Frames Of Reference- Chapter 26
~nsequeira119
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I can’t remember the last time I ate of my own volition.
I only recall the presence of the light hands serving me some form
of nourishment from a ceramic bowl, my lips invariably refusing to
let any substance pass, my throat only swallowing the stuff down
when choking is the alternative. Still the hands persist, because
they’re hers and she refuses to let me die. I don’t think
he’s checked into her shifts at the ER lately. She’s going to
get fired, no doubt.
During the course of this accursed interim, the truth invariably
wills out, in fragments and drops- not out of any moral obligation,
but rather as a kind of paranoid reflex. I tell her all as she sits
next to me reading, consuming snacks every now and again, leaving
the crumbs on the mattress pad to wash out later. Twice each day,
she guides me towards the bathroom and waits outside as I wallow in
heavy visions which consist of abstract shapes for the most part.
I tell her about the lab, about Nil, about the structure of my
payment, about the one-month limit and how I failed because Nil
erased the tape. I tell her about the vision I had while
blindfolded, about the looming sense of danger and the weird
programs on Nathan’s computer. To relay all this information to
her requires a couple of days.
I even tell her about Eddie, in my fugue. I mumble incoherently,
she turns me over onto my back and I study the patterns of paint on
the ceiling with my glazed view, and I recall the night we tipped
over, the night I tried hickory for the first time, and especially
how Nadene kissed me and there was nothing I could particularly do
to stop it before it happened. She seems hesitant to accept certain
details as true, seems captivated by others, and is also visibly
bored at certain points. I feel a gnawing pang of cowardice- I’m
telling her these things only so that the blackmail won’t work,
not because it’s the right thing to do.
Or I’m telling her it because reality as we know it is shifting,
moving like a prodded mass, its entropic descent has been initiated
and there’s nothing to suggest that it won’t take effect out
here. I may as well air my dirty laundry to the only person who’s
ever given me the benefit of the doubt before objects begin
levitating globally and people’s faces melt into amorphous blobs.
A long time ago, I read a story about a dead earth where the
sun’s energy had been depleted and the last remnants of the human
race all gathered together in a massive pyramid and awaited the end
of days, while the world became the domain of monsters and night.
And I seem to recall a certain detail of that sprawling mythopoeia,
in that at the end of time, long after the pyramid had been laid to
ruin and the chaos had enveloped all men, that all lovers would
somehow find each other between the waning stars as the cold
nothing set in. Or something generally insipid of that variety.
I don’t know why it is that she only reads mysteries or adult
contemporary works, what draws her to those stuffy armchairs with
their leather padding and tobacco smoke. I suppose it never really
occurred to me, what sort of psyche would crave such a genre.
There’s comfort in readily available answers, reassurance in that
all questions will be resolved and all culprits apprehended, all
answers tied into a neat little bow. It’s a form of wish
fulfillment and indulgence, and I can’t fault her for that,
because her life has never been one with any exit signs in sight.
And I- well, I pursued those signs as best as I could, followed
every single one, around every corner. I assumed that this was
autonomic and normal, that I would find myself amid a lush alpine
meadow where the snow never melted and the flowers grew from my
form like buttons, but the simple reality is that there are no
meadows here, and the labyrinthine tunnels have only led me further
below the surface of the world, toward a massive smoke-filled
chamber attended by a silent hooded figure.
The figure leads me into the box, places a warm hand on my back-
I’m ragged and disheveled from the volcanic smoke. They strap me
in such that I’m suspended upside down on a kind of board, and a
large steel needle begins its arduous descent from the ceiling of
the chamber. It takes several hours to make contact with my thigh,
at which point I realize how the mechanism is designed to shove the
needle through me, between my legs, ending with my head, and that
I’ll remain conscious throughout.
I scream for the figure to release me, to let me go, hammer on the
glass with what little remains of my strength, but they stand
vigilant with a soft light beneath their shroud and a firm stance.
Then the needle passes the boundary of my flesh, I am rendered-
And then I rouse from the sleep that has typified my being for the
last month, sweat pooling on the blankets, and I’m crying and
she’s got her arms around me, but no matter how much I feel and
see her, I can’t stop. I grasp and clutch and double over, and
she says nothing, just presses her cheek against mine and pulls me
close where the inner dialogues are stored on whisper-thin mosquito
ribbons and the fairies bounce from petal to petal.
The month is out.
From the living room downstairs, the TV roars with some
well-dressed news anchor relaying the harrowing events of the
evening.
St. Louis is burning, in an event which will come to be known as
the Inexplicable Onset. The city has been completely decimated by
the impact of a strange vessel which materialized from nothing
roughly fifteen thousand feet above the ground, a massive metallic
craft seemingly populated by human entities, though the wreckage
has been combed over by numerous state agencies and nothing can be
said for certain. It ostensibly seems to be some sort of freighter.
The waves from the impact have ruined the land for a hundred-mile
radius.
“You told me about that,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I state. “Yes, I did.”

“Wake up,” she pulls at my hair. “Fuck’s sake, Jerry. Wake
up. There’s someone here.”
Her words come from beyond the pale crescent, distant and
meandering, but there’s a certainty and a solidity in them which
jogs my consciousness and makes me as alert as I can be given the
circumstances. How one’s senses tend to sharpen when in a state
of limbo. I crane my neck, and detect a weird clicking noise from
the hallway. The clock has fallen from its nail and lies broken on
the carpet.
“Go see.”
“You’ll come with me, Shell,” I mumble. “Come with me and
we’ll go together. But we’re not going down without a fight.
Yes, man, we go out fighting or we don’t. Along now for the
journey. Once more for the sake of things.”
“Oh, shit-” she gasps as she lowers her feet over the edge of
the mattress.
“Whatsa matter?”
“Come look at this.” I join her at her position, and indeed her
alarm is justified- for there, nibbling at her toes with their
little symmetrical mouth protrusions, are a dozen or so large
beetles. Each one is well-fed, inordinately so, smooth and shiny in
the moonlight, they dart around each other and crawl on their six
legs in an instinctive dance. She jerks her legs back up, but I
lower mine and hold her close to me and we both avoid the things as
best we can.
What hits me first as I rise to my feet in who knows how many days,
is the sensation of hunger, the weakness which has possessed my
atrophied muscles. She keeps me steady, holds me around the waist
and I peek out beyond the door.
A menagerie, all shapes and sizes, little ones and massive ones,
all chawing on the strands of the shag and trying to climb the
walls, some of them getting pretty far with the padding of their
feet. Sheila stands firm despite the awful realization that our
home is no longer our home, that this will be how things are going
forward.
There’s something else, too. A greenish, sickly light from
downstairs, as if that floor has become a hive...
“Stay here,” I motion, and she cowers back against the wall,
taking special care not to step in the wrong places. I steady
myself, really gather up all my strength for the big push. I take
in some air, it’s stale and cryptic. The green light flashes
three times, the acrid stench of sulphur from down below. I grip
the handrail, pause, clatter down a few feet. My vision becomes
more warped the further I go.
The living room is deathly quiet, all the pillows are arranged
correctly and the shadows of the trees outside drift like spectres.
There’s no apparent source to the light, it flickers and
rescinds, and it permeates every object without any specific
pattern. One second, it’s in a vase, and the next the whole
ceiling is a translucent verde, bathing all in its ambivalent
quality. It would be so normal if not for the hundreds of insects
which have infested the property, invading what had heretofore been
sacrosanct, defiling with thoraxes.
And then, after maybe two minutes of dead silence, with only me and
the weird illuminative property for company, the ultimate shock
takes place- a shock akin to the rending of the spinal cord itself,
as if the long trail were wrenched from my back and I were flayed
with it, a horrible action so instant and sudden and present that
it dwarfs all previous sensation by an exponential factor.
Eydrich bursts flailing from the glass doors on the far end of the
room, trenchcoat in tow, face thoroughly obscured by glasses and a
bandana, weiding a finely honed dagger which he whisks from his
belt and promptly raises to meet me before I can hope to react.
“Choo choo, friend.”
He piledrives me, running at full speed, glass shards blanketing us
as we cascade onto the floor and destroy a few of his associates in
the process. His weight is suffocating and his leering form is
difficult to stave off, but through some tremendous act of will, I
manage to raise my hand and still his arm before it can strike. The
dagger is some sort of glittering thing, encrusted with what
appears to be cubic zirconium. The blade is steel. How Verwus
acquired such a thing, I’ll never know.
“Get off me,” I spit. “Go- fuck’s sake, Sheila’s
upstairs, calling the police-” it’s a nice ruse, but he’s not
falling for any bluffs tonight. He wants my head.
“Mister doctor man,” he shrieks in mock pity. “Oh, mister
doctor, lookit that, you’ll have to go inta the clinic tomorrow,
fix them wounds. Gonna have a might nasty one when I’m finished.
Lookit you, all ready for action. Where you going? Whatsa hurry?”
“If this is about those photos,” I pant, “They’re fake.
Doctored. Whoever showed them to you- I never fooled with Nadene,
Eddie. Honest.”
“I oughta sprawl your guts out here,” he hisses. “Right
fuckin’ here, the nerve. Why, you come from way out- stranger
from past the borderland- and you say I oughta mind my manners when
ya can’t mind your own. You’re no better than I, we all live on
the great circle, wheels inside wheels- ouroboros, all that shit.
And I think what you really mind is, me impeding on your solace,
precious solace here in castle keep. You’re in for a surprise
now.”
“I don’t want a surprise, Eddie. Please-”
“ALL ABOARD!”
He mounts me again, attempts to secure the upper hand, and just as
my vision is obscured by the fringe of his cloak,. My hand shoots
out to the right and latches onto a small object. A shard of glass
from the broken entrance. As my fingers encircle it, its sharp edge
carves a channel into my knuckles. Not that I care. I’m going to
inflict a lot more pain momentarily.
I scream loudly in the frenzied onslaught of beetles, they rain
from his stringy hair and they drop from his velvet cap, they
scurry around my torso as I use my remaining leverage to gain the
upper hand and throw all my weight onto Eddie. His bandana slips
off, revealing sweaty lips and a grimace of carnal hatred. His
teeth are stark white, paralleling in equal measure the dagger with
which he intends to skewer me.
I lift the shard, grasping onto the dull end, and raise it up over
his face. He’s coming to recognize the weight of the situation,
how even in my weakened state he poses no serious threat. His coke
bottle lenses fog up, I pin his wrist and he turns numb.
Just as I’m about to drive the shard into his skull, however, or
at the very least make him believe such a thing is going to happen,
Nadene arrives, tumbling down the staircase onto us both. Knocking
the shard from my grip.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Sheila shrieks. “Both of you!”
She sounds injured.
“You heard her,” Nad warbles. “Let’s blow. Eddie, he
didn’t mean nothin’ to me. Honest.”
Eddie somehow regains his dominant position through this
confrontation, and I curse Nadene for her interference- one more
moment and I would have put the pestilence out of its prolonged
misery with vitriol and justice. As it is he holds my wrist behind
my back and the dagger to my neck, and Nad sits calmly on the rug
as if this were another day in the life. In all honesty, it
probably is.
“Fuckin’ bitch,” Eddie drawls. “Just like you. Din’t know
ya followed me here.”
I look closer at Nad- she sports a prominent black eye.
“Did you hit her?” I ask.
“You keep outa this.”
“He did!” Nad laughs, picking up a smaller green beetle. “He
does it alla time, you just don’t know about it, Jerry, ‘cause
you’re too busy with your- uh- sciences. Too busy to take note of
me getting hit by this wretch.”
“You learn some fuckin’ respect!” he bellows, removing the
dagger momentarily from my neck and aiming it square towards her
clavicle. She remains steadfast, undeterred, a steely glint in her
eye. I remain motionless, waiting for an opportune point in the
dialogue to act. Eddie is hot- his temper is short and his fuse is
going to be blown any second now. When you lose control, you lose
the fight.
I keep Eddie’s eyes fixed on me because Nadene is slowly nearing
the fireplace. I’m not sure what exactly her game plan is, but I
have a hunch.
“We’ve been through a lot, Eddie,” I snarl through gritted
teeth. “You sure this is how you want to end it?”
“Shut up!” he howls. “SHUT THE HELL... UP!”
Without considering that the position would leave him vulnerable,
he pinches my flaccid skin and pulls us both onto our backs such
that we’re staring up at the ceiling. He then swivels my
shoulders to face him and begins laughing hysterically at nothing
in particular, cackling like a scrappy hyena as he draws the edge
of the blade ever closer to my rubbery epidermis and his hands claw
into my back and I realize once again how uneven and splayed his
teeth are, like those of a manic weasel-
And then, just as the dagger makes contact and I notice a sharp
twinge of pain, and close my eyes and prepare for the end, Eddie
makes a strange coughing noise, the arm holding the knife starts to
twitch uncontrollably, and a thin string of saliva drips from his
mouth. His restraint on me loosens considerably.
Nadene stands towering above him, using what little remains of the
power in her hickory-dampened muscles to drive the poker from the
fire through his left sternum. It’s longer than the dagger- two
feet or so- and chiseled to a very sharp point. I have no doubts
that his heart has been ruptured, he begins foaming at the mouth
and from the wound there erupts a geyser of lymph and a bubbling
red mass.
“You don’t see it,” he chokes, holding onto me as he goes
down. “It’s beautiful...”
I stagger to my feet, hold my fingers over the considerably small
quarter length gash in my neck, join Sheila where she’s at on the
stairs, witnessing the entire sequence of events and shaking her
head as if that’ll render them null. I pat her and lean against
her, as if to reassure her that yes, she has just seen a man
vivisectioned, and no, it’s not a pretty sight, but it’s really
no worse than any surgery.
Nadene wipes her nose and kicks Eddie’s corpse onto its back such
that his leering fish eyes are staring up at nothing in particular,
and the beetles begin swarming the body of their fallen comrade,
crawling up the sleeves of his cloak, up onto his chest to feed on
the vitreous material. In weeks they’ll hatch their larvae in
there, feast upon the remains of their wonderful benefactor, and
the circle will begin anew. It is, I think, a fitting conclusion to
the life of such a renegade.
As the sentience leaves his frail husk, the green light fades and
the entire room returns to its usual nighttime hue.
“It’s like the whole world gone crazy,” Nad cries into
Sheila’s bosom. Sheila says nothing, just hugs her and rocks back
and forth. I cross over to the east window which faces the road,
and look out in the general direction of Pueblo.
While the light pollution is generally a vibrant yellow, tonight
there’s a faint crescent of fuschia glowing past the break of the
hill. An unmistakable shade, the same color as the hailstones and
the bursts of lightning in my brain and even the pus which now
drops in little streams from either side of my forehead. This
unusual hue is, undoubtedly, caused by one mind, being subjected to
unendurable stress. It’s zero hour.
“I’m heading down there,” I emphasize. “Got to. Got to fix
this. Make it right.”
“I’m coming with,” Sheila says. “Can’t stay here. Not
with these- these fucking things crawling around.”
“Hey,” Nad says, picking one up. “They’re your friends.”
“Whatever,” I state. “We’re going, then, all of us. Ah- not
in the Camry. Too risky. Let’s take your car.”
“It’s in the back,” Sheila tosses me the keys from the post.
“Way out on the dirt.”
“Okay, let’s go.” I spin around, stagger out into the waiting
night. The girls follow closely behind, I press the fob once and
Sheila’s car purrs. We pile in and I make a special point to lean
over and plant my lips onto hers, and to make sure that Nad can see
how much we love each other.