Tess

Tess stops, draws in a deep breath, and turns to look behind her. No one there, no one following her, yet the lingering chill suggests otherwise. She hastens her pace, eyes to the ground, only looking up every few seconds to avoid running into anything. Although she is aware of the many people that go on about their lives around her, the only thing she can hear is the sharp click-clack of her own heavy boot heels. She is grateful for their pounding insistence, for anything quieter would allow the thoughts charging through her mind to gather unnerving momentum.

She looks down at her left hand and unclasps the fist she didn’t realize she was making, only to ball it up again when she sees how much she shakes otherwise. With this she runs into a man, who simply smiles. At first, she is embarrassed, laughs it off. But as the man nods in forgiveness and goes on about his way, Tess begins to wonder if maybe his gaze was too familiar. Had the two met before? Was he in fact her pursuer, throwing her off his scent? She bundles up her thick red trench coat and begins to jog as fast as she can without drawing too much attention to herself. She next ducks into a convenience store, smiles awkwardly at the cashier and heads straight for the restroom. Shutting and locking the door, she begins to search her pockets. Had he dropped a tracking device in any of them? She had to be sure. She takes off the coat, turns it upside down and shakes it vigorously.

A small key hits the floor, creating a small ping that sends a shiver down Tess’ spine. She leans down slowly, observes it and, as if on instinct, swallows the key. At first she struggles, making hideous choking sounds before launching for the sink and washing it down with water, inadvertently splashing her crème-colored blouse.

“Shit.”

Observing herself in the mirror, Tess wipes the water from her mouth as a look of tired relief washes over her. “Harder every time,” she says to her reflection.

Putting her coat back on and buttoning it all the way to hide the water stains, she exits the restroom, smiling again at the confused cashier. As she hits the fresh air, she looks around for the man, but doesn’t see him, so she heads back on her original path.

Finally making it to her town house and heading inside, she slams the door shut, locking all three of her locks. She then leans head first against the door and releases a heavy sigh of relief. She slowly slips off the coat and hangs it up. Then, turning around, she sees something that makes her freeze. Her heart releasing what feels like gallons per second, she can’t even swallow. She’s not even sure she’s breathing. Sitting on her coffee table is small pine box, painted black. It is not unfamiliar to her, but she cannot quite remember exactly what it is or just why it scares her so. She does see that in order to open it, she will need a key.

*

She hovers over the toilet wearing a plain white camisole, a slim black skirt, an apron and yellow cleaning gloves. Before diving in, she releases a short crying jab. She then grits her teeth to make herself stop and, grunting angrily, dives in. She finds the key, yanks it out, flushes and vomits as the remaining contents swirl away.

Frazzled, she slides the gloves and apron into the toilet bowl, washes her hands and the key until she feels she’s scrubbed away all traces of that foul memory and, wiping her hands on her skirt, slowly makes her way toward the box.

Kneeling before it, she inserts the key and pops the lid. All she can do for the first few moments is simply stare at what’s inside. While at most times her age would be hard to guess among her androgynous yet striking features, the stress of the last few days is showing its wear, her face’s gentle but deep lines revealing every one of her 46 years.

Inserting her long, slender hands into the box, she pulls out a gun. A silver Desert Eagle, Mark XIX in .50 Action Express. She observes it closely under the dimming daylight. Only now does she realize how late it’s getting.

“Oh no, I have to pick up James,” she says, standing up so quickly she almost gets a head rush.

“Two and a half hours ago,” says the voice of someone Tess cannot see but fully recognizes.

“Yes, I am aware,” Tess says in a half-gone daze. “But—I simply must go. Even if I’m late.”

“You are late. You can only ever be late again.”

A pain washes over Tess’ face. She begins to sob.

“That’s not going to help you, dear.”

“I know,” Tess cries, unable to halt the flow of tears.

“I don’t think you do. Or else you would stop.” The voice’s words are tough yet still remarkably gentle.

Tess grits her teeth again, knowing this is the only way she can stem her distress enough to get on with what she needs to do.

“There. Now take yourself down a bit. You know where you need to be.”

With surprising resolve, Tess replies, “Yes. Yes I do.”

“What is it that Michael wanted?”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“The man you ran into on the street.”

“Oh, he-he gave me the key. And apparently…this,” she says, holding the gun up.

“That’s not where the key came from. Try to remember.”

Tess sees herself in flashes. In a gun store. Buying a locking case.

“But…why?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have time for this. I think I’m going to have to speed things up a bit.”

Tess lowers her head in fear as a figure moves into light of the setting sun.

“Look at me.”

“I…I can’t.”

“This is the only way it can work.”

Terrified, Tess looks up and is suddenly calmed. Something in her eyes has changed. “See,” she says, looking at the other person in the room. “Isn’t it all much clearer now?”

Tess then raises the gun with alarming confidence and pulls the trigger with no hesitation, the shot plowing through her guest’s heart.

Tess then begins the process of cleaning up the mess she’s made.

*

Strolling down the street, Tess now moves with purpose. As well, there has been a remarkable shift in her appearance. She is stunning, cutting a stylish figure in large maroon sunglasses and the same red coat she wore earlier. Yet it would appear she’s wearing no makeup at all; that very little effort has been put into her sudden state of grace.

However, there is only one thing on her mind now. She has to pick up James, even if she is late. She knows he’ll be so happy to see her, regardless of the circumstances. And so what if she should happen to run into Michael again? That could now be taken care of easily. Things may have taken longer than usual this time, she thinks to herself, but everything will be OK again. Just as before. Just as it always will be…

*

While walking to meet James one late autumn afternoon, Tess decided to stop off at the bank and withdraw a large amount of cash. Making it to him not twenty minutes later, she knelt to greet him and accepted his warm hug.

“Mummy!” he shouted with joy.

She then pulled him close and whispered in his hear. “Mummy has a surprise for you. We’re going to go on a trip.”

“Where? What could possibly be better than this place? We’re not moving again, are we?”

“No. We’re not. We are staying right where we are. Forever.”

“Right here, in my school’s parking lot?”

She smiled warmly, stood up and rubbed his head. “Scandalous child. Let’s go, shall we?”

She took his hand and gently tugged him along.

“But you haven’t told me ‘bout where we’re going.”

Tess knelt to be at his level again. “It’s somewhere quite like this place, only better.”

“Better how?”

“Everything looks the same. Everything smells the same. Everything even tastes the same. Only you’ll be much happier with everything.”

“Than are we really going anywhere?”

“Yes. We are. But we’ve to make a small stop first, alright?”

“Oh, I suppose. But I’m so excited it’s killing me.”

“Yes, babe, I know. But soon that feeling will be over. And you won’t have to feel dreadful for a very, very long time.”

“Why not never again?”

“Because…things just don’t work that way, love. To do what we’re doing, to go where we’re going, it requires sacrifices, and that’s one of them.”

“Sacrifices? Like Jesus?”

Tess smiled warmly, observing his Catholic school attire, “It hadn’t occurred to me, but yes. It’s going to be a lot like that, son.”

As James leaned into hug her, she spotted a man in the distance, a familiar man, but one she couldn’t quite recall. She only knew that she had to leave. Now. Time was running out.

She grabbed James’ hand and led him down a few blocks and into the gun store. “Now wait here, just one more thing and Mummy will be all ready. All ready for our big trip.”

Once they got home to the town house, Tess laid her new, locked box on the table and headed toward the family room, only she noticed James had stopped following her.

“What’s the matter, dear?”

James now sported a frightened look, all the warmth and happiness of before gone. “I don’t want to be here.”

“Why not? This is your home! Don’t be silly.”

“NO! I don’t want to be here,” he yelled.

“James, calm down!”

He then began to cry. Tess grabbed his chin and focused her eyes on his. “Listen to me. Everything is going to be OK…soon.”

“Mummy?”

Tess turned around to see a small child, a strawberry blonde with green eyes. Another James.

She slowly looked at the James in front of her and, noting his now calm demeanor, walked to the locked box, flipped it open, grabbed the gun and shot the new James in the chest, killing him instantly.

Original James only stood there, looking on with no reaction. Tess, waiting a few moments in order to confirm his eerie complacency, then fell to her knees and began to sob. “I hate this part. I always hate this part.”

Another person emerged from the back room, stepping over the slain James. A worn-looking mother with bright red hair and hazel eyes – another Tess. “I know. But it’s the only way. Now look at me.”

“But how will I find the key again? It keeps getting harder.”

“I don’t know. But just look at me and this will all be over.”

Original Tess did and, as if experiencing divination, stopped crying and said, “Look, all better.” She then shot the new Tess only once, which was enough. She knew by then exactly where to aim.

*

Tess’ stride begins to slow. Ignoring the part that comes after the look in his eyes is getting harder. She fights back tears knowing that this is the sacrifice she must make every time.

Lost in her thoughts, Tess is given a jolt when she realizes she’s not alone. Walking beside her now is that man. The man she never seems to know, but does now.

“Michael,” she says, smiling wearily.

“Ah, caught you early, I see,” he notes.

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

They walk along in silence for almost a full minute.

“So,” says Michael, finally breaking the tension, “How many times you gonna put him through this?”

Tess stops and Michael goes a few paces ahead before doing the same and turning to look back at her.

“Through what? An almost everlasting sense of peace?”

“At what cost?”

Tess only rolls her eyes.

“Have you seriously not thought about any of this? About why the periods between your…rebirths,” he spits the word with disgust, “keep getting longer? About why it never gets easier for you to look your only child in the eyes before putting a bullet through his heart?”

Remaining silent, Tess only grits her teeth.

“Ah, I see. I had it wrong. You have, haven’t you? You have put thought into it. But you can’t let go, can you? Somehow, and I didn’t think this was possible, I think that makes me hate you even more. I mean, seriously, can’t you let him grow up? Live long enough to see how it all might turn out?”

“Don’t tell me how to raise my child,” she finally says, more with fatigue than anger.

“Look,” Michael reaches for her, but she pulls out her gun and puts the barrel to his forehead.

“In broad daylight, Tess?”

“None of this matters. Kill you, the you you, and I’ll be done with all of you. I’ll be in real trouble for a while. But it won’t be long before—”

“You have to shoot your own kid again?”

Her grip on the gun tightens. “Shut up.”

Michael swallows in natural fear response, but has no intention of stopping. “Before you have to watch him bleed out, before you have to clean it all up, just like always?”

“Shut up!” she yells, pulling the trigger. But click. No result.

Michael, having flinched, straightens his posture with a shaken sigh as Tess begins to crumble to the ground. “No,” she cries. “This, this can’t be…”

Letting her sob, Michael easily takes the gun from her distraught hands. “Hmm. Playtime over?”

Tess looks up at him, as hateful as could be.

“Yeah, I think you may have run out of one-ups.”

As if remembering something he didn’t realize he had forgotten, Michael opens his hand, revealing the key.

Tess reaches for it but is shocked to watch it slowly fade from existence, right in front of her.

“No…”

“I can’t believe it,” says Michael. “I really can’t believe it.” His tough mask now dissolving, he to falls to his knees and throws his hands up in the air. “Thank you. Thank you!” Happy tears flow over his cheeks before he breathes deep and wipes his face of with his coat sleeve.

Getting up, he offers his hand. “I suppose this is goodbye then.”

Tess ignores his hand, gets up on her own and, her back toward him, replies, “I can only hope so.”

Tess begins to walk away.

“Hey,” Michael calls after her.

She stops, but doesn’t turn around.

“I would apologize, but the only thing I’d be sorry for is not being able to hide the key from you better after all those years. You somehow always knew, intuitively, how to find it, even after we had been so deep into the process we had forgotten who each other were.”

There is a long silence before Tess says, “You were always a terrible husband, but a decent father, I suppose. If there’s one thing I’m sorry for, and I suppose I truly should be sorry now, finally facing mortality as I am, it’s that I made it so you two could never see each other again. I had to forget you, and that meant erasing you as completely as I could.”

“Yeah, well…” Michael never finishes his thought,

After an even longer period of no one saying anything, they then start off in separate directions.

As Michael wanders on, he begins to look more and more lost. After a while, passersby begin to mistake him for a confused tourist, leaving him alone, all of them believing someone else will finally stop to help him.

Just before she enters the school lot, Tess feels a chill across her spine, but doesn’t turn around. She bundles her red collar tighter. She smiles. “I love autumn.”

Dr. Zoome and the Mad Scientists - Draft 2

The tape. The story of the tape. The story of the tape is the story of Dr. Zoome and the Mad Scientists.

It all starts deep in the forest, and not in some witch hut or science lab in a garage, but a place a little more familiar: along the beaten path, but slightly off of it at the same time. It was on this path that Dr. Lomax Zoome, on one of his daily constitutionals (which invariably involved him stroking his chin as he strolled, eyes to the sky, not directly ahead of him) started to stray slightly from the given trail and soon found the path of his vision hurtling groundward...along with his whole body. For he had tripped. On a tape. The tape.

It took a minute or two and an exclamation ("man alive!") or three for him to realize what had happened. For his eyes to find the tape. Immediately he was struck with a sense of profundity, yet he could not understand this sudden gravity, only that it weighed immensely on his second heart and forced all attention, all consciousness really, to the black cassette that lay just near his left foot. The black tape. With the gray sticker. Dr. Zoome moved slowly, as if not to scare it away, and gently picked it up. As he did, he noticed a bizarre inscription, but couldn't read it, for it was in a language he had never seen before. And he knew every language, from French to Farsi, for he was, after all, Dr. Zoome. But this language was a new kind of foreign.

So, naturally, the first thing he did was bring it to the witch. The witch was as scary a sight as any, a balding, bespectacled hag named Raken. But she was tapped into a dark knowledge that showed her things mere mortals, even mere mad scientists, would never be able to discover on their own. Raken took the tape into her hands, held it in up in the air, took a good look at it and then...screamed.

"What is it, Raken?!" questioned Dr. Zoome.

"This tape...this tape..." Raken was soon cut off as, holding the tape, her head flung back and she went into a deep trance, her gray eyes suddenly flooded with black.

In a deep, inhuman voice she added, a few moments later, "The tape. The tape stays with you. The tape..."

"Yes?" asked Dr. Zoome, heart pounding.

"The tape is you."

Before the good doctor could ask anything further, the witch's head fell forward and, not looking up, she handed the tape back to him, once more stating, back in her own voice, "The tape is you."

"...But where did it come from?"

Raken looked up, eyes gray again and as she opened her mouth to speak, she let out another scream before fading into black smoke and then disappearing completely.

Dr. Zoome stood there for a few minutes before coming to a private realization and turning around to leave the hut and head home to the science lab in his garage.

Months went by before anyone in the nearby town heard from Dr. Zoome again. In and out of the lab came a small group of familiar faces: Veit Ignatius and Gustaf St. Gabriel, fellow exchange students and, eventually, college dropouts, and Father Francis Fogarty of the local church. The man of the cloth often left in great distress and the dropouts, also musicians of sorts, often looked half alive whenever they lurched out, usually near three in the morning.

Back at the pub, Veit and Gustaf would be pressed for details by drunk townies, and they'd respond only with scared eyes and weird murmurings about how "we all messin' with somethin' powerful. We ain't in control. We ain't in control. Things ain't right. God help us all."

One of these townies happened to be a fledgling record exec, Robert Rinehart, who developed an even deeper curiosity than his many partners in inebriation. So one night he followed Veit and Gustaf back to garage lab in the woods, awkwardly darting behind trees as he stalked the dropouts. Once they were inside mysterious garage, Rob was alone in the cold night. As he crept ever closer to the building, the silence of the evening gave way to the sensation of sound pounding through the ground and up through his chest. By the time he was against the wall, he could no longer tell if what he felt was rumbling sound waves or his heart discovering new limits of deep, rapid percussion.

Peering through the small, dirty window, he could see only blurs jamming blob-like instruments and bolts of electricity storming the private sky of the garage. Squinting to achieve better perception, his eyes soon opened wide again as a silhouette passed alarmingly close to the window. Rob then ducked out of sight and, after he heard the most inhuman cackle that his hearing could ever hear, he bolted home.

Bolted straight through the door of his house, slamming it locked behind him. He then flew into his bed and flung the covers over his head.

And his night was still far from over.

In the deepest bang and blame of REM sleep mind trips, he found himself floating in white space. The fear of earlier had not yet subsided but it was now mixed with an incongruous comfort. It was like an excitement teasing at the edges of absolute terror while nestled in your favorite blanket. Soon, he was not alone. Falling to his knees from white oblivion, eyes to the ground, Father Francis Fogarty clasped his hands and began mumbling nervously, quietly.

"Father?" Rob urged with a swallow.

Father Fogarty looked up, eyes not so much gone as...transparent. Through the father's eyes, Rob could see only further white oblivion.

"Dear child of the light, there is something you must have," said the holy man in a tremulous voice.

"Something I must...have?" asked Rob, voice shaky and low.

"Something...I must give. Something that I must pass on before it is too late..."

Francis stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I haven't much time. This," he said, turning back and producing the tape, "Does not belong to me. The tape is not me. The tape...is not me."

"Father, I don't understand..."

Father Fogarty placed the tape gently on the ground and looked once more over his shoulder. "They are coming. The tape is not theirs, either. Not anymore. The only way for us to ensure that it never disappears...that they don't ever take it back..." In the distance, they both heard the echoing, nearing drones of something speaking, shouting, but in no familiar tongue. "...The tape is not me. It is not them. It is," Fogarty tapped one finger to the tape, the bizarre lettering twisting and snapping until it formed an altogether new inscription. An inscription that read:

Dr. Zoome.

"The tape. The tape is him." Fogarty lowered his voice to a whisper as he stood. "Now go!"

Like a shrinking vortex, the white space was quickly sucked from Rob's field of vision and as he headed deeper back into the black, he swore he could hear a scream...

He then jolted awake in bed, shaking his head, laughing off the night sweats as nothing more than a crazy ass dream. He was comforted by this bullet train of thought until...until he saw the tape.
The tape on his night stand, nearly invisible wisps of black smoke trailing off of it.

Where did it come from? He didn't know. He only knew that it was now his responsibility. And that the tape was Dr. Zoome. And that the tape. The tape must be heard by all.