What the Hell Did I Just Read

13. WAIT, WHAT THE FUCK?

I said, “That can’t be … no. You absolutely thought you had a son as of like, an hour ago.”

She nodded, absently. “And I got memories. Going back eight years. But they don’t make sense, if you think about ’em hard enough. It’s all bent and twisted. He don’t got a room of his own at the trailer, supposedly on account of losing my last place in a fire. But he don’t got clothes, or toys, neither.”

“But … how would you not notice that? Like, instantly?”

She shook her head. “You seen them TV shows about the hoarders, people got garbage piled up so high that they can’t even walk from one room to the next? Family tries to intervene, but those people literally can’t see the garbage, can’t be convinced anything’s wrong. Your mind, it gets these blind spots to the most basic things. I got a cousin who weighs six hundred pounds, but all thought of that goes out the window next mealtime rolls around. And then I got to thinking about that parasite. All that little worm is doing is convincing the ant that it’s always been there, inside it, and that walkin’ up the tree to where the berries are is its favorite thing. Even though everything inside it should know it’s suicide.”

I said, “But humans aren’t ants. You’re saying this thing showed up, and convinced you that you had already had a son, complete with thousands of memories going back years. How would that even work?”

Amy said, “Your memories are physical structures in your brain. It would be the exact same process as the ant, just a little more complicated.”

John said, “The fuckroach, we could all feel it trying to worm its way into our history. Not just looking like a cell phone, but making us remember that it was one. Making it just plausible enough.”

Amy said, “What’s worse, it looks like the dog can’t detect these things after all. If we’re now sure ‘Mikey’ in there is one of them…”

John said, “Eh, it’s not the first time he’s been wrong. He totally whiffed on that possessed stuffed bear I won at the Fall Festival. Just kept humping it.”

Amy said, “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember the thing with the bear? It was when I still lived in that apartment on—”

Amy clutched her hair with her one hand and said, “Oh my god. You think you’ve always owned that dog.”

I said, “Uh … what?”

Amy threw herself back in the car seat. “I’ve never seen that dog before today. I thought John was just dog sitting or something.”

I stared at the motel room door. “No. Just … no. That’s Diogee. He and Molly never got along? Chewed up one of your sandals one time?”

“I have never lost a shoe to a dog.”

Behind the motel room window, the curtain twitched again.

John said to her, “No, this is … they’re scrambling your brain here. This is you, not us. I remember everything. This used to be Marcy’s dog, he stayed with me when we broke up, her roommate was allergic. Years ago, same year as we had that bad winter and … all the stuff happened.”

I said, “Yeah, it has to be Amy who’s wrong. Again.” I said to her, “You remember the night all those guys burst in looking for the, uh, thing a few weeks ago? And you threw it in the river…”

She shook her head. “I remember that event, but there was no dog.”

John said, “We took him to the vet! He ate the chocolate?”

“Do you have the receipt?”

“Sure, I … wait, no, she didn’t charge us.”

“We did not go to the vet that night, John.”

Chastity said, “If you concentrate, if you focus hard on them memories, you can break them apart, find the real memories in there. Hiding. See, they picked the wrong target with me. You can make me doubt the world, but you won’t make me doubt myself. My memory, my false memory, was tellin’ me that Mikey’s father was some guy I slept with, a guy I met at the lake and then left town after a one-night stand. But I ain’t never done that in my life—the kind of man who does that, he don’t make it to my bed. And if I had a kid, a real one, I’d be livin’ in a better place. In a better town.”

I said, “And your friends, your family, they wouldn’t wonder why you’re acting like you’ve got a child, out of the blue?”

“Don’t talk to my family, what there is of it, and I’m not much for socializing. That thing, it knew it. Picked me for a reason, I’d say. But it didn’t take.”

John said, “Okay, okay. So, let’s focus on the most immediate problem. Now they’re both in there, in that room, the kid and the dog, neither of which are of this world. What the hell do we do? Leave?”

Amy said, “If we can get it to drop its disguise can we, I don’t know, talk to it? Find out what it wants?”

I said, “How in the world do we get it to drop its disguise?”

John said, “We’d have to make it want to. Wait, while it’s in dog mode, does it have to behave like a dog? Maybe I go in and say, ‘Oh look, since you’re just a dog, surely you wouldn’t mind licking some peanut butter off of my balls.’”

“Maybe just knowing we can see through it will be enough,” suggested Amy.

John said, “I wish we still had the Soy Sauce. It would know what to do.”

Chastity said, “The what?”

I said, “What he’s referring to is slang, for a, uh, substance. Think of it as a performance-enhancing drug for people with any kind of paranormal abilities. Or whatever. It’s the reason we can do what we do.”

John said, “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that on the Sauce we would be able to see through the thing’s camouflage, through the whole illusion.”

“Anyway,” I said, “it’s moot, because we tossed our only vial of the stuff into the river.”

Chastity said, “Well, that conversation was a good use of our time.”

I said, “All right, so we go in and we talk to it and try to find out what it wants. And if what it wants is to feed on us and, uh, breed on us, then what?”

We all just looked at Chastity. Only she could say this.

“We kill it. Only cure for a parasite.” She looked at us. “Any idea how we do that?”

John said, “They don’t like fire.”

Amy said, “We’re not going to start a fire in an occupied motel.”

Chastity nodded. “So much crack in this place, fire would get the whole town high. No, we got to take him somewhere else, away from all the people. Mikey and your dog both.”

John said, “I know a place.”

All four of us cautiously approached the motel room door, the only one of us who was armed was Chastity, with her revolver. John asked her if she wanted him to take the gun.

“No. If this goes wrong and something has to be done, it’ll be me who does it.”

I said, “Just be ready—this thing is going to try to pull on your heartstrings. It’s going to play up the little kid stuff, he’s going to bat his eyes and say, ‘You wouldn’t shoot me, Mommy!’ You sure you’re ready for that?”

“Nope. But I’ll do it anyway. If you’re tellin’ me you wouldn’t have any problem pulling the trigger in that situation, well, that ain’t nothin’ to brag about.”

She steeled herself, pushed open the door, and screamed.

From the neck down, the creature standing in the doorway was little Mikey Payton, just as we’d seen him, wearing a faded LeBron James T-shirt. From the neck up, he was Diogee. Specifically, the ass part. The dog’s two rear legs were draped over Mikey’s chest, its tail stuck straight up into the air where Mikey’s forehead would have been.

The dog’s anus opened and closed like a mouth and said, “Look, Mommy! I’m a butthead!”

Chastity slammed the door.

I said, “Okay, I was … not expecting that.”

The huge, gun-toting, screaming black woman had drawn the attention of the bikers around the burn barrel. The fat guy from behind the counter leaned his head out of the office a few doors down, looking annoyed. It sounded like motel rules were being broken.

Lemmy Roach said, “Chastity? What’s happening?”

I said, “Nothing to see here! It’s fine!”

Then the curtains of our room were ripped aside and what appeared there wasn’t Mikey, or the dog, or dog-butt Mikey. It was a naked young woman, visible from the hips up. She was splattered with blood and appeared to have one wrist shackled to a headboard with a pair of handcuffs. She pressed herself against the window and screamed, “HELP! THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ME!”

Two more guys ran out of a nearby room to join the bikers at the burn barrel. Roach yanked a pair of short shotguns into his hands and screamed, “THEY’VE GOT LACY!”

I was, in that instant, sure that no woman named Lacy had ever existed. I was also sure that every single person in the vicinity would instantly remember Lacy, have a head full of fond memories of her, and feel an overwhelming urge to protect her.

Roach led a pack of bikers toward the door, each of them drawing firearms. Chastity screamed at them to stay back and, when they refused, brandished the revolver.

“You go in there, you’re gonna die! It’s a trap!”

Of course, the bikers had no reason whatsoever to believe this was anything but the ravings of a lunatic who had kidnapped a female friend of theirs, and also they had shotguns. The sound of conflict had carried across the grounds and room doors were popping open all around us, disgorging biker dudes eager to join the fight. One woman in black leather quickly hustled away three young kids—some of these bikers had families.

The “woman” behind the glass continued to scream and beg for help. John, Amy, Chastity, and I faced a phalanx of shotguns and black leather.

Roach, brandishing a total of four shotgun barrels by himself, screamed, “CHASTITY, YOU’VE GOT THREE SECONDS TO PUT THAT DOWN AND GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

John said to him, “This may seem like a weird time to ask, but do you know Ted Kno—”

There was a commotion at the opposite end of the parking lot. Everyone spun around to see three black NON trucks come barreling in. There was no entrance to the lot over there, they just smashed through the motel’s sign and flattened a row of shrubs, skidding to a stop. A dozen black cloaks flowed into the parking lot, bringing their weird-ass weapons to bear.

The naked woman in the window screamed and pulled on her restraints.

The downpour chose that moment to resume.

The nearest NON cloak was the same one that had led the charge into John’s living room that night weeks ago—or at least, this one was wearing the same puffy-cheeked infant mask. It opened its baby mouth—it had tiny little rubber teeth—and said, “STEP AWAY FROM THE ORGANISM.”

Thinking back, I’d say this was a mistake. These instructions made perfect sense to me, John, Amy, and maybe Chastity. That was it. No one else in that crowd knew what “organism” they were referencing, or where it was, or in what direction they should step in order to find themselves “away” from it.

Most of the bikers had now trained their guns on the NON cloaks, with a few seeming to remember that their most urgent task was to free their beloved Lacy. We all stood that way for a moment, getting drenched in the downpour. To me, it seemed like a perfect time to just slip away and let these people fight it out amongst themselves, but there was no way to communicate that to the other three in a way that wouldn’t tip off everyone else.

At the window, “Lacy” screamed, “HE’S COMING! OH GOD, HE’S COMING!”

A muscular arm reached in, grabbed her hair, and yanked her back onto the bed, letting the curtains fall closed.

That did it.

Roach yelled, “Get off her, you sick son of a bitch!” and sprinted toward the door. He pushed past Chastity and blew the doorknob off with his shotgun. He yanked open the door and plunged inside.

Five seconds later, a spray of guts and black leather flew out of the door.

What walked out the door next, was a torso.

“Lacy” only existed down to her waist, which ended in rows of tiny fuckroach feet. She came scooting out of the doorway, the disembodied man’s arm (which ended at the bicep) still clutching her hair.

Chastity said, “Oh, shit!” and shot at the Lacy thing with her revolver. It flinched and pulsed, the fuckroaches giving up their disguise for a split second each time a bullet struck home.

The NON cloaks screamed at Chastity to stop, in their weird pseudohuman voices. Then, Babyface fired a blue beam that was presumably intended to scramble her brain in some way that’d neutralize the threat. It missed, and instead hit a member of Christ’s Rebellion. The man screamed, “VIOLENCE IS WRONG!” He then threw his gun aside and lay down on the soaked pavement, appearing to go to sleep.

The Lacy torso waddled its way toward the bikers, the spell having been thoroughly broken at this point. They opened up on it with their shotguns, blowing off fuckroaches with each blast. Babyface commanded them to stop shooting the specimen, and when the bikers didn’t comply, another blue beam was fired at them. It hit a biker with a glancing blow that just brushed the back of his hair. He blinked, confused, then started firing his gun wildly into the sky screaming, “FUCK YOU, MOON!”

The rest of the bikers were now torn between the disembodied torso monster and the squad of spooky assholes shooting shafts of magic at them. Some turned their shotguns on NON, knocking down black cloaks and making a strategic retreat across the parking lot, toward where their bikes were parked.

Apparently frustrated at being ignored, “Lacy” dispersed completely into a swarm, the creatures whizzing around until they coalesced into a group of six severed heads, each of the same elderly woman, floating a few feet off the ground. The biker nearest to them had time to scream, “GRANDMA, NO!” before they launched themselves at him and started eating his face. The man tumbled to the ground at my feet …

… and onto the pavement rolled the brushed steel canister.

The vial Amy had chucked into the river three weeks ago.

The one that contained the Soy Sauce.