Entry Nine
(Remember) The Sleeper
Well, Book, I was wrong. I'm not dead,
but right now I wish I was. When I say right now, I mean at the present time.
Eventually I'll think differently later. I always do. "What a coward"
you'll say.
I know.
The doc had me plugged into a machine,
which moderates my heart and nerves system. I'm on constant watch because of
these...habits. Probably won't let me leave for a long time. It seems like
goddamn 1984 or something.
Maxwell moved in today. For one being a
little younger, he's a gangly man, much burlier than myself (then again I never
was very tall). I'm sure that underneath all that muscle he probably has the
strength of ten other guys, but I'll refrain from going too metaphorical on
you, because I also have the habit of doing that sometimes. Anyway, the man
looks sick. His skin is pale and wrinkly for someone his age, or maybe it's
because of the scars. My guess is drugs. I've seen what Accellia has done to
people--heighten your sense of ecstasy for physical pain; agony is like great
sex to an Accellia user. I've seen men tear themselves apart while on that
shit. So why take it? I have no clue. Some use it as an act of sickening
revenge; others as a method of suicide; it's also been in various assassination
attempts (hey, I read the news every now and then). There aren't many cases
with Accellia in which the user survives, and most of those people turn out to
be real mental cases. Looks like our good friend Maxwell is going to feel right
at home, because he sure as hell seems like one of them. Maybe someone slipped
the drug in his drink at a party or something. I don't have the balls to ask.
Who would? Do you? "Hey, sir, are you on drugs?" Besides, I'm
never much of one to talk.
I didn't get much of a chance to
introduce myself to him, as the doc wanted me to go visit one of the terminally
ill patients ward for some odd reason. I don't realize why until later.
It's a man. He looks a little young, but
the way he sleeps he seems decades older; I'm not sure how to explain it. Hell,
I don't even know why the doc wanted me here in the first place. I dismiss the
initial befuddlement with some hidden message the doc's trying to divulge, but
he doesn't pull any strings. Nothing. I stand there in that perfectly white
room next to the perfectly sleeping patient--a bomb could go off and he
probably wouldn't notice. Instead, he slept, dead to the world around him.
Delicate, weak, vulnerable, with wan skin deteriorating from frail bones.
The doc told me that he'd been admitted
into Delial the same time I had. He said that he was abandoned at the
facility's doorstep, unconscious. They realized he was in a coma he wasn't
going to wake up from anytime soon. They kept him in the terminally ill ward
for safe keeping, because of his fragile condition.
Upon asking the doc about how this had
anything to do with me, I get my answer: "He didn't get here by himself.
He was left here by someone who told the staff you knew him."
Did I? These past several months have
been nothing but a blur, so what do I remember?
I remember my family...my brothers. I
remember my mother's death and my father's suicide. I remember being thrown
onto the streets for dead, and running into a man named Kavar, who saved me
from being beaten to death or gang-raped or sold off to child slavery or
perhaps even all of the above. Despite all that he's done to me and I hate him
as I do, I owed a lot to Kavar.
I remember a woman now. Her name is
Reene. She is that ghost (not the tenth), dead for an entire year. I know I
haven't been able to sleep properly since. I remember her father and my college
professor, Kuan. He's...dead, too.
How...?
No.
I hold my head. I feel myself begin to
stagger and the doc has to hold me upright. A flash of images giving me
migraines overwhelm me and I can't bring myself to remember everything the way
they were and are and should be and would be and could be. I get vertigo and
start to pass out except the doc doesn't let me he keeps me on my feet so all I
can see is the sleeping comatose person lying in bed dying and deteriorating
until there's nothing left but a fragile child crying out in a white abyss.
And then it hits me. Like a tsunami of
memories it hits me. I see a face in that abyss. No matter how many times I
call out to it, it doesn't respond. It just stands there, watching me.
Something follows me in that abyss. It's
something that can see me but I can't see it for the life of me. I try to pick
myself up; I try to carry on; I try to make sure my heart isn't racing at a
thousand miles per hour and my brain doesn't shut down so I become frail and
pathetic like that person lying in bed.
It's a dream. It's all a dream and I
never wake.
The doc is sustaining me still, telling
me that I did better this time. I have no clue what he's talking about, but he
seems to know more about what's going on than I do.
Have I ever mentioned that Dr. Wendel
doesn't really seem like a doctor at all?
--Alexander