Apex Book Company

Short Fiction: The Orpheus Project, Part 1

Evening at the University.

The last classes have finished. The lights are out in the lecture theatres. Residential students walk in twos or threes. Some are drunk. Some students are always drunk. It makes being powerless despite your youth and education bearable. Girls are in twos; boys are in threes. The few couples amble aimlessly. It is a warm evening promising kindness to drunks and lovers alike.

Evening is when the real work gets done. Here and there lonely lights shine from otherwise blank-faced buildings. Floodlights splash the pathways and patches of grass between the looming buildings. But there are many shadows. Most of the campus is resigned to the darkness.

John Grimm turns from the window looking out from his office halfway up the Physiology block. ‘Fuck I hate students,’ he growls. He drops his cigarette butt into a mug with a splash of coffee left in the bottom. With a hiss, the butt joins the bloated corpses of half a dozen of its fellows. Grimm moves from the cluttered desk by the window towards the door leading to his laboratory. He is naked except for a pair of boots. He clutches a packet of Marlboros in one hand and a silver lighter in the other.

As he moves through the dim clutter of his office he jams another cigarette between his lips and flicks it alight with his Ronson. The flare of the lighter allows him to read the engraving on the side. ‘Professor Grimm, with all my love — Kim’. She’d given it to him when he was awarded the neurophysiology chair six years ago.

She’d given it to him while she was still awake.

Grimm enters the red glow of his laboratory and shuts the door back to his unlit office. The lab has a good pedigree. Victor von Frankenstein built its great-grandsire. But Grimm can see elements from Altered States, The Fly, and Brainstorm. He can’t remember the names of the fictional scientists, but he remembers the actors. William Hurt devolving into an Australopithecus, Jeff Goldblum evolving into a human-fly hybrid, and Christopher Walken peering into the mind of a woman as she dies. He especially remembers Christopher Walken.

Grimm steps past insulated information busses and banks of computer equipment. The white-noise whir of cooling fans fills the lab, and the single bare light bulb spits red light between faraday-cages and black-faced oscilloscopes. Wires and cables coil like nerves and arteries between the stacks of electronics.

The whole lab is focussed on a single chair.

‘Kim. You won’t be alone much longer, hon.’ Grimm settles himself in the chair, and leans back. Most of the wires and cables feed into the base. The chair is lined with a rubbery looking material. It feels warm on his back and buttocks. Like something alive. Like skin. ‘I’m going to be with you, one way or the other.’ Grimm looks at the helmet resting on the workstation desktop in front of him. Beside it there is a gun.

A long drag and a puff.

Smoke billows through red light and wires. Ash drops on an armrest.

Grimm lets the cigarette fall to the floor and crushes it beneath the heel of his Johnny Rebs, a holdover from his biker days before he met Kim. He leans forward and picks up the helmet. His mouth chuckles. His eyes don’t. The shape of the helmet reminds him of his biker days as well. Same colour. Different substance. Matte black rubbery skin, same as the chair. Grimm lifts the visor, and slides the helmet over his head. A single black cable connects the back of the helmet with the base of the chair.

Grimm lowers the visor and his hand gropes blindly towards a keypad on the armrest. He punches in a sequence of numbers and the whole lab pauses for a deep inward breath.

Even the red light bulb dims.

PAIN, as a thousand needle electrodes pierce his scalp and face and eyes. His skin erupts with sweat and his balls shrivel up into the safety of his body trying to escape the…

PAIN as the warm rubber skin of the seat punctures his bare flesh with a million fibres, each one searching out nerve endings to synapse with. He jerks and convulses for a moment. Bowel and bladder both release, but he knows nothing beyond the…

PAIN as the human-machine interface roars to life with the sentient energy of the massively parallel AI tasked with running the system.

Tasked with running the Orpheus machine.

And then nothing. Nothing at all. Grimm floats, his mind blank with the relief of being free from the agony that was everything. Weightless. Sightless. Safe.

A flicker of light.

Grimm focuses his attention on the light and instantly it expands to fill his vision. He is in a room with a hospital bed in the centre, but it is not a hospital room. In the bed is a thin-faced woman. Her hair is neatly brushed, and she is wearing light makeup. It is Kim, as he knows she must be at home. He cannot see the nurse-aide he has hired to look after Kim tonight but there are other things that tell him the vision does not reflect reality.

The walls of the room are green, the way they were before the snakebite that left Kim locked in her own world and him locked out. The ventilator that they sometimes use when Kim goes into respiratory arrest is not there. Nor are the flowers he took in this morning to mark the fifth anniversary of her coming home. Home to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause…

‘Kim?’

Nothing.

‘Kim, was that you?’ She was an English major, and had a Shakespearean quote for any circumstance.

‘John?’ Her eyes flicker open. He is bodiless; else he would reach out for her. She looks at him. ‘John?’ she says again, but her lips don’t move. Her eyes are like windows on a winter night looking out at the star-studded crispness of the sky. ‘How can you be seeing my dream?’

‘Kim!’ A sob almost unbearable to utter. How can he? He has no voice with which to speak. And yet she hears and her lips curl upward into a smile. He wills himself to move closer, drifting through the dreamscape room.

But her eyes. Her eyes are so large. She reaches out her arms to embrace him, but he can’t stop himself falling faster and deeper into the blackness of her eyes grown now large enough to swallow the world…

And then he blinks. He has weight and warmth. A sheet is pooled around his waist, covering his lower body. He glances down and lets out a cry. But his voice is as wrong as his body. It is a woman’s voice.

It is Kim’s voice.

He swings her legs over the side of the bed, and slides down onto her feet. He puts her hand on the bed to steady herself. Noticeably no penis. The centre of his being is deeper, more… more essential. But otherwise he feels pretty much as he usually does. He is dimly aware of more weight on her chest than he is used to, but the body knows itself and the mind is left to get on with business.

The room is dimmer than when he entered. He hadn’t noticed candles lining the walls. He hadn’t noticed the deep red of the carpet. He hadn’t noticed the shadows and the smoke…

‘They weren’t here,’ he says. ‘None of those things were here.’ Again, it is Kim’s voice that speaks, not his.

‘Sssso sssweet, isss ssshe not?’ hissed in her ear. Honey laced with venom. Grimm whirls her head. On the other side of the bed, the room telescopes into a long stone vault with a thousand candles burning on every inch of the floor. A shadow rushes through them, and in its wake the candle flames are set dancing and guttering.

‘Who’s there,’ he asks with her voice.

‘You mussst love her very much to ssseek her out in her dreamsss,’ the voice whispers in Grimm’s other ear. Again, he whirls her head. The bedroom is gone. The candle-strewn floor of the stone vault stretches in all directions as far as he can see. He stands naked in Kim’s body, one hand resting on…

… a black stone altar. A thick jelly of old blood adorns the top of the altar stone; brown tendrils draping the sides. He snatches her hand away and fights an urge to be sick. The noisome air is thick with the stench of rusty iron and old smoke. The shadow hurtles away from him, the movement of the candle flames marking its passage into the depths of the vault.

‘Show yourself!’ he cries out with Kim’s voice. His breathing is rapid, and he is very conscious of her breasts rising and falling with each gasp. The smoke is thick and chokes her throat.

‘Very well, manling. You ssshow great bravery coming here. You are the firssst in many hundredsss of yearsss. Sssince you demand it, I ssshall ssshow myssself to you.’

The smoke and shadows congeal. Hatred pours from the thickening clouds, and with the hatred two red eyes appear. They stare at Grimm. A long body like a rat the size of a horse draws itself together out of the darkness. Beneath the eyes a toothed crocodile snout snaps and clashes; the gaps between the rows of fangs littered with gobbets of semi-rotted flesh. Webbed paws send candles spilling burning wax over the stone floor. The fur on the monster’s feet catches fire, and the stench of burning hair mixes with the smell of blood and smoke filling the vault.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ Grimm whispers. The demon flinches, but then throws its crocodile snout up and laughs.

‘Foolisssh manling, how long hasss it been sssince you believed that?’

‘I believe now,’ he replied.

‘No good! You are in the realm of dreamsss, manling. My realm. And you came here willingly. You only essscape here through me. And you only go through me by offering a sssacrifice.’

‘Who are you?’

Laughter. Knives clashing, or swords striking shields. ‘I am her worssst nightmare, manling. But you and I have met before. I look different for you, but then you ssshould know: you don’t look yourssself tonight either!’ Again, the horrid brass laughter.

‘What can I offer you? I have nothing here. I don’t even have myself.’

‘Oh but you do, foolisssh manling. You have your very sssoul. But I can offer you more than essscape, ssso much more. I would be mossst happy if you chossse to ssstay!’

‘I have come for Kim.’

‘And you have her! You have her here in a way you could never have her in the real world, sssilly manling. Or do you desssire to take her back jussst so you can have her that way again?’

And he is lying on her back, her legs wide. He looks up through her eyes and sees himself labouring over her; he sees his own face contorted with effort — teeth clenched and eyes screwed shut. He feels a hand squeezing her breast roughly. Almost painfully. But most of all there is heat in her belly and a remorseless presence pushing, and pushing, and pushing…

… he is standing in her body beside the altar. The monster has come closer and is lounging now on the black stone; crocodile snout only inches away. A long red tongue flicks over her body and the eyes blaze with undisguised lust. He gasps despite himself and takes a step backwards, knocking over several candles. The pain of the hot wax on her bare feet clears his mind. ‘Not like that! Not for that! I’ve lived with her body for the last five years! It’s HER I want. HER… not her body!’

‘Very well then, manling. I propossse a bargain between usss. I ssshall let you take her from here. You were brave to come. Braver than any I have met for sssuch a long time. But asss you leave, ssshould you look back even once, then inssstead of her you ssshall take me.’

‘I agree.’

‘Then go. And take your woman’sss sssoul with you. If you can.’

And he feels himself pour out of Kim’s body. The smoke whirls and the shadows gather, and ahead he sees a tunnel leading up and away from the foetid vault. He feels himself drawn into the tunnel. Behind him, there is snarling and growling and the hot breath of the creature blowing him up and up. He cries out, despite having no voice.

‘Kim!’ But there is no answer other than the roar of the beast. Ahead, the tunnel grows narrow and the shadowy walls gain texture. By their shape, Grimm can tell that he is moving very fast and seems to be gaining speed. But the monster fills the tunnel behind him with hatred and fear. Of his beloved, he can hear nothing.

‘Kim!’

‘She’s not following. It’s a trick!’

Again, a hot bellow of rage from immediately behind him. Ahead the end of the tunnel is visible. Through it Grimm sees himself lying naked in the Orpheus chair. Blood trickles down from beneath the collar of the black helmet. His white body is bloated and bruised with the nano-technology filaments from the chair that have violated his skin. His penis hangs tiny and limp between his legs, and his breathing is ragged. Only his boots look healthy, perched incongruously on the end of legs threaded through with the black tracery of subcutaneous nano-tech tendrils.

‘Kim!’ he cries out with his silent voice. The beast roars again, inches behind him.

‘I have devoured her. It wasss sssuch a sssimple trick, and you have led me out into the world with you.’

‘No!’ Grimm screams. ‘I’ll not leave you!’ He wills himself to turn before reaching the end of the tunnel so he can go back…

… and he sees Kim; only Kim — one arm stretched out towards him as she is pulled back down the tunnel away from him. Her eyes fill with reproach, and the tunnel shakes with laughter.

Grimm takes a single shuddering breath, and then groans as he lifts a bleeding hand to raise the visor of his helmet. His whole body is bruised and bleeding from a thousand pinpricks. He leans forward and fumbles a Marlboro from the packet up to his mouth. He knocks the gun to the floor as he reaches for his lighter.

‘It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real…’ he mumbles over and over.

But his trembling fingers refuse to operate the wheel of the lighter.

Outside distant screams drift up between the walls of the blank-faced buildings.

_____________________

The last classes have finished. The nightmare rushes through the darkness. The lights are out in the lecture theatres. Residential students walk in twos or threes. Some are drunk. Some students are always drunk. It makes being powerless despite your youth and education bearable. Girls are in twos; boys are in threes. The few couples amble aimlessly. It is a warm evening promising kindness to drunks and lovers alike.

Promises can be broken.

Evening is when the real work gets done. Here and there lonely lights shine from otherwise blank-faced buildings. Floodlights splash the pathways and patches of grass between the looming buildings. But there are many shadows. The nightmare waits between the floodlights. ‘So sssweet,’ it chuckles. ‘Ssso sssucculent.’ A girl walks past–library books clutched protectively over her chest. The nightmare watches as she glances up toward the Physiology block. There is a flash of dim red light in one of the dark windows.

And then as teeth pierce her shield of books, she screams.

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Bryn Sparks lives in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, with his wife Christine and their three daughters. He owns no sheep. Bryn is CEO of a medical device manufacturing company, and is completing a PhD in Medicine at the Otago University, Christchurch School of Medicine.

Bryn’s previous publications include “Wing and a Prayer” in the February 2004 issue of Frothing at the Mouth, “Seven Wives” in the 2004 volume of the award winning Agog! anthology: Smashing Stories, and “Whiskey in the Jar” in the December 2004 issue of Aoife’s Kiss.

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Bryn Sparks’s short story “On the Shoulder of Giants” appears in the Apex Publications anthology Aegri Somnia. Order your copy today.

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