Endurance (9 page)

Tom looked at
the two men on the floor and looked at the door, ready to make his
exit. He was stunned to see the woman at the door holding a syringe
was Lucy.

‘
What the
fuck’s going on Lucy? Where’s Dan?’

‘
I don’t know
what…’

‘
Lucy, it’s
me, Tom!’

‘
Mr.
Williams, please calm down and get back into bed.’

‘
Lucy,
Stewart is dead and so is Anna. We’re next if we don’t
move.’

‘
Get into
your bed now!’ Lucy said, clutching a bat in her shaking right hand
and a syringe in her left.

‘
Fuck sake,
Lucy.’

Tom walked up
to Lucy, but as he did, she swung the bat and hit him on the head.
Tom staggered to his left. As he regained his focus, Lucy tried to
stab him in the neck with the syringe. Tom grabbed her arm and
knocked the syringe out of her hand onto the floor. He continued to
hold her arm, grabbed her white jacket and threw her across the
floor to his right. She slid and stayed on the ground curled
up.

‘
Please don’t
hurt me,’ cried Lucy.

Tom didn’t
say anything; he was confused about why Lucy didn’t know
him.

He left the
room and entered the shadowy corridor, which was as dull as the
room. It looked grey with nothing in sight, except
shadows.

He looked
around to determine his best route of escape. To his right was a
man in an army uniform with a gun. Tom decided to run to his left.
The man shot at Tom, but missed.

As Tom neared
the end of the corridor, another man appeared. He darted from
behind the wall at the end of the corridor and shot at Tom. He
missed the first shot but then hit Tom in the chest, halting him in
his tracks. Tom felt the piercing pain, followed by another two.
The third shot hit him in the throat; Tom struggled to catch his
breath. He was hit with another bullet on the pectoral muscle,
knocking him flat onto his back.

Tom clutched
his throat, trying to breathe; then looked down at his body,
realizing there was no blood from the wounds.

As his vision
blurred and the room darkened, he saw Lucy standing over him
looking down. She paused before pulling a syringe from her pocket.
She knelt down, plunged the syringe into his neck, and injected the
liquid.

11

Tom lay in
bed, unconscious. Three men stood around him. The two men on either
side of the bed wore white and blue uniforms; the bald man at the
end of the bed wore a brown suit.

‘
He’s a very
sick man. I thought he was getting better, but obviously not; we’re
back to stage one,’ the suited man said.

‘
Should we
keep him sedated?’ asked one of the other men.

‘
No, we’ll
keep him tied down for now. I suppose we should have expected this;
good days and bad days. I’ll speak to him when he comes
round.’

The other two
men departed, leaving the suited man and Tom alone.

‘
Mr.
Williams.’

Tom heard the
voice echo throughout his head.

‘
Mr.
Williams, if you can hear me, I need you to try and focus. We need
to have a chat about this situation and remind you why you are
here.’

Tom tried to
wake up. The voice continued to echo through his head. ‘Get up,
Tom!’

Tom jerked
awake and sat up. He tried to move his hands but they were secured
in brown leather cuffs to either side of the bed.

‘
Good. Mr.
Williams are you listening carefully?’

‘
Where am
I?’

‘
Right.
Listen to me. You’re not well, you’ve been here a long time now, we
made progress but you have now reverted.’

‘
Where the
fuck am I?’

‘
Mr.
Williams, occasionally you have memory lapses when your illness
worsens. I’ll remind you. You’re in a mental institution. We’ve
made progress with you, but now you seem to have reverted back to
this stage.’

‘
Mental
institution? You must have the wrong guy. I’m completely sane. Let
me out of here.’ Tom struggled weakly as he tried to break the
cuffs. ‘Let me out right now!’

‘
Mr. Williams
I need you to calm down and listen to me.’ The man leaned toward
Tom and asked, ‘What is my name?’

‘
I don’t
fucking know who you are, I’ve never seen you before.’

‘
Mr.
Williams, this is very disappointing. You’ve been here for more
than a year and you don’t know who I am.’

‘
I have not
been here more than a year.’

‘
Yes, you
have. Do you want me to show you all the records and tests? You
have been here more than a year after you decided to kill thousands
of people. You killed parents, grandparents and children. Do you
even remember what building it was? Sorry to sound harsh, Mr.
Williams, but you obviously do not remember the drastic actions you
decided to take.’

‘
What? No I
didn’t do that! I was in…’

‘
Let me
guess. You were in a lab. Your dad was there, Anna’s and Stewart’s
corpses were hung upside down; you killed your dad and made the
building self-destruct by pressing a red button. Does that sound
about right?’

Tom paused
and stared at the man.

‘
What?
How?’

‘
We know each
other better than you think. I would shake your hand but… obviously
your hands are tied. I’m Doctor Miller. I have been fully involved
in your recovery. I’ve helped you.’

‘
I don’t know
what’s going on, just please let me go.’

‘
I’m afraid
that’s never going to be possible. You, Mr. Williams, have been
deemed by the courts a danger to the public. Although, I would love
to get you back out there working and earning a living.’

‘
If all this
is true, how do you explain Anna’s, Stewart’s, Danni’s, and my
father’s deaths?’

‘
They never
existed. Well, not how you imagine them. You killed your father in
the blast. Anna is still alive, but the last time you saw her, you
refused to believe it was her. Stewart was an old school friend as
were as Dan and Lucy; you haven’t seen them for years.’

‘
Lucy works
here! I saw her, she injected me with…’

‘
That is a
woman named Lucy, yes, but she only works here. She isn’t your old
school friend.’

‘
Well how did
I recognize her from here if I’m thinking about someone
else?’

‘
You are
altering your reality to fit your fantasy. Since a woman named Lucy
works here and happens to have the same name as a girl named Lucy
you remember from your school, you’ve managed to work this Lucy’s
face into your quite elaborate fantasy.’

Tom lay back
on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

He thought of
the trauma he’d been through. Anna’s death had felt so realistic.
He remembered cutting down her corpse and holding her dead body. He
remembered the destruction, the smell of smoke returned to his
nose. He even felt the pain of the burns on his flesh. He
remembered meeting Graham and Danni on the underground and watching
Graham go crazy. He clearly remembered murdering his own father, in
order to save others. After thinking things through for a bit, he
looked over at Doctor Miller who stood to his left.

‘
That’s it.
Take a deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth.
That’s it. You’re back in the real world now.’

‘
What
happened?’

‘
You entered
a fugue state. You do it quite often, you ‘zone out’ on us. We’ve
determined you aren’t having seizures, but believe you think you
are having some sort of flashback to perceived events in your
falsified past. What did you think of during this
state?’

‘
I
dreamt…’

‘
A memory?
Was it what happened in your past before?’

‘
No. I dreamt
of a long distant memory of me at Disney World Florida with my
parents.’

‘
Oh
brilliant, this is a good start to your recovery, Tom. Keep having
these real, happy memories and we can move on from this mad
obsession you have with this fake memory.’

‘
Is London
normal then?’

‘
London is as
perfectly normal as it ever has been. We can go there if you want,
I will show you around. I’ll organise a day for us to go, but for
now, you need some rest. Here, take this…’ Miller pulls out a small
white tube from his jacket, pops open the lid and tips two red
tablets into the palm of his hand. ‘This medication will keep you
relaxed so you can get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow and I will
see if we can go into London.’

Tom paused
and looked at Miller more closely.

He appeared
to be in his fifties; he was bald, with dark eyes that looked
black. His suit was clean with no flecks of lint, dandruff or other
specks of dirt to mar its appearance. His name badge read ‘Dr.
Michael Miller’. He was almost petite, his bones were so small; he
was only about five foot, seven inches, with narrow
shoulders.

‘
Come on Tom,
open your mouth.’

Tom
hesitated, but eventually opened his mouth. Miller put one tablet
in Tom’s mouth, poured some water into his mouth and allowed him to
swallow the tablet. Then he put the other tablet in Tom’s mouth and
gave him more water.

‘
You will
feel drowsy very quickly. Once you fall asleep, I will un-cuff your
wrists. I will see you in the morning, Tom.’

Miller stood
by the bed until Tom’s eyes closed. Miller sighed as he un-cuffed
Tom’s wrists, then, he left the room, locking the door behind
him.

12

Tom and
Miller walked along the Jubilee Gardens.

It was a
sunny day in London; the sun glistened off the river Thames and the
surrounding buildings. The London Eye gleamed from the rays. The
grass looked green and healthy, with no dead spots in sight. The
Thames was dark blue with boats cruising along the river and
seagulls fluttering around the water.

‘
See Tom,
London is normal. You are very sick and in need of my help. You
just need me to help you.’

Tom and
Miller walked to the London Eye, Tom looked up at it
smiling.

‘
Last time I
was here, this was scattered all across the gardens there.’ Tom
looked to the green, open field.

‘
Well, in
your dreams, hey Tom?’

A light,
engine sound echoed through Tom’s ears.

‘
Can you hear
that, Doctor?’

‘
Hear
wh…’

Miller was
shot before he could answer Tom. Miller collapsed to the ground
covered in bullet holes.

Tom looked
behind him to see the surrounding buildings exploding into
smithereens. He watched as the trees lost their leaves, the grass
turned into nothing but mud, the swings and climbing frames burned
into orange and grey rust. The children sitting on the swings burst
into flames and disappeared.

Soon, Tom was
alone; even Miller’s body had disappeared.

Then he heard
a creaking sound followed by a number of snapping sounds. Tom
watched as the ground ahead of him, the London Eye moved inland.
Tom turned around and began to walk backward; he saw the London Eye
falling. As it reached him, he could hear Dr. Miller’s voice fading
in and out and echoing eerily in his mind.

‘
Mr.
Williams. Mr. Williams. Wake up.’

The Eye was a
foot from hitting the ground; it exploded violently, launching Tom
into the middle of the street. He hastily got back onto his feet.
As he turned to run, Anna stood right in front of him. Her pupils
were a deep red, blood trickled from her eyes, leaking down to her
cheeks and onto her blood-stained neck, which was covered in bloody
hand marks. She had no expression, her skin was a light cream
colour and her neck was covered in black, thick veins. She smiled,
revealing yellow stumps for teeth and pitch black gums.

A hovercraft
distracted Tom from looking at Anna any longer. It arose from
seemingly nowhere. Anna began to scream, the scream pierced Tom’s
ears. He stared at Anna’s mouth opening wider and wider. The
hovercraft shot the ground around Tom and Anna. It shot a bullet
towards Tom’s head that seemed to travel in slow motion, as it
reached his face, it forced him to awaken from his
nightmare.

Tom sat up
straight, short of breath, sweat dripping down his forehead and
running down his stubbled face in rivulets. Miller stood at the end
of the bed.

‘
You okay,
Mr. Williams?’

Tom paused as
he tried to catch his breath. He grabbed the glass of water next to
his bed, sipped, and stared at Miller.

‘
Yeah, just a
bad dream.’

‘
Care to
share?’

‘
I can’t
really remember it, but I think my Mum was killed, was a childhood
nightmare.’

‘
Okay, Mr.
Williams. I have some good news. We can go into London today, but I
need to introduce you to someone. Come in, Smith.’