|
Melissa Dirk sat in the corner clicking a pen, the melodic monotony of the act
began to infect her---the repetition of it reminded her of her life, of everyone's lives
out there in the so-called real world but it was just an illusion. A terrible lie, a-
"Miss Dirk, how are you feeling today?"
"Oh wonderful, wonderful-yourself? Delightful, good to hear it, how's cat and
dog? Oh, great, wonderful, dandy-"
"No need to be sarcastic, Miss Dirk, it's a simple question," said Dr. Maltez.
"It's always a simple question with you people, with a thousand hidden
insinuations and manipulations underneath. I know how doctors work, you forget I used
to be one. Although not of the same trade, a doctor nevertheless."
"OK, Miss Dirk, I'll speak to you frankly then---I want to know how a perfectly
intelligent savvy young doctor such as yourself ends up in here."
"You mean the nuthouse? What a joke! This is a vacation compared to life out
there-the world out there, now that's the asylum. You can't even walk into a burger
place anymore without stepping into some family's emotional trauma, it didn't used to be
that way, things were better once. Life was livable. Now it's all fallen apart because
of them, those dirty bastards hiding underneath the surface-"
"Who, Miss Dirk?"
"Oh, they don't have a technical name, yet how can they? They haven't even
been discovered yet, they live like a virus-underneath the skin like a cancer or AIDS in
it's dormant stage. They could be aliens or something of our own creation, I don't
know. I call them the 'blankfaces' because it's the only thing that seems accurage.
They have no discernible features, they are empty, devoid of emotion like white worms
living beneath the skin. They despise us. They hate the human race-we disgust them
because we feel too much. They hate all emotions, emotions make them vulnerable, they
like to feel superior to us.
"A few of them work here, y'know? Your doctors and psychiatric staff, they
walk by the door sometimes when they bring me lunch and taunt me. Snicker at me and
show their true faces. They find humor in other people's misery which is ironically a
human quality. They enjoy cruelty."
Dr. Maltez scribbled in his notebook while she spoke and he was both disturbed
and frightening by her glaring belief in her own story. She scared him, that made her
happy, at least it proved he wasn't one of them.
"So when did you first begin to discover these creatures as you see them?
These 'alien' beings..."
"Many of them came into my OR and I had to operate on them. It was then that I
began to see them for what they really were, on the outside they looked human like your
everyday joe but beneath the skin was something monstrous. There are slight differences
in their internal organs too, some of the doctors in the OR noticed this too but they
let it go. I couldn't, I began obsessing over them...I had to know what they were...
"This was right after the events of the Heaven's Gate cult so any allegations
of the kind weren't liable to be taken seriously-but as I was shopping in one of the
poorer sections of town one day, I saw a flier. It read:
WE KNOW.
DO YOU?
They live among us. Taunt us, eat our food, impregnate our women. They are
the hidden. If you understand what this means, come to:
3434 Main Street Apt. 12
At 7pm, April 29th
"So I went to the meeting and that's when my life changed forever-I won't say
for better or worse because it's just like finding out other people share your
nightmare-there is no joy in this fact but merely strange fascination...everyone there
was friendly and polite. I made friends with a smiling asian woman there who said she
could see the 'blankfaces' ever since she was a child. She would point them out to her
mother at the supermarket but her mother just took it as a child's silly game.
'She didn't realize that I had tapped into my inner psychic powers early,' said
Lelu, my friend, 'I wasn't crazy, I wasn't alone. It's like a homosexual boy making his
first gay friend. It didn't destroy the problem...society but it easied the anxiety a
little.'
{ ~ ~ ~ }
"I was a member of this group for the next six months, we went around the country
educating people and finding recruits. We were going to start a war, all in time for
the new millenium. Us versus Them. Humans vs. Blankfaces. All my years of medical
school meant nothing to me then-the next time a blankface came into my OR, I refused to
treat him. The nurses were enraged because the man was black on the outside, they
thought I was a prejudiced tyrant. A doctor with a god complex. I was fired
immediately. At this point I could care less, I was a part of the cause
now...Operation: Free Earth.
"We were getting weapons flown in from across the country, planning to attack
every major base they had-from Washington to the Empire State Building, we had contacts
all around the globe. Under the guise of an internet software company, we were running
a militant gang war. We were so naïve though to blieve that we actually could win this
war, but at this point we didn't know how sophisticated they were, how far-reaching
their power was...they had been assimilating into our society since the 1950's, they had
a fifty-year headstart on us!"
Dr. Maltez coughed, his palms were sweaty and nervous.
"It was the dog that betrayed us, I know that might sound funny but it's true.
We didn't know that they could infect animals yet and they were harder to see in
animals. My friend Lelu had a large husky we called Dover, they had implanted a worm in
him to spy on us. We were having a meeting one night when suddenly there was a burst of
light and a time tunnel ripped through the air, a troop of blankfaces with
semi-automatic machine guns came out of it and starting shooting at us. They killed
everyone in sight, even their spy the dog....everyone except for me. I lay there among
the pools of blood and watched the dog rip in half as a spider-worm crawled out of it's
belly, smile at me and crawl away. I watched as my close friend, Lelu's brains were
blown out next to me and I crawled among the corpses though a secret passageway into the
sewers. I spent the next two days outrunning aliens covered in urine and feces, some of
it my own and dodging rats. But I survived and that's all that matters, survival.
Survival of the fittest, right? That's what Darwin said."
"I took the last bit of money that I had and took a plane to Detroit to see my
mother. I told her everything about the blankfaces, the group I belonged to and well,
everything---and of course, she had me commited and here I am....talking to your sorry
ass..."
"That's quite a story, Miss Dirk."
"It's the truth and I don't care if you believe me or not. You could see them
too if you really wanted to, it's human laziness, all you have to do is look, really
look..."
"Well goodnight, Miss Dirk," said Dr. Maltez, "I'll see you in the morning.
{ ~ ~ ~ }
Dr. Maltez stayed up half the night going over Melissa Dirk's incredible story.
How was he expected to take any of this seriously? It was insane. What should stop him
from turning in a report recommending that Melissa Dirk was dangerous, that she should
be locked up forever and have the key thrown away.
Then an intern knocked at the door and came inside.
"Hello, Dr. Maltez, just checking in-I'm gonna be going now."
"OK, goodnight, Damien," said Dr. Maltez and raised his head. For a moment he
saw the man's face turn for a second, his vision blurred and he saw something white and
shiny underneath his skin.
A face like white marble, polished and featureless like a thousand suns going
supernova.
"Goodnight, Dr. Maltez," said the young intern then he looked like his old
self, a bright-eyed handsome young man.
Dr. Maltez shook his head, this woman's insanity was beginning to infect him
like a virus. He jotted down his favorite method of treatment: shock therapy.
{ ~ ~ ~ }
Melissa Dirk sat in the waiting room and played cards with a drooling
scitzophrenic when the men in white came to take her away. Her screams woke every
patient at the asylum. Heads turned and the skitzophrenic began to dance a violent jig.
"Don't do this to me!" she shrieked at Dr. Maltez, "I was telling you the truth, don't
do this!! PLEASE!" The doctor stood in the corner of the doorway with his hand on his
face as if ashamed, the men took her behind the heavy white doors.
"They'll kill me," she said, "They'll kill me!"
{ ~ ~ ~ }
That afternoon, Dr. Maltez went out for lunch, it was rare at all these days
that he ever got away from the asylum. He had a cot in his office and sometimes he
spent weeks with crazy people without ever seeing the outside world.
When he went out it felt like being on an alien planet to him, where everything
was so unfamiliar. The world was advancing more and more each day it seemed. Human
contact was rare and impersonal. There seemed to be a silent rage seething underneath
the surface of everything. Like a chat room filled with meaningless conversation,
America was an island compared to other countries. An alternate universe.
In the local McDonalds, a few miles from the hospital Dr. Maltez stood in line.
He looked over the menu deciding whether to get a Mcbite or a McGrub when he watched the
small child at his mother's skirt. She held a sleeping infant in her arms.
"Mommy! Can I get a milkshake or not?"
"Jimmy! We don't act that way. You have manners," said the mother firmly and
set the boy down.
Dr. Maltez smiled and was glad to see old-fashioned discipline in the works not
that reverse psychology new age crap that had been peddled a few years ago.
New ideas came along but things mostly stayed the same, he thought. That was
the world he knew...then he saw "it".
The boy's face pulsated, white and shiny beneath the skin like a wet piece of
clay. Forms bulged and writhed beneath the skin. He closed his eyes and opened them
again. Not this same hallucination!
"You ready to order?" asked the boy's mother and he saw her real face too. The
white worm underneath the skin, it was disgusting like a huge parasite sucking on a
human carcass.
Maltez stared at the woman bizarrely until she turned to him, he acted casual
but she still seemed suspicious. The sleeping child on her shoulder was a worm too-a
baby worm underneath blond hair and dimples.
The mother and son ordered as Dr. Maltez left the restaurant and went to his
car. He looked through the window and saaw the mother on her cell phone now calling
someone.
On his way out he bumped into another man-worm, "Watch where your going," the
creature said and Maltez jumped. The worm made a low mewling sound and spoke into his
watch.
No. No. The whole world was crumbling around him. She was right, right. It
was all fake, a facade-the human race was close to extinct and the others were taking
over. He drove back to the hospital like a lunatic, unsure of what to do then he formed
a plan.
That night he snuck the keys from his office and went to the cell of Melissa
Dirk and unlocked the door and woke her up out of bed.
"C'mon, we gotta get out of here."
Melissa stared blankly at the wall, her eyes had a hollow and dead look. Oh
no, they had killed her, was his first thought, wiped her mind out completely. He took
her in his arms and carried her out of the hospital.
Once they made it to the parking lot, the alarms went off-nurses and security
guards rushed outside, guns cocked.
"Freeze!" screamed a guard as the good doctor was putting his key in the door.
"Dr. Maltez!" said a nurse, "I'm shocked at you! Kidnapping a patient!
Apalling, I'll have your license!"
Then he saw the thing writhing beneath her skin.
"You don't fool me, bitch! I know all about you, all of you freaks! Mutants! The
human race won't die without a fight!"
"Oh but you already have," the nurse said as her head split in two and the white
parasite crawled out. It had multi-colored reflectory eyes like a bat-spider.
In his arms, Melissa stirred, "I was wrong to try to stop them. They are the future,
we're already obsolete...."
Then he saw what he wished he had seen before, a baby worm in Melissa's skin, it split
her body-shell in two like a pod and he dropped her to the asphalt. The worm crawled
out of her belly, smiled at him and pranced around happily.
"Aren't we beautiful?" said Damien the intern, "We're immortal, you know."
The guards came at him and pounded him into oblivion.
{ ~ ~ ~ }
Two months later.
Richard Maltez sat in the corner clicking a pen, the melodic monotony of the act
began to infect him-the repetition, the perfect fluidity of the movement---
The door opens.
A doctor in a long white robe enters.
"Hello, Mr. Maltez, how are you feeling today?"
He snickers.
"Did I say something funny?"
"Deja vu, bitch!" he shouted and laughed even louder.
"Let's speak frankly, Richard, why don't you want to become one of us? What
are you afraid of? Being happy, is that it?"
Richard felt himself begin to fade as he looked up at the picture of Freud on
the wall and it began to look like a white worm.
9
|