The Lunatic Messiah

by Simon Cutting

  Blink. The monitor beeps. Breathe in. Check the time. Two minutes. The monitor beeps. Breathe out. There's a man in the bed next to me snoring. It's a quiet sound, gentle and regular, but I find it the most irritating sound in the world. I roll my head over to the side to look at him. He's an old man, maybe seventy, and he's hooked up to even more equipment than I am. His beeps were slightly out of sync with mine to begin with but over the course of a few hours they have become synchronised. We're like a pair of women living together who find that their cycles start to occur at the same time. It's impossible that we should synchronise, of course, but it hurts my head to consider the implications of this so I focus on something else. I hate him. I've never spoken to him, and I know absolutely nothing about him, but I HATE him. In fact, I hate everything. I hate Dr Pontius, I hate Dr Armaita, I hate Mary and Harry, and I especially hate Joe Finch. I hate his miserable little life. I hate his unambitious but comfortable career, his stagnant, predictable marriage, his friends of convenience, his weak tumour-ridden brain, and his frail and sagging body. But most of all I hate his self-pitying, self-hating, hate-filled hate. I hate, therefore fuck you.

  It's at some point during this unproductive mode of thought that I come to realise that the beeps have stopped. Both my own, and my menstruating geriatric friend. In fact, there is no sound at all. There is nothing. Not even the soft buzz of silence that normally fills the ears when there are no external sounds. I look around the room, but there seems nothing else amiss. I must have gone deaf. Somehow, the tumour must have put pressure on my eardrums or eaten into the part of my brain that processes the signals of sound and destroyed them. I curse inaudibly. I start to scream, but the silence goes into my mouth and fills it like cotton or fog, not only blocking any sound, but choking me with its oppressiveness. I need to hear something, and after a good few minutes of silent screaming I realise that I can. It's footsteps, unevenly making their way down the corridor. Not shuffling, but something moving quite quickly. I look to the doorway just in time to see a little girl skip past the door to my room. She looks in at me as she passes and smiles, showing far too many teeth. Seconds later a man walks past. He's a young man, maybe mid thirties, and he's wearing a long leather jacket of the type that hasn't been popular since the fifties. He doesn't look at me at all. He's too busy spinning the chamber of a revolver and turning a bullet over between his thumb and forefinger. In any other circumstance I would stay in bed and hope never to see either one of them again, but I can tell from the fact that my thoughts are in first-person present tense that I'm dreaming again, so I throw my legs over the side of the bed and pull the instruments away from my body. There is no sound still, not even the rustle of my backless hospital gown against the sheets as I slip onto the cold floor and follow them out into the hallway.

  They're a good twenty metres in front of me, about to pass through a door to what looks like the surgery, so I have to run to keep up. I can feel a draft blowing up the hallway from behind me, willing me forwards and I can hear their words floating back to me.

  'You always play that stupid game, Gavrilo,' says the little girl, in a voice that sounds ostensibly like a little girl, but has a certain menace behind it that's hard to place.

  'I like to gamble,' replies the man.

  So this is Gavrilo, the man that Evan was supposed to come and see. I've caught up now and I see him place the bullet into the revolver and give the chamber a spin. He kicks open the door to the surgery and as we pass through I can see that it's not a surgery at all. It looks more like a waiting room, and behind a small desk and computer in the corner, is a slightly plump woman of about forty, typing at a computer between sips of coffee. Gavrilo points the pistol at her dramatically.

  'One in six, Diana!' he declares and pulls the trigger.

  Click. All sound has returned. I can hear the sound of phones ringing, and people chattering to each other somewhere else in the building. Looking behind me I notice that the door we have just come through leads not back to the hospital, but to a busy office, complete with partitions and water coolers and furniture all bought in large quantities from Swedish design houses. Diana, the receptionist, laughs vacantly.

  'Mr Yama! When are you going to get sick of that silly joke?' she says.

  She looks then at the little girl.

  'Hi Lucy. Do you want a biscuit?'

  'Yes please,' replies Lucy, and Diana hands her a chocolate biscuit from a half empty packet on her desk, pulling her hand away quickly as Lucy takes it, like somebody feeding meat to a crocodile.

  Her father has dark, curly hair and pointed sharp features, with his eyebrows nearly meeting in the centre. He looks Mediterranean or Slavic. By contrast, Lucy is small and blonde, with blue eyes and a white dress of the kind mothers buy their daughters to wear to church. Lucy has all the elements of a sweet little girl but they don't seem to fit together properly.

  'Is Mr Grey in?' Gavrilo asks, and laughs as if he has said something funny.

  Diana simply nods, still looking at Lucy who is staring at her unblinking, as she chews the biscuit.

  Gavrilo pushes open the door next to the desk and goes in, leaving Lucy staring at Diana, who is slowly rolling her Swedish design house chair into the corner in an involuntary gesture of submission. I give Lucy a wide berth as well, and follow Gavrilo through the door.

  In my tomb it is dazzlingly white. It is the stuff that makes minds blank. It is silence. I can even feel my thoughts being observed. The air is stale. I feel clean in my tomb. Nothing can exist except me. Nothing can touch me or infect me. Nothing can kill me. I think of a place where I have never been. I have been enclosed for so long and I need to think constantly so I don’t forget how. I need to remember what things look like. I haven’t seen anything before but I remember it nonetheless. I see people, through glass, but they all look the same to me. They all have the same grey faces, rotten to the core. They are the walking dead. They are infected. Those that work for me do so for money. Money! As if the word meant anything. The walking dead want money the most and need it the least.

  One of them lopes in now. He drags his decaying flesh through the doorway, and the light from without stings my eyes. He is sunken. He is the Instrument of Death. I can smell him through the glass, I think, although that is impossible. There is nothing in here but me. I am isolated. I am clinging to life whilst they all wallow in death. There is someone else as well. It is Him! He has arrived. He looks smaller than I expected. He looks confused. He keeps staring around in the darkness like a blind man. Is this what I feared? This man looks as dead as the rest of them. He is rotting on the inside as well as the outside. He can't see me. None of them can see me.

  'Mr Grey,' says the Instrument, and raises his hand in some sort of salute.

  He mocks me. He thinks me insane, but he doesn't realise. He's dead, just like the rest of them. His thoughts are nothing. His Vampire enters behind him, gorged on blood like a leech.

  'Why have you brought this thing with you?' I ask.

  My words sound thin. They have trouble making it through the air. They are reluctant to allow their vibration into his ears.

  'What thing? Lucy?'

  The Vampire. I knew she would come. She wants to consume me, but that is not the nature of things. It is I who will use her eventually. She is small but her flesh is pink, like fresh meat. She looks as though she is exploding with life. I have seen her when her father talks of death. I have seen her eyes shine. She lives on death. The two of them have so much anger between them. So much Fury. But they are my Furies.

  I look at the needle in my arm. It scares me. My eye follows the tube up the wall to where it disappears. It feeds me. I am terrified of the tube. I know where it leads. It leads to Him. He is dead like the rest of them, and if I wait too long he will infect me as well. The lights just flickered. I saw them flicker. Is there something trying to get in here? Is something trying to get in here with me?

  Is something in here already?

  I
t's dark in the room, and there's a sort of hissing sound. Like recycled air. In front of us there's a sheet of glass, reflecting Gavrilo and Lucy back into the room. I cast no reflection so I must not be here. There is some kind of mass behind the glass but I can barely make it out. It looks like a man, but only vaguely. It is the notion of a man, staring back from behind the screen. I feel a shudder run up my spine as I squint to make out the edges of his form.

  'The substance has surpassed the form,' says Lucy behind me, making me jump.

  I feel foolish, being scared of a little girl. I'm dreaming, I know it, and yet I still feel frightened.

  'What the hell are you talking about, Lucy? When's this idiot getting here? I've got more important things to do,' Gavrilo says impatiently, shuffling his feet on the carpet.

  'She can see him...' says a tinny, croaking voice from an intercom just beneath the glass.

  It is barely a voice at all. It is so soft that it's more like a rustle of leaves. Something only half-heard and instantly forgotten.

  'See who?' Gavrilo says, looking behind him.

  His eyes pass directly over me but he doesn't take me in at all.

  'Him,' croaks the voice, leaving a trace of silence as it wafts towards me.

  Lucy takes my hand, and it makes me jump again. Her skin is cold to the touch, but not clammy. She smiles up at me and rubs her thumb gently across the scar on my palm, back and forth, quite rhythmically. It's very disconcerting.

  'I can see him. He doesn't know where we are,' she says to the glass.

  'None of you know...'

  Gavrilo looks annoyed now and he raises his arms up into the air in exasperation.

  'Are you two trading cryptic crossword clues or something? Can we just get on with it and leave the metaphysical shit in the self-help books where it belongs.'

  Suddenly another voice crackles through on the intercom. It is Diana from the next room.

  'Evan Meakes here to see you.'

  'Thank God for that. Send him in,' Gavrilo says.

  The Mule comes through the door with a squint. His life begins to waft away from his skin, drawn in by the gravity of the Vampire. She smiles at him, wearing her mask too loosely. She is leaking around the edges. Her eyes and her mouth are not the same as her face. The Mule surveys the room. He sees the Instrument and holds out a hand to be shaken, but it hangs limply in the air, nothing more than a focal point for the Vampire. The Mule glances at Him, his eyes pausing a moment too long. Could this be the one? There is some kind of connection between the two of them.

  'Can you see Him?' I ask.

  The Mule looks nervous and his eyes sink deeper into his face. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small bag of death.

  'I brought you the... the package.'

  The Instrument takes it from him and checks the seal.

  'There's blood on this,' he mutters and I see the Vampire's eyes light up.

  I can tell she wants to leap upon it, but she restrains herself.

  'Can you SEE Him?' I repeat, and the Mule stutters.

  He doesn't know what I mean, but I saw the look between them. They have met before. The Mule knows Him. The Mule is a vehicle.

  I never really had nightmares. When I was growing up I had the occasional dream about monsters in the wardrobe or under the bed, but nothing that really kept me shaking in my bed, too scared to sleep. I never needed the light to stay on, or at least I don't think I did. As soon as I start to think of my childhood again, the details go fuzzy, but the point is that I was never truly scared of anything that happened in my dreams until I came into that room. Whatever it is, hiding behind that glass, I have a very palpable sense that it wants to hurt me. Mr Grey isn't its name and it isn't a man, just as Lucy isn't a little girl. She's looking at me now as we stand near the door to the waiting room. Gavrilo is talking to Diana, and Evan brushes past me, in a bigger hurry to leave than anyone, but the sound is fading out again and all I can hear is Lucy. The sounds of the office are fading too.

  'You should go back,' Lucy says, finally releasing my hand.

  She had held it the whole time we were there, and it only added to my discomfort.

  'So am I dreaming? You were in the hospital. That's the real world. That's where I really am.'

  Lucy shrugs.

  'Maybe I'm the one who’s dreaming,’ she replies.

  'So I dream of you and you dream of me?'

  'How romantic. Do you want to fuck me?' she hisses obscenely and I recoil in horror.

  She sticks her tongue out and then laughs. I feel a shiver go up my spine. Not only is this not a little girl, this thing is not even human.

  'If that's your father, then where is your mother?' I ask, pointing over at Gavrilo to distract her.

  Anything to stop her staring at me.

  'The mother nourishes her child. She lives for her children. She dies for the same reason. You should go.'

  I look behind me, at the swinging surgery door. Through the circular window I can see the darkened halls of the hospital again, and I gratefully push the door open and stumble through to the sound of Lucy's laughter behind me. I almost run down the corridor, certain that if I can just make it back to my bed then this horrible nightmare will be over. I have to keep reminding myself of that. This is a nightmare. I have just been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I'm feeling incredibly anxious, but none of this is real. If I can just wake up, then I know that the only thing I'll have to deal with is my impending death. As I approach one of the open doors on the left I see a sign above it labelling it as the maternity ward. There is noise coming from within, and despite my better judgement I slow down and glance inside as I pass. A woman is lying on her back, her legs up in stirrups, and she's screaming in agony. Her face is a deep red, almost purple. All around her, a crowd of people are watching, all smiling like they're observing a wedding. The baby's head appears, pink and glistening, although there is nobody waiting to catch it. It slithers out of its own accord, pulling itself from its mother’s body with jagged, bony arms. It tears itself free and scurries up the body on four legs, coming out at right angles from its body like some sort of fleshy crab. Suddenly another head appears as the mother dilates again, and she screams once more. The crowd of people standing around watching sigh in wonderment, and one woman has even started to cry.

  'It's so beautiful. The cycle of life,' she sniffs.

  As the second creature tears itself free in a spray of blood and afterbirth the first one has arrived at the mother's neck and suddenly opens its mouth and sinks in its teeth, tearing some flesh off viciously like a hyena, as the mother screams all the louder. The crying woman in the audience puts her hand on her heart as a third creature starts to scratch its way out.

  'I hope to have children myself some day,' she says and the man next to her wraps his arm around her shoulders affectionately.

  I can't watch any more, and I turn to run back to my room, trying to stifle a scream, but just as I tear my eyes away I see the screaming woman's stomach swell and suddenly split open, revealing a multitude of vicious offspring, fighting to be the first to break free and feast on her flesh. I'm halfway back to my room and the screaming is slowly fading, but it's not until I throw myself on the bed and pull up the covers that I start to breathe again. The old man is still lying where I left him. His monitor beeps. I fumble, completely out of breath, for my own monitor and reattach it, and my beep begins again. After a few seconds of lying completely still I strain to hear the horrible sounds from the maternity ward but there is nothing except our synchronised beeping and the gentle sound of the old man snoring.

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