He laughed, gurgling merriment rumbling up from his gargantuan gut and out the gaping mouth a foot from my face.
This strong silent treatment of mine wasn't working too great, so I spoke finally. I told Cimarron to go perform a complicated obscenity upon himself. Actually, that's misleading. What I suggested he attempt is not normally an obscenity. It is obscene only if one does it to oneself during a public parade on Main Street. Which it is physically impossible for even a deranged acrobat to do. Thus, obscenity is a myth, and cannot exist except in acrobatically deranged imaginations. Or so spun the feverish thoughts in my head.
I wondered if my mind was already trying to get away, get out of here, before these bastards even started playing their games with me. I knew I had been consciously trying to relax, willing relaxation, only to find suddenly that muscles were rigid again, cords in neck taut, arms starting to tremble a little from tension too long held.
Let's face it, I was scared, frightened, hugely apprehensive. Not because of anything they'd done—they hadn't really done a damned thing yet—but because of imagined future pain and panic and wreckage of the self. And that was ridiculous. Nothing is ever as bad as our exaggerated anticipation of its reality, they tell us; the imagination creates more monstrous terrors than those that are real, they tell us. I was trying to remember what else they tell us—and figure out who “they” were, and if they'd ever been strapped to a table about to be plugged into the lightning—when I saw Alda Cimarron's arm moving in the air above me.
He was waving at one of the other men. Dr. Bliss, it was.
“Try the chest thing,” Cimarron told him.
Dr. Bliss said, “I'm ... not sure that's wise—"
“Goddammit, just do it. That's what the thing's made for, isn't it? To start hearts if they've conked out?"
“Yes, of course. But—"
“So if it stops his ticker, you do your thing and start him up again, OK?"
“I'll do my best. But it's an extremely dangerous procedure—"
“Bliss, quit farting around and do it. This guy pisses me off. He's a smartass and a smart-mouth, and he pisses me off. He's supposed to be a tough sonofabitch. We're gonna find out how tough the sonofabitch is."
I didn't believe any of this. Or, I believed it, knew those humanoid monsters were talking about me—and, clearly, about my heart ... my heart, about turning it on and off like a plug-in toy—but this unbelievable crap they were arguing about attempting, attempting with me, simply wasn't acceptable. It wasn't real. The mind refused to swallow the concept and digest it, burped it up instead. The mind, I thought ... what if the mind, the brain and its electron streams and synapses and myriad virtues, was so excessively stressed that —
Cimarron was no longer near on my right. Dr. Bliss was there, one of those queer-looking little paddles in each of his hands. He was speaking, saying something to the effect that he'd already set the current at so-many watt-seconds himself, and the others must be sure not to touch the patient, which could be dangerous to the individual so touching.
The patient? I was going to kill every one of these human goddamn maggots if I ever got the chance ... which didn't seem likely, even to me. Bliss had placed the paddle ends on my upper body, one at either side of my chest, at opposite sides of—my heart.
I was jerking, rolling, feeling the muscles of my arms and right side blaze with pain, trying to get away, knowing I couldn't, knowing they were going to do it, jerking anyway.
Cimarron, on my left, held his big Magnum by the long barrel and tapped me with its butt in the middle of my forehead. Not hard enough to injure, or knock me out. Just hard enough to hurt, and raise a lump, move part of the ache from the back of my head to the front. It probably didn't even break the skin.
Cimarron said, “Don't be dumb, Scott. I'll crank your skull next time. It's gonna happen; let it happen, pal. You got no place to go."
I told him again, in marvelous detail, what to do. But it was pure reflex, just lip movement, no bravado, no smart-mouth, just something that came out with no thought behind it. But I stopped jerking, stopped stretching those already-torn-feeling muscles and tendons.
Bliss moved the paddles an inch or two, saying lightly, “This should be interesting. All right, now, here we go."
And then —
My body exploded, something raced, ripped —
Oh, Jesus God Almighty Christ, oh stop-stop-godalmighty—great knives and hammers tore at me from inside my chest, my head felt as if it was swelling up like a balloon, I thought my eyes were popping out, I could feel a giant heart trembling, swelling and then shrinking, trembling again and wobbling like an out-of-round wheel on a kid's bike, shrinking to a circle, a dot, nothing...
A little while ago, or a long while ago, at some unknowable place in rubber-band time, I had heard the breath shriek out of my mouth, all the air in a small universe bursting through my clenched teeth and past my stretching lips. It had sounded like a scream. But it wasn't a scream; no, just air, breath, screaming from my lungs.
I hadn't believed there would be so much pain, hadn't known there could be. I hadn't expected pain that was beyond measuring, without a greater agony to compare it with. It had been so intense that I felt emptied, hollowed out. But I was still alive. I guessed I was. My heart was beating. That bruised heart, I thought, that bruised and abused heart ... keep on going, don't conk out on me now.
Cimarron's beefy face swam in a kind of hazy pink soup above me. His mouth moved and I clearly heard him say, “Michelle Esprit Romanelle. Where is she, Scott?"
Go zonk yourself. Take a sulfuric acid enema. Give me one small chance, Alda baby, and I will slowly squeeze your testicles in a hand-cranked vise and mix what's left of them with liquefied horseflies.
Don't tell the bastard a thing. Don't speak, don't open your mouth. Don't even look at him unless it's to see where to spit. Don't think about pain, don't think about the pain. Oh, God. Godalmighty, dammit, dammit! Just don't tell him, don't tell him. Not about Spree. Not Spree.
They were talking. I didn't care what they were saying. But some of it I became aware of, as if by a kind of word osmosis, phrases soaking into me through head or ears or skin. Argument. One more like that might kill him, can't kill the bastard till he tells us where the broad is, what's the matter with the dumb sonofabitch, OK, do the head, give it a shot, tickle his brains, not too much at first, Doc...
Paddles. Those small metal circles pressing, one at each side of my head. Curious name for odd things like surreal twin-handled potato mashers. Something greasy at my temples. Man sliding the paddles. From the corner of my eye I could see a thumb placed on one of those buttonlike projections alongside the dangling black wire. And I could see that little green bulb, glowing now.
“I'll handle this, Groder. Don't mess with that dial."
“OK, OK, Doc, just wanted to see the big jerk jump a little. He already sapped me a coupla—"
“Move, move—there. Here we go.” Lightly, lyrically. “Here we go again, boys."
I could feel it starting.
I almost wet my pants. I almost took an involuntary leak right there on the table ... wherever the table was. I'd known the answer to that a second ago. Or a minute. Or an hour. But I couldn't let that happen, I reminded myself, or reminded that other guy, whichever it was. You take leaks in the toilet, or maybe out in the bushes. Not with your shorts and pants on. At least, not after you've grown up. So just hold it, friend. It was a mildly amusing thought. Just hold it right there, turkey! I wanted to laugh. But I couldn't. And I really, really wanted to. I understood then, maybe fully for the first time ever, how wonderful it was to laugh. To feel joy. Joy—not pain. Joy—not the weird, uncomfortable trembling again, different from what I'd felt before.
Somewhere I'd read that there is no sensation of pain in the pinkish-gray matter of the brain itself. That surgeons can slice a scalpel through the jelly, poke it with a probe, spread its convolutions with metal springs—no pain. But maybe ...
maybe there was something worse than pain. The something was growing, filling part of me, encroaching on the rest, dissolving parts of my self like a snake, a shining silver boa constrictor, sucking fragments of me through its mouth and down, and down, into...
Panic, sudden uncontrollable panic spilled darkness into my brain, crinkled blackness slashed with pink and gray and green and horror. Billions of razor-edged bits of redness, like impossibly thin cannibal worms, wriggled in squirming bloodiness somewhere behind my eyes—or at least somewhere, in some part of me; another part of me beat-up and scarred and horny-handed weeping man and I didn't give a good goddamn, I didn't care.
They really did it all then.
After a while I imagined I was up near the ceiling in one corner of the room, looking down at the dummies fooling around with that other guy. He looked like a lump. Looked pretty dead to me. That wasn't right. If he was dead, that wasn't the other guy but just a discarded cocoon; I was the butterfly, up here near the ceiling. Down there, Dr. Frankenstein fiddled with dials and switches and potato mashers trying to make thunder and lightning and pour it into the monster strapped to the monster table with weird-looking bolts on his head, wires coming out of them...
The castle, the monster, Igor and the doctor, all were gone, left far below, far away, almost farther than memory could reach. Instead, before me, suddenly, was—everything.
Suddenly Everything was transcendentally clear, unimaginably bright and beautiful. Graceful ripples of billowing-blue forever stretched out and on, and on, at every side of ... of me, I supposed it was. I guessed it was I at the center of all This. This beauty, this star-chiming song, danced and spun around whatever this point of my consciousness was. And I was vast, all-encompassing, endless, and thus hugely satisfied with myself.
I moved, it seemed forward, but in all directions endlessly also, and before me was a great bank of fog, coming nearer, looming larger. I thought—thought with comets and suns and supernovae and coalescing universes forming scintillating synapses in the immensity of my brain—that it was strange there would be fog, like the chill moist grayness over remembered winter beaches, in this bubbling immensity of space. Still nearer ... and I could see it was not fog but a sea of stars, billions of stars like shining droplets, appearing smaller than grains of sand only because I was so vast, all-encompassing, endless.
Why, I had to be a god, I thought, and the thought filled me with forgivable exultations. How grand I was, to fill all of space, breathe stars and suns, drink nebulae and universes, and be a great blistering-shining-majestic god of all I surveyed. At least a god, at least, and perhaps it was possible that, even more than that, I —
Something monstrously huge, massive, ominous loomed beyond the end of endless space, rose from darkness into darkness and then arced into burning light, moving toward me with dazzling and terrifying speed. It was coming at me, smack at me. Square silver lines of force intersecting within a thick black-hole border, projecting downward from it twin streams of metallic power joining in a loop at its end, like a handle, a handle six times as long as the trembling squareness filled with intersecting vortices and lines forming a magical mesh. It loomed nearer, coming directly toward me, a giant ... what? Swatter? Fly swatter?
A what? Coming after me, swinging out and down toward me—toward this endless Wonder, this star-filled planet-packed asteroid-gathering Superwho? Closer ... and closer. Yeah. Could it be I was going to get smacked by a giant fly swatter?
Ah, come on, you've got to be kiddle —
* * * *
Light blinded my eyes.
At first, I assumed it was one more damned supernova. But then I moved.
If I had been a weepy-type girlish fellow, I might have screamed. But I'm made of sterner stuff, very tough stuff, and therefore I merely yelled like a cactus-goosed banshee.
I was back in the room I'd left in order to become an immortal fly-god; the light in my eyes was a frosted-glass-covered bulb in the ceiling; and I yelled because when I moved—tried to move—every muscle and tendon and even piece of fat in my body told me it was at least stretched, probably torn, and possibly snapped.
While not here but out there, I must have jerked and pulled and twitched and strained my body so violently, when Dr. Bliss was turning his little electroshock watt-seconds dial and thumbing his buttons, that the leather straps should have been pulled free from my ankles and wrists. But that hadn't happened. Instead, I had apparently sprained all of myself in new and innovative ways, and, when I moved, every muscle I could identify started silently screaming. So I tried not to move much.
I lay still for long moments, breathing shallowly at first, then more deeply, trying to get my head and my thoughts together, essentially taking a little trip of exploration and discovery through the channels and nooks and crevices of my mind, or at least ... I made myself form and face the unnerving thought ... what now remained of my mind, if part remained no longer, thus leaving behind—amusing, but not much—holes in my head.
It was a curious, baffling, frustrating—and at times frightening—exercise. In part because I was sure, without really knowing the source of my certainty, that I'd forgotten some things that had happened and remembered others that had not. Sometimes I recognized the unreal as just that, illusion or error; but at other times I wasn't sure, just knew something was fuzzy, tilted, askew.
And once in a while, when I was following a train of thought or retracing a memory, there would occur a most curious short circuit or glitch, like a trembling deep within the brain, and at the precise moment when that little zap zapped, the train would be derailed or the trace lost. Just zap, and ... where'd it go?
And that was scary. Believe me, that sort of thing wiggles the soul. But I remembered—and knew that this I remembered clearly—Claude Romanelle, drooling, vapid, out of it totally, but then one-hundred-percent whole again, right after Dr.... Dr....
One of those curiosities. I could see the man's good face, hear his crisp voice, see the brown suit he'd worn. Just couldn't pull in his name. Not yet. Soon, undoubtedly.
It would just take a little time. No problem. Not yet, anyway. I was, in fact, very near normal, not crippled—at least not crippled mentally—in pretty good shape considering the Marquis de Sade games those bastards had played with my head.
So far ... So far ... For, throughout all these mental meanderings, I kept wondering when the games would begin again.
I opened my eyes, moved my head gingerly, neck muscles or bones protesting with a kind of crick sound. The room appeared to be filled with a thin haze of smoke, pinkish-gray smoke, and all the solid objects looked wavy, like when your TV goes on the blink.
The people were still here, the wavy people. There was the goddamned doctor who'd played with his little black dial and paddles and buttons, Dr. Brass ... Glass ... Blass. Dr. Blass. And the big three-hundred-pound sonofabitch. Cinnamon Bun, I knew him well. I wanted to kill him. I'd told him I was going to take him out. There, seated, was the thin man in a green robe; middle-aged, good-looking codger ... Romanelle, Claude Romanelle. My client. I had him pinned down for sure. Then there was the girl, wearing a banana-yellow suit and white blouse, ah, yes, I knew that lovely one well. And the rangy guy slouching against the wall, Cowbody. Couldn't dredge up his real name, but I remembered he was called Cowbody.
It started with a prickling. Like that weird shivering inside my head when the first weak current had started to flow. But there wasn't any current now. It was a different kind of growing panic, swelling like a balloon inside me, tiny at first, getting larger, pressing against my chest, my throat, my heart.
The girl ...? She—I knew her, she was dear, she was wondrous, she...
It was as though I knew her name very well, but couldn't let it appear, form, become solid as stone. I squinted across the room, concentrated on her face and form. That face was magically beautiful but marked with strain, her pale summer-bright hair in disarray. Her arms were pulled behind her, and eye-jarring bulging b
reasts pushed almost nakedly against the white cloth of her blouse beneath the yellow jacket.
I knew. Didn't want to know; but knew.
Her eyes were on my face. On me, Shell Scott, her protector, her tight-lipped and tough and invincible and unbreakable go-to-hell hero who —
Slowly, so slowly, realization, never-to-be-forgotten and never-to-be-forgiven realization, swept over me, drowned me, smothered me, stopped my breath. Its implications were worse, more painful, than those agonizing currents that had ripped and roared through my heart and brain.
Spree.
I couldn't remember it at all, not yet. But I knew.
I must have told them.
Chapter Twenty
It was only about five minutes later, only a brief lifetime.
What was happening seemed odd to me, peculiar. I understood part of it, kept straining, reaching, hoping to understand it all because I knew the worst now. It couldn't get any worse than this.
They, Cinnamon and Blass ... no, not Cinnamon. Cinnarom—Cimarron, Alda Cimarron and Dr. Blass had found Spree, brought her here. She was bound, as was Claude Romanelle. The Cowbody had brought two wheelchairs into the room and both Spree and Romanelle were seated in them now, not only bound but gagged, and with convex white masks, hiding the gags, over their mouths.
The group appeared to be preparing to leave. Without me, of course. Didn't need me any longer; Cimarron had finished with me. Or maybe not, not quite. He was walking this way, toward the table on which I was strapped, beckoning with a finger to Dr. Blass. In a moment they were both looking down at me.
I didn't move, tried not to blink my half-open eyes, kept breathing in the same slow deep rhythm as before.
Softly, his voice rumbling, Cimarron said, “Look at this pile of crap. He ever going to come out of it, or did you screw up and zonk him permanent?"
“I ... I'm not sure yet,” the doctor said apologetically. “He might revive any minute, or possibly in another hour or two."
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 32
