Desmond Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
They were assassins. Together they roamed, across the expanse of time and space, and hunted, and killed, and hunted, again and again. The kill was their bond, their personal chastity. Again and again. I love you, she told him, her lips smeared with blood. And I love you, again and again, every time.
Assassins, they broke through to each world and killed each version of their same quarry, their same prey. She took many forms. A brain in a mouth. A hand growing through faces, eyes melting into pools that spread across a distended belly. Her bodies were warped and insane, infants of her rabid desire, her twisted need to own and control and make all into one, into her. And all of them died frothing and screaming their defiance beneath the assassin's fire. They killed all of her selves and the same soul jumped ahead, and they followed her, this one who had read the secrets and marked the time. This one who was many who would be One. They had to kill every version, or all the versions would become one soul that would swallow the world. For the world was endless, and this one soul had a hunger that knew no bottom, no boundaries. She would never be satisfied, never stop her feeding. A feast of forever, the world eaten into eternity.
Their love was drenched in death. A million souls, a million worlds. A million lives ended, ritual sacrifices made with a super sanity that ruled their quest, cemented their bond. This One. This One that must die, to the last. Every last One, until the North. And now they were assassins, hunting the North.
Until the North made changes unforeseen, and altered the hunt forever.
1958
The bedroom ceiling emerges from blackness into a cool dusky grey. Wendy is lying in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Lying perfectly still, like she does every morning; this is her every morning no think ritual, isn't it? Like she always does, but the light somehow seems different – it isn't morning, she realizes. How can she do the no think ritual if it isn't morning?
I'm sorry to have frightened you like that.
Wendy stiffens up at the sound of a familiar voice. Low and deep and full, the voice of the authority in her life. Desmond. Desmond is lying in bed next to her.
I'm still... getting used to this place. To the way things are. It takes time to acclimate.
Wendy can feel her heart racing so fast that it feels like a sparrow in her chest. Desmond, next to her, is little more than a shadow in the corner of her eye. She pulls in a breath sharply. He is right there, now. She can hear him speaking to her.
We have a lot of things to discuss, Wendy. A lot that you are going to have to come to terms with.
Wendy blinks. Her mind tries to comprehend what he is saying to her. Above her the room is growing darker; she has to see him now, before it's too late, now that he has come back to her. She has to look upon the returned face of her husband. Slowly, carefully, Wendy turns her head towards the man laying at her side.
He is still the same. Lying on his own back, Desmond's face points upward to the ceiling, just like hers, and he still looks the same as he has all these months. There's been no change. His eyes still stare blankly out into space, his jaw still hangs slack and drooling over his collapsed chin. He is still a brain damaged paraplegic. She stares at him for several seconds, then nods her head silently to herself, before rolling herself onto her back again.
The ceiling glares down at her blankly. She closes her eyes and lets it sink in.
She has lost her mind. It was only a matter of time, really. And with this realization comes the inevitable thought: What were they going to do now? Who was going to take care of them, now that neither of them could take care of themselves? A hot and empty space grew within her mind as she considered their future, and the only conclusion she could arrive at was that this was the end. It was over for the both of them, now. She had lost her mind and now their lives were over.
You haven't lost your mind.
Wendy chuckles lightly up into the deepening darkness of the bedroom, of their bedroom, that they had shared together for so many years, now. How many nights had she gone to sleep right here in this very same bed, with the notion that when she woke up the next day, that her life, that their life together, would continue on into the future? And now this same place has become little more than a slowly darkening grave for them both. Their lives are over.
Our lives aren't over. In fact, they are just beginning.
Wendy's chuckle dies a gentle death in the still evening air. Of course it would say that. It's amazing how attuned this voice was to the thoughts she was having, isn't it? Amazing how well she could invent the responses of her husband's words to her thoughts, but then it's all coming from the same place, so there you have it. Fascinating, nonetheless, the way that her mind is twisting in upon itself. Cannibalizing itself. The mind is a cannibal. She wonders if she could have written a thesis on the subject, had she majored in Psychology like Desmond had. But she's a Computer Scientist, and the mind is more than just a computer, after all. So much more.
Wendy, look at me.
Wendy blinks several times. She doesn't want to play this game anymore. She wants to stop eating her own brain, now. It's time to stop this. But the voice, Desmond's voice, that she realizes is coming from inside of her head, maybe it always had been, ever since she had first met him, just a voice in her head right from the very start... His voice wouldn't stop talking to her.
Look at me Wendy. Look at me.
Wendy swallows hard and squeezes her eyes shut. She wants to cover her ears but knows it won't do any good. She won't be able to drown out Desmond from speaking to her inside of her head. The air around her feels like a vise that holds her in place, like a moment that won't deliver itself into the flow of natural time. She sinks desperately into the bed, freezing, petrifying, necrotizing into a brittle shell shocked husk of bloodless blind empty mind -
Look at me.
Wendy turns her head with a horrible aching ponderousness, her neck cracking painfully as she rotates to her side and comes face to face with Desmond. He has turned on his own side, as well, and now he is looking directly at her. His right eye is wandering upwards, careening around as though tracking a buzzing fly, but his left eye – it's staring straight into her. His left eye has a pupil that seems to contract, to shrink to the size of a pin prick, a tight and narrow focused beam staring at her while his fat right eye orbits aimlessly like a lost satellite jittering across half of his face. He stares at her. She stares back. And that is all they do for a while, just a married couple in bed, looking into each other's eyes.
After a while, Wendy sees a picture forming in her own mind. She sees herself lying on the carpet beneath the dining room table. Then she carefully pulls herself up and maneuvers out from underneath the table; rises slowly to her feet. She walks directly from the dining room, through the kitchen and into the hallway. Down the hallway and into the bedroom. Desmond is waiting for her there, in his chair, facing the bed. She moves over to the chair and tucks her hands under Desmond's arms, lifts him from the chair and onto the bed with practised ease. She pulls back the covers and lays Desmond down. Pulls the covers up over him and lightly tucks him in. Then she walks around to her side of the bed and gets in. She lies on her back next to Desmond and stares at the ceiling.
Wendy's voice seeps out of her like air from an almost empty balloon. “...Who are you..?”
Desmond seems to smile, just barely.
My name is Desmond Roberts.
Wendy clenches her teeth, gripping the sheets beneath her tightly. Something in the way he told her his name. Something wrong.
But I am not your husband.
Even in the now complete darkness, his single eye keeps her pinned in place, locked into his stare. She can't believe what he is saying to her.
And you are not my wife.
The eye holds, unmoving. Not his wife. Still here but gone.
No. Not gone. We are both here. But my wife, my Wendy, she is gone. She has gone, along with your Desmond. And now we are here, each in the other' place.
I don't understand. This is my place, this is my home. Desmond, what are you talking about?
We were travellers, we were on a mission.
Travellers. Who were travellers? You and-
Wendy. My wife Wendy. We were travellers and we had a mission, but then something went wrong.
Something? - Okay... I think... I think we need to take this slowly. I think you need to tell me as much as you can.
Yes. I will tell you everything.
And so they lay that way together, side by side: Desmond and Wendy, two strangers finally finding each other in the dark. Laying next to each other, they speak long through the night. In fact, the conversation they share lasts well into the next day.
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