The Little Demons Inside

by Micah Thomas

  "Right. Thank you," he sheepishly replied. Damn. Never underestimate the kindness of strangers. Never look a gift horse in its whatever. He wondered if maybe he was dreaming. Good things didn't usually happen to him.

  Her apartment was small and didn't have the roach issue he expected. Small but cozy. Henry casually noticed it was decorated with art, not prints, colorful landscapes in thick neon colors. One in particular caught his eye, as he received a fairly awkward tour of the place. A genderless figure meditating, bright lines of gold, perhaps connecting chakras, emanating from the core. The heart, illuminated in gold foil, seemed to be on fire.

  "You an artist?" Henry asked.

  "No. That's my mom's work. I didn't inherit any of her talent."

  Henry nodded and look down at his hands, not sure if he should sit, wishing he didn't smell so bad. She picked up on his anxiety and gestured to the bathroom attached to the master bedroom.

  "I think I've got an unused travel toothbrush you can have. Unless you need to make a call now, go ahead and shower."

  Henry wanted to thank her, but felt stupid and tongue-tied. When she closed the bedroom door behind her on her way out, he sighed and turned on the faucet. He really hoped that the noise would cover up the sounds of the shit he desperately needed to take. This was great he thought, as he looked at the herbal body wash in the shower. Better to smell like soothing lavender than a human-sized pair of sweaty balls.

  Cassie paced in her small kitchenette while she heard the water running. Should she do the dishes? Tidy up? This is crazy, she thought. She had just let a homeless, not-epileptic but seizure-prone dude into her home. It was the shock. It had to be. Her PTSD kicking in, and her hardwired brain defaulted to leave no man behind mode. Dumb, but reasonable, she bartered with herself. At the same time, she started thinking up excuses to get him out. He's almost cute, in a fucked up way, but so were a lot of psychos. He didn't ask to get the stray dog treatment, hadn't even asked for money, unlike her ex, Aaron, who was always asking, always taking. He had to go. She should invite someone over. A third person to make sure she wasn't murder-raped. Not that he seemed like the sort. Fuck. Why had she let him in?

  She eyed his bag, a shitty, beat up backpack, threads unraveling, zipper on its last legs, held in place with a few safety pins. There it was, sitting in the living room. She had a right to know, right? If there were drugs in there, weapons, human body parts, oh god. She thought of herself calling 911 and telling them that she let a stranger in the house and invited him to take a shower, but that she'd changed her mind. Had he done anything to hurt her or put her in fear that he might hurt her? Nope. 'Please call again should you need real help,' she imagined they say. She took a quick listen for the running water again.

  "Fuck it. I have a right to know what's in my house," she grumbled to herself.

  Kneeling with a line of sight to the bedroom, she dug around in his bag, quickly searching for weapons or syringes, but found nothing dangerous, just manila folders, filing cabinet folders, printouts, screen grabs printed on nice paper, the bulk of which she recognized as lab reports of some sort. She looked up once at the bedroom door, and started reading.

  PROJECT IFRIT - Status Update: Green. Subject H. is responding to post-hypnotic sessions with 99% success prior to stress-induced episodes.

  LAB# 035 -> Lab to be sunset with damage of the usual sort, but beyond repairability. Invoice to PO 38-I.

  LAB# 036 -> Facility golive 4/1. Leveraging rocket development firewall from sat deployment projects. Vendor supplied. Tested to 400 Kelvin.

  LAB# 040-> Status Yellow. Thresholds exceeded. Drug tolerance high, subject not lucid but very compliant. Memory will be impacted, but this is not an intelligence test anyways.

  She'd flipped through about half of the papers when the sounds of the shower shut off with a series of tapping sounds in the pipes. Cassie zipped the bag closed and shouted out to Henry.

  "Go ahead and use the towels in there! They are totally clean," she called to Henry, hoping he wasn't doing anything strange, like jerking off into her shampoo or putting her toothbrush up his ass. Why would she think things like that? Some people are glass half-empty, and some other people are convinced the glass is half-full of poison.

  "Got it!" Henry shouted from the bedroom, buck naked and cringing at the thought of putting his dirty clothes back on. He went as far as putting on the jeans, but committed to going commando after burying his underwear in her trashcan, beneath empty rolls of toilet paper.

  Henry's exhaustion overtook any sense of decency he might have had, not that he was carrying much these days. It obliterated any concerns or thoughts of how odd it was for him to be in someone else's home, especially in an attractive woman's bedroom. A chance for real sleep in a real bed. It felt goddamned amazing to use a towel, and to lay on top of clean blankets, with the AC blowing cool air. Safe, warm, and damp from the shower, Henry slept almost immediately. While his body recovered from the day's exertions, his dreaming mind returned him to Seattle. The Emerald City. The place he'd left in a hurry, but one where his thoughts and memory get fuzzy, and dreams indistinguishable from reality.

  ***

  On the day and a half bus ride to Phoenix, he had dreamt of Seattle, and those dreams were a confused mess of flame and screams. A lot of people say that they had a weird dream, but all dreams are weird. The brain doing its thing, processing experiences, making sense and blowing off steam. Henry's dreams, at least in the previous couple of days, were disturbing on a whole new level. Before that, well, his memory was a bit fucked up regarding before that. He knew his life pretty well up to a few months ago, or was it a whole year? Either way, he had a broken and fucked up memory gap up until two days ago, when he bought a bus ticket headed to Phoenix. Anyway, in these dreams of fire, Henry was not in a seizure. In the dreams, he was the flame, sensing the latent fire within all things matter and air. He was the excitement between electrons and bonds that scream to change shape again in their lifecycle of energy. It felt like the cusp of a prison escape, all matter ready to change and leap outward. The world was dense and alive. The brick, the street pavement, the glass windows of sky scrapers, steel within, all aching for release and he had the key, the call to action. The air itself is first to respond in hot blasts, quickly gaining and releasing energy as a precursor to the flames.

  In Cassie's good bed, safe and sound, Henry dreamed in a deeper sleep than one could reach on a bus. After running on empty so many days straight, it's a wonder any part of his mind still wanted to process. There are dreams and there are memories, and dreams that feel like memories. In some mix of all three, Henry's subconscious poured over his experience, seeking recollections, making stuff up like dreams do. Henry felt like a passenger, not really resting, but not fully lucid as the memory took hold and he dreamed of a time before the flames. It was like waking up in another time. Observing, merely an eyeball watching the movie of his own life.

  Rain drizzled. He was in Seattle. Not Arizona. He heard his own voice as the nighttime cityscape materialized before him. Wet drizzle. The smell of wet dog and cool breezes over the lake. Chloe was there, probably waiting for the bus to go back to her suburban parental palace.

  "Where are you going?" Henry asked.

  "You don't know everything," she replied with a smirk. She was standing there, still alive, still beautiful, Chloe, the rich girl slumming it and hanging with the gutter punks and hooking up with this loser.

  Did she know he'd been waiting, that he made time for her? Her attitude didn't tell him that she even cared. This was normal. This was good. This is what it was like to really date a woman. Did she know he was in love? Did she even care?

  "Laters," she said.

  She turned, and with a slight move readjusted her headphones back on her head, returned back into the digital bubble. Henry watched and briefly considered tagging along. A surly pride stopped him in his tracks.

  "Fine, fuck it," Henry mumbled to no one.

  He was h
ungry, feeling the deep bone chill from the rain and wind.

  I'll go find Joe, he thought, hoping Joe might have some weed. Henry felt these things like it was present, no dread lingering over his head. Simple desires, simple satisfactions.

  A darkening dusk shade swept over the city. Maybe this wasn't even that same day. Holiday lights sprung up on the trees and surreally lit the street kids and junkies, just shambling awake into a zombie mob. Well-dressed men and women, some holding their equally well-dressed child's hands, either leaving a show, or what might have been a nice dinner, waiting as their car was brought around. None of them even looking up from their phones. It's not as if Henry was envious, but it pained him to see them, just as all beauty did. It was too late to hustle tourists, so he begged a little change from familiar enough characters. Shoe Shine and Trashcan Man were usually good for something if you gave them some of your time. Always address older homeless with cautious deference. The turn from jovial to rage happens quick, but spin them right and they'll want to share a bit of paternal wisdom before eventually passing a few coins, and maybe a few bills if it's been a good day.

  "Hey now, young man. What you doin'?"

  "Staying alive. Same as always. See anything good today?"

  The patter could have been scripted, it was so consistent.

  "What are you doing out here, man? You need to quit that smoking. A beautiful woman walks down the street and see that shit. It's over, man."

  "It's over, yeah," Henry agreed. "Hey pops, you got anything to spare? I'm real hungry. I slept too long and missed everything."

  "Don't you know 'bout the early worm?" Shoe Shine chucked.

  "You mean the bird?"

  "What the fuck you say?"

  "The early bird. You mean the early bird."

  "Fuck you, man."

  "Don't be that way," sensing that he might spoil the mood, "I get my EBT tomorrow."

  "Alright, son."

  Shoe Shine reached into some creviced, barnacle-ridden, deep hidey-hole beneath his rope-belted slacks. A whiff of some utter foulness escaped, and a few bills were crushed into Henry's outstretched hand.

  "Thanks!"

  He was quick to get out of there. Every encounter, he hoped, would be his last. You don't worry about burning bridges on the street. Memories are short and despite the presence of known characters, the cast could change suddenly. People come and you never knew from where. They left the same way. Chloe died. Mary disappeared, Nathan died, camps moved across town, and maybe he'd find a way out and vanish too, leaving these implied debts and misbegotten promises behind. He'd give anything for someone to say to him, nothing is going to hurt you, baby, everything will be alright, but that wasn't for him. This might seem trite or melodramatic, but Henry knew the truth. When you're down, really stinking down and busted up inside, there isn't anyone that cares.

  Henry knew he was dreaming when a hummingbird of golden fire flitted down from the sky to hover and dance around his head.

  "Why do you show up when I'm feeling bad?" he asked it to no reply.

  The dream went fuzzy and Henry's awareness of it faded to a deeper sleep.

  ***

  Cassie waited until Henry's breathing was deep, punctuated with intermittent snores. She briefly considered that she'd have to wash her sheets again this week. Henry was clean now, but those clothes were ripe. Maybe she should have offered to do his laundry. Nothing like a full-service savior. What if he had lice? Or worse? The room was going to get the Velveteen Bunny treatment. She didn't want to make a lot of noise, but then resented being beholden to silence in her own apartment. She sat on the couch, she sat on the floor, she picked up a book and put it back down.

  She had a sudden thought, remembering something forgotten in all the rush: she had been going into work and was now beyond late. There was a task she could and should do. She picked up her phone and saw she'd missed messages, lots of them. Most were from her mom. She'd have to return to that later though, work first. She dialed through the queue options to get to the front desk admin.

  "Hello, Pima Hospice services. How may I help you?" the receptionist chirped.

  "It's Cassie. I know I'm late, but there was an accident," she said, wondering if she'd be fired for this, hoping she might, but knowing she wouldn't.

  "Oh, we know. Are you ok? We didn't expect to see you today. Your picture is all over the news."

  "Great. Well, I'll be in tomorrow. Is my shift covered?"

  Famous. Great, Cassie thought. If only she had an Instagram and Twitter and some way to monetize this new-found glory. Oh wait, she hated that shit. She had some mental block and an introverted streak and, really, all that social media stuff had become hot while she was in the service. She's young enough to be a millennial, but didn't identify with the fame thirst game.

  "Already on it. Don't worry about it. Are you sure you want to come in so soon?"

  "Really, I'm fine." She wondered if that was true. She didn't have any smoke inhalation, and other than the shock of it all, she'd inventoried her body and didn't have scratch. That in itself seemed a bit odd. The Circle K was pretty much a war zone when she left. God protects babies and drunks, and sometimes nurses named Cassie.

  Cassie set the phone down and looked pensively at the backpack and assorted papers. Was he a crazy mental hospital escapee? Fuck. She listened again for his snoring. The phone buzzed again with a fresh message from her mom. She quickly tapped out a reply that she was fine. Really, fine. That she was home, and just wanted to sleep, and would call tomorrow.

  She didn't want to, she knew she was prying, but the contents of Henry's backpack were too damned curious and temping. Without knowing what she was even looking for, or at, she started reading again. This one was an email chain printout:

  RE: Wiseman

  This is a shit show. How can somebody appear on a national TV show and not be trackable by you dipshits? Are you hiring out fucking retards as investigators with our project budget? This is your mess, you clean it up. C. will want to see movement at the next status meeting. Don't send another email like this again.

  RE: Wiseman

  PROJECT: Wiseman. Status: Yellow.

  No one is sure how Wiseman got out. Subject is on surveillance video walking out uninterrupted. Per inherited resources, Subject had unrestricted access. This appears to have been a gap in process carried over from the migration upgrade.

  Investigative resources and government vendors have been engaged, but entertainment point of contacts indicate that Subject merely 'showed up and we put him on.'

  It is imperative that we identify the extent of the leaks.

  Who the fuck is Wiseman? Is that Henry? Cassie flipped through more pages but there was no organization to the printouts.

  CANDIDATE SURVEY:

  Availability: 10

  Traceability: 0

  Initial Responsiveness: 10

  Zeta Quotient: 10

  CANDIDATE: H.

  We anticipated good results with H., but all Initial Responsiveness is often misleading, but not in this case. On the first attempt, H proved to be an immediate match. Worth noting, contact made is not novel. Effective immediately, Project Ifrit has a new subject!!

  RECOMMENDATIONS: Aggressive programming to mitigate unintentional manifestation. No pun intended, we need internal firewalls as well as facility upgrades to asbestos/fire retardant labs. Supporting criteria: We all remember subject E.P. Let's not go backwards. Ifrit is hot. To quote the lab tech with H, "I was sweating my balls off just being in the room with the kid."

  "Oh fuck," Henry said, coming into the room.

  At the sound of his voice, Cassie looked up and saw Henry standing in the doorway looking at her with a wounded sadness.

  "I should go," he said, not even a note of anger in his voice.

  Cassie dropped the stack of papers and Henry bent down, gathered them up protectively, haphazardly stuffing them back in the bag.

  "You were in an experiment? Was it treatmen
t for your seizures?"

  "I am what I am, just like Popeye the sailor man."

  Cassie felt terrible, like being caught reading someone's emails or diary. Being a snoop wasn't in her character. Her curiosity was aroused and she didn't know what to do to end the awkwardness. The situation was entirely reasonable, but very much unusual. On one hand, they were strangers connected by the tenuous string of events starting with an explosion, and ending here. This was not the start of a beautiful relationship. It wasn't anything. People being kind to each other. Isn't that the good Samaritan thing to do?

  "What is Black Star?" she asked genuinely, mustering the will to make this better.

  "A bunch of assholes. That's all. Look, I really oughta go. Now, before anything happens."

  "I'm sorry, but, look at it from my position, I don't know you, and..."

  Henry got as far as the door, not that taking a few steps through the apartment took a long time, but awkwardness slows time to a crawl.

  "I thought maybe you were crazy. Dangerous. I'm sorry I went through your shit."

  He glanced at the painting of the meditating figure again.

  "It's fine. You're fine. I am dangerous, but not to you, not anymore. Thanks again for helping me. I mean it."

  "Did you have something to do with the fire?"

  Henry took a deep breath and opened the door, and ultimately decided not to answer.

  He left and she felt relief. She was aware that the adrenaline nausea was wearing off, replaced by exhaustion as she forced down another glass of water. What a fucking day. She was on the way to work and stopped for gas at the Circle K next to her office. Saw coworkers, Jenny and Denis. They said hi. She saw a dude outside, tried not to make eye contact. She went inside and bought an iced coffee. Sure it's not high quality, but on a hot day, pre-made Starbucks fraps were alright in her book.