by Weston Ochse
He was thankful it wasn’t awake now.
He was thankful it was in a fugue.
But he would have been more thankful had they never been on this damned mission at all.
Chapter Twenty
MCQUEEN WAS IN a coma. Try as he might, Sufi Sam couldn’t arouse him, so he’d left to consult with the other dervishes. In the meantime, the TST licked their physical and psychological wounds, still stunned that they hadn’t been in reality but instead in a dervish fugue created by the mysterious branch of Mevlevi dervishes and monitored by Sufi Sam. The dervish whirling had as much to do with lateral time management as it did with their worshipping of God. With an aeon of Sufi knowledge to draw upon, the Mevlevi partnered with the traditional mystics to create a complex pattern of dance that allowed them to move easily through other realities.
The TST had been using this as an opportunity to go back to the moment before they’d encountered the daeva and try and undo what they did. Not only did their lives depend upon their success, but possibly the fate of the planet.
Now, back in their room with everyone cleaned up, it was Boy Scout who had difficulty coming terms with his return to reality, especially with McQueen still locked in his coma.
“But you never did those things so you can’t take responsibility for them,” Lore said, shaking her head, which had also been closely shorn by Sara.
“I thought I did them.” Boy Scout stared morosely at McQueen. “It seemed like just a few hours ago that I hit him. McQueen, my friend.”
“It never happened,” Lore said.
An image of Joon came to him followed by an imperfect image of him kicking her from an outside perspective. Had he really done that to her? Had he really kicked her? Had he killed her in one of these travels like she’d said?
“I just can’t shake it,” he said.
Lore placed a hand on his arm. “It’s not the same, boss. Reality is all that matters.”
He stared at her hand, then placed his on it for a moment. “But it’s not, now is it. If reality was what mattered, what we were doing would have no significance.”
“Ever seen that show about a western fantasy?” Criminal asked. He was reclining on his bunk, pillow behind him, legs crossed, cleaning his HK 416 rifle.
All eyes turned toward him.
“I think one of the pay-per-view channels is remaking it, or maybe already has.” Criminal laughed. “Now I can’t be sure what was fugue and what was real. Still, the flick I’m talking about is the one with Yul Bryner… you know, the bald guy from The Magnificent Seven.” His eyes narrowed. “What was it called?”
“Westworld.” Narco looked up from where he was tying his boots. “That’s the one where the amusement park is filled with robots and people can do whatever they want to them.”
“You mean that bald guy from The King and I?” Lore asked.
“What the fuck is The King and I?” Criminal asked.
“Never mind,” Lore said. “What about it? What about Westworld?”
“It’s like what these dervishes create. It’s not real, but it seems to be.” Criminal cocked his head. “People go to this Westworld to do something they wouldn’t do in public… in reality. Many of them go there to rape and murder.”
Narco raised his eyebrows. “So what?”
Criminal stared at him. “So what? Even if it’s a fake world, the rape and murder still counts.”
“Bullshit,” Narco said.
“Fuck you,” Criminal responded. Then he turned to Boy Scout. “It’s true. Westworld is not a place where you can go do anything, even those things that you can’t legally do anywhere else. Westworld is a place where your morality is weighed and measured. It’s an opportunity for you to test your own idea of who you are.”
“That’s pretty deep,” Lore said.
“Pretty deep shit, you mean,” Narco added.
“No,” Lore continued. “What he says is true, I think. I know what I said before, but Criminal has a point. The difference is that when we are in the realities the dervishes put us in, we don’t know they aren’t real.”
“Which makes it all the worse,” Boy Scout murmured.
Sara spoke for the first time. “I haven’t traveled with you, but I was there when the dervishes first talked about it. I’ve spoken to Sufi Sam about it when you’re under. When you’re in that state, you aren’t only you; you’re pieces of each one of you. Each one of your memories and experiences go to create puzzle pieces of the reality. Who you see and who you interact with are inventions of the lot of you. You’re used to controlling who you are, but can you be responsible for controlling those pieces of you that aren’t a part of you?”
“Talk about deep,” Criminal said, giving her a respectful nod. “Now I’m totally fucking confused.”
“Like that’s a hard thing to do,” Narco said. “Still, it’s all make-believe. Who cares what you do in a make-believe place? Who cares what you do in Westworld? Raping and murdering is why it was made in the first place.”
“Said by no one but a psycho,” Criminal murmured.
“Even if you do something or see something in another reality… this fugue y’all were in,” Sara continued, “it can still affect you. PTSD is still possible. Ever try and watch that Berg beheading on YouTube? I know people who can’t unsee it and have been ruined for life.”
Boy Scout remembered the first time, their failure to return to that moment and not capture a daeva, and how the old Sufi had been so earnest.
“You must go back under. You must try again. Even now, it begins to wake. I can only hold it for a time and without the combined might of your minds, it will break free and kill us all.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Boy Scout had said.
“It was not I who sought to capture a daeva. I am but a vessel to assist you in your life’s journey. To save your life. To save the lives of your people, you must go under again. Heed the bell, follow the goat, and allow me to move you sideways to another place.”
“What is this sideways? I don’t get it.”
“It is neither forward nor back. It is neither here nor there. It is no place and everyplace.”
“You sound like a fortune cookie on acid.”
“I am only who I am. Rumi anticipated your question. He said, ‘I am so close, I may look distant. So completely mixed with you, I may look separate. So out in the open, I appear hidden. So silent, because I am constantly talking with you.’”
“But I’m not looking for this Rumi character.”
“Rumi is not a character. He is our spiritual leader. The poem is not about Rumi. It is about yourself. Your true self. The self who has the answers.”
“Boy Scout?” Something shook him. “Boy Scout, are you paying attention?”
Boy Scout realized he’d closed his eyes. He opened them to see Lore right in front of him, her hands on both shoulders.
“Yeah. What is it?”
“McQueen. He’s back and wants to talk to you.”
Boy Scout pushed her out of the way, then rushed to his friend in the other room. He fell to his knees next to McQueen. “There you are. You had me worried.”
McQueen’s eyes were droopy. His breathing was shallow but steady.
“I went away,” McQueen managed to say.
Boy Scout cupped his cheek, then checked his forehead. “We all did.”
“No. I went away again.”
“Where did you go?”
“To a place of light. A place where nothing existed. It was so bright that I couldn’t even see myself. I tried to look at my hands, but even in front of my face they weren’t visible.” He sobbed once. “I was terrified.”
Sufi Sam entered the cistern with one of the younger dervishes. The newcomer’s name was Faood and he’d been educated at Oxford. He had a quick smile but serious dark eyes. “What your friend saw was the Sefid. It is not a good place.”
“What is the Sefid?” Boy Scout asked.
“The Sefid is TheWh
ite. It’s the nothingness between places. Think of time as a strip of film. The blank strip between pictures is the void.” He came and knelt beside McQueen. Then he leaned his head in and sniffed along McQueen’s blanket-covered body. “I can smell it on him. And more.” To McQueen he asked, “What else did you see?”
“A pinhole of darkness. At first it wasn’t there, but then it was.”
“Did you go to it?”
McQueen glanced fearfully at Boy Scout before answering. “No. It started coming toward me and I ran from it.”
Faood frowned, then glanced at Sufi Sam, who nodded. “Interesting that you ran. What made you afraid?”
McQueen shook his head. “It didn’t seem right. I don’t know.”
“It was fear that saved you,” Faood said to McQueen. “The Sefid has a way of seeping into you. It makes you accept it. It makes you want to be there, but there are things that live in the Sefid. Terrible things. Sometimes they were once like us. Sometimes they become lost and changed. Then there are those things we put there.” He inclined his head toward the main cistern behind him. “We put the daeva in that place. It doesn’t know it has a body still, but if it finds out, it will be able to escape.”
“Was that what was chasing me?” McQueen asked.
Faood shrugged. “Could be. Could also be something else.”
“You said sometimes they change? Travelers like us? Is that what you mean?”
“We dervish, we travel, as you know. It is why we dance the way we do. Rumi taught us this long ago, and we do it because of him. Sometimes one of us will become lost. We try and find him, but there are so many places and spaces between places that it’s very often they go lost forever. Then, without humanity, without warmth, without love, they become creatures of need… creatures of desperation.” He looked around the room. “Have any of you been in the Sefid?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“It’s common for someone who travels into the Sefid and back out to have one of these changed creatures and not even know it. They... how do you say? Replace you… add themselves to you… is there a word for this?”
“Possess,” Lore said. “We call this possession.”
“Yes,” Faood said. “I remember now. Like in The Exorcist.”
“Jesus,” Narco said, getting up and backing away. Finally, he turned and walked to the other end of the room. “What is this bullshit? Time travel… possession… will it never end?”
Boy Scout stood. “Okay, let’s give McQueen some room. Narco, come and help me get him to the cleaning room.”
“I can do it myself,” McQueen said softly.
“Not this time, my friend,” Boy Scout said. He took one of the big man’s elbows and helped him off the ground.
Once on his feet, Narco came back and took the other.
Boy Scout nodded to Lore. “You work with Faood to figure out when we’re going under again. We need to get out of this damned place.”
Then he took his old friend into the other room and cleaned him like a brother.
Chapter Twenty-One
MCQUEEN WAS WORSE off than any of them and the differences were staggering. Where he’d been full-muscled with a hipster beard and mustache in the most recent fugue, now he was half that man—sallow cheeks, no beard, no mustache and virtually no hair. Sara had apologized, but her caretaking of the team was difficult enough without having to cultivate a sense of style. She’d done the best she could. His lips were almost whiter than his skin. Any tan that any of them had developed had been leached out by the water and total lack of sunlight. In fact, the water should have had a more severe deleterious effect than it had, but either the nature of the fugue or the gruel they’d ingested somehow protected them.
McQueen’s muscle loss was Boy Scout’s biggest concern. He looked like a stage four cancer victim, someone nearer death than life. Boy Scout had managed to get some real food—rice and chicken—and was now feeding it to McQueen.
Boy Scout had come out of his own fugue rather quickly, but McQueen seemed unable to shake it. It was like he was straddling the two realities. Boy Scout wondered if it had to do with his travel to the Sefid. The sort of hell that McQueen had described would be enough to drive anyone mad. Whatever it was, Boy Scout wasn’t going to allow McQueen to go into another fugue. He wouldn’t make it.
McQueen opened his eyes and held Boy Scout’s in a steady gaze. After several bites, he put up his hand. “Enough.”
Boy Scout put the wooden bowl and spoon down. “Are you full?”
“Yes,” he said, then added, “And no.” He sighed and wiped the edge of his lips. “That last one did me in, boss. I don’t know if I can do another.”
Boy Scout agreed. “We’ll have Sara join us if you can take care of us while we’re gone.”
McQueen stared at Boy Scout for a long time… long enough for a single tear to fall.
Boy Scout was shocked. He’d never seen the other man cry. He didn’t think he’d had it in him.
Seeing Boy Scout’s reaction, McQueen spoke carefully. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I put up a great front, something I’ve perfected after twenty-four years in the Army. First in basic training, then in infantry training. All the homo jokes. The fag jokes. They never ended. Once I was so offended at some joke this dumb ass cracker made that I failed to laugh like all the others, and he homed in on me right away. He just figured it out. He began calling me a fag. He told me all the things he’d do to me and all the things I did to animals and small children. It was beyond disgusting. So one day toward the end of infantry training he had fireguard from three a.m. to four a.m. Know what I did? I fucking raped him. I beat him up and I stuck my cock so far inside him that he didn’t know which hole I’d entered. I was so angry. I was so enraged. I was the gay Hulk and he was my punching bag. No one ever heard us. What I did to him… the anger I bestowed upon him, was epic. Then you know what he did, that fucking cracker? Know what he did? He finished his shift, put on his Class A uniform, and hung himself in the shower. A sorry ass Class A uniform with a Marksman badge and no ribbons. Like that uniform meant anything to him.”
Boy Scout burned with a thousand questions but remained silent.
“Turns out that uniform meant everything. He was an ass cracker, but every generation of his cracker family had served in the military since the Battle of Bunker Hill. I took that from him. As bad as he’d been, as hateful as his words had been, they were nothing compared to the act of rage I committed against him. That rape. My fucking shame.”
He gazed solidly at Boy Scout. “And you’re worried about your soul because of the pedophile officer you killed? You got nothing on me boss. I’m a rapist murderer because I couldn’t take a joke. I’m hell-bound because I had thin skin. So you know what I did? I grew my skin thicker. I learned how to be aloof. I put on muscle and no one fucked with me, even when I didn’t laugh at their silly ass cracker fag jokes. And when the time came to join the teams, I jumped on it. Best thing ever happened to me. Being on a team is different than being in an infantry squad. When you’re in squad it’s all dick measuring and fighting behind the motor pool. When you’re on a team, it’s a matter of being part of a band of brothers like none other. And then God had the last laugh.”
Boy Scout realized he’d been holding his breath and sucked in a lungful through his teeth. McQueen had never been this forthcoming. To have him unload like this was unprecedented.
“And a last laugh it was. You feeding me just now reminded me of it. And to think I’d pushed that memory way into the back with the dust mops and getting caught playing with Barbies by my father. I was on my team for two years, then we got a new guy. Big, tall, black and beautiful. He called himself the Black Kojak because he always went around with a sucker in his mouth and liked to say, ‘Who loves ya baby.’ We connected right away. He was the best lover, the most attentive lover, I ever had. It was—he was—
“Then I went on a hundred and twenty-day mission to support a SOCO
M special mission unit while he deployed with the team to Iraq. By the time I got back, he was in the hospital. It wasn’t an IED. It wasn’t a haji with a lucky shot from his AK. No, it was a fucking taco that brought Rudy down. A fucking street taco, then boom, gastrointestinal anthrax. Had the doctors gotten to it sooner, he might not have died, but those fucking doctors had no clue. They medevaced him to Germany, then to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where they were finally able to give the proper diagnosis. By then it was too late. His body was too toxic. I spent a week feeding him Jell-o with a plastic spoon, just like you did me, before he died.”
McQueen abruptly looked at Boy Scout, then at the ground, as if he’d just discovered what he’d done… what he’d said.
“Jesus, McQueen, get it under control,” he said to himself. “Sorry to unload like that, boss. I just… I just… you helping me like you did reminded me of everything.” He knocked on his forehead with his fist hard enough to make Boy Scout wince. “What’s up there needs to stay up there and not get out.”
“I think it’s okay to let some light shine into those dark corners,” Boy Scout said. “Stuff can rot and infect other memories if you don’t keep that clean up there.” He cupped McQueen’s cheek.
McQueen let Boy Scout’s hand stay there for a moment, then shook it off and laughed softly. “You’re the only straight man who has ever held my face like that. Why do you do it?”
“My grandfather used to hold my face like that and it made me feel connected instead of all alone.”
McQueen nodded. “Your grandfather was onto something.” He looked around, then let out a long, sorrowful sigh with just a hint of a sob at the end.
“Hey,” Boy Scout said.
“What?”
