Vision2 (8 page)

He smiled as he thought of her and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Firturro met with Omiralle that night at his apartment. It was not uncommon for watchers whose humans were about to undergo the Mezoglike to discuss their participants. This meeting, however, was different. Their hushed voices echoed across the room before falling flatly through the stale air.

“I
’
m positive Roger
’
s been experiencing the precognitive flashes. I gave him the whistle to try and reassure him, but I
’
m not so sure it
’
s working. There were a couple of times during his meeting in front of the council when I thought he was going to faint,” Firturro said as he poured another cup of Kalika.

“I thought the same about Trey, but he managed to
‘
be cool,
’
as he says it.”

“I wonder what they see when they have these flashes? Trisinna
’
s text only mentioned that the humans she observed had overpowering psychic flashes. It never mentions exactly what they see,” Omiralle admitted, referring to the text they
’
d literally stumbled across when rearranging books in the watchers
’
library.

“I
’
ve often wondered the same thing, but I daren
’
t ask them directly for fear they will speak of it in public and admit to our knowledge of it under intense interrogation by the President. If he knew that we
’
d found the secret text, it would be the end of us, despite our meager protection.”

“Right now the only protection we
’
ve been afforded is the fact that most of the watchers have banded together, and he knows it. Without our united front, we would surely crumble.” Omiralle sighed and looked around the room as he rubbed the perspiration off his brow with the back of his thick hand. “Do you truly hold out any hope that one of our humans will be able to make it to the end?”

“Not much,” Firturro admitted, “but something
’
s changing, something feels different this time, and I just hope it
’
s something good.”

Omiralle nodded his head in silent agreement. They had started on a path they could not turn away from the moment they
’
d read Trisinna
’
s text and realized that the history they
’
d been given wasn
’
t merely wrong but a travesty to what the ancients had truly believed. Whatever came now was unavoidable.

Conversations with the dead

Eleven years earlier…

The yellowing rose covered wallpaper mocked him with weathered strips that curled off the sheetrock, and he couldn
’
t remember how long he
’
d been in this room of death.

She had been dying for a while now; Roger just hadn
’
t wanted to admit it. His mother was all he had left. As far as Roger knew, the bastard he
’
d once called dad was out fondling the new breasts on that truck stop slut of his. Hell, the idiot had stopped by the hospital once, and the stench of whiskey was so strong Roger had practically gagged.

Now Roger sat in the living room listening to her shallow gasping and the steady hum and click-click of the machines they had her hooked into. Because it was such a small house, and he was only five feet away from her door, he couldn
’
t help but listen. A nurse stopped by twice a day to check the machines and make sure his mother received her daily round of injections and pills.

Snatches of memories came to him in an onslaught, floating up and mixing together like the colors in a kaleidoscope whenever he closed his eyes. He could remember them dancing around the living room to her old 45
’
s of The Beatles, Manfred Mann, and Jimi Hendrix
.
He could remember making Christmas cookies and falling asleep on the couch together waiting for Santa. But each of those memories, no matter how happy, was now tainted with the memory of her lying in the next room, waiting to die.

There was a part of him, as deep and hidden as it might have been, that just wished she
would
give up.

If she would just go….

An irregular click on the machine brought him from his thoughts. Roger
’
s head tilted toward the room. When he heard the strange sound again, he stood on unstable legs and wobbled to the bedroom door. He stood in the doorway and silently watched his

Kristi Brooks

mother. Several seconds later, she took a deep, ragged breath, and the monitors went back to the regular click-click and hum that he had grown so accustomed to hearing.

When he was reassured that she was still alive, he returned to the couch. As he walked across the room, he noticed that the TV was on. The land that spilled across the screen was covered in pale, puke-green sand, and the picture quality had the gritty and realistic look of a documentary.

The camera panned across the horizon, revealing two suns, one on each side of the screen. One was a bright orange-red fireball that lit the room up with its glare. The other looked a lot like the normal sun, except for the static-filled picture.

The picture zoomed in on what looked like a bug nestled on the ocean of sand. Roger leaned into the TV, his body drawn and crouched, like a panther waiting to pounce. He turned up the volume until the neon green bar read that it was all the way up, but he got only a sharp, loud burst of static in return.

The scene was moving at an alarming rate of speed, and the dark spot took the shape of two men. One was on his knees, his upper body hunched over as if he was trying to vomit while the other lay motionless on the ground. Just as it looked like the camera was going to run right into him, the poor creature looked up, and Roger let out an involuntary gasp when he saw his own face looking at him.

He was older, and there were lashes of thin blood leaking out of several cuts, but it was definitely him. Roger leaned in to get a closer look, but the picture went black just as the machinery in his mother
’
s room began to shriek.

The dark TV screen stared back at him as the reality of the alarms registered. He ran toward the urgent howl in one swift movement, every muscle in his body suddenly on fire. She looked at him with the wide, red-rimmed eyes of a prisoner as her breath escaped from her body in sharp, harsh barks. He maneuvered through the network of equipment until he reached the side of the bed.

“Just take slow, deep breaths. Remember, that
’
s what the doctor said to do when you felt one of these attacks coming on. Just try to focus on your breathing.”

“I can
’
t…It won
’
t matter…just, need…bow out,” She managed to croak out between each gasp.

“No, no you don
’
t, remember? You don
’
t believe in giving up, remember?” Roger said as his mind filled with panic.

This wasn
’
t his mother. It had to be someone else, this had to be happening to someone else, because…because she couldn
’
t leave him now. As he watched, her breathing became less and less harsh.

She smiled, and for a second her face was transformed from the haggard and tired face he had grown so used to seeing into the beautiful, vibrant person he remembered, and he realized that he was already missing the woman he was so afraid of loosing. She had been buried under pain and tranquilizers for so long he
’
d forgotten about his real mother.

“I love you.” He leaned over and whispered into her ear as he slipped his warm hand inside her cold one, her skin a paper-thin shell beneath his fingertips.

She held on for a while longer, but she didn
’
t talk anymore. Tears of pain and freedom streaked down her sunken cheeks.

It
’
s just another attack. It
’
s just another attack.

They sat there, his mother
’
s limp hand locked inside Roger
’
s firm one, both of them as still as stones for fifteen minutes before she went. There was no fanfare, no dramatics. She just simply stopped breathing.

Roger leaned over her lifeless form and cried. He didn
’
t move to shut off the shrieking machinery that heralded his mother
’
s passing. It no longer mattered. Their sounds blended in with his hiccupping sobs, and he liked it better that way.

The man from the strange TV show was promptly tucked away into a mental filing cabinet Roger tried desperately not to think about.

Now….

“No one can help you. Can
’
t you see that?”

Roger opened his eyes to a cold, harsh, unfamiliar room and immediately rolled over and put his feet on the cold floor to reassure himself that the nightmare hadn
’
t chased him into reality.

In the dream his mother had been barely alive and he was holding her hand, much as he had the day she
’
d died. As she
’
d lain there, emaciated to the point of terminal dehydration despite the IV
’
s, she
’
d insisted he was the doomed one.

Even though his blood pounded through his tingling palms he knew this was a dream. The muscles across his entire body were bunched together, but he
’
d been unable to move even one finger. The fierce grip of terror closed in around him, and panic raced through his veins like poison, each pulse roaring through his body like incoming waves on an ocean beach.

Then, in the dream, her face began to change in front of him. The sunken skin around her eyes caved in, revealing a fresh, wet mess of newly hatched maggots. He tried to scream, but the weak squeak that came from his throat was overtaken by a sound like paper being waded up and thrown into a fireplace as her skin cracked and dried across her body, turning her into a living mummy.

Roger managed to shake himself out of his stupor and yanked his hand away, taking some of her skin with him. When he tried to run, he found that his legs still weren
’
t responding, and when he tried to shut his eyes hot needles forced themselves in, making him turn back to her. His muscles were so taunt he could feel them straining against his skin, jumping like a horde of fleas.

He watched in mounting horror as her fingers reached out to him. He didn
’
t want her to touch him, to mark him.

“Roger, look at what happened to me. It
’
ll happen to you too. You can
’
t stop it. Just give in,”
she said with dry, clicking vocal chords. He could almost hear the bugs and the dirt moving in her throat as she spoke.

The voice was a horrifying mixture of the voices that had haunted him as a young adult. All those thriller movies—
Nightmare on Elm Street
,
Halloween
,
Friday the 13
th
—came rushing back to him. His mother had become one of the boogeymen. How was he supposed to fight his own mother? He couldn
’
t raise a hand to harm her, much less kill her. Even if she was a walking maggot farm, she was still his mother.

Despite his worries, his exterior self remained calm. His body didn
’
t move, but he found himself answering her with a voice outside his body.

“I can
’
t quit. I
’
m gonna win, Mom. I can feel it, and I think Firturro is gonna help me.”

“No. No one can help you. Can
’
t you see that?”
One of her skeletal fingers grazed his cheekbone, and his skin immediately became numb under her touch.

That was when he
’
d managed to jerk himself out of the dream, his left cheek still tingling in the dark. His mother
’
s parting words caused chills to dance across his already clammy flesh.

The only available light was a lamp in the far corner of the room. Its scarce light flickered across the walls, shadows chasing more shadows. Roger reached over and gripped the bedside table, but no matter how hard he squinted his eyes, he couldn
’
t make out what was on the table. His hands moved across the knotted wood, his fingertips replacing his sight as he searched for the lantern and matches he knew were there.

His left hand found the cool glass surface of the lantern just as his right touched the cardboard matchbook. He tried to open the matchbook, but his fingers had become as useless as sausages, and the matchbook fluttered into the complete darkness at his feet. Roger paused, the hair on his arms and legs stood so far off his flesh that he could feel the root of each one of them alive and pulsing in his skin.

Something
’
s under the bed.

He pulled his feet onto the bed even as his rational mind demanded that he stop behaving like a fearful child. However, at this moment the boogeyman was as real as the Obawok. Four little half-crescent moons were being branded into his palms as his hands clenched into tight fists.

Roger shoved his fear back and lay across the bed, thrusting his hands into the unknown darkness, while his fingertips groped along the dirt floor. When his fingers brushed against the cardboard cover of the matchbook he grabbed at them so greedily that for a second he felt them slip even further under the bed. Moving slower, and with a great deal of caution, he managed to get his thumb and forefinger around the thin piece of cardboard and slowly lifted them off the floor.

This time he was very careful as he felt along the matches inside the matchbook and plucked one out. He pulled the lantern to the edge of the table and removed the lid. He lit the match, cupping the small amount of light in his hands for a second before touching it to the wick and making the light bloom across the room like a small ray of sunshine.

When it was securely lit he sat up, put his feet back on the floor, and pushed himself off the bed. He walked to the kitchenette with the stiffness of someone who had just stumbled into the waking world. Gripping the edge of the counter, he turned the coffee machine on and found himself mouthing a silent prayer that the ancient ones hadn
’
t forbid caffeine.

Roger tilted his head and looked around the corner as the overhead lights were turned on and he heard the faint clicking of a key. The door opened and two guards began searching the apartment. He stood by the bed and sipped his coffee as the guards finished their inspection. They returned to the door and stood on separate sides as little Tigaffo appeared between them.

Roger made a brief, grunting noise that might have been construed as a “hello” and returned all of his interest to his cup of coffee. He studied Tigaffo over the brim of his mug and noticed that the greasy substance that had been coating Tigaffo yesterday was even more pronounced now.

“I
’
ve been sent to bring you to the training area,” Tigaffo said. His voice was slightly edgy, and Roger was sure that it had something to do with his refusal to give a respectful greeting.

“Where
’
s Firturro?” Roger asked turning around and trudging back to the bedroom.

“He has gone to make sure the training and test areas are being prepared appropriately. It
’
s part of his job as your watcher to ensure your safety and fair treatment.” Tigaffo paused, waiting for Roger to turn around and address him. When Roger made no move to do so, Tigaffo spoke again, not even attempting to disguise his anger. “You have ten minutes.”

Roger heard the shuffling feet, and moments later the walls trembled as the door was slammed shut and latched behind them. A perverse sense of satisfaction overcame him and he smiled into his coffee.

In an attempt to clear his mind he stretched, allowing his muscles to move and breathe. After a few minutes both his mind and body felt better, and Roger went to the bathroom. On the shelf where the sweat suit had been yesterday was a pair of black soccer shorts and a plain gray T-shirt, size X-Large, neatly folded up and lying next to a newly laundered towel. He studied them for a minute, wondering how they had gotten there, before he put them on.

He pondered the randomly appearing clothes while he brushed his teeth but came to no answer and decided to stop worrying about it before it gave him another headache. Moments after he left the bathroom, Tigaffo returned.

“Are you ready?”

Instead of replying, Roger took his empty cup to the sink and rinsed it out. Then he turned on his heels and headed straight for the door.

As Roger approached, Tigaffo backed up, his haughty smirk disappearing under a thick layer of fear as his dark lips parted in a little “O” revealing his brown and yellow teeth. The guards moved even closer to Tigaffo, but Roger only smiled to himself as he brushed by the expectant trio and into the hall without pausing. They stared at him, leery of the possible confrontation, before also passing through the door and into the hallway. The guards quickly followed, and Tigaffo shuffled along behind them.

“Follow me,” Tigaffo commanded, as he pulled himself to his full height and marched down the hall.

Roger chuckled and within a couple of strides was walking alongside Tigaffo. “Where are we goin
’
?” he asked, his voice light and playful.