Ionic Relapse Read online

  Kieffer woke up the next morning with the coppery taste of blood still in his mouth. Along with the taste of blood was the lingering memory of the six-tentacled mutant that had tried to eat him the night before.

  Since that day, he took extra precautions.

  He could try to fight the sinking feeling in his brain, but what would be the point? It would only feed on itself. Becoming the alpha voice of all his thoughts and feelings. Completely blocking out any sense of what is or isn’t real. A perceptional scramble that always left him seeing things in a twisted viewpoint. Familiar faces became unrecognizable, all humanity ripped away. If he was quick enough, he could probably avoid any potential encounters out in the hall and manage to slip out of the house undetected.

  “Sure,” Ashley said placidly. A slight frown crept onto her face as she got up and brought the empty notebook back to her desk, “at the end of the hall.”

  He thanked her several times as he awkwardly exited the room and shut the door. Once in the hall, Kieffer did a silent jig, looking like a ninja with an extreme case of crabs. The raw excitement mixed with fear was almost too much for him to contain. His head was swimming with an intoxicating combination of pride and anxiety. A wondrous thing had happened and now he had to walk away while he was still on top. Otherwise, he may never reach home base. The possibility of fucking things up was almost inevitable if he stayed. The familiar feelings of depthless unease that were creeping up through his thoughts would only grow. They would grow and grow until they consumed every lobe and completely disillusioned him. Kieffer knew the signs of an attack well, and this was one of them. The shrinking feeling in his head combined with the distortion of the physical world around him were usually the first tells of a full-on ionic relapse. He had gotten too far now to risk everything he had accidentally accomplished. It never hurt to remind the lovesick part of him that his window of failure was never quite closed.

  As he made his way to the other end of the hall, he surveyed the various framed pictures that lined it. Their flat, forced smiles and dotted eyes followed his slow stride across the dimly lit carpet like haunted portraits. He saw several older photos, presumably of Ashley’s ancestors, huddled around aging grey farm equipment. Their sun-bleached faces frowned impatiently back at Kieffer as he moved closer to the open staircase in the middle of the hall. The light from downstairs got progressively stronger as the pictures slowly regressed in age. Soon he was looking at a candid photo of a naked baby smiling up at him from a bed of soapy bubbles. Undoubtedly Ashley as a toddler having fun in the tub, Kieffer quickly averted his gaze to another photo before he saw too much. His eyes swept across the checkered wall of memories until suddenly they stopped.

  Sharp talons painfully gripped his side as his pounding heart halted in his chest.

  Completely distracted from his escape, Kieffer's thoughts momentarily ceased to poison the dark spaces in front of his eyes.

  Hanging in an isolated spot directly before the open staircase was a photo of a middle-aged man in a white crew cut t-shirt and blue jeans. He was standing in front of a patch of heavily wooded area. Judging by the neon green grass and clear blue sky, it was summertime. His gloved hands were on his hips in a gesture of annoyance. He clearly didn’t want his picture taken. His salt and pepper hair was swept back to expose a stern and sweaty face framed by slightly outdated eyewear. The faint remnants of a dull, blurry scar snaked its way through his slightly receding hairline. A firm chin steadied the frayed impression of a smile that occupied the lower half of the strange man's head.

  In the lower left-hand corner of the picture, Kieffer could see a stump with a hatchet embedded in its flat top. Apparently, the man had been chopping something before he was forced to take a photo break.

  How is this guy strange to me, though? Kieffer thought naggingly to himself. He couldn’t determine why the seemingly ordinary looking middle-aged white guy rattled his nerves so badly. Does he look like someone I know? A dead celebrity, maybe? He studied the picture several more times, scanning it from top to bottom, but came up blank. The David Costello glasses and high-ridged cheekbones were so visually common that there was no real answer to the question. He looked like every man and no man at the same time. Not uniquely handsome or beautiful, but not by any means ugly.

  Utterly ordinary.

  He was the kind of man that you could see every day in passing at multiple locations around the world. You start to notice the magic man after a while and logically conclude that he is just a repetitive image imitated in life. Like the Fibonacci sequence or other recurring fractals throughout nature. Self-replicating phenomenon that can be logically explained. There's no doubt that certain genes are more prevalent in certain areas; that could account for something. No one would argue that in Maine the bloodlines don’t run a little close, either. But it isn’t wholly uncommon to see carbon copies of a certain person or shape appearing naturally throughout our existence. The slight physical variations are there if you look hard enough, but at a distance, they all look like one man.

  A common archetype for white male mediocrity.

  But even after solving the flash of déjà vu, the gnawing feeling inside Kieffer's gut told him that deep down he knew something else.

  Was this part of the oh-so-familiar downward spiral of paranoid delusions and mislinked events?

  Most likely, this guy was nobody to no one. Just a regular guy with bad eyes and poor fashion sense.

  The cold paranoia from earlier had started to creep back into his bones. He broke away from the framed picture while this new and rational angle of thinking was still fresh in his head. Without looking back, he strode stiffly towards the staircase on hard wooden legs that splintered with each long step. His glass fingertips nervously rubbed the stretched ball of pink wires and strings that used to be his abdomen.

  You know you're not in a good place when your own parasitic brain worm starts to eat its own tale.

  He looked briefly over the pegged banister of the stairs as he cautiously leaned around the corner. Nothing at the bottom but the closed front door and coat rack. He proceeded to tiptoe down the stairs while surveying the open living room to his left for any signs of life. Sensing no movement, he broke into a sprint and rushed madly for the front door. He gripped the knob with sweat-greased hands and turned.

  Locked.

  Naked panic gripped him then. He violently twisted and jiggled the cold handle until realizing that the deadbolt had been latched.

  He reached up and turned the lock, letting the door slowly creak open.

  Kieffer half expected to see the Every Man from the photo upstairs standing tall in the doorway. His slender frame a painted silhouette against the orange sunset burning softly behind the surrounding trees and townhouses. His black eyes bearing down on him with radioactive hate. The idea struck an ice pick of fear into Kieffer’s still pounding heart. He wasn’t entirely sure why. When the door opened only to reveal the empty driveway and mud spotted yard, Kieffer let out a heavy breath of relief and slipped out of the house.

  Out in the chill of the spring dusk, he could think clearly.

  As he walked out of the driveway, he thought mostly about how he was going to face Ashley tomorrow at school. He could get online later and message her that he had gotten sick and had to leave. Lying wasn’t ideal for him, but neither was the truth. Maybe telling a little white lie would spare her feelings long enough for him to come up with a better strategy to continue seeing her. Kieffer now knew that his feelings for Ashley were mutual. They had a real connection: a real relationship. But, it would only flourish if both parties treated the situation as such. Ashley wasn't at fault; the burden lay completely on Kieffer's narrow shoulders. He knew it would be up to him to make this work. The fate of his love rested solely in his hands.

  Deciding not to wait, he pulled his bulky two-pound Nokia phone out of his front pocket. Still warm from idling, he turned on the tiny green screen and punched in a quick text.

  Mom cal
led. Need to go home. Family thing. TTYL. Online? Sorry.

  He looked the message over briefly before tacking on a :( at the end for emphasis. He hit send and placed the uranium powered Lego back into his pocket.

  Five seconds later he felt a small return vibration…

  No prob. Hope things are ok. ;(

  Kieffer read this and instantly felt a pang of sour guilt. He knew Ashley was disappointed, and it was all his fault. A hollow sting of remorse crept nastily along the narrow ridges of his brain. Once again fogging his feelings and making him question whether he should go to a doctor.

  If you stayed, you would have fucked it up. Trust me.

  And as for a doctor, don’t waste your time. They’ll just hook you on drugs that fuzz up your noggin. You’ll be a different person and probably not a happy one. Just smart enough to hold down a job and pay bills, but not emotionally equipped for The Real. Nothing would really get through to you like it does now. You would be happy and positive every second of every day. And every time something that should make you mad happens, you will momentarily cease to be. Your brain will fire off its usual code and signals to sealed receptors blocked by foreign chemicals. With nowhere to go, the pulsive energy dissipates—

  He steps back out from inside, turns off his phone and crams it back into his pocket.

  The soft tickle of her heavenly kiss lingered on his lips. Her perfume flooded his nostrils once he calmed down enough to recall. He was drunk with passion and riddled with guilt for his speedy exit.

  I just need more time, he told himself. Just a little time to get my thoughts together and make sure this thing pans out right. A hopeless romantic finding love for the first time is nothing to leave up to the changing winds. He used to feel differently, but now he knew better. If he didn’t want to die alone, he would have to make an effort.

  Another more analytical part of him thought about the photo of the Every Man.

  What could it mean? His morbid curiosity dwelled somewhere beyond the bright, plasmic replays of his first kiss. What was it about that photo that struck such a minor chord?

  These conflicting schools of thought echoed internally as he made his way up the waterlogged street. His scrawny legs carried him on their own accord. Suddenly, a car passed him as he rounded the end of Ashley’s road. Kieffer looked up as the vehicle swerved and hit a large puddle, soaking his right side in a spray of stagnant mud and dead grass. Kieffer swore silently as he looked back at the receding brake lights through the billowing fog of hanging exhaust. He watched the car slow down and pull into Ashley’s driveway about three houses back.

  At least I got out in time, Kieffer thought praisingly. Instances of extreme coincidence never ceased to amaze him. He noted this in his mental logbook of strange occurrences and continued his way home.

  That inactive part of him that never accepted regular circumstance made an interesting note. It subconsciously noted that the passing car was an old rust-spotted canary yellow Volkswagen Buggy.

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  Chapter 6

  October 30, 1981

  7:54 pm

  Farmington, Maine

  Ricky Miller stood languidly under the fuzzy orange light of the empty church steeple. Dim amber rays sparkled reflectively off the surrounding circle of crystallized trees and shrubs that encompassed him. Their frost-burned leaves swayed and shuddered through the passing night breeze. The sudden nocturnal approach of winter had forced every plant to regress back into nature's own self-triggered migration. Hiding patiently under blankets of frozen dirt loosely stitched with minerals and salt.

  The red brick church, with its sharp corners and color-stained windows, sat at the crest of a dead-end road just a mile from Ricky’s home. Lined with unforested land for miles to the north, the church stood on a giant concrete P that had been scorched over the thick timberland of a forty-acre plot of wilderness. What once was wild virgin forest stretching for eighty miles now had an ugly scar on the tip of its nose. The church was the first manmade structure on the lot that wasn’t a deer stand or a makeshift tree house. It had been built as a replacement for the old Pentecostal church that was erected during the town's infancy in 1799. In 1963 when it came time to build this new place of worship, town officials were forced to size down the scale of production due to budget cuts and pricey land deals. Unable to purchase more than an acre of the government protected land, the end result was a taller, narrower building that looked like the naked fireplace of an abandoned underground factory or mansion; a crimson monolith poking up through virgin earth. The thin red spike of Satan's index finger stabbing holes through Hell to catch a quick glimpse of Heaven.

  It was a place Ricky knew well. He spent every Sunday morning at this cramped mortar-lined pillbox going on fourteen years now. Since the day of his baptism, this place had been his so-called spiritual beacon. Although, he hardly thought of it that way. Ricky hated church. He hated Christianity. He hated every single aspect of its rich history and traditions with a glowing blue flame that only burned hotter with the start of each new week.

  This disdain for everything holy came out of pure selfishness. He didn’t want to spend all of his time thinking and praying to some guy who did a couple magic tricks a few thousand years ago. Ricky had been boldly questioning the concept of Heaven and Hell from the time he was old enough to tie his own shoes. Something about it just didn’t sit right. Maybe, somewhere, there was an alternate religion more suitable for him, and he just hadn’t heard of it yet. One where you don’t have to constantly be thinking or talking about how awesome that one dude is.

  Ricky knew his parents felt very deeply for the church. They were outspoken Christian warriors in their small farming community. He respected them by attending Mass and Sunday school without protest. Ricky was selfish in the sense of faith, but ironically respectful to his parents. The odd relation between these two key factors in his life weren't lost on him and could very easily be explained. Just because a really old book holds some relatable stories and sensible morals doesn't automatically give it any spiritual significance or worth. Spouting common sense then calling it prophecy is as much divine intervention as a grilled cheese sandwich with the depiction of Christ on one side.

  It’s just a fuckin' sandwich.

  Every week cycled in a constant loop. Always starting with ritualistically waking up way too early on a non-school day, dressing in over-starched dress clothes and unpadded leather shoes, then traveling the ridiculously short distance to be bored stupid for two hours straight. He loved his mom and dad like any clingy only child would, but it didn’t change the sore lump of cynicism he felt on the outer crust of his existential soul. So many cold, sunless Sunday mornings spent ironing and adjusting his hand-me-down tie and frayed slacks with a stale smile pasted on his face. Ricky knew how much it meant to his parents that he be “saved.” The New Testament had been their nightly bedtime reading for as long as he could remember. Always recited from a special red leather-bound copy with his name embroidered in sparkly gold thread on the front. It was given to him on his eighth birthday. Ricky had asked for a bike, but apparently hadn’t been clear enough. He pretended to listen every night, gasping and nodding in all the right places. At any other time of the day, the book would sit on the end table by his bed and act as a fancy five-inch coaster until it was time for nightnights. Ricky just couldn’t feel the “Godly love” that everyone claimed to have seeded in their otherwise wicked hearts.

  Even at the age of fourteen, he saw tremendous cracks.

  If God were really everywhere all the time, why would I need to travel a block and a half to pray? Ricky often found himself thinking during many of Reverend Child’s lispy biblical rants. Aren't I close enough when I stub my toe on the radiator by the kitchen? Hard to think God would choose to live in a house that looks like a subleased pizza shop. Only refurbished with uncomfortable wooden pews and dusty velvet-draped altars where delicious pizzas should be baking. Seriously. How much c
ould He really care about us coming over to visit once a week?

  The idea always grew more charred and cancerous with each passing psalm.

  God is like an angry cult leader who insists on having legions upon legions of loving followers to piss on. Why would he painstakingly groom each one of us in his own image only to ignore us and treat everybody like shit? Ego issues or what? He’s always making elaborate plans no one asked for and then never following up on his end.

  Do you seriously want me to pour my entire life into a book full of arbitrary guidelines that allows the faithfully questionable few to profit while the rest of us grovel and pray? Yeah, he gave us life and love, and I appreciate that, but it’s like we constantly owe him for something he alone invented. No one called in a favor and asked for Him to go ahead and thread a new string of consciousness.

  The least, I mean the very least, He could do is let everyone worship from home. Does it have to be here? And with that fat guy with the goiter or that smelly lady with the melting neck skin? It wouldn’t really change anything if I was in a different building, would it? It’s not like this is literally God’s house. He’s not waiting on the second floor for the priest to relay the exciting events of the day to him, is he? Gossiping with Childs over coffee about all the juicy town goings and sinful secrets that we all know Jesus loves to hear. Whether I’m squirming in a varnish-stained pew or in my comfy bed at home, I'm still praying to Him, RIGHT?