The GOD Box

by Melissa Horan

  “What are you thinking?” May asked him.

  With a look of undiluted dullness he stared back at her. He didn’t care. Not about the dead fool on the floor or the fair sexed shrew kneeling on the filthy ground. Formidable though the situation was, there may be ways around it. What he was thinking… if he could have expressed what he was thinking… was everything at once: there were images of pristine labs in the background, a cemetery in the foreground; remembering the deal and that the qualifications for coming back had to include Gabe, he was unsure if there was a way around it. He was deciding if Gabe had enough distraction factor, or convincing power to engender their care or interest to bring him back. He was almost positive he wouldn’t really need their care or interest, however. It wasn’t just that he was considering starting over. As a matter of fact, he wondered if he shouldn’t…

  “Whether or not it would be beneficial to bring him back… and if I care.” He said frankly

  Involved with discernment she stared at Jonathan for a good long while. It was obviously his choice whether to bring him back, she could tell that much. But how? That was the question she would have to answer. He was happy to see that she couldn’t read him well enough to know, really, what he wanted.

  “At this point it seems like you don’t want it and that it wouldn’t be beneficial for your cause at all.” She pressured him.

  “Well, your lack of details is your disadvantage. Regrettably, depending on what I choose my cause to be, his life might be the only beneficial thing.”

  May didn’t know what that meant, which was fine because he intended her not to know.

  Jonathan hated Gabe even more after death, thinking more seriously to the final deal the council made to their equipment, that one couldn’t come back without the other. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that there was no way to fix that, no escape from it. Check and balance put him in this predicament now. He couldn’t have selfishly said otherwise without suspicion. Immortality was only at reach with enough human decency to bring back with him his enemy; his hatred embodied. Oh, the irony. Of course, they didn’t always hate each other, but he did in this moment. Where they all stood now perfectly summed up the problem in Jonathan’s mind – him in chains and May disappointingly helpless over death.

  Jonathan thought she was asinine. She was satisfied to let her only ally remain dead. She wasn’t begging or bargaining for Gabe’s life back. All that knowledge she could have, she’s was wasting. Idiot. Not surprised. What she wanted was comfort and zero responsibility. Not that she even knew what she wanted. He slunk back, emotionlessly keeping eye contact. He knew she was in charge, partially because he was in chains, but partially because she was more emotionally secure. Eyes closed, chin to chest, he imagined all the possibilities. When his mind went running… as the saying goes, he didn’t lose control like other people seemed to… he took intense mental notes and dealt with things one at a time.

  His head slowly tipped upwards as May looked away from him, yet his eyes remained focused on her. As was her habit, she rubbed her hands over her face and through her hair. Nothing was hidden in her expression. She was obviously hesitant to leave Jonathan alone with the body. She had to decided now how to dispose of it. Her eyes darted back and forth from the door, to the window, to the body. May opened the door to see if someone was within the sound of her voice. Thomas was out chopping wood.

  “Hey, will you help?”

  “What for?” He asked, then seeing some distress, said, “…I’m almost done.”

  When the door was closed behind her again, Jonathan was staring hard at the ground, a little more panicked. It wasn’t because he felt like he couldn’t come back. But, he knew that if he chose to come back, he would need Gabe’s blood and the panic, in actuality, was because he was afraid of being psychotic… of taking action that labeled him as the town’s monkey and put in prison or killed without what he needed from Gabe. Jonathan had to make a decision whether he wanted Gabe or not. Unfortunately for him, May did too, and she made hers faster.

  “Here’s how its gunna work from now on,” May began, “Every time I give you pills to swallow, I throw the same amount in the fire.”

  At first he could only gape at her. How did this even come to this? You are a product of your emotion, woman. You’re weak and stupid. Only an imbecile would take what someone needed most and destroy it. Then he became afraid what she really might do. He tried to calm himself by thinking, she doesn’t have the stamina to stand by the threat…this is her only source of power.

  May didn’t back down. His anxiety visibly exploded with heat from his chest to his arms, to his cheeks. As if he couldn’t control it, his fear and frustration made their verbal stand,

  “You can’t do that! They are for me-dic-al conditions! You can’t force me off my meds and think that you’ll solve all my problems. They are chemical imbalances in my brain! Who the hell do you think you are?! I was the smartest man in the United States. I know more about your brain than you do! I could take it apart and put it back together with a brand new set of memories! You think you know what makes life work! You have no idea, who I am, what I’m capable of. You have no idea what people need, or how to get there! All your reading, all your searching is idiotic. All that crap you were talking about yesterday?! Do you know what that is? No. Because it’s nothing! Nothing! All your little ideas might as well be put in Gabe’s grave and peed on. Deranged idealist. You know how many of those cute little ideas were tried and failed? How hoped for they were by stupid little people, who had no control. This is typical! You know why it didn’t work? Nobody cares!”

  He was trying to piss her off, just running and running his lips. Maybe she’d get that it would be worse for the wear on all of them without his medication. Still, in that demonic smile which he most positively wasn’t imagining, it pleased her to punish him, and to condition him. Grabbing the bottle of his pills she put a few in her hand. Now he was watching her intently, cursing at her, telling her to put them down. As she moved to the fire where dinner was cooking he became quiet. One pill into the fire.

  “Bitch!”

  Another pill into the fire.

  “Damn, feisty, whore!”

  The door flung open on the scene – one man dead, one man screaming, and May at the fire, pills in her hand. Thomas came in running, seeking explanation. Thomas grabbed a shovel outside and swung it upward, threatening to bring it down in his might on Jonathan’s head. Jonathan became silent. This was the bottom of the food chain. Sweat was pouring down his face and snot was leaking from his nose. Almost totally crazed, he was embarrassed at the scene. He was breathing heavily.

  Knowing this was a tool, May stopped putting the pills in the fire. Silence was rewarded.

  Thomas stared at her incredulously, “Uh… hey, could you help me?? That’s what you ask? What do think about? He’s dead! You could have screamed or something! Or ‘get the hell in here and help me’.”

  May didn’t say anything to his rebuke. She dropped her hand lamely and her face dripped into exhaustion. She wasn’t going to throw his pills in the fire. That was a lie; a threat, but an effective one. After a certain point though, she just didn’t know how to deal with him.

  Jonathan cussed her out deliriously in every language he knew… which was four. Everything he just felt about potential control was gone. Desperation was taking over. This wasn’t a side of himself he enjoyed seeing, or showing for that matter. He convinced himself thoroughly that it had nothing to do with him or who he was… it was his anxiety and it was beyond his ability to control.

  “Stop… please stop.” He begged now as tears came down his face quickly, all of the adrenaline trying to drain. One incontrollable emotion to the next left him hating himself. Everything inside him needed to come out like vomit which his body was rejecting. His manic behavior was surely frightening them. It would be over soon, but he needed to let it out. Biting his thumb knuckle was, albeit, the only thing he could do… an
d the most tame. He wanted to break the skin; make it bleed. He was shaking now. He hated the chains. He hated living. He hated losing. He hated dying. He hated the chains and knew it was his fault that he was in them. He hated forceful submission. Anxiety and panic screamed from every vein.

  The pills stuck in May’s sweaty hand as she put the leftovers back in the bottle, which rattled with the soft plunking of each pill replaced. She was sweating and shaking too, though not nearly as badly as Jonathan. May looked as though she might faint, and she sat down.

  Thomas put the shovel down. He looked around the room to fill in the storyline. May waited until Thomas asked about Gabe. When she slowly explained, he soberly nodded, like one does at the sight of death, even if they don’t care, because they feel like they’re supposed to. Jonathan hated this stupid, tiny and dark hovel of a house. Blankets everywhere, a dead man flopped on the floor, and the cushions in an array where the body was dragged from the couch to the floor. Thomas began cleaning up. Jonathan didn’t know why, it’s like he had some moronic notion that that was the first thing to do to get the world back in order – straighten up the cushions.

  The woman sat in front of her notes. Thomas sat next to her, on the side that would separate her and Jonathan. They discussed a few things which Jonathan paid careful attention to. How they would need to take care of Gabe’s body in town, and who would finish chopping the wood. May got up and poured herself water and came back to the table. Face squished between her hands, she sat there, breathing through pursed lips.

  Removing hands from her face, she had a mixed look on her face toward the body still on the floor.

  That’s right, Jonathan thought, stare at it. Think really hard, maybe you’ll come up with a solution, you moron.

  “I’ll go ahead and take care of the body.” She said. Then something else came to her mind as she now stared at the water. May swirled it around, thinking and looking discreetly at Jonathan. He dared her to fear it in silence, but then as if to prove to Jonathan she wasn’t afraid, she drank it, giving him an intentional blasé expression.

  Thomas seemed to want to help, but felt awkward and didn’t know how. He went over to the body and began to pick it up. May followed as Thomas went to lift the body and attempted awkwardly to hold open the door. She grabbed Gabe’s legs. They noted with hush how surprisingly light-weight he was. They took him outside and took any noise with them.

  Praise the lack of ignoramus’ Jonathan thought. He wearied and looked at the chains. This was a typical uncivilized response of how to deal with the unknown. If they chained it, they could stare at it and try to understand it, until it was beneficial to set it free.

  Any part of Jonathan’s face that could leak was doing so. Chances are he’d soon be asleep and could ignore everything that just happened. That was the plan, anyway. After he finished crying and shaking, he leaned back in his chair with a pillow on the head of the very low-riding back rest. Vengeful thoughts cooed to him like a lullaby.

  Venomous she-devil; suffocating heifer; ignorant hag; paltry want-to-be feminist. He would sooner kill her than seduce her, which was saying something. Eventually he fell asleep, and woke up again to an empty house, not knowing how long he’d been asleep. He felt a little better; slightly more in control than before his nap.

  As far as he had determined, he had two options. One, he could bring Gabe back and start over. Two, he could let them live, and create the tools he needed to keep up his research. Right now, it was the second option. Gabe was right. This wasn’t enjoyable. Jonathan didn’t want to die again. Not right now. Tactics must change because the experiment wasn’t working. The environment he was in now was a fair enough place where he could sufficiently ignore every other human being. Somewhere, he would build an open lab and work, and fix the problems. He would only ever need to leave for food, and besides that exchange, he would never have to explain anything to his dim-witted associates.

  Jonathan looked around the room. It was so dark in this house that it felt like the cave. Jonathan tensed up at this realization. His medication was wearing off from this morning. As he twisted his wrists, they dug into his skin, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to make him stop. Jonathan had to get out of here. He seeped the air through his teeth, which were clenched so tight it was as if they were wired shut. The snot was drying on his face and he pulled and pulled against the chains. They weren’t coming free. Desperately he looked at the cuffs, to see if the mechanism could be broken. Because he was so distraught, it took his eyes a long time to focus.

  It couldn’t be broken. He tried for an hour and they still hadn’t returned to give him a pill. He needed another anxiety and claustrophobia pill. He was starting to feel as manic as before his nap. Jonathan couldn’t realize in his nightmare that it was ninety percent withdrawal. And, he never realized how quickly it would hit him or how quickly his feet would be taken from underneath him. He was at a loss. At this rate he would work himself up until he fainted. Scourging the place with his eyes for the keys, he cursed the blasted darkness for blinding him. But it wasn’t the darkness that blurred his vision it was tears and withdrawal. Certainly, he looked like a mad man.

  When May entered the house several hours later, and sat down at the table, she stared exhaustively into Jonathan’s open eyes, but said nothing. He met her gaze, and would not be the first to break their eye contact. He was declaring war, right here in this moment.

  Captivated, and disgusted, she closed her eyes, and drifted to sleep with vivid imagery of misery, and the way he slumped in the chair, blood dripping from his wrists, and with wet face, complete with a plague of blackness circling his blood-shot eyes. He would kill her if it was the last thing he did.

  At the sun down and at the sun rise, he stared and imagined every possible way to cause her death. Jonathan watched her struggle through the next morning. Every dreaming moment, she was trying to be awake. As a matter of fact, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t wake up. Vague sounds approached them from the outside, but never woke her up.

  Jonathan didn’t even know if he fell asleep, his obsession was so complete. Jonathan didn’t know what was happening either. He couldn’t look away. Even when Janine tried to wipe his face when she came in the previous evening, he just turned this way and that to avoid the cloth. He did let her clean his wrists, and bandage them as best she could without removing the cuffs. Not that she wanted to help. Fear of the monster was repelling her in every way.

  ___

  When May opened her eyes again, it was quiet. A soft kiss on the cheek from her daughter had woken her up gently and easily. Nothing was said. From a sideways glance where her head had molded to the table, she looked into big, blue eyes that blinked back, turning sideways also, so that she looked right-side up.

  The girl seemed to sometimes look a lot like May and at other times more like her father. It puzzled May. Right now, while May felt close to the girl, she tried to specifically identify those features that belonged to either one. Nose was hers, eyes were his. At the same time that she was making these decisions, she was reflecting on herself. Three years had passed since Janey was born – May barely got back in time for the little girl’s birthday this year. Not that they did much for it… made a special treat… gave her a toy they bought months ago in another town.

  Flippant was the last quality May would have attributed to herself. Self-control was her mantra. So how had she ended up with a child before she wanted her? Why hadn’t the self-control worked four years ago? She could say it was ‘love’; that it was social pressure; that it was a carefree moment; that it was anything… but it wasn’t anything. It wasn’t anything except physical desire. Janey’s father’s name was Vincent, he lived in the city still and he and May were on friendly terms. It took time to get that way... purely because of May’s odd reaction. Before she knew she was pregnant; before the consequence was made manifest, she hated herself.

  That was an odd moment for May. She acted, and it was wrong. Perhaps it
was some deep belief within her, reacting in outrage. It was an opportunity to learn that she never wanted that again. In that moment, she changed. She would make choices based on the outcome, instead.

  Yet, there she was with the daughter who hardly knew her. Perhaps May hadn’t changed quite as thoroughly as she thought.

  Several minutes passed by before May picked her head up to look around. Saliva had secreted between her cheek and the table, so her face peeled rather than lifted off of the dense wood.

  May rubbed her face with her hands and sighed. She remembered that Dane was gone, and that she still had chores to do. Dane. Janey was almost one when May met Dane. This was how May judged time, with the people she met. This weird nostalgia probably came from Dane’s absence.

  Her memory of him seemed to actually start two days before they met. The politician he was with came into town.

  …

  While most of the girls in town spent their time flirting with the boys, May was more interested in the politician. Having someone traveling to ‘preach’ their philosophies was a moderately new idea. May had heard the rumors from a few of the traders who came in and out of town. Since she had been through as many books that she could find, she was searching for new ideas.

  She first met the man while she was buying almost rotten mangoes and he was purchasing eggs at the next shack over. He was wearing a hemp vest, which signified that he was a bit more well-to-do. Surprisingly, he was genuinely friendly toward the farmer who sold him the eggs. They weren’t talking about politics at all. That made May begin to like him.

  She casually joined in the conversation and when another customer came up, May walked away with the man, continuing their conversation. Eventually, of course, they turned to his line of work and she asked what gave him the idea of traveling.

  His response was suspicious. Basically he said he wanted to unify the people for trade purposes; for security in the event that some relationship went south between any of the cities, there was a bigger judicial system in place to help sort it out; to make compromise.