Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (3 page)

Two ducks, high-fiving each other after winning the Super Bowl.

Two hermaphrodites fucking a model of one of the fighter spaceships from
Independence

Day
.

A guy running over me on a motorcycle. I can see the bottom of his boots sticking out the

sides, like I'm looking up at him at the moment it runs over my face.

A Moth Man, with snapping jaws on his wings.

A pool of blood with a severed penis laying at the top. Aftermath of a cock bomb.

Two hands about to thumb wrestle.

A predatory bird, wings folded, staring right at me. It's pissed.

A clown with pointy hair, a grin full of sharpened teeth spread wide. The thing at the

bottom is a potato he's eating sideways.

Two crabs puking up chunks of a turkey they had just eaten.

They kept sending me out to this waiting room while they went and huddled in the office and probably talked about how

crazy I was.

Then, finally, they took me to a different building near the clinic me and Amy had been to on my last visit. The facility was

mostly empty on a Saturday. They took me down a hal , me and the huge Dr. Welsh and Fred the friendly psychologist

and Kel y the button-cute assistant in the tight T-shirt.

The four of us piled into the little room with the machine and all the wires. Only three of us would come out.

It took 45 minutes for them to wire me up, the girl shaving tiny spots in my skull to hook up the little wires. They huddled

around computer monitors and calibrated instruments and muttered to each other and peeled off the wires and stuck them

back on again about 37 times. It occurred to me that maybe I didn't have the exact brain they were expecting. Oh, well.

They muttered to each other some more before finally the enormous Dr. Welsh stepped in front of me.

"Are you comfortable, David?"

"No. I have wires and shit stuck to my head. But it's okay."

I saw the girl, Kel y, smile behind him.

"It won't be much longer. We appreciate al of your patience."

He walked around behind me. I was a bundle of nerves. I felt an ache from my fingers and realized I was gripping the arm

rests of the chair.

I made eye contact with Kelly. She gave a small smile and said, "Are you nervous?"

"I don't think that's the word for it."

"Don't worry about it. We're here in case anything goes wrong."

"I'm not worried about things going
wrong
. Look, guys, I'm not sure this was a good idea."

Welsh reappeared to my left, said, "It's completely up to you, David," in a voice that barely concealed his desire to punch me.

"Okay," I said, "just remember, we start this thing, the
second
I ask you to turn it off, you turn it off. Right?"

"Of course, of course."

"The very second. Because if this dark bastard appears, I'm gonna stop this thing real fast."

"Of course."

"And if I ask everybody to run out of the room as fast as they can, they'l do it, right?"

Kelly giggled. She studied my face and abruptly stopped giggling.

"I'm serious, guys."

"We completely understand," said Welsh. "Just try to remain calm and remember that nothing you're seeing is real. We're monitoring your heart rate and Kelly here will be watching you so even if you are unable to-"

"-Wait, wait, wait. How do you know it's not real?"

"Well... as we explained earlier, we're stimulating a very specialized part of the brain that helps you differentiate the self from the outside world. We believe overactivity of this area causes us to project a 'shadow' self that..."

"Yeah, yeah. That's your theory. But how do you know the shadow people aren't real y there, but just invisible to most of

us? And that this thing you're stimulating is just the part of us that let's us see them?"

"Is that what you believe?"

"I don't know, I'm just saying. As scientists, you know. Got to keep an open mind."

"Now, again, you've just seen them the one time, isn't that correct? The encounter in your bathroom?"

I wish.

"Pretty much. I think I may have seen them once or twice otherwise."

If the electrodes on my skull had been hooked to a lie detector, it would have exploded into flames.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Yeah, turn it on."

"If we do, and we're able to manufacture these hal uc- these phenomena, would you consider seeking treatment?"

"Probably not."

"Why?"

"Can't afford it."

"No other reason?"

"No."

I pictured bits of flaming lie detector flying across the room.

I let out a breath and said, "Let's do this."

They hesitated, then turned some dials and flipped some switches and muttered to each other.

Nothing happened. At first.

Kelly came into view. I smiled at her, she smiled back. A col ege campus was a dangerous place for a man already

engaged to another woman. Fred the Psychologist also stepped into view, a good looking guy with black hair in a Ceasar

cut. The gigantic Dr. Welsh was behind me, still operating the equipment, I guess.

Dr. Fred said, "Everything okay?"

"I think so. Still hot in here."

"We'd bring that fan closer but it interferes with the equipment."

"It's okay. The air is broken in my truck so I'm used to - OH HOLY FUCK! THERE IT IS! THERE!"

A figure, black as midnight, casually stepped into view. Silent. Standing right there in the room, next to a little table with a coffee maker on it. The coffee maker had a "Mr. Coffee" logo on the front. The shadow passed across it, moving to the

center of the room and - I swear I saw this - the moment it passed the coffee machine the logo changed from "Mr. Coffee"

to "Braun."

What the fuck?

Kelly, new to this, flinched and put her hands over her mouth. She was in the room with
an actual crazy person
. Dr. Fred was more control ed. He asked, "Where is it now, David?"

My guts jumped, feeling like the cables had been cut on my elevator. My eyes were locked on the shadow thing, drifting

across the room like an airborne oil slick. In a flash I thought I saw a pair of burning embers where its eyes would be, the

only interruption of color in a being that was otherwise the deep black of outer space.

When it wasn't moving it gave a perfect impression of a man-shaped hole carved into reality with a surgeon's scalpel. A

hole that revealed absolutely nothing behind it. Nothing at all.

"It's standing right next to you! Turn it off! Fuck! Turn it off! What the shit was I thinking?!?"

Dr. Welsh was already working behind me. I started ripping wires off my head.

Dr. Fred said, "Okay, okay. He's turning it off now. Do you still see it?"

Kelly crossed her arms and pushed hair behind her ear, glancing nervously at the two men. The shadow thing moved

toward her, not three feet away. She had no idea it was there. No idea what was about to happen.

"WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE! NOW! OH, SHIT, WHY AM I SO FUCKING STUPID?!?"

I stood up in the chair, yanking some box off the table behind me because it was still attached. I threw aside a wire and