You, Human

by John Skipp

  Her mouth hangs slightly open and you think—as much as you can think—she would’ve hated to look slack-jawed like that. The urge to shriek grows, but it doesn’t escape. It burns, a hot molten core in your heart.

  Her eyes half-open, giving her a doped-look, and you straighten. Your grip on her hand tightens. Her eyes are black, but they see you, and, if she’s seeing you, that must mean it’s all right, right? Turning everything off doesn’t mean it’s over, right? You’ve seen episodes of E.R. Sometimes the patient just needs a jumpstart.

  You swallow and your throat clicks. A hand grips your shoulder, the way it will at the funeral.

  (STOP THIS NOW I CAN’T SEE THIS I WON’T)

  You think her head turns, but it really doesn’t—her chest has just stopped moving. She’s still looking at you, but her eyes have become the eyes of a taxidermy product, glassy, molded to convey an emotion.

  But the irrational hope doesn’t die; you still have the hand, holding yours, gripping yours, and that means she’s still there, right? She still knows you’re there, right? It can’t be too late if she can still hold you. Right?

  “She’s holding my hand,” you say.

  The owner of the hand on your shoulder squeezes in a way that’s supposed to be comforting and isn’t. “It’s muscle memory, Jimmy,” the owner says, his voice thick. “Her hand muscles are responding to the pressure of your hand.”

  The words fall like bell tolls on your ears. Your head burns, your chest flattens, yours eyes bulge and scald and the scream is just behind your lips, dying to be let out, and you bear down mentally: I will not do this, I will not, I will not—You can’t make this real. Even now, with the truth in front of you, you can’t let out that which makes this real.

  And then the burning … cools. The scream retreats. The weight in your chest lessens. It all … dwindles, until you feel almost nothing at all.

  You’re still holding your mother’s hand, but the grip is a lie, just like her intense I’m-seeing-you gaze, and the loose skin—the dry skin, the thin skin—is all you can feel.

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” the man says and his voice is all snot and closed-throats, full of an emotion that you suddenly can’t feel. It is at this moment you and the boy separate, the boy stuck in his hellish frozen instant and you going on with your pale half-lives.

  And, inside, the you remembering all this screams and screams and screams, until the light comes again, until you’re yanked and—

  —he lay on his side, cradling his ball of light, now gray and dim. Jimmy stood in front of him.

  “Pain is a bridge,” the boy said. “Who you are on one end is not who you are on the other. You experience the pain and you cross and it changes you. But, with us, somehow, it didn’t. I got stuck on one end and you—you all … jumped. You didn’t feel any pain, but you weren’t alive the way you should be.”

  He knelt beside McIntyre. “You need to accept it, James. You need—”

  McIntyre couldn’t breathe; his nose was clogged, his lungs filled to capacity. The pain was gone from his head, replaced with a hot buzzing that reminded him of cicadas. All he could see was his mother’s dead eyes, all he could hear was the sound of her not breathing, all he could feel was the thin skin of her hand—

  —and he shrieked.

  It boiled up from his core, rolling up and out and into the ringing nothing. Just a great animal bellow of pain and grief, rolled over and over with interest, not just for twenty years, or twenty times twenty years, but for all of them. Every half-life. Every pallid dream, every false continuation of the man known as James McIntyre. His throat shredded. Every muscle, every nerve, every cell, cried out into the darkness, reaching higher and higher, dissembling the pieces until nothing was left.

  And then the scream built McIntyre back up again even as it dwindled to a rattle, assembling his form, cell by cell, imbued not with the falseness of his lives, but the passage of the pain—even as he knew it wasn’t finished yet. He wasn’t finished yet.

  And then, finally, silence.

  And James McIntyre opened his eyes.

  McIntyre held his dying ball of light between him and the boy. They watched it ebb and flow, ebb and flow, each fluctuation fainter, until only darkness remained and McIntyre’s hands held nothing at all.

  He stood and the boy, a silhouette limned with the faintest etching of light, looked up at him.

  “The end,” he said.

  “Not yet,” the boy said. “One final step.” He saw the boy’s silhouette turn his head and McIntyre followed his gaze.

  Far away, a single light burned.

  The final star was the boy’s. The true star, the true core.

  “Are you ready?” Jimmy McIntyre, both eleven years old and impossibly ancient, a ghost of an unlived life, asked.

  “Yes,” James McIntyre, both thirty-one years old and not alive at all, replied.

  The boy offered his hand and the false-man took it.

  And, together, they walked towards the light.

  Coda:

  The star explodes in rays of creamy light, with the core becoming the horizon.

  Sound—the distant beep of pagers, the almost syncopated deet of many machines doing many jobs, the opening piano chords of a Top 40 hit song.

  Smell—cafeteria food and Latex and hospital cleaner. The scent of vanilla perfume that the false man will always associate with middle school girls and the boy will have no association for whatsoever.

  Finally, sight—the rays of light becoming the angles of the hallway, top-bottom-left-right, with color filling in the gaps: speckled white for the tile floor, beige for the walls. Wide doorways swim into existence, wheelchairs standing guard.

  At the end of the hallway, just before it opens into the wide central area of a nurse’s station, a small boy sits in a wheelchair, holding a book.

  The false-man sees with no surprise whatsoever the boy sitting is the exact twin of the boy whose hand he is holding. They approach. The boy’s hunched over his book—Insomnia by Stephen King, the false man sees—but isn’t reading. He glares at the red-and-white dustjacket.

  The boy holding his hand lets go and walks over to his twin.

  “One final step,” he says again and the expression on his face is one of weariness. “Are you ready?”

  “Are you?”

  Instead of answering, the boy touches the exposed back of his twin’s neck. There’s a soft flash of creamy-white and his hand sinks into the other boy.

  He sits down where his twin sits, becoming more intangible with each movement. Before they connect, the boy offers the man a single final look that the man has no problem discerning.

  Don’t let us down, it says.

  And then the boy is gone with another soft flash of creamy light and it’s just this ghost and the boy in the wheelchair. Behind him, the Counting Crows goes into its first chorus of “A Long December.”

  The man reaches out, hesitates, then touches the back of the boy’s neck. Immediately, the aftertaste of Ho-Hos fills his mouth. Instantly, weight gets added to his chest.

  His hand sinks into the boy’s neck with more creamy-white light and he feels pulled, drawn in. He almost yanks his hand back, but the boy’s last glance at him—don’t let us down—keeps him going.

  He turns himself around and sinks into the boy, that pulling sensation intensifying. Memories, twenty years’ worth, whistle through the remaining second of his half-life, but, again, they recall nothing for him. They aren’t his.

  Before he full submerges, he looks back one last time, where he and the boy had come from, but sees only darkness, held back by the light.

  An apt metaphor, he thinks, and disappears.

  Jimmy blinks as disorientation sweeps through him. He has the odd feeling of both sitting down and getting up. The nerves in his legs twinge, confused.

  “Stupid,” he mutters, rubbing his eyes, but he freezes. To anyone looking, he would be some kid wiping his eyes because he’s crying, because he�
��s mourning, because he’s about to become a dumb fucking orphan and all he can fucking do about it is cry. They’d see him and be so full of sympathy, as if that could do anything about his fucking—

  (don’t say it don’t say it)

  —dying mother.

  He grinds his teeth until his jaw aches and drops his hands. No one would see him cry. He would not cry. He would not give in.

  But, Jesus Christ, who would’ve thought this would hurt so much? The weight he feels on his chest. He’s had the air knocked out of him a few times, but this is nothing compared to that; it feels, instead, like he’s clamped into one of those table-vices in shop class and some malicious bastard is turning it and turning it.

  His vision shimmers as his eyes grow hot.

  “Jimmy,” a man says from behind him.

  He looks up and John is standing there, his tie loosened, the bags under his eyes making the rest of his face paler. He’s ten years Jimmy’s senior but, right now, he seems twenty or thirty.

  “They’re turning her off,” John says and his voice cracks on the last word. His eyes are cherry-red-rimmed. “You need to say goodbye.”

  Jimmy nods. It feels like his throat is closing.

  He picks up his book and stands on legs made of Silly Putty.

  John steps aside, allowing Jimmy to enter first. “Are you going to be okay?”

  HOW CAN YOU EVEN FUCKING ASK THAT? he wants to scream, shriek, bellow, but he doesn’t. He won’t. He won’t even look at John. It’s stupid, but a part of him believes with a childish fierceness that if he doesn’t give in, she won’t go. She’ll have to stay. If he stares at John’s face for too long, thought, he won’t be able to hold it back. Can’t he see the truth on his brother’s face?

  He steps into the doorway and stops.

  The room is dark except for the single shaded fluorescent bar. A trio of machines stand to one side, science-fiction doctors brooding on their failure. The human doctor, so unimportant that Jimmy immediately forgets him, stands back a respectful distance.

  Finally, Jimmy looks at his mother.

  Something shifts within and the strangest sense of déjà vu hits him. He thinks two thoughts, equally nonsensical and impossible, simultaneously: I’ve been here before and I can’t go through this again!

  He reaches out and grasps the doorway, leaning like a drunk. He senses John behind him, but Jimmy sees only their mother, lying there, dwindling there. His throat hurts, as if he’s already been screaming. That sense of déjà vu gets stronger, becoming an odd, horrible form of vertigo.

  I’ve been here before, he thinks, but on some level doesn’t think it’s his voice at all.

  I have to live this again, he thinks and his throat burns, his chest closes. He blinks and his eyes are wet.

  He wants to call out to her, something that would appear dramatic but couldn’t match the wrench of emotion twisting in his chest, but he can’t, can’t even open his mouth. The air is locked in his throat.

  Behind him, John says, “Jimmy—”

  He puts a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and, this time, it’s comforting. He feels something give inside, and the weight … shifts.

  Jimmy McIntyre, eleven years old and thirty-one years old and impossibly ancient all at the same time, finally screams, finally lets it out, finally makes it true, and, finally, begins to live.

  FALLEN FACES

  BY THE WAYSIDE

  GARY A. BRAUNBECK

  “Thou com’st in such a questionable shape

  That I will speak to thee …”

  – Shakespeare, Hamlet ; Act 1, Scene 4

  It wasn’t the best set he’d ever done, but when Paul Cormier left the stage of The Funny Bone that Wednesday (read: Amateur) night, it was to applause that, if not exactly thunderous, was far more than he expected; several members of the audience were still laughing at the closing gag, and a few of them even loudly repeated the punchline as he made his way through the rows of tables toward the bar. He took his usual seat at the end, ordered a rum and Coke, and was about to ask the bartender if there was any fresh popcorn when Jim Woodward, the manager, came up behind him and put a hand on Paul’s shoulder.

  “Question: how long have I been inviting you to come back here on Amateur Night?”

  Paul shrugged. “Every other week for about two years, I guess.”

  “You guess. Wow. Powers of instant recall that well-honed humble such mere mortals as myself.”

  “Does everything you say sound like you wrote it down ahead of time and memorized it?”

  Woodward signaled the bartender to bring him his usual, and then took the seat next to Paul. “As a matter of fact, yes, but we’re not here to discuss my dreadful personality problems. You got a manger yet?”

  “Three guesses.”

  “What I figured.” He took a sip of his drink, then waited a few moments for dramatic effect. “Carmen Borgia is upstairs in my office. He wants to see you.”

  Paul could barely find his voice. “Y-you mean now?”

  “You ought to see your expression—Bo-Bo the Dog-Faced Boy looked more intelligent. Yes, now. For some reason that puzzles even as resplendent a personality as mine, the Borgia Agency is interested in managing your shaggy WASP ass. You interested?”

  “Three guesses.”

  “My God, the snappy repartee that must crackle throughout your home.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Here’s the thing: you know I like you, and I like your act, but what’s more important, the audiences like you, else I wouldn’t keep inviting you back. Are you paying attention? This next part’s important and there may be a quiz later. There’s going to be an announcement tomorrow. Jay Leno’s going to be appearing here three weeks from this Friday, it’s a charity thing. You know how Leno likes to discover new talent, right? Well, when Carmen set this up, Leno asked to see tapes of six amateur comics from the area. One of the tapes was yours, and Leno was blown away by your impressions—I sent the tape where you started with Nixon singing “If You Could Read My Mind” and closed with Richard Pryor and Jesse Helms doing In the Heat of the Night instead of Portier and Steiger. Remember how you killed that night? Leno picked you—I figured he would. Now, the thing is, I can’t offer you a paying gig unless you’ve got management. The owner and the union tend to frown upon doing it otherwise, go fig.

  “All you have to do is go up to my office, shake Borgia’s hand, and try not to pass gas; your days as home computer service technician will then be numbered.”

  “Hey, I got your system upgraded in less than a day—by the way, thanks for specifically requesting me. My boss remembers things like that.”

  “No prob. You know your stuff.”

  “It pays the bills … and I like it.”

  Woodward took Paul’s drink out of his hand and pulled him to his feet. “My office, go. One foot in front of the other, then repeat until you either walk into a wall or are stopped by a small, well-dressed Italian.”

  Paul was starting to make his way toward the private stairway when Woodward said: “Hey, Paul.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know you were a little off tonight. Don’t worry about it, okay? Tell you the truth, I didn’t expect you’d even show, let alone be as good as you were … considering that tomorrow would have been your sister’s birthday.”

  Paul was genuinely touched that Woodward remembered. “Thanks, man.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “You—”

  Woodward dismissed him with a wave of his beefy hand. “Excuses, excuses. I’m surrounded by indifference. No wonder I weep alone nights. Should’ve been a cesspool cleaner like my mother wanted.”

  Paul did not so much walk as shamble up to Woodward’s off-ice, convinced that this was all some set-up for an immense practical joke. To Paul’s mind, the universe was a model of chaos, not nearly as benign as people would have you believe, and even if it were, he never had this kind of luck, and so at once began looking over his shoulder for whatever it
was that would soon catch up with him and sink its teeth into the soft parts of what little optimism he was still able to affect.

  Not the most beneficial state of mind to be in when you were about to meet the biggest talent agent in the Midwest.

  He surprised himself by not pausing at the office door; instead, he walked right inside and up to Borgia.

  “Five minutes,” said Borgia, looking at his watch. “Took you five minutes to get up here. Most comics would’ve burned skid-marks in the carpeting if they were told that—oh, wait. Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  Borgia began pacing. “The sound of my death getting thirty seconds closer. Sit. Stand. Squat. Dance the hoochie-koo for all I care. Mind if I smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Damn. And I quit two years ago. Never mind.” Then he grinned. Carmen Borgia was a short, intense, sinewy man with bright hazel eyes and the energy of a dozen five-year-old children who’d fed on nothing but pure sugar since birth. If he hadn’t been a talent agent, Paul figured Borgia would have been the actor who had the career Joe Pesci should have had.

  “Woodward tell you all about it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Borgia stopped his pacing. “Did I just hear the ‘S’-word issue from your mouth? Please tell me that I did not. The ‘S’-word irks me—and when was the last time you heard someone properly use the word ‘irk?’”

  Paul blinked. “You know, if I left now it would be like I never came into the room.”

  “That supposed to be funny?”

  “Actually, I was going for a Robert-Ryan-in-The Wild Bunch-type of tragic-irony thing.”

  “Great movie. So-so delivery on your part.” Borgia walked up to Paul and held out his hand. “You’re very talented, you’re very funny, and I would like to represent you. I also have a couple of computers in my home that need tending to, but we can discuss that later. Very hush-hush, under-the-table type irony, since my wife and children think I know everything about everything.”