Mind Over Psyche

by Karina L. Fabian

  “You know what? I hope he comes back. Soon! This week, and I want you to kill him. Kill him so we can put this whole damn thing behind us and have our baby and be happy.” She dissolved into tears.

  “You don’t mean that,” he whispered.

  “Yes! Yes, I do! Kill him for me, Deryl. Please!”

  A stabbing pain through the back of his skull made him buckle over, gasping.

  She looked up from her tissue. “Deryl? Deryl what is it?”

  Something alive in his brain tried to claw itself out. For a moment, he felt his mind ripping; then everything resolved itself in a blinding flash. He still felt the pressure, but he had shields again, and he pushed it back. He looked up at Clarissa, saw the concern in her eyes, and felt nothing but a low-key horror. “This isn’t real,” he said, not realizing he spoke aloud. “How long have I been stuck here?”

  “Oh, God! Deryl, no! Don’t do this to me! Deryl, did you take your pills? Deryl!” She clutched his arm. For a moment, he felt a stab of tenderness. He swayed, but then stood, pulling himself out of her grasp.

  “It won’t work this time, Alugiac!” He looked around the apartment and laughed in amazement. Did he really have this vivid an imagination?

  Disbelieve it all, his mind warned. None of it is real!

  He picked a direction at random and started walking. He passed right through the coffee table.

  Clarissa jumped in front of him, clung to his chest. “Come on, honey, please. I’m sorry. I was upset and the hormones and—please, let’s just both calm down, and you take your medication—”

  He didn’t even glance at Clarissa as he walked right through her, but couldn’t help looking back when he heard her yelp. She was on the floor, as if pushed. She looked at him with shock and fear.

  For a moment, his steps faltered.

  She trembled, but stood slowly. “I’m going to call Dr. Acker.”

  Dr. Alouicious Grant Acker. Al Lou G. Acker. Alugiac. Again he laughed. How could he have been so blind? He turned from her and headed to the balcony.

  Don’t believe anything. Don’t believe—

  But again her scream brought him back to her reality and he found himself teetering on the balcony’s ledge, eight stories from the ground. He looked down. The swimming pool seemed small and far away.

  “Deryl, please, please come back in and let’s talk about this! Deryl! Don’t do this to me! I can’t lose you!”

  Yes, you can. Because you’re not real. Without thinking about what he was doing, he stepped off.

  She screamed.

  He fell, and kept falling until his body smacked painfully against a surface.

  And still he fell, deep into a nightmare. Gardianju’s nightmare. Demon-specters flailed at him, pulling him down, ripping him apart. A sword appeared in his hand, and he knew one swing would destroy them. He forced his hand to open and the sword fell from his grip. It’s not real. It’s not real!

  He fell out of nightmare and into a pink room. This time, when he hit the floor, he didn’t continue through, but lay there, groaning and disoriented. When he at last had enough wits to look around, he found himself in the high-intensity ward at SK-Mental, his arms bound in a straitjacket.

  Tasmae and Joshua were staring at him in open-mouthed shock.

  *

  Tasmae gave a cry of joy and relief as she stepped toward Deryl, but that step faltered when he didn’t reply. He’d sat himself up and had scooted away until his back pressed against the wall, but otherwise showed no sign of being aware of his surroundings.

  “Deryl?” Joshua approached him slowly. “Deryl, bud? We need to get out of here.”

  Deryl spoke in a dead voice. “Nice try, Alugiac. I’m not buying it, not any more. I’m tired of being your puppet.”

  “Deryl, what are you talking about?” Tasmae knelt in front of him. He glanced at her just long enough to dismiss her.

  The Sphinx had warned them about this. Still in the background, Joshua brought his keytar around and softly started playing. “You can talk to me/Come, talk to me.” He played the song through, changing the lyrics as necessary, pouring sincerity and love into each verse. He finished the song and was segueing back into the chorus when Deryl looked him in the eye. “Singing me sane, Joshua? Fine. You want me to believe you’re real? Prove it.”

  “All right,” Joshua said softly, reasonably. “Remember how you told me I had to be real because you’d never have imagined me with five o’clock shadow? Ever seen a keytar before?” He was betting that five years in the institution and even longer without watching television, the answer would be no.

  He watched doubt soften Deryl’s features, then disappear. “Not good enough.”

  “Deryl,” Tasmae said, and his eyes flicked his way. “Could Alugiac have really faked me? Could he have faked this?”

  She gazed lovingly at Deryl, and Joshua saw his pupils pinpoint just before Deryl closed his eyes. Tasmae touched Deryl on the cheek, and he pressed against her palm, trembling. But when she leaned toward him, he jerked his head away with a sob.

  Joshua swore. “What did he do to you?”

  Deryl didn’t answer, but neither could he look at Tasmae. He tried to hug himself tighter beneath the straitjacket.

  Tasmae stood. “When we find Alugiac, I will kill him.”

  “Shut up, Taz,” Joshua hissed. “The last thing we need is to go spoiling for a fight. We do not want to bring that maniac to us.”

  He knelt down beside his confused and grieving friend. “Deryl, listen to me. Tasmae and I came to help you, but once we came through that door, we entered this world. Your world. Now we’re trapped, too, and no one can get us out of here except you. You’ve got to believe in us, Deryl, and disbelieve this world.”

  Deryl wouldn’t look at him. Instead, he dropped his head, and rocked. “You’ll die. You’ll die, you’ll die…” Tears trickled down his cheeks.

  Joshua watched as Deryl slipped away from them. Tasmae again sat at an angle to him, her face a mirror of his misery. Her body started to rock slightly in time to his, and Joshua knew with horror that he could lose them both and end up trapped here forever. He sat down cross-legged, his keytar on his lap, and let his hands play randomly over the keys while he prayed.

  Dear Father in Heaven, I could really use your help right now. St. Jude, patron of lost causes, show me the way through this. St. Cecilia, patron saint of music, inspire me. Help me do God’s will. Help me get us home!

  Suspended in time, the trio sat there, each caught in their own thoughts. Even Joshua began to rock slightly. His fingers moved over the keys, filling the room with snatches of song—oldies, top 40, a chorus or two of Chipotle’s, and hymns. Finally, his hands settled on one hymn in particular and he began to sing: “Brother let me be your servant / Let me show the Truth to you / Pray that I may have the grace / To let you be my servant, too.”

  As he moved through the second verse, he felt Tasmae’s hand on his shoulder and she joined him in the third verse. He let her take the fourth on her own: “I will weep when you are weeping / When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you / Let us share both hope and danger / ’Till we’ve seen this journey through.”

  Deryl turned and met their gazes. “You’ll die,” he said in a small voice. “That’s how it works here. He’ll make it so I have to kill something—someone—or you die. And I can’t kill. If I do—” His voice cracked on the last word.

  “What?” Joshua prodded as he continued to play.

  Deryl’s face scrunched with misery, but he shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was tight and small. “I don’t know.”

  Tasmae answered, her voice hushed with understanding. “Something dies in the waking world. Something of Alugiac’s choosing.”

  “Someone. Get out of my mind, please Tasmae. I don’t want you to die!”

  “No one’s dying
.” The music ended in an abrupt musical squawk as Joshua smashed his fist on the keyboard. “And no one’s killing. We’re changing the rules. Look, I’ll make you a deal. Alugiac’s using information from your own mind to make you believe in this world, right? Trust in us for now, and I’ll come up with something so, so stupidly ridiculous that there’s no way you could have thought it up, okay?”

  “Joshua!” Tasmae pointed at the far wall.

  The pink padded wall of the containment room had turned into a wall of molten rock. It inched towards them.

  Joshua didn’t even waste time swearing. “All right, Deryl, this is it!”

  Deryl gaped at the advancing lava and struggled to stand. “Help me get this straitjacket off!”

  Joshua was already pushing at the door. “It’s not real, you idiot!”

  “Oh! Right!” The jacket disappeared. Deryl gave a short laugh of surprise.

  “Joshua, sing something!” Tasmae shouted. She, too, shoved her weight against the door. Deryl stood, but otherwise did nothing.

  The room was starting swelter from the heat. The lava roared. Joshua shouted at his friend, “Deryl, disbelieve us out of here!”

  “I don’t know how!”

  “Then disbelieve the frickin’ door!”

  “All right!”

  Suddenly, there was empty space where the door had been. Joshua and Tasmae spilled out, landing in a tangled heap on the floor, Deryl tripping over them as he rushed out of the room. Joshua shoved himself up. His heart skipped a beat and he reached behind him for the keytar. He gasped more than sighed with relief to find it intact. “Good. Good start.”

  “We’re still in the asylum,” Tasmae accused as Deryl pulled her to her feet.

  “I’m trying!” Deryl cried, but when he saw the orderlies at the end of the hall, he nonetheless took off in the other direction.

  “Deryl! They aren’t real!” Joshua shouted at his retreating back.

  “They are as long as he believes they are!” Tasmae replied as she ran after him.

  Joshua groaned and followed.

  Soon, they were running down hallways that had nothing to do with reality and more resembled a climax scene from the Twilight Zone. In one hall, a teenage boy was being worked on by paramedics while his friends blabbered, “He just looked at him! He looked at him, and he fell over!” Out of one doorway, Isaac, Deryl’s elderly Jewish friend, stood in concentration camp uniform, while across the hall, another elderly gentleman shouted that Deryl was Satan’s child and should have been destroyed in the womb. With each encounter, Deryl shouted a negation, yet continued running. Tasmae and Joshua ran with him.

  Joshua slowed, however, when they passed Randall Malachai with his arms around Sachiko. The chief psychiatrist was kissing her neck, and she hummed as if enjoying it.

  “What the..?”

  She opened her eyes, saw Joshua and mouthed, “Run!”

  He saw a vacuum extractor in Malachai’s hand.

  She’s not real! he told himself as he took off again, but that didn’t stop his stomach from churning.

  When he rounded the corner into a common room and skidded to a halt, even that was forgotten as he looked at the monster that blocked their path.

  The horrifyingly malformed body sported too many eyes and teeth too large. Gore dripped off its huge, twisted body. It roared incoherently and made odd bog-like squelching sounds as it moved. It was hideous.

  It was like some kind of monster from a B-rated horror movie—one with cheap special effects.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Joshua yelled over the noise.

  Yet Deryl and Tasmae stood frozen before it. It advanced, and they stepped back.

  Tasmae held Deryl’s hand and was quietly instructing him to not believe, yet she had pulled the punch dagger out of her hair. Her sword stuck out of what would be the monster’s thigh, if it had had proper legs. Deryl shook and whimpered.

  “Oh, please!” Joshua whipped around the keytar, played fifteen notes, a rising chord, and three computerized “PEW!” Sounds.

  Three streaks of colored light zoomed down the hall and resolved themselves into caricatures of little girls with pod-like hands, and eyes and heads too large for their squarish bodies.

  “What’s the emergency, Joshua?” the pink one asked.

  Despite himself, Joshua smiled. “Think you ladies could handle that for us?” With a casual flip of his hand, he indicated the monster bearing down on his friends.

  “Ewww!” the blue one squealed.

  “All right!” Cheered the green one.

  “No problem at all,” the pink one said cheerfully, and the girls swooped into action, zipping right between Deryl and Tasmae.

  Deryl made a strangled gasp of surprise.

  Tasmae dropped her dagger.

  “Come on.” Joshua grabbed them both by the arms and pulled them out of the way. Illusion or not, he knew very well what happened to the things around them when the girls fought evil monsters.

  “My dagger,” Tasmae protested as he shoved them under a table.

  “Forget it! I’ve got a dozen superhero theme songs. Now look, Deryl. Look hard. Then you tell me you could have thought that up!”

  Deryl watched as the streaks of pink, blue, and green zoomed around the monster, kicking, punching, shooting lasers out of their eyes, and bantering the entire time. The tension and fear on his face vanished, and he smiled, bemused.

  “Nope. That’s pretty unbelievable.”

  A horrible howl filled the room, rising to such painful volume and intensity that they covered their ears and curled up in agony. The world began to swirl around them as if it had become a tornado.

  “Couldn’t you disbelieve more quietly?” Joshua shouted as the table they were huddled under was caught in the twister and vanished into oblivion.

  “This isn’t my doing!”

  The world faded and stilled.

  Chapter 30

  Once again, they found themselves in a featureless land of gray fog and dark horizons.

  “Deryl!” Joshua groaned with annoyance.

  “No. We are in the Netherworld,” Tasmae said. “The true Netherworld.”

  “Well, good, then. How do we get back?”

  YOU DON’T.

  The mist before them swirled, and from it stepped Alugiac.

  Joshua gaped. He was a short but large man, though Joshua guessed his muscle was starting to go to fat. He wore heavily brocaded, priestly robes that dazzled even in the dim flat light of the Netherworld. His hair was graying but full, and he had a goatee. He regarded them all with superior sneer.

  He was every cliché of a supervillian Joshua could think of. He even spoke in all caps—his voice echoing and sinister, yet somehow toneless. All he needed was a white Persian cat and a garish pinky ring.

  “You can’t be for real!”

  He turned his sneer directly to Joshua, gestured laconically, and Joshua found out just how real he could be.

  Blue-white barbs of electricity flashed from his hands and struck Joshua, throwing him back. He shrieked and arched in uncontrollable pain.

  *

  “No!” Deryl lashed out with his mind. A mirrored shield interposed itself between Alugiac and his friend. The lightning ricocheted off it and struck Alugiac, knocking him back. He staggered, then laughed.

  Deryl glanced fearfully at Joshua and almost sobbed with relief to see him roll weakly onto his back and shrug off the keytar, which had absorbed the brunt of the attack and was a smoking ruin. Joshua shoved it away and fell back panting.

  GOOD. CONTINUE, Alugiac encouraged, but Deryl had already lowered the shield.

  “No.”

  THEN THEY DIE, JUST AS THEY HAVE BEFORE. JUST AS THEY WILL AGAIN. OVER AND OVER. AND YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHICH TIME WAS THE REAL TIME—OR EVEN WHO IS REAL.


  “Deryl! Help me!”

  “Clarissa?”

  She was there, just to the right of Tasmae: pregnant, terrified, and being held by the attacker that had escaped the police. He pressed a huge hunting knife against her throat. His eyes, so like Alugiac’s, gleamed with lust and excitement.

  “Deryl, help me!” She squeaked, then shrieked as the knife cut into her cheek.

  “Deryl, she’s not real!” Tasmae yelled.

  Clarissa sobbed louder.

  “I know!” Deryl said, but it was almost a whisper. He couldn’t tear his eyes off her. “Taz, get Joshua and go!”

  “No! We’re in this together!”

  “Deryl!” Clarissa shrieked.

  “Deryl,” Tasmae’s calm, authoritative voice cut though the girl’s screams, “let’s just go. You don’t have to—”

  Tasmae’s words were cut off as the strange tar-like monster, like the ones that had attacked her when Alugiac first appeared, rose from the ground at her feet and enveloped itself around her. She struggled as it immobilized her: legs, arms, shoulders. The featureless mouth surged tauntingly toward her face.

  DECIDE, DERYL. CHOOSE THE ONE TO DIE, AND I WILL LET THE OTHERS LIVE. OR GIVE IN TO ME, AND YOU CAN HAVE ALL.

  Clarissa had moved so beyond fear she couldn’t even scream. Tasmae struggled valiantly, but it was obvious the creature played with her, waiting Alugiac’s command. Joshua stirred and groaned faintly, too overcome by the effects of the lightning to help.

  CHOOSE.

  “No.”

  Deryl, Tasmae teleped. You can get us out of here! Just go!

  YES, DERYL. JUST GO. ABANDON YOUR WIFE AND CHILD. RETURN TO “REALITY” WITH YOUR ALIEN LOVER. AND KNOW THAT I WILL FOLLOW. IN YOUR DREAMS AT NIGHT, YOUR IDLE MOMENTS OF THE DAY, WHENEVER YOUR GUARD IS DOWN, I WILL BE THERE. THAT IS YOUR REALITY.

  “No!” Deryl shouted and a blue haze started to surround him. “I. Will. Not. Be. Your. Puppet!” With each defiant word, shields grew in size and brilliance around him until they blazed with blue light. They crackled and hummed with pent-up power. With the last word, he flung his hands toward Alugiac, and the shield bulged, expanded, and surrounded them both.