‘She was in the elevator.’ Megumi slips into a pair of sandals and heads to the living room. ‘How was your evening?’
‘Okay. Strange food.’ Boy eyes her wearily. The presence of any of his hallucinations are somewhat upsetting.
‘What’s the matter?’ Penelope asks. You are my hallucination!
‘Everything’s fine, just stressed about tomorrow. I’m going to the gallery to check on the installation of my pieces.’
‘Oh, of him,’ Penelope says. ‘And of me?’
‘Yes. Speaking of which, you know him, don’t you?’ he asks, his voice quivering. Something isn’t right, hasn’t been right for years now, and Boy says the first words that come to his mind. ‘You always seem to be around when he’s around.’
‘No, I don’t know him,’ Penelope says.
You are him!
‘Know who?’ Megumi’s brow furrows as she looks from Boy to Penelope.
Neither of you are real.
Boy knows in his heart that this is the truth. At that very moment he knows, no matter how elaborate Megumi’s story about her first hallucination was – or anything else she’s told him for that matter – she is as real as Penelope. He’s doubted himself before, but he knows now. These things are playing out in his mind. These people aren’t alive.
‘Glass Wings,’ Penelope says.
‘Oh, the creature with Glass Wings,’ Megumi says. ‘The creature from your nightmare.’
Can’t you see what’s happening here! Boy wants to scream at her. You act like you don’t know about Glass Wings; you act like you’re real, but you’re not! You’re both my hallucinations!
‘Quit fucking with me,’ he says through gritted teeth.
I’ve created these things into my reality. I’ve created these things into my reality. I’ve created—
‘What do you mean?’ Megumi is inching away from Boy now, aware that something is awry.
‘You know exactly what I mean. You aren’t real.’
‘I am real,’ she says, confused. Penelope giggles nearby. Maybe to the left of him, maybe to the right. It doesn’t matter. Destroy.
‘And you!’ He stomps his feet at Penelope. A wave of anger craters around him. ‘QUIT FUCKING WITH ME!’
For the first time, Boy can see Penelope’s form.
She’s pale and slim, naked and dimpled. A bluish tinge coats her paper-white skin. Her hair frames her face and she’s flat-chested, skeletal. Her teeth are grinding, her eyes menacing black olives.
Penelope’s tongue slides out of the corner of her mouth. It grows longer and longer, thicker and thicker. It collapses onto her stomach and sticks to her legs. The weight of her tongue jerks her head forward.
Boy’s backing away now, wetting his lips. I knew it! The words come before the realization that he’s in serious danger strikes him.
Penelope’s eyes bulge out and the bones in her jaw begin to twist under her face. Her skin pulls away from her form, sounding like rubber bands snapping. Her fingernails grow long and sharp. Her skin petrifies and turns mustard.
Sharp, metal picks tear from the flesh of Penelope’s legs.
Megumi wails, tries to move away from her. She’s next to Boy now. She’s not real goddammit! GODDAMMIT SHE’S NOT REAL! NEITHER OF THEM ARE REAL!
Boy’s trying to get a grip on things, trying to stop his heart from leaping out of his mouth and crawling onto the floor and tossing itself to the rain-battered streets below.
Penelope’s shoulders bulk up like crumpled paper bags. Her parchment skin stretches thin across her boney torso. Her collar bones break free from her skin, jutting out like sticks in a shallow body of water. Hair falls from her head, fluttering rapidly against her morphing body. It sears the hardwood floor, melts into black cross-hatches.
She takes one lumbering step towards them both. He takes one lumbering step towards them both. Penelope is Glass Wings. Glass Wings is alive and well in Japan.
Boy’s mouth falls open. His lungs compress. He struggles for air, struggles to suck in air so he can push it past his vocal chords to say something. To scream, to gasp. Nothing. Say. Something. Say. Something. Say—
Wings sprout and black blood sprays from the monster’s back and onto the couch. His nose expands, hooks. His mouth twists and rips at the corners. Glass teeth push through his sickly chapped lips. Wretched grotesque icebergs. His tongue darkens, curls into the air.
Hot tears now stream down Boy’s face. He feels his bladder loosen and he pisses himself. Water spreads across the crotch of his jeans. ‘Oh my God.’ Is all he finally manages to whisper, as if God were there, as if God were his, and He could do something to save Boy. Megumi is stumbling past him now, trying to get away. She’s holding her chest, making a gagging sound. Fight or flight.
Fight.
Boy wants to fight. Even though he’s pissed himself and is more scared than he’s ever been in his entire life, he wants to destroy the demon. And the voice in his head suggesting this annihilation is small. Damn if it isn’t small.
Fight.
A whisper in a stadium full of drunken revelers. A lost bookmark in the Libraries of Alexandria. A single drop of rain in the fury of a typhoon. A needle in a million haystacks in a burning neon landfill somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. I created you, I will destroy you!
The voice grows. It grows from a whisper to a deep, guttural resonance. Do not underestimate the power of the monster that created the monster. Fight. A man lighting himself on fire in front of a cackle of riot police. A shot to clear the masses. A warrior leading the charge towards imminent demise. The voice becomes a battle cry. FIGHT!
Boy feels Megumi’s grip tighten around his wrist. ‘Please. Please. Please,’ she sobs. Her cheeks are red and puffy. Grapefruit pink. Terrified. And even though Boy knows she isn’t real – she can’t be – he loves her and feels immensely sorry that she has to see what he’s about to do. Boy is going to die. This is going to kill him and he knows it.
‘NO!’ he screams. Megumi yelps as he whips his hand away from her.
Glass Wings is in full form now, his wings so large they scrape against the ceiling. There are no weapons nearby aside from a lamp. Boy goes for it. He holds the lamp over his head and tosses it at the monster. The lamp smashes into the creature’s chest, glass shatters onto the floor.
Glass Wings’s eyes narrow into white slits. He shuffles a few steps closer to Boy. Something is stopping him from charging Boy. What could it be? He can’t be afraid of me. It can’t be that.
Boy doesn’t see Glass Wings’s tongue come lashing at him. It whips across his face, stinging his cheek with small slivers of glass. Pink stars appear as he falls sideways. The coppery taste of blood fills his mouth. He spits and red splotches appear on the floor.
He stands, wipes his mouth, and looks back at Megumi, who’s now on the floor rifling through her purse (for her cell phone, Boy thinks. Wait, she’s not real, he reminds himself). Boy hunches over, gets a grip on the floor with his Converse, and pushes off in Glass Wings’s direction. Seconds later, he connects with the monster, and the two smash into the flat screen television.
Glass Wings’s brimstone vinegar stink pricks Boy’s nostrils. He feels nails streaking down his back. The creature’s wings close around him, pointing their tips inward. He hears Penelope’s voice in his ear, his brain, his heart – You are mine. I control you, you don’t control me. I CONTROL YOU!
Boy pushes the fucked creature away and narrowly misses impaling himself on the tips of the monster’s wings. He falls to the floor; adrenaline kicks in and seconds later he’s back on his feet, charging at the creature with what little force he can muster from a five foot distance. He collides again with Glass Wings and he bounces off. His body slams against the floor-to-ceiling window and a crack appears.
They both look to the large crack on the face of the window.
The monster charges at him this time and Boy dodges left. He rams his shoulder into Glass Wing’s torso, feeling a pain b
alloon down his arm. Black blood foams out of Glass Wings’s mouth, and the monster falls forward onto his knees. The stench of carrion is overwhelming.
Yes! Boy wants to scream, he wants to jump up and down. He’s finally got a leg up. Then the unthinkable happens. Glass Wings’s black tongue flies out of his mouth and wraps around Boy’s neck. It constricts.
This is it.
The tongue tightens. Boy begins to feel lightheaded and his arms drop to his side. His body goes limp.
This is it.
This is it.
Strange thoughts come to him as he’s being strangled to death.
His art, the only thing he would leave the world. Girl and her cuts and the fact that he still hasn’t seen her in person yet they’ve been communicating for almost a year now. Mom and her anger towards poverty as if poverty was always the impoverished person’s fault. Rock, his father whom he doesn’t know, the sperm that created his form, a form that would go on to create a hallucination powerful enough to kill him. Friend, his only friend. Oggie, his sponsor. Others – all the players in his life who helped shape him in some form.
It’s over.
Glass Wings’s tongue squeezes so tight that Boy can feel the vertebrae in his neck snapping. With the last bit of air that is trapped in his mouth, he laughs. I created you. I created you. I CREATED YOU!
₪₪₪
The grip around Boy’s neck loosens.
Glass Wings is now on his knees, his eyes crossed and bloody tears cascading down the sandpaper skin of his face. Boy falls backwards as the tongue loses its grasp around his neck.
A knife juts out of Glass Wings’s chest.
Entrails spill out and a shiny metal point can be seen sawing against the mangled monstrosity’s breastbone. Megumi stands behind Glass Wings, crying. She’s holding the large knife with both hands, pulling up with all her might. One of the creature’s wings bayonets the floor and using what little strength it has left, the wing shoves the creature’s body towards the cracked window.
Glass fills the air and Megumi screams. Shards rain down into the living room floor and Boy dives for Megumi, covering her body with his. Streaks of the creature’s black blood trail down her appendages. Small cuts from the glass bring red lines to both their faces and forearms as they collapse onto the floor. The creature is gone. The window is completely shattered.
₪₪₪
Boy holds Megumi in his arms. Time blades past wielding pointy clock hands. Both are too afraid to let go. Someone knocks loudly at the door, but they ignore it. The phone in the bedroom is ringing violently. The sound is jarring. There’s blood and glass everywhere.
Together, they sit up carefully. Boy cups her chin in his hands.
‘You look like you just murdered someone,’ she says, wiping blood off his eyebrow with her thumb.
‘How do we fix this?’ He looks around the room. Everything has been shattered or ripped to shreds. The television is split in two; tiny sparks glimmer from the large fracture in the screen. Air blows in from the broken window, warm and smelling of rain.
‘Let’s start with the phone,’ Megumi says. She tries to pull herself up, but Boy tugs her back down.
‘Just a moment, I’m not ready to move away from you.’
‘Okay.’
Now there are two fists banging against the door.
‘Where did you get the knife?’ Boy asks as he brushes tiny flecks of glass off her shoulder.
‘My bag. It’s the same knife I stabbed the woman with. I carry it with me sometimes.’
‘Are you in there!?’ Boy can hear Oggie yell from outside the hotel room door. Boy’s now ninety percent sure that Megumi is real. Still, with Oggie around and nowhere for Megumi to go, this could give him a chance to prove it once and for all. Then again, once he opens the door, he’s going to have to tell Oggie something about the destruction of the room.
‘You saved me,’ he says to her, wanting to forget everything around him. It’s over. It’s over. He’d get the phrase tattooed on his arm right now if he had the chance. At least he hoped it was over.
‘The monster was strangling you. I had to do something. I knew as soon as you turned towards him that you were going to die rather than run.’
‘So,’ he says, wanting to talk through everything amidst the ruckus of fists against the hotel room door and the ringing phone, ‘Penelope was Glass Wings. I just… I just can’t believe…’
I can believe.
Boy’s always felt a sense of unease around Penelope. She spoke to him at strange times, like when Lucy was assaulting him, like when Glass Wings was in his bedroom in New York.
‘Are you in there!?’ Oggie yells from outside the door.
‘I suppose we should do something.’ Boy looks directly at Megumi. She scoots closer to him, arches her neck forward. A brightness splashes across her darkened pupils. They embrace, covered in their own blood, Glass Wings’s black blood and specks of glass. They embrace, and for that brief second, the din pilfering the air subsides.
‘Thank you.’ Boy stands and heads to the bedroom to take his piss-filled boxers off and throw them away. The bloodstains on his jeans will dry.
₪₪₪
Oggie is sitting on the only clean spot left on the couch. He’s wearing a dark blue suit, his shirt untucked and his tie loose. The look on his face isn’t as concerned as Boy thought it would be, even with all the blood on the ground.
Megumi takes a shower while Boy tells Oggie everything. His words fumble over one another as he speaks, but he remains semi-coherent. After fifteen minutes of speaking, fifteen minutes of Boy telling Oggie things he’s never told anyone, fifteen minutes of feeling his face turn red with blood because he’s barely breathing – Boy finally takes a breath.
Oggie clears his throat. ‘And, Megumi can also see these things?’ he asks, nodding his head towards the bathroom.
The nurse cleaning Boy’s wounds finishes. She’s wearing a surgeon’s mask, and collecting the blood-drenched paper towels in a small green bin with a toxic label on its side. His cuts are small, but there’s still a lot of blood. The smell of antiseptic ointment batters against the warm breeze rolling in from the broken window.
‘Yes, or, I don’t know,’ Boy says, thinking instantly of her statement about how Japanese people view mental disorders. Then again, Oggie had seen this much. ‘Yes, she… she can.’
‘I suspected several times over the last year that you were suffering from something,’ Oggie begins. ‘At first I thought it was drugs. You, yourself, said it was drugs, but then I had your neighbor keep an eye on you, and he said that aside from the occasional joint, you didn’t seem to do much of anything but work.’
Red Beard was a spy?
‘I felt it was appropriate to have someone watch you. Especially after I found you covered in tiny shards of glass outside your girlfriend’s apartment. This all makes sense now.’
‘Okay.’ Boy says, not in the least bit offended by Oggie’s interpretation of him as an investment. It’s true, I really am.
‘As you can imagine, this is a little hard to take in.’ Oggie’s next breath seems to touch every drop of blood in the hotel room.
‘I can imagine. I know… I know what it looks like.’
‘It looks crazy, but what’s most important is that we need to get you to a doctor.’
‘I don’t want treatment.’
‘I know, but medicine could help—’
‘I don’t want medicine.’ I’ve quit taking the medicine.
‘Yes, but you see, I mean, do you see what’s happened here?’ Oggie raises a single finger and paints it across the devastation. The slivers of glass from the shattered television, the giant hole in the window tipped with blood, the bloody handprints on Boy’s clothing and the walls.
‘I see, I see. But…’ he says, his teeth chattering.
‘But what?’
‘This is me.’
₪₪₪
I think you’re being selfish, G
irl said to him on the phone, days before he left for Japan.
How so?
You’re seeing things that aren’t there and these things can interact with you. It’s a fascinating condition, it’s strange, it’s absolutely unique. There may be others like you.
There are others like me, Boy said, remembering what Penelope had said the first time she spoke to him.
There has to be. No one is unique in their suffering, Girl said. I learned this when I spent time at the clinic in St. Louis. So many people suffer silently. You have to seek treatment. It’s not fair to your friends or family if you don’t. You can get help.
But I don’t want help. I...
What?
I hate medicine. Boy remembered the experimental medicine he took back in Austin for the research study. He’d rather deal with his problems than take some chemical that radically altered his body chemistry.
I don’t understand why you are so against taking medicine, Girl said. It’s not something to be ashamed of. Mental illness is a real thing. You should be happy we live in a century where they don’t immediately toss you into the looney bin, or castrate you.
They didn’t castrate people.
You don’t know that. Mental illness has been dealt with brutally for centuries. Sure, there are problems with medication now, and true, there are severe side effects. I know firsthand. I was on Effexor for seven years of my life. Coming off that medicine was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Harder than childbirth?
Different than childbirth, Girl said.
So, you’re telling me that weaning off the medicine was the hardest thing you’ve ever done, yet I should see a doctor and start taking something?
It helped me; it helped me when I needed it to help. The point I’m trying to make is that you shouldn’t be ashamed, and that you should do something.
I’m not ashamed.
₪₪₪
Oggie speaks as the nurse continues to dab at Boy’s wounds.
‘The only thing reassuring about what’s happened here is the fact that this really puts your show into perspective. Portraits of the Ghosts that Haunt Me. I get it now. I’m not saying we – you – should run with this, but maybe you shouldn’t be so secretive about your condition any longer.’
Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller) Page 29
