The One We Feed (14 page)

None of those
seemed quite so clear anymore. If they disappeared altogether, would I still
exist? Arthur once told me in passing, that the Samurai spent one hour of each
day thinking of themselves as dead. I thought he’d meant pondering the world
without them in it, in an
It’s a Wonderful Life
kind of way, but the
more I thought about it the better I understood that if a person was dead, what
the world looked like without them would kind of be moot.

As I felt the
water close over my head, I considered that I had died once but had come back,
and so it was not really the same dead they’d been meditating over. Theirs was
a different dead, one I would never feel if I played my cards right, the
permanent kind, the unknowable, useless kind. Their dead was nothingness, and
maybe thinking about that gave them some perspective.

“I’ve always
regretted things I never did, but I’ve never regretted the things I’ve done.”

It was perfect
in the tub; dark, warm, and insular. I’d been practicing holding my breath at
every given opportunity, just to see how long I could go. If I shut out reality
and went into the
jhana
now, I’d only be medicating myself, turning
slowly into William or Petula, but if I curled up in this porcelain womb and
thought of myself as not yet born, something would change in me; some respite
would come.

It has to, or
I’ll explode.

My mind fell
into some kind of cosmic gap, my heart slowed, brief alerts of the tipping of
homeostasis were manually overridden, and I hovered, dark and warm, forgetting
everything.

Everything
except Petula.

What reason
could Jinx have had, I wondered, for stabbing her? What seeming consistency had
turned him to such action? He’d brushed it off, but I knew,
knew
it had
something to do with a pattern he was attempting, in his scientific method, to
reproduce.

I pictured
her, curled up in her dirty blanket, in her cement hovel that was everything
from childhood twisted by bitterness. I worked at the image of her until I
could recall every single feature, the lank curls, the uncertainty and fear in
her demeanor, but mostly, her staring eyes. It was as if they were sightless,
tracking no movement, seeing no detail. What was she, or rather, what
had
she
been, before she’d found immortality?

Could she have
been blind, before?

I opened my
eyes in the scalding water and despite the immediate surge of agony, continued
to stare. Shadows encroached, and the white slope of the tub blurred in and out
as my corneas were damaged and repaired.

Was that what
it was like, not to be able to see? A constant struggle to find something
everyone else took for granted, or perhaps to quantify something others
understood, but you yourself would never know? Did one learn to cope, or obsess
over the lack? Was that the secret of her ability?

I pictured her
eyes sliding shut on the peace I had momentarily given her. Had her sight
become an unlivable curse?

Her image
seemed so sharp then that I almost believed I was looking at her. I repeated
her name again and again in my thoughts, and felt a change like a fall from a
high place.

The shallow
water took on greater depths. All at once, it was as if I were floating in a
lake, an ocean, something even larger, if there was a word for that; a great Sargasso
of deep, ever-flowing tides and currents, carrying me along like plankton, her
face swimming before me.

Disoriented, I
reached out for the edge of the tub. The ripples stirred the image. It swirled
into sharp angles, squared forms that were impossible, colors and shapes that
moved inside each other, solidifying into an actual place, into people and
things. I realized suddenly, that I was
seeing
. I was viewing a place
that was not
here
but
there
, and I was
not
in the
jhana.

The dreamscape
had the look and feel of a hospital, security glass and white linoleum, but
there was something very wrong about it, a certain disrepair and decay. There
were also an inordinate number of patients wandering the halls, their gowns
flapping open or their wrists reddened with ligature marks. Several orderlies
were standing about, sorting papers and pills with unabashed dullness. As one
of the inmates turned and began talking to himself, I realized it was a
nuthouse.

The
jhana
allowed me to explore, to seek out any and every part of the place I entered,
the smells and sounds as perceived by the minds I touched, but this chilling
state of observation was not only detached, it suffered no interference. Either
I found what I was looking for, or I did not.

Petula.

The already
muted tones dissolved in the swirls of water-shadows, and I was left staring
into a shifting darkness. After long moments of staring hard, I pulled her face
from the moving shades and miniature currents. A movement of my hand brought
her to life, and the scene of her captivity evolved through the fractal
flickers from under the door.

She was
strapped onto a gurney with thick leather and buckles, and I could instantly
see why. Her room was tiny, the walls the same pale green that was the color of
all institutional hothouses. Somehow, Petula had found a marker and had
decorated, coated, and successfully disguised them with scenes of native
simplicity dominated by eyes. Eyes in pairs, of all sizes, a single eye crying
dark tears, orbs with no pupils, and eyelashes like broom bristles; they were
everywhere, in every nook and spare space. But on each wall, as central and as dominating
as insect queens, were a pair of narrowed eyes separated by a dark dot, brows
arching largely like crescent moons, a swirl like a question mark where the
nose should have been. Like markings of the cardinal directions, they looked at
each other, their knowing gazes crossing her futilely as she stared upward at
nothing. Her chest was heaving, her curls were damp and stuck to her forehead,
her cheeks were flushed, and whatever demons had possessed and driven her into
bondage, seemed to quiet with each deep breath.

She could feel
me.

The image
faded like ink diluting, and I came from it shivering.

Could it be
that in that brief period of exposure, I had somehow acquired Petula’s gift?

I thought of
the man I’d killed. I had known instantly what his gift appeared to be, and
then….

I sat up in
the water, numb, steaming with the heat I now gave off. My heart was pounding,
my head throbbing, not with exposure but with the thought the perhaps, somehow,
I had misjudged even myself.

I was almost
positive that I had come into my powers by purely non-invasive means. If I
spent enough time with a person, I simply grew into them and took on the
characteristics I admired or feared. It was memetic, ideas transferred to me
over time, ideas I transmitted to myself at the Crossroads, ideas that turned
to structures in the brain, and from them to chemical cursors, and then to a
shift in DNA. At least, that was how Arthur had made it seem; but what if that
was all some kind of insulation he provided. What if it was all much more
nefarious?

I thought
back, running through the twisted corridors of my weirdly constructed memory
like a crazy person.

Ursula was the
first. I didn’t exhibit her talent until long after her death, but what if that
was just because I was still growing? I had stabbed her while injured. It was
possible that her blood and mine had mingled.

My hand rose
to my mouth. Karl had shared blood with me in that kiss. But I remember feeling
like I could see his gift and resist it
before
he actually used it on me
.
That had been a vision, something that had never happened. I’d thought it was a
warning of Jinx’s immediate danger, but what if that vision carried far more
information than I had been able to interpret in the moment? Could it have been
some kind of foretelling, a future echo of the gift I was going to inherit?

I had wiped
blood from Moksha’s face, just before I’d found that I could mimic his gift.

William had
handed me his knife and I had used it to cut the stitches on my scarificator
wound. A miss-flick of the wrist, some hateful self-mutilation; could it be
that his blood had been on the blade?

But Jinx, what
of him? I had kissed him too, that night in his house, when the soldiers were
running about, automatic weapons cradled like children. How had I exchanged
fluids with him? Then I thought of his numerous piercings that seemed to
constantly be shifting and sprouting on his always-new features. Could that be
the way?

I thought of
the bloody smudge on my face, of Petula’s hand stapled to my chest; two new
gifts in one day, sudden and perfected in so little time.

But if it wasn’t
a place to make myself, then what good was the Crossroads? What had it given
me? If I was just a butterfly collector, pinning specimen to wooden plains, if
I was just a monster, feeding off the protracted miseries of others, then there
was no higher good, no perfect grace. There was no enlightenment.

I gasped and
covered my face, cold in the water though it still put out clouds of humidity
that twisted around me magnificently.

I had once
entertained the notion that the Sangha was a conspiracy to conglomerate wealth
in the underworld, but I was beginning to think that AMRTA was an exception,
that somehow the organization—as disorganized as it was—was the most
impoverished, destitute, morally bankrupt group of creatures ever to be pitied.
Karl had been the elite all along, since it seemed his counterpart in California
had very little resources to work with. He hadn’t even bothered to move Petula
to some other secret location, and why should he when it would be so easy to
hide her among humans that humanity wouldn’t even acknowledge?

I rose from
the tub and perched on the cold plastic of the toilet, dripping.

There had to
be something I could do to help her, but all I could imagine was reaching out
to Karl. He had offered me his resources, was it so wrong to use them?

I snatched the
thick robe off the door hanger and wrapped it around myself in an unfeeling
frenzy. I grabbed the telephone from the counter where I’d left it and texted
Jinx.

“Send me Karl’s
#.”

It was but a
moment before he replied, “Just ring him on psychic hotline.”

“Fuck U. Send
now!”

Ten numbers
blinked back at me. My phone dialed them at a touch.

To my
surprise, it was not a secretary who answered but Karl himself. He seemed
upset, and in his voice I heard frustration, something he could no longer hide
so easily.

“Karl, it’s
Lilith.”

The clouds
immediately cleared. “I was worried. You left me so quickly, I thought I’d made
it all….”

“Listen to me,”
I nearly shouted. My strides were carrying me back and forth in front of the
beds, in front of the many mirrors I tried hard not to look at. “Petula, the
name I said before, do you know her?”

“Yes. She’s a
remote viewer. We’ve been employing her talents since about 1890.”

I took a deep
breath. “Don’t ask how I know, but she doesn’t have talents to be employed
anymore.”

He said
nothing. I could hear his breath coming in shorter rasps.

“She’s in a
mental hospital here. Find her. Get her out, somehow.”

“Done. Anything
else?”

“Find out what
went wrong.”

“I had already
begun. I only needed more….”

“I know. Find
William and do….” I halted and waved an arm around uncertainly. “Do whatever
tests you need to, I guess. A full physical. See why he’s still...functioning
properly. I need to be sure.”

“As you wish,
though he’s been quite clear that he wants nothing to do with me.”

“I’ll take
care of it.”

I hung up
before we got into anything deeper than that. My mind was running laps, pieces
of it surpassing others, a tangled relay that made no sense.

“Matt,” I
texted, “Karl will call 2 run tests on Will. Make Will do it. Please 4 me.” As
soon as the message was sent, I collapsed onto one of the beds and felt
exhausted.

“
Petula
,”
I whispered, “from the Latin ‘to seek.’”

Perchance to
find.

Chapter
9

The Savage
Beast

It all came back to the girl I
wasn’t meant to know about, the tiny, dark-skinned girl I’d first seen in my
strange vision. I didn’t even know if she
was
a girl or if she was some
new kind of monster; after all, she
had
shape-shifted. Was I meant to
save her, steal her gift, or kill her? I had no clue, but it was sure that if I
didn’t seek, I’d never know.

I looked
around the hotel room. I was alone with nowhere to be, nothing to do. There was
no way out of it.

I lay down on
the bed, still draped in my bathrobe and slightly damp. What was I afraid of? I
was here and she was…wherever she was. If anything, being inside her head would
help me to understand her better and be less afraid.

I forced some
deep breathing, letting each exhale take me lower and lower. By a slow process
of selective sensation, I shut off nerves one by one, until I was floating
inside my own body. I was lighter than air, and, suddenly, the air had me. I
reached for her and within the thought was at her side.

In the cruel
light from the overhead florescent bulbs, she looked nothing like the snarling
terror she had been. She looked dead. So many tubes stuck out of her that I
became convinced that someone, somewhere was attempting to torment the real
girl by sticking this one with cursed pins.

Machines
blipped and binged, registering different bodily functions. Several IVs pumped
things in or took things out. A catheter bag hung on the edge of the metal
table, right next to the thick strap holding her in place.

So this is
what Petula meant by sleeping,
I thought, as a momentary lapse of
anger crackled my reception like a storm. They were keeping her subdued with
chemicals and, when she had tried to fight them, had chained her to the table
and forced her to submit.

If the Sangha
had counted her an enemy, then as far as I was concerned, the two of us were
buddies.

I could not
recall ever having mind-melded with a coma patient, but it could not be any
different from the time I’d learned Cantonese. After all, that gentleman had
been very close to death. With her, there was no conscious mind, no interface
to get in the way. I would not have to listen to the translation of her
experiences. I could just see them as they had existed.

I covered her
brain like a warm blanket and set about lining my own thoughts up with her
haphazard ones. I let her neurons lead the way, like little bobbins weaving a
pattern in my thoughts. The memory came together slowly, like leaves falling
mysteriously into place, fleshing out a scene.

It began with
a photo, wreathed and set atop an easel.

My heart sank.

“But our
sister, Esther, was not just a woman of God. Like every member of her family
before her, she had dreams! She had plans! She was going places, and she was
taking her daughter with her.”

I could feel
the girl’s emptiness and knew it well. It wasn’t just loss; it was the burden
of a person that was the last in her family. The only stories that could ever
be told had to be told by her. She was a personality afloat.

She looked to
her left, at the tired social worker waiting to take her to some place that was
not her home. She looked back at the podium, feeling so blank and dispassionate
about the whole thing that she hadn’t even heard the Reverend introduce her.

He beckoned. She
turned around. The whole crowd was looking her way expectantly. The social worker
gave her a nudge.

“It’s your
turn, Reesa,” she said.

Reesa looked with
distaste at the fingers that had dug into her ribs. “Don’t touch me.”

She got to her
feet before the woman could reply and pulled a paper out of her pocket. When
Gran had died, her mother had spoken at the funeral. She’d talked about all the
important things Gran had done, but everything she’d said was some kind of
twisted version, like she was using the facts of Gran’s life to prove some kind
of point, make an argument about how the world really worked. But Reesa
remembered how that pain felt, and there was no argument, no point. It was all
just a bunch of bullshit.

She turned and
faced the crowd of people she only half-knew. Some of them had been people her
mother hadn’t even liked. So many different types of people, and yet they were
all dressed the same. They had no right.

The Reverend
handed her a microphone.

“Go ahead,
Honey.”

She looked at
him, her inner fire of indignation stoked a little higher.

“Don’t call me
Honey.”

The words rang
out over the speakers. There was a smattering of uncertain laughter. Reesa
ended it with a sharp glare.

“You don’t
belong here, none of you.” 

Several
shifted uncomfortably.

“You think
sittin’ here is gonna do something for you? It ain’t. My mom got shot in the
head by someone who didn’t even know she was there, someone who was trying to
kill someone else. She’s dead. Here you are looking at me like I’m supposed to
tell you all about her. Like I’m supposed to have an answer or maybe tell you
that even though she’s dead, she did all sorts of amazing things. You think I’m
gonna cry, and you’ll all feel better about the fact that there ain’t no one
here for me. Well, I ain’t.”

With an
embarrassed lunge, the Reverend moved to take the mic from her. She jerked it
from his grasp and stepped away from him, keeping him back with just the look
on her face.

“Don’t you
dare!  After this, no one’s gonna even know I exist. You’ll all go away and
feel better, like you said your goodbyes. You’ll all go home with clear
consciences and I’ll still be here with my dead momma and my dead Gran. I’m
gonna say what I wanna say. If you don’t like it, you can go get one of your
relatives shot and get your own mic.”

The
congregation was so quiet that it seemed as if they weren’t even breathing.

“My mom and I
fought all the time,” she said, pulling the cord away from the Reverend’s feet,
just in case. “The truth is, she didn’t want to even have me. My dad was a
loser, all the way up until he died by fallin’ into a ditch, drunk. She thought
she did the best she could, but it never felt like that. If she didn’t have
Gran, she wouldn’t never have finished school. She quit every job she ever had.
She was an angry person and always said that everyone else was tryin’ to keep
her down. She never spent any time with me. She never took me shopping or out
to play. She never even brought me to church.”

A few people
had begun to mumble or whisper to each other, shading their mouths with the
program emblazoned with Esther’s face.

Reesa began to
shake. She clutched the mic like it was a lifeline.

“My mother was
not a good person.”

The Reverend
again attempted to cut her off. “It isn’t good to talk about the dead….”

“What,
honestly?” Reesa shouted. “I ain’t talking for her. I’m talking for me. No one
can talk for her, because we ain’t her. I’ll speak my mind, so you shut your
mouth and let me finish.”

There was a
collective gasp. Some older women sitting close to the front were shaking their
heads. Reesa forged ahead, determined to finish her eulogy. She held up her
paper and took a deep breath.

“My mother was
not a good person, but she wanted to be. She hated evil and injustice, whether
it was real or just in her head. She studied all the time, because she thought
that if she just kept looking, any question she put her mind to, she could
answer. She knew how to put on a bandaid or tie a shoe. She knew how to write
song lyrics and poems.” Her voice broke.

The throng was
a field of wax sculptures, staring at her in awe.

“She made
cookies on Saturdays. She watched old movies with Gran. She danced in the rain
in our backyard.”

Her vision
misted over. Droplets smeared the words on the page. She wiped her face and
shook it off with a few shudders.

“I will miss
the arguments she used to have, the way she could make any person feel stupid
for even questioning her. I don’t know why. I’ll miss waking up to find her
asleep on the couch with the TV on infomercials. I’ll miss Pizza Thursday,
blanket forts, and when she sometimes put makeup on me.”

She shook her
head and looked out at their anonymous faces. She just didn’t care anymore.

“My mother is
dead. No one is ever gonna know what she might have done or who she could have
been. I’ll never get the chance to make friends with her or like her and that…that’s
what makes me sad. People are gonna say, ‘oh what a shame,’ and try to make her
death into some kind of example for how to make the world a better place, but
if you need an example to make the world a better place, then the world ain’t
never gonna be a better place.”

She summoned
the Reverend with a glance. “You all go to your potluck now.” Then she handed
him the microphone and walked down the aisle toward the door, the social worker
running to catch up.

The memory
faded. She had been so hurt that she hadn’t really thought much on the
situation, ruminated on the casket or its grisly contents. Yet I got the
overwhelming sense of a deep and wise person germinating within her, filled
with emotion but never overtaken by it. After how I had been feeling recently,
like a rag doll tossed on the tide, it was almost comforting to hold onto her.

Her mind
wandered for a while, cutting together clips of foster homes, of fights with
other children and the horrible people who were supposed to take care of her,
of the social worker and her exhausted face. It went on and on, until it came
to a halt in a bus-station garbage can.

Reesa was
digging through it, forcing herself not to throw up at the smell. She didn’t
like what she was doing, but it was necessary. Over and over she repeated the
mantra, that no one would ever take care of her, that she had to do it herself.

There was no
moon. The bus depot was almost deserted since transportation shut down around
ten. It wasn’t safe to be out, but she was hungry. If she didn’t find something
soon, though, it would have to wait until the morning. She had to go back to
her hiding spot, or someone would find her. She’d learned that lesson the hard
way.

She found a
half-eaten sandwich that didn’t smell too bad and was about to slip it into her
backpack when a hand closed over her mouth. A larger body jerked her backward
toward the alley behind the bus park. She didn’t waste time. She didn’t think
about being afraid. She opened her mouth until a big lump of flesh was inside
it and then bit down with one hundred percent of her strength.

The body
behind her screamed and flung her sideways. Small but scrappy, she hit the
ground rolling and came up into a crouch. Her bag was scattered all over the
ground, her knife lost amid the disarray. Without taking a second glance at the
figure nursing its hand in a shadow and swearing up a storm, Reesa leaped to
her feet and tore across the parking lot. She was aiming for the lights of a
nearby Taco Bell, a place with people who wouldn’t call the cops, a place where
most of the staff were just kids working late night summer shifts.

She didn’t get
far. The man caught her by the hair and picked her up. She kicked and kicked at
his stomach, trying to get a foot down low enough to send him sprawling, but he
was too strong. The arm around her middle was like a metal band, tightening
until she couldn’t breathe.

“Fucking
bitch!” he grunted in her ear.

She leaned
forward and brought her head back into his mouth, just to teach him a lesson. He
staggered. Stars wheeled in front of her eyes. As he tumbled backward, dazed,
she could feel blood on her scalp, trickling down her neck. The arms loosened a
bit, and Reesa tried to escape. She sucked in as much air as she could, lifted
her arms above her head, and slithered down. He was clutching, but she was
wriggling lower with each step he took. When she’d gotten low enough, she
brought her heel back into his crotch.

He squeaked
and she kicked again. Finally, his arms let go. Thrown forward, she hit the
pavement knees first. She staggered up, her legs bloody, her pants torn, and
limped toward the restaurant. Every sound he made behind her spurned her on. He
rolled around and called her names, but she kept limping, taking short little
breaths the whole way. By the time she reached her destination, she was so full
of adrenalin that she didn’t feel the door as she collided with it. She fell
through into the short hallway and went straight for the bathroom. It wasn’t
until the lock clicked in her hand that she felt safe.

She stumbled
backward and onto the toilet, shaking so hard that it rattled. The sobs snuck
out while she was fighting to breathe and kept coming even after she’d gotten
her lungs back. She put her head between her knees and counted her blessings.

Someone pounded
on the door.

Reesa jumped.