We Are Monsters (33 page)

Chapter Sixty-Four

Eli sat in a chair, slouched down with his neck bent against the headrest, face angled up towards the ceiling. Alex sat next to him holding the syringe. The chamber was completely full.

Angela held Eli's head steady in her hands. They had had to wait for her to stop crying. The tears kept raining down on Eli's cheeks.

Angela sniffled. “How are you going to do it without the imaging equipment?”

“Very carefully,” Alex said. The needle wavered slightly in his trembling hand. He waited for it to settle. “I've done this enough times to know where to angle it. The rest is up to fate.”

“I thought you didn't believe in anything as metaphysical as fate,” Eli said, showing a half smile.

Alex squirted a few drops from the syringe and leaned over Eli's head, bringing the needle towards the corner of his eye. “My beliefs are being redefined as we speak.”

He placed the needle against Eli's tear duct. It made a tiny dimple. “Ready?” he said.

Eli closed his eyes in affirmation. He didn't risk nodding his head.

Fortune favors the bold,
Alex thought automatically. It had become a rote saying for this stage of the procedure. Although it had never proven true.

He plunged the needle through the socket of Eli's eye.

Eli stiffened, but just slightly. Angela held his head steady in her hands, watching the steel shaft of the needle slide through.

“Almost there,” Alex whispered, monitoring the length of the needle to gauge the distance to the pineal gland. He reached the point where the gland should be and closed his eyes. He felt the slightest resistance against the tip of the needle. He nudged it gently, sensing a microscopic pop, and depressed the plunger, emptying the syringe. He quickly pulled the needle out, and the operation was complete.

“Brace yourself,” he said to Angela. “This part can get a little rough.”

Eli's eyes rolled under his lids, like someone deep in REM sleep. His lips parted as if to whisper some dying secret. He looked peaceful, more youthful and serene than he had in many months, if not years.

Then his face contorted into a horrid mask of pain and he began to convulse violently in his seat, his feet kicking out and scrabbling against the ground, his back arching and bucking against the chair.

Angela wrapped an arm around his jaw, locking her hand into the elbow of her other arm, which she used to secure Eli's head. Alex grabbed his legs and held them down. Lacy pinned down his flailing arms.

Eli was grunting and making gurgling sounds, a white foam spilled from his lips.

“You gave him too much,” Angela said, struggling to hold his head still.

“No. This is actually a good sign. It means I did it right.”

Eli's eyes flew open as wide as the lids would allow. The pupils were fully dilated, just two black circles like gun-barrel holes. Alex watched the left one constrict down to a pinprick while he struggled to restrain Eli's bucking legs. Eli's lips contorted into a rictus, spraying white spittle, and he began making a choking sound interspersed with a prolonged groan.

“How is this a good sign?” Angela sounded panicked.

“It's—” Alex began.

Eli's face was turning a violent shade of red. His breathing was hitching in his throat, the groan weakening.

“Shit! Get him on the floor.”

“He's dying,” Lacy said as they shifted him from the chair to the floor

“No he's not,” Alex said, but he could tell Eli's systems were shutting down, the convulsions subsiding. His eyes, with their mismatched pupils, had become fixed in place.

Angela shifted from the top of Eli's head to his side. “He is, Alex. He's crashing.”

Alex grabbed Eli's wrist. His pulse was weak, barely there. Alex dug his fingers into Eli's flesh, trying inanely to awaken Eli's pulse through pain. It beat softly. Once…twice…just the faintest flutter.

And then it stopped.

Alex held the lifeless wrist in his hand for a full minute, listening to the harsh breathing that he realized was his own. Angela watched him silently, her wide eyes glistening.

He let go of the wrist and it thunked to the floor. He looked down on Eli's body, which appeared even smaller and less substantial than before.

“We need to resuscitate him. Now. Start CPR!”

Angela reached out with trembling hands and placed them on Eli's chest. “Christ, Alex. What's happening?”

Lacy answered for him. “He's gone.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

All he sees is smoke. A greyish-white thread billowing up against the black. He can smell fumes from the ash, and it reeks of burnt cordite. It reeks of roasted flesh.

It's coming from his house. He doesn't know how he knows this. But he does.

The house comes into view as he steps towards it, its bland features emerging through a murky gloom. How is he walking? He has no legs, no feet. He is part of the darkness, insubstantial as a shadow.

The house sits all alone on a solitary plot of land, surrounded by haze. Or smoke. He can't tell. It's so hard to think right now.

Whose house? His house. Who is he?

He sees that the front door is ajar. The smell of smoke is stronger here.

This is wrong. He always keeps his house securely locked. Someone must have broken in. Someone is trying to burn it down.

He hesitates on the front landing—
Wait, there's something I'm supposed to be doing right now. I'm… I don't know. I don't remember
—and then he shakes his head. It would help if he could just see his own reflection. Then he could recall.

The door swings open on silent hinges, and he walks inside.

Walks?

He knows that this is his home, even though he has never been here before. He feels no connection to it.

Why, then, is he walking inside? Why is he here?

There is a reading room to his right. The walls are lined with bookshelves. A hazy light filters in through the tall windows, highlighting drifts of smoke coming from farther inside. He sees the side profile of a man in one of the high-backed chairs: a chest, one arm and a leg. The face is hidden.

“Hello?” The voice he hears is not his own, although he's not sure how he knows this. “Who's there?”

The man doesn't move. So he glides closer, orbiting the chair to reveal more of the man's body and face.

He circles around to the front. There is no face. It is covered in a thick sheet of dried blood that drained out of the man's nose and down from the open cavity at the top of his head. The pistol rests in the dead man's lap.

He has seen this pistol before. Has seen this man before. He used the pistol once to kill. And now the pistol has killed again.

The man's eyes peel open, staring at him accusingly. He feels as though he is being assessed. Black chunks coat the back of the chair, but the man's eyes retain some intelligence.
You couldn't kill me,
they say.
So I did it myself.

He must close those eyes. Close them forever so that they may never seek out violence again. So that the man can finally rest in peace.

He reaches out without hands, or perhaps a shimmering outline of one, and the dead man reaches up and grabs hold of his nonexistent wrist.

“Don't you fucking touch me with your hypocritical hands.”

The man pulls himself to his feet. He is tall. The face behind the blood is firm and handsome. He wears a military uniform with rows of shiny metals.

“You call me a killer? What about you? How did your hands get so clean?”

“I'm not clean!” he gasps. “I'm no cleaner than you!” He is looking at the bloody filth on the man's face.

“You're fucking-A right you're not. Because I'm in you. I am you.”

The man is holding the gun in his other hand. He raises it and points it at the invisible face. The barrel hole looks like a dilated eye.

“You think you're some kind of saint or something?” the man says. “You're a killer worse than me. You did it despite your high-and-mighty morals.”

“No.” He hears the voice that's not his own, surprised by its defiance. “I am not that man. I am not that man anymore.”

The hand holding the gun falters. The blood-smeared eyes squint.

“Yes you are,” he says, but he doesn't sound sure. “I know what you did.”

“No, that man died when he shot that young boy and gave birth to someone new.” There is an accent in the voice he hears. One he cannot place. “You died too,” he continues, “and have lived in hell ever since.”

“Ha!” the man's laugh is full of mirth. “You're talking fairy tales.” The man's lips quiver in an attempt to smile, but they do not know how. A face has never shown such pain.

It hurts his heart.
Whose heart?

He looks again at the gun and realizes it isn't real. It can kill him, but not hurt him. He reaches out with his free hand, which he can hardly see, and pulls it easily from the man's faltering grasp.

“Give that back,” the man says, but his voice is weak, a whimper. They stand there, connected hand to wrist. “You can't take that from me. It's mine.”

“You look tired,” the accented voice says. He pulls the man towards him, and the man stumbles forward on the sleepy feet of a little boy. “Come, rest.” They embrace.

Darkness falls as he closes his eyes. There is a pain somewhere that feels like his center, and then it slowly melts away.

A loud, booming voice causes his eyes to spring open. “The fuck are you doing?” it says.

A large, overweight man in a dark suit is standing in the corridor. “Your fucking house is burning down, you dipshit! What the hell are you standing around like an idiot for?”

The military man is gone. The chair where he sat is now clean. He blinks his eyes that aren't there and focuses on the angry, overweight man now yelling at him.

“My house?” he says.

The large man shakes his head in disgust, points a fat finger. “Your house. It's burning right to the fucking ground.”

The acrid smell of smoke is stronger now. The air is growing hot. A pulsating glow is coming from the far end of the hallway, and he can hear a crackling sound.

“Are you just going to stand there while your whole fucking house burns down around you?”

Am I? I…? I am. I am Eli. I AM ELI!

And just like that he remembers who he is. Or was. Or both.

He is Eli, and this is his house.

He starts walking towards the hallway.

The large man steps in his way. “Oh, now you're going to do something about it? No, too late. Your house is going to burn.”

The man is twice Eli's size, his hulking frame fills the hallway from wall to wall. But Eli can see the glow from the fire coming through the large man's body. “You're not really here,” Eli says.

The man puts his hand on Eli's chest and shoves, sending Eli stumbling back. “Don't talk crazy, old man. I'm here, all right. I've always been here, waiting for this whole thing to come crumbling down.”

Eli's right hand feels heavy. He raises it and realizes he's still holding the gun. The grip feels rough against his skin. He points it at the big man, walking forward.

The man does not budge. If anything, he leans forward. “You put that down, you hear me? You put that away, right fucking now!”

Eli presses the barrel against the man's heart. He doesn't want to kill. Not again.

“You're not in charge,” he says.
Why does his voice still sound so strange?
“You're not in charge of anything.”

The large man smiles. His parting lips are but folds within folds. “I own you,” he says. “And I—”

Eli squeezes the trigger.

The large man falls to the ground, grunting as he lands, and the smell of burnt cordite fills the air.

“You own nothing,” Eli says, looking down on him. “Nobody does.”

He can hear the fire as he moves farther down the hallway. Smoke is seeping through the doorframe that leads to his meditation room. The walls are shimmering with flickering light.

He sees his shadow for a second—the narrow frame, the long, bushy face, the cone rising up from his head—and is stunned. It looks nothing like him.

He scalds his hand as he grabs the doorknob and turns it, coughing against the smoke.

There is a man inside, feverishly working to smother the fire. “Help me!” he cries in an all too familiar voice. “Please! Help me!”

It's him. It's Eli.

Then who am I?

The floor is on fire. Orange flames are climbing up the walls. Eli is frantic in his attempts to stomp it out, to suppress the ascending flames. He throws a thick blanket on the fire that seems to work for a moment and then it begins to burn. “Help!” he screams.

And then the fire is right before him, singing his skin. “Help!” he hears himself yell, the voice now his own. “Help!” He turns around to plead with the man who has just entered the room, but no one is there. He is all alone.

I'm going crazy,
he thinks.
Seeing things. Seeing things that aren't really there. I've got to stop the fire. I've got to put it out.

The heat from the fire is not as painful as he first feared. In fact, it's almost pleasant. A comforting warmth. He looks down and sees that the flames have subsided a bit. The fire is more manageable now.

Okay. Okay. This isn't so bad. I can keep this under control.

He has time to breathe, to think.
I've got to get back. I have patients who rely on me. They need me. What am I doing here?

Smoke from the smoldering fire blinds his eyes.

Or do they? Do they really? Maybe they need someone else. Someone younger. Someone who doesn't have so many issues of his own. Do I even really make a difference? Or do I only pretend to make people sane?

He can no longer even feel the heat. He has forgotten about the fire altogether. He's got to figure this out. Get to the bottom of it. No time for fires now.

Must get back. Back to work. Back to where I belong. I've got to make it all right. My legacy. I've got to secure my legacy.

His body radiates with warmth. It is neither pleasant or painful. It is just there, where it's always been.

Wait. What's so bad about a little fire? Didn't she…? Didn't she burn?

The warmth inside flares, singeing with a painful heat.

No, no. Fire hurts. Tamp it down. Stomp it out.

But he doesn't. He opens to it, just a little. Giving it room to breathe. He hears it hiss as it tastes air. It sounds a little like a woman he once knew saying,
“Yessssss”
.

And then the pain returns, igniting his whole body. Yes, his body. He can feel it now. God, it hurts.

Come on, Eli! Come on!
The voice. He knows that voice.
Don't give up! Come on, don't let go!

The fire is back, roaring loudly in his ears. The voice inside his head is trying to tell him something, and he has to strain to hear it. Something legacy. Something responsibility. Something about his sanity.

He's never felt anything like this fire. He doesn't know if he can continue to hold it back. It's burning his whole body. His whole body hurts.

End it now,
he thinks.
Just let…

And for once he stops fighting and gives in to the flames.