Blue Stew (Second Edition) (16 page)

Walter tried desperately to ignore the unavoidable conclusion by picking out something else—
anything
else—from what Timothy had said. “It’s . . . it’s not like I’m some kind of
addict
. . . I’ve
tried
things, that’s all . . .”

“You ‘try things’ because your chemical imbalance is not as severe as it is for some, and you can see what so many others see, yet still fail to act on: Life has
no
purpose. It is a sorry accident—a self-perpetuating, sorry accident. And you, like so many others, ‘try things’ to get away from it. Unfortunately, the medicine you’ve taken up until now has not been strong enough to fully counteract the disorder that inhibits you from seeking your
proper
liberation.”

It was becoming, it seemed to Walter, as prudent a time as any to challenge the man with the gun, “You say ‘chemical imbalance’ and ‘disorder’ in place of, I guess, survival instincts or emotional systems? Can you really call these things an ‘imbalance,’ if they’re integral . . .” but he had just collided with the final point, Walter realized as he trailed off miserably.

“. . . Integral ingredients in life?” Timothy supplied easily. “Yes, I can, because life is fundamentally built around a senseless drive towards an imbalance. This basic characteristic of life is not so horrible in, you know, birds and trees and life forms that lack such developed emotional systems, sure. But, for complex, conscious creatures like humans, it is a dismal prerequisite of life to hold us hostage in our bodies, leveraging fear and pain and false hope against us. You know, I have a PhD in biochemistry from Harvard, so I would know.”

Walter realized that his knees had begun to shake. He had no idea how this was going to play out, but there was a very bad feeling in his gut: Timothy Glass was a lunatic with a rifle angling to prove a fatal point.

Timothy smiled. His face had gotten clearer as Walter’s eyesight had acclimated to the contrast of light.

“Walter, remember one of humanities few truths: The only thing to fear is fear itself. The chemicals that have your brow glistening with sweat and your pulse racing right now, those chemicals lie to you. Your brain is a machine of false perception feeding into a
useless
cycle.”

“Maybe so,” Walter’s voice was small and pleading. “Still, I . . . I just want to go home now, Mister Glass,” he finished with a laugh that might’ve been closer to a whimper.

“You
could
,” drawled Timothy. “Though, I’d forgotten how cathartic using a fellow man as a sounding board can be for the damned series of tubes in our skulls. I had voiced some of
this
to former colleagues of mine before, and—
if
they would indulge me at
all,
” Timothy spat bitterly, “it would only be to go as far as suggest that I seek professional counseling, and that I’m still grieving over Susie. I don’t talk to any of them anymore.”

Timothy stopped.

“Susie was my wife. Did you hear what happened to her?”

“I . . . yeah, I’m sorry.”

“I was horribly torn up for a time, there’s no denying that. She was the only woman I’ve ever been with . . . the only woman I’ll
ever
be with,” the first and last trace of human emotion touched Timothy’s tone as he said this. He quickly regained his machine-like cadence, “In the end, I was gifted with the ultimate perspective on life. Susie is better off, now.”

“You might be right,” Walter spoke with forced sympathy. “And I agree about the therapeutic nature of talking things through. But . . . I’m just
really
tired, Mister Glass. And I’m
really
sorry I was so immature and broke onto your property like this. If you want, maybe . . . maybe I can come by over the weekend and do some chores, to pay you back?” Walter, if he got out of there alive, could not think of anything more horrible than willingly submitting himself to the company of this madman again—but he was willing to offer
anything
at that point to get away.

Timothy’s shaded face twisted out of contemplative thought.

Walter pushed, “Trust me, man; I’m the
last
person you should worry about ratting you out. You run a meth lab;
whatever
, good for you.”

Timothy’s eyebrows raised and his scars stretched, making Walter cringe.

“A ‘meth lab?’”

Walter nodded, though the assumption, abruptly, did not seem so obvious.

“Walter, oh Walter . . .” Timothy began to nod. It had come to the point of making a final choice, and the final choice was easy. “I
could
let you leave now, believing that. However, like I already said: I can’t be so cavalier. Plus, I like you Walter. I want to
help
you.”

“I don’t . . . I don’t . . .” his voice was no more than a faltering whisper.

“Give me some credit, Walter.
Meth
is not the cure. You know it, I know it. It’s temporary relief, like all the rest. The sum of my life history and my educational background has—by pure dumb chance, truth be told—allowed me to perceive with unprecedented clarity the disorder that afflicts virtually all humans. And my extensive education and my ties to the medical field, they all have enabled me to attempt develop a cure—a
true
cure—to
life
.”

Walter was actively trying to avoid connecting the dots; trying to avoid reaching the Hollywood cliché of knowing too much. He broke in stupidly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just let me go home. I don’t care . . . just let me go home . . .”

“Now I must give
you
some credit, Walter. You’re not
this
dumb. You already have enough to catch a hint, even if it might take a day to fully develop.” Timothy, now, set the rifle onto the table beside him, though he left one hand on it. “And I really need to thank you for this opportunity, Walter. The chance to talk my way through this is so very cathartic . . . the clarity I’m gaining from stripping all of it down to laymen’s terms is incredibly
exhilarating
, in fact!”

“I’m just so tired . . . I . . .” Walter was trembling all over now. It was starting to fit together, horribly, even as he
still
tried to shield himself through forced ignorance.

“And . . . you’re beginning to see it!” Timothy’s eyes lit up madly. “After a long year of full-time research and development, I succeeded. I have created a drug that effectively counteracts the chemical imbalance in our brains, the
disorder
that forces upon us predictable, broken perspectives. Perspectives that warp the truth of the universe, drawing us like bugs to shining beacons of useless desires like money and power, corralling the strays and the stragglers with senseless barriers of darkness and of fear and of the unknown.

“I alone, Walter, have developed the scientifically-sound cure to human life, which holds with it the promise of
true
freedom for all of mankind!” As his voice rose, a crazed light flared in Timothy’s eyes.

“It was four months ago that I saw my first indication that I was—
finally
—honing in on
the
cure. A lab rat, Jake 12, on the twelfth iteration of the compound, uninhibited by fear and pain, scratched the side of his head down to the bone, and later bled to death. I recreated the success a week later, and over a span of months I arduously studied the results and tweaked the compound as I moved onto guinea pigs, and then real pigs, and sheep, and a few shelter dogs.”

Electric lamps were scattered unsystematically over the work tables—plugged into the same industrial orange cords as the one upstairs—so lighting in the hidden basement was spotty. This helps explain why only now—as his eyes had grown more accustom to the lighting—did Walter notice the large animal cage and, next to it, stacks of smaller ones, all along the furthest, darkest wall. Additionally, the putrid smell of the place, which he had distractedly assumed to be the exposed soil, Walter now realized smelled a whole lot more like animal feces—a scent he was familiar with from dealing with so many farmers at work.

Timothy laughed before going on; Walter shuddered at the sound.

“The effects on the pigs and sheep, while on the developing drug, were less transparent, lacking the natural ability to claw themselves to death like the others. Most just didn’t eat or drink, and allowed themselves to wither away over the course of a week. My solution was to install a moderate-sized propane stove in one corner of their confinement, and set it to high. Like clockwork, every single animal approached the lit burners and promptly dropped their heads into the flames until their brains were medium-rare.”

Walter felt his stomach turn threateningly.

“However, while the theory was sound and the practice held no contradictions, dog and sheep brains are a far cry from the intricate prisons of the human brain.”

It was at this point that Walter acknowledged to himself that all this, without any further chance of doubt, was going in no other direction but the one he had already guessed. The thought of wheeling around and scrambling up the stairs as fast as he could shot through his reeling mind . . . but Timothy’s hand was still resting on the rifle . . .

Timothy went on, “So I—maybe a little too
cavalierly
—tried a small dosage on myself. And, even on such a small dosage, the experience was everything I could’ve hoped it would be. My acquired intellect no longer had to battle with my inborn, lying instincts over universal truths. I could see with utter lucidity how, for instance, my three-thousand dollar laptop held no more
true
value than an equally-sized rock in the woods . . .
or
,
how my body was just as worthwhile, to the greater world, as a corpse decaying on the ground, mingling back together with the other elements  . . .
more
valuable, in fact, seeing how humankind represents nothing more than walking prisons: things that have inherent
negative
value.”

Timothy searched over the table nearest to him briefly, but did not seem to find what he was looking. He went on, “I lost myself in such balanced, perfect perspective. I found a knife. Cutting these three slices into my face was the most wonderful experience of my life,” he ran a finger along the middle scar. “I could practically see, in lines of beautiful white, my essence escaping this horrible cell.”

Timothy stopped there for a moment and shook his head longingly.

Walter, his eyes shifting uncontrollably about, now noticed how all the orange power cords seemed to congest around a high shelf in front of him and to his left . . .

Timothy went on, his head still moving back and forth, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever brought myself to do, stopping after the three cuts . . . but I had remembered that I
alone in this physical form have
positive
value. For I had created, what I
then
knew to be, the cure to human life. And, ever since then, I have been producing as much of it as fast as I can. I intend to spread this
truth
all over the Earth.”

Timothy stepped to one side, away from his rifle, and gestured at a series of sealed vials, separate from the beakers and the tubes and the flames on the same table. Inside the vials was an opaque liquid substance, colored baby-blue.

“I call it my Blue Stew.”

Walter stared at the vials, horrified. He said softly, without thinking, “You used that on the five victims the other night . . .”

“Well, as Rufus 5 demonstrated, Blue Stew is still effective when mixed with warm—not
boiling
—coffee. So, I just needed to lure a few dumb grunts out here through Craigslist with the promise of excessive upfront cash and mindless labor . . . and who
doesn’t
take coffee before work?” Timothy smiled to himself. “
But
. I would never say it like
that
. . . that I
used
it on them. I
gave
them the greatest possible gift, the gift of true perspective—
blue
perspective! They
willingly
set themselves free, all while seeing the world with more peace and clarity than anyone has before them!”

Mortified, Walter spoke automatically, “‘Peace and clarity’? Those men must’ve been tripping out of their minds—you turned them into deranged, violent psychopaths . . .”

Timothy’s face dropped for a moment.