“I—I've dreamed about it before.”
“What happens?”
“I pull out my gun. I don't even think. I don't aim. I just pull the trigger. I run through the offices, and I track them down. I can't stop myself. I want to stop myself. I don't want to do it, but I can't stop. I keep going—and eventually—the only way I can stop is...is...”
“Is what, John?”
“You know what.”
“But you wanted to do it. Somewhere deep down, didn't you?”
“No. (Time reverses) No! (Time reverses) NO! (Time reverses multiple times over a crescendo of screams) Of course I did.”
“Why don't you try it now, John?” (slides gun across table) “Go on. Take it.”
A long, winding series of hallways intervened between the medical wing and Dr. Whitebalm's private room, tangled snakes of dreary clanking corridors and stairwells with phantom blood stained into their walls, walls pulsing with the memories of disasters and traumas hidden underneath thin coats of fresh paint. Now I was in her room, but the endless turning and pacing, opening and shutting of doors, chattering voices and bleak echoey hallways had taken a toll on me. I felt motion sick from it, my eyes were filled with the afterglows of doors and stairwells and passageways, one on top of the other, which now seemed to trail behind me in the periphery of my vision.“How are you feeling?”, Dr. Whitebalm asked as we entered her office and she drew the door shut behind her. Honestly, you know, I wanted to just SCREAM the truth at her. The truth being that, well, I'd just fought an transdimensional battle against a flower that was living inside my friends head, but, whatever, “I'm fine.”, I said, “I've had a long day, but I'm fine. I'd like to sit down, if that's okay.” Still a little bit shaken up, I backed slowly away from her, wary of the possiblity that she could turn out to be a teenager in a grey hoodie disguised as the professor, getting ready to stab me. Eventually, my knees met with the couch cushion and I let them collapse in on themselves and relax. I had not yet sat on a couch since I got my superpowers and it was amazing. So comfortable. Like sitting on a giant marshmallow. I never wanted to stop, ever. Sitting was the best. Dr. Whitebalm circled towards the kitchen, keeping her eyes fixed on me with with an intense and calculated demeanor. The professor reached the kitchen and carefully poured herself a cup of coffee. Sipping it lightly, she turned, and poured a strange white powder into it from a bulky metal tin. I could barely make out a small warning label on the tin—the powder was radioactive.
“I was hoping we could discuss the accident more privately. I've been trying to piece everything together, but somethings just aren't fitting.”
“There was a—a--a--a--was a--we--”, as I tried to think of a lie my words and thoughts slipped off of each other, and so I aborted the ploy at deception, took a deep breath, and tried to latch onto the ambient noises in the room to help me let go of everything else—I listened the air conditioner click and clank weakly against the faint hum of electricity running through gas in long glass tubes—I heard the steam from her coffee cup rise softly into the air with a faint, gentle hiss as Dr. Whitebalm moved across the room—more collected now, I focused my attentions on her. I had not yet determined if she ought to be trusted. On a gut level, I felt that I could trust her, at least to a point, but on the surface I was more paranoid. This government scientist that had taken us to this underground lab, one that we might never be allowed to leave—that had seperated us from our families--who knew where they thought we were now—and perhaps most egregiously, she—I mean, she torn a goddamn hole in the universe. The mushrooms would have wanted me to kill her, and I knew I could do so...quite easily, in fact. But when I looked into her eyes, my paranoid ideations softened—I could peer through the anxiety and distrust I felt to reveal a real person in front of me, imperfect, but, well...alright, when you got down to it. Uncomfortably curious about me, dreadfully and grimly serious, and somewhat arrogant, but not untrustworthy—she sympathized with me. I resolved to tell her the truth.
“Last night I had a dream. In my dream, my dream, uhm, John, he—he's the guy whos in the coma right now—--who's asleep--he was in my dream. And he said to meet him outside the house the next day—which is today.”, she seemed to follow, stroking her chin studiously with one hand, “Well, when I got there, someone was—you know, someone was, screaming at the cows, and waving a knife, and John's voice came in my head and said, 'I'm trapped outside my body, can you help me?', so I got out of the car, and went to help him. I was pretty stoned, so it freaked me out to hear his voice and stuff, but I was worried about, you know, not helping him if it was real. You know”, she listened more intensely, her hand now almost over her mouth, “It was, it turned out. After he was back in his body, we went outside and, uhm—and—uhm...we went outside, we left the house, we stepped into the field. All of the sudden, he looked in my eyes, and like...bam! I was tripping, and I could saw Icould see the mushrooms were opening a gate to XIBALBA! Well, the mushrooms tried to fight the sky, John got attacked by a flower, and so....not so, then... the mushrooms gave the gift of language to me! But John didn't wake up, you see, he got hurt by this flower, and it's got him now, stuck in his brain, and it wants to kill everything! That's basically it.”
Dr. Whitebalm burst into laughter, “Oh boy.”, she nodded, unsure of what to tell me. “So, you—hmmm. Okay”
“It's a true story. I wasn't even that high before I went into the field. John can do it with his mind.”
“He can do it with his mind, huh? Well. That's—alright. Well. And how do you know John?”
“John came into the Walmart where I work one day to buy some vitamins. About a week ago. About a week and a half ago. No—it was Monday the 6th.”
Just then, she made a connection—the night of the accident—that was February 6th, 2017. Suddenly taking what I said seriously, she leaned in, “What do you--I'm sorry, can you tell me more about John?”
Before I could respond, the florescent lamp dangling behind our heads started to tremble. Dr. Whitebalm turned around, confused. My face froze still, caught somewhere between fear and wonder.
“You didn't do that, did you?”. I read into the contours of her face—it was like a great desert streaked with canyons, flicking with barely perceptible beads of sweat. Somewhere in her countenance, I could trace that, by asking “You didn't do that, did you?”, she thought, somehow, I had caused the light to flicker. But I hadn't. “No, no, no. I can't do that. I think that was John. Or maybe the flowers.”
“Tell me about the flowers. What flowers?”
“They're evil flowers. They want to...”
I reached down to my side for a cigarette, bringing it up to my lips, only to realize, with surprise, that there was nothing there. What had we been talking about? The two of us looked at each other with unease. Somehow the last few seconds of conversation had slipped by us. “What were you just saying?”, she asked.
“Uhm...”, I tried to remember our conversation, “I was just telling you about where I went to college.” Confused, Dr. Whitebalm looked back and forth—of course. She remembered that. College. Duh. “That's right. What were you saying?”
“I only did a semester of it, at Texas State in San Antonio.”
“And you wanted to be what, a doctor?”
“Yes, surely, absolutely, good enough, that's right.”
Something felt strange, but I couldn't place my finger on why. “Do you mind if I make myself some coffee?”, I asked. “Be my guest.”, Dr. Whitebalm said, “Just...don't use the creamer in the metal tin, please.” As I stood up and walked towards the kitchen, I tried to make sense of my surroundings. Something was off; I knew that deep inside—I could tell that something from my brain had been taken from me. Warily, I shifted from English into the mushroom language. At once, two ghosts in the room made themselves visible to me, glaring with suspicion as I became visible to them. I was another one of the test subjects, they thought. Probably seeing the look of terror on my face, Dr. Whitebalm grew worried. Quickly, I darted into the language of the grass—a simple language—idyllic and calm—then into the language of the cedar tree from the field—until I finally reached the language of the white flower in John's mind. Immediately everything made sense—the memory of our conversation had been stolen from me, and a false one planted in its place. A faint giggling came from the ceiling and the walls—the spirit of the flower seemed put down roots there, and was taking delight in the mischief it had caused.
As I grew more and more on edge, Dr. Whitebalm's emotions seemed to mirror my own. I didn't remember what we were talking about, only that the conversation I thought I remembered was not a conversation either of us had ever truly had. The real memory had been stolen from our brains. Taking advantage of the language's temporal looseness, I slid backwards through my memories, until I could see the same two ghosts from before crouched down with John behind Dr. Whitebalms round wooden dining room table. The teenager in the grey hoodie watched from the side, listening in on Dr. Whitebalm while she tried to figure out what I saw during the explosion. Up above, a tiny version of John gripped the sides of a hanging florescent light and shook it back and forth. Relieved, if not even more confused than I'd been before, I snapped back into the present.
Dr. Whitebalm stared forward blankly, her eyes wide and mouth frozen agape. Unwittingly brought into the language of white flowers with me, she had watched helplessly as all timelines flashed by her at once, all possible presents running together in a paralyzing chaos, an infinite and writhing tangle of memories so impossibly dense that she had not even the remotest sense of what she was or who she was for what had seemed like an eternity. I pulled her into English—the junctions between her nerves and her muscles suddenly snapped back into place and her mind returned to its default perception of reality. Heart racing, she collapsed back into the couch and, lost in an overwhelmed stupor, she struggled to digest what she had observed. The mysteries of the universe, which had been expanded and elaborated on through the voices of plant languages through which I carried her, collapsed crudely into the confines of English, quantum physics and calculus, all of which seemed altogether inadequate to chart the impossibilities of what she had witnessed. Her worried eyes met mine, her jaw locking back against her teeth and her brow wrinkling with vaguely defined uncertainty. “Did you—do that to me?”
We stared at each other; our distrust of one another stubbornly resisting its gradual dissolution. I poured myself a cup of coffee, and nodded, slowly and uncertainly. “You asked me a question. But the flowers made us forget.”
____________
Narrator: Meanwhile, the medical staff at the base examines the other victims of the accident.
Cassandra
“How are you feeling?”
I stared up at the nurse, dumbfounded. Not dumbfounded that he'd ask but, well, I didn't know how to respond. I guess I felt fine. But I shouldn't have been feeling fine, right? After all, my husband was dead. I should not feel fine—not at all. But I felt, well, honestly...just fine. Electrified by the days events, I guess, but...fine. Sure, I felt worried for the children, but apart from that, I barely felt that the Mick and I had even been friends— it was always a war to please him, to make him happy. Naively, I guess, I always imagined he had been a perfect husband, and that it was me who was the problem. Today, though, I guess it clicked. He ran across the field, screaming, ready to kill me and his entire family, and I wasn't actually surprised. Did this mean I hated him? All along? Well...no. Of course not. Well, I mean, I didn't want to hate him. Who knows. Maybe I did. Maybe did hate him. Before I could respond, the nurse answered his own question. “I suppose I shouldn't ask. I can't imagine what you're going through.” Blankly, I looked up at him, a single tear forming at the corner of my eye as I realized, with terror, that I...really did feel absolutely nothing—just a blank space, a blank space where I knew that words and feelings should be.
Everything felt like it would be okay if I just sat still and waited for it to pass. If I just forgot about him, forgot all the terrible nights I'd spent with him pretending to be happy, forgot the time I'd wasted trying to make myself enjoy being around him; to wake up and cook him breakfast in bed on his birthday—all the time I'd spent trying at all. There had been a moment back at the house that I still don't know how to describe—John almost...took control of my mind—I felt myself peel away from my body like a balloon lifting into the sky—the room warped like the inside of a fishbowl, and all of my memories, the best ones, the worst ones, the mediocre ones, all flooded out of my head, displayed on tiny living postcards, and I could see them, all at once, from a distance. I knew that I could let go of them, if I wanted—but really I didn't know how to do that—to let go. John had me look upwards and pray—he didn't make me—I suppose its hard to explain— and just thinking about it makes me think I'm going crazy—but I looked up, and as I started to speak, I saw the ceiling unfold. All of the memories flew up into a city made of trillions of jewels, plucked from the sky by a being with thousands of eyes, who soared through the air on an immense, fiery cloud—and it loved me—it knew me—it recognized me, and I recognized it somehow.
But even if I thought I let all everything go and float up to God right then and there, I didn't forget a thing. It came back, piece by piece, bubbling up in my skin; the earth shook, and I shook with it, as one by one the memories I thought I'd released into the sky popped back into my head. And sure, Meagan, whatever the hell she'd done, had helped—I'd felt my family come back together, but now it was back. Again. I wanted to forget it—to forget it forever. To stop remembering. I didn't feel hurt about Mick dying. I felt hurt that I had seen that monster lurking somewhere underneath his eyes and I was stupid enough not to run the hell away. I knew that everything would be fine if I could forget.
“I...I hate to put you through this again, ma'am but I just want to make sure everything is right on the charts. Your full name is Cassandra Louis Parker?”
“Yes.”
“And how old are you?”
“37.”
“Do you have any known allergies to medications?”
“Not that I know of.”
The nurse continued with this line of questioning. I'd done it before that day, but this was a different nurse, and we were entering a new facility, and I suppose they needed to double check their notes. I didn't really mind, though. It was almost sort of nice to think that my whole life could all fit into some little document, and be stowed away somewhere. Plus, I mean, I was perfectly healthy, wasn't I? I only drank once or twice (well---maybe three or four or five times) a week, and I hadn't ever smoked. I had no heart conditions, although I did take something for my thyroid. As he proceeded down the chart, I felt a growing, albeit weak, sense of satisfaction and pride in my physical condition.
The door swung open about halfway through the chart—a Mexican looking doctor with dark brown eyebrows came to the door, his shoulders hunched slightly, and his eyes half-glazed over. “I'm sorry to interrupt, Adam. I just had a question for Cassandra.”
“Go ahead”
“Your father-in-law. He is—how old?”
“87 years old.”
“Well—thats—thats what he said too—hmmm.”
“Is something wrong with him?”
“No, no, no. He's actually—uhm—really good. Like. Really good. Healthiest 87 year old I've ever seen in my life.”
“Huh. Well, you know, he does like to mind his health, and he gets on his feet a lot.”
“Yeah....yeah. Of course. That—uh. Makes sense, I guess. Hmmm. Well. I'll let you to get back to it.”
“Thanks Dr. O.”
I waved goodbye, and the nurse turned to the counter behind him to retrieve a stethoscope. “Alright, sorry about that.”
“No, no. You know, old people can get senile, it doesn't hurt to check.”
“Definitely, yeah. Anyway, I'm just going to listen to your pulse here real quick—Hmm. I can't quite hear it too clearly here. I'm gonna try the back, is that okay? Alright...lets see here...Ouch! Shit.” He tore his hand away from the stethoscope. It swung from his ears as he shook the pain out of his fingers.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it's just my hand, it—cramped up or something.”
“I'm sorry!”
“Oh, don't apologize, it's not your fault. Let me try again—Jesus fucking Christ! I don't know what's wrong with my hand today.”
The lights in the room flickered, as the computer screen wobbled and waved. He looked around warily, before rolling his eyes. “Sorry, you'll get used to it. This is a Deep Space Laboratory, I don't know if they told you about it. Some of the experiments take a lot of power.”
“What are they doing?”
“Nothing interesting. All I know is its dry enough to lower the sea levels if it ever gets out of these walls. Here—let me try that again--”
TO GERRY
Dr. Oregano or Oregon or Oregami whoever the hell stomped back into the room and sat down across from me, looking my charts up and down. Same damn thing. You sure you really 87 years old? Shit. I know, can't believe it myself. He was having such a hard time with this that he went to go ask the daughter in law. She told him the same thing. Wouldn't be surprised if he tried to carbon date me.
“You must—uhm. Get a lot of exercise, Gerry.”
“Yeah, I mean, last week or so, I've been trying to spend me some time out with the cows. Uh. Arthritis used to act up, but I uhm—I just figured it was time to, you know. Keep them company.”
Don't know what was so difficult for this doctor to wrap his head around. He could probably stand to just, I dunno, feel happy for me. The pain from the hip had gone down pretty good. I actually wasn't feeling too bad. Maybe I was right all along, and red meat and eggs is the key to a long and happy life. Maybe I'll write a book. Go on Dr. Oz.
“Well, based on the scans we took of your hip, and your blood work, you're---I mean, honestly, you can hardly tell the hip was even broken.”
“Tell you what, it sure as hell felt broken.”
“I believe you, I believe you, but you're...honestly the healthiest person of your age I've ever seen. I mean your liver works better than some of the grad students here, your heart's... practically perfect, your blood sugar is amazing, your brain doesn't show any signs of deterioration, I mean—I just don't know how to--“
He'd said that about eleven times or so. He'd run just about every goddamn test he could think of trying to find some sign that I was, in fact, not just a senile old coot who was also a 35 year old pro-athlete in disguise. But to hell with all this crap. I was getting tired. Hungry. Didn't know what the hell I was supposed to think about any of this. God damn government tearing holes and god knows what in the universe or whatnot. Don't reckon how they can somehow round up the money for all this time wastin', pasture wreckin' coverup nonsense but Mr. Trump has to go beggin and pleadin for the money for a wall. Wish this doctor would hurry up.
But I guess I wanted to be alone too. Just have some time to think through things. Can't help but admit it-- I was pretty frustrated with Mick. I honestly did the damn best I could with him, but he was always a monster. Can't help but admit it, especially in hindsight. Seems kind of stupid. Hell, I remember one time, I caught him in the barn when he was seven torturing squirrels with the blowtorch. And he kept getting kicked out of school., too Age sixteen, he even tried to lay hands on a little lady in gym class—I just about let her brothers have their way with him too, but I didn't. Maybe I should've. But he was my son, so you know, I was gonna love that kid whether he tortured critters, or picked fights, or...disrespected women, or even if he voted for Hilary Rodham Clinton. Guess I paid for it though, in the shape of big damn hole in the back of my property and whole field of concussed, lonely bovines. I just hoped that the government would let me get back to them soon. They were probably all sorts of worried.
Things were getting pretty strange. To be quite honest, the weirdest thing I've ever experienced was, was back in 66 when I headed down to a 13th Floor Elevators concert out in Austin. Pretty looking hippy girl asked if I wanted to smoke some marijuana, but I kindly declined. To be quite honest, I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about with that crazy hippy music stuff. My friend Caleb decided he'd try it out, but he didn't really think it did all that much apart from it making the music sound a little bit better. Went to a Grateful Dead concert in Houston, too, but really just to say that I'd gone, and we didn't stay too long. But since last week, I'd met a homeless fellow who uses LSD to read minds, watched psychedelic mushrooms control my cows, and witnessed the government poking holes in the sky.
John was nice and always seemed like a good listener. Reckoned he needed a father figure of some kind in his life, not to mention I sort of missed having someone to talk to. I've got friends, I mean...Jill stops by sometimes and brings me eggs, and I kind of have taken a liking to her, but I figure she kind of thinks I'm just a boring old man. We never have that much conversation. She does look mighty fine for a lady in her sixties, and...well that's all I'll say about that. But having someone around to talk to sure was nice, and John seemed like he liked it too. The kid was weird, sure, and smelled a little bad when he first got there, but he was a nice boy. Sure hoped he wasn't dead, or, I don't know, vegetable-ized, however you call it.
The Doctor sighed, concluding a long monologue about how damn healthy I was, and how damn upset that seemed to make him. “Well. I'm sorry about that doc.”
“Don't be sorry. It's just—incredible. I—don't even know what to think.”
“Well—you got me there. Uhm.”, the two of us looked at each other awkwardly, “Guess if I'm doing fine, I can go ahead and...skeedaddle on out of here, huh?”`
“No—no, we can't let you leave until we're sure the radiation isn't going to cause any complications.”
“Seems to me like the only complications are giving me the body of a 35 year old with a functioning prostate.” Heck. That'd make a hell of a comic book. It'd be a real hit in nursing homes, I'll bet ya.
“We can get you into a more comfortable room, would you prefer that?”
“That pretty little oriental nurse still gonna come bring me my food?”
“Well, if you aren't going to be in the medical wing, I can't really ask Leah to--”
“Just pullin your leg, Doc. Just pullin your leg.”
____
“So, this whole place...it used to be what—a secret prison?”
“No, they did—um, tests. Experiments with LSD, stuff like that.”
“I can't imagine tripping down here. It must have been terrifying.”
“Yeah. They don't let anyone down here, but I mean, who cares, right? I've been coding algorithms like all fucking day.”
“This is awesome. Hello! Can you give us a sign of your presence?” (other guy laughs) “Oh my god, don't tell me you watch Ghost Hunters too...”
“E'er day.”
“Great minds think a--”
(loud clammoring sound)
“What the fuck was that?”
“You should have seen the look on your face, you just got white as a sheet. Hey—if that was you, can you--” (loud clammoring, closer this time)
“Holy shit. It's haunted. It's fucking haunted. This is awesome.”
(loud clammoring, again closer) “Hey! What's your name?”
“Oh hell no. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Look behind you. Look behind--”
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Hey, is that... that....
“John. My name's John”
(sounds of psychic terror)
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