Jesse gave Lisa that tight lipped smile they all gave when patience was almost at end, “Yes, of course you studied well. But to understand and to do are very different. To recite the beliefs and live the beliefs are very fuzzy. Lisa, we are all the same and none different…”
Kristi wrinkled her nose, looking directly at Lisa, “And yet, some are different. There are few that are empaths.” The other two Mothers looked away as if she had said the most offensive word ever spoken. “Very rare it is to be an empath…to feel what humans feel shows a weakness that tosses order into disarray. Among The Grey, disarray is not acceptable.”
All three mothers looked at Lisa now. “All the same and none different…All the same and none different…”
Lisa woke when sunlight hit her eyes. She was sleeping on her couch. The apartment had been cleaned. She could smell pine and disinfectant. The carpet had been vacuumed and there was no dust in the sun beams coming through the window. The clean was just as creepy as their insidious winks. On her coffee table was a note on beige paper scented with lavender.
End Point
July 16th
4PM.
Best wishes,
Superior Mother
Lisa sat up and held the note—looked at the note, held it again, looked again, and held it again. That gave her five weeks. Five weeks was an enormous amount of time; she felt relieved. Yet, it was no time, no time at all; she felt panic. Relief and panic swayed around the room, each taking turns smacking Lisa in the face.
Helen
Helen sat next to a dumpster behind Lisa’s apartment building. She wanted to go to her child so she could hold her, guide her, and explain what happens now. This is what happens now, she thought. Isn’t that what mothers do? They guide their offspring. They explain why going to A will mean that B soon follows and eventually you’ll get to Y and Z. Do human mothers toss their young to the streets to test their smarts without a map, without advice? Helen rocked back and forth pacing the nasty alley. Her heart hurt, but she needed to make the choice. Lisa would have to fly on her own or crash. Helen would have to make a choice that felt cruel, but was for the good of Lisa and for the good of the women of The Grey. We must all be the same. We cannot be different; it is a way to survive. It is a way to achieve maximum quality of our species. If her daughter failed, it was a way to weed out the rotten fruit. She would swallow her pain or pride either way. Helen walked away from her daughter that day with a pain in her chest so profound that all mothers on earth sensed it.
Superior Mother
Superior Mother sat in her quarters. She mindlessly rubbed the top of her desk, listening intently to Helen’s thoughts. She nodded and smiled at her desk. Helen had made the correct choice, and this gave Superior mother relief. If she would have followed the path that both her and her offspring were on, then Superior Mother would have given orders to end them. Ending them would be a nasty choice, but a choice that needed to be made all must be the same—none must be different, even if it meant giving ugly orders.
Humming, Superior Mother touched the petals on the flowers that sat on her desk. Having fresh flowers in her room was a waste of resources and time. The flowers were better suited in a field where a bee could pollinate them. She knew this, but in her years she needed to gaze at beauty often in order to push back all the distasteful things that she needed to do for her species.
Part II
The Countdown to End Point
Week 1
Shift: to move or to cause something or someone to move to a different place.
Craig
Craig was enjoying his cold shower. He enjoyed believing that his heart was as cold as the ice water hitting his back. It was also a lame way to pretend feeling that the rush of a cold wave was hitting his back while riding his board. Craig was happily shivering; then, something shifted, but he didn’t know what. There was a shift in the air, room, water… something. Something shifted so suddenly that Craig peeked out his shower curtain and turned off the water. The shift wasn’t something tangible, was it internal? This confused Craig to the point that he sat on his bed naked, shivering, and soaking wet. There was a shift—maybe in his body? Did he have a mini stroke or a small seizure?
Confused, Craig looked out his window. The sun was up, the cars where in their continuous repetition of back and forth down Feline Street. “What the fuck was that?” he asked the house, but as usual, the house wasn’t speaking to him.
Rafael
Rafael’s mom was at the grocery store going up and down the aisles trying her best to ignore Rafael spinning on his tip toes and touching every box he could see. She hated public places and hated taking Rafael with her to public places. At home, she could swallow the spinning and carry on staring at walls, but in public the spinning brought looks and walls always had people in front of them.
She pulled up her pants, sighed, and grabbed some juice when Rafael fell over. He didn’t trip; he fell over stiff as a board. His mom panicked. She was alone in the aisle; nobody saw what happened, and she couldn’t find her voice to scream. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. She wanted to pick him up, but her legs stopped working. Rafael’s mom sat next to him, pushing herself to react. But nothing happened, until Rafael spoke, “Mom, did you feel that?”
She looked at this boy when he spoke. Sometimes she couldn’t hear him; there was a block between him and her, but today it was clear. “Si, what…what was it?” She wanted to lie. She wanted to tell him he was pretending. That the stupid spinning was shaking his brain up, but she couldn’t—she couldn’t lie. She had felt it. It came in silent and shifted the world.
Rafael got up and so did his mom. She pushed the cart aside knowing that she truly needed everything in the cart, but didn’t care. They were leaving un demonio was loose; she was sure of it. Then, she heard Rafael again, “Everybody is gone…”
She looked down the aisle and at the checkout stands—everybody in the store was gone, except them. She picked up Rafael and ran home. There were people on the street. The traffic was normal, but something cleared out that store and left her and the boy there. She didn’t want to know why, she just wanted home.
Maggie
The baker had been chatting at Maggie all morning—her daughter was doing this, her son was working here. Endless chatter about her children, her birds, her dogs, her husband, the neighbor—all things Maggie nodded to, but cared none about. When the baker mentioned that her daughter had a job interview, laughed, and pretended to kiss her daughter’s head, Maggie pretended to slice the baker’s tongue off.
Then Maggie heard silence…the chatter of the baker had stopped so quickly that she turned. There stood the baker with her tongue in hand, blood pouring from her mouth. The tongue lay flaccid in the baker’s hand; it would never chatter again and for this Maggie was glad, but then she realized what she had done. She looked for the knife she had she used, she thought she should flee to Mexico maybe she could quietly die on her parent’s property. Maybe the baker would bleed out and she could hide her in the freezer long enough to catch a bus. The knife where is the knife?
Then, the baker began to whistle and Maggie looked again. She was fine. The baker’s tongue was in place and the floor clear of blood. “Café…Senora el Café?” Maggie stared at the customer “Si, el café.”
She listened to the baker whistle while she handed the man his coffee. There was a curtain between humans and hell, Maggie was taught this. “los nubes cubren el cielo y nostros no podemos alcanzar, pero aqui siquiente de los seres humanos esta el infierno que casi el Diablo te tienta el pelo.”
Maggie’s curtain shifted and she peeked at hell. She would never be the same again.
Iggy
Iggy sat on a bench and watched the sidewalk intensely. He had been watching for a long time, but didn’t know how long. Hours, minutes, seconds were all random for Iggy. He could never tell the difference between a minute and an hour. He couldn’t help but not care. Today, in this moment he focused on t
he sidewalk only because it hadn’t growled or hissed at him all day.
He felt in his heart that he should be happy the sidewalks had suddenly turned their mute button on, but he would only be happy when he knew for sure that the mute button was on permanently. He watched and wondered how he could check that. There was no remote for the sidewalk, no default button to press.
Then Iggy jumped up and looked around. He jumped again. He thought about jumping, then jumped. The sidewalks had stopped hissing, and he could think something, then do it. He looked at a person walking by, watching him jump and said, “Hello.” The person gave him a nervous wave back.
He thought he should say ‘hello’ and did it. He thought about jumping and did it. Iggy looked at the sidewalk again; it was silent. His brain was suddenly working the way it was supposed to work—the way it worked in the school with the apple trees and green, green grass. Iggy felt an incredible surge of happiness. The energy of the happiness was pounding through his muscles. The pounding of those muscles made him want to run and scream—yell very loudly that something, something, something happened! Iggy wanted to roar.
He woke up that morning and felt that all was different in his brain. He wanted to tell everybody. He wanted to tell the world. Then, he stopped and thought, Maybe, maybe not. Calm down, be quiet; it’s a secret, Iggy thought. He felt that the stars had shifted in his favor. It was like finding a million dollars on the street. Tell no one, carry on like normal.
“Como nada,” Iggy told his breath. So he scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders and walked the sidewalk at last.
Lisa
Standing in her bedroom, Lisa felt a tug. A pull on her pores or a spike in her back, she couldn’t tell which; she couldn’t understand what. It gave her a sensation of curiosity. She was the blonde girl in every horror film going to look for the spook that would certainly slit her throat, but she felt the shift. It happened right here and right now, she just didn’t know what it was or why it was.
Looking out her window, it all seemed the same: the cars blurred by, the smog clung to the air, and all looked dull. Lisa got dressed and lay on her bed thinking about the weirdness of it all. She had never felt it before and did not want to feel it again. It made vomit rise in her throat and gave her legs an achy “need to walk” feeling.
Lisa stood and stretched, thinking she would walk. She would walk out the door and to Craig’s house. She had five weeks. Five weeks to lure him to End Point. Then, she felt a twist in her muscles that sent her crashing to the floor. She became stiff and alert—hyper alert to every fabric, color, texture in the room. Her legs wouldn’t listen and her back glued itself to the floor.
She felt she should panic. Lisa wanted to yell and scream for help. She felt doomed and assumed this is what her diet of meat and sugar got her. Lisa’s body worked against her now, and she thought she’d never reach End Point. The feel of the carpet was too much for her; she needed to get away from the carpet. The look of the so-very-white walls was taunting her.
Then, as quickly as it came, the grip was gone. She felt as if liquid had spilled all over the floor, like soda. Instantly, Lisa flipped onto her belly and crawled away from the room like the victim of a vicious attack. She needed the linoleum floor of the kitchen to restart her thinking.
Reaching the kitchen, she lay there feeling the cool floor. She told herself that all was well now. It was weird, it happened—yes, it happened. Something happened, but now it was done. “All is well,” Lisa explained to the floor. She patted the floor as if it was a scared dog, but then the pat felt wet. Lisa looked from her hand to the floor and at her hand again—covered in blood, it was blood.
Red blood had been poured all over her floor. It smeared itself on her hands, her legs, and dripped from Lisa’s hair. Crouching, Lisa looked at her fingers, blood from where? Where? The smell of it was filling her nostrils, and she had the urge to lick her fingers. When she tried, she realized that there was a tongue lying idly in the corner of her kitchen floor. A pinkish tongue lay on her kitchen floor severed off and bloody. Lisa put her hands down and crawled to it. The cut was clean. Someone had their tongue cut off, but who? Lisa poked the tongue, sitting in a pool of blood, with her finger and wanted very badly to rub her face in the blood. It looked ooey gooey, sticky sweet.
The blood was enticing—chunk of cake enticing. She could rub her face in it, taste it, let it drip from her fingers, sleep in it. If Lisa could fuck the blood on her kitchen floor, she’d do so while the severed tongue watched.
Then, the tongue twitched and Lisa woke up from her blood lust. It was her tongue. Her tongue. Grabbing her mouth, jabbing her teeth with her fingers, she felt for her tongue and it was gone. Not there, her tongue wasn’t there. Lisa tried to stand up, but she slipped and fell over like a sloppy drunk. Her tongue started flipping in the blood and Lisa couldn’t scream. She couldn’t scream.
This was her blood. That was her tongue. That was her tongue! In a panic, she looked behind her for the Mothers. Is this what the Mothers did to the naughty girls? Is this how it starts or is this how it ends?
There was a knock on her door. Lisa ran for it, then realized, “No stop…stop.” She clicked her tongue. It was in her mouth. She glanced at the kitchen floor there was no blood, no tongue.
The knocking continued.
“Lisa, it’s Craig…Craig…Lisa open the damn door. I can hear you jumping around in there.”
Lisa turned the door knob and clicked her tongue again. It was there. Craig walked in, not waiting on an invite. He was pale and sweaty looking. Lisa felt every second of his panic against her skin, and it was crawling down her legs. Craig’s panic mixed with Lisa’s blood lust hung on her like a shroud of horror. Was she that blonde girl in the movie that always got killed? The bloodlust told her she was the one who did the killing.
Lisa cleared her throat, “You look messed up.”
Craig gave Lisa a hard look. “Yeah, well you’ve got blood in your hair. What the fuck is that about?”
Every chunk of her gut told Lisa to lie. Just lie. Lie about the blood. Instead, she told Craig the whole story from start to finish. Craig smoked several cigarettes, listened, nodded, and asked questions.
“Usually, I’d tell you to lay off the dope. But, I know you don’t do that. You barely drink. Instead, I’m going to do what is not comfortable for me and believe you. I believe every word you said, but I don’t know why.”
Lisa fell in a heap next to Craig on her couch. Both sat there, breathing in the situation. Lisa breathed it in, tasted it, and wanted to spit it out.
Superior Mother
Superior Mother drank her tea and clicked her tongue. Despite herself, she giggled. The Mothers glanced at her with a worried expression. Superior Mother was no nonsense. There was a time for everything and a place for everything. In The Grey, there was never time for silliness. Helen rubbed her arms and licked her teeth. The shift had begun, she was sure of it, and Superior Mother must have been very pleased with the results.
Helen peeked at Superior Mother sitting at the head table, quiet now, sipping tea, and taking small bites of her food. Superior Mother always seemed a bit jolly when the results were in The Grey’s favor. Or, if Helen’s instinct was correct, Superior Mother enjoyed stirring the humans’ mental health pot.
Maggie
At home, now Maggie ate her dinner in silence. She waited patiently for that curtain to move again, so far nothing. Most would feel a terror in the curtain moving—who would want a glimpse of hell? Nobody wants to see what the devil in them would do if they could, if they would. But, Maggie was interested—not terrorized. Interested that she would yield that type of coldness—that type of bloodlust in her fingers, hands, arms…the whole of her sluggish and sloth-like self would kill if given the opportunity.
Dinner finished, plate washed, and watching her novella was a boring nightly routine, but tonight was different. Tonight, Maggie sat knowing that she had seen what others would never believe. She was
granted that peek and there was a reason for it. What Maggie did not know was what this reason was? Was it a sign to go forward and kill the way she wanted? If she did this, could she get away with it? She doubted she could escape in time. Or was it a sign that she would soon be taken? That the curtain would open and she would be sucked in, working the pits of hell for eternity.
The idea of her sister popped into Maggie’s thoughts, and it made her grieve. Her sister, so perfect and kind, sitting in Heaven and watching her sister accept that she belonged to the devil without fear or sadness, just acceptance. Her sister would suffer for Maggie’s fate, not Maggie.
“Creo, y no creo,” Maggie told her TV remote. “Creo, y no Creo.”
Craig
Waking up on Lisa’s couch gave Craig the very male urge to leave quickly and he did. Craig needed to walk, and he needed to think about what Lisa had told him. He believed her and he didn’t believe her. He believed only for the reason that he knew something strange was going on. He couldn’t even remember making the decision to go to her apartment.
In fact, Craig had no idea how he knew where her apartment was or how he ended up there. His truck wasn’t outside, so he didn’t drive there. The ‘what the fuck’s’ in Craig’s head were spinning when he got home. The truck was sitting in his driveway. The front door was unlocked. He stepped into his house, the towel from the shower was on the floor. He had gotten off the bed, got dressed, and walked to Lisa’s apartment without remembering any of it. The fact that he could not explain his own actions was what made Craig believe Lisa’s story about the bloody tongue.
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