Mind Over Psyche

by Karina L. Fabian

  “Get away from her!” Deryl shouted and focused his power.

  The man was thrown across the room and crashed into a rack of free weights. It rocked and crashed over him.

  IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?

  For a moment, Deryl froze. He stared with horror as the man, the Master, rose out of the rubble. Bruises swelled and blackened his face and he spat out some teeth, but laughter bubbled out of his bloody lips.

  “I told you to protect her,” he now said with a human voice.

  “You didn’t believe me. Thought I couldn’t get to you. Fool.”

  I TRAINED YOU BETTER THAN THAT.

  Deryl shook his head and stepped back. “Stay away from her,” he snarled, but he could hear the tight, desperate edge in his voice. The Master laughed and ignored him, moving again to Clarissa.

  Again using his telekinesis, he lifted the barbell with its 200 pounds of weight off Clarissa’s neck and flung it at the advancing man. It struck him in the face. It had to have shattered his jaw, but the man continued to laugh, to talk, to advance.

  “You’ll have to do better than that. You’ll never end this. I’ll keep after you. I’ll have her. Only death can stop me.”

  KILL, DERYL. KILL ME TO PROTECT YOUR WIFE. KILL ME TO SAVE YOUR BABY.

  Clarissa had managed to scoot herself back against a corner and was cowering. “Deryl?’ she whimpered.

  “Stay away from her, or I’ll kill you!”

  “You don’t have the guts.”

  DO NOT THREATEN. ACT.

  Deryl rushed him, knocking him back into a wall, pummeling him with fists and feet and mind. Things swirled wildly around them, sometimes hitting him as well as his enemy, but he didn’t care. It was only when he heard Clarissa’s screams and the police shouts to freeze did he pull away. They grabbed and handcuffed him despite Clarissa’s weak protests that he was her husband and protecting her, but he hardly noticed as he focused on the villain before him.

  Despite his beating, Clarissa’s attacker grinned, even laughed weakly as the police checked him and called for an ambulance. His eyes bore on Deryl, at once triumphant and accusatory, and Deryl knew exactly what he was thinking.

  YOU DIDN’T FINISH, DERYL. YOU DIDN’T FOLLOW THROUGH.

  *

  “That’s amazing,” Sachiko said as she looked around. They’d arrived in the empty courtyard, which was dark except for a few motion-sensitive security lights that switched on in response to their arrival. “And the song was pretty good, too.”

  “Thanks,” Joshua said as he slung the keytar on his back. He tapped Tasmae, who had scanned the area as if for potential attackers and was now staring aghast at the dark sky with its paltry scattering of stars. She nodded that she was all right. “What time is it, do you think?” He asked Sachiko.

  “After nine. That’s when we try to clear everyone out.” She tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. “That’s funny. It’s not supposed to be locked.” She reached in her pockets for her keys, found them empty, and shrugged at Joshua. “What now?”

  Tasmae tore her gaze from the sky and strode to the glass, unsheathing her sword.

  “No!” Joshua grabbed her arm. “You’ll set off the security system. They’ll know we’re here.”

  “Besides, that’s impact resistant glass,” Sachiko added. “You won’t be able to break it.”

  “Anyway, I’ve got an idea. Close your eyes.” Joshua took hold of their hands, then stepped forward slowly, pulling them with him as he sang, “We’ll play cloak and dagger / Standing strong and tall / We’ll walk without a cut / Through this plate-glass wall.”

  And they were inside.

  Sachiko turned and looked at the tall picture window behind them. “You’re good.”

  “That one was easy. I love the imagery in that song.” He glanced her way, found her gazing at him admiringly.

  “It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Mine, too.” He could lose himself in her smile.

  “If we could get our minds back to the mission?” Tasmae urged, her exasperated tone almost a perfect imitation of Deryl’s.

  He cleared his throat and stepped back, breaking the spell. “What now?”

  Tasmae answered. “We stay together and move quickly. Sachiko, you’ll go first into any intersections or around corners. Greet anyone you meet loudly enough for us to hear. Joshua, keep your instrument ready. We hide until they pass if we can; otherwise, we run toward Deryl if possible, you alter the situation with song, or we fight, in that order. Let’s go.”

  They moved quickly down the corridor, taking the turns as Tasmae instructed. They met no one. Tasmae murmured nervously that it was what she would have done if she’d wanted to lead them into a trap, but Sachiko and Joshua both assured her it was normal for the time of night.

  “We can’t avoid meeting someone when we get to the high-intensity ward, though,” Sachiko said as they paused in an unused office to consider their next step. “We’ve got about half an hour before shift change, so it may only be Danny—Kim usually makes the last check of the shift around now. If we wait too long, though, the next shift will arrive, and there’ll be the usual half hour of shift change briefing and shooting the breeze. I know Kim—he’s a talker. So, got an invisibility song?”

  “If I did, I’d have used it already. Besides, I’m not sure that would work. Would I get our clothes, too? What if it didn’t apply to our stuff?” He and Sachiko grinned at each other at the thought of a disembodied keytar floating around the complex.

  “Josh Lawson’s ghost is haunting Max Security,” Sachiko sang, and they giggled.

  Tasmae gave them both a deadly look.

  “Sorry. Stress.”

  “Shall we do this the old fashioned way? One of us distracts Danny while the other bonks him on the head?” Sachiko suggested.

  Tasmae nodded, but Joshua blanched at his fiancée’s casual suggestion.

  She shrugged. “This place isn’t real, remember? Besides, he’s a big braggart. Thinks he’s so hot because he ‘earned’ a black belt in two years. I keep offering to teach him some sparring moves—frankly, so I can show him up—but he thinks I’m flirting and cute.” She sneered with distaste. “Might do him some good to find out a belt doesn’t mean a thing in a real fight unless you’ve got the moves to back it up.”

  “There will be no fight,” Tasmae said. “I will get behind him and incapacitate him with one blow. Joshua, stay out of the way and keep an eye on the corridor.”

  “I’m hanging out with a couple of Amazons,” Joshua muttered, but agreed.

  They got to the nurses’ station without incident and paused at the junction just before it. Sachiko peeked around the corner. “Just Danny,” She said to the others. She looked over her outfit, shrugged, and undid a button on her top. “Hope this was supposed to be my day off. No getting jealous,” She said as she readjusted her bra and pulled off her engagement ring. “This is just distracter-factor. Can you sing me a drink?”

  Puzzled, Joshua sang “Margaritaville,” until a large, umbrella’d drink appeared in Sachiko’s hand. She drank it down in long steady gulps, spilling a few drops on her chest for good measure. Joshua gaped.

  “Are you this conniving in real life?” He asked.

  She smiled, flipped her hair, and sauntered over to the station, letting her hips sway with enough exaggeration to suggest she’d been drinking more than she’d just had. Danny looked up when she greeted him with a warm yet kind of sad, “Hey there.” Soon she had him absorbed in conversation about how her no-good, immature excuse for a fiancée had gotten cold feet once he got back to Colorado, and how what she needed was a good fight and maybe a little fun. Tasmae waited until Danny was completely focused on her and silently sidled around behind him. Joshua hovered by the corridor entrance, marveling at Sachiko’s acting ability. What else didn’t he know abou
t her yet?

  “What is going on here?” A stern, familiar voice said from behind him. Joshua whirled to face Dr. Malachai. “Mr. Lawson, what are you doing back?” He demanded. He looked past the still-gaping intern. “Who is that?”

  Danny had looked up at the sound of the chief psychiatrist’s voice—he had everyone well-trained that way—and noticed Tasmae sneaking up behind him. He spun with an exaggerated “HEE-yah!” And sent a flying round kick in her direction. She swung her arm, but instead of blocking, caught his leg on the outside and used his own momentum to make him turn his back to her. A single chop to the base of the skull and he was down.

  By then, however, Malachai had Joshua in an iron-firm grip and several orderlies and a couple of guards were pounding up the hallway behind him. “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough bad press for this institution?” He scolded.

  “Matter of fact, no!” He couldn’t play with Malachai holding one arm, but he sang, “Wanna make your living off the evening news / Well I got something, something you can use / I want Malachai to lose / Come get his dirty laundry!”

  “What are you doing?” Malachai asked calmly, but his grip tightened.

  “Could have been a singer but in the end / Gotta use my singing to rescue my friend / So come and shout out in his ear / He’s got the dirty laundry!”

  Suddenly, twenty reporters, photographers, and cameramen surrounded them. They thrust their mikes into Dr. Malachai’s face, calling out questions, and he was forced to let go of Joshua. He backed away, smiling as he watched the chief psychiatrist struggle to figure out what was happening even as he put on a professional face and replied calmly to their accusations.

  “What about the allegations of Deryl Stephens’ family that your inept handling of him has rendered him incurably insane?”

  “Is it true that you have a real psychic here?”

  “Are you holding a teen hostage behind those doors?”

  Must have gotten the grocery store gossip rag reporters. Sachiko and Tasmae had opened the door and were gesturing for him to hurry when a reporter asked Malachai, “And what about the rumors concerning you and Sachiko Luchese?”

  What about Sachiko? Joshua paused, wanting to hear more, but Sachiko pulled him away. “Let me handle this. You have to save Deryl, remember? He’s seventh to the left.”

  “What about you and Randall?” Without thinking, he used the chief psychiatrist’s first name. Somehow he had the feeling the rumors were personal in nature.

  “Go! Rescue Deryl!” She shoved him toward Tasmae, and he ran. He glanced back to see her button up her shirt, put the ring on her finger, and turn to the reporters.

  Then the scene dissolved until only gray fog was at the end of the hall.

  “’Ko?”

  “Joshua! Here!” Tasmae shouted.

  He turned and ran to Tasmae, the fog swelling up slowly behind him. He stopped next to her at Deryl’s door. “Are you doing that?” He demanded, jerking a thumb behind him.

  “We must be entering Deryl’s reality. He’s in here. I can feel it. How do we open the door?”

  “Remotely, or with a key—both of which…” His voice trailed off and he indicated the now vanished nurses’ station.

  The fog moved inexorably closer.

  Tasmae shut her eyes in concentration. She shook her head. “I can’t reach him. I can’t get through to him. His world, his perceptions, are behind this door. I can feel that much. We have to get through that door.”

  “No kidding.” Somehow, he knew that if they were here when the fog reached them, they’d vanish with everything else. His heart pounded. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the haze.

  “Joshua!” Tasmae snapped, but he couldn’t think of anything. His brain moved too fast to concentrate.

  She slammed her fist against the keytar, and a heavy rap beat began to play. “Sing!”

  “Okay! Um… Right! All right, world, you hearken to me / ’Cause I’ve got the words to change reality / Hold back the fog an’ it be bogging ‘cause the verses ain’t a slogging / Don’t see why we should need no key / You open up with Aladdin’s sesame!” He stopped, breathing heavily, praying.

  The fog slowed, boiled upward, but no longer advanced.

  The door opened with a quiet snick.

  Despite himself, Joshua grinned and crossed his arms over his chest, rapper style. “Word.”

  Tasmae gave him a confused look, then pulled the door open.

  They rushed in.

  Chapter 29

  “I don’t understand!” Clarissa spat at the policeman who stood in their apartment, his hands nervously playing with his walkie-talkie. “He could barely move! How could he have escaped?”

  The policeman grimaced, and Deryl fought to keep his own mouth from mimicking the gesture. He could feel everything the officer felt: embarrassment for his force, anger and a little fear that a man who had been beaten so thoroughly was still able to get up and walk out of a hospital, and sadness at having to bring such terrible news to a woman who had to be at least seven months along. “Ma’am. It happens. Not often, but—”

  “I don’t care!”

  He winced a little at her vehemence, and Deryl felt a new emotion from him—annoyance that the poor lady’s husband didn’t do something besides stare at the floor. Deryl forced himself to put an arm around Clarissa and pull her against his shoulder, kissing her head softly. Her emotions seared into him, but at least the officer was satisfied.

  He squatted down in front of them. “We’ll increase the patrols around your house and work.”

  “For how long?” She sniffled hopelessly. “All you’re going to do is make him wait.”

  “If we keep him waiting long enough, he’ll make a mistake,” Deryl spoke the officer’s thought for him, though he knew it wouldn’t happen. He looked at the policeman, tried to smile. He felt desperate to have him leave. He gave Clarissa a quick squeeze, then rose to open the door. “Thank you, officer. Anything you can do, we appreciate.”

  The officer set a card on the entryway table and left. No sooner had the door shut than Clarissa burst into full sobs. “It’s not fair!”

  “I know,” he said dully as he sat beside her. The police had arrested him along with Clarissa’s attacker. He was released on bail only on the condition that he see a psychiatrist. After everything he’d done that night, there was no hiding anything from Clarissa—or Dr. Acker. The lobectomy was scheduled for next week.

  You can’t let them do it, that part of his mind screamed again, drowning out Clarissa’s muffled words as she sobbed into a Kleenex. If you do this, there’ll be no escaping. He’ll have a hold on you forever. You have to remember what’s real. You have to think!

  He sat beside Clarissa but couldn’t touch her. When he touched her, there was only her, and the baby, and keeping them both happy and safe. When she was away, there were too many holes, too many doubts. He’d looked at his medicine yesterday, and it had seemed evil somehow. He’d flushed it down the toilet and done the same today.

  Now he wasn’t sure that had been such a good idea. The headaches had returned, increasing and fading, it seemed, with how involved he was with the world around him. Just like when he was a kid, the thoughts and emotions and even attitudes of others pressed themselves on him. He could feel the Master working on him, but in a new way, playing upon recent events so that he found himself regarding everyone as a potential threat until he was afraid to leave the apartment. Only his greater desperation to be alone enabled him to let Clarissa go to work that morning. He’d stood on the balcony that afternoon and looked longingly at the pool below, but couldn’t overcome his fear even to go downstairs for a swim. He’d felt Tasmae’s pull, too, almost as if she were calling from behind his locked door. He couldn’t let her in. Whether she was real or not, somehow he knew it was dangerous to bring her to him.

  He�
�d had visions, too, all playing on a theme: things—balls, cars, worlds—colliding, him stopping them with a thought; people falling before him like autumn leaves as he grew in strength and power. He didn’t know what they meant, but they felt so important! In the end, he’d reclined on the couch, a book in his hands as his cover story, and given himself to the visions until Clarissa came home, griping about being stuck working the office and telling him she craved Chinese. She had pulled him out of the visions and back to himself.

  He looked at her now, his heart breaking to see her so distraught. He loved her. Or was it an illusion? He couldn’t think when she was near. And now this.

  You have to get her away, something in him urged, and he wondered if it was for her safety or his sanity.

  “I want you to go to Sachiko’s and Josh’s for awhile,” he found himself saying.

  “And leave you alone to have major brain surgery? I don’t think so!”

  “Listen to me!” He spoke urgently, but didn’t touch her. He couldn’t, not now. “I need you to go. I need to know…that you’re safe.” He wanted to say, “what’s real.” He was torn between the desire to comfort her and the need to push her away.

  “You hit him with a hundred pound weight and he laughed at you!” She croaked. “He walked out of the Intensive Care Unit! He said he’d never stop. He killed Jacob. He wants to kill me—and our baby! What makes you think going to Colorado will stop him?”

  She paced the room. He wanted to make her stop, to reassure her, to remind her what her doctor had said about stress and the baby. He couldn’t make himself do anything. He sank onto the couch.

  She got to the Closet of Doom and spun to face him. “Why didn’t you finish him off?”

  “What?”

  “You could have done it. You wouldn’t even have had to hit him. You could have stopped his heart, and no one would have known!” She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, her hair wild, her cheeks stained with tears, her lips curled into a snarl of anguish, and she suddenly seemed horrific and surreal. His mind felt scalded, his nerves shattered, and his dinner ready to come back up.