I Will Rise (7 page)

The hand’s plan: lie dormant, act up when necessary, keep me down, keep me unhappy, keep me resentful and give me the strength to do what must be done. Make me loathe humanity. Make me despise its undying thirst for advancement. Prepare me for my purpose.

The hand, as ancient as time itself.

And I am not the loser I thought I was. I am merely an instrument in the primordial design. I have been made to wait. The time is now.

In moments I will be returned to my earthly body. I will be dead. I will be reborn. I will have the power to destroy every last shred of humanity and return it, and its wealth of recyclable souls, back into the soil of the planet where they belong. Technological progress will grind to a stop, the digital blue will fade and I will be responsible for restoring balance and ridding the dream of all ugly human ambition. All it takes is a touch from my hand. Instant death. Instant salvation. The
e
arth will continue on free from human infection and one day after the dream has run its natural course it will awaken. And it will sleep. And it will wake. World without end.

Annabelle the purple cloud exits my head and recomposes a few feet before me. Again, she looks incredible. Again, I can’t help thinking that I know her. I bite my lower lip and fight off heated thoughts.

“You get all that?”

I sigh and roll my eyes and make like I am exasperated.

“I know,” Annabelle sympathizes, “It’s a lot to take in. And believe it or not there’s more. There is a series of steps between here and the end. We’ll save those for later. Let everything else sink in first. Besides, I am not supposed to talk about it, I am just supposed to guide you.”

“This is ridiculous. What if I refuse to follow your instruction,” I say only half seriously.

“You don’t really have a choice. This isn’t even your dream. Whatever happens will happen because of the dreamer, not because of the decisions we choose not to make.” She shakes her head and gives me a disappointed frown. “This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to you. You are no longer Charles Baxter, the lifetime loser. You are now Charles Baxter, the most important man in the world. Don’t let us down.”

I sigh again.

“Look, it’s a lot to understand and in time it will make sense. In the meantime you have me help you along.” Annabelle smiles big.

“Great,” my voice sick with sarcasm, “it’s me the super-loser and Ms. Fuck You Rebellion against the human machine.” I smile back.

Annabelle gets serious, the smile fades and she says, “I am what you want me to be.” She runs her hands up and down her body, “This isn’t how I really look.”

“What?” What now?

“I am a byproduct of your anticommercial, pent-up, sexually repressed neurosis. I only look like this because you want me to look like this.” She tugs at her too-tight T-shirt, “These clothes”—and musses her hair— “this god-awful red hair”—and cups her hands over her chest—“these impossible breasts, oh and lest I forget, that horrible vision of me straddling that dog, it’s all you. Look at yourself for Christ’s sake.” Annabelle points for emphasis. “This bulging, unreal hunk of flesh is your creation; it’s your vision.”

I look over my too-perfect physique and blush with embarrassment. This is all too much. Changing the subject, I ask, “Aren’t we ready to go back yet? Don’t we have some Most Important Man in the World type stuff to do?”

“In a minute. First things first.” Annabelle raises a finger and traces a rectangle into the air. A chunk of the unending white falls away to reveal a two-dimensional, floating, flickering television screen. The image of a woman appears. She is wearing faded, food-stained flannel pajamas, sitting on a brown couch, sleeping, head lulled to the side. Her dark brown hair is long and tangled and run through with streaks of gray. She is probably in her midforties, but looks older. She looks worn out.

“Who’s this?” I ask.

“Me,” she says quietly.

“Say what?” I make wide eyes.

“This is me. I am sleeping, dreaming myself here. The dreamer gave you the power of touch. It gave me the power of sight. It makes sense. Your hand has plagued you all of your life. My eyes have plagued me.

“In here.” Annabelle waves her hand through the flickering, floating TV image. “In the real waking world, I am blind. When I am here with you, or out there”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“in the library or the grocery store with you, I can see. This is how it all began. I’ve been dreaming you every night for the longest time. Little by little the Dreamer has been showing me bits and pieces of why.

“For a while I thought I was going crazy. I thought I had made you and the Dreamer up. A couple of days ago, that day in the library while you were having one of your attacks, I was taking a nap, dreaming you as usual, when I suddenly found myself transported into this body, the body you had dreamed up for me. I was amazed. The strange little things in my head, my idea about the dreaming planet, the idea that I was to lead you to… Anyway they didn’t feel like ideas anymore, they felt like truths. It was all coming true. In this body, this funky red hair and ridiculously perfect figure, I actually have eyes that work. For the first time in over thirty years I can actually see. Not blind vision, not images in my head, but sight like back when I was a little girl. For the first time I wasn’t merely dreaming you, viewing you from above like a security camera or God, I was looking at you, into your eyes, and seeing you as a sighted person would. God. I was looking into your eyes and you were looking back into mine.”

Annabelle stops and takes a deep breath. Her eyes glaze over and she loses herself for a moment.

“Annabelle?”

She snaps out of it and says, “Sorry, it is all a bit overwhelming. There is just so much to be done and not much time to get it all done.”

“How much time?”

“I am not sure. It’s hard to gauge human conceptions such as time. Everything we know exists within this single, unfinished dream, so who is to say yesterday happened or today is happening or tomorrow is going to happen. When I think about it… Forget it. We have to stay focused and that means getting you to me. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep twenty-four/seven; believe me, I’ve tried. My body is about eight hundred miles away in Mesa, Arizona. Once you get here we have to meet up with…” Annabelle pauses for a moment and her eyes roll up.

“Are you okay?” I reach out to put my hand on her shoulder.

She jumps out of reach and looks flat-out terrified, “I’m not allowed to tell you anymore.” Calming down and shaking her head, she says, “You must never touch me. You have to promise that you will never touch me or our final contact.”

“Final contact?”

“I can’t talk about him just yet, but you have to remember never to touch us. If you do, we die and everything falls apart.”

“Him?”

Annabelle sighs and looks flustered. “I’ve said way too much. All you need to know right now is that I am waiting for you in Arizona. When you get to me, never touch me. Never touch anyone I specifically tell you not to. Lastly, touch everyone else.”

I am confused. “Huh?”

“Your power is in your hand. You must touch every living thing you can between here and Arizona.”

“Unless you specifically tell me not to?”

“Exactly. Things will definitely get weirder before they get clearer. Just follow my lead and we will save the world.” Annabelle reaches her hand out and places it on my cheek. The sensation is tremendous (how long has it been since another human being has touched me with affection and caring?).

Is this a test? Didn’t she just get done telling me not to touch her? Ever? I jump away and shout, “I didn’t touch you!”

Annabelle puts her hand over her mouth and giggles. “In the waking world, Charles. When you get to Arizona and we begin our journey together, in the flesh. It’s okay to touch in dreams. Thank you for remembering anyways.”

Stupid.

“Are you ready?”

I nod.

“Okay, just close your eyes and try to clear your mind. I’m going to try and break our communion. In a few seconds you will be returned to your body.”

“But my body is dead.” Besides, I like this body. I don’t want my old body back.

“It better be. ,You have to be dead for things to work.” Annabelle says this like it is the most natural thing in the world.

“So I’m a zombie?”

“Sort of, but not like slow or hungry for brains or anything like that. You will be stronger and faster. You will blend in and through the power of a simple touch will be able to exterminate all of humanity.” She reaches out and takes my left hand. Slow, deliberate and deeply affecting, she massages my palm with her thumb. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Your hand will serve you. Close your eyes.”

I do.

Annabelle keeps on massaging my palm and her thumb’s circular motion quickens. She presses harder, deeper, and my mind becomes a funnel, a black hole, an exit.

You are everything.

* * *

I am dead and I have been to heaven.

Thirty-three and dead for our sins as I had hoped, but where is my father? Where does my
g
od fit in to all of this? Where is that fundamental foundation upon which everything has been built?

Most importantly, why don’t I care?

Everything uprooted, changed, rearranged, and strangely, it feels good. Relief. Here but not really here. For real. Why doesn’t it hurt? And why did it hurt so much more to believe?

Now that my
g
od is gone, the idea erased, replaced by another, I don’t quite understand, I miss the promise of heaven, of eternal reward, but I welcome the lack of order, I embrace the removal of expectation and I believe in Annabelle when she says it will all make sense eventually. This new perception, this implant, this antichoice of dreams upon dreams upon dreams isn’t too tough to swallow. It fits and makes about as much sense as any other ideology. I thought myself incapable of letting go of
g
od, but it already seems that my old belief systems are nothing more than fading dreams, another sleeper yawning awake, welcoming the alien day with fresh eyes.

And natural as can be it’s like I was never born. It’s like all that came before, desperate, hopeless, undifferentiated, never existed. And even if it did exist, this new development proves that I was never meant to fit in. It proves that all of my worries and aches are unfounded, pointless, and given that the world—the old, harsh, “use me up, spit me out” world—isn’t even real, I can’t help but prefer this fresh sense of consciousness.

I don’t have to play by humanity’s rules any longer. I don’t have to feel like shit anymore because I can’t play by the rules. I don’t have to die inside every time I think about my dad and my seizures and how incredibly disappointing I am. My hand—my beautiful, cursed hand—has compelled me to hate humanity and go against the grain because I must destroy it.

I am ready.

I hate sexuality and flesh and reproductive progress because I was designed to do so.

I am ready.

On my knees, the world exploding from my palm, bit by bit, piece by piece, layer by layer: dirt, rock, wood, bone.

I am ready.

Anti-flesh, Anti-brain.

I am ready.

All of a sudden I am a hero. Me: ugly, loser me, a champion of truth, a King Arthur in the making, out to restore balance, to temper human failings and bring peace to the land. God, and to think how much time I wasted feeling worthless. I was never meant to love. I was never meant to smile. And this is beautiful. In a world that means nothing, that is virtually nothing, I suddenly mean everything.

Chapter Six

The Fallen

Rocket ship down.

The errant pixel.

I am flying, a weightless dart through the digital void and after all I’ve seen none of this seems so remarkable. Big deal. Nothing is real anyhow. I suppose I am falling back to earth, but dispossessed of body it’s tough to discern direction. There’s definitely movement though. There’s definitely a sense of frenetic urgency, or I mean there would be if I cared. That is, if things were real enough to care about.

Was I ever up enough to fall down?

Is heaven or purgatory or that electronic holding chamber or wherever I just was, up?

Downward makes the most sense and after a moment of idiotic internalizing my hunch is validated. The digital blue gives way to familiar night sky. Not that I care.

Stop.

Okay, I am slightly concerned. I mean I see treetops and they are rapidly approaching. I am definitely falling, no, I am hurtling, my rate of descent marked by the streaking stars. Still, without a body, or any belief in reality for that matter, the drama of plunging is rather uneventful. Big whoop. Oh, no, help, I’m falling. I might hit the ground and break my…

The earth
is
rushing up pretty fast.

A few hundred feet to go.

Look! There! I can see Paunch’s mangled carcass.

I can see Lumpy kneeling over my body.

Closer.

My dead body.

Closer.

Dead…

* * *

“…Requesting back-up, over. Officer down. Repeat, officer down.”

My eyes snap open, a thick wet sound as they slam ajar, and I cough sick. Lumpy, fuzzy, Lumpy, coming into focus, Lumpy, one hand on my throat feeling for a pulse, the other holding a walkie-talkie. When he notices my alert eyes, his eyes go sooo wide I think they might fall free out. A dead second hangs between us. The world too solid, the world on pause, the world resuming full force. Lumpy is on his feet, screaming, gun drawn, trained at my head.

“Stay down, motherfucker!”

“Don’t move a motherfucking muscle motherfucker!”

“I motherfucking swear to motherfucking God, I will splatter your motherfucking brains all over the motherfucking ground!”

It’s nice to see that nothing has changed.

Lumpy continues to rant and rave and his shrieking shrinks down to a dull murmur at the back of my brain.

I am fucking crazy.

Wait, let me rephrase that, I am
motherfucking
crazy. Just ask Lumpy.

Okay, assessment: I am clearly out of my head. I am here and I hurt and reality is very real. Annabelle, digital mumbo jumbo, me as the one man who can make a difference: complete bullshit. Complete crap, because everything really, really hurts. I’ve been shot in three places and I can feel every sucking, steaming, stinging wound.

If I am dead, the destroyer, the anti-savior, shouldn’t I feel different?

Shouldn’t I feel more than human?

Divine?

Everlasting?

Bones of pearl and eyes of fire?

Shouldn’t there be something other than crappy awareness? Something other than physical distress? Something other than pain?

Something?

I am such a fucking rube. To think, that even for a second, I was in control. Purpose. Destiny aligning. I was in control of
my
destiny. Not only my destiny, but also yours. True freedom. For a split second there, in my brain, or in my ridiculous fantasy or wherever, I actually mattered.

No belief.

No feeling.

No responsibility to one’s self or others.

Nothing.

Imagine that. Imagine us as nothing more than images patterned by a dreaming mind. Like
The Matrix
, but way cooler because our bodies aren’t enslaved batteries—they don’t even exist. Think of all of this wasted, useless non-time feeling less, feeling insignificant, feeling like a lower rung or a lower class or like I deserve more. How cool would it be if it was all for nothing.

For a glorious second: gunshot trauma, a waking dream, unconscious, whatever: equalization. You were no better than me. No better than me with my gimp hand and my God complex and my aversion to sex and people and people-generated ideas, and oh, oh, oh, my need, my truculent, soul-sucking, organ-galvanizing need.

Seizures for you.

On my back writhing for you.

Acceptance.

Less than you.

Did I mention how much these gunshot wounds hurt?

Sloshing about in my biology, I look up at Lumpy. He’s still going at it: “I should kill you, you motherfucker. For what you did to my Paunch, I should…”

Repulsive. His nostrils twitch and his eyelids vibrate like greasy hummingbird wings. Sweat beads and pushes through his pin-sized pores. No better than me. But here I am, still me, still lost, and as disgusting as Lumpy. At least he fits in, at least he gets respect, at least somebody somewhere loves him. And why do I care? So what if nobody respects me? Who cares if nobody loves me? Why should it matter? You figure after a while one would get used to exclusion, one would get used to watching. You figure. But it never happens. The comfort levels never rise to the occasion.

Sometimes at home, in the quiet dark, just before I fall asleep, I feel okay. I feel somewhat normal, or I think that when I wake up the next day I will do something eventful and earn my place in society. Sometimes getting really absorbed within a fantasy or a daydream helps. Sometimes when my hand gets me down I can forget about who I am and where I’m going. Instances like these provide reprieve, but alas, an instance only lasts for an instant.

Last year I reached the breaking point. I sucked it up and tried to make friends. I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and pretend I didn’t hate them. I tried doing it the old-fashioned way, no seizures or ploys for sympathy, just, “Hi, I’m Charles and I think you’re swell.” Good idea, right? Wrong. A guy can only take so many cold shoulders.

And all of this fucking sucks because despite my hatred, inside I feel like I am a nice person. I have friendly eyes. When I screw up my courage and really concentrate, I can get a sentence out without tripping over any words. Yet regardless, there is something off about me, something wrong. People are instinctually repelled and want nothing to do with me. I can see it in their eyes.

With idiot humans it’s all about the eyes.

I remember: six years old, on my back, a gathering crowd of strangers. Mall freak-out. One minute I’m begging my mom for a pack of sea monkey powder, the next I’m flopping around like a fish.

Swirls, a hurricane of color, perhaps a little less malign back then, perhaps cartoon characters and childish-dreamy-things floating about in the hallucinatory mix instead of bones and dirt and Annabelles with flaming nipples.

Nothing to fret about.

This wasn’t the first time—it was commonplace, happenstance, just another day in the life of Seizure Boy, and I can remember my brain not making too much of it. I can remember thinking: ride it out, don’t swallow your tongue, be brave, this will get us a pack of sea monkeys for sure.

When the world finally recomposed and the craziness retreated back into of my head where it belonged, I was greeted by a sea of faces. The looks of concern, the looks of horror, the laughers (always a few of them), the dramatists and their calls for help, I’ve seen them all before. I’ve studied them and oftentimes while lying there recovering, waiting for my mom or dad or an accompanying loved one to snap me out of it, I’ve stared and left my recuperating body behind to travel deep within them. I’ve taken thousands of journeys to that end place, that cerebrating place where the brain and the eyeballs meet.

Every person thinks of themselves as an individual, this fresh personality, this walking wet work of special quirks and nuances. And maybe, to some extent, this is true, but for the most part the bulk of our emotional bundles are fashioned the same way. I know because I’ve seen it up close. I’ve seen beyond the painted looks and into that pink-gray juncture and no matter what, whether concerned or horrified or laughing or overreacting, the same base aspects emanate from every pair of eyes.

If I seize in front of you, there is no way you can hide it. No matter how you dress it up, the basic core of disdain and sadness and compassion and hate and sorrow and amusement comes across. It’s the look you give to the retarded or the mute or the disfigured or those from a lower social class. It’s the worst look one could receive and the worst one could give. It says,
I feel sorry for you, I wish I could help you, I’m glad I am not you, I am glad you are not me, I hate you because you are ugly and you make me feel uncomfortable, but I will never admit this to anyone, not even myself because that makes me a horrible person, but if ever, through some miracle, I am able to come to terms with myself and this horrible lie, I would still be okay with it because again, I am not you.

And of course every time, including that fateful day at the mall, the looks consume me. Embarrassment flushes my cheeks and buzzes about my stomach. My head goes loopy with heat and icy with humiliating pinpricks of mortification.

That day, as any, I wanted everyone to go away and I wanted my mommy.

That day, as any, I wanted my mommy, but she wasn’t by my side. Every other time she had shielded me, cradled my head in her arms and waved away the faux compassion of the idiot hordes. But this time I was utterly alone. This time I felt the cold of the world seeping through the floor tiles and into my bones. This time her fingers weren’t in my mouth, the sweet taste of lotion and polish, holding my tongue. Her voice wasn’t in my ears telling me it was okay. Fear eclipsed embarrassment. Frustrations gathered as my eyes nervously scanned the crowd.

Where was she? The only one who understood?

A firebomb in my chest.

Where? The only one who never looked at me the way everybody else looked at me.

My hand buzzed. Seizure juice primed, ready for round two.

Where?

My eyes blurred.

Where?

And finally, her hands. Warmth. Calm. I turned my head relieved and eagerly looked to meet her eyes, hungry for her eyes. What I saw stopped me cold.

She had become one of them. The look in her eyes turned my blood to ice and my heart to rot. She was one of them. The only human being I ever cared and trusted had turned on me. I expected as much from my dad, but not my mom. Not my protector. Not my seraph of safety.

But alas, it was true. Betrayal leaked from the corners of her shifty eyes. Her skin was flush. Sweat dampened her hairline. She was ashamed of me, embarrassed by my idiot seizures.

Suddenly, I was completely and utterly alone.

Nothing has been the same ever since.

I always figured it would get better after high school. Maybe once I got away from the sham that was my life and started someplace fresh I would blend and live like anybody else. The moment I could, I left and for the most part things are better. Nobody stares or makes fun of me to my face, nobody tries to trip me or steal my lunch or beat me senseless, but then again nobody bothers to look at me. Nobody says hi to me. Every day I enter the world and every day the world greets me with a sea of downturned eyes. Unless of course you count Mr. Shithead (he regards me with contempt, but hey, regard is regard), which I don’t.

“Are you listening to me, punk?”

Lumpy, Lumpy, Lumpy, if only you understood. If only you knew. Then maybe you would do this piece of shit a favor and put a bullet somewhere fatal.

“You are going to pay for this! He”—Lumpy makes a grand gesture toward Paunch’s corpse—“was a highly decorated officer!”

I try to speak and ask for the bullet, but I end up gargling on my own blood.

“Shut the fuck up!” Lumpy shakes his gun for effect.

Maybe I should try and get up and jump the pig, force him into finishing me off. Maybe I should flail about or make crazy eyes or try and get past the blood in my throat and call him a stupid prick bastard. Maybe I should…

“Yes, maybe you should.”

Annabelle?

The dream come to life.

My eyes search until they find one of Annabelle’s dainty hands making rabbit ears behind Lumpy’s head. She peers around his frame and smiles at me with her eyes.

Walking through Lumpy, red mist, Annabelle comes to a stop a few paces in front of him and places her hands on her hips. Her red, red hair frames her face and her eyes glow deep, deep black. No slogan across her chest this time, just a plain white T-shirt and those plaid bondage pants.

“Get up already,” she demands.

“You’re real?” I stammer in disbelief. I’m not crazy?

Lumpy thinks I am talking to him. He tells me to
shut my
fucking fuckhole
and lunges a few feet forward in a threatening display of power. Annabelle smirks at the thick machismo as her body dematerializes around his. She disappears and I frantically crane my neck, afraid I might lose sight of her. Two dainty fingers rise up behind Lumpy’s big-ass head. Annabelle steps through him yet again.

“Get up, Charles. I’m serious.” She frowns in illustration.

It’s hard to take her seriously with Lumpy’s gun hand jutting through her chest. I motion with my eyes. She looks down, lets out a frustrated sigh and then takes another few steps forward, putting Lumpy’s appendage completely behind her. She looks at me expectantly.

“What do I do?” I ask.

Lumpy responds, “You don’t do nothing, asshole! You lay absolutely fucking still!”

Annabelle rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Kill him,” she says calmly.

Kill him?

“How?”

Lumpy steps closer, “If you don’t shut your fucking mouth, I am going to shut it for you!”

Sidestepping, Annabelle blows a shock of red hair out of her face. She extends her arms toward Lumpy and pretends to be a matador waving an invisible cloak. “Charge, Charles. Tackle the beast and don’t let go until he’s dead. Just hold on.”

I stare dumbly.

“Do it!”

Surprised by my own speed, I am on my feet and toppling Lumpy before he has a chance to react. I have him on his back and am doing exactly as Annabelle instructed, but the bastard struggles something fierce. This is quite remarkable because his strength is easily a zillion times more than mine yet still I manage to hold on. The struggle seems to go on and on—Lumpy fighting for freedom— me holding him down—and it is all growing a little tiresome. Not that the situation isn’t exciting or dangerous—I mean, it’s going somewhere, I can actually feel his gun smashed between our torsos, it’s just taking forever to get there. The knobby gun metal shifts and shuffles as Lumpy tries to dig the barrel into my stomach. Desperate, screaming bloody hell, he shouts, “Motherfucker,” and then takes a chance. The gun roars its approval.