Nonentity (15 page)

Everything went black.

****

I awoke in the interrogation room. Straps confined me to a metal chair behind the oak table. Clamps held my eyelids open. A jumbo monitor covered the wall across from me. About six feet to my right sat two men, each in a gray shirt and solid white tie. Two guards stood in a front left corner. One was the stoic guard who injected me with the syringe that I shattered. The “PR” was gone from his face. Had I imagined it?

The man closest to me at the table swiveled in my direction. He had salt-and-pepper hair. His blue eyes were as savage as R. Smith Manchester’s. “Some things you see are real,” the man said, eerily emphasizing each syllable. “Other things are mere illusions.”

The other man at the table stood and walked over to me. He whispered in my ear, “The object in your pocket will appear to you in multiple locations as you sit in this room.” The whispering man went to the door and left.

It startled me when I peered at the guard who injected me. The right side of his face bore a new symbol: an hourglass with a green circle on its lower half, a replica of the item in my pocket. I sensed that I had crossed into a darker realm. Unable to escape, I looked despairingly at the salt-and-pepper man at the table.

“There is no less horror out there than in here, Mr. Flemming.”

I glanced away from him briefly and turned back. His white tie suddenly displayed four hourglasses in vertical alignment, each with a green circle on its lower half. His blue eyes shined demonically, filling me with unease.

Several minutes of creepy silence passed. Another glance at the injecting guard revealed the “PR” on his face again, supplanting the hourglass. The hourglasses had also disappeared from the salt-and-pepper man’s tie.

The door opened. Victoria Mason entered. She wore a pink blouse with a blue skirt pasted to her hips. I ogled her with lust that worsened my discomfort.

Victoria surveyed the room. “Nice to see the prisoner in restraints. Let us proceed.”

She walked over to me and pulled out a bottle of liquid. Squeezing several droplets into my eyes, she said, “Mr. Flemming, your misconduct has stretched our patience. A corrective measure is necessary. Anything to say before we get started?”

I glared at her.

“As I figured. You’re going to wish you had talked more.”

She dimmed the lights with a remote. She activated a video on the large screen in front of me. I discreetly worked on loosening my straps.

Footage of a prison cell played on the monitor. Three guards stood over a naked woman on a stool. The woman’s head was shaved. Wounds blighted her face and body. On the right side of her face was an hourglass with a green circle on its lower half. I recognized her as Lorna. The guards pounded on her mercilessly. I could not avoid watching them shove her to the floor and gang-rape her.

Rage boiling, I gained superhuman strength. Tearing away from my straps and eye clamps, I lunged madly at Victoria. I clasped her throat and choked her to the ground. The two guards in the corner sprang upon me. They dragged me from my prey, slamming me into a corner behind the table. Someone rolled up one of my sleeves and plunged a needle into me.

I looked up and caught a wavy glimpse of the man at the table. His tie featured the four hourglasses. He smiled and said, “Is anything real in a house of illusions?”

Across from him sat Lawrence Alister. A two-foot tall hourglass with a green circle on its lower half rested on the table in front of Lawrence. The hourglass contained no sand.

****

Half-conscious – I heard a female voice: “The preceding scene was less than real.” I knew the voice but could not place it in my dazed state.

Down a dimly lit hallway, two faceless guards dragged me by my arms. My hourglass had busted; sand leaked from my pocket. The hallway stretched for miles.

The guards eventually tossed me into a cocoon of chilling metal. The machine closed around me like a mouth swallowing me. It spun at nauseating speed. Laser beams of varying colors flashed around me. A sharp object pierced the back of my head. I experienced something extraordinary: a tinge of pain, the psychic pain of losing the plastic self for an authentic nonentity self. My brains were sucked through a jagged tube.

The laser beams stopped swirling. The contraption that enveloped me opened to a vast room of green light. I observed without processing. On a chair to the left sat Lorna. On a chair to the right sat my father. Both were corpses. Sand cascaded down on them, drowning them in time that had run out on the three of us.

Then I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing – the illusion of life vanquished.

Blackness cloaked a foreign realm. A door opened in the ether. A blaze erupted through that door, lighting up a barren atmosphere. The fire faded.

A magnificent voice shook the netherworld: “The first book was yours. This one is his.”

The thunderous statement jarred a traveler from unconsciousness. Where am I? the traveler thought after waking. Where was I before? His memory was blank.

The magnificent voice thundered again: “A last dance with condemnation initiates passage into a timeless void where the mind dictates all. To assemble your immaterial existence, you must eliminate the hourglass. You must transcend the numberless sands.”

Another flame blasted through the door in the ether. The traveler gazed toward the dark sky and saw shining sands of a quadrillion lifetimes cascading down on him from the illuminated door. The sands consumed him.

“As you count the grains,” said the magnificent voice, “they dissolve, revealing a green circle. Go to that circle.”

The traveler could count nothing. He fruitlessly scoured his mind for recollections.

“Your previous world is gone,” said a faceless spirit within the sands. “Striving to remember is useless.”

Another spirit said, “Your current world bends not to your reasoning. Observe but do not decipher. Detach from the urge to comprehend.”

“Perhaps we can assist him,” the first spirit said.

“What do you suggest?” asked the second.

“Rather than a suppression of memory, an overload. Permit him a window back into the universe where he died.”

The traveler heard numerous recognizable voices: “Your movie is not the same as mine.” “And for crying out loud, don’t call them D&P. They hate that. Show some respect.” “Don’t you dare go back to sleep on me. You can’t get off the hook that easily.” “Congratulations are in order, my friend. Your candidate won in a landslide.”

The voices and their content were familiar, yet only increased his bafflement. He sank deeper into the sand.

****

Amid muddled reflections the traveler surrendered. He abandoned the analytic impulse, resigning to confusion. A mighty gust blew the surrounding sands wide open. A small tunnel formed. The traveler climbed through it into a new setting.

A distant moon sprayed sparse light. Frigid wind screamed agony. A nearby forest of silhouetted trees spooked the traveler. A green light shined onto a severely cracked walkway. The path led to a cozy cabin with a partially caved-in roof. The front door of the cabin had a hole where a doorknob should have been. Had he visited a similar location in the past? He chose not to speculate on that question. “Observe but do not decipher.”

A potent gale swept him over the walkway’s cracks toward the cabin. His momentum stopped at the door which swung open.

Stepping into the cabin, the traveler spotted an enormous man in a corner to the left. The man held a humongous ax over his right shoulder. He wore a long beard dyed green. Solid green eyes matched his beard. His face was dirty.

In the center of the snug room was a slight oak table where a little girl sat facing the traveler. Her hair was long and dark. Her eyes were shut. On the table, in her hands, was an hourglass with a green circle on its lower half. There was a chair opposite her. A refrigerator stood against the wall behind her.

“I knew you when I was older – somewhere far from here,” the little girl said. She opened her eyes. They glowed an enchanting green. The traveler connected with those eyes.

The little girl said, “Now you have completed the life cycle in a literal sense. You are beyond literal ramifications. How does that feel?”

The traveler could not speak.

She said to him, “Please have a seat.” He did so, across from her.

The man with the ax said, “Some things you see are real. Other things are mere illusions.” He dropped his ax. It vanished before it could hit the floor.

“Material objects are not concrete,” said the little girl. “They do not warrant your focus. Neither does memory. The past was never as authentic as it appeared.

“This domain is tricky. Rather than fixate on befuddling imagery, envision an emptying of the hourglass. Eliminate the sands from your consciousness. Trouble not with what you see here. Take it in stride when images repeat themselves.”

She pointed to a corner left of the traveler; he looked. The green-bearded man was gone like his ax. In his spot stood a replica of the little girl at the table. The twin child held an identical hourglass. Her eyes emitted a stream of vibrant green through the hourglass’s circle.

Sounding like a full-grown woman, the twin said, “Time spins backward. I have regained my youth and duplicated myself to reinforce my message. Picture the sands disappearing and you will be reborn as well.”

The traveler followed the emerald trail of the twin’s eyes, to the refrigerator behind the table. The dark-haired little girl stood next to the fridge, the green-bearded man’s ax in her hand. She swung the ax into the middle of the fridge, puncturing the appliance with a slit through which green beams saturated the room, blinding the traveler.

“Can you locate me within this room?” the child asked. “Point me out or I shall fade away. You must …” Her voice trailed off.

The traveler fainted. He woke in a dark hallway. Two faceless figures dragged him across the floor by the arms. Sand leaked from his pockets. He experienced fleeting déjà vu.

His forced trip led him to a large window at the end of the hall. The faceless figures released him and exited. The traveler peered through the window. There was a warm den inside. In an easy chair by a fireplace sat a debonair man in his mid-sixties. On the floor, at his shoes, was the little girl from the cabin. Several feet behind them was a desk with a nameplate: Randolph Doppelganger. The traveler ignored the name’s familiarity.

The debonair man read a book aloud to the little girl:

“You must face what genuinely haunts you. Who or what is your enemy?”

“My enemy?”

“Yes, your enemy,” Lukas said. “What threatens you the most?”

“I suppose the Permanent Regime. Like anyone who dares to be his own person, I am vulnerable to totalitarians. The Regime will likely destroy me.”

“Except that you will have already destroyed yourself.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” said I.

“You are not your own person. You’re a facsimile of someone who once was. You’re a shadow. The Permanent Regime
is not
your enemy. There is no Permanent Regime and never was. It’s a cheap illusion.”

“Horse pucky! Do you deny the tyranny that rules us? Do you declare it unreal?”

Tugging at the debonair man’s leg, the little girl said, “What does ‘tyranny’ mean?”

The man leaned back in his chair. “Tyranny is whatever infringes upon true happiness. You see, to the main character in this book, tyranny is himself, a personal history that he regrets. He cannot achieve self-actualization. He projects his neuroses onto a fictional entity, the Permanent Regime. The parallel universalist exposes that projection.

“Permit me to relate this concept more specifically to you. You are terribly fearful of a world beyond your control. You project that fear onto a bearded man who wields an intimidating ax. That ax symbolizes tyranny. When you confront your actual fears, the ax will vanish. You will defeat tyranny. Does that make sense?”

“Not really.”

The man laughed sympathetically. “Let’s see what else the book tries to tell us.” He resumed reading aloud:

“Yes. At the risk of revealing too much: the Regime is no more than a plot device. Set it aside. You have sold yourself short, purchasing a room in a house of sand. It was your attempt to escape.”

“Escape what?”

“Your own grief. Self-loathing. That feeling of not doing enough. You are lost, Sebastian.”

The little girl had dozed off. The debonair man set the book on a table beside him. He picked up the child, put her over his shoulder, and carried her out of the room.

Green light blinded the traveler. He lost consciousness.

He woke in the small cabin. The little girl, bearded man, ax, and refrigerator were gone. At the oak table was a single chair. On the table rested an hourglass with a green circle on its lower half. Disregarding recent events, the traveler sat in the chair. He focused solely on the hourglass’s green circle – imagining the sands out of existence.

****

The green of the circle expanded, absorbing the traveler. He lost awareness of self and surroundings. Time became meaningless as the sands evaporated.

A loud mix of Gregorian chant and psychedelia blasted the traveler out of his emerald trance. He remained in his chair in the cabin. In a corner to his left stood the green-bearded man, holding his ax. Across from the traveler sat the dark-haired little girl. Her hands were conspicuously empty.

“Something is missing,” said the little girl.

“I will recreate it,” the green-bearded man said.

He flipped his ax into the air. As the object twirled, it morphed into the hourglass with the green circle on its lower half. The green-bearded man caught the hourglass.

“This item is as true or false as you wish it to be,” he said, heaving the hourglass at the traveler. That item no longer exists, thought the traveler. The hourglass disappeared in mid-air.

The cabin went pitch black. The traveler heard two voices – the first, female; the second, male:

“What is your name?”

“Sebastian R. Flemming the Third.”

“Wow. That’s quite distinguished.”

“I’ve never cared for it. I’d rather not have a number after my name.”

Something sharp pierced the back of the traveler’s head. An electric current shot through him. He seemed to die a second death.

But he soon woke in a darkened field. Thunder and lightning thrashed above. Rain pelted him. A glowing bubble hovered a few feet in front of him. It contained a breathtaking woman of black hair and hypnotic green eyes. The woman raised her arms to the sky and the inclement weather ceased.

Smiling, she said, “Sebastian, why are you here?”

The traveler’s words flowed from him unconsciously: “I am here to see you. Nothing has been right since I lost you.”

“Surely you’ve realized that you never lost me.”

“Can I touch you?”

The bubble disintegrated. The woman stepped toward the traveler, placing her hand in his. Her touch sent another electric surge through him. The two of them suddenly stood inside the cabin, at the door.

She said, “Fate is on the other side.”

She opened the door. They stepped outside, hand in hand, penetrating the next phase of immateriality.