Silent Hill: The Dream Machine
by Elliot Bowers
Chapter 6
…
La-a le la-la-la, la-la-la… De la… La-a le la-la-la-la… It was the sweet, sad notes of a girl's beautiful song that distracted her as she drifted along in the darkness and warmth, going along towards the end. La-a de-da-la-la… She was on her way somewhere when the song grabbed at her. Such a beautiful song, it was. Deep within herself, she hoped and yearned to hear more of the song: to get to the source of the song and immerse herself in the bliss and melody. The song was singing to her, calling her. All that she had to do was get through the right side.
The right side was blocked off, like the left side, the bottom and top: which all curved together like a pipe. Pressing close to the right side, the song was very close. Yet the side would not yield and was preventing her from getting to the source of the beautiful song…
No, she would not be denied that blissful music. She used a bit of her abilities to press and push. The side began to soften, to become thinner. She was finally able to press through where it was thinnest, piercing a hole that was soft and oily at the edges. It allowed …her to…slip through and enter into the bright whiteness…
…
"Ergh-ach!" squealed something in frustration as loose sparks and spatters of blood flew into its face. Confused and frustrated engines began to squeal and shudder with the sound of grinding gears, sparks and blood spurting out from between bolted-together seams in their casings. In this red-lit room, the sparks flared even brighter red and the blood spattered to the floor in shiny drops. A Flesh Lord growled in frustration as muscular little Blood Workers strained at levers. Six-armed Deniers scrambled along the rusty grating of the ceiling and climbed down pipes towards the three engines. Something was delaying the flow of the catalyst, interrupting the work of the engines. Something would have to be done about it. The Deniers began to turn the correct valves, and the squealing, grinding sound of confused Machinery softened. Heads began to vibrate…
…
Selena snapped awake to the sound of two nearby bathroom doors being slammed shut nearby. Stunned, blinking her eyes, she saw five wide strips of metal, connected together and whirling. The strips were slowly turning in circles, going around and around. They were resonating with the hum of the electric motor to which they were attached… That was a ceiling fan: a fan attached to that ceiling. The ceiling fan was up there and she was down here, lying on the hard floor of the café. The pain that ached her neck was gone, yet her head was still hazed with the pain of headache.
Headache or no, nothing could be accomplished by just lying about, really: headache or none. She sighed and sat up, sitting with legs together. Yes, it was this café again, the one she had gone to when last in town. This was certainly the place…or at least a version of it. Right now, she was sitting close to the bathrooms: which was right next to a little stage just large enough to hold one band of musicians: complete with microphone stand and blue-velvet curtain. Set before the stage were wooden tables and chairs. Over by the windows was a series of booths for people to eat in. The tall waitress in black skirt and white blouse was taking coffee to one of the booths by those windows: where other patrons sat.
Unlike before, the customers here were of all sorts. One customer was a well-tanned sort of man with dark hair, his white business suit and black tie looking crisp as he sipped coffee and read from an especially thick newspaper. By just sitting, the man seemed to radiate power, drawing attention and concern. Just by being in his presence, Selena felt some of that man's confidence instill some pride in even herself… He had the look of someone who could rule countries by simply appearing on television, or having his voice heard on the radio. It was the look of a powerful being.
Or perhaps he looked too powerful. His suit looked somewhat brighter than it should have been in the sunset-colored light coming through the nearby window: as if a light source illuminated him just him. Looking at him began to give her a headache. He was far too luminous a figure.
Odd… Sitting opposite him at the same table was a petite, dark-haired girl reading a book: a girl dressed in dark jeans and tube-neck sweater: small dark shoes on her feet. Over her hands she wore white gloves. Her night-colored hair and large dark eyes were a contrast to her smooth, almost plastic-looking pale skin: the skin of her face. Hmm, her outfit seemed unfitting to the warm air inside of this café; the girl seemed more dressed for a day of Cold season than a day indoors.
As if she noticed Selena staring, the dark-haired girl brought the fingers of her left hand over to her right and began to tug at the fingertips. She took off her right glove before turning the page. Doing this revealed a metal hand: the articulate stainless-steel joints making slight clicking sounds as her fingers flexed, gleaming fingertips pinching the top of a page. And she kept reading.
Selena blinked and ignored that sight. She chose to look at something else, someone else, anyone else. A tan-skinned glowing man and a dark-haired girl with metal hands, was this place contaminated as well? Perhaps she was just imagining things: a mental glitch.
Sitting at another booth was a slumped figure of a person in a large and floppy silvery suit. That suit was so thick and cumbersome in appearance that she could not tell if it was a man or woman in there, with a large shiny hemispherical helmet that mirrored back light: blocking out all sight of who was wearing the thing. In contrast to the rest of the silvery suit, there was a colorful square patch on the figure's right shoulder: horizontal red-and-white stripes in the design of the patch with little white dots in the upper-right corner. That figure in the suit did not belong here, an anomaly.
Again choosing to ignore what she was seeing, Selena shifted her attention to someone else, anyone else: hoping to see a nice, normal group of people. The next booth over, there were four more customers sitting together. They seemed to be eating a what looked like naked little men: their bodies fried fast-food style, like fried chicken. The customers' golden teeth chomped into little naked torsos, tearing at the fried flesh as their plain-white eyes glared. They were just smiling and eating, munching and chomping away. God, was anyone normal here?
Normalcy, 'tis a thing of perspective, came a thought: someone else's thought: sounding within her own mind. I bid ye greetings, Sister. As if she hadn't been surprised enough by every other thing she saw in this place, the sound of a voice in her head made Selena look quickly around, lengths of her own hair getting in her eyes. Something must have happened to her when she arrived herebecause now her hair was much longer than it was before: no longer cut to shoulder-length. After quickly tucking lengths of her hair behind her ears to get it out of her eyes, she looked for the source of the voice…somewhere… Turning herself around, she looked towards the curtained mini-stage: where bands would play for those in this café.
Out from behind the velvet stage curtains came a very beautiful person. She was small and slim, with the stature of a child… Arms and legs bare, she had clear and perfect skin: not a single blemish. Her slender figure was clad in green shorts and a white shirt, with beige-leather boots on her feet. Silken, moonlight-colored hair was combed straight back from her pert face, a face with large green eyes and a poutish little mouth. The red-leather boots on her feet seemed cumbersome, yet this girl somehow moved gracefully across the stage: walking as if the boots were no more than the slippers of a dancer. The confident way with which the girl moved bespoke grace and maturity: more than merely a "child."
She hopped down from the edge of the stage and stood in front of Selena, hands on her shorts-covered hips. "Dearest Sister, ye believes oneself to accomplish big deeds by thinking so terribly small," she said in that lilting accented voice. Her large green eyes seemed to gleam like jewels from the lights above. "Why, ye have even sealed out thoughts of kinsfolk! Wee folk we may be, yet the body is but a conduit for the mind."
Selena regarded this dollish girl, wondering where she had come from and wondering why she was calling her sister. "Why do you insist on kinship?" Selena asked the girl. "We look nothing alike. Perhaps if you put in eye-contact lenses and dyed your hair a much darker tone, we could pass for being siblings. Or kinsfolk, as you say. And you may grow to be taller in time…" The girl tilted her head to the other side, smiling as if Selena was saying some of the silliest things in the world. "What have I said that is so worthy of derision? You seem to hold back laughter behind your lips."
"Ha-ha… Nay, Sister! 'Tis not ridiculous what ye've said. It was ignorant, mayhap, yet not thoroughly ridiculous," responded the girl before tilting back her head, arching her slim neck. "At least not blatantly so!" she declared to the ceiling. Standing on tip-toes, the pale-haired girl began to spun herself around, whirling and turning, her long slim arms outstretched and long pale hair fluttered outward as she made her revolutions. Still spinning around, she gave a word every time her whirling brought her around to face Selena. "A…wee…bit…confused, ye…would…be…! Becoming… dizzied…by…thy…travails…!" The girl kept whirling herself around and around, as she made her way towards the edge of the stage, where she stopped spinning…
And sat down, dropped down, her boot-covered legs dangling over the edge. She did not seem the least bit dizzy from her multiple gyrations, though her pretty hair now looked somewhat wild and astray. A playful toss of her head and a quick stroke of her delicate-looking, and her hair was away from her face again. She smiled and added, "Ye have yet to comprehend even thyself. A mere look would bring about leagues of clarity."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Selena, suddenly agitated. "I know full well what my physical appearance is! Now see here, young child…" She quickly got to her feet, hoping to use her height to show this silly little child some grown-up authority! "Playfulness is expected of children, and I am in no mood to be playful as things are becoming…" She stopped in mid-sentence.
Because now Selena realized that she herself was now no taller than the strange little girl. Looking down, the floor was not as far away as she expected, nor were her feet. Her own body was as slim and petitely proportioned as that of the green-eyed girl: though Selena herself still had on an outfit jeans and shirt, a leather jacket worn over. And her hair felt different atop her head: more filmy and light. To confirm her suspicions, she untucked some lengths of it from behind her right ear and let it dangle in front of her face: holding the ends of the strands in her fingertips. Her own hair had the very same moon-silk color as the strange little girl, as was everything else about her now, perhaps. Then again, Selena herself was not in a position to call anyone else "little."
"Aye," said the green-eyed girl softly. "Aye, indeed… 'Tis the creeping, temporary fear of self-realization." She slid off of the stage and sat down next to Selena on the floor, then reached to clasp both Selena's hands: before her words sounded in Selena's mind. Welcome again, Sister We be kin of the self-same Hill: which has been rendered contaminated by those of the Other world, echoed the other girl's voice in Selena's mind. 'Tis a geas that that ye be bound to versions of the land in which our Hill has been troubled: troubled by the color of Machines. Now our Hill shall be misused.
"Why me?" asked Selena aloud. She pursed her lips together and tried thinking the words as she stared into the other girl's eyes. Why me? I was but a novice in our religion. In fact, I was immune to being blessed. Others of the religion have betrayed us and seek to use it in summoning the Others: with their hordes of creatures in tow.
Why ask this of thee? The green-eyed girl smiled. 'Tis the responsibility of a queen-to-be in coming to the aid of her people's land. Or, would ye continue to be…used? Would ye prefer to be contaminated? The lights overhead flickered, and there was the sound of air nearby: storm winds. Sister, I do so very wish that ye retain this knowledge in thy return. Yet ye have a cause. The lights flickered again, and there was a blast of air as both of the café's bathroom doors opened: making both Selena's hair and the other girl's hair flutter about.
Reddish-brown pools of slime oozed out from both bathrooms as ropy, oily strands of black stretched out to covered the edges of both doorways. Ye have been found, Sister! 'Tis a binding, sucking summoning! We possess the power to open worlds: a power the Others seek to utilize. 'Tis why they call thy soul to a Machine-grown copy of thy former body: thy true body. Resist, my dear Sister! Ye must resist being contaminated and utilized…! The lights flickered and dimmed, and the wind from the open bathroom doors began to blow the other way, now sucking inward.
And Selena could not resist. The wind…began to pull her. She tried clinging to the other girl as the light flickered and the wind pulled her towards one of the open the doorways: the sounds of machines whirring in the darkness. Yet the grip did not hold, her small hands not having the strength of a full-grown person's. She found that if she concentrated enough, used her mind, she could resist the pull and try to stay here.
Yet it was not enough to stay in place. Selena lost her grip, and one of the open bathroom doors sucked her in. The other girl's face was a look of sudden loss and sadness as Selena was snatched away and into the oily warmth in the darkness. Those open doors, rectangles of light, were going far away. Then those doors slammed shut, leaving Selena to be consumed by the darkness here: floating her along.
…
2.
…
Some time later, any amount of time later, she was again continuing to float along in the warm darkness. It was not something to be particularly afraid of. Yet it was not anything to be enjoyed, either. There was nothing but the cloying warmth for her to float through, going along, drifting along… Nothing could disturb her here. For all the running and hiding she had done, this was what she had feared. Now she vaguely wondered why, as her thoughts and mind lazily along. For how long was she in this place? It was almost impossible to tell. Sometimes, she would hear echoes where the separation between here and there was thinner. There were sounds of ecstasy. She had also heard faint and distant sounds of fear, followed by pain. Things were just as they were.
Until now, that is. She began to feel something terrible and painful. Something was squee-e-ezing her, slowing her down! That squeezing feeling became painful. Blasts of lightning dazzled and deafened her, stunning her, when something up ahead was forcibly r-r-ripped open! She lost coherent thought for a moment, so overcome with pain as she was pulled through the ripped opening…
…
All things in this place served the Machine: the Machine that churned in the darkness of this world. The engines and parts of the Machine drew blood from the pipes and powerful electrical currents from the cables. Where the Machine drew its energy from, or the origin of the Machine itself, such knowledge was lost in the tens of thousands of years it had existed: not that anyone cared. None of the others here ever bothered to question the Machine as they toiled in gloom: the surfaces of everything here either crusted with rust or greasy with blood.
The Machine itself knew its purpose… It had a will of its own as its engines and blood-lubricated parts churned and hummed. The Machine was everywhere here, behind the walls, heard underneath floors and even invisible in the air. Indeed, parts of the Machine even stretched into other dimensions. And that was its strength. The Machine was everywhere here. And the Machine sought to be everywhere and every-when else as well. To facilitate obtaining some worlds, the Machine would need properly processed catalysts.
…
She was barely aware of herself now as she was pushed along and out into the hall. Engines thrummed and churned. Bald-headed muscular midgets worked levers as six-armed creatures turned valves. They worked in rooms of blood-colored light as a doorway was opened for her. Other doors, other worlds…
There it was again, the lightning and thunder, the r-r-r-ripping! She could hear and feel the fabric of reality itself being rent asunder violated: painfully stretched open to make a hole. Beyond this tearing was a hole: darker than the depths of the universe as smoke began to cover everything, everything becoming painfully blurred as it lost focus and coherence. It was into the hole that she was str-e-e-etched! She shrieked in pain as she was stretched painfully through the hole, into somewhere empty and wide-open. It was into this darkness that she fell, frightened and full of pain. It felt as if she was dying again…!
…
She stopped flowing and was at rest now. Now that she was fully here, she opened her eyes. There was pain, just so much pain that leaked through her blurred state of semi-consciousness that left her weak and dizzy… Everything hurt so much.
Some kind of doctor was standing over her: a vague and blurry figure in smeared white-and-gray tones under a spotlight from the darkness above. The doctor figure had shoulder-sized blurry lumps to the left and right of its large sphere-shaped white head. Her newly opened eyes seemed not able to work well, and she could not make out the doctor's face…if it was a face. Perhaps the doctor's face was best not seen with clear vision: a distorted parody of something once human, if it had ever been.
There was not much she could see other than the large-headed shape that was the doctor's head. Everything was so incredibly blurry. Even her thoughts were blurred and haphazard, leaving her unable to form words or see too clearly: or even have a proper sense of herself. Other than feeling weighed down now, no longer floating, there was nothing worth seeing through this haze of pain-blurred weak vision. She vaguely wondered, What are you doing to me? That was the last vaguely coherent thought she had as the lump-faced doctor-thing continued doing thing to her…
…
The girl lie on the large…hospital bed, lying atop a layer of rumpled red-silk sheets. Gray light from the window combined with the florescent lights overhead to cast harsh light on her. Though all else in this hospital room was the crisp and white-colored, the bed-sheets were red silk: sensuous and soft. So there she lie, her skin as pale as the ankle-length white gown she was dressed in, her silken moon-colored hair splayed about. The pale child seemed so small and frail that it seemed, without the tube of liquid going into her neck, she would be dead. Or so it seemed.
There was an intake of breath, followed by a sigh. She opened her large green eyes and sat up, looked around as she heard the sound of wheels moving. Something was pushed along, pushed closer… It was a large mirror on wheels, brought over to the left side of this bed. The mirror came to a stop, and she saw someone in the reflection staring back at her.
The person in the reflection looked back with two staring big green. The eyes were not light brown, not deceptively dark blue, but green. She brought her fingers to her pale cheeks, her delicate chin, even fingered a few soft strands of her hair. The strange girl in the reflection was doing the same thing at the same time, gently touching parts of her face before touching her hair. Then, very carefully, the girl fingered the tight band of red material around her neck, which held a tube of liquid connected to an artery to her neck. That little girl in the mirror… So it wasn't a dream. The Others had actually gotten her and changed her.
Squeezing her eyes shut, opening her mouth, Selena began to shriek! The high-pitched sound filled the room with a knife-sharp sound that was a wailing siren of pain and energy. Ceiling tiles began to vibrate, the bed began to quiver, and the mirror began to take on hair-line cracks. The shriek went on to continue shaking everything: making for the beginnings of a small earthquake.
The muscular midgets: bare-footed and dressed in red in coveralls: ran away from the mirror they had pushed next to the bed. Dark oily fluid was now leaking from their ears and noses as they ran with their hands over their ear-holes. They scampered over to the large air-vent at floor-level: ducking into there. The last one in there closed the grate behind himself.
Selena stopped screaming. She slowly unclenched her eyelids and looked at her new self in the now-damaged mirror: a thin little pale girl in gown and wrapped in red-silk sheets. Then there was the tube of dark liquid going into her neck. It was connected to something in the ceiling, hidden by the ceiling tiles. She absently fingered the encircling band of material around her neck as she regarded the thin tube connected to her, wondering what they were putting into her body and where it came from. She had the idea that there was machinery somewhere else keeping the flow going. The smooth slender tube was connected through the ceiling tiles, beyond the ceiling…
…
3.
…
Looking up at the ruined ceiling, he doubted that God could help him now. Or maybe this was the doing of God: or someone else's "god." He had heard about what happened to that other town. Now it was happening here, all of that pagan religious crap about the "Descent" and "Judgment." That was when things were supposed to happen and everything… It was not worth following that train of though. Nothing was worth doing now, not even bothering to contemplate what the Hell was going on here.
This is all too much screwed-up crap for me to understand, thought this former police chief as he sat in a hard, crusty wooden chair. Or it had been a wooden chair: just as he had been head of this police department. If this place was still in the police department. This big room looked as if it had been taken somewhere else, with stuff from the outside infecting everything.
Now this chair was encased in a crusty, greasy layer of something dry and nasty. The once-smooth tiled floor it rested on was covered with the same disgusting dried-up reddish stuff. This same nasty stuff made the school-style little desks stick to the floor: covered the floor, covered the furniture. Above, the crustiness was somewhat thinner and did not completely block out the light from the light-fixtures. The lights somehow still worked. But the crusty reddish substance covered the doors out. The doorknob had long since fallen off, its base eaten away and sealed off: sealed shut.
This was once a briefing room in the police station: eighteen mini-desks arranged in the center of the room, with a podium and chalkboard at one end, four square walls with no windows. Windows would have compromised the security of this police station: In a time of emergency or civil unrest, windows would have been a means for dangerous winds or bullets to come in. Windows also would have been an easy way for camera-using criminals to spy in on police briefings. Now criminals were far from being a worry. At the least, windows would have let him see outside.
He slowly looked over to where a nice set of windows would have been… Never mind, that was stupid. The windows would have become just as ruined and infected as everything else here. Everything was contaminated: the floor, the walls, the mini-desks… Windows would probably have been the first things to have become contaminated: the stuff eating its way through insulation at the window edges and speeding the infection of this place.
What the Hell was all this, anyway? Was it alive? It looked like someone or something had covered everything with dried mozzarella cheese mixed with a lot of ground pepper. That, or the "dried molten cheese" was really blood and rust mixed with motor oil… It was darkish in tone, while cheese was more a yellow color. Or it could just be the kind of paint used by paranoid people to keep brain-control radio waves from leaking into their houses; it beat trying to wear tin-foil caps! Whatever it was, it was nasty to look at for too long.
Too long… He knew that sitting in this chair for too long was not a damned good idea. He could already feel bits of the rusty, crusty stuff working its way into the seat of his pants and prickling into the skin of his butt He shifted his feet every minute or so to keep his shoes from sticking. Or maybe it was every few seconds, not really every minute. He glanced at his digital watch: which now displayed gibberish: The LCD display had long since gone distorted, exposed to radiation or something.
"Chief, will you please stop looking at your watch!" expressed Kathy, her pinned-up dark brown hair becoming undone. She was one of the forensics lab-scientists. Now, she had long since tossed her long lab-coat: revealing the sort of knee-skirt-and-buttoned-blouse outfit worn by secretaries. Her skirt clung in such a way that it outlined the strong shapes of thighs and butt. She had also unbuttoned her blouse unsettlingly low, not seeming to be wearing anything underneath.
The sinews of her sweat-slicked neck stood out when she wailed a complaint. "My God! Will you stop looking at that thing! Your watch has stopped working since forever! You just keep looking and looking at it as if time still matters…or like you're waiting for some square-jawed, six-foot man with a red cape and plucky attitude to come to the rescue.. Well guess what? If that sort of man did come, he'd probably come here to kill us instead of help us! And if you think Animal Control can help, guess what? They're probably long-gone by now: getting into their white van and zooming far away from this town!"
Ah, Kathy… How could he forget? She was here, too. To think that he fantasized about her and her girlfriends in very pleasing situations. Now he hated her almost as badly as he hated himself. Looking at the floor, he muttered something dark. Hell, he wasn't the "chief" of anything now! "Why don't you shut up about her…. Judy wasn't interested in you, not even interested in women. She wouldn't have ever come to like you. Besides, at least she's not here anymore. Maybe they took her to where all that noise is coming from and… Oomph!"
Kathy had angrily hopped atop the former police chief's lap and had wrapped her long athletic legs around his waist: beginning to squeeze. Her skirt had hiked up, exposing the taut musculature of her sweat-sheened thighs as she continued to bodily grip the chief with the strength of her lower body. There was a wild sort of look in her eyes as she did this: her teeth bared in a mad grin. As the former police chief gasped and grunted in pain, Kathy's grunts were ones of strength and strain.
He let his thick arms hang, the inner sides of his arms touching her bare knees but not bothering to do anything about anything anymore. His vision was covered over with floating sparkles of pain as his peripheral vision was bordered by darkness. Hell, why bother? He was thinking about ways to do himself in, anyway: to give up and die. Maybe he could have chipped off a sliver of that rust-stuff and cut his own wrists. Or he could have tried to do a handstand and let himself fall on his own neck. But suicide that would have taken effort. Heh, at least now he wasn't doing all the work. This wasn't such a bad way to go anyway: squeezed to death by the legs of a beautiful woman. It even felt…a little…good… So his weak thoughts drifted along as the sounds of her grunting seemed to fade off, mixed with other sounds. Vague thoughts went towards his ex-wife. Out there, she was probably dead: a victim of the contamination that probably took over the entire town by now. Or he was as good as dead by being trapped here. It just didn't matter anymore. Either way, any way, it was all over. Just let Kathy's wonderful legs squeeze as so he would…sink into unconsciousness and death. And then his dead body would slump in this chair right here like this as a rumbling sound beginning to fill his head…
It was a somewhat familiar rumble-roaring sort of sound coming in this direction. Or it could just be that everyone thought the sound familiar at some subconscious level: having heard it before. It was like the sound of a thousand car-engines. Maybe it was more like the deep baritone thrumming of industrial equipment within buildings? That sound then brought to mind the kind of muffled noise made by steam boiler-rooms… Whatever the sound was, above all else, it was undoubtedly the sound of engines and other Machinery again. It was getting louder: letting in more of the sound. Someone was coming to get him: though they would be too late. Yes, it would all be over…
Then the pressure of Kathy's thighs lessened and…relief came. "….Un-n-nggh!" she groaned, giving up. "Damn it! Why the Hell aren't you dead yet!" she yelled, giving a final squeeze with her legs. She balled one of her fine-boned hands into a hard fist and thwacked him across the forehead. "I must have been squeezing you for at least an hour! Just like a man: expecting me to do all the work while you just sit there and make nothing happen!" Thwack! "You make me…sick! Just…forget it!" She kicked a leg over his head, sat sideways on his lap, then got herself off of him: to stagger away.
It was over there by the crusted-up podium that she suddenly fell to her knees, on the nasty floor and supported the weight of her upper body with her left hand. Her right hand was over her throat as trickles of something began to come from her gaping mouth. The dark wet drips of saliva… That was not just saliva. Something was wrong with her.
Still groggy, the former police chief leaned forward to try and get a better view: seeing Kathy bent over and gagging. The heaviness in the air and the anemic, rotten-colored light from the grimy light fixtures only made him feel worse as he saw her reacting to whatever was making her sick. Please don't, he thought. Because if you do, I'll probably do the same. He did not even have strength enough to give voice to his thoughts.
Too late! Here we go! "Hup-p…! " she gagged, choking on something coming the wrong way through her esophagus. "Hup-hup… Hw-w-eap-p-ph…!" Now came the sound of chunky, wet vomit muffling the sound from her mouth: coming up through her esophagus and out her gaping mouth. The dark nasty stuff splashed to the already nasty floor: not that it made much difference in terms of cleanliness. Now there was a circular-shaped puddle of something lumpy and oily. Oily was the adjective because whatever it was that came up from within Kathy's body was something more befitting something out of a fuel tanker than from within a human being.
She staggered to her feet. Now her eyes were different, very different. They were red. Really, the they were completely red: the corneas and irises having taken on the same color. It was as if her organs of sight had become replaced with ruby balls stuck in her eye-sockets. As fear mixed with nausea, the former police chief wondered if Kathy could still see. Or maybe that wasn't Kathy anymore. Maybe the contamination had finally overcome her.
"What are you staring at, worthless bastard?" she sneered, her odd blood-colored eyes seeming to see everything here all at the same time. That was a good question; what was he staring at? Those eyes just weren't damned human anymore. "You act as if you've never seen someone vomit before! If I can't kill you, I suppose I'll do what I can to make a gentleman out of you. You must be disciplined." Hips swaying, she began stepping back over here. A woman like her would have been provocatively, seductively attractive under other circumstances. But now it was unnerving: given her appearance and the fact that she was thoroughly contaminated.
Thwack! The former police chief's head lolled from Kathy's back-handed slap. He didn't feel any worse from the blow, though. He did not feel any better either: of course. Thwack! Ooh! That was a big one: right on the temple! Thwack… Amazing, he was still alive and relatively clear-headed. The fact that he was able to remain conscious despite the damage inflicted on his body could only mean that the contamination had done something tohis physiology. Thwack-k-k…! Another nasty idea struck with six times the strength of one of Kathy's back-hands: Maybe he couldn't die here. Or maybe… Thwack!
Following the sound of another few back-handed blows landing on his own head, he heard a burst of that rumbling again: the sound that filled his head when Kathy had tried squeezing him to death with her legs. Even as Kathy continued to slap him, he was well aware of that sound coming. Chunk-clunk! There were then squeak-squeak-squeaking sounds as something rusty was being turned…turned…turned. Thwack! "They're…coming for me," he rasped. Squee… Squee… Squee…!
"So what! Until they get here, shut your hole and concentrate on feeling the pain!" snarled Kathy, winding up for another back-hand blow to put across the former police chief's face. And she continued to slap and slap and slap while the rusted-over door over there was retracted upward, being pulled upward by the rotation of hand-operated gears attached to a rusty wheel. Squee… Squee… Squee…
When it was open enough, that someone…or something walked into this room on brown-shod feet. Or maybe those were its feet: hooves that so happened to grow in the shape of shoes. The rest of the man-thing was generally human-shaped, dressed in leathery pants-things over its legs and a grimy white coat over its upper body. His: or its: head was covered over with a smooth black semi-sphere: like the top of a ship's radar dome painted with black lacquer. And the helmet was the only thing clean about the thing as it clomped its way into this room: pushing a wheeled stretcher.
It was the same nasty looking stretcher that was used to take the other forensics woman away. And from the looks of it, that thing was used to take many a contaminated person away. It was so well-used that there was a human-shaped blotch of dark grime on the cloth. The former police chief wondered how many people were transported on that damned thing…over how many hundreds of years.
Kathy put her hands on her skirt-covered hips. "Oh, yes… Now you're going for a ride, chief! And at the end of that ride, they're going to dump you into the Machinery. I just know it!" The shiny headed man-thing reached over and grabbed the former police chief under his armpits: lifting him up out of the seat and tearing away the seat of his pants: which really was stuck to the seat. Some of his skin seemed to have been pulled away as well.
How embarrassing, the seat of his pants and boxer shorts ripped away… It didn't matter now. Nothing did. He just let the big ugly bastard dump him atop the cart. "Yes," gloated Kathy, "you're going to be fully conscious as you're ground to the consistency of red-colored tapioca pudding. Then you'll be mixed up with everyone else that ended up here! They did that to her, now they're going to do the same to you! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…!"
Huh-huh-huh-huh… The former police chief thought he heard the man-thing echoing Kathy's mad laughter, though the man-thing's own mirth seemed muffled by the armored metal helmet bolted over its shoulders and head. He felt this stretcher beginning to move towards the door and wheeled out of that ruined briefing room: into a hallway that looked nothing like any hall of the police station he knew. He wondered where this place was as the helmet-headed man-thing continued to wheel him along, pushing him through this hall resonating with the sound of the Machinery.
…
4.
…
There were three massive-bodied figures standing at the front entrance to the café: standing eight feet tall and at least six feet across. All of them were dressed in burgundy-colored jumpsuits: the jumpsuits custom-made to fit their massive bodies. Their feet and ankles were encased in thick metal contraptions that vaguely resembled boots: metal electromechanical boots to support their massive weight. These beings in jumpsuits more resembled small mountains of strength and muscle in big jumpsuits. And the fact that they had metal helmets and metal face-masks surgically grafted to their heads hid their heads and faces: if they had faces underneath there.
All three of them were equipped with various types of massive equipment: each piece of equipment easily the size of an average human being in itself. They were connected to the equipment by electrical cables stretching from their lower backs. One of the massive figures had a six-foot drill motorized with a chunky red diamond at the end. The second figure had a similarly sized piece of massive equipment, except the end was fitted with two wicked-looking circular blades. The third was equipped with a black-chiseled jackhammer that looked suitable to single-handedly obliterating a nine-story building.
These figures were deconstruction workers: summoned to handle an especially annoying project. If they were not needed, then they would not have been brought here. The deconstruction workers were only summoned to tackle huge annoyances such as sealed doors or other barriers to progress. They worked for the Machine. Anything that stood in the way of the Machine stood in the way of that progress. So these three massive beings set to work with that mighty equipment of theirs, the sound of their massive equipment quaking the street and filling the air with sounds of chaos and obliteration. The cables connecting their backs to their equipment began to glow red as sparks flew out from the tips of their tools.
They kept this up for at least an hour. Then they kept going, quaking and thrumming with their deconstruction equipment. As the cursably bright sun rose to try and burn away the fog surrounding these three, they continued to drill and cut and work at the café door. The sounds of their mighty machinery had shaken the street for this long. Yet, the café door remained untouched: as if its hardness was built and stuck in another dimension.
One of the mountainous beings snarled, gray smoke curling from the grille of his electromechanical face-mask. Despite their efforts, the door to the café…would not open. Such annoyance! He took up his mighty. red-cased jackhammer: the thing the weight of a small car: and thrust the chisel-bit against the edge of the café's stainless steel door. His right arm cradled the weight of the thing while his six-fingered left hand was out and back, squeezed one of the jackhammer's triggers!
This made for a resumption of the chaotic sound. The insane chaos of the noise was enough to even blur the air. Even so, the deconstruction worker kept at the door as his massive body of insane musculature held the big red jackhammer to the door: metal-shod feet holding to the sidewalk and transferring some of the vibration. Small cracks appeared in that sidewalk, sparks began to fly out from the thunderous vibrating contact between the chisel-tip of the massive jackhammer and the door itself.
The deconstruction worker stopped. Inhaling and exhaling, smoke coming from the metal face-mask as well as from the man-sized jackhammer, it tilted back its metal-masked head. Out came a sheer grow-w-wl worthy of an ancient lizard. Clearly, they were frustrated. While they had expended their effort and energy, their great and massive strength, the glass-and-steel café door remained closed tight.
A siren sounded in the distance as a cloud of smoke wafted down the street and coming in this direction. Swoo-osh…clank-k-k! The deconstruction worker with the powered buzz saws slammed the edge of his tool against the café door once more. What was this door, able to withstand even a half-day of effort! "A-a-argh…! Roo goo don-yondler," snarled the one with the jackhammer, making the one with the buzz-saws bow its metal-masked head. Other lands, other worlds…
When the cloud of gray smoke was finally nearby, these three massive figures began to clomp over towards it. They vanished into that smoke. There were other places where their efforts were needed: other lands, other worlds. One sealed café door was not worth the energy.
…
Some time later, a long black limousine drove along this same street and parked in front of the very same café: with the same door. One of the thin male chauffeurs got out of the front of the vehicle. He was dressed in black suit and hat that made his pasty skin seem even more sickly. Getting around to the rear right-side door, he used his left hand: gnarled with wrinkles and lumps: to open the door. Out climbed a tall, thin woman dressed in a long gray labcoat: a skirt and blouse worn underneath. Other than the fact that her labcoat was gray, she seemed much like any other doctor.
Another chauffeur opened the rearmost left-side passenger seat. Out climbed Samuel Longhorn: dressed in red jacket, dark shirt and slacks. His hard black shoes made clomping sounds as he walked around the limousine to stand by the doctor. He crossed his arms, leaned back against the limousine itself as he regarded the sealed-off café door. The doctor was also regarding the door, standing close to it with her hands on her hips. "Well, Dr. Montaigne…!" he said. "It is more than obvious that her power is needed for the full acquisition of this land. I have summoned three massively powerful workers from the place of origin. Even they and all their who-knows-how-many centuries of experience was not enough to break through. Only she can unseal this door."
Dr. Montaigne turned to face Samuel. "But she's not fully coalesced yet! Her transition was only part of the process, as I have told you before. We are doing what we can…but only what we can. Her physiology is just so unlike anything much of my medical staff has ever seen in their careers: She only looks human. Beyond her skin, beyond her skeleton, everything is different. We don't really know anything about her other than what little information we could get from the Deniers. If we make one false assumption about her condition, one mistake, she would die and we would have to wait years before we have another chance! If they give us another chance."
"A correction, doctor," said Samuel. "Her body would die, not her… And that would only be for a time. All that is required is that they pump some more of that oh-so-wonderful stuff into her and she will be up and ready again."
"That's not how they see things," said Dr. Montaigne. She shook her head, and a stray breeze played with strands of her dark brown hair, flapping the hem of her gray labcoat. "My God…! They think of us as pathetic, stupid incompetents. They didn't even trust us enough to give her a sponge bath without at least two of them watching from the ceiling. And you should have seen them when we started taking the I.V. out of her neck! Their heads started vibrating like mad, and they nearly killed Dr. Kaufman's brother! We do what we can to understand them half the time even though they don't even communicate the same way we do. Then there is the question of her state of mind."
"It is worthy of interest, how you should bring up the issue of 'state,'" began Samuel Longhorn. He stood up straight and took a slow walk over to the front door of the sealed café. "In political science, the term 'state' denotes a sovereign power with absolute authority over its people within a territory, a set amount of land." He pointed to the sidewalk. "This town, as well as part of that other town, is my land…from which I will draw power. You are on…my land. This accursed café is on my land. Yet this building remains unconverted: an isolated space that is immune to influence. Without the power of the catalyst, such isolated and haphazard bits of territory will remain unconverted. I will not wait for too long. And her 'state-of-mind' should not matter. She is but a means to an end."
"Is that how you see women?" asked Dr. Montaigne. "As just things to be used? Mr. Longhorn, you may be quite a sizable man in terms of wealth and power acquisition, but you are encroaching into realms within which your knowledge is lacking!" She put a finger to the right side of her head. "Think about it! Thi-i-i-ink! Her mind is her most important resource, an almost unbelievably powerful resource." She lowered her hand, then reached out as if holding something. "This resource must be handled with care. Like computer technology or nuclear energy. And like those things, if she is the least bit unstable, the consequences…" She suddenly outspread her hands. "The consequences could really be apocalyptic.
"Imagine if the nature of reality was like a sheet of paper. To us, it is clean and clear. Ideas can be written on this paper. Or things can be drawn on it. Everything can be done in black and white. And things are already written on it. Now imagine what should happen if bits of that paper should be torn or crimped. Then imagine water or mold working its way into parts of the paper and making it soggy in places. Essentially, the paper becomes terrible with mold and rot.
"Things become less coherent. That which was once clear becomes unclear. The ink becomes smeared, and things jumble together. This, while entire chunks of the surface fall away: softened by mold, rot, and other aspects of decomposition. Entire chunks of paper, entire pieces, are simply obliterated…just like that. Who knows where it would go? Whatever the case, those chunks would be gone.
"With the assistance of devices they've given you, you have already turned the sheet of paper and made tiny changes in it. A deletion here, a revision there. She, however, is many times more powerful than what you call engines. With the hands of her mind, she could summon forces to facilitate the distortion of our reality: entire swaths of our reality. Minor changes in some places would not matter terribly much. Worse yet, the right twist of her mind at the wrong time could be the end of this entire town. Much as a madman at a computer console could activate world-destroying weapons, she could bring about something just as awful: or worse. And extrapolating from the data we've gathered so far, it would be worse: worse than nuclear weapons. Very much worse."
Worse than nuclear weapons… Samuel looked up at the clouded sky above. Then he looked downward, at the cracks in the sidewalk that radiated outward from the entrance to the café: as if the weight of the building was pressing into the pavement itself and distorting the hard surfaces. He returned his gaze to the doctor. "Dr. Montaigne, unlike many others of my social status, I am not a stupid man. 'A fool and his money are soon parted,' as the saying goes. I have understood what you have said. Though it burns me to consider the prolonged consequences of not having the catalyst to go with my engines, you have made me aware of not being patient. However, the very moment that she is coherent, even vaguely usable, I want her delivered to my mansion. Miss Gauche is my head servant and manager of the house staff, among other things. She will go by the hospital to take her when such a time comes."
"Thank you, Mr. Longhorn," responded Dr. Montaigne. "We all want power. But we do not want power with so much impatience that Pleasant River becomes a repeat of Silent Hill. Such incoherence and madness there… Perhaps if my senior colleagues had been more prudent in their actions with Dahlia, things would not have turned out so unpleasantly."
"Ah, but now I have opportunity where others have lost it!" exclaimed Samuel. He turned to give one last kickat the glass-and-steel door of the café. Of course, there was no damage at all. It was like kicking the side of a granite-and-steel tomb: stone-solid. "Now we shall return to our respective places of business…" He gestured towards the limousine. "By your lead, madam."