by J. Thorn
Corey spent weeks watching and listening to the colors. It was during this time the doctors declared him mute, told his parents the bolt damaged the frontal lobe and he might never speak again. Although it brought a level of relief to Corey, knowing he would not have to answer the doctor’s questions, he did want to talk to his parents. He wanted to tell them both how much he loved them. He knew someday he would get to say those words to his dad. The drunk driver in Detroit made it impossible for Corey to do the same for his mother. Corey couldn’t remember the last thing he said to her. He jotted down hundreds, possibly thousands of words on his notepad, but never again spoke with his own voice. Corey hoped he’d have that chance again someday. He wanted to hug his mother and tell her how much he loved her.
A fan inside the ceiling kicked on and Corey heard the hum of the motor. He turned over on the bed, putting his back to the doctors behind the glass. His eyelids felt heavy, sleep tugged at his consciousness. Corey realized he was going to be in this bed, in the middle of the hospital, whether he slept or not, so there was no point in fighting it. After the time spent in the hospital from the lightning strike, Corey never wanted to be in a hospital room again. But he knew this was important to his dad, so it was important to Corey. Just before he fell asleep, Corey felt his mind go to the new place.
He was headed to that other universe opened by the lightning bolt, the one most people never realized was there. To the doctors monitoring him, it would appear he was asleep. But Corey was stepping into what he called the “memory machine.”
Corey’s mind had the ability to jump across time and space. Corey would not see the scenes as a movie inside of his head and he would not be able to alter what happened in it. That kind of “paranormal activity” was what Hollywood writers used in their screenplays. This was different. Corey would be privy to memories coming from a different lifetime but he would experience them as if they occurred in this one.
Hope you got your computers ready to roll, Doc, Corey thought.
He remembered the heat, not because it was hot but because it was unnatural. It smelled like charred wood with a bitter aftertaste. Corey felt it sear his eyebrows and fill his nostrils with the stench of burning hair. He couldn’t see any of this. He was remembering something his current physical form did not experience. He heard screaming and desperate crying as the flames tore through the building. Corey remembered being squeezed between a mass of frantic bodies and a steel exit door that opened inward, trapping the panicked mass inside. A strong hand was gripping his shoulder, most likely that of an adult. And then just as quickly, it was gone. “This way,” a voice said.
Corey couldn’t hear it in his vision, but he remembered it.
This memory, the one seeping into his mind while he lay asleep in Dr. Singleton’s lab, came from Collinwood, Ohio. It was March 4, 1908. The Collinwood Fire, as it became known, claimed the lives of 172 children inside Lakeview Elementary School, along with two teachers and a rescue worker. The tragedy would forever change building codes and fire department procedures, birthing the modern “panic bar” now on all doors of public buildings. It allows the door to swing outward quickly and easily in an emergency.
Corey felt the memory. He was inside a child on that day in 1908.
He was inside of Lakeview Elementary. “It burns,” he heard the voice of the child say.
“Follow me,” an adult said.
Corey could see an image of the adult. She wore a long black dress with flames licking at the bottom. Her black hair was tied back into a bun and soot covered her face. The memory was showing a middle-aged teacher, a female, but Corey knew the soul of Dr. Singleton was inside her. They both died in that blaze, together. Corey knew that was their connection.
He followed her through the smoke and the terror as the stairwells acted like giant chimneys, drawing the fire upward where it spewed like a dragon’s tongue. Burning wood fell to the ground while everything but the brick burned. Corey hated this memory and wanted it to end.
The woman tugged at several children as she moved through the debris. Most were dead and those who were not would be within moments. The oiled wooden floors of the school burned, pushing black, noxious smoke into the building. Corey hoped more children would die from toxic inhalation before the fire could burn the skin from their bodies.
“I’m coming,” he said within the memory.
He saw an open window, the glass blown out from the heat. He caught a glimpse of the sky beyond like a cruel taunt from a playground bully. Another wooden joist fell from the first floor ceiling, blocking out the last glimmer of daylight. The flames roared and Corey remembered feeling as though he was inside the boiler of the school.
The woman struggled beneath the burning beam, which pinned her to the floor. Her hair fell from the bun and the ends caught fire, sizzling up toward her scalp. Corey could remember her eyes, the same ones that belonged to Dr. Singleton now. She was saying goodbye without speaking. Corey knew he was next. The ground shook as another part of the structure collapsed in on itself. He remembered hearing the water from the fire hoses lashing against the flames, hissing like an evil serpent. The scorching heat burnt through the vision and left Corey with nothing but a new memory from an old life.
Corey woke up, choking on soiled air from his disjointed memory. The cool air of the room hit his sweaty forehead and made him shiver. He rolled over and looked at the glass to see his own reflection looking back. He wondered if the doctors inside were laughing at him, entertained by his body’s response to a memory it didn’t own. They would never understand and he doubted their instruments would pick it up. They would call it a dream state and try to use his brain wave pattern to prove it.
Corey was too tired to care. He yawned and rolled back over. The room had no windows and no clock, so he had no way of knowing the time. He was tired and once his eyes closed, another memory resurfaced.
The energy leaking from the portal triggered the visions. Although Corey did not understand that intellectually, he felt it in his gut. The frequency of the new memories was an indication something cosmic was changing. Before he could think any more about it, the next memory surfaced. This one came from the near future.
The man named Matthew, the one whose body he invaded, pulled a dagger out of the chest of the man on the ground. The warrior’s hand waited until the thief spat his last breath, a mix of saliva and blood, before he stopped turning the blade. Corey felt the man spin to see another fight taking place. The two combatants stood in stark contrast to the world, covered in white by the fresh snow.
The winter wasteland made Corey’s head hurt. It was frigid and barren. This was his world but different, one that was dying or dead, leaving nothing but broken humans to fight over the remaining pieces.
Corey’s mind climbed inside of a man’s head. The man’s clan called him Matthew and now Corey looked through Matthew’s eyes as if he were there, in that distant memory. A thief was attacking the caravan on the open road. Corey/Matthew leapt at the thief and punched him twice in the face. The thief’s eyes rolled up into his skull and Corey/Matthew’s second punch opened his bottom lip where blood began to flow over a wiry, filthy beard. Corey/Matthew reached to his side where a knife used to be. Instead, Corey/Matthew drew his right hand back and brought the heel of his palm crashing into the thief’s face.
Corey/Matthew watched men fighting and dying. They grappled with each other in the most primitive combat, squeezing the life out of each other with their bare hands. Corey saw the memory of three bodies lying motionless in the snow, two of which he killed with Matthew’s hands. Three pockets of men continued to fight, most of them congregating near the eastbound side of the Ohio Turnpike.
Corey saw a new Ohio in his mind’s vision, decades after an apocalyptic event.
Corey/Matthew felt a burning pain on his right side as another thief rushed him from behind. The attacker’s blade opened the thin skin on his hip, but didn’t pierce any vital organs. Corey/Matthew turned in
the air, using the attacker’s momentum to carry them both to the ground. Corey/Matthew landed on something round and hard, which knocked the breath from his lungs. Before he could breathe, the attacker kicked him in the shoulder. A second kick connected with the side of Corey/Matthew’s face.
Corey/Matthew felt the snow followed by an intense burn. He remembered the taste of blood in his mouth and the sensation of spitting the thick, viscous liquid on to the ground. Corey/Matthew brought a fist down on the attacker’s face, feeling the man’s lips burst apart. Corey/Matthew rolled on top of the adversary, grabbed his ears and drove the man’s head into the highway repeatedly until he was dead.
The blacks and grays of the future memory began to sing to Corey. He heard the guttural, rhythmic thumping in the color palette, a symphony of violence and death. The grays and blacks tortured Corey’s ears as the man in his future memory stumbled and leaned back, the guardrail keeping him from falling over backward.
The world swam in and out of focus and the darkness came down like a curtain in Corey’s mind. When he opened his eyes, Dr. Singleton was standing next to his bed.
For a moment, Corey saw the eyes of the attacker in Singleton’s skull. The two memories that came to him, spurned by the emerging energy coming from the portal, revealed Corey had spent many lifetimes with Dr. Singleton, in many roles.
In the fire, Singleton tried to save Corey. In the future, Corey would kill him. They were not dreams, not nightmares, yet Corey would have a hard time explaining it to anyone. The visions took a toll on his physical body, making him tired and weak. What Corey didn’t know was they weakened his spiritual resolve as well. The portal would open and the energy coming through now would be a trickle compared to the ensuing flood.
Chapter 18
Johnny wiped the mirror with the corner of the towel and stared at himself. The soap removed the dirt from his body, but not the shame.
“I had it,” he said. “I didn’t need her help.”
He stood back and surveyed his muscles. He knew he lost the tone he had in his twenties, even into his thirties. The fourth decade was not starting out well for Johnny Jackson. He woke up with pains he never felt before, pressure in places there shouldn’t be. Johnny was still in better shape than most of the other drivers at dispatch. They had long since given up on staying trim and fit. Most of the trucks were dusted with powdered sugar or littered with cellophane wrappers. Johnny avoided those temptations, but he came up short at the observatory. He had to be bailed out. By a woman.
Fuck her, he thought.
Johnny smiled when he thought about his path to get here. He had vague memories of escaping the violence in the Sudan. A man and a woman carried him over the border and out of the war zone. Like his birth parents, he never saw them again. Johnny bounced around in the back of army trucks for the first year until finally escaping with a group of older kids. He arrived in the United States wearing a pair of shorts and a reluctant grin. He came through New York and found himself processed by the bureaucracy without knowing what was going on. A man in a suit with a stack of papers escorted him to a youth shelter. Three months later, he was in his first foster home.
The other boys pummeled Johnny. He was thin, weak and clumsy. Johnny was beat down on playground after playground, each altercation resulting in him being shipped to a different foster home. He left one kind of warfare to land in another. By the age of sixteen, and his seventh home, Johnny discovered the weight room in his high school. Coach Warren had “Johnny Afro” in there five days a week, hoping to have a new star quarterback to showcase under the Friday night lights. Johnny never quite lived up to his coach’s expectations, but his muscle mass and fierce determination were enough to deter the bullies from taking any more runs at him.
The girls were a different story. Being one of a few non-natives at the close-minded high school in rural Ohio, they avoided him like the Black Death, which they used as his nickname. The cliques at Johnny’s high school existed like they did everywhere else. The Mean Girls made fun of his accent and his teeth. He didn’t have first-world medical care in Africa and none of the foster parents were about to invest in braces. Johnny’s teeth stuck out from his gums like the nubs of elephant tusks. He rarely smiled, fearful of exposing the jumble inside of his mouth. The girls would leave love notes in his locker and then hide around the corner to watch as he unfolded and read them. They snickered and pointed. Had it been ten years in the future, he would have been the subject of many viral videos depicting amusement at the expense of his dignity.
Johnny wasn’t gay, but he didn’t exactly like women either. The scholarship came and he tried college, but he didn’t have the focus. After one semester of lackluster grades, Johnny dropped out and was hired by the package delivery giant with a headquarters in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He immediately loved the work. He had the freedom to be out on the road, fascinated by automobiles and the American addiction to them since he first arrived as a young boy. He had a route, preplanned and precise, created by dispatch. Johnny just did—he didn’t have to think. The shop was union and he earned a decent living for a single man with few material desires.
He raped his first prostitute at age twenty-one. He saw the face of every Mean Girl who taunted him in high school as he took what he wanted from the whore. He left her with a swollen eye and a missing tooth. The girl’s pimp came after him but Johnny handled him too. He continued developing the muscles he started building in high school, using them to take what he wanted from the bitches. Johnny extracted a sliver of revenge every time he held a whore down and rammed his cock into her.
He dropped the towel to the floor, stepped out of the bathroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the main wall of his one-room apartment. He rubbed one bicep and decided it was time to get back into shape.
If I want to be a guardian, put that bitch Lisander in her place, I’m gonna have to hit the gym.
It was in that moment another thought hatched in Johnny’s twisted, damaged mind. Speaking her name brought it forth like a warlock beckoning a demon.
Gonna make Sonya mine, he thought. I’ll show her who’s weak.
Johnny ran into the bathroom and pulled on the same delivery uniform he wore every day. He had to be at dispatch in thirty minutes, but he would spend the day driving and thinking about Sonya. Johnny thought he might even masturbate to her tonight to get him in the mood.
“You will never embarrass me again,” he said, slamming the door shut and shaking the mirror on the wall.
Johnny woke up the next morning and went through his usual routine. He smiled at his customers, no longer self-conscious about his teeth. Some of the childhood insecurities remained while others he cast to the side like a used tissue. Johnny followed his route while keeping her face tucked in the back of his mind. He knew his approach had to be twofold. First, he would have to remove her from her daily routine, which would cloud her judgment. But she was a doctor. She was smart. Johnny would plant drugs at her house and then bail her out. She would be shaken and she would trust him. Then he would punish her physically and take back the respect she took from him. He would do that while fucking her in whatever way he wanted. After teaching Lisander a lesson and ruining her reputation, Johnny had to make sure she would never be seen again and thus the other part of his plan was hatched. Murder. Being so close to the portal had warped Johnny. It infected him with an evil that others in the Order were able to repel.
Johnny laughed to himself while glancing in the side mirror. He couldn’t wait to see what Sonya Lisander would do when a brick of heroin arrived at her door, slightly ahead of the Cleveland Heights Police Department’s Drug Task Force.
Johnny returned to the central office at the end of his route and waited. The database terminal near the loading docks was often left unattended while Helen ran off for a fourth cup of coffee or to blow her supervisor in the men’s room. He typed in Sonya’s last name and the computer spit her home address back at him. Johnny scri
bbled it down on a piece of paper so he could get out of Helen’s office as soon as possible. He would use the maps on his phone, although he drove on almost every street in the greater Cleveland area. Johnny already knew the general location of Sonya Lisander’s neighborhood.
He grabbed a brown paper bag from his locker, taking home the remains of his Aseeda. Johnny couldn’t afford to throw food away and so the leftover porridge would become his dinner. Johnny hurried through traffic while looking at the sun. He wanted that damn thing down. Darkness. Johnny wanted to get to Lisander’s house and begin his surveillance. He would need to be deliberate and cautious. He didn’t want to jeopardize his freedom, his job or his future as a guardian. Sonya would be punished and Johnny would be the guardian he dreamed about since discovering Orion’s Order. But he had to be patient. He had to ignore the raging hard-on of revenge in his pants and think with the head on his shoulders.
He drove the rest of the way home, imagining all the things he would do with that white devil. Johnny ran to his apartment and tried to distract himself. The television droned on and did little to take his mind off of his mission. He didn’t even think much about the Gaki. A demon from the depths of Hell, or wherever they came from, had almost bitten his head off and yet that excitement didn’t measure up to the dish he was going to serve Lisander.
First things first, he thought.
