Vlad

My Last Best Friend - V

“These drinks might be too strong,” I said. “What… what do they put in them?” My brain leaped into a confused frenzy. The tumultuous mixture of the Cow Town Specials slammed my cognition against a wall.

“That’s a secret,” Gavin said. He flashed a faint outline of a sadistic grin. “I was thinking you wouldn’t get more than half way through your second one, but here you are. All gone.”

All gone. Everything I ever had… all gone.


I reached my teeth over the marbled chunk of steak at my fork’s end and sealed my quivering lips around its scorched bits of viscera.

“John! John… is that… is that you? Oh my God!” A woman’s airy half-rasped voice pushed its way into my ears while I chewed through the morsel’s center. I put the fork down and turned away from my plate, unsure of what to expect or who to look for. The room stood in its place like a November lake, still as death, but not yet frozen. I looked for Gavin but he was not there.

“What? Who?”

She stepped through a booth’s shadow and approached me in a direct line of feathery steps. Her hair flowed in a cascade of dreamlike wisps that concealed a part of her face.

“John, I didn’t think you’d be out already. My God… I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“That I’d be out? Out from what? I’m sorry, miss, but I think you’ve mistaken me for somebody else.” I turned back to my food and took another bite. She came closer.
The familiarity of her approach paralyzed me. I was not somebody she once knew. I was somebody she had once lived for. She sat down in Gavin’s seat and straightened her posture. I tried to decipher her with another look, but her features melted into an anonymous void.

“John… you don’t remember, do you? Christ, you don’t remember… you don’t remember anything.”

“Remember what, exactly? I’ve never seen you before. I don’t know who you are.”

“I can’t believe they did this to you.”

“What are you talking about? Everything that was done to me was my choice.”

“No, John. It wasn’t. You are not well.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please excuse me. You are interrupting my meal. My best friend Gavin will be back soon and you’re in his seat.”

“It’s me. It’s Stacey. We have a daughter. A beautiful little girl. She’s in preschool now, and I’d bet anything that she is a genius like… Look, John. There is no Program. Do you understand? Here, look at me, look at me.”

She took a hold of my elbow and turned me closer. To me her existence had no meaning. In her I saw nothing. Not a ghost, not a lost memory, not a forgotten encounter. Nothing. Her faint eye creases and spotty imperfections screamed their history back to me, but I heard none of it.

“Again, I’m certain that you are mistaken,” I said with a deeper, more direct tone. “I am a new recruit in The Program. I am going to war soon and I would appreciate it if you let me finish my meal. My best friend Gavin is my civilian ward. He can help you once he returns. I’m not supposed to talk about any of this. I don’t know what else to tell you. If you are a fan or an… admirer of those enlisted, there is nothing I can do for you. My behavior is monitored at all times. I’ve been ordered not to interact with people like you. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but please, please back away.”

I looked around and still I did not see Gavin. The bottom of my stomach turned cold.

“John, dear, you are not well. I was your longtime girlfriend. We met in high school. You worked at the rail yard for over ten years. We were practically married before you… Listen. There is no such thing as The Program. Gavin is not a real person. We’ve had this talk before. You’re unwell again. I didn’t think you’d be released already. It’s been what, ten months?”

“Released from what?” I said. My tone turned defensive. “Released from what? I wasn’t released from anything. You don’t know me. You’re just a heartland bar whore leeching around for another story to tell before you hit the wrong side of forty. Get the hell away from me!”

“John… no…” she sighed and turned away. She pulled out her phone and dialed a long string of numbers. The air between us turned to ice. A memory of her smile’s outer crease drifted by, but I buried it.

I swung my shoulders around in disgust. I looked for Gavin. I called his name twice, but he did not come. I shoved away my unfinished plate. I called louder and still nobody came. The stocky bartender disappeared through the swinging kitchen door.

“Gavin!” I screamed. “Gavin! Gavin!”

Stacey retreated to the entrance. Her distraught eyes remained locked onto me as she mumbled indiscriminate phrases into her phone. She held the device jammed deep into the side of her cheek. The protruding bones of her angled wrist trembled.

A crash of shattered glass stung me. I fell into a defensive stance behind one of the large booths. A viscous redness pooled at my heels. My forearm burned. The room fell into a wild and nauseating spin. I gathered my breath and screamed with all of my might. I turned myself upright and sprinted to the back wall. I flipped a table and I smashed through the nearby chairs. My head shrank into the size of a needle point. With failing breath I capsized. Gavin had set me up. The bastard poisoned me. I wheezed a silent curse of damnation onto his name.

Powerful red and blue lights flooded the chamber. A brick of a man charged through the front door. He yelled out a string of broken phrases in a manic timbre. With the corner of my eye I caught the sight of a raised gun held in his meaty fists. Stacey ran up to the brick man and begged something from him. She pleaded with hysterical fury.


I lay bleeding on a mound of glass shards. I tilted my head and watched the door. Two shorter men scampered in and pulled Stacey away. The brick-like man stood his ground, gun steady.
My breath returned with a weak reprise. I stood up and straightened my legs. I began to walk into the aura of warmth that opened up before me. The brick-like man barked louder every step I took. I looked past him and saw a crevice of the greater world shining through the axe wound in the crooked wooden door.

Fresh air. Open sky. Beauteous fields tilled by simple men whose worlds spread no farther than their outstretched callused palms. Home.

I walked into the light. An odd numbness crept up from behind my chest. A heartbeat later the numbness spilled out into my limbs. I collapsed when the force of my own dead weight became insurmountable. An alien language of desperate commotion hovered somewhere far above. I shut my eyes. Everything ceased.

Time bled against the walls of my skull and through the hollows of my bones. No heaven and no hell stood before me. A torturous shred of my former self-awareness remained. I had been called forth to witness my own Judgement.

I drifted through an icy swap. A mute blind man led me to its edge. He struck each of my limbs with his cane. He then delivered me into a wall of infinite light.
I gasped against the toxic mud stuck in my airways. My teeth bit down against the synthetic foulness of a hospital tube. The wall of infinite light set fire to my eyes. I jerked my head up but my skull remained pinned. My neck seized with a violent tremor. I could not move. My body lay contorted against the steel jaws of a sinister apparatus. A pale servant dressed in white stabbed me with a fresh needle and I returned to my palace of nothingness.

The mute blind man came back to face me. We stood over the abyss upon a fallen tree. He swept his cane through my shins and I fell backward into the swamp. The mud and debris turned into water as I hit the surface. My limbs turned to stone and I spiraled down into the crystalline infinity.

I drew a fresh breath of air and opened my eyes. My lungs sang with the taste of mountainous purity. The overhead lights glistened like welcoming angels. The jaws of the steel apparatus and its tubes had been removed. I now sat upright, bound with leather straps to a simple chair. A dark haired man with telescopic glasses sat across from me. He stared at me with excruciating intent. He stared right into the center of my brow. I raised my hand to scratch it but the bindings on my wrist refused to give way.
“Do you know your name?” the man said.

“John Wilson,” I said.

“Do you know where you are?”

“No.”

“Do you know why you are here?”

“No.”
“Are you a member of something known as The Program? It is a top secret biological engineering project designed to enhance the bodies of willing participants so that they may serve as perfect soldiers for the United States Army.”
“No.”

“Very good.”

He stood up and walked out of the room. The colossal steel door swung shut behind him and its mechanized locks clicked twice.

__________________
Oh, there are problems in these times...
But none of them are mine!