledge extending from it, and it appeared that each lower floor was set up the same way. Domingo thought that maybe he could drop from ledge to ledge until he reached the ground, but 50 yards out there was a 20 foot fence that seemed impossible to pass. He imagined it probably had electricity running through it, ‘cause that’s the type of place it was. Domingo started to climb out of the window. The urge to leave was greater than the desire to live. He had to leave... right then.
Domingo lowered himself from his window ledge until his feet were 5 or 6 feet from the next ledge down. He let himself fall and his feet hit the next ledge sending him off balance, but he instinctively let himself drop so that he landed square on the window ledge with his butt. He muttered a silent, nonsensical prayer to himself and leaned back. He looked inside and sure enough, it looked just like his old room, except there was another name plate attached to the TV. Where it once spelled "Domingo" it now spelled "Jane". He remembered the bars on his windows beforehand... he remembered the feeling that came from looking at them for awhile. They were probably doing the same thing to this patient "Jane" as they had done with him. There wasn’t much hope for whoever else was under their control, he thought. Domingo could make out the shape of the patient lying in the bed as it was reflecting a haze of light from the television. The television was blue... but then in bright red letters it read, "Use your gift, Boy!" Domingo’s jaw dropped, and he saw a figure made of television light crawl out of the screen. He stared. It stopped... then it flew at him and connected with a silent explosion.
The next thing Domingo noticed was the 20 foot fence below him. He was flying over it at a massive speed like a projectile shot out of a cannon. "I’m dead", he said- and then he started to descend. As the tops of the oncoming trees approached it hit him, "Use your gift, Boy!". There was no thinking after that. Domingo entered the zone and his limbs grappled with each branch as they flew at him. His descent took on a horizontal slide buying him time to slow down. He felt his flesh getting cut from the scratching of branches but he never suffered a direct hit until he hit the ground, which broke away beneath his weight covering him with mud and water.
Domingo pulled himself up out of the muck onto a dead log. He felt a strange numbness all over his body as he looked into the darkness. There was a bit of light reflecting from the moon onto what surely looked like a swamp. It was too dark to take it all in but he could see movements in the water. Domingo held his breath for a moment. There was movement all around him. Within 5 feet of himself he saw what looked like logs of all sizes moving through the water. Gators!
He checked the log he was on- it was wood. Good. ‘There’s no time to waste.’, he thought, ‘Gotta keep on.’ He found two thin but strong branches, long enough to project out of the muck. Each one had a nob sticking out of it for his foot to stand on. Domingo took his already shredded shirt and tied the cloth from it to secure his feet to the sticks. He had to cut his pants into shorts and use that cloth as well. After they were complete, he used the stilts to keep himself out of the water. Domingo held onto tree limbs and vines for balance and slowly began to make his way through the muck.
The Next Day
There was nothing left of the kid, the man in the gray hat thought. "There was nothing left of him at all.", he said out loud. The patient Domingo had just over 2% of his personality intact, his motor skills were even damaged. The boy barely reacted to a door slammed next to him during testings. Even the peons had close to a percent more programming input availability than he had. 3.14% was supposed to be the cut off which meant- it had to be the demon whore!
The security cameras were scrutinized. They showed Domingo watching an ordinary television show when he suddenly came to. The television show was "Top CEO’s". It was one of the better episodes... but there was nothing to warrant a sudden change in expression, his opening of the window, or his appearance at Jane’s window. Again the cameras caught the look of surprise on Domingo’s face just before he disappeared from Jane’s window. There was no telling what happened to him.
Jane’s Room
The nurse who had left Jane laying in her own vomit appeared at her door. There was a maniacal grin on her face and her left eye was twitching. Cheerfully she said, "We get to go for a walk, Jane. You’ve fucked yourself now!"
The nurse pulled the catheter out from between Jane’s legs. "You wont need this anymore, Precious. You’ll have to make room for other things..." The nurse considered prodding her with her thumb, but the clock on the wall wouldn’t allow it. She made an adjustment to Jane’s bed and then pulled the section out of it which she was strapped to. The section was a mobile gurney, which allowed her to wheel Jane out of the room.
Corridors of white walls changed to corridors of white walls descending gradually downward. They were going downstairs.
"If you don’t say anything soon I get your tongue.", the nurse said drearily. "I’m not that important around here... You are though. I’ll be glad to have your tongue." The nurse seemed to cheer up slightly.
Jane was scared... but she was confused as well. There was always an intangible order to her fragmented life, and this piece of it was no less a shock than any other. But it was more horrible than any other- perhaps.
It took about a half an hour to get to where they were going. The first 20 minutes involved white walls and gray carpet, but the last 10 minutes introduced scenery of a different nature. At first Jane noticed tiny serial numbers printed on the walls. They were printed just below the crack of the ceiling and she only noticed them because she was laying on her back.
"I know all about you, Jane.", the nurse started after a while of silence, "You came from a good family... and they had good values... but they didn’t put you to work quick enough... and you threw away an education."
Jane noticed numbers covering more and more of the walls and then strange symbols started to appear mixed in with them. As they progressed on, the white walls were replaced with light brown stucco slabs. There weren’t numbers on these walls, just symbols of some ancient nature. They were familiar to Jane. Without exception each marking was carved into a wall- not drawn. The corridor began to smell.
"It was only a matter of time before you turned into a lesbian and started dealing drugs." The nurse shuddered and shook, "I hate you lesbians!! Always dealing your drugs and ruining good furniture." The nurse’s eyes were full of tears but she quieted down. This part of the corridor always frightened her.
Jane turned her head to see what she could already smell.
Responsibility
Che’ra was managing on an hour of sleep a day. Her hour of sleep and her 5 minute letter to her grandma were the only moments of free time she had. She traveled constantly between Albany and Miami, but was mostly in Miami after the news.
The news was simple. People were dying all over the city for apparently no reason. This might have been acceptable if only lower class people were dying, but the strange fate already claimed the life of 1 CEO. All of the deaths occurred in bathrooms or kitchens, and all of the people who were at each household died at roughly the same time- always within the hour. The CEO was found in a bathroom with 4 other corpses... cause of death unknown.
Che’ra thought "water supply". She had tests done on the water supply in all different areas of the city. She thought that the water could have prematurely reached the pollution point, but those tests showed up negative. The reports showed that none of the victims had any kind of toxin poisoning. Che’ra checked for new chemicals that might have been introduced, which wouldn’t have appeared on toxicology reports, but they didn’t turn up either. There was another problem too. People were dying in random areas throughout the city. If people were dying from something in the water, the deaths would be concentrated to certain areas.
Che’ra wondered about us Others. She had known about our rebellion and even our whereabouts for a while. It didn’t take her long to find us either. As a safety precaution, all higher level businessmen had tiny locators implanted under their skin. Some of these locators were fused with X-ray cameras complete with audio inputs. The businessmen were told that they’d be rescued immediately if anything ever happened, but Che’ra sacrificed all of them to collect information.
She learned all about Hell. Each one of us plotting against their empire. She had seen and heard me... The man in the gray hat became curious about Che’ra’s find and told her to continue her investigation. After a short time they knew general information on all of us. The man in the gray hat took a particular interest in Darkwing and they had plans to invade the warehouses to get him. All of that changed though when they captured the girl who was always referred to as Jane. The invasion was cancelled, and the warehouses were left officially protected until their usefulness came into play. The man in the gray hat didn’t speak of what that use would be though.
All the cameras ever showed was the one warehouse called Hell. It was the only place they kept the corpses, so it was the only observable area. Che’ra sent spies to the other warehouses, but they never came back. Then she sent spies out with locators attached to them...
Darkwing
He could feel her. He could feel her ever since he was born. That’s how he could always find her, but he didn’t know that until now. She was dangerous though and she probably wouldn’t recognize him, not in this body.
Darkwing was only a third human now. He knew who Sir Jane was and how she had become separated from herself. He knew more about himself. He had to find the spirit that left the girl. He knew the spirit... and he was afraid.
She didn’t have a name; she was a presence. He was a presence as well, like her, from the beginning of the planet ruled by time. They never knew each other directly because they lived only through the being of human life, and only one life at a time.
Darkwing had no idea what she’d be like detached from her humanity. He had learned to submit to the beings he was born in over time, although he was also well aware that outside of the illusion, time didn’t exist. He made a choice and that choice made him too. He was aware of many of the lives he was living now. Those lives seemed less separated to him. Time was a shape changing years into solid layers of relatable knowledge.
Darkwing descended to the base of a mountain with a tall waterfall pouring out into a stream. There were incredibly large trees forming a forest around the stream so he landed in the water 30 yards from the waterfall’s pool. As he wandered toward the waterfall her presence grew acutely inside of him. She seemed everywhere. The water in the pool had an unusual neon green brightness to it, yet it was calm like glass.
Her arm broke through the surface by the water’s edge and pulled Darkwing into the pool. He couldn’t see anything other than a dark shape holding him down easily in the green mixture of water and light. She had him so easily- his struggle was hopeless. Darkwing felt her hands on him. Each touch bore into him past the skin, grating against his nerves. The sensation of her touch was just overwhelming, a concentrated combination of shivers and tickles... so much so that instead of laughing he screamed.
Although he was drowning, Darkwing orgasmed violently. Her hand had brushed against his crotch leaving no control over his body’s response. She was still for a moment, holding him under the water. Darkwing saw her face dimly lit under the water for the first time. She was studying him. He was still struggling to free himself, but only through weak spasms. She reached down and held his crotch as she studied him. He screamed against his will and then stopped breathing. Darkwing knew he was at the end. Only when she released his crotch could he relax and let the calmness of death come over him. It was the most peaceful feeling he had ever had in his life... but she interrupted it.
Sir Jane lifted him like a feather out of the pool and laid him on flat rocks. She knew there was life in him, and she knew just how much to give back.
Ray
Ray was furious. A single sentence echoed from each wall of his skull, repeating over and over again. "They made me what I am." Ray was right; he had been programmed. He should have known when they gave him all the freedom in the outside world, without so much as an interrogation. He could think for himself, but whenever they wanted to they could think for him.
Here he was in a cold, dank room that he had walked in himself, locking himself in! Why did he do it? He remembered walking right in after they told him to. He remembered being repulsed by the room, which was a common prison cell, as he walked into it and then closed the door behind him. There was no escort.
Then there was a knock on the door followed by the entry of 2 peons. Ray waited for them to get closer to him. He was going to kill at least one for sure, until they mentioned his name. One peon said, "The man in the gray hat wants to see you." That’s all it took. Ray forgot about everything he was thinking and feeling before that comment. Without so much as a shrug he left with the peons, completely unaware of the fate that waited for him.
Alligator Alley
They should never have taken that ride, she thought. Now they paid the price.
Her and her boyfriend had successfully avoided the Peace Force for 6 days as they walked and hitched towards Miami, Florida from Albany, NY. It had been a grueling 6 days and it was now over. Her boyfriend lay dead, bleeding on the highway and she was alone. The man who killed him had been their last ride. He wanted to have sex with her but they stood up against him. After the man killed her lover he jumped back into his white van and drove off. She imagined that he forgot to rape her, like someone would forget to pump gas that they already paid for.
The man had threatened them about this place- she looked around. A 10 foot fence off the side of the road with the top slanted toward the jungle within. Barbed wire stretched across the top of the fence. She had seen the many eyes light up red, reflected from the headlights, as they traveled through it. Alligator Alley... The man said the highway was surrounded for 40 miles by gators. He had said the people around there were just as bad as the gators, and then he shot her lover in the heart and drove away. She should have fucked him, she thought.
As she walked toward the fence she thought of how lucky she had been. She was the only one of her friends who wasn’t forced into doing favors for The Man, but then again... it had more to do with her lover than luck. They had been running and hiding the whole time... and it was his idea.
As she walked toward the fence she realized it had been his idea the whole time, and that his idea was over now because he was dead. She took off her shirt and pants when she reached the fence, climbing halfway up the fence, then placed them over the barbed wire. She climbed back down and turned to look back at his shadow of a body. She was only a shadow of a life herself now... but she was going to be something else soon. He would too, she was sure of it. She would bring him back. She would bring him right back.
She cut herself climbing over the barbed wire but the pain didn’t catch up with how she felt inside. She was a dream and a sacrifice because he had turned her into one, and now it was her turn to play. The fear only increased her drama as she removed her shoes and socks before stepping into the mud and water. Each step sunk her in further... She looked around. There was nothing... No red eyes staring up at her, no sound at all. Her death was perfectly still.
Possible Science
It has been agreed upon by many members of the scientific community that the brain lives on up to 10 minutes after death. It has been suggested that during those few minutes a person’s brain may still record what it’s eyes can see, if they are open. Well, it just so happened to be that the boyfriend’s eyes were open and his head was facing toward the fence behind him... where she was.
His glazed eyes watched her subtly discard rationality. You could tell, not by her actions, but by the look in her eyes. She had a lot of his blood on her. His brain registered the connection. She walked over to the fence, and before she made her final climb she looked back at his body. The eyesight was all the brain had left so it made the most of it. Any reflection of moonlight was caught by the boyfriend’s dead eyes, and his brain was able to follow her into the swamp.
His fading brain was able to capture something hers preferred not to. It saw a large gator clamping onto her head and dragging her under the water. The eyes remained fixed on that area for 5 minutes longer than what was previously thought possible. During it’s last minute, the brain noticed something else in the swamp. There was a figure hovering above the water making it’s way out of the swamp. It kept moving closer until it reached the fence, then it looked up. It had noticed the clothes on top of the fence. The brain registered that the figure was not a woman. It was a man, which meant... she was gone. His brain died after that was registered.
The Lowest Level
As Jane was rolled down the last leg of the corridor she was overwhelmed by the powerful smell. It was a smell that made her eyes water. The walls had changed again... this time from stucco to human! The walls were formed from limbless human beings. They were just torsos with heads, sewn together to form a human body blanket. This huge blanket of bodies was either attached to the wall, or was in itself a wall- it was impossible to tell. They were male and female... symbols carved into each. The stumps which used to be legs were sewed onto the shoulders of the body below them. Stumps which were previously arms were sewn to the stumps adjacent to them and the sides of each body were sewn to one another.
Jane noticed that each mouth was sewn shut, but that some of the eyes were open. She forced herself to look closer and her body broke out into chills... they were alive! Many of them were alive, expressing it... horror! Those that were alive tried to moan when they met Jane’s eyes. There were guttural sounds and whimpers starting to fill the corridor, and the nurse began to lose it herself. She wailed along with their painful song. Her face full of snot and tears... terrified.
Jane was terrified also. Their struggle cut into her and she began to absorb it from somewhere in her body. The horror welled up and a numbness followed... but just before Jane blacked out she saw the serial number of the door ahead of her. G66.
The Blackout
Jane was walking through the jungle when it was either very early in the morning, or else just getting to be dark. Fog rolled and lofted on the ground, covering much of the green growth below it. It seemed to reflect a light of its own on the surrounding area, creating a haze of neon green. She saw someone just ahead of her and walked up to them. Jane couldn’t tell which sex the person was by looking at their face, it could have been male or female. They were tall and thin, wearing a loose garment of surreal colors made from what looked like feathers and leaves. Their hair hung to their shoulders and it was partially braided, partially straight and partially dread locked. Jane thought that she noticed the slight bulge of breasts behind their garment.
Cat’s eyes. They were definitely similar to cat’s eyes... slightly larger than human eyes, as the balls seemed to almost pop out of their head. Below the eyes and the slightly indistinct nose, was a slight grin. It wasn’t quite a smirk, and it wasn’t just a happy grin, but it didn’t make them look altogether insane either. The grin spoke, "What do you want?" The voice trailed off into echoes without the intent of evoking emotion. Jane didn’t reply because she was wondering how to say anything at all, out loud. "I’m your doctor.", the voice said, "Now look at my eyes and speak." Jane looked at the eyes and felt the words surge out of her, "I believe my mind is gone.", she said. Their eyes remained locked in a quiet stare for a moment then the grin replied, "No... your mind is right here... It’s you that must be someplace else... I can’t say that I notice you anywhere around here."
Attack of The Replacement System
It had been months since Che’ra sent out the first spies with locators attached to them. These spies were sent to report on the main warehouses of the Others, and to avoid the Hellhouse. Not one of them had come back, and they all shared the same story before disappearing forever. Here is an account of someone who tried to enter a warehouse from above ground:
"I’m entering the vicinity now... There’s no one around, no security as I can tell... I’m freely walking up to the warehouse wall- there is something. I can hear music coming from inside, rock music... Oh my God--" Click. End of reception.
They didn’t all exclaim, "Oh my God.", but always something in a detached, shocked voice. The reception was shut off immediately from each spy who was sent. Che’ra tried to solve the problem by placing the locator in a random part of the spy’s body, and she saw to it that the location of the device was unknown to them. It brought her up to 15 seconds of extra air time before the locator was shut down.
Che’ra viewed the locators in real time, allowing her to listen to everything that happened as it was happening. The locators with visual capabilities never showed a human on their screens. The warehouses seemed always unprotected and the sewers vacant; all except for the music. From the first locator viewed, Che’ra could hear at least the slightest hum of the music. It was just a background drone that was barely audible for the first month. It was enough to spark an interest in Che’ra. After all, it was the only link she had at the moment.
With the 15 extra seconds she extracted by hiding the locators, Che’ra was able to gain a sound sample and amplify it through a computer. She was able to capture an entire line of a song. It was a strange voice singing, " The dark humor of God is what I love most." Che’ra found it interesting but couldn’t understand why it would have such an effect on anyone who might have been there to hear it. She thought she’d have more luck amplifying the music as it was played live instead of processing it on a computer, so she upgraded the audio inputs on her next batch of locators. Che’ra worried for a moment that she was being obsessive. This research wasn’t part of her duties... it was her first ever side project.
Alligator Alley
Domingo took off his home made stilts and looked up at the fence. 10 feet high and the top was covered in barbed wire. He couldn’t believe there were clothes hunched up on the barbed wire just above where he was standing. "The way was prepared.", he said to himself in only partial belief- and then he climbed.
There was a body laying at the side of the road with a large wound in it’s chest. Domingo didn’t know why, but he bent down and closed the eyes of the corpse and then broke down crying. He walked off quickly with a powerful emotion in his gut that he couldn’t decipher. Who was the boy? The dead boy’s eyes looked so familiar to him, but he didn’t know from where.
As Domingo walked down the road he felt the sensation that he was a part of something indescribable. The road was alive, the fence was alive, and he... now too, was alive. By the time Domingo entered Miami he was running on different fuels. He had eaten nothing all day, and only drank from the dew on leaves. He knew his feet were walking in the direction they had to, although there were no directions that his conscious mind could consider... and then he saw it. The sewer cap almost radiated its own source of light for him to see; there wasn’t a doubt.
Domingo was unaware of the sewer’s stench or the darkness that enclosed him, but he could hear the music from the moment he dropped down. He was the only person to hear the music from such a distance- 3 miles away. He followed it without thinking.
"Happiness says the stream ain’t gold
It’s running fresh with life. Falling
from the heavy cloud, pushing, pouring
straight through time. Yeah, things are
looking up I’ve got new shoes
and for this road a guide..."
45 minutes later Domingo entered into the warehouse above him.
Darkwing
Darkwing came to slowly. He felt his back against a tree with branches harnessing his wings and arms to the point of immobility. It looked as if the branches had naturally grown around his limbs. "I’m in trouble here.", Darkwing muttered to himself. "Yes you are!", an electric shock of a voice railed inside of his head. Darkwing winced. Her voice was too powerful, causing him pain. "Oh baby. Please don’t speak into my head!", he thought back to her, wherever she was. It happened again like a lightening strike, "Why?!" Darkwing screamed and he could hear her start laughing, but thankfully it was projected externally. "Why?", she whispered again but out loud. Darkwing was agitated, "‘Cause you’re killing me, Girl!"
She jumped from the top of the tree above him and landed squarely on her feet, immediately staring him up and down. There was an immature, playful look in her eyes that suggested danger and amusement. Darkwing was scared. He didn’t detect any familiarity in her stare and he didn’t feel any towards her either. She was a huge surreal beast to him, like an enormous lion covered with alien blood. "Do you remember me, Baby? It’s Adam.", he tried to muster out, "We know each other. We’ve known each other... just not quite like this."
She just stared at him. She must have been 9 feet tall. Her skin wasn’t quite as dark as his and she was covered in what seemed like flourescent sweat. Darkwing felt heat coming from out of nowhere. He felt it around his entire body and it was slowly increasing in temperature. She was doing it- he knew it. She was gonna burn him. Darkwing got pissed, "Damn it, Girl! What do you think you’re doing?!" His eyes forced light into hers. The heat was rising. "I came here to find you! I came here to bring you back ‘cause you’ve come apart, Girl! Acting like a damn animal! I know you! And you know me!" He was screaming now ‘cause he could feel the burn... From out of nowhere Darkwing screamed, "Let’s sleep in!"
The pain immediately stopped. Darkwing lay collapsed, strapped to the tree. He had no idea what he had just said. The creature before him continued to stare, but with a different look in her eyes. They closed, but the 3rd eye opened up and she began to remember. She remembered one moment with him that occurred in several alternate lives. Rome, Egypt, Africa, America. In a palace, in a shack, on the street, in the woods... One memory with a 1000 faces, just the two of them. A simple memory, him turning to her as they lay together and saying, "Let’s sleep in, Baby."
She was in awe.
What happened made sense in some ways. After a particularly bloody night Jack went to lay down with Annie and one of her earplugs fell out. Her unconscious mind began to listen to the Replacement System as she slept, which eventually woke her up with a frantic fit of tears.
Just so you know, me and Jack had become irritated with the constant playing of the Replacement System so we wore earplugs regularly to dull out the sound. It had been a few weeks or maybe a few months since we’d been doing that.
Now when Jack woke up she was feeling horribly guilty. She had a sense that she was becoming a monster. It was more than an overwhelming feeling she was experiencing... it was also physical. Her body felt unhinged. Jack held onto Annie to keep from shaking. She wished more than anything for Annie to be healthy... "But you’re not healthy, Annie. You can’t talk anymore. You can’t walk anymore." Jack was crying. She whispered and whimpered to Annie’s dead ears, "I’ve killed a lot of people since we’ve been split up, and now I’m not so sure they deserved it." Jack held her tight and then broke down in quiet hysterics, "Annie. Annie... I cut some guy’s dick off the other night. He was still alive for it... it was bad. He was crying like a little girl, and now- I can’t get it out of my head that maybe he was a little girl. It doesn’t make sense but... Somehow I’ve been cutting myself into little pieces all along, ‘cause I feel bad for each one of them now!" Jack broke down crying with random emotional utterances. She whispered apologies over and over and over again, clinging to her damaged lover as the music broke into her. She wouldn’t put the earplugs in and so she couldn’t help but focus on the words...
"Gone impure in the back of my mind
There is no place to rewind
There is no time to make it clear if it was born it will stay here
Until the day we meet again
I let you down inside my head
There is no change I will resist
To replace the bridge between our ships, baby... save me-"
Jack whispered the chorus to herself and gently squeezed Annie’s arm each time she whispered, "Baby, save me. Chain me to change. Baby, save me. Save me again..." Jack fell asleep in her repetition.
The Next Day
I’m not sure how it happened, but from that next morning and for a week after we could hear Annie and Jack screaming back and forth at each other regularly. Somebody tried to get in the room to see Annie for themselves but the door was barricaded. After a day, some of the Others slid snacks through the door crack but for a whole week there was no communication between them and our outside world.
It really pissed me off that Jack shut down for that whole week because she missed a pivotal night. Before invading a large convention center that night, some members of our squad approached me. They told me that they had thought I was turning evil or insane before- because they saw the torturous works of art Jack and I had arranged using corpses. Then they said that word of it spread across the country in a matter of weeks and that now the satellite picked up broadcasts of it around the world. Private broadcasts-not public... but the powers were afraid... their minds had changed about me and Jack- they wanted in!
There was nothing to it really... everyone becomes enraged and sickened in the presence of true horror. I told them to go along with their feelings and that the rest would take care of itself. It did.
3 Weeks Later
I wasn’t alone anymore, although being alone had never bothered me. I was in the company of 10 or 20 people most of the time... and they wanted me to tell them what to do. I was leading what seemed like a small militant army. Fifty of us had killed with new eyes in 3 short weeks... I even saw my own picture on a billboard. I was an enemy of the man in the gray hat now.
I was thinking about a truly expressive image. I wanted to collect all of the heads from a viosex center and put little gray hats on them. Then we’d break into a closed office building and put a head on each desk for the first shift to discover. We were all conspiring in a group when Jack walked up and asked to speak to me alone.
What Was Said
"We went evil", she said. "I didn’t know until I really listened to The Replacement System."
"Why’d you do that?", I asked.
"I lost an earplug for a minute and started to understand."
"Understand what?", I asked.
Jack broke down, "That we wronged people! We tortured and murdered people who we could have saved! They were sick..."
I knew where she was going so I beat her to the punch, "Do you think I’m sick, Jack? Do you want me to take my earplugs out so that I might see the evil of my ways? Don’t you Jack? Don’t you wanna bring me... into the light, Jack?"
"I wanna let you know that you’re losing yourself. I was almost gone, I could feel it."
"How’s Annie?", I asked, "I heard she was awake?"
"She can’t walk but she’s all there.", answered Jack. "She was there when I came to, but she wasn’t all there until I woke up the next morning. She’s-"
"She’s what Jack?", I interrupted, "She’s still alive? How long is she gonna live for if I stop protecting us from them?"
"We weren’t protecting anybody !", she yelled, "We can’t control what’s happening out there! The whole fucking world has turned into a machine and the more we play with it, the more we relate to it! You won’t get it ‘til you pull out those damn plugs!"
" Hey Jack", I said calmly, "Why don’t you get out of the fucking room...", I chuckled about it really. Jack didn’t though... she was a fucking wreck.
"You’re whipped", I added, "When she lets you off your chain come see me."
No response... for the first time- I really wanted to fuck her. It was confusing for me. She was so upset when she left, and I found it kind of amusing. She was doing just what she was programmed to do- I thought it was cute of her.
For the rest of that night and for what seemed like every day afterward, I was horny as Hell. The sexual urges that started with Jack spread to all women in general. I started having random sex with people in the Warhouse, but I tired of that real quick. The viosex centers became a real draw. I fought the attraction for awhile but it was too great. I treated everyone with respect at first, but eventually I let go bit by bit until I thrived on their weaknesses. I came and I killed. Soon, everyone who followed me did too.
I just want to take a second and make it clear that you can’t get something for nothing. If you relax and let life do what it does you’re gonna get slapped in the face. Standing up for what you believe in is the most difficult thing to do in the world. I made a pact to defend my friends, and I stuck by it. Novocaine, Jimmy and the rest of them couldn’t take the pressure. They couldn’t handle the compromise.
The sad difficult truth is so similar to what Jack said. In order to save your friends you have to sacrifice part of yourself. She was right... I had to get to know the enemy in ways that I wasn’t comfortable with... but only a few of us can be trusted with the delicate balance between greater goods and evils. The idea of love is so much more complicated than it’s surface seems. You can’t know love without hate. How can someone do something good for someone until they understand what’s not good for someone? I now know that the pain I am forced to internalize will be what saves us all.
What’s Going On
When Jimmy noticed Darkwing gaining consciousness, he left the rooftop. His old friend had begun a new path and Jimmy knew that he’d be eager to get right on it. Jimmy could almost smell coffee brewing in the warehouse and took that as a sign to return to his routine. He wouldn’t be leaving the monotony after all.
Pops was asleep when Darkwing woke up. He took in his surroundings more like an animal would... then say a man. The huge black wings were the only difference in his physical appearance, but something was quite altered in his demeanor. The way his body moved when he walked seemed almost surreal. It’s as if each minor movement was purposefully guided. His eyes were glowing although he was silent after he came to. They were momentarily ominous until he broke into honest laughter. Darkwing shook his wings off as he walked to the edge of the roof. They didn’t hurt anymore– now that he understood them, and they took him into the air to find her.
Tyrone and Novocaine were hanging out with Pat and Danny regularly during music breaks because they quit going on missions. Jimmy joined them after Darkwing’s departure and together they discussed how they now feared me.
The 50 or so Others that were willing to kill opened up a new, yet smaller warhouse. We called it Hell.
The original warehouses were still full of spiritual and personal conflict but everyone was excited about the prophesy of the fish. Even a fish religion was created and people wandered the sewers trying to catch a glimpse of one.
As for the Lobe Finned Fish, they were traveling through the sewers and working their way through plumbing until they reached bathrooms. They waited until someone used the toilet, shower, or sink and then they expelled their tiny, fetus wrapped selves into any available human orifice. After taking control of the human they traveled from human to human, or returned to the sewer system. They were highly efficient and ahead of schedule.
Che’ra was put in charge of basic operations in Miami, as well as her Albany project. Most of the sleep she got was between plane rides.
Word of the Miami Big Business Torturers spread across the mindset, and the man in the gray hat tried to block any transmission of that information... but he had no intention of halting the slaughters. Those particular non conformers were more efficient than his own Peace Force!
Annie and Jack were nursing deep wounds. Annie couldn’t feel her legs just as Jack cringed with pain every time she felt her own soul. Purposefully blocking out The Replacement System seemed to increase her feelings of guilt tenfold. Both of them were still in shock.
The divine yet wild part of Sir Jane was having the time of her life flying all over the world and learning what she was capable of... She was capable of just about anything. That part of her didn’t remember anyone at all, even the part of herself she left behind.
The Accident Again
Ray was waking up from a dream. He was walking through a forest that grew in the sky. The roots formed clouds that extended everywhere like grass. Ray got down on his knees and pushed his face into the ground until he felt it break through the cloud covering. How he knew how to do that, he did not know. Ray’s exposed head opened it’s eyes to see water and land mass thousands of feet below. He felt the rest of his body sinking through the cloud and he tried desperately to move but his body sunk like a board. Ray freaked out, failing to scream until something pulled him swiftly from the cloud cover. It was Sir Jane... or at least something like her!
It was a woman wearing no clothes, but her body was extremely muscular. Parts of her seemed to be formed of flourescent liquid, swirling in different patterns, and parts of her seemed like particles of light. The dominant color was a flourescent green but it was contrasted against a museum of light. There was an eye in the center of her forehead, but it was closed.
They stood and looked at each other for 2 seconds, and in that time a mischievous grin formed on Sir Jane’s face. She lurched forward, grabbed Ray by the arm, and dragged him through the clouds until she came to this particularly fleshy looking tree. Ray looked down and saw that he was naked. In a flash he was pressed face forward against the tree and he could hear her eerie giggling behind him. To Ray, the tree felt like a soft warm body and in a short time he noticed that his penis was inside of it. He panicked for a second but the pleasure did put him in a somewhat euphoric state.
Slowly, he noticed that the tree was sweating and he could feel it react with the movements of his own body, but something terrible happened. The rage started to stir up inside of him like hot lead being poured into someone’s ear. He struggled against the tree and began to scream in rage and horror, but the tree wouldn’t let go... And there protruding from the trunk of the tree, smiling with those mischievous lips, was Sir Jane. Even as he went into a mindless fit of rage she clung onto him. Those manipulative eyes examining him in such a distant glaze...
Ray woke up screaming. The screams turned into tears after a few seconds, and his body was shaking uncontrollably. He felt dizzy and a wetness in his crotch area which turned out to be his own genetic soup. "I came.", Ray said inside of his head. He hadn’t done that since the white room...
The White Room
After Ray completed the chemical interrogation, he was brought into another white room for phase 2. Electrodes were placed all over his body and someone from a control room could run electricity through them at will. Ray was injected with new chemicals which kept him sexually aroused- always physically, but mentally he was off and on.
The entire room was turned into a movie of Sir Jane. They had extracted images and sounds from Ray’s head and then pieced them together for a very accurate audio/video projection of her. The walls doubled as large screens as did the floor and ceiling. No matter where he stared... She was going to be there.
Ray was tortured like this until he was close to cracking up... right at the brink. The chemicals in his body made him orgasm every couple minutes for the first hour or so, and then it slowed to every 10 minutes. The ejaculations themselves were unnaturally forced and became quite painful after the first couple of hours. To increase the efficiency of the operation, the controller electrocuted Ray at the point of ejaculation- each time.
Back to the Accident and Ray
So Ray had come, and now he was staring at a corpse. "Peace Force...", he whispered to himself, "I remember." Ray looked over at the tree line and saw the gaping space that broke into the forest. He stumbled quite a bit trying to get to his feet which made him think that he must have smacked his head pretty good. Sure enough, it was crusted with blood when he felt it.
After a few steps Ray saw her. She was naked and unconscious ... and nothing like she was in the dream. Sir Jane looked frail. Ray could feel the chemical dream stirring up inside of him. It wasn’t overwhelming but he could tell the violent impulses were directed at her. He took off his big black leather coat and wrapped her in it. She seemed so much smaller than he had remembered. "So this is the demon whore...", rattled off somewhere in the back of his head.
Ray threw her over his shoulder and guessed she probably only weighed about 100 pounds. She had withered away since the last time they had met, but Ray... Ray had almost doubled his size since then. He carried her over to his motor board and pulled the remote control from the coat wrapped around Sir Jane. It started right up, and Ray took off with Sir Jane into the horizon.
The Institution
"Jane...", whispered a calm and familiar voice, "It’s time to wake up, Jane."
It took her forever to open her eyes... when she finally did her body stiffened and her bowels released. It was him! The man in the gray hat. "You’ve wet yourself, Jane.", he said gently but cooly, "Try to relax yourself." She felt terrified. "Do you remember how you got back here?, he asked. She said nothing. "My son Ray had to find you and bring you back. You gave us quite a fright... Really Jane, running away like that.", the man in the gray hat answered for her. He was wearing a suit and tie with a white lab coat over them. Impeccably white, sterile. She could see his face now, so lifeless... so dry.
"I can see you’re still unstable, Jane.", said his monotone voice, "I’m afraid we’ll have to leave your restraints on until you’re feeling better." He pushed a button on the intercom and asked for a nurse to come down. Both of them were silent until the nurse arrived. "She’s wet herself.", he said to the nurse and then to Jane he said, "It’s good to have you back, Jane." She could tell he really tried to mean it when he said it, and then he left the room.
"Are you doing OK, Jane?", the nurse asked as she changed the gown and sheets. Jane tried to say something but the words just wouldn’t come out. She wondered why. "Cat got your tongue?", the nurse asked. No answer.
Jane knew she was drugged. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, even her thoughts. She was very weary of the man in the gray hat but she knew practically nothing about him. Who was the man in the gray hat?
The whole day went by in slow motion with only occasional visits by the nursing staff. Three of them... and each one acted as if they knew her. The last nurse asked her what she was doing back but Jane couldn’t even express her confusion. The nurse before that one just said, "Hi", in a friendly tone that suggested familiarity. All Jane could do was lay in her hospital bed and watch the television that was always on. They were all reality shows and newscasts, except they didn’t seem real to her at all.
One was called Greatest American Family and they followed the lives of each family member throughout the day. It seemed unnatural to Jane that throughout the day there wasn’t an interaction between any two family members. A group of men and women showed up at the family’s rather small apartment dressed in uniforms that read "Peace Force." One "Peace Force" person knocked and entered the room of each family member, with a case strapped to their chest. Each family member used a credit card to purchase food and drink, or pills from the vender. Then the family members were led separately from the house to their routines. The kids went to different schools, and the parents to different buildings. From there it showed clips of each kid learning attentively at school and the parents eagerly working.
The husband was an upper class worker so they included a clip of him walking into "The Unwilling" room. The clip showed him wink at the camera as he entered, but the rest wasn’t shown on television. There was a caption that read and said, "You’ll know when you get there!" His wife was shown trying to promote herself in the room of "The Willing". After going down on one of her employers she recommended, "Soft drugs for personal and professional enhancement!" The kids were brought home by the "Peace Force" venders and they remained in their separate rooms until the end of the show. When the husband and wife arrived, they too attached themselves to computers and cell phones in separate rooms.
Jane thought the show seemed darkly surreal, but then, her life seemed a bit unreal itself. She clearly remembered meeting the killer in the shack and everything that happened afterwards. Before that it was more bits and fragments that she couldn’t recall enough to paste together. Did she really dream up that hulking figure in a hockey mask... who turned out to be someone she cared for? She missed him– and the man in the gray hat... she feared him.
The television shows she saw that first conscious day were single dreams compared to her fragmented world. She had clues as to who she was but never a complete idea. The people in the television were just the opposite. They had an idea of what they were, but they didn’t seem to be aware of even fragments of their individual selves. The shows all appeared connected in theme, as if they joined together to force a particular idea. It was glaringly apparent to her. One show was "Greatest American Family" so another was "Best Japanese Mother" and "The Ultimate CEO’s".
The First Dream
That night Jane had a dream after she dozed off. The television had still been on when she slept- they always left it on.
The dream was very realistic. She was in her hospital room when the man in the gray hat entered and turned on the light. She tried to move, but she still had the straps holding her down. He walked over and pulled her blankets off. To Jane’s surprise, her body was incredibly muscular and dark in color. She lifted an arm and it easily broke the strap. The man in the gray hat looked annoyed at this. In a scolding voice he snapped, "No! You’re just Jane!" She could tell that she wet herself again, and when she looked down at her body it was frail and white. Then she woke up. She had wet herself... but in the bedpan.
A Place Called Hell
This was my place. I created it. I accepted the responsibility that only a few can be trusted with- the delicate balance of real power. There was no need to question my motives for taking control. The control was placed on my shoulders from those around me. I was appointed unanimously with no need for documentation.
It was a hell of a thing to carry the stares of those who depended on you. I had finally learned the greatest joys and dilemmas of leadership- those stares. They looked differently at me than they used to. I had been a leader then and they looked to me for direction. Now I was a symbol and they looked at me in an attempt to see themselves. I learned this... and the day I became aware of it was the day I became a symbol.
Hell, as we called it, was decorated with living trophies. The cruelest men wearing the finest suits were chained to various areas throughout our small warehouse. We glued earplugs into their ears so they had no chance of hearing The Replacement System, although that music had never been set up to broadcast in Hell. Our walls were decorated with these men. Men. Men...
Men. I noticed that the higher up the ladder we hunted, there were less encounters with women. There were no women chained to the walls of the place we called Hell. I was convinced it wasn’t for a lack of cruelty that we hadn’t apprehended a true female predator. The truth was becoming observably clear- Women weren’t trusted with the responsibility of holding dominant positions. True dominant positions of the unfolding world required a steady use of cruelty and if women held those positions, they too would indulge in the cruelty process... equally. The mindset did not include women of rank... and so we mainly hunted men.
While I was taking all of this in I became confused. Part of me was arguing with Jack in my head about the effectiveness of cruelty. I was glad she backed out when she did because she could have taken some committed members of the Warhouse out with her if she had waited any longer. She was convincing. So convincing that I could see her point of view with a great deal of clarity sometimes. I didn’t want to use violence the way I had been. I used to avoid fights before this mindset started to ravage all I knew; then I was forced to fight the fights that others weren’t capable of.
I understood the mindset enough to realize there was something wrong about me also. I was male. A male in a world of men... and it stung! Someone could always tell me that I’m doing whatever I’m doing partly because I am a man. They could say I’m tied into the evil around me and they’d be right.
After a while the burden of this knowledge started to burn a hole in me and I spent more and more drunk nights trying to put the fire out. My anger was increasing though. I still made personal use of the viosex centers and afterwards I would carve apologies into my body as punishment. I was learning about pain... in order to eventually end the reality of pain for us all... eventually.
The businessmen chained in Hell eventually starved to death and we replaced their bodies with fresh ones.
The Institution
Jane woke up harnessed into her hospital bed as a nurse was replacing her bed pan. The nurse then pulled out a coil of tubing and said, "You’ll need a catheter for awhile, Jane. You’re still making a mess from tossing around at night." As the nurse inserted the catheter, Jane became nauseous and panicky. She threw up on herself as she was trying to articulate how she was feeling to the nurse. No words came out. The nurse looked at her coldly and like a mother to a brat said, "Cat got your tongue, Jane? If you ask me, I think you’re being a big baby. We all know you can talk. You talked before, Jane." The nurse wiped off Jane’s face and then paused, "You can teach a dog to stop pissing on a carpet if you rub it’s nose in it. We’ll see if we can’t teach you how to speak again." The nurse left the room without cleaning up Jane’s puke.
She was left there strapped into her bed with the smell of vomit for hours. She couldn’t tell how many. The TV had been on. The TV was always on, growing brighter and louder with the hour, or at least so it seemed to her.
He walked into the room, the man in the gray hat. Instead of a white coat he was wearing slacks and a green sweater today. Attached to the green sweater was a gold pin. It read, "Counselor of the Month." As he walked up to her he noticed the vomit on the sheets and his eyes squinted like a repulsed cowboy’s. "Jane, who did this to you?!", he asked with an intensely soft tone, "Tell me who did this to you and I’ll have them stoned... I’ll have them fired, Jane."
She just stared at him open eyed without even considering a reply. Something wasn’t quite real about her situation. She found herself staring at the man in the gray hat and then over just a few feet at the television. ‘They’re both quiet now’, she thought.
"Well Jane", said the man in the gray hat, "There’s only so much I can do... without your help." He walked to the other side of the room then turned his head so Jane could see his profile lined up with it’s silhouette. "Silence is the refusal to encounter one’s own life." He walked back to the door, "I’ll do what I can to help you, but you must trust me Jane. It takes two to build a relationship." With that said he left the room and immediately a nurse entered and changed Jane’s sheets and gown. The nurse chatted with her about nothing in particular and then left.
The 2nd Dream
Jane was laying in her hospital bed staring at the television in her dark room. She imagined yellow buttons in the back of her brain which she mentally pressed until they lit up. When they lit up she felt her body relax and a rather transparent body floated up out of the original one, still strapped to the bed. She felt herself float straight up through the ceiling and enter another room. The room she entered looked just like her own and there was a young man standing in the middle of it. He had a dead expression on his face as he stared at the television, which hung only a few feet away. She felt her body float over and then get sucked into the television. She saw his dead pan expression wake into an intense stare and then she woke up. It was morning.
The Above Room
The room that Jane entered in her dream was an actual room, and the young man she saw was actual as well. His name was Domingo. Domingo Carter Santiago. He was a "patient" at the hospital just as Jane was, and he was just as silent as she. It had been a number of years since he was first admitted. He had been emotionally and mentally shut down for most of that time as well.
The night that Jane’s presence entered his room, Domingo was doing his usual. Not really sleeping, not really awake. He stared. Sometimes at the television, sometimes at the wall or a spot on the floor. He didn’t talk to himself as he had before... too much time had passed and there was nothing to talk to himself about. There was a lingering awareness left inside of him that hadn’t quite faded away, and maybe that’s why he chose to make sense of what he saw.
That night as he stared past the television something jolted his attention to the screen. There were words on the screen that spelled, "Domingo’s Big Break!" Then he saw himself fighting the school bully the way he had years before. As he watched himself dodge the impact of each punch, the muscles in his immobile body spasmed accordingly. The expression on Domingo’s face woke up into the storm. He let the tears flow as he watched himself on the screen. "Welcome to Miami", the screen read and then it flashed to a sewer cap. There was light and music escaping from just around the sewer cap, and then the screen went blank. Domingo remembered himself and he felt an incredible urge to get to Miami. Miami was his big break...whatever was under that sewer cap!
Still standing there, Domingo deadened his expression. He knew there was a possibility that he was still being watched. The moment they saw the slightest bit of life in his eyes it was over for him- he knew it... there would be no hiding how he felt from them. Perhaps they weren’t paying much attention to him? It had been a matter of years since he had given up. His eyes drifted to the window- no bars!
Domingo Santiago did his best to look like a patient as he slowly made his way to the window. He felt it. It was glass. For the hell of it he tried, and to his surprise, the window opened. He peered down to see that he was 10 stories up. It was the first time he had ever looked out of that window- to actually look at something. The next story down had a window with a small 1 foot ledge extending from it, and it appeared that each lower floor was set up the same way. Domingo thought that maybe he could drop from ledge to ledge until he reached the ground, but 50 yards out there was a 20 foot fence that seemed impossible to pass. He imagined it probably had electricity running through it, ‘cause that’s the type of place it was. Domingo started to climb out of the window. The urge to leave was greater than the desire to live. He had to leave... right then.
Domingo lowered himself from his window ledge until his feet were 5 or 6 feet from the next ledge down. He let himself fall and his feet hit the next ledge sending him off balance, but he instinctively let himself drop so that he landed square on the window ledge with his butt. He muttered a silent, nonsensical prayer to himself and leaned back. He looked inside and sure enough, it looked just like his old room, except there was another name plate attached to the TV. Where it once spelled "Domingo" it now spelled "Jane". He remembered the bars on his windows beforehand... he remembered the feeling that came from looking at them for awhile. They were probably doing the same thing to this patient "Jane" as they had done with him. There wasn’t much hope for whoever else was under their control, he thought. Domingo could make out the shape of the patient lying in the bed as it was reflecting a haze of light from the television. The television was blue... but then in bright red letters it read, "Use your gift, Boy!" Domingo’s jaw dropped, and he saw a figure made of television light crawl out of the screen. He stared. It stopped... then it flew at him and connected with a silent explosion.
The next thing Domingo noticed was the 20 foot fence below him. He was flying over it at a massive speed like a projectile shot out of a cannon. "I’m dead", he said- and then he started to descend. As the tops of the oncoming trees approached it hit him, "Use your gift, Boy!". There was no thinking after that. Domingo entered the zone and his limbs grappled with each branch as they flew at him. His descent took on a horizontal slide buying him time to slow down. He felt his flesh getting cut from the scratching of branches but he never suffered a direct hit until he hit the ground, which broke away beneath his weight covering him with mud and water.
Domingo pulled himself up out of the muck onto a dead log. He felt a strange numbness all over his body as he looked into the darkness. There was a bit of light reflecting from the moon onto what surely looked like a swamp. It was too dark to take it all in but he could see movements in the water. Domingo held his breath for a moment. There was movement all around him. Within 5 feet of himself he saw what looked like logs of all sizes moving through the water. Gators!
He checked the log he was on- it was wood. Good. ‘There’s no time to waste.’, he thought, ‘Gotta keep on.’ He found two thin but strong branches, long enough to project out of the muck. Each one had a nob sticking out of it for his foot to stand on. Domingo took his already shredded shirt and tied the cloth from it to secure his feet to the sticks. He had to cut his pants into shorts and use that cloth as well. After they were complete, he used the stilts to keep himself out of the water. Domingo held onto tree limbs and vines for balance and slowly began to make his way through the muck.
The Next Day
There was nothing left of the kid, the man in the gray hat thought. "There was nothing left of him at all.", he said out loud. The patient Domingo had just over 2% of his personality intact, his motor skills were even damaged. The boy barely reacted to a door slammed next to him during testings. Even the peons had close to a percent more programming input availability than he had. 3.14% was supposed to be the cut off which meant- it had to be the demon whore!
The security cameras were scrutinized. They showed Domingo watching an ordinary television show when he suddenly came to. The television show was "Top CEO’s". It was one of the better episodes... but there was nothing to warrant a sudden change in expression, his opening of the window, or his appearance at Jane’s window. Again the cameras caught the look of surprise on Domingo’s face just before he disappeared from Jane’s window. There was no telling what happened to him.
Jane’s Room
The nurse who had left Jane laying in her own vomit appeared at her door. There was a maniacal grin on her face and her left eye was twitching. Cheerfully she said, "We get to go for a walk, Jane. You’ve fucked yourself now!"
The nurse pulled the catheter out from between Jane’s legs. "You wont need this anymore, Precious. You’ll have to make room for other things..." The nurse considered prodding her with her thumb, but the clock on the wall wouldn’t allow it. She made an adjustment to Jane’s bed and then pulled the section out of it which she was strapped to. The section was a mobile gurney, which allowed her to wheel Jane out of the room.
Corridors of white walls changed to corridors of white walls descending gradually downward. They were going downstairs.
"If you don’t say anything soon I get your tongue.", the nurse said drearily. "I’m not that important around here... You are though. I’ll be glad to have your tongue." The nurse seemed to cheer up slightly.
Jane was scared... but she was confused as well. There was always an intangible order to her fragmented life, and this piece of it was no less a shock than any other. But it was more horrible than any other- perhaps.
It took about a half an hour to get to where they were going. The first 20 minutes involved white walls and gray carpet, but the last 10 minutes introduced scenery of a different nature. At first Jane noticed tiny serial numbers printed on the walls. They were printed just below the crack of the ceiling and she only noticed them because she was laying on her back.
"I know all about you, Jane.", the nurse started after a while of silence, "You came from a good family... and they had good values... but they didn’t put you to work quick enough... and you threw away an education."
Jane noticed numbers covering more and more of the walls and then strange symbols started to appear mixed in with them. As they progressed on, the white walls were replaced with light brown stucco slabs. There weren’t numbers on these walls, just symbols of some ancient nature. They were familiar to Jane. Without exception each marking was carved into a wall- not drawn. The corridor began to smell.
"It was only a matter of time before you turned into a lesbian and started dealing drugs." The nurse shuddered and shook, "I hate you lesbians!! Always dealing your drugs and ruining good furniture." The nurse’s eyes were full of tears but she quieted down. This part of the corridor always frightened her.
Jane turned her head to see what she could already smell.
Responsibility
Che’ra was managing on an hour of sleep a day. Her hour of sleep and her 5 minute letter to her grandma were the only moments of free time she had. She traveled constantly between Albany and Miami, but was mostly in Miami after the news.
The news was simple. People were dying all over the city for apparently no reason. This might have been acceptable if only lower class people were dying, but the strange fate already claimed the life of 1 CEO. All of the deaths occurred in bathrooms or kitchens, and all of the people who were at each household died at roughly the same time- always within the hour. The CEO was found in a bathroom with 4 other corpses... cause of death unknown.
Che’ra thought "water supply". She had tests done on the water supply in all different areas of the city. She thought that the water could have prematurely reached the pollution point, but those tests showed up negative. The reports showed that none of the victims had any kind of toxin poisoning. Che’ra checked for new chemicals that might have been introduced, which wouldn’t have appeared on toxicology reports, but they didn’t turn up either. There was another problem too. People were dying in random areas throughout the city. If people were dying from something in the water, the deaths would be concentrated to certain areas.
Che’ra wondered about us Others. She had known about our rebellion and even our whereabouts for a while. It didn’t take her long to find us either. As a safety precaution, all higher level businessmen had tiny locators implanted under their skin. Some of these locators were fused with X-ray cameras complete with audio inputs. The businessmen were told that they’d be rescued immediately if anything ever happened, but Che’ra sacrificed all of them to collect information.
She learned all about Hell. Each one of us plotting against their empire. She had seen and heard me... The man in the gray hat became curious about Che’ra’s find and told her to continue her investigation. After a short time they knew general information on all of us. The man in the gray hat took a particular interest in Darkwing and they had plans to invade the warehouses to get him. All of that changed though when they captured the girl who was always referred to as Jane. The invasion was cancelled, and the warehouses were left officially protected until their usefulness came into play. The man in the gray hat didn’t speak of what that use would be though.
All the cameras ever showed was the one warehouse called Hell. It was the only place they kept the corpses, so it was the only observable area. Che’ra sent spies to the other warehouses, but they never came back. Then she sent spies out with locators attached to them...
Darkwing
He could feel her. He could feel her ever since he was born. That’s how he could always find her, but he didn’t know that until now. She was dangerous though and she probably wouldn’t recognize him, not in this body.
Darkwing was only a third human now. He knew who Sir Jane was and how she had become separated from herself. He knew more about himself. He had to find the spirit that left the girl. He knew the spirit... and he was afraid.
She didn’t have a name; she was a presence. He was a presence as well, like her, from the beginning of the planet ruled by time. They never knew each other directly because they lived only through the being of human life, and only one life at a time.
Darkwing had no idea what she’d be like detached from her humanity. He had learned to submit to the beings he was born in over time, although he was also well aware that outside of the illusion, time didn’t exist. He made a choice and that choice made him too. He was aware of many of the lives he was living now. Those lives seemed less separated to him. Time was a shape changing years into solid layers of relatable knowledge.
Darkwing descended to the base of a mountain with a tall waterfall pouring out into a stream. There were incredibly large trees forming a forest around the stream so he landed in the water 30 yards from the waterfall’s pool. As he wandered toward the waterfall her presence grew acutely inside of him. She seemed everywhere. The water in the pool had an unusual neon green brightness to it, yet it was calm like glass.
Her arm broke through the surface by the water’s edge and pulled Darkwing into the pool. He couldn’t see anything other than a dark shape holding him down easily in the green mixture of water and light. She had him so easily- his struggle was hopeless. Darkwing felt her hands on him. Each touch bore into him past the skin, grating against his nerves. The sensation of her touch was just overwhelming, a concentrated combination of shivers and tickles... so much so that instead of laughing he screamed.
Although he was drowning, Darkwing orgasmed violently. Her hand had brushed against his crotch leaving no control over his body’s response. She was still for a moment, holding him under the water. Darkwing saw her face dimly lit under the water for the first time. She was studying him. He was still struggling to free himself, but only through weak spasms. She reached down and held his crotch as she studied him. He screamed against his will and then stopped breathing. Darkwing knew he was at the end. Only when she released his crotch could he relax and let the calmness of death come over him. It was the most peaceful feeling he had ever had in his life... but she interrupted it.
Sir Jane lifted him like a feather out of the pool and laid him on flat rocks. She knew there was life in him, and she knew just how much to give back.
Ray
Ray was furious. A single sentence echoed from each wall of his skull, repeating over and over again. "They made me what I am." Ray was right; he had been programmed. He should have known when they gave him all the freedom in the outside world, without so much as an interrogation. He could think for himself, but whenever they wanted to they could think for him.
Here he was in a cold, dank room that he had walked in himself, locking himself in! Why did he do it? He remembered walking right in after they told him to. He remembered being repulsed by the room, which was a common prison cell, as he walked into it and then closed the door behind him. There was no escort.
Then there was a knock on the door followed by the entry of 2 peons. Ray waited for them to get closer to him. He was going to kill at least one for sure, until they mentioned his name. One peon said, "The man in the gray hat wants to see you." That’s all it took. Ray forgot about everything he was thinking and feeling before that comment. Without so much as a shrug he left with the peons, completely unaware of the fate that waited for him.
Alligator Alley
They should never have taken that ride, she thought. Now they paid the price.
Her and her boyfriend had successfully avoided the Peace Force for 6 days as they walked and hitched towards Miami, Florida from Albany, NY. It had been a grueling 6 days and it was now over. Her boyfriend lay dead, bleeding on the highway and she was alone. The man who killed him had been their last ride. He wanted to have sex with her but they stood up against him. After the man killed her lover he jumped back into his white van and drove off. She imagined that he forgot to rape her, like someone would forget to pump gas that they already paid for.
The man had threatened them about this place- she looked around. A 10 foot fence off the side of the road with the top slanted toward the jungle within. Barbed wire stretched across the top of the fence. She had seen the many eyes light up red, reflected from the headlights, as they traveled through it. Alligator Alley... The man said the highway was surrounded for 40 miles by gators. He had said the people around there were just as bad as the gators, and then he shot her lover in the heart and drove away. She should have fucked him, she thought.
As she walked toward the fence she thought of how lucky she had been. She was the only one of her friends who wasn’t forced into doing favors for The Man, but then again... it had more to do with her lover than luck. They had been running and hiding the whole time... and it was his idea.
As she walked toward the fence she realized it had been his idea the whole time, and that his idea was over now because he was dead. She took off her shirt and pants when she reached the fence, climbing halfway up the fence, then placed them over the barbed wire. She climbed back down and turned to look back at his shadow of a body. She was only a shadow of a life herself now... but she was going to be something else soon. He would too, she was sure of it. She would bring him back. She would bring him right back.
She cut herself climbing over the barbed wire but the pain didn’t catch up with how she felt inside. She was a dream and a sacrifice because he had turned her into one, and now it was her turn to play. The fear only increased her drama as she removed her shoes and socks before stepping into the mud and water. Each step sunk her in further... She looked around. There was nothing... No red eyes staring up at her, no sound at all. Her death was perfectly still.
Possible Science
It has been agreed upon by many members of the scientific community that the brain lives on up to 10 minutes after death. It has been suggested that during those few minutes a person’s brain may still record what it’s eyes can see, if they are open. Well, it just so happened to be that the boyfriend’s eyes were open and his head was facing toward the fence behind him... where she was.
His glazed eyes watched her subtly discard rationality. You could tell, not by her actions, but by the look in her eyes. She had a lot of his blood on her. His brain registered the connection. She walked over to the fence, and before she made her final climb she looked back at his body. The eyesight was all the brain had left so it made the most of it. Any reflection of moonlight was caught by the boyfriend’s dead eyes, and his brain was able to follow her into the swamp.
His fading brain was able to capture something hers preferred not to. It saw a large gator clamping onto her head and dragging her under the water. The eyes remained fixed on that area for 5 minutes longer than what was previously thought possible. During it’s last minute, the brain noticed something else in the swamp. There was a figure hovering above the water making it’s way out of the swamp. It kept moving closer until it reached the fence, then it looked up. It had noticed the clothes on top of the fence. The brain registered that the figure was not a woman. It was a man, which meant... she was gone. His brain died after that was registered.
The Lowest Level
As Jane was rolled down the last leg of the corridor she was overwhelmed by the powerful smell. It was a smell that made her eyes water. The walls had changed again... this time from stucco to human! The walls were formed from limbless human beings. They were just torsos with heads, sewn together to form a human body blanket. This huge blanket of bodies was either attached to the wall, or was in itself a wall- it was impossible to tell. They were male and female... symbols carved into each. The stumps which used to be legs were sewed onto the shoulders of the body below them. Stumps which were previously arms were sewn to the stumps adjacent to them and the sides of each body were sewn to one another.
Jane noticed that each mouth was sewn shut, but that some of the eyes were open. She forced herself to look closer and her body broke out into chills... they were alive! Many of them were alive, expressing it... horror! Those that were alive tried to moan when they met Jane’s eyes. There were guttural sounds and whimpers starting to fill the corridor, and the nurse began to lose it herself. She wailed along with their painful song. Her face full of snot and tears... terrified.
Jane was terrified also. Their struggle cut into her and she began to absorb it from somewhere in her body. The horror welled up and a numbness followed... but just before Jane blacked out she saw the serial number of the door ahead of her. G66.
The Blackout
Jane was walking through the jungle when it was either very early in the morning, or else just getting to be dark. Fog rolled and lofted on the ground, covering much of the green growth below it. It seemed to reflect a light of its own on the surrounding area, creating a haze of neon green. She saw someone just ahead of her and walked up to them. Jane couldn’t tell which sex the person was by looking at their face, it could have been male or female. They were tall and thin, wearing a loose garment of surreal colors made from what looked like feathers and leaves. Their hair hung to their shoulders and it was partially braided, partially straight and partially dread locked. Jane thought that she noticed the slight bulge of breasts behind their garment.
Cat’s eyes. They were definitely similar to cat’s eyes... slightly larger than human eyes, as the balls seemed to almost pop out of their head. Below the eyes and the slightly indistinct nose, was a slight grin. It wasn’t quite a smirk, and it wasn’t just a happy grin, but it didn’t make them look altogether insane either. The grin spoke, "What do you want?" The voice trailed off into echoes without the intent of evoking emotion. Jane didn’t reply because she was wondering how to say anything at all, out loud. "I’m your doctor.", the voice said, "Now look at my eyes and speak." Jane looked at the eyes and felt the words surge out of her, "I believe my mind is gone.", she said. Their eyes remained locked in a quiet stare for a moment then the grin replied, "No... your mind is right here... It’s you that must be someplace else... I can’t say that I notice you anywhere around here."
Attack of The Replacement System
It had been months since Che’ra sent out the first spies with locators attached to them. These spies were sent to report on the main warehouses of the Others, and to avoid the Hellhouse. Not one of them had come back, and they all shared the same story before disappearing forever. Here is an account of someone who tried to enter a warehouse from above ground:
"I’m entering the vicinity now... There’s no one around, no security as I can tell... I’m freely walking up to the warehouse wall- there is something. I can hear music coming from inside, rock music... Oh my God--" Click. End of reception.
They didn’t all exclaim, "Oh my God.", but always something in a detached, shocked voice. The reception was shut off immediately from each spy who was sent. Che’ra tried to solve the problem by placing the locator in a random part of the spy’s body, and she saw to it that the location of the device was unknown to them. It brought her up to 15 seconds of extra air time before the locator was shut down.
Che’ra viewed the locators in real time, allowing her to listen to everything that happened as it was happening. The locators with visual capabilities never showed a human on their screens. The warehouses seemed always unprotected and the sewers vacant; all except for the music. From the first locator viewed, Che’ra could hear at least the slightest hum of the music. It was just a background drone that was barely audible for the first month. It was enough to spark an interest in Che’ra. After all, it was the only link she had at the moment.
With the 15 extra seconds she extracted by hiding the locators, Che’ra was able to gain a sound sample and amplify it through a computer. She was able to capture an entire line of a song. It was a strange voice singing, " The dark humor of God is what I love most." Che’ra found it interesting but couldn’t understand why it would have such an effect on anyone who might have been there to hear it. She thought she’d have more luck amplifying the music as it was played live instead of processing it on a computer, so she upgraded the audio inputs on her next batch of locators. Che’ra worried for a moment that she was being obsessive. This research wasn’t part of her duties... it was her first ever side project.
Alligator Alley
Domingo took off his home made stilts and looked up at the fence. 10 feet high and the top was covered in barbed wire. He couldn’t believe there were clothes hunched up on the barbed wire just above where he was standing. "The way was prepared.", he said to himself in only partial belief- and then he climbed.
There was a body laying at the side of the road with a large wound in it’s chest. Domingo didn’t know why, but he bent down and closed the eyes of the corpse and then broke down crying. He walked off quickly with a powerful emotion in his gut that he couldn’t decipher. Who was the boy? The dead boy’s eyes looked so familiar to him, but he didn’t know from where.
As Domingo walked down the road he felt the sensation that he was a part of something indescribable. The road was alive, the fence was alive, and he... now too, was alive. By the time Domingo entered Miami he was running on different fuels. He had eaten nothing all day, and only drank from the dew on leaves. He knew his feet were walking in the direction they had to, although there were no directions that his conscious mind could consider... and then he saw it. The sewer cap almost radiated its own source of light for him to see; there wasn’t a doubt.
Domingo was unaware of the sewer’s stench or the darkness that enclosed him, but he could hear the music from the moment he dropped down. He was the only person to hear the music from such a distance- 3 miles away. He followed it without thinking.
"Happiness says the stream ain’t gold
It’s running fresh with life. Falling
from the heavy cloud, pushing, pouring
straight through time. Yeah, things are
looking up I’ve got new shoes
and for this road a guide..."
45 minutes later Domingo entered into the warehouse above him.
Darkwing
Darkwing came to slowly. He felt his back against a tree with branches harnessing his wings and arms to the point of immobility. It looked as if the branches had naturally grown around his limbs. "I’m in trouble here.", Darkwing muttered to himself. "Yes you are!", an electric shock of a voice railed inside of his head. Darkwing winced. Her voice was too powerful, causing him pain. "Oh baby. Please don’t speak into my head!", he thought back to her, wherever she was. It happened again like a lightening strike, "Why?!" Darkwing screamed and he could hear her start laughing, but thankfully it was projected externally. "Why?", she whispered again but out loud. Darkwing was agitated, "‘Cause you’re killing me, Girl!"
She jumped from the top of the tree above him and landed squarely on her feet, immediately staring him up and down. There was an immature, playful look in her eyes that suggested danger and amusement. Darkwing was scared. He didn’t detect any familiarity in her stare and he didn’t feel any towards her either. She was a huge surreal beast to him, like an enormous lion covered with alien blood. "Do you remember me, Baby? It’s Adam.", he tried to muster out, "We know each other. We’ve known each other... just not quite like this."
She just stared at him. She must have been 9 feet tall. Her skin wasn’t quite as dark as his and she was covered in what seemed like flourescent sweat. Darkwing felt heat coming from out of nowhere. He felt it around his entire body and it was slowly increasing in temperature. She was doing it- he knew it. She was gonna burn him. Darkwing got pissed, "Damn it, Girl! What do you think you’re doing?!" His eyes forced light into hers. The heat was rising. "I came here to find you! I came here to bring you back ‘cause you’ve come apart, Girl! Acting like a damn animal! I know you! And you know me!" He was screaming now ‘cause he could feel the burn... From out of nowhere Darkwing screamed, "Let’s sleep in!"
The pain immediately stopped. Darkwing lay collapsed, strapped to the tree. He had no idea what he had just said. The creature before him continued to stare, but with a different look in her eyes. They closed, but the 3rd eye opened up and she began to remember. She remembered one moment with him that occurred in several alternate lives. Rome, Egypt, Africa, America. In a palace, in a shack, on the street, in the woods... One memory with a 1000 faces, just the two of them. A simple memory, him turning to her as they lay together and saying, "Let’s sleep in, Baby."
She was in awe.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment