by Nico Laeser
“You don’t mind if I take a little nap after Anna fucks off?” he says, raising one eyebrow, “No? Great, thanks, Danny boy.”
Anna returns a few minutes later with a cup of coffee and puts it down on the table. “There you go, Marcus, is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, that’s it for now,” he replies and puts his sunglasses back on.
“Did you already help Danny with his exercises?” she asks.
“Yeah, of course,” he says and pulls one side of his face into a quick dismissive frown.
“Alright, let me know if Danny needs anything,” she says and leaves the room.
Marcus stands up and walks around me, out of view, and I hear the television turn on. The room spins, and I am facing the television but slumped to one side in my chair with my face pressed to one side of my headrest.
“There you go, Danny boy,” he says and tosses the television remote into my lap. “Just in case you want to change the channel.”
He clears his throat behind me and says, “You be a good little bird now and watch TV while I take a power nap.”
By the end of the first commercial break, I can hear him snoring a little, and when the screen goes black for a split second, I can see my reflection in the television screen and a slightly smaller copy next to it. We both sit, gape-mouthed and slumped in the same position, one slightly behind the other.
The commercial ends and the man selling exercise equipment comes back on, welcoming me back to the shopping channel, saying that I have only one more hour to take advantage of this special offer.
CHAPTER 8
I am the choreographer
Friday is my favorite day, because Friday is garbage day. Friday is the one day when doors get propped open and left that way, as the cleaning staff that works in the house empties all the trash from various receptacles throughout the house into large, plastic, wheeled bins that are then pushed outside, where they are picked up and emptied later in the day by the garbage truck.
At this time every week, headache or not, I leave my chair and my body and move through the open doors to outside. Everything inside is black and blue with yellow, red, and green fading in from recently handled objects and from people.
Outside, the sky is a much darker blue; the trees, grass, and flowers are yellow, orange, pink, and red, and glow like they are hot. The world is frozen still like a three-dimensional photograph, but I am free to walk around, although I still can’t really feel anything, only resistance and rigidity.
People frozen in mid-run leave a yellow vapor trail. The driver and passengers frozen in cars glow, leaving longer yellow lines that expose their route, but the cars themselves are merely dark blue and black silhouettes.
The world has the same color characteristics of thermal imaging that I have seen on a television show, where it was used at night by law enforcement to detect the body heat of drug smugglers at the border.
Although it appears similar, it is not heat that makes things glow in this ossified landscape, but life. If someone touches something, they leave a print for a time like they would with heat, but cars and hot engines do not glow, only people, animals, trees, and flowers glow.
I’m out of the house and off the property, walking toward the nearest town. I see the red figure of a man with an orange dog contrasting the blue-black path. The dog has bright white glowing eyes and its chest fades to greenish-yellow with a purple tinge around it. I keep walking and take a shortcut through a trail in the woods. The whole forest glows brightly, with the spaces between in blue and black.
As I emerge from the forest, everything is black and blue, save for the few glowing people frozen in various actions. Silhouetted rectangular framework is dotted with rows of glowing lights, and as I get closer, I realize that it is a bus. A man stands looking up into the sky with his mouth open allowing the white light to pour from his mouth as well as his eyes that glow from an orange face. There is a black rectangle at the side of his face. I move in closer to study him; the rectangle has a tail that wraps around his ear. I assume that it is a cell phone earpiece like the one I have seen Marcus wear previously.
I am trying to figure out what the man is looking at and move my head next to his, following his gaze to a bright yellow object in the sky. Black power lines obscure my view slightly, and I move closer to the man, to view it from the same angle as him. With my head directly in front of his, I look up and see that there is a bright yellow cross in the sky.
There is a rush of sound, and the cross in the sky becomes a bird, a crow. The bus engine whirrs and rumbles as it pulls away. All the regular color of the world returns, and the world is moving. I look down and I can see my hands and the suit that I am wearing.
I can hear a voice in my head, talking to me, “Are you there?”
I spin around thinking that it is the man that drew my attention to the bird, but he is no longer there.
“Are you still there?” the voice says.
I put my hand up to my head and feel the earpiece attached to my ear and realize that somehow, I am now back in the real world, and I am someone else. Somehow, I have become him, and I attempt to speak.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey, I thought I’d lost you there,” the voice says.
“I’m Daniel,” I say.
“What? Where did Jason go?” the voice says.
I am now wondering the same thing. If I am here in his body, where is he?
“Who is this?” the voice asks.
My thoughts buzz simultaneously with excitement and panic, and the latter churns my gut.
“Daniel from accounts?” the voice asks.
The world slows to a stop and the colors darken to black and blue, and once again, I am standing next to the man with the earpiece, but he stands in a different position, the position that I left him in.
I leave the scene and make my way back, the same way I came. When I arrive back home, the doors are all still open, and I slip inside. I return back to the day room and to the figure in the wheelchair.
When I left, the body of the figure was dull red in color; now it looks blue-black, the same as the furniture around it, but with a slight green glow in its center. I re-enter my body, and there is pressure and a squeal in my head.
The noise and pain subside over the next short while, and I attempt to make sense of what happened on my walk. I am wondering what the possibilities are, and also what the consequences might be.
CHAPTER 9
I am listening
Cassie has always maintained the view that I am still in here, even after the failure of the last attempt to prove it. She had noticed movement in the index finger of my right hand and had said that she thought that I was trying to communicate. She arranged to have a computer brought in that had software installed that allows the user to scroll through letters with the use of only a single button, which she placed and secured on the arm of my chair, positioned under the finger that was in her opinion, tapping to get her attention.
Cassie explained, both to my parents and to me, how the software worked. Click once for a menu to appear, and then it will scroll through letters. When the letter I wanted to use was on the screen, I should click to select it, and then it would start over. After I got the hang of that, then I would be able to advance to a more efficient system that would evolve with use.
The message I typed was nonsense. The finger movement was something that I was unaware of and not in control of, a twitch, a spasm, a nerve response resulting from some half-chewed control system. This was the last time that my parents got their hopes up and was the last time they visited the day room or me.
***
Cassie says, “They were talking about eye tracking in my course. I thought that maybe we could give it a try. I don’t think that your parents are going to approve after the last attempt, but there are relatively inexpensive versions of the equipment. A regular computer and similar software to what we tried before, but there are cameras and
sensors that you can plug in and calibrate so that it tracks the movement of your eyes, and you can make selections on screen just by looking at them.”
Cassie smiles and touches my hand.
If I can keep control of my eyes for long enough to spell even one word, then they will know that I am still here.
“I’m going to ask my computer guy if there is anything that he can do,” she says.
She stares into my eyes and says, “I can’t wait to finally speak with you, Danny.”
Anna walks into view. “It’s almost five, Cass. You are going to be late for your course if you don’t get a move on.”
“Thanks, Anna, I didn’t realize that it was getting so late,” Cassie says and begins to gather her things. “Is Marcus here yet?”
“Not yet, but it’s okay, I can sit with Danny until he gets here,” Anna says.
“Thank you, Anna. I’ll leave this here, if you want to read to Danny until Marcus arrives,” Cassie says and places the book down on the table.
“I’ll do that, Cass, now you’d better get going; don’t worry about us. Danny, Frodo, and I will be just fine.” Anna smiles and opens the book to the bookmarked page.
***
I hear the Mustang pull into the driveway, and a couple minutes later, Marcus walks into the day room with a girl.
“Hello, Marcus,” Anna says, “Who’s this?”
“This is Shelly; she wanted to meet Danny boy,” he says.
The girl looks down at the floor and shuffles like someone desperate to find a washroom.
“You are not supposed to bring non-staff members into the house,” Anna says.
“She’s my helper,” he says.
“Helper?”
“Don’t worry about it; it’s fine,” Marcus says.
“I don’t think that Danny’s mother and father would approve of you bringing strangers into their house, no offense, Shelly,” Anna says and regards the meek-looking girl as she stands next to Marcus and tugs at his shirt.
“It’s okay, I’ll go,” Shelly says in almost a whisper.
“Are you going to kick her out, Anna?” he says and throws an accusing glance at Anna.
“Well no, but if ... ” Anna starts.
“Then there’s no problem,” Marcus says.
Anna gets up out of the chair and places the bookmark back in the book.
“Alright, I will see you at bedtime, Danny.” Anna places the book back on the table and turns to Marcus, “If you have time, maybe you can continue reading to Danny.”
Marcus stares at Anna until she leaves the room.
“Who the fuck does she think she is?” he says.
“Maybe I should go,” Shelly says.
“Why? Because of Aunt Anna?” He raises his eyebrows. “She’s a glorified maid, don’t worry about it.”
He turns to me and says, “What’s up, Danny boy?”
“So can he speak or anything?” Shelly says, staring into my eyes the way a kid stares into a fish bowl.
“Nope, just sits there drooling and shitting himself all day,” Marcus says.
“That’s sad. Can he hear us?” She turns to face him, and the chemical fog of cheap perfume attacks two of my senses.
“No, he’s a vegetable,” he says.
“Why don’t they just put him out of his misery?” she says.
“The laws don’t allow it,” he says, pulls up another chair, and sets it across the table from his.
Shelly sits down and turns with her arm over the back of the chair to stare at me some more.
“So, what do you do, just sit here?” she asks.
“Pretty much; he’s low maintenance. Anna changes him and cleans him,” he says.
“Gross,” she says scrunching up her face.
“It was a lot more work taking care of old Monty, and I was there all the time. I get paid the same for looking after Danny boy, and I don’t have to do anything,” he says.
“Except read to him?” she asks.
Marcus picks up the book and takes out the bookmark, replacing it nearer the back. “I’m not reading that dungeons and dragons shit.”
“Marcus,” Shelly exclaims.
“What? He can’t understand it anyway,” he says and places the book back down on the table. He extends his arm and puts a hand on Shelly’s leg, “You want to … ”
“No, not in front of him,” she says, cutting him off.
“Why not? He is brain dead, what does he care?”
“He’s looking right at us,” she says.
Marcus stands up, takes off his coat, throws it toward me, and everything goes black. “Night-night, little bird, go to sleep.”
“Marcus?” she says in a tone that seems to contrast her mousy demeanor.
After a couple minutes of muffled reluctance, reasoning and giggling, I hear him grunting and her stifling intermittent moans.
CHAPTER 10
I am still here
There are extension cords and cables leading to the table and a computer screen sitting on it. Cassie is sitting in her chair. Her face is tinted blue, lit by the screen, and her eyes flick from one direction to another.
“Sorry this is taking so long, Danny, I want to make sure that it’s properly calibrated before we get started,” Cassie says.
My headache is near unbearable right now. I want to leave my body, to take a break from the pain, but I stay and wait. After today, I will be able to ask for painkillers to deal with my headaches, and I will finally be able to talk to her. I will be able to ask her to go back and read the chapters that Marcus skipped. I will be able to thank Cassie and Aunt Anna for everything that they have done. I will be able to talk, to communicate, to rejoin the living, and help them understand what it is like to be trapped in here.
Anna walks in. “Looks like something described in one of your science fiction novels.”
“It’s pretty simple; all the letters are on the right-hand side, and you choose a letter by looking at it, then other boxes open up and expand as you look toward them. It predicts the next letter to follow your previous selection based on probability and shows those letters in the bigger boxes,” Cassie says.
“Sounds complicated,” Anna says.
“The more you use it, the quicker it gets. It learns what words you use regularly and in conjunction with others, and then multiple options pop up in boxes after you start a word, like predictive text on your phone,” Cassie says.
Anna’s expression doesn’t change. “It takes me twenty minutes to send a text on my phone.”
I am practicing moving my eyes. They are not doing exactly what I want, and every time I strain to look left, the pain in my head rings out like a church bell.
Marcus enters the room and says, “What’s going on?”
“Cassie thinks that Danny might be able to communicate to us, using his eyes,” Anna says, moving her eyes around as she explains which makes me laugh inside.
“It’s the Dasher software, modified for eye tracking control,” Cassie adds.
“Didn’t you already try something like this?” Marcus says with a sour look on his face.
“It’s different software, and that was with a push switch for his finger,” Cassie says.
“What’s the difference?” Marcus asks.
“The finger movement turned out to be involuntary, but it doesn’t mean that Danny’s not in there. They use something similar to this for sufferers of locked-in syndrome who can only move their eyes up and down,” Cassie says.
“So what if it doesn’t work?” Marcus says.
Cassie turns and stares at Marcus. “I don’t know, Marcus. I guess we just make him as comfortable as possible and go back to the way we were before, hoping that he’s still in there and treating him like he is.”
I am reminded of various stories from Cassie’s childhood, of her chastising her foster brother, Brian. From the sharpness in Cassie’s tone, I wonder if she is aware of how Marcus behaves toward me, when she is not here.
“I just want to get this set up first,” Cassie says.
Cassie turns the screen carefully, and then pushes my chair in as close to the table as it will go. The screen is bright and hurts my eyes. The light makes my headache worse, and as I blink, I can see colored boxes opening and growing bigger on the screen.
“It’s going to take a little practice, Danny,” Cassie says and then turns to Marcus, “You don’t have to do anything, just leave Danny in front of the screen and give him a chance to get used to the interface. Anna will come and check on him later and take him to bed.”
“I will make sure that everything is okay here, Cass,” Anna says.
“I really wanted to be here for this,” Cassie says.
Marcus peers around the screen and watches as the colored boxes expand.
“Don’t put your head in the way, Marcus, just sit out of the way and give Danny a chance to figure it out,” Cassie says, and turns to me, “I’m going to try to get back before you go to bed, Danny.”
Anna and Cassie walk away together, and I lose them in the darkness beyond the bright screen. I have to shut my eyes for a couple minutes to let my headache settle.
Marcus peers around the screen again and reads aloud the text in the box at the top of the screen, “Acabyzyyaa.” He turns to me. “Wow, is that Shakespeare.” He sits back down in Cassie’s chair, shaking his head.
I look back at the screen and colored boxes begin to scroll and expand from the right-hand side. The letters are from A to Z, top to bottom, down the right-hand side, and as I look at one of the letters, it grows and moves to the left, then other boxes grow larger from the right-hand side, and random letters move quickly from right to left, stacking up to produce yet another nonsensical sentence. I stare at an empty box and the sentence is removed.
I look again at the letters on the right-hand side and at the H, then move my eyes away to the left, back to the e, then away, then l, l, o, _, m, y, _, n, a, m, e, _, i, s, _, D, a, n, i, e, l.
