I feel a jab in my back and I lurch forward; I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking.
There are strange signs of violence in the apartment. Chairs are knocked over, books shredded and strewn about, and what looks like claw marks in the drywall. It would not surprise me to learn that my grandfather owned a pet bear. All the light fixtures are shattered, and although the huge square windows provide plenty of exposure, the apartment is thick with gloom. The sun has slipped behind a dark cloud rolling in from the ocean. The windows creak in the wind.
The pitchmen drive us along the boot scuff trail—apparently the only trafficked portion of the entire sprawling penthouse—until we come to the living room. I remember this room. I remember the fireplace with its flawless, axe-chopped cedar logs, never lit. I remember the grand piano that dominated the space like a glossy black sculpture, never played. I remember sitting on the couch sipping old Scotch and listening to him pontificate while beautiful women clung to our arms, never named.
Do you ever get tired? I would ask him sometimes. Do you ever wonder what we’re working toward?
And he would laugh and say, No.
We sacrifice so much for it, I would say to him after a few drinks as my world blurred around me. Our own lives and others’. Do you ever ask yourself why?
And he would laugh and say, Because we can. Because if we don’t, someone else will. Because it’s how the world works.
The piano is dusty but still pristine. The logs have grayed but still look ready to warm this marble crypt if anyone cared to light them. I remember these fixtures. What I don’t remember is the white curtain running from wall to wall, dividing the space in half like an opulent hospital room.
“Executive would like a word with you,” Blue Tie says again, and he and Yellow Tie move ahead of us, placing their backs to the curtain. I expect them to sweep it open with melodramatic flair, revealing Atvist and his board members at their long black table. But the pitchmen just stand there. The light behind the curtain casts amorphous shadows against it. And then:
We know who you are.
Bees in my hair. Mosquitoes in my ears. A nest of baby spiders bursting open in my brain. I am used to hearing voices, but this is different. This is not my conscience or my past or any ghost I’ve absorbed. This is from outside.
We know what you did and we want you to undo it.
The last time I heard a voice like this, I didn’t know if it was real or my own projection. In the midst of those grim moments outside the stadium, surrounded by armies of skeletal horrors, it didn’t much matter. The voice ranted and raved and spewed its rhetoric and I did my best to ignore it while I smashed its grinning skulls. But the terror in Julie’s eyes removes any comforting ambiguity. This voice is real.
You will give us what we want or we will find ways to take it.
It has all the mindless confidence that I remember, the droning boredom of foregone conclusions, but there is a new edge to its timbre. A raspy overtone of aggression.
Him.
It took us centuries to build our machine. It was perfect. It kept people safe by feeding them to us. And you broke it.
“R, what is this?” Julie whispers, pressing her hands to the sides of her head.
You confused people. You told them to look for things that don’t exist. You confused the plague, corrupted its function, and now the world is filling with people who have no place. People who don’t fit in our mouth. And they are scared and we are hungry.
It’s him, but he’s just one voice in a choir—or perhaps a crowd, because it’s more noise than harmony, a million blustery old men shouting over each other until their voices merge and average out, all their cultivated sophistries finally melting into truth.
We want you to make things simple again. We want you to lead them back into our mouth.
“No,” I say.
A draft whistles through a crack somewhere and ripples the curtain. Outside, the sun has been fully consumed by the mass of dark clouds. A leaf slaps against the glass, blown up from trees so distant they look like grass.
We will hurt you.
“You did that before.”
We will hurt people you love.
“You did that too, motherfuckers,” Julie says, firming her face and straightening her spine.
The curtain billows like a seismic tremor. Whatever is behind it has no human outline. The shadows are low and lumpen and bristling with sharp points.
You children, says another familiar growl. You dancing, grinning fuckups.
A blast of wind buffets the building, rattling the window panes. Blue Tie’s walkie beeps. He raises it to his ear. I can’t make out the words buzzing from the other end but I can hear distress.
“Please excuse me,” he says, and slips behind the curtain.
Julie and I glance at each other. Yellow Tie maintains her cheery grin but says nothing.
“What’s wrong?” Julie says. “Are you going to torture us or not?”