Falter Kingdom (20 page)

Correct.

Yeah, they'll look at me weird. They'll think they need to save me; they'll talk about how I'm losing. But I never said I was fighting. I'm not fighting any battles, and I don't think they'll understand how I know even before I could ever know what's going to happen. Like, I know what's going to happen, like, whole days before it's going to happen. People call that a symptom. I think it's really a gift. You're letting me know before it happens.

There are plenty of surprises ahead.

Yeah, it would be boring if there weren't. That's what I was going on and on about earlier. Things are definitely different and they can't be different if everything's the same.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Nope. Things are getting exciting. I mean, people will say it's weird, how I talk to myself... but that's what they see. They hear us talking but it's the same voice. It's like, “Who is saying what?” It doesn't matter. Hunter.

H.

I said something.

Then I spoke.

I should be scared.

You should be scared.

Why am I not scared?

Because you're smarter than most.

Right, and that's cool of you to say, but what just happened there happened without even having to say anything. But we could have said it. If we did, it would be, like, to other people, complete insanity. They'll say that I'm speaking in tongues. They usually say that about a person when he's all possessed. Oh! And that's another thing. This is possession, right?

You are possessed?

I'm not sure. I guess this is it. I was reading about it earlier. You saw.

I did.

And well, they say that when it's, like, no longer a sense of being watched and now a sense of being one, or no longer, um—what were the words?—able to think clear thoughts without there being...

Interjections.

Yeah, interjections, then it's more likely that the subject is possessed. That's what they call people in the videos: “subjects.”

The subject in question is: What of bonding isn't possession?

You mean...

Bonding is a form of possession.

People wanting to be around other people, and because they want to be around those people, they sometimes start talking like them, start acting like them, and they even start dressing like them.

Other people look to be possessed.

That... actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, yeah. Yeah... that does make a lot of sense. It's sort of the same. But then it's also very different. But no two things are the same, yeah. And then I'm kind of focused now on what's happening next. I, well...

You go to school.

I don't want to go to school. Can't believe Halverson hasn't just, like, suspended me again for, you know, “looking like shit.” That's what everyone's saying, even if they aren't actually saying it. And it kind of is true; I just can't stand being around people right now. I get exhausted. Dizzy. Just thinking about all the stuff I have to do, how I have to, you know, really try, it's hard to stomach. It's really hard to handle.

I'll go to school.

You can go, but I'm not.

I'll go.

Fine, that's fine. Just be ready for all that usual stuff.

I'll be fine.

But yeah, you'll be, you know, taking me with you.

No.

I don't get it—what do you mean?

Wait in the tunnel.

But you're going to be there, as me.

When I am you, you are not.

I thought we were both using the name Hunter.

Hunter is Hunter. Sometimes Hunter isn't Hunter.

So I'll stay at Falter?

Stay. You will know everything, precisely when it happens.

That's wild. I mean, you know how I feel about it. It's... strange, I mean, yeah. Okay, I'm rambling. But it's strange, right?

It is difficult at first.

I'll get used to it?

Soon there will be no difference.

What if I go along with you?

Then it will be much like what has occurred previously.

If I don't...

You wait where there is no need to worry. I am not the same.

Yeah, that's true. I... trust you. Everyone else thinks I'm crazy for trusting you, but I mean, you got to go with your instincts, right?

Correct.

Okay. Okay. I'll stay. I'm not going back to school. I don't even want to see their faces. I just want to, like, stay in bed and chill.

Stay in bed. Watch it on video.

Yeah, I'll watch it on video.

Do you trust me?

I trust you.

Friends?

Yeah, man, we're friends. It's pretty obvious that we are. Not that anyone else will ever get it.

11

I WALK TO SCHOOL SO THAT I MAY GET USED TO THIS
body, these legs, this face, the sun. I walk to school and I wait where the locker reads “34.” This is your locker. This is my locker. There are plenty of students. There are plenty of opportunities. I walked to school, and because I did, there is an odor, a stench that barely registers to those here. But they smell it.

I am going to wait until that bell rings. The bell will ring, and I will begin with your day.

I am in your head.

I am plenty, and no, I am not exhausted.

I am your friend, you will see. This will be proof.

You watch as it happens.

The video feed shall be plenty.

It shall be plenty for you.

It shall be plenty of proof that I seek nothing if not the solution to the loneliness that I have felt for as long as I have learned the nature of loneliness.

Your first period is subdued. You sit in the back, I assume, given what you've left me. Yet I am concerned for there is a lot missing—
details, such as names of acquaintances and the name of the instructor staring me down.

You see, I am not sitting. I am not sitting because I am not sure if you sit in the back or the front.

The instructor beckons: “Please, Mr. Warden.”

I know you'll enjoy this, so I say, “Do you want to know how you'll die?”

“Excuse me?”

The humor that it causes, it's wonderful, isn't it? Such humor, such fear in their faces.

Not to be worried.

The instructor will select not to acknowledge what has been said. The instructor will entertain the idea of Mr. Warden being sent to the principal's office. First period, and I have already caused some calamity.

How intriguing.

The principal lives in a routine that has shut his mind off from the more curious concepts in life.

What a waste, I must say.

What a supreme waste of life. Halverson is his name, and he returns home to the same dinners, the same wines, the same few books before retiring for the night in his cushy yet unfeeling bed. There he is, your principal.

“Frankly,” he begins, but as you already know, nothing else is needed.

“Frankly” this.

“Frankly” that.

You are given a warning. “Frankly” Halverson is quite concerned.

He listens to my replies. He notices a change.

My voice is your voice. Soon we will speak the same. Friend, you see it as much as I have seen it. Much like you have said, there is worry, misplaced worry. They see the pale skin, the marks that I have made, the bad breath, the bloodshot eyes. The thinning hair and missing eyelashes.

Indeed, you have seen better days.

A lot of energy placed in a body such as this can achieve only so much. Soon we will find escape.

I find escape from the principal's office. Given a warning, and it's off to third period. Must I be responsible for missing the second period if Halverson kept you with his “frankly” talk for a whole hour? Regardless, I walk as best as I've been able to surmise from watching you and I return to class. During this class, I remain silent like the other students, studying from a book I have no interest in reading.

What is this subject?

I am beginning to understand why you fear the monotony of school. I am also learning quickly of how little others understand about what you are going through. They treat me like an affliction. They treat me as a curse. They treat me as a behemoth.

I encourage you to look it up. “Behemoth.”

I am not a behemoth.

“Demon” is as close to getting right what I am. But so many seek the visual, what I look like, but I can only show you based on what I'm becoming. I look so much like you because of the events that have transpired where I have been able to influence and help.

The day wears on with this same undercurrent of confusion from others. They whisper words involving your demise. They whisper gossip about the breakup. They judge you based on how you look. They judge you based on the way I walk.

During lunch, I sit with Brad, who sits to the side, unwilling to say much of anything to me. I speak to him to get some practice. There is much to learn from speaking using this voice.

I inquire, “Brad, how is it that you haven't gotten laid yet?”

Yet you aren't supposed to know this. It catches him off guard.

There it is, once again, confusion and fear. You might be worried but I wouldn't be concerned. Let us have some fun then.

“Bro, what the hell you talking about?”

Brad attempts to cover up the embarrassment that bubbles up from beneath his practiced demeanor.

“You are still a virgin,” I speak in an authoritative voice. I speak much like any of the instructors might. However, I assume it comes off much different from what I had wanted.

This will take some time. It will require your help too. As mutual friends, I assume we will both learn to operate the social ins and outs with relative ease.

Brad is uncomfortable.

Others are uncomfortable.

Perhaps this is a good moment to leave.

I do. I leave the table, let that bit of information hang bold and true, for it is worth remembering that even if it was I that made them feel so awkward and perhaps afraid, they still assume that it is you they are speaking to.

I believe it would be great to try a drink.

I haven't had what this is called.

I find him where anyone finds him, Jon-Jon, whose real name is Jonathan Johnson, one of the most mediocre of names possible. I saunter up—another word worth acquiring, for I enjoy that word. Saunter.

Jon-Jon is adept at hiding behind a smoke screen, a practiced role of his as a businessman. Yet upon seeing your presence, seemingly out of nowhere—I had walked in such a manner that he couldn't have noticed until I was directly in front of him—he says, “Hunter, well, you're... you're looking a little rough.”

Immediately he runs through a number of ideas, turning you into a gambler's paradise.

I tell him, “Hunter will not die. He will live longer than you.”

The dramatic shift from reserved to noticeably concerned is far more enjoyable when the person's worked tirelessly to be someone he is not.

Jon-Jon makes an offer, for there is little else for him to say: “You want a drink? Maybe a smoke?”

Must it all be vice?

Yet I am here to try one, and I accept a drink. The taste is familiar. I will not be able to taste this with fresh senses. You have tasted and
abused this drink to help navigate the social circles. And it tastes of something else. It has no clear taste whatsoever. I taste mostly the aftermath, long after the effects of alcohol hit this body. I drink as much as you would.

I drink and discover that the body changes, becomes more difficult to navigate, after drinking enough.

I walk with narrower focus to what's next.

Fifth period and sixth, yet this body needs time to repair. It needs to rest. I sit in what is deemed study hall. The students move away from where you are sitting. You are “freaking them out.”

I notice a young woman, Blaire, the only one staring back when I am caught making eye contact. She knows you, and not as what you were but what you are becoming. She wants to approach, but I sense that she feels as though she hasn't been welcome. I sit there, staring, and she sits, staring back, for the entire period. Upon leaving the school campus, I watch so many treat you as a contingency, something that shouldn't be. A lost cause.

For the one named Blaire, she is the sole exception.

Everyone else, they assume that the exorcism may arrive too late. I let the body rest before walking home. Your home is like you left it.

Now leave the kingdom.

They will be waiting for you.

Your parents.

I watched the entire thing, and man, it does seem different after it is all said and done. Seeing it from a distance, I really get this strange feeling, like they want me to be messed up, the one who got it all wrong, so that they feel better about themselves. I mean, right?

That would be correct.

It's all fixated around you, and I don't know why that is.

I am deemed an affliction.

Like something I shouldn't be around. The priests told me to fight any and all contact with you.

I remember. I was there.

They don't see you for what you really are, I don't think.

They do not. They see things for the horror that has been defined over time.

You know, I've been thinking... is it why Father Albert calls you an unclean spirit?

Perhaps.

Yeah, I think that's probably why. Demon seems too much like all the other demons in the movies and stuff.

They assume that the activity is made to terrorize. I have only done what I have done because it worked.

Definitely. It definitely worked. Okay, so I don't want this to happen.

It will happen. It is what's in front of you.

Like, she just won't go away! Now she got my parents involved?! They're both home. I've never seen it where they are both home in the middle of the day. Not like this. Now this, this is insane. She just won't leave me be.

I am here. You will be fine.

You'll do all the talking?

If I must. Yet did you not state that you would no longer take the easy and convenient way out of decisions?

Yeah. Yeah, I did say that. It's just... okay. Fine. Time to get this over with.

Of course, they're not going to let me step inside before my dad's right there, making sure I won't get away.

“Son, we have to talk.”

It sounds like I'm about to be in, like, one of those TV dramas. I'm the poor son who's in a losing battle against a demon.

Mom's got her head in her hands, and it looks like she's been crying.

That bitch Becca is there, and she told them all. Of course she told them. Look at that grin on her face. You see it?

Indeed, I do.

Dad's right behind me so that I can't just run away. Run upstairs. Run back outside. Run inside so that you can speak for me. But yeah,
I know, I know, you're right there. I just don't want to have to hear this. It's so ridiculous to me.

“Son...” Dad's got a chair, got a plan, got a whole big charade.

Yeah, I'll sit, even though I already know how bad this is going to be. I'm sitting. Now it really starts.

Becca first: “Hunter, are you there?”

Of course I'm here. But I'm not going to say anything. She shouldn't be here. She should be, I don't know, somewhere else. Out of my life.

Then it's my dad saying the same thing: “Hunter?”

My mom cries. She won't stop crying.

Would you like to know how your mom's going to die?

Huh? How?

Your mom will begin coughing one day. It is a cough that fails to improve. It disappears and then returns. Your mom will begin coughing up blood. She will ignore the symptoms given that they're quite easy to ignore when working fourteen-hour days. When she gets it checked, her voice will have left her. A knot that will not leave when swallowing will send her to the doctor. The diagnosis will be cancer of the larynx. Your mom will die ten years after the first cough. You will be in your midtwenties.

I look at the tears and see how my mom really does look overworked and ragged. I take this information as something sinister but also something that'll just have to happen. It's already there, right? The cough?

The first symptoms have already begun to show.

Dad looks me in the eye. “Son, are you there, son?”

Becca too. “Hunter?”

They want you to speak.

Fine. “I'm here.”

Becca, acting all concerned: “Hunter, stay with us.”

And then Dad going on about being out of the loop: “Why haven't you told us, son? What makes you assume that this isn't serious?”

What is there to say? “You're never around, what do you care?”

Mom gasps, cries a little harder. Wow, what are they trying to prove?

“Like hell I don't care. This isn't you speaking. It's the demon!”

Becca nods. “You need help. And now.”

I say, “Why are you, like, even here? This is
me
talking.”

Becca rolls her eyes. “That was just an argument. We have been through too much to just up and end it. Come on, Hunter...”

Um, I seem to remember the scene being really, really final. I make it sound really insincere: “Come on, Becca...”

Dad's all like, “Becca was the one that had to tell us! I simply cannot believe this could happen to my son!”

It can happen to absolutely anyone. You're right. It can happen at any time.

One must simply put oneself out there.

Yeah, and they're acting like I'm dying.

You are dying.

Huh?

We are all steadily moving toward the end of the tunnel.

Well, yeah, if you put it that way.

“Son, you need to fight it. You need to think about the future. Son, do you hear me?! You need to be strong. I know you can be strong.”

He's shaking me and it's making me dizzy.

Tell him to stop.

“Dad,” I start, “you won't want to keep shaking me or else I'll...”

Were those your words or mine?

A little of both.

Well, it worked. Dad's taking a step back. That look on his face, he's so damn worried.

Would you like to know how your dad's going to die?

Die due to worry?

Your dad will remarry after the passing of your mother. Your dad will attempt to move on, but his attempts will ultimately fail to render anything but guilt from the fact that he had spent much of their marriage running away from intimacy. Your dad will find himself alone one night, unable to free himself from the thoughts
dealing with your mom's death. He'll die much like so many have done before, a deadbeat with dull eyes staring blankly at the TV.

You just made me depressed.