That didn't make sense. But I was thinking lots of weird things right now, so fuck it. I just needed a gate.
If Level Zero was just the same room, then all gates were the same gate.
My stomach wailed. I grabbed my gut and felt things gurgling down there. I was so hungry.
The emptiness in my gut had grown and grown as I walked. That was one thing I noticed even as my body faded from me.
I had to eat. I didn't want to die down here.
But death was just another state of being.
People died all the time.
My hunger grew. The time wore on and I still didn't see any gates. The pain in my chest was reaching beyond my stomach and into my heart, my lungs, my blood. It crawled up my throat and seeped into my head.
And inside my head, it played with my brain. It shifted the grey matter and gurgled it around. I felt like it was rearranging my head, fixing it.
People died all the time. The world fucked you over. It wasn't as if it mattered. And if I died then who really cared?
I'd thought like that for a long time.
After Jon died, I'd forced myself to think like that. Sometimes I'd cried a lot, even after I promised myself I wouldn't.
But then I got used to the idea.
Once I'd gone to the ROM's paleolithic section. Had a big white room, no paintings, just bare, white plaques with black Helvetica script giving dates and descriptions. The artifacts rested on blank white cabinets, and they all looked alike. Old wood, old bones, old stone, old clay. It all looked alike—dirty and ruined and the colour of dust. The things we were, the things we made, the things we came from, all went back to the same shit.
But no matter how much I accepted the idea, no matter how much I'd forced it into my head, it never truly made sense to me.
Now it made sense. The hunger made it right.
There was a gate.
Except this gate wasn't normal. It was red. It went up to the ceiling and it was red. It glowed carmine along the room—when had I come to this room?—casting a long, black shadow behind me. My breath fogged in its light.
A gate was a gate.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: DELUSION
“You're in shit now,” Jonathan said to me.
The tires stuttered on the snow. Snowflakes crumbled on the windshield as we drove down the long, dark stretch of road.
The snow melted on the windshield. The wipers pushed the slush away with a croaky squeak. Ahead of us, the high beams shone on snow which fell like static against the blackness.
This was wrong.
I was past this. I was an adult now.
I looked down at myself; I was wearing the sweats and t-shirt I slept in.
Despite the wrongness, I didn’t give way to panic. An eerie calm had settled over me. This was just a dream.
I turned in my seat and looked out my window. In the glass, I saw my reflection. It showed me: the adult Sam—stubble, baggy eyes, the whole deal.
The window showed nothing special. Just snow, trees and dark. No connecting roads. No traffic lights. By now, we should have come to an intersection. Instead, we just passed mile after mile of narrow, tree-lined road.
“Nothing out there.” Jon said.
“You’re right.” I answered.
Jon was bigger than me. Alive, he’d been my height, but now he dwarfed me in some way other than size: there was a fifth-dimensional largeness to him. If we played basketball he'd win, if he arm-wrestled me he'd win, if he talked to girls he'd be better at it. He'd always be bigger than me.
I turned to Jon.
And stopped.
Jon's eye was missing.
Faint light glowed from the dashboard readings. It painted the car with a soft, dark brush. In the dimness, I couldn't find blood on Jon's face. The abscess in his eye just gave way to darkness, like he was empty inside.
“I'm gonna teach you how to survive.” Jon continued. “Do you know what you have to do?”
What do I have to do Jon?
Jon turned to face me.
Half his face was bloody pulp, like it had been scraped off. White cheekbone peeked out the mess, and a neat row of white bottom teeth. The middle tooth had a silver filling on it.
My throat caught. I tried to speak. My tongue didn’t work. I tried to move. For a second, I felt my hand respond. But just as I began to lift it to the door, it went slack against my lap.
“You've gotta go down.” Jon said. I saw his tongue flatten inside his ruined mouth against the teeth. “You've gotta find the dust.”
Dust?
Jon stared at me with his good eye. The dashboard lit a gleaming crescent on it. The pupil was black—like the emptiness in his head.
But the darkness was just a fog. It was an illusion. There was light inside there—I could tell. Red light.
“He searches the halls of permanence.” Jon said. He hissed, and ragged flesh skittered on his wound. “He hides and sneaks and tricks. He seeks to undo reality, all for this world of dust.”
The invisible hold on my throat relaxed. I could speak.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“He is dust.” Jon said. “He is nothing.”
Cold seeped into my chest, cold so strong it hurt.
“What are you?”
Jonathan's body stared at me.
The darkness slowly parted around his eyes. Light grew behind them so gradually I could hardly notice. They were red now, red like a supernova sun—a badass, reality-warping thermonuclear reaction, going to shit.
Slowly, Jon said.
“We are angels.”
#
“You're in shit now.” Josh said.
I was driving the car down Mississauga Road.
The snow was bad—it came in sheets that whited out the windshield. The frozen wipers scraped against the glass.
Some music would be nice.
I looked at the radio dial. The car shuddered. I reached over and tuned it to 96.3.
The sound of glass breaking blasted through the speakers. Cracks, smashes and crinkles, like a crashing car. I turned off the radio.
“I'm gonna teach you how to survive.” Josh continued. “Do you know what you have to do?”
I felt a bump. The car swerved. I jumped, and pulled at the wheel.
I felt the wheels skid beneath me. The steering control came, went, came went. I struggled to rein it in. We were going too fast.
“You've gotta be fast. You've gotta be quick.” Josh said.
Blue fire burned out of Josh's stomach. The flame was spreading, slowly, across Josh's chest. It climbed thread by thread of his hoodie.
“You've gotta ask yourself: who are the Stalker Men?” Josh said.
I didn't care who the Stalker Men were. I just wanted them gone. I wanted this all gone. I didn't want to care, and I didn't want to remember. I wanted a normal life back.
“Think of everything in Level Zero—think of what it is.” Josh said.
I didn’t want Level Zero.
My fingers strained on the wheel. I gripped it hard.
I wanted Josh gone. I wanted Amrith and Lena and Laurent gone. I wanted them to never bother me again.
“Why do the Stalker Men exist?” Josh asked me.
“They're junk data,” I seethed. I'd say anything for him to stop asking questions. “They don't have a purpose, they're just like Level Zero: an accident.”
“You still think that?” Josh asked me. “Lena and Amrith think like that, but did you ever think I did? You don't see any connection between us and Level Zero? Between us and the Stalker Men?”
I thought of the Stalker Man's blue eyes, its soft white skin, its hideous, bony form. I thought of the smell and the body and the wrongness of its voice. The Stalker Men were light-years away from us.
“No.” Josh said, as if he heard my thoughts. “I think they're very, very close.”
The car jumped. I started. I jammed the brake but the car sped up. The trees whirred by. The tires whined. I moved the
wheel but felt the car swerve too fast. We were in a skid.
Josh's entire chest was on fire. It was spreading to his arms now. The fire slowly eclipsed his elbows, his forearms, his hands. It washed over the back of his head and spilled onto his face. Josh was made of light now: an angel.
“Do you know what retards say about death?” Josh asked. The fire covered his eyes but it turned red. Red eyes in blue fire.
“They say death gives us life. That a coin can’t exist without its other half.”
The car was going fast. Too fast. I jammed the break but nothing happened. Too much speed.
The engine roared in the pit of my stomach.
“They don't know we don't live. Not really.”
Too much momentum.
“Just like Jonathan.”
So much noise.
“Just like you.”
Breaking glass. Spinning headlights.
Cold air and cold snow.
Darkness.
#
My vision blurred. Blue lights. Red lights. Yellow lights. Cold wind. So cold.
I moaned and felt carpet on my palms. Not my carpet. I could tell foreign carpet from authentic homestyle carpet. This carpet felt ropey, made from thick, corded fabric. Not like my threadbare IKEA rug.
I bent double. Sleep pushed out at my face. My eyelids swelled shut. I fought them open. Had to see. Had to fight.
A cold breeze blew down my neck. I shuddered.
Where was I?
A room, a small and dirty basement. Concrete walls with neon orange spray paint marking buried utility pipes and the smell of old furniture soaked with countless beer-spills.
I rolled against a sofa. It was a threadbare yellow futon with white stuffing peeking out.
Darkness hung like cobwebs in the corners of this room. White pine beams criss-crossed the
white stucco ceiling.
This was not my home.
But it was someone's home. A TV sat in the corner, and a laptop perched on a stained mahogany coffee-table. I saw a lime green Gameboy Colour, which was strange because I'd thrown out my own watermelon-pink one when I was in the sixth grade.
A staircase with a bare bulb hanging over it led upwards. It looked like I was in someone's basement. A glass door to the side led out into a small garden area, flanked by a black wooden fence. It was early morning outside—in the garden white petunias were bobbing in grey earthen pots.
My ass shifted. Whatever I was sitting on crackled. I looked down.
Magazines I didn't recognize: a big white one called Lapham's Quarterly with a strawberry on the front, a thick orange journal with the words NEW THOUGHT in tiny yellow letters at the bottom. I tugged at the bottom of the pile and brought out a crumpled copy of National Geographic.
That cold wind blew back at my neck again. Something mechanical kicked inside the walls.
Who's room was this?
Maybe it was mine.
I chuckled. I leafed through the National Geo and saw a few high-res photos of a hummingbird.
I threw the magazine to the side.
Maybe it was my room.
Maybe I wasn't myself. Maybe I'd dreamt of Samuel J. Flautt, Level Zero, the Stalker Men.
I grinned.
A cold wind blew at my neck.
It was really cold. Painful.
I knew what cold meant.
I looked behind me.
The Stalker Man.
It hung on the ceiling, its double-joints compressed its spider-limbs in half. Its fingers and toes curled around the beams, but I think that it wouldn't fall even if it let go.
The Stalker Man's eyes stared, as always, right at me.
They were red now.
I didn't want to run; I didn't want to give it the satisfaction of fear. I wanted to turn away. I wanted to ignore it and make it meaningless.
But I knew its eyes would keep staring. So I stared back.
I thought it would be less freakish if it was smaller, but it wasn't: the folded arms and legs just brought it closer to a human shape. Disgusting. I hated it. I hated it in my gut with caveman fear of the deformed.
There was a little bit of regret: it was real, my life was still fucked up.
There was a bit of sadness.
Not a lot though. I was past sadness.
We are concluded.
The voice was a thought. It went into my head without the gurglings from the Stalker Man's gut.
I'd heard the thought-voice before, but had never known why it sometimes used that, or the forced intonations from its pervert-biology.
“Why are you talking to me now?” I asked. I forced my voice level. I couldn't show my revulsion at this thing that shouldn't exist in daylight.
The Stalker Man's shoulder's rotated. The joints clicked and slid like breaking bones. The eyes never stopped staring. Did they ever stop staring?
I do not speak to what is beneath me. I do not speak to dust. Now I speak to you.
“Dust?” I asked.
A white hand darted to the wall. A white foot smacked the ceiling. The Stalker Man soundlessly, and with that impossible speed, aligned itself like an arrow towards the gate.
Finally, the thing's head looked away.
No longer.
The Stalker Man reached down.
We are concluded?
A wave of dizziness passed over me. It started at the back of my neck, crawled over my scalp and cascaded down my face. It earthed itself in my guy. I stomached it. Static overwhelmed my eyes. I felt sick, and the crazy, meaningless question asked itself: how was I going to get back home?
Except I was home.
I was on the floor, leaning against my bed.
My room was as I'd left it last night. The customary mess of clothes, papers, and TEB flyers lay in a heap that was sure to fuse into sedimentary rock one of these days, my computers stuttered on my desk as they woke and went back to sleep, birdsong came from outside.
The sun was up. A beam of light lit the floating dust above my bed.
The coffee machine whirred in the kitchen. I heard Greg's footsteps pound down the living room. The front door creaked open and squealed shut. Greg forgot to turn the TV off—I heard Breakfast
Television talking about banana milkshakes in Streetsville.
My mouth tasted like ass. The rest of me smelled pretty bad.
A horn honked outside. Traffic was always a bitch in the mornings.
My alarm clock spelled out the time in green. It was 7:42. My alarm hadn't gone off.
It was Monday morning. I was late for work.
#
You have 3 notifications.
I checked the HR office. Empty. I leaned back and took a long, careful look down the hallway. Empty. I rifled through my Gmail account for any business mail. Empty again.
I clicked the link to Facebook.
I had an hour to go before lunch, and most of the HR staff were giving tours to the fleet of interns that started today. The HR team had a new intern, a girl named Sally. Sarah wrote her name, and a task list, on the whiteboard with the rest of us. My name near the far left was spaced comfortably away from it.
The office was usually depressed on Mondays; no surprises there. The sound, the air, the environment all seemed weaponized. The phones rang too loud, the air ran too cold, and the unnatural light knocked our body-clocks into a circadian rhythm.
This Monday had the added joy of interns; I heard more laughter than I wanted, and a lot more mistakes: jammed copiers, calls for help, Gmail-beeps telling me so-and-so was late, so-and-so forgot to punch the time-clock.
Facebook popped up. It disappointed me right away; no interesting notifications. Thierry Reeves, an annoyance from university, had invited me to protest against some war criminal being held in Serbia; Lana Epcott had invited me to a Falun Gong meeting; and Rohit had liked a colourful comment I'd made about interns.
No messages from the Level Zero crowd.
I tried not to think about it.
&nb
sp; I gripped my mouse and the plastic creaked.
“Enjoying that there Facebook Sam?” Henry's voice asked.
I jumped. The mouse popped out of its USB. The tower of my computer wobbled. Henry was so close I was surprised I hadn't smelled his Old Spice deodorant, or felt the threads of his TEB hoodie on the back of my head.
“No no, don't get up man.” Henry said. He put a hand on my shoulder and eased me down.
“Sorry Henry,” I said. “Lapse in judgement.”
I plugged the mouse back into the USB and went to close the window. Henry stopped me.
“No no,” Henry held out his hand. “Let's take a look. Let's check out the notifications, you've got any hot girls on your friends list?”
Not the time old man. I gritted my teeth. “Sorry. Won't happen again.”
“I said it's no problem,” Henry insisted so that I knew it was a massive problem. “Show me your friends list.”
“That's—”
“Show me.” Henry insisted.
I opened my friends list. I was grabbing the mouse again. I took a deep breath. I could keep calm.
I could keep calm.
“Dude, you’ve got like, five girls!” Henry slapped me on the back. My knuckles whitened on the mouse.
I scrolled down the list, slowly. Henry took in every picture and every name. The humiliation was tangible.
“Yeah, click on her—Lena.” Henry said.
I clicked on Lena’s profile.
Lena’s profile still hadn’t been affected by the recent format change. I wonder how she’d managed that. Her profile picture showed her and Amrith with the faces photoshopped onto each other’s bodies. It was creepy.
Lena’s wall was pretty sparse. The comments came in days apart. The most recent comment came from two days ago.
Someone named Lori-lee had written: where are you?
Huh.
“You enjoy,” Henry patted my back again. I heard his suddenly audible footsteps leave the room.
That was probably a pay reduction right there, but I didn't care.
Where are you?
For some reason, that bothered me.
I went over to Josh’s profile. There was no activity there either—but, he only had 21 friends.
I searched Josh’s friends list. Amrith and Laurent were both on there. I clicked on both their profiles.
Laurent’s profile was blocked, but Amrith’s wasn’t. On his wall, someone called Juresh Bhattia had written: dude answer ur phone.