by Jay Phillips
Barren: (finishing off the drink and pouring another) I know you are way too young to be fooling around with a man his age. It’s just wrong.
Metal Girl: He loves me, and I love him. What the fuck is wrong with that?
Barren: (laughing) What the fuck is wrong with that? He’s a fucking psychopath. He kills people the way a normal person kill insects, without the first sign of remorse or guilt. Life and death don’t mean shit to him.
Metal Girl: And it fucking means something to you? I’ve seen you kill; you’re no fucking different than he is.
Barren: Yeah, I’ve killed. When I’ve had to or been ordered to, yeah, I’ve killed. But I tell you right now, I’ve never received any enjoyment or pleasure from taking another’s life. He’s a fucking monster who takes pleasure in killing, and if you can’t see that, then you’re blind. And I feel sorry for you.
(End video)
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The house was, in The Detective’s estimation, totaled. The living room had been turned into a furnished pile of rubble, and water shot out from broken pipes in a room which had probably once been a kitchen. Bullet holes covered the walls, allowing miniscule amounts of sunrays to pepper themselves throughout the house. It amazed him to look at the many holes made from the armor’s guns, especially considering that many of those had been aimed at him. As far as he knew, they had all missed. He looked over his body, checking for blood or open wounds. There were none, for now.
He found the stairs near the back of the house. Outside, he could still hear Metal Girl and The Iron Knight trying to beat each other to death. He didn’t have much time to find out what in the hell the psychic wanted with him before the two of them tore through the rest of the house. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this. The thought in his head was just so compelling, and it appealed to some long buried sense of curiosity or something like that. Maybe he was just running from the scrap taking place outside, or maybe there was something else persuading him to make the trip up the stairs.
He reached the top of the spiraling staircase. Enormous holes had been ripped across the upper levels, allowing huge patches of sunlight through. The second floor smelled vaguely reminiscent of a nursing home, a bad mix of old people and death. With his enhanced olfactory sense, it was almost enough to make him sick. He followed the smell down the long hallway, noticing it became more pungent the closer he came to the large bedroom at the end. The master suite, he assumed.
The Detective opened the double doors and walked in. Instead of a posh bedroom in a mansion, he found a hospital room, complete with air tanks, heart monitors, and an old man hooked to an IV, lying flat in a hospital bed with a oxygen mask strapped to his face. The man was skinny beyond belief, looking like a sack of bones wrapped in skin. The few hairs remaining on his head, there were at least seven left, were white as snow and appeared to be something one would find on an ancient corpse. The rest of his head, along with his neck and most of his face, were covered in large, brown age spots. The Detective’s first impression, with the smell and the old guy’s general condition, was that the guy was dead and had been so for at least a few days.
“Thank you for coming,” the voice in his head said.
“I take it this,” The Detective pointed to the body in the bed, “is you?”
“Yes, Detective, this is me,” the voice answered. “But while my physical body has become feeble and useless, my mind is just as strong, if not more so, than it ever was.”
The Detective looked around the room. “So this is the fate of the man once known as Psychosis: a paralyzed corpse calling out to people with his oh so great mental powers.”
“Yes Detective,” the voice answered, “this is the fate of the greatest mind of a generation, a man who once made entire armies quake in the knowledge of his presence.”
“It’s good to see your condition has taught you humility.”
“My condition,” the voice said in return, “has taught me nothing more than what a waste the human body has become and how pointless it truly is.”
The Detective smiled. “Said the man lying in his own feces and covered in bedsores.”
The voice in his head laughed. “That pathetic sack of skin, Detective, is nothing more than a vessel, a means to an end. It is not me. And I have outgrown it.”
“Oh well,” The Detective replied, looking down at the barely breathing old man in the bed. “Sucks to be you then. Cause, from the way I see it, you’re kind of stuck with the piece of shit body you’ve got.”
“Actually Detective, no, I’m not,” the voice said in a tone filled with arrogance. “I’ve spent the past decade trying to perfect a method of transferring my consciousness from this shell to another, one stronger, faster, one filled with the life I haven’t known since an assassin split my spinal cord into two separate pieces. And you, my dear Detective, as luck would have it, are currently in possession of a body that more than suits my needs.”
The Detective laughed loud and hard. “And you think I’m just going to hand my body over to you while I, just what, cease to exist?
“Yes, once I’m in possession of your form, you will, as you phrased it, ‘cease to exist,’ and I will possess your shell and whatever powers you may currently have, as well as my own.”
“Nice plan.” The Detective turned to walk out of the room, “But there’s a slight kink in the design. You see, I’m not going to just let you have my body.”
The voice laughed. “I’m afraid, my friend, that you have absolutely no choice in the matter.”
The Detective’s right arm moved against his will, stretching out towards the old man lying in the bed. The Detective grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and pulled the arm back towards his body. “What the fuck?”
“That, Detective, is what I can do,” the voice answered. “When I’m in your mind, as I am now, I can make you do whatever I need you to do, and once you touch my body, I will be able to complete the transfer, making what is now yours into mine.”
“What you can do is go fuck yourself---” Before he could finish his sentence, The Detective’s right arm shot out again, pulling him toward the old man’s sullen head. He tried to move his left arm, to use it to pull the other arm back, but it refused to move. His feet began to inch towards the bed, moving him ever closer to the dried out carcass.
“My dear Detective, please don’t waste either of our time by resisting; it is truly pointless.”
The Detective ignored the advice of the man who had invaded his thoughts, pulling back with every ounce of energy he could still muster, pulling with anything and everything he had left. Then, a pain ripped through his skull, a pain that made him feel as if a branding iron had been inserted directly into his brain. He heard screaming, but he wasn’t completely sure if it was him. It sounded like him; he assumed it was him, but the screams seemed to come from far away, like an echo from across a canyon.
“Just let yourself go, Detective, and there will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more anger, no more loneliness. Oh yes, the loneliness, I can see it all here in your thoughts, always solitary, always the man isolated from the rest. Even in a room full of people, you’re still alone, aren’t you? And the humor, the smart comments and funny one-liners, nothing more than the mask you wear to keep people from coming too close, the shield to protect you from the hurt. Then last night, you achieve a moment of satisfaction, a moment, somewhere inside your mind, you thought might lead to you becoming a man who wouldn’t have to wear the masks, who wouldn’t have to protect himself, but she betrayed you just like they all have, like they all will. Let go, Detective; let go, and you won’t have to fight these feelings anymore. You won’t have to deal with the agony of who you are, of what you have done, of what you couldn’t do. Just let go, Detective, and it will all be over.”
And then, with zero warning, The Detective was no longer in the master bedroom of a mansion, staring at the decayed body of a madman. Instead, it
was fifteen years earlier. The Detective was still a rookie cop, walking a beat, wearing a uniform he never seemed to feel comfortable in. It was cold; he could feel below freezing wind against his face and neck, the only two areas of his body left uncovered. He looked around at the salvage yard where he stood, home to at least a hundred piles of junked out cars and trucks, each stack stretching thirty feet into the night sky. He remembered this place, and he remembered this January night well. This was not a pleasant memory, not in the least.
At the time, his powers had just begun to manifest. The strong sense of taste had been the first to arrive, forcing him to survive for a solid year on a diet of plain, white rice and water, the only two things his over sensitive taste buds could tolerate. Next came the increased levels of hearing. The first time he had heard someone’s heartbeat from over twenty feet away had almost been enough to make him question his sanity. The over active sense of touch eventually came, and he remembered all of the nights he had spent in the dark with a book, teaching himself how to read just by touching the type. And finally, there was his amazing olfactory sense, the sense which told him that this place was engulfed by the stench of death.
This night, fifteen tears ago, the body of twenty-five year old Elsa Martinez had been found in the office of a salvage yard. The young woman had been cut and stabbed until she was unrecognizable, forcing the coroner to use dental records to confirm her identity. On a routine search around the premises, he had found what no one else would have been able to find: a strong odor emanating from the trunk of a wrecked economy class sedan, stacked second to the ground in a pile located in the back of the grounds.
Just from the smell in the air, he was able to find five year old Cassie Martinez, stabbed, raped, and hidden in the trunk of a blue car. No one else could see her or sense her presence, but he knew, without knowing, that there was a dead body near. In a moment, he would attract the attention of another uniform, and the two of them would pry open the trunk and find the little girl, still dressed in her pink Sunday church dress. People would question how he found her; he would say he smelled her. They would say he was better than a cadaver dog to his face; freak would be the word they would use behind his back, which he would be able to hear due to his now freakish hearing.
He turned and tried to get another officer’s attention, but no one noticed him; they all continued with what they were doing, waving their flashlights from spot-to-spot, ignoring him as if he was nothing more than a ghost amongst them. Maybe he was. He walked towards the car, the odor almost pungent enough to drop him to his knees. He pulled the trunk up; this time, it wasn’t locked. And there he found her, the tiny child who still caused him the occasional nightmare, forcing him to always wish he hadn’t been the one who had found her. He stared at her as she laid there, dead, soaking in a pool of her own blood. Her eyes opened.
He took a step back. She stretched her blood covered right arm out towards him and offered him her hand.
“Thank you, Officer,” she said, her voice as sweet as pie. “Thank you for finding me. I’ve been trapped in here for so long. Won’t you please help me out?”
He shook his head from side-to-side. This wasn’t right; this wasn’t how it happened. This exact moment was carved into his memory like a tattoo. It wouldn’t come out, no matter what he did to get rid of it. And this, this wasn’t right.
“Please, Officer,” she said again, pushing her hand closer and closer to him. “Please take my hand and help me out of this awful place. I need you. You’re the only one who can save me.”
He took another step back. “No,” he said. “I can’t. You’re already dead.”
And then, she was gone; the salvage yard disappeared, and the cold January wind against his skin was replaced by the feeling of blood pouring down his bare back. He was in an old abandoned warehouse, somewhere outside of the Canadian capital. Blood flowed freely down his back and across his shoulders, running down his arms and dripping from the tips of his fingers and onto the dirty, concrete floor. Mere minutes ago, he had killed the bastard with the invisible whip, The Lash. The teleporter, by this point, was long gone. This was the moment after the shooting, after the killing; this was the part he never wanted to remember but couldn‘t forget, no matter how hard he tried.
Her name was Angelica Jones, and if she liked someone, they could call her Angel. The Agent’s men had chained her the same way they had chained him, with her hands above her head, leaving her hanging like a piece of cured ham, leaving her dead while they interrogated him. The Lash’s whip had torn her once beautiful skin to pieces, the skin on her face basically flayed from the bone. If The Detective hadn’t known for a fact who she was, there would have been know way he could have identified her body. And this, this was the moment when he found her.
She had been brought in as a liaison between his super powered security squad and the Canadian Government. She was a normal, living and working everyday with a group of super powered men and women, and the group didn’t just dislike her; they resented her very presence amongst them. She was an outsider, placed alongside a group of people who were unable to trust outsiders and their ilk. But he liked her, and she had liked him. He was the only one on the team allowed to call her Angel. He used to take pride in that fact.
He stared at her bloody corpse, all the while trying to ignore the grotesque scent of death emanating from it. The smell was overpowering, almost too much for him to stomach. He pushed it aside as much as he could. He looked closely at her. Even her hair was covered in blood, making her once light brown locks seem almost red. He remembered this moment, looking at her flayed flesh, thinking about all of the times when he wanted to ask her out, to let her know what he thought about her, only to realize it was all for naught. This moment, this exact point in time, was over; it had already passed. This was nothing more than a memory he couldn’t forget.
“It doesn’t have to end like this,” a familiar voice said to him.
He looked up to see Angelica Jones standing in front of him, no longer chained from the rafters, appearing as she once was, beautiful, happy, alive. Her skin was no longer flayed, and her now blood free brown hair fell down into her face, as it always had. She stood in front of him, wearing the short pleated skirt that always stood out in his memories of her, and she smiled at him. She held out her hand for him to take.
“Take my hand,” she said as she reached out for him, “and this moment, this place will cease to exist. Take my hand, and we can be together.”
For a split second, the tiniest of instances, he considered taking her hand, clutching it and giving in to her offer, but there was still that stench, the smell of death that overwhelmed him. “No,” he replied, taking a step away from her outstretched hand. “I can’t. You’re already dead, and there’s no going back.”
And then, she was gone, the warehouse, the blood, the chains, all disappearing with her. The Detective was now naked, standing in front of The Ice Queen’s picturesque bedroom window, staring out on the night covered cityscape below. He turned around, and Ice reclined in the nude on the bed, her long, white hair falling gently across her large, bare breasts, her nipples hard and stiff as they always seemed to be. She smiled at him.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she said, her full red lips wrapping each word in a tender embrace.
“Bad memories,” he answered. “Too many bad memories.”
She held out her hand for him to take. “Come back to bed. We’ll come up with something better for you to recollect.”
He took a step towards her and started to reach for her hand, until he remembered that the Ice he knew smelled like chilled strawberries, just like she tasted. This Ice smelled like a rotting corpse in the final stage of decomposition; this Ice smelled like death. He stepped back. “No,” he said.
“Take my hand,” she said, her voice softer and sweeter than he could ever remember it being. “We can be together; we can be happy. I can take you from the pain; I can take away all of the bad memorie
s and replace them with something new, something worth remembering. Just take my hand, and we can both be happy. I promise.”
“No,” he said again, taking another step away from her hand. “No. This isn’t right; this isn’t real. None of this is real. You are just an image in my head; you’re just a nonexistent piece of my overactive, goddamn imagination.”
And then, she was gone, replaced by a bedroom in a mansion where he stood over a barely alive paraplegic attached to an oxygen tank. He stood in a room filled with the all consuming stench of death and decay. He remembered that he had to move backwards, to move away, but he couldn’t, finding himself still bound by some invisible force within his head. He cleared his mind and put every ounce of energy he had left into one final push.
“Get…the…fuck…out…of…my…head!” The Detective said as he ripped himself away, landing hard against the wall on the far side of the room. Moving as fast as possible, he pulled the gun from his coat and aimed it at the old man’s head, holding his forefinger firmly against the trigger. “If I hear one more word inside my head or see one more goddamn thing that isn’t real,” he said, sounding and feeling out of breath. “I will muster enough willpower to pull this trigger and blow your fucking skull through the goddamn wall.”
The Detective pushed himself to his feet, his back still clung to the wall. He walked a few feet closer to the old man’s body, the gun still aimed at his head. “I’m leaving now, you dried up motherfucker, and like I said, a single thought in my head and I will kill you. You’ve been in my head, so you should know the things I’ve done and what I’m capable of doing.”
The old man’s lips moved from beneath the oxygen mask, and words leaked from his mouth like tar running through a keyhole. “H…o…w?” the old man asked.
“How did I escape your unbreakable mental hold?” The Detective replied. “How did I escape the grip of the man who could hold an army at bay? You fucking smell like a rotting corpse, and all of the images in my head smelled the same way. Eventually, I caught on. And don’t forget, you’re not the first piece of shit, almighty, no one can stop me, everyone worship me, look at how fucking powerful I think I am, psychic I’ve had to deal with, and you won‘t be the first one I fucking kill, either.” Without another word, The Detective turned and walked through the double doors on the other side of the room.
