by JA Huss
Oh, she can choke my throat all she wants. But that’s not the part of me she needs to hold in her hand.
She needs my mind.
But now we know who’s up there. You. You’re up there. Holding me close. Keeping me safe. Making me the monster I was meant to be.
Hello, you.
Did you miss me?
The last dose of drug has now flowed through my whole body. It’s been absorbed by the muscles and that’s it, people.
Time to go.
The gathering is not something I like to describe. It’s a contraction of my whole body. I seize up on the table. My back arching. My hands pinned to my sides with straps. My legs bound to the table.
My mouth opens, but I don’t scream. Not with my voice, anyway.
I scream with my mind.
Imagine throwing a pebble into a puddle. Imagine those harmless little circles that radiate out, getting bigger and bigger and bigger the farther away they travel.
You want to be far away from me right now, take my word on that. Because the mental scream that comes out of my mind is a force of nature.
People fly backwards in front of the supersonic shock wave. The wind that comes from the explosion blows past them, taking everything around me with it.
Walls disappear. Windows shatter.
And then there is silence and I’m alone.
I’m free. At least from the restraints holding me down on this table. But I retreat back into my head.
You’re back now, right? This is what you wanted. This was your plan all along.
So fuck you. I don’t wanna be in control anymore. Just fuck you. Take over then. I don’t care.
“What the… fuck?”
I open my eyes and see a girl. Dark hair, olive skin, unknown color eyes. About five nine. Maybe five ten. She’s wearing a uniform but that’s not the part that bothers me.
What bothers me is she’s still standing.
I sit up, the useless bindings falling away from my body. “Who the fuck are you?”
She squints at me. Frowns. Looks down at the floor. Then behind her. Yasmine’s body is visible, but she’s underneath one of her team members. Looking lifeless.
The dark chick shakes her head, then opens her eyes wide, like she’s clearing her vision.
Amber, I see. Her eyes are amber.
“What the hell was that, Brooks?” She says my name with confidence, but it fades quickly. Her eyes dart back and forth for a few seconds. Not focused on me. Not really. Just like… they’re searching for something they can’t find. “You are Brooks, right?”
I swing my legs over the side of the table and step down. My feet are bare, and there’s shards of glass and metal everywhere. It crunches under my soles. I ignore it, but the girl winces for me.
“Yes,” I say, straightening up. She’s kinda pretty. I might want to make a good impression. “Thomas Brooks. Who, might I ask, are you?”
“Did you…” She looks around again. Very confused, this one. “Did you just explode?”
“No,” I say, patting down my chest, just to make sure. That’s when I notice the IV needle sticking out of my arm. I give it a tug and throw it aside. “I seem fine.”
“What was that? This whole place is… gone!”
“Oh,” I say, noticing the side of the building is missing. Car alarms are going off outside. “Well, shit. They just got this building up and now look what I’ve done.” I smile as I take my attention back to the pretty female. “Do you have a name?”
She’s confused again.
“Darling?” I say. “A name?”
She shakes her head.
“You don’t have a name?”
“I do,” she says, letting out a sigh at the same time. “But I don’t understand what’s happening. I… can’t remember why I’m here.”
“You… presumably work here?” I ask, trying to be helpful. “You’re wearing a uniform.” Her name tag says Phil, but she’s definitely not a Phil.
She looks down at her clothes in horror. “What the hell?” Her wide eyes meet mine again. Yes. A very pretty yellow-brown color. Strikingly unusual. “Am I bleeding? Do I have a concussion? Am I halluci—” She stops. “Halluci—”
“Hallucinating?” I offer, again. Just trying to be helpful.
She takes a deep breath. Her lips move, silently counting to three. Then she lets the breath out.
“You’re not bleeding. I don’t know why you’re not bleeding, since everyone else in this room was knocked to the floor. But you seem fine to me.”
Something changes in her. A panic. A moment of pure… fear. “I need to get the fuck out of here. I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no clue how I got here. I don’t even know my name!”
I step forward and take her hand. “Now, now. Don’t worry. We can leave if you want. I just need to grab something from the other room.”
“The other room?” She turns to look behind her.
“Oh.” I’m genuinely disappointed. The other room is mostly gone. Blown to bits. “I was hoping to grab that suit.”
“Who are you?”
“Thomas,” I say, placing her hand on my arm. “You just said my name.”
“No,” she says. “No.” More forcefully this time.
Well, she’s one of the inmates, obviously. That’s too bad. I haven’t been laid in months. I had a little spark of hope there for a second. But clearly, I will be leaving and she will be staying behind.
“It was nice meeting you, whatever your name is. But look, I’m sorta busy today. So I gotta run. Cops are gonna come and—”
Sure enough, there’s sirens downstairs.
When I look back at the girl she’s… flickering. Like… seriously, flickering into other people before my eyes.
One second she’s a man, then she’s an old woman. A few flickers of that and she’s a young woman wearing a different uniform.
“What the fuck?” I ask.
She shakes her head and rubs her eyes.
“What was that?” I ask.
She stares at her feet for a moment, then slowly brings her eyes up to meet mine. “I’m a level ten.”
“Are you?” I ask, jutting my head back in surprise. “A level ten what, exactly?”
“Hallucinal—” She shakes her head again. “Delusional.”
I laugh. “Yes, darling. I think you are quite right about that. You are definitely level ten delusional. Now, as much as I’d like to hang out with you, possibly fuck you crazy and then drop you off somewhere, never to see you again, I’m gonna have to move along now. I’m not into the psychotic ones. They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Illusional,” she spits out with some effort. “No. Illusionist.” She smiles with relief. Like she just solved the biggest puzzle ever. “Yes. I’m an illusionist.”
“A level ten… illusionist?” I raise an eyebrow at her. “Not possible.”
But then she flickers. And for five whole seconds, she becomes me.
CHAPTER SIX - SADIE
If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, I’d laugh at the man’s shock. Thomas, he called himself. It feels familiar. I look around at the total destruction in this room. I can see outside. A hole has been blown into the wall.
That is not familiar, but the other side—the side with a door, complete with frame, still standing amid the missing wall—that side seems familiar.
How did I get here? Why can’t I remember anything?
“Where,” Thomas says, bringing my attention back to him, “the fuck did you just come from?”
I open my mouth. Clearly about to say something. But my mind is… blank.
And everything, I mean everything, about my blank mind is wrong.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“I think you’re the one with the answer to that question. You just appeared here. You’re not a patient, are you?”
He’s pointing at my clothes again. Why am I wearing this ridiculous uniform? “No, I’m not a patien
t. I’m here for you!” It comes from somewhere, but I have no idea where.
“Me?”
The sirens downstairs are louder now. I can hear people shouting.
“I need to go, sweetheart.”
I don’t bother answering him. I just whirl around and make for what used to be the hallway. There’s no one up here but us right now. But there will be soon. And whatever is happening, the last place on Earth I want to be stuck is inside this hospital.
Thomas catches up to me, grabbing hold of my hand. “Look. We can help each other out. How about that? I need to get out of here. You need to get out of here. Do that illusionist thing again so we can slip by everyone.”
“I’m not a patient,” I say, looking him up and down as I pick my way through piles of debris, making my way towards the sign that says exit.
Exit.
Yes, this feels right. For whatever reason, this exit sign is exactly where I need to go. “I have no idea who you are.”
“That’s not saying much.” He laughs. “You don’t know who you are either.”
We both start jogging down the stairs towards the ground floor. “Well, I do know I’m not a patient. And you clearly are.”
“I’m here by mistake. Just like you.”
But that doesn’t ring true. Not the part about him. The part about me. I am here for a reason. I just don’t remember it.
He squeezes my hand tighter, making me acutely aware that he’s still got a hold of it. “Just get us out, OK? We can put all the pieces together once we’re away from here. I promise, I’ll take you somewhere safe so you can figure it out. Sound good?”
I want to put up a big fight right now, but I don’t have many choices. What if I am a patient? What if they stop us downstairs and try to take me… prisoner?
When we get to the third floor, the stairwell becomes clogged with people. Nurses and patients. There’s screaming and pushing. Panic, I realize. People are about to panic.
Thomas pulls me close to him, leaning into to whisper in my year. “Just be calm. We’re gonna flow right out of the building with everyone else. When we get outside, we’ll head to the parking lot. You disguise us as… whoever the fuck you want. Just not the real us, got it?”
I say nothing.
“Then I’ll get us a car and we’ll drive out amid the chaos.”
I’m still too busy concentrating on the mass hysteria around me to answer.
“Listen to me, trippy chick,” Thomas says, squeezing my hand hard. “Do you understand me?”
People are pressing up against me. I hate it. I hate them touching me. I want to be away from this chaos more than anything. “Yes,” I finally say. “OK. Just get me away from here.”
“Follow my lead.”
We take our turn shuffling down the stairs towards the ground level. An old man who smells like stale bread and mold is too close to me. I want to be sick. But then there’s the door being held open by firemen. There’s a few nurses and doctors, but mostly we are just patients.
No. I’m not a patient. I do not belong here.
“When we get outside, make us look like visitors. Can you do that?”
Can I? “I’m not sure,” I say, deciding it’s better to be truthful.
“You can, OK? You just told me you’re a level ten illusionist. If that’s true, then I know what you can do. Just find the faces of two people in plain clothes and change us into them. OK?”
I stare at the daylight pouring through the open door. I want to be outside so bad.
“OK?” Thomas asks again, shaking my arm to jolt me to attention.
“OK,” I agree. I don’t know if I can really do what he just said, but it won’t hurt to believe in it. Just get me outside and away from all these smelly people.
We approach the firemen, and just when I think I won’t have to throw a trip—trip?—and we’ll be able to make our way to safety, there’s a whole army of nurses and doctors, rounding up each and every patient as we file out through the stairwell.
Thomas sees them at the same time, because he says, “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” I echo.
“Do it now, OK? Make us anyone but who we are now.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can. I know you can. Just do it now!”
I find two people far out in the parking lot, both clearly hospital employees by the way they’re dressed, and I just… steal their faces. Thomas still has my hand. And it’s only when I throw the trip—trip?—that I wonder if I can change him as well as me.
But I feel the shudder, in my mind and his, in the same moment.
When I look over at him again, I almost let go of his hand in shock.
So this is what it feels like to see a trip. Where am I getting that word from?
I shake my head and concentrate on keeping the illusion in place. We walk, hand in hand still, right through the door. Several nurses are herding patients as we emerge, but they yell right past us.
We walk faster. Walking off towards a large parking lot. We’re not the only people doing that, either. Several dozen others are right alongside us.
When we get to the parking lot, Thomas steers me towards a car. “You can drop it now,” he says. His illusion falls away as soon as he speaks, becoming Thomas again. “No one is looking. They are way too busy back there.”
“Is this your car?” I ask, feeling the illusion drop away.
“Sure.” He laughs as he takes his shirt off.
I lift an eyebrow at him.
“I need one to break the glass without fucking up my hand. And I don’t want to take yours. Yet.” He smiles at his innuendo.
I look down at myself. Horrified. Again. What the hell did I put on this morning? Where was I this morning? I search back, trying to find something about my day that makes sense. A cup of coffee, maybe. Or checking email. Something.
Thomas wraps his shirt around his hand, then punches the glass, making it shatter into a million shards that fall harmlessly down to the ground.
I go still, almost in a panic. Who am I? I know my name, but that’s not enough. Who am I?
“Hey, trip chick,” he growls in my ear. “Snap the fuck out of it and get with the program. We need to leave.”
“Sadie,” I say.
“What?”
“My name is Sadie. So stop calling me that stupid name.”
He smiles at me. All the way up to his eyes. “Fine. Sadie it is. Now, do you want to get the fuck out of here or not? Because the longer we hang around the greater the chances that these people will get their shit together and stop us on the way out.”
I blink, realizing something. “It’s not supposed to work like that.”
“What are you talking about now?”
“The illusion. It took us at least five minutes to walk over here. I should not be able to throw a trip for more than a few seconds.”
He cocks another eyebrow at me. “Really?”
I nod. “I know I seem… confused. I get it. I don’t make much sense right now, but I know this. I just know this. It’s not supposed to last that long.”
“Well, Sadie,” he says, taking both my hands and giving them a squeeze, “I tell you what. As soon as we get out of here I’ll help you figure it all out. OK? But first, we have to get the fuck away from this place before they figure out I’m missing.”
“They want you,” I say. “They’re looking for you.”
“Yes,” he says. “But I swear, I’m not as crazy as they think.”
“Just a little bit crazy?” I ask.
He smiles again. And I don’t know why I find his smile so reassuring, but I do. So I wait. Holding my breath until he speaks. “Just a little, I promise.” He reaches inside the car, opens the door, then slips into the driver’s seat.
“How will you—”
But he’s already got it started before I can finish that sentence.
When he looks up at me from under his unruly head of dark hair, he winks. “I’ve got
talents too. Now get the fuck in the car. We’re out of here.”
I walk around the other side, get in, and close the door behind me. Thomas is already backing the car out before I can say anything else. Like what if they recognize us on the way out? But it’s clear, there’s no one at the front gates to the asylum long before we get there.
We pass through unnoticed and drive south towards Cathedral City looming in the distance. After several nervous minutes of looking behind us, Thomas finally relaxes. “Thank you,” he says. “You saved my ass, Sadie. So I owe you one.”
He reaches over, places his hand on my leg, and squeezes. But oddly, it’s not creepy. It’s… comforting.
“And hey,” he says. “Don’t worry. Whatever’s happening to you, we’ll figure it out.”
“Where are we going?” I ask as I remove his hand from my thigh. It’s not creepy. That’s not why I removed it. It’s just… not something I allow. I might not remember much, but I’m a hundred percent sure I don’t let strange men touch my legs.
“Well.” Thomas sighs as he gets on the freeway going south. If he takes my rebuke personally, he doesn’t show it. “We can’t go to my place.” He looks over at me and smiles. “Obviously. And I’m pretty sure your place is also a very bad idea. We can’t go to my friends’. They’ll look there first. So I guess we’re stuck with a tower. It’s the only place I can think of right now.”
“A tower?” I ask. This day is so confusing.
“Yeah,” he says, pointing at the tower at the southern edge of the city. “I own those towers. They’re mine. And they have basements that weren’t in the plans, so no one knows about them but us.”
“Who is us?” I ask.
“So they won’t find us there,” he says, ignoring my question. “We’ll be safe until we figure out what to do.”
I slump back in my seat. The tower he’s pointing at feels far, far away. And I am way too tired to think for another second.
“Hey,” Thomas says, grabbing my shoulder to jolt me awake. “I don’t think you should sleep. You might’ve been hit after all.” He reaches up to tap my head. “Amnesia, right? You lost your memory.”
“No, I didn’t,” I say. Groggily.
