Before they told me, I already knew somehow that I was adopted. And I was never happy about that. But on that Saturday as I sat eating dinner with my parents around a plastic table, I praised whatever there was to praise that I was adopted, or else I would have been a halfer, too, if in fact that’s the way it works. Nevertheless, I was pleased not to be their real offspring. I couldn’t be sure, of course, if reals could give birth to halfers or the other way around, since I didn’t know how the spectral link between the small people and the real people worked. My friend was taken from me before I could learn more about that, and maybe about other things. I hated that—I hated it with all my being. And what happened, as I mentioned, was that all my hate for the small people transferred to the half-smalls. Now I wondered if the reason for that transference wasn’t due to my subliminal recognition of having parents who belonged to that weird species.
Retrospectively, it made all the sense in this clockwork world that my father and mother were halfers—the way they reproached me so often about being a shameful little bigot when in truth I was not a bigot but a real person who was afraid of the small people and couldn’t accept the arrangement the big world had with them. Maybe real parents would have understood that, I don’t know. I wanted to think so. I wanted to think that there was something sensible, or at least something of marginal value about the tick-tock world I had been born into. But the two halfers sitting with me at that plastic table only berated me as a shameful little bigot, certainly because they wanted to stifle my sensitivity to how things were in the world at its deepest level and to muddle my brain as I came of age, going through all the adjustments in the process so that I could be presented in company—that is, so that I would be a sightless moron like everyone else, everyone except people like the only friend I ever had in my life. In a split-second, as I sat munching my hamburger or hot dog and watching my mother and father that day, I was hopelessly possessed by hatred for them.
That night I lay awake in my bed for a long time, earnestly trying to arrive at some way to live with the household status quo, just as real humans had arranged at some time in the past to live with the small people, though no book I could find would pinpoint when that was or how it was done. But there was no way I could do that—no way at all.
It must have been around the middle of the night—I didn’t plan a specific time—when I entered my mother and father’s bedroom. They were lying on their backs in bed, the moonlight glowing on my father’s slightly smiling face and concentrating stare as well as on my mother’s smooth face and big eyes, which were open. Both their eyes were open. I don’t know why. Maybe they didn’t sleep. It wasn’t as if I was the sort of person to peek into his parents’ bedroom to see what they were doing.
“Dad, Mom,” I said, just to get their attention. They didn’t even sit up in bed, though. Maybe they were sleeping, in their own way. “Listen,” I continued. “I want to tell you something. What I want to tell you is…” Then, with all the lung power I could summon, I screamed: “I’m a shameful little bigot. I hate the small people. I hate them for all I’m worth. But more than I hate the small people, I hate you.”
Then I jumped on the bed and was all over them with the knives I’d gotten from the kitchen. Push, push, push. Chop, chop, chop. They didn’t make a sound the whole time. I can tell you one thing—halfers aren’t soft like the smalls. I really had to work on those things that called themselves my parents.
***
I wasn’t exactly amazed that I never saw the inside of a courtroom, knowing as I did what I knew. I didn’t know, however, what would ensue in the aftermath of my deed—that I would be locked up in this place. Whatever it is, it isn’t a prison, not with the superlative educational facilities you’ve provided, allowing my mind and sensibility to flourish. If our positions were reversed, that would be my scheme—cultivate me like a plant, breed me into something that could express its view of the world at its deepest level. You were ready for me from the very first, so I have to assume I’m not the only one to do what I did, and for the reason I did it. That’s right, isn’t it, Doctor? But I’ve been here so long. How many more doctors must I see who want to hear my story? Are you in training or something? I’m as sane as your shoes, we both know that, even though I should have gone mad long ago from my dreams alone. Why can’t we make a deal, come to an arrangement? I’m practically an old man. My coming of age came and went. I’d kill myself if I thought you’d let me. That’s not what you want, though, is it? Could you please give me an answer just once?
Everything is such a mystery with you people—halfers I used to think, but I don’t know anymore. I lost my instinct for that the moment I stepped into this place. Did you do that? And what about the tingling? That hasn’t happened in who knows how long. It would be nice to see a clock or a calendar every so often. Don’t you care about time, whatever you are? How about space, existence, all the commotion of reality? I’ve known it was all just a preposterous mess for ages now. I also learned that I should be on the outside, and the rest of this ludicrous world, or most of it, should be in here for study and rehabilitation, adjustment and readjustment, if that’s the point. What are you trying to accomplish? Whatever it is, you seem to be doing a terrible job of it. Is everything still as crummy as I remember it? Your world, whichever one it may have been, was an offense to my eyes. And it didn’t have to be that way. But maybe that’s the way you wanted it—a nightmare from morning stool to bedtime stories.
Oh, here they come—the big boys. You can tell them to take their hands off me. Big boys with big hands. But are they really big, or only half big? I believe an autopsy could establish the facts, if you’d allow me the pleasure. My parents were half-smalls. The alignment of their bones was human enough, but their organs seemed all of a piece. It could have been they were starting to convert, I don’t know. So what’s inside of the small people, Doctor? My guess is that they’re composed of some doughy substance inside and out—a flabby clay that can be molded into any form, having no identity of its own. Is this really our world, the real world, or is it theirs? Did the right hand of evolution know what the left hand was doing? And what about the spectral link? I have my theories. I’ve had lots of time to think about that, for what it’s worth—thinking. Give me a hint, something to mull over. I just need a speck of hope to keep me from going to pieces—a little truth to hang onto. Answer me, Doctor, before I’m dragged off. Who are you? What are you? Answer me. For the love of all that is real—Who am I? What am I?
Thomas Ligotti, The Spectral Link
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