God Drug

by Stephen L. Antczak

  They heard a groan coming from inside the Blue House.

  “Sparrow,” Hanna said. They went inside.

  Sparrow was asleep in bed, but soaked in sweat. “Mommy,” she whimpered. “Mommy, get it out… It hurts, Mommy, please get it out…”

  “What is she talking about?” Tom asked.

  “Something’s inside her.”

  “But what? You think she’s talking about the drug?”

  “I don’t know.” Hanna shook her head. Sparrow calmed down after a few seconds. “She seems okay, now. We should let her sleep some more.”

  They went back out to the front porch. Hanna stopped. She narrowed her eyes and peered into the Grey Nothing.

  “What is it?” Tom asked. “Do you see something?”

  “Yes. Something’s out there.”

  Tom looked, but couldn’t see anything except Grey Nothing. He said as much.

  “Something’s out there,” Hanna repeated. “Something that’s not supposed to be.”

  “You mean something that’s not a dream?”

  Hanna nodded. She pointed. “There.” Tom looked toward where she was pointing into the Grey Nothing. Was there a pinprick of something in the Grey Nothing? He couldn’t tell. It could be his eyes playing tricks on him. Maybe hers were playing tricks on her, too. She went down to the last step before the Grey Nothing and reached her hand up to it, until the very tip of her finger disappeared within. “Right where my finger disappears,” she said.

  Tom leaned close, and finally he did see something, a small speck, a black dot marring the perfection of the Grey Nothing. “What do you think it is?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Hanna looked worried. “It shouldn’t be… anything. There should be nothing out there, nothing at all.”

  They watched until the speck had grown into a smudge, then it became a shape, recognizably human, a person walking along suspended in the Grey Nothing.

  “It’s him,” said Hanna. “It’s the General.”

  “No way.” But before long Tom could see him, blackened and ruffled, wisps of smoke wafting from the shards of his uniform. He walked right up to the end of the steps, standing there in the Grey Nothing. The mirrorshades were still on his face, cracked and tilted, and the bowl of his pipe looked like it had exploded, leaving the stem splayed at the end.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in for a glass of iced tea?” he asked. The sarcasm was in his voice, but he didn’t grin. He looked at them with no discernable expression and waited.

  “You should be dead,” Tom said.

  “I can’t die,” the General told him. “Only a full, whole person can die. I’m not a whole person. Until I become whole, I can’t die. Now, are you or are you not going to invite me in?”

  “We’d rather not,” Hanna said.

  The General sighed. “I had hoped you were going to cooperate once you saw the hopelessness of your situation. Not that it matters. We’ll just have to do this the hard way.” He started up the steps. Hanna and Tom backed away, up to the porch.

  “Stay back!” Tom yelled at the General, who ignored him.

  “Come on,” Hanna said, grabbing Tom by the arm and pulling him with her to the front door. They went inside, slammed the door shut and locked it. “It’s safe in here, right?” Hanna asked.

  “So far,” Tom said. They heard the General’s footsteps on the porch. The doorknob turned and the door rattled in its frame. “You’re not getting in here!” Tom shouted through the door. Then they heard the General’s footsteps go away from the door, and stop. Then again, heading toward then door at a run. A moment later the front door exploded inwards. Splinters of wood and glass became projectiles, shrapnel, knocking Tom off his feet. Hanna merely turned away and shielded her eyes. The General walked in.

  “I’m going to huff, and puff, and blow your house down,” he said.

  “There’s no need for this,” Hanna told him.

  “I know that,” the General said. “But Jovah doesn’t. He wants to be whole again, and I want to be the one in control when he is.” He moved closer to Hanna. She didn’t budge. “I’m going to eat you alive,” he said. “Just like the others.”

  “There’s got to be another way,” Hanna said.

  The General shook his head. “One of us has to absorb the other. It isn’t in your nature to do to me what I’ve done to the others, what I’m about to do to you. It’s violent, it’s bloody… you weren’t made that way.”

  “I know.” Hanna saw her reflection in the mirrorshades. Her nature. What was her nature?

  “This is the way it has to be,” the General said.

  He reached out to grab Hanna by the throat, but suddenly Tom got up and charged the General. The General spun and caught Tom in the side of the head with a Judo move, sending Tom crashing into the opposite wall. Tom fell to the floor, unconscious. The General returned his attention to Hanna. He reached out for her again, but this time she surprised him. Instead of trying to pull away as the others had, she slipped past his grip, closer, and pushed her body against his. Before he knew what she was doing she had her mouth on his, forcing his open, ramming her tongue into his mouth, her arms and legs wrapped around him.

  The General staggered back, off balance, and tripped over the coffee table, slamming onto the floor, Hanna still atop him. She pressed him down onto the floor and her tongue slid down the General’s throat. The General strained against her, pushing her head back with all his strength, managing to dislodge her tongue from his throat.

  “Fight me,” he rasped. “Resist. You have to fight me, it’s the only way you can win!”

  “No,” Hanna said, smiling. “I know my nature. I can’t fight you. It’s the only way you’ll win. I’m going to make love to you.”

  “No!” The General struggled, tried to push Hanna off of him. She shoved her face close to his, looked into his eyes.

  “I love you,” she said.

  The General weakened. “No!” He tried to look away. She pushed the mirrorshades off his face, forced him to look into her eyes with his own, naked eyes.

  “I love you,” she said again.

  “No…” The General tried to push her away, but his strength had dissipated.

  “Yes,” Hanna whispered hotly in his ear. “You know you want me. You know you always have.”

  “No…” the General groaned.

  “Oh, yes…” Hanna managed to unzip the General’s trousers, and maneuver herself over him just right. “I feel it. You’re aroused,” she said.

  “No…”

  “Yes, yes,” Hanna said, smiling. She moved again, and he was inside her now. She sat up and ripped his shirt open, revealing the PROPERTY OF tattoo that had been Galactic Bill’s, the needle tracks in his arms that had belonged to Deuce…

  “Not supposed to be this way,” the General managed to say, his voice barely a whisper, as he felt his essence merging with Hanna’s, sliding up into her.

  Sparrow didn’t seem to be doing any better. Tom thought she looked worse than before. She groaned in pain, her hair was matted and wet from sweat. He didn’t know what to do. When he awoke in the living room, neither Hanna nor the General were there. He’d heard a noise, Sparrow whimpering in her room, and had come in ready to fight, expecting to find the General in there doing something unspeakable… No General, and no Hanna, and he forgot all about them when he saw Sparrow’s condition had worsened. She thrashed around in bed suddenly, whimpering again.

  Tom took her hand, held in both of his. Her hand felt warm.

  “Sparrow,” he said. “It’s me, Tom. I’m here for you. I won’t let anything happen to you, Sparrow. I love you. I hope you know that. I love you, Sparrow.”

  She didn’t calm down. She squeezed his hands in her one, so hard he felt his bones grinding together. He managed to pull away before she broke something. He’d never realized she could be so strong. Delirium, he realized. It made people stronger than they really were.

  He wondered if the drug w
as still in him, still working. If so, could he speak to her telepathically like before? Could he experience her thoughts, and try to calm her down from within her own mind? He decided to try. Tom closed his eyes. He could sense Sparrow’s presence in the room, but maybe it was because he knew she was there. He could smell the sour scent of her fever pressing in all around him. Sparrow was everywhere. There were no words, her thoughts were animalistic, nonsentient, chaotic, wild. An image formed, the universe from without, a Rorschach blob expanding in every direction at once. Sparrow imagined herself as the universe. Tom felt insignificant in her presence, less than a gnat buzzing around her head. Sparrow feared she would never stop expanding, she would eventually encompass all of creation and would then become One with the cosmos.

  It was too much for Tom to wrap his mind around. He opened his eyes and saw Sparrow in bed, and she did not look normal. She looked pale, and bloated, her hair soaked from sweat, her skin slick and glistening. She looked twice as big as she was normally. Infected, Tom thought. Swollen.

  Someone knocked on Sparrow’s door. Tom froze. He imagined it had to be the General come for Sparrow. Tom knew that if he had to fight the General again, this time he would die. But he could not allow the General to simply take Sparrow without a fight.

  Tom grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open, intending to surprise whoever was there, fist ready. When he found himself facing the General’s mirrorshades, Tom slammed his fist into the face of… Hanna. She staggered back, but didn’t fall.

  “What was that for?” she asked. She reached a hand up to her mouth, where Tom had split her lower lip, and felt blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said. “I thought you were him. What happened?”

  Hanna grinned. “All you need is love,” she said. “I took care of the General. He’s gone.”

  “Gone? Where’d he go? Are you sure he’s not coming back?”

  “Oh, I’m sure.”

  “What happened?” Tom asked. He noticed now that her skin was slightly darker, and she seemed slightly taller and older than before. Not as perfect, although still incredibly beautiful.

  “Let’s just say the General was… unborn.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He tried to absorb me, Tom. But I was too strong. Instead, I absorbed him.”

  “How?” He couldn’t even begin to imagine how that had happened.

  “I’d rather not go into the details,” Hanna said. “But I can tell you this: it’s over.”

  Tom shook his head, then looked at Sparrow. “It isn’t over. She’s not doing well… and have you looked outside? Whatever’s happening is still happening.”

  Hanna took a breath. “I meant, my part of it is over. Jovah’s whole now. All the different aspects of Jovah are melted into one. Me. I’m Jovah. I won.”

  “That’s great,” Tom said.

  “Is that sarcasm?”

  Tom quickly shook his head. “No, not at all. I think it’s great. But now what?”

  Sparrow seemed to have settled down while Tom and Hanna were talking. Tom decided they should leave her to sleep some more. He and Hanna went back out to the front porch. The Grey Nothing was all around them. Nothing marred its perfection now.

  “I don’t know,” Hanna answered his question from before. “I’d intended to impregnate Sparrow so she’d give birth to a new reality…”

  “You what?”

  “Sorry. I mean Jovah had intended to impregnate Sparrow so she’d give birth to a new reality in which he and Sparrow would be one entity. Hey, don’t look at me that way, it was his idea. He truly loved Sparrow, you know, through Io. Sparrow was everything to him, all that mattered in the universe. When he realized what was happening to him, that his various personas were becoming strong enough to exist without him, he activated the General, sent him around absorb the others. It took all his strength to control the General, but he was never really in control of the General. The General just made Jovah think he was in control, until the end. The General got the idea of being the dominant persona when Jovah was whole again.”

  “And I thought I had problems,” Tom commented.

  “Jovah was crazy,” Hanna said. “But he knew what he wanted. He used Galactic Bill to get the drug to Sparrow. You and Lena weren’t supposed to get any of it. That was Galactic Bill’s way of throwing a monkey wrench into the works.”

  “How did this happen?” Tom asked. “Where did Jovah come from?”

  “Alice Company,” Hanna said. “The Marines gave Alice Company to the C.I.A. to use for testing. They tested the drug on Alice Company. They weren’t in Vietnam, but in the Florida Everglades, in simulated combat. None of it was real, but their fear was. But the drug, which was only supposed to link the soldiers telepathically, made them hallucinate. Their fear made them turn the mock-battle into the real thing. The soldiers were all killed, except Jovah. He experienced their dying thoughts as if he were having them himself. Sergeant James Johnson’s last thoughts were of his daughter, Io. Private Rick Evans’ final thoughts were of his fiancée, Hanna. And when they died, when his comrades went over to the other side, Jovah went with them. It drove him insane. And the drug’s effect on him was worse. He was incapable of dealing with any external stimulus… the air burned his skin, light stabbed into his eyes like a needle, the smallest sound rammed through his ears like an ice pick. The C.I.A. put Jovah into a sensory depravation tank while they studied him. Eventually they forgot all about him. All he had were his memories, the memories of Alice Company in their final moments. They became real to him… and here I am. I was like the others, at first. Because Jovah had been stretched so thin, we were each stereotypes, cardboard cut-outs, and we had no idea of our true nature.”

  “Jesus,” Tom said. “And now you’re him. This all happened to you.”

  Hanna smiled. “Sort of. I remember it like a bad dream. Like someone else’s bad dream.”

  “That’s good, I guess.”

  “You know, Sergeant James Johnson was from here, from Gainesville. That’s why Io wound up here. That’s why she met you… and Sparrow.”

  “Well, there is no here, anymore.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Hanna said. “Here is in our heads. It’s all about having a sense of place, a place that feels safe, that feels like home. Everything that happened, we made it happen.”

  “You mean you did. Jovah.”

  Hanna shook her head. “No, all of us, everyone who took the drug. You, Sparrow, and Lena… you three had an effect on reality. It isn’t over because it isn’t supposed to be over yet.”

  “That makes sense.” Hanna shot him a look. “Sarcasm,” Tom told her.

  “It does make sense, though. Think about it. The nature of the drug is that we create our own reality. If we’re hallucinating and don’t know the power of the drug, we know what happens. But once we start to understand, we can fix it. We should be able to fix it.”

  “Fix what?” Tom asked. “There’s nothing to fix.”

  And at that moment, Sparrow screamed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a scream that Tom would not have imagined Sparrow capable of making. He ran inside, back to her bedroom in a flash, Hanna right behind him. He opened the door to see Sparrow thrashing around in bed, arms and legs flailing wildly. The sheets had already been torn to shreds. The bed had moved several feet back from the wall. And Sparrow herself… she didn’t look like Sparrow anymore. Her stomach was bloated so much it spanned the width of the bed. She was naked, her clothes had also been shredded. The skin on her stomach looked like an eggshell covered by a spider-web pattern of cracks.

  “Hold her,” Tom told Hanna, “she’ll hurt herself like that.”

  They tried. He grabbed Sparrow’s right arm, Hanna grabbed the left. Suddenly Sparrow whipped her right arm sideways and sent Tom head-first into the wall. Then she flung Hanna over the bed and into the oak dresser Sparrow had purchased at Salvation Army for ten dollars. The dresser splintered from t
he impact.

  “Get it out!” Sparrow screeched. “Get it out!!”

  Tom scrambled to his feet. “Get what out?” he asked. But he knew… something was inside her, something caused by the drug. Hanna lay where she had landed, amid the shards of wood that had been the dresser, not moving. The mirrorshades had been broken in half on the floor.

  Sparrow thrashed her head about until she saw Tom, and then she focused on him. Her eyes were bloodshot but he knew she could see him. She lashed out at him, barely missing.

  “You did this to me!” she screamed. “You!” White foam sprayed from her mouth.

  “What did I do?” he asked.

  “Get it out! You did this to me! Get it out!”

  Hanna moved, then slowly got to her feet.

  “She thinks I did something to her!” Tom yelled. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted Hanna to know. He was desperate for her to know something, anything.

  “It was you, Tom,” she said. “It was supposed to be me… supposed to be Jovah… but it was you. You did it.”

  “Did what?” Tom asked.

  “She’s pregnant, Tom.”

  Sparrow screamed and the windows in her room shattered.

  “What do we do?” Tom asked. Thoughts of boiling water, tearing clean sheets into strips, getting her a leather strap to bite down on,… all flashed through his head.

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Hanna said. “Except… grab her legs, force them apart, and help her get whatever’s inside her… out.”

  Tom felt faint. “Oh, God.” Whatever’s inside her. Whatever it was, the drug ensured it would not be a normal baby.