The Donors

by Jeffrey Wilson

  Somehow, he seemed able to chat comfortably about what they should eat for dinner. Surreal, that was the word for it. Only in dreams did normal people have a battle of wits with demon Lizard Men in a dark alley and then hug their girlfriends and casually discuss dinner plans.

  Jenny let go of one of his hands and handed him the phone from the counter. Jason punched in the direct line to Nathan’s room. After only two rings, the phone clicked to a connection.

  “Hello?” Nathan’s small voice said. “Jason?”

  “Yeah, buddy it’s me. Jenny and I just wanted to check on you. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” Jason heard a rustle like he had adjusted in bed. Nathan’s voice took on a conspiratorial whisper and he imagined the kid moving away from his mom so as not to be overheard. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  “I’m fine, buddy,” he answered with a cautious glance at Jenny. “Why? Did you feel something or hear something?” He had already decided not to tell Jenny what had happened in the alley. She seemed to be teetering on the edge as it was.

  “Kinda,” Nathan said softly. “I just kinda thought that maybe the Lizard Men tried to hurt you. It just felt that way I guess.”

  “I’m fine, Nathan. I promise,” he reassured. No sense in worrying him either. “And Jenny is here and fine too. Are you gonna be okay tonight? You know how to get me if you need me or anything happens, right?”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said as if the question was silly. “I can talk to you in my head whenever I want.”

  “I’ll come see you real early in the morning again and then we’ll talk about a plan okay?”

  “Okay, Jason,” Nathan said and seemed content. “Bring Miss Jenny, okay?”

  Something’s going to happen—something bad.

  “I will,” Jason promised. “Get some sleep, alright?”

  “Sure,” said Nathan with that same what-a-silly-thing-to-say voice. “See ya tomorrow.” The phone clicked off and he was gone.

  The creatures were sure to be busy with Jazz, and Jason could think of no way to help him. The fear in him told him he shouldn’t want to. The two people that mattered were safe. Tonight, that would have to be enough. He needed some sleep and now that Jenny had planted the seed, he realized he needed some food as well. Tomorrow would be the day, he suspected, one way or another. Jason looked at Jenny, the other half of what he thought of now as his dysfunctional family, who stared back expectantly.

  “You like Chinese food?” he asked.

  * * *

  James had tried a big mix of drugs over his short life, but had always preferred liquor. He loved the mellow buzz of weed, but even that left him wanting a drink. The hard shit never made him feel anything but scared and his one trip with mushrooms had been like living in a cartoon, not fun at all.

  This felt nothing like any of that. He figured it must be some kind of shit he hadn’t tried and whatever the doctor gave him definitely felt like no trip he wanted to take again. It didn’t suck, except for the weird feeling in his chest that he got used to pretty quick, but it didn’t feel good either. It felt like floating or something—like floating inside a dream.

  He could feel pretty much everything, only more. The sheets on his skin and the sensation of the bed against his back became more real somehow. James could feel and taste plastic in his mouth, but whatever they gave him made it not bug him too bad. And he heard voices, lots of them. He knew they spoke in English but the words were mostly big doctor words and he felt so fucked up from the drugs he couldn’t follow what they said.

  And who gives a shit anyway?

  The only bad part was the dream. He dreamed that he had died in the ICU and that the doctors talked about him being dead right in front of him. In his dream he tried to sit up and tell them he was still alive and nearly shit when he couldn’t move. Alarms were going off all around him and the doctors and nurses scurried around.

  In the dream he felt a terrible stab in his chest and choked when they lifted him nearly off the bed by his jaw and jammed a plastic tube in his throat. Then someone, a doctor he figured, said to stop, that he was gone, and that was when he really freaked out. In the dream his body really was dead, because he couldn’t move anything, not even his eyes which looked up into a bright light that he couldn’t focus on.

  Someone leaned over him, the face huge, and they had pulled up his eyelids and shined another light in his eye. Then the voices mumbled more about him being gone and how it maybe was a “bee-eee” from a clot or something. They had even pulled a sheet over his face which actually felt good because it blocked out the blinding goddamn light.

  He remembered rough hands that picked him up and moved him to another bed and his head got real swimmy then and he thought he couldn’t breathe. The sheet had slipped off his face and he looked up at someone, a brother, but big and fat and in scrubs like the doctors, who looked back with a scrunched-up face then pulled the sheet back over him. Then he passed out.

  Fuckin’ dream. But them drugs is sure okay.

  “He’s had too much narcotic,” a raspy voice that sounded familiar said. It sounded pretty pissed off and he guessed the voice was the doctor in charge. Something in the voice made his brain tell him to be scared, but he couldn’t figure out why so he decided not to give a shit.

  “We had too. Without it he would have had a big sympathetic response and we could never have pulled it off. We needed lots of hypotension so there would be no pulse that could be felt. We can’t fake that by disconnecting leads.”

  “When will he be light?” the voice asked.

  “Soon,” another nervous voice said. “I can give him some Narcan to speed it up if you want—even run it as a drip until the Fentanyl is gone—but it’ll clear on its own in about fifteen to thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be back in ten,” the scary voice that he couldn’t quite get scared of said. “Have him ready by then, however you have to.”

  James felt motion just above him and then cool, waxy fingers grabbed his eyelids and yanked them up. The image that hovered above him stayed slightly out of focus but his mind recognized it from somewhere and alarms went off in some part of his brain that wanted to give a shit. The eyes beneath the hat glowed orange from the shadows.

  “I’ll be back, James,” the familiar voice said. “And then we will talk, you and I, about what the future holds for you.” Red lips split apart enough to let a blood-red tongue push out. It stroked across the impossibly long teeth and then sucked back into the slit of a mouth in the ash white face.

  Deep inside James hollered and a layer of haze lifted. Then the cold, bony fingers let go of his eyelids so they slid wetly back in place. He sank into the rust-colored darkness and heard the voice in his head rise to a scream. He decided he probably better start to give a shit.

  * * *

  Jenny felt the voice of the man in the long coat and top hat, but she didn’t really hear it. It felt like she imagined mind reading would be like; no sound or even words, just thoughts and feelings pounded into your head against your will. She didn’t let it bother her because she knew she was dreaming. The dream broke itself into a million senseless fragments, each piece meaningless alone, but the kaleidoscope of pieces formed a kind of abstract art that meant a lot. But she knew it would be a worthless jumble when she woke up.

  Dreams are just like that.

  Yes, they are. They really are.

  The images floated around her, the same disturbing images as before, and she refused to look at them. She knew exactly what they were without looking, so what the hell difference did it make? She floated through the dream she couldn’t describe, ignored the images, snuggled against Jason and pulled his arms tightly around her.

  Just a dream, you know.

  No, pay attention. Don’t let them in.

  The child’s voice sounded like a whisper, the words more like feelings and tied to the images she wouldn’t look at. The fragments were ugly and violent, but they didn’t hurt like befor
e. Like when you got your teeth drilled after they gave you novacaine. You know it hurts—it has to hurt of course, and you can feel the tugging and pushing—but you’re numb.

  The new images showed a thin and angry-faced black man—a boy really. He sneered at her as the images wiggled into her brain, still just feelings, but with pictures. He had done terrible things, this boy James. Had raped and murdered—but young children not adults—and that mattered she knew. He wouldn’t stop. Not ever.

  Run back to Jason, girl. You’re in the cave and you don’t even see it.

  Help us stop him, Jenny. It’s okay. It’s right.

  Jason nodded to her from the cave and smiled. He would understand—maybe even do the same thing if he were in Jenny’s shoes. She felt fear grow insider her, but something else in the dream stifled it. None of that made sense, but that was okay in dreams.

  Dreams are just like that.

  She realized the child’s voice was not really Nathan, not this time. Like Nathan, but deep and false. But that was okay, dreams really were like that.

  Just help us in the dream. Just this time and we’ll leave. You can be with Jason and even with Nathan. We’ll take the evil people like James away with us and we’ll leave you together in peace. One last time and just in a dream. Jason would want you to if he knew it could save you all from this nightmare. Help Jason and make this all go away. Just help us finish and we’ll be gone.

  Dreams are just like that.

  She dreamed that she slowly and carefully unwrapped herself from Jason’s embrace and slid gently out of bed. She padded barefoot across the bedroom floor, careful to avoid the squeaky board near the closet door as she scooped up her dirty scrubs and jacket from the closet floor and grabbed her Crocks from the wall beside the bathroom.

  Even in her dream she couldn’t just slip away from him, and so she tiptoed gently back to the edge of the bed, bent over and kissed Jason softly on the corner of the mouth. She looked at his gentle face for a moment, softly illuminated by the street light that snuck in between the bath towels over the windows.

  “I love you, I think,” she said.

  The corner of his mouth ticked up a bit, a half-smile, like he had heard her. It looked to her like “I love you, too.” Then she creeped silently out of the room, steered around the loose board again, and dressed in the living room. Jason would worry if he woke up and shouldn’t she really go, especially if this would make the nightmare stop?

  Dreams are just like that.

  True enough.

  She locked the door softly behind her and then headed to her truck and the hospital.

  Chapter

  21

  He didn’t crave a drink at all, but prayed for the drug that had made him not give a shit about the nightmare he found himself in. He could see some of what went on in the room, like if your TV was black on the top half of the screen and you could just see people’s legs. The nightmare didn’t feel like no dream no more, and he had tried for what felt to be an hour to wake up, so he felt pretty sure about it being real.

  The burst of air in his chest every few seconds no longer seemed like no big deal, either. The most terrifying part was that he couldn’t move, not at all. The half-up eyelid thing was the most movement he had managed since the doctors had given him the other medicine that sucked the high out of him in seconds and left him with pain, terror, and half a view of the room he lay in, paralyzed and helpless.

  He sensed a change, like a suction almost, and felt his ears fill with pressure. Much of the movement in the room stopped and he could hear hard shoes clicking on a tile floor. He seemed to be able to focus his eyes a little better now, and the bottom half of his vision revealed a long overcoat as a figure approached him.

  He knew that coat—it was that pasty mother fucker with the red eyes and long teeth. He had convinced himself that he had been a prank the asshole cops played on him. Maybe it still was. Maybe this was just more of that same grab-ass bullshit. But then he remembered the long teeth and red tongue and knew it wasn’t no prank. They had asked him a bunch of bullshit and then left—had told him they’d help him be sorry for the shit he done. What shit, goddamnit? Them white bitches had beat him half to shit—had shot his ass, not the other way around.

  The coat stood right beside him now and he couldn’t focus as good up close.

  “Hello, James. I’m here to help you repent.”

  The bony fingers pulled his eyes open again and he stared up into that deformed face. James felt his heart beat in his chest and in his temples, even in his eyes. The cold hand grasped his hair, and pain shot through the top of his head as he felt it lifted from the table he lay on. He saw clearly now: a surgery room. Two people in masks and shower caps with long blue gowns arranged surgical instruments on a blue, covered table.

  Beside them a woman, out of place in brightly colored scrubs and a jacket covered with clowns holding balloons, stared at him with large, beautiful blue-green eyes. Her look was stone, like she might be in a trance or something. Then his head dropped suddenly onto the table again and a burst of air exploded in his chest. Tears filled his eyes and broke over the bridge of his lower lids, tickling down the sides of his face.

  “Start the Narcan drip—no narcotics of any kind.”

  The girl with the pretty eyes and the colorful scrubs came forward and he watched her hang a smaller IV bag on his pole and jamb some tubing into it.

  “I want you to enjoy every moment of your repentance, James,” Mr. Clark said, only his mouth didn’t move. James felt glad ‘cause he thought if he saw the long teeth again his heart might explode. “Let me tell you what we’re going to do to you, James,” the voice said only this time the blood-red lips did move.

  The face, still in shadows under the brim of the hat, leaned close, and as he watched, it shimmered and started to change. So did the room behind it. For a moment, he stared at a dinosaur-like head, the eyes burning lumps of coal—black surrounded by a halo of red. Darkness replaced the harsh lights and he thought he saw the dirty roof of a cave. Then the image shimmered like a tar road in the heat and he looked again at the shadowy face in the top hat. The lights burned his eyes and made them water.

  “We’re going to cut you open, James,” the voice said in his head, the mouth a partly open, but motionless, blood-red slit. “We are going to tear you open and rip things out of you while you are awake and powerless, and you will feel everything we do.”

  The ridiculous words cut through him. He heard alarms sound and a furiously fast beeping that had been slow background noise moments ago. James’s own voice screamed in his head. This was impossible. They couldn’t do this. He had rights. The cops would come and stop this shit. The mouth above him split wider into a horrible grin and then Mr. Clark stood slowly and addressed the blue-suited doctors by the table full of instruments.

  “Take a kidney, only one for now, and don’t feel you have to rush.”

  James’s eyes wouldn’t move, but his corner vision caught a man in blue moving toward him. He felt cold wetness on his skin followed by fingers pressing harshly into his belly above his navel.

  “Knife, please,” a new voice said.

  His screams rose to a fever pitch inside his head and he heard a hissing sigh from the creature in the hat, like he was coming in his pants.

  “Yeeesss…..”

  * * *

  The other voice inside Jason’s head called to him and he reluctantly decided to listen. It felt more like a taunt than a calling.

  Double dare you, scaredy cat.

  “Bite me,” Jason whispered in his sleep, but he went just the same. He remembered that the other-him voice, the one with the sing-song, little-boy quality, wasn’t him at all. It never called him to do anything that didn’t have a purpose. He doubted he had understood that before, so long ago, how could he have? He had been barely older than Nathan. His fear for Nathan and Jenny had grown enough now that he couldn’t ignore the call, and so he went.

  You learned a
bout ignoring, didn’t you? And Mom paid the price.

  He opened his eyes and looked around. As silly as it seemed that he would find comfort or safety in the presence of a five-year-old, he realized that it felt much, much worse being here alone. Partly because of the memories and the little-kid terror it brought back, but also because last time he had been so focused on taking care of Nathan that he’d had little time to be scared for himself.

  Well, not this time, bro. I may actually piss my pants—if I was wearing any friggin’ pants.

  He felt some comfort in the dreamlike quality this time, and he wondered for a moment if he might not be dreaming. He didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure. The darkness and the wet heat felt real, and he already felt a tickle of sweat running down the middle of his back and into his crack.

  Real, I think.

  Doesn’t matter, Jedi. Get moving. Lots to see and lots to do.

  Jason felt an intense sense of déjà vu when the other-him voice called him Jedi. He remembered now that he had been heavy into Star Wars back then, and the voice had always called him Jedi or Young Jedi. The memory hit him hard. A closet full of heavy and painful memories might come crashing down on him if he cracked open the door to his brain a tiny bit more. He closed it firmly and started up the path toward the ledge where he and Nathan had looked down on his mom.

  You mean Jenny, don’t you, Jedi? Mom was last time—long before Nathan, unfortunately for her.

  He shook the voice silent and kept moving. The dark puddles of purplish blood seemed to be everywhere now, like the cave bled slowly to death. He stood on his tiptoes to make his feet small and hunched over, trying not to touch the ceiling. His back ached as he zigzagged around the puddles and up to the top of the rise. Cautiously, he peered over, though he felt nearly certain that the creatures weren’t here. What he did see nearly made a scream escape; he tasted Chinese food in the back of his throat.