CHAPTER 25
Dusk, and Simon’s eyes opened again.
The memories hung there, and he walked through them: the woman, the apartment—he winced—the fall down the hill, the headlights. Frowning, he very carefully tried to move his shoulder, just an inch, just lift it off the bed. It worked. A little stiff, but no real pain. His eyes and throat felt cleansed, and he drew in a few deep breaths. Pleased, he sat up.
He was in a small bedroom in a house, on a twin bed. Dark brown wood paneling covered the walls. A small night table stood beside the bed with a reading lamp on it. Shag carpet stretched across the floor, underneath huge, overlapping squares of heavy gray plastic. The closet, a wide type with two folding doors, stood open and perfectly empty, except for a hanger on which his clothes were draped. They looked to have been recently washed.
Guest bedroom, he thought.
He lifted the sheets and saw that he was wearing a pair of boxer shorts he didn’t recognize. That started to freak him out, but before he could make any clear decisions the bedroom door opened and a woman walked in. She flipped on the overhead light and Simon flinched away from it for a second.
Older than he was, late twenties or so, she wore a burgundy silk jacket with a matching skirt and a white ruffled blouse. He’d thought for a moment she’d be bringing him a tray of food. That’s what he always saw in the movies, when the main character woke up in some strange place, the first person he saw was always some attractive female with a tray of food. This woman was attractive, all right –- more so the longer he looked at her—but empty-handed. She stood in the doorway and watched him with a blatantly speculative expression.
Attractive, yes...and Simon felt himself responding, and almost immediately the other urge flared up right behind it. He remembered vividly the woman in the apartment, how much he’d wanted her, how he’d been so rudely denied, and the full need of it settled onto him.
He felt his eyes change, and the woman saw it; her own eyes narrowed, but she didn’t move from the door. She crossed her arms just below her ample bosom and leaned against the doorframe, only watching him. That made Simon angry. He wasn’t sure why, but it did. He didn’t even try to fight it this time. He threw the sheets off him with already lengthening fingers and rolled forward, up onto his knees. His jaw dropped, distended, and the teeth came in, and he brought one leg up, ready to lunge off the bed toward the woman, and she said, “I think you need to calm down and get back in bed.”
Simon stopped in mid-motion and his fingers rapidly returned to normal.
Calm down and get back in bed. Okay. That sounded reasonable. He nodded, his jaw re-formed and clicked shut, and he gathered up the sheet.
The woman pushed off of the doorframe and came into the room as he settled down onto the mattress with the covers around his chin.
“Now you just stay right there, like that, and listen while I talk to you. All right?”
Simon nodded, and stared at her. She was a little heavy, a little more rounded than he liked, but the closer she got to him the more he found himself straining at the boxer shorts. He was acutely embarrassed, and he wanted to lift one leg, at least, to camouflage himself. But she’d told him to stay right there, like that, and that sounded pretty good, so he figured he’d go along with that.
But...but the need was on him bad. His fingers began to throb as the bones softened, re-formed, softened again, echoing his pulse. He saw the white pinpoints of his eyes reflected clearly in hers, and his jawline rippled. But she’d told him to stay, to listen. So he did, and it made him want to howl.
The woman leaned back, away from him. “My name is Brenda, and I have a lot that I need to tell you.” She stood up from the bed, went back to the door and pushed it all the way open. In the hallway outside the bedroom stood a small, dull-looking man in dark slacks, a white shirt, and a tie. He held a slim teenage girl by the arm, in such a way that he seemed to be keeping her upright as much as she was herself. The girl looked frightened, but made no move to break the man’s grip. Drugged, Simon thought. That girl is sedated. And pretty...
“But I know you must be absolutely starving,” Brenda said. “I’ll come back and speak with you when you’re done.” She nodded at the small man, who shoved the girl into Simon’s room. Brenda walked out and pulled the door shut behind her. Simon heard several locks engage.
He and the girl stared at each other for about ten seconds. Then Simon felt a release, a catch thrown inside his head, and thought his blood would boil out of his veins.
He bore the girl down to the floor in a tangle of white squirming coils.
She never made a sound.
# # #
Later. How much later...? Simon didn’t know. Couldn’t tell. His toes still quivered.
For the first time, the sheets of gray plastic covering the hardwood floor of the bedroom actually registered on him. That was good planning. Both he and the girl were soaked, dripped red everywhere they moved.
Well, everywhere he moved.
Simon lay on his back beside the bed. When he rolled up onto his side, the plastic stuck to his skin, and he had to peel it off. The girl’s body lay a few feet away, curled and shrunken and looking a bit like a cast-off insect shell.
He closed his eyes. He knew from experience that as soon as the buzz wore off he’d feel it, all the remorse and guilt and pain. It was a unique time for him, this blood-fueled high, when he could survey his actions and their consequences intellectually, distanced from every emotion but pleasure. He tried to savor it.
The door opened. Brenda, just as striking as before, said, “Get up and take off your shorts.”
Simon scrambled to his feet, happy to oblige. Off with the shorts, sure, no problem with that. He left them on the plastic, and she said, “Now follow me.” Well, that wasn’t a problem either.
She pointed him toward the bathroom and told him to wash off all the blood. Still no problem, quite a reasonable request, glad to do it. The shower felt pretty good, anyway, though he really hated to see the blood disappear down the drain. He liked it when it dried on him, and cracked a little when he moved. Anyway. He tried to think of a song to sing while he bathed, but nothing good came to mind, so he hummed “Row Row Row Your Boat.”
When he finished and stepped out of the shower stall, he found clean, fluffy towels and a fresh change of clothes waiting for him. Just plain white socks and tighty-whiteys, and dark blue jeans and a solid green T-shirt, looked like they came from K-Mart. But it beat walking around naked, so he got dressed.
Brenda waited for him in the hall. He started to say something, but the air filled up with that scent, the scent he’d smelled before, and she stepped forward and put her arms around his neck and kissed him, and oh, oh wow, even though she didn’t give him any tongue, damn but that was the best kiss he’d ever had, and everything got sort of white and weird and his head went strange.
Next thing he knew he stood in the bedroom again. All the plastic and the bloody underwear and the girl were gone. Brenda stood next to him and told him to sit down on the bed, so he did, and that felt better. She pulled a chair across from another room—Simon thought he saw a kid in that room for a second, but he wasn’t sure, maybe the kid wasn’t real, ’cause he was really pale and had this thing on his head—and she sat down in the chair and looked at him.
“All right,” she said. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them truthfully. Okay?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Good. Now. Earlier tonight you were in a park in the city.”
He nodded affably.
“What was the name of that park?”
“Uh...I think I saw a sign...Hammer Field?”
“Good enough. You met someone...unusual in that park tonight, correct? Do you remember that?”
Simon squinted and thought about it...
...and the rest of the night came back down on him like falling masonry. All of the good feelings, the thrill of the girl he’d taken, the incredible kiss, everything went sour.
His eyes started watering and he scuffled back on the bed and jammed himself into the corner, and hugged his knees to his chest and darted his eyes around. His heartbeat went crazy.
“Please,” he said, in a voice like a little boy’s. “Please, he’s not here, is he? The guy from the park isn’t here, is he? I don’t, I don’t wanna see him, I don’t, don’t...” He trailed off, and Brenda scowled.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Simon started crying. He grabbed handfuls of hair and hid his face.
“Hey. I asked what’s wrong with you. Answer me.”
Simon wailed, “I’m scared!” and really started sobbing, and couldn’t talk.
# # #
Brenda counted to ten, very slowly. She’d seen this happen once or twice before, when she dosed someone. Sometimes it brought emotions closer to the surface. If she’d had to predict which of Simon Grove’s emotions would float to the top, though, certainly none of her choices would have been fear. After a few moments, when she felt collected, she fixed her eyes on him again and said, “Simon. You do what I say. Look at me.”
Reluctantly he raised his head. His whole body shook, and tears rivered down his face. She’d never tried what she was about to try, and had no clue whether or not it would work, but what the hell, it was worth a shot.
“I can’t believe this,” she muttered. Then, louder: “Simon. Stop crying.” It took a few seconds, but the tears dried up. He still shook, though, obviously still terrified. She said, “You’re afraid of this guy? It was a guy, right?”
He nodded pitifully.
“Okay, well, no more of that garbage. You’re not afraid of him. Hell, you’re not afraid of anything. Got that? Do you understand me? You’re fearless. All right?”
She sat back and waited to see what effect that would have. It took a few more seconds, and then—
The change scared her.
Simon stopped shaking, and grew unnaturally still. He partially uncurled from his fetal position and lifted his head, slowly took in the room around him as if seeing it for the first time. Quickly he focused on Brenda, and as he looked into her eyes she sat back a little farther in her seat and swallowed a sudden lump in her throat.
Something in there had shifted, melted, realigned itself, and Brenda suddenly understood that she had unintentionally, radically transformed the young man.
She thought for a moment that his features had changed, that he had softened and reshaped his face into someone else’s. Then she realized the only difference lay in how he wore his expression. The effect rippled out from there, through everything about him. The way he held his hands, the set of his shoulders. The tilt of his head. As if some force had scooped out the old Simon Grove and poured a stranger into the empty shell.
He wiped the tears off his face with his shirt-tail, straightened his back and folded his legs under him, and regarded her with total calm.
“Y’know, I’m not sure what just happened...” This he said in a different voice, even. Lower, better modulated. “But I think I owe you for it.”
“Ah...well. Remember, you’re doing what I tell you to do.”
He arched his back and rested his forearms on his knees. And smiled.
“Oh, absolutely. I’m all yours.”
Thoroughly unnerved and trying hard not to show it, Brenda said, “Oookay, back to the park. You ran into somebody in the park tonight?”
“Did I ever! That guy was something to see! Popping around, all over the place, covered in guns. Wore a mask, too.”
“A mask?”
“Yep. Black one, white over the eyes. Scary dude. Real badass.”
Brenda flashed on several articles in the paper over the last several days, and she groaned and put her face in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Simon asked helpfully. She ignored him.
Exactly what we need. An augment with an agenda. And right off the scale, to boot. “We need to find that man. Did you see him without the mask?” Simon nodded again. “Good. All right, come over here across the hall. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Sure,” he said. “But first I’ve got a couple of questions for you.”
Brenda frowned again. It looked as though she’d have to give him another dose as soon as possible. “Such as?”
“Like, okay...how’d we get this way? I mean, you and that other guy are the first people I’ve met who could, y’know, do things. Like I can do things. So what caused it? This is the first chance I’ve had to ask someone who’d know. Well, I think my mom knows something about it, but she wouldn’t ever tell me.”
“This isn’t the time for lengthy explanations. All right? When I have time I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Okay. So give me the abridged version for now.”
Brenda decided she didn’t much care for the new Simon. Impatiently, she said, “The abridged version? Fine. No one knows how it happened. It just did. About one out of every four or five million people got it. Usually people who already had a little bit of it...like your mother. Like you.”
Simon nodded. “I knew Mom had to have something. She couldn’t’ve looked that good for that long without some kind of help.”
“So. Satisfied? Can we get on with things?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now come with me.”
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2 comments:
At this point I'm out of it enough not to remember whether or not I took out any earlier mention that Simon's mother might have a touch of an augmentation herself. If I did, parts of this chapter will be a little confusing. If I didn't, I think I meant to.
The Six-Week Freelance Deadline Sprint is rapidly drawing to a close, and I can't say I'll miss it. I look forward to having that portion of my brain back for a little while.
It's not confusing because (if I am recalling correctly) up until the end of this chapter our only frame of reference regarding Simon's mother comes from Simon himself; and he clearly doesn't always know what is real. So, his mother's apparent youth could be the result of augments, or plastic surgery or his own unstable mind.
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