Bojan Ratković is an aspiring writer from Serbia, living and working in Ontario, Canada. Recently his work appeared in the Great Lakes Cultural Review and on the World SF Blog. He is pursuing a PhD degree in political philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario.
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Phylactery
by Joseph Sale; published August 13, 2013
Billy sighed. He closed the novel he’d been reading and tossed it onto the table. Nothing had been the same since the fall. The memory gave him chills along his arms. He would never forget the day he’d returned to his flat to find a crowd gathered, and a police cordon around the splatter of red mess that had once been Jake.
He’d vomited instantly when he saw it.
He was sitting at the same window Jake had tumbled from, trying and failing to distract himself from the question.
A question he almost didn’t want to answer.
It was possible the whole thing had been an accident. Jake had loved to smoke there, perched on the sill like a modern gargoyle. He could have lost his balance and fallen.
He could have.
A niggling possibility scraped at Billy’s insides as if he’d swallowed a rat whole. He never thought Jake would do that. Sure, he was lazy, stumbled between jobs like a drunk between bars, played the Xbox as though it was the only thing that interested him in the world, and he smelled of marijuana constantly, but he seemed happy. Billy looked down at the pavement. The road had been cleared. It was two weeks since Jake had died. He had yet to find another flatmate; had yet to even try. The problem was that every time he looked down outside, he was sure he could still see the stain.
Grimacing, he stood up and went into the bathroom.
Halfway through brushing his teeth he caught a glimpse of himself into the cabinet mirror. He stopped to take in his reflection. It was alarming. Had he looked like this yesterday? His skin was the discolored white of off-milk. His eyes looked like they had receded in their sockets. Putting the brush down, he placed his hands on either side of the cabinet and stared deep, taking in every nuance: the small bumps of acne that couldn’t quite die and hair yellowed like parched grass but dark around the edges as if he was fading from something more solid — more real.
"Why does everything feel dead?"
He realized that he was gripping the cabinet hard, his fingers creaking as his nails dug into the flimsy card from which it was made. He wrenched at it suddenly, almost oblivious to what had prompted the anger. It had seeped in like an antithetical inspiration: darkly empowering. The cabinet broke away from the wall with ludicrous ease and a spray of crumbling plaster accompanied it, revealing a hollow wall. He tossed the cabinet aside.
"Well, I guess that’s why I can hear them doing it every night," he sighed, looking at the empty space revealed by the hole. He clenched and unclenched his fist a couple of times to release his tension. He laughed weakly. It was all so ridiculous. This apartment, his job, his whole life, in fact, seemed like one giant joke spelled on the lips of God.
He went back to the sink to finish brushing his teeth when he saw a small glimmer inside the concave of the wall. At first he thought it was a pipe, but it seemed too bright — too beautiful. He reached in and felt something hard and coarse. He pulled it out.
It was a small phylactery, a little leather box with a gleaming silver seal. It was ornate, and old by the look of the designs on the seal. Yet, it wasn’t dusty. Someone had been regularly taking it out and looking at it.
"What the hell have you left, Jake?" Billy whispered, turning it over. He flipped open the silver seal with as much delicacy as his trembling fingers would allow. As he expected, the phylactery didn’t contain scripture, but a tiny, glass bottle filled with a black, toxic-looking liquid. Underneath the bottle was a small note on which was written:
"Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams."
Billy put the bottle and note on the living room table and didn’t look at it for the rest of the day. When he got back from his shift on the till, he looked at it. He had no idea what the substance was, or what the hell the quote meant, but he felt like all of this was an invitation — an invitation he didn’t yet understand. It was the last evidence of Jake he had, the last thing in the flat that hadn’t been taken away and boxed up. Rationally, he knew it was probably hallucinogenic, and harmful.
But he was curious.
Billy reached over the table and picked up the phial in two fingers. He would find out the hard way.
Unscrewing the lid, he touched the cold glass to his lips and leaned his head back. As soon as the black liquid met his flesh, he felt a tingling erupt across his mouth. He stopped and screwed the lid back on in a flurry, aware that suddenly everything was difficult to grasp, and blurred. He managed to put the phial back, but his hands were floppy and useless, so much so that he swept all his mugs off the table as he tried to sit back.
The world went dark.
But then it came back, although it wasn’t quite the same. Everything looked larger. His dingy little living room looked like it had enough space to fit fifty people, and everything was bending, as if an invisible force was pushing it outwards, as if the universe could no longer accommodate him. Colors were bleeding into one another. Where did the white of the wall end and the red carpet begin? Streams of crimson were running up the apartment walls as if all colors had become wet paint and gravity was now drawing upward.
His eyes widened further.
"Jake?"
Jake was standing in the center of the room. He had been staring off into nothingness over Billy’s head, but at the mention of his name his eyes had snapped onto Billy’s. There was something disturbing about the way he was standing. He was perfectly upright, and unnaturally rigid like an automaton. But it was definitely him. He had his black hood up around his blacker hair, and ripped black jeans trailing along the floor.
Billy sat up, although he was dizzy.
"Jake! It’s me, Billy!" He took another glance at the half recognizable world. "What the hell is going on?"
Jake pointed at his own mouth. Billy took in a sharp breath. Where Jake’s lips should have been, there was a yellow sticker with a crude smiley face drawn on it, one with only a single curved line for the smile, and two impenetrable dots for eyes. It was pasted over the entirety of his mouth so his cheeks were sucked in slightly. Something about it made Billy shiver through his core. Jake shook his head sadly.
Do you mind if I talk like this instead, Billy?
Billy felt the coldness running up and down his spine intensify. The voice had sounded inside of his head, as if it had been his own conjured memory of Jake’s voice. There was something else too, something else he didn’t recognize.
"Sure," he stammered. "But why can’t you talk, Jake?"
Jake’s eyes creased as if he was smiling, but the sticker didn’t move. The childish single-line drawing of the smile remained at its unnatural curve.
Do you believe in other dimensions, Billy?
"What?"
The voice resonating in his head was like Jake, and yet unlike him. It had his tone and sound, but nothing of his way of speaking.
This is another dimension, Billy, a dimension where you are dreaming. Look.
Jake raised a finger and pointed at somewhere next to Billy. Billy turned and leapt up in shock. He was looking at himself, lying on the couch, eyes rolled into the top of his head, lids flickering slightly as if he was having a bad dream. He looked down at the self he now inhabited. He could see it was shimmering at the edges, as if seen through a blurred lens.
"If this is another dimension, how did you find it?"
The phylactery. Jake’s eyes never blinked, and they were boring into Billy as though he was trying to stop his heart with thought alone. I found it. It took me to special places. Places I could never get to in reality. And you can go there too, Billy. Come with me, and I’ll show you how to change things.
"Change things?"
&n
bsp; Jake nodded.
Change the world.