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16.
Last Updated:
2022-07-20 18:03:09
Latest chapter
Absolute Unit 21.
21.We can senseTrent deep in the basement of his own mind. He’s built a room down there, with a door impossible for us to unlock, but we can peer through the keyhole. The walls are covered with posters of David Bowie and Marilyn Monroe (always a fan of vintage, dear Trent), and a torn leather couch dominates the floor, facing a widescreen television that plays clips from classic films, music videos, memories of Carrie kissing him all over in that wintery bed. By sifting through the abandoned files in Trent’s hippocampus, we determine this is a replica of his basement at home, his safe space from life’s chaos. For what it’s worth, we whisper through the keyhole, we’re sorry about this.Screw off, Trent says, his eyes never leaving the television.We promise you can come out. You won’t be deleted.Yeah, right. I told you to screw off.We leave him down there. If he’s unwilling to cooperate, his fortress can serve as a prison. Let him watch through the keyhole as we take his
Absolute Unit 20.
20.We’re back onthe gray beach, the water lapping at our tendrils. Trent stands beside us in the surf, naked except for his leopard-print jacket, shivering in the cold wind slicing down the coast. “Great.” Trent says. “Not this again.”Footsteps crunch sand. Bill strides for us, also naked as the day he was born. A thick mass of tendrils dangles from between his legs, dragging on the sand, yellowish and segmented; when it touches a wetter patch of sand, it crackles and sparks with electricity. Smaller coils wave from his ears and the corner of his left eye-socket. His eyes are black with dried blood, making him look more like a bloated carcass than ever.“No more negotiations. No more of this useless equivocating. Here’s the deal,” Bill says. “We’re plugged into your brainstem and your cortex.”“Just leave us alone.” Trent scoops up a handful of wet gray sand and throws it at his uncle. “Please. I just want to be left alone.”Bill ignores him. He walks up to us, places a
Absolute Unit 19.
19.In the elevator, there’s no way to avoid Bill’s stink. He looms over Trent, reminding us of our breakfast meeting a million years ago. Bill barely held it together then, thanks to the magical forces of nicotine, caffeine and pills. Now he seems immense, powerful despite his gray and puckered flesh, seeping wound, messy hospital gown. As the elevator rises, the enormity of the situation appears to fully sink into Trent. Any residual effect of the drugs has dissipated, and our tendrils sense his growing panic, sizzling and sour. Only strategic squirts of adrenaline and dopamine work to keep him in some semblance of working order. “I just don’t get what’s happening here,” he says.How many times do I need to explain it, dumbass?“Patience,” Bill says, glancing at the floor indicator. The elevator stops on five. The doors hiss open, revealing a nurses’ station pocked with gunshots, its countertops smoldering with charred folders. Beyond, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the patient
Absolute Unit 18.
18.Bill waves agray hand, his fingers still jittering madly. “Come here, Trent.”“Are you okay?” Trent says, stepping forward—and then Carrie clutches his arm, her nails digging into his flesh until the pain begins to approach the dulling ache of his bullet wound. “What’s ‘total control’ mean?”He’s got us inside him, we tell Trent. We’ve taken over.Taken over? Trent’s mind rattles like a rat in a cage. You mean that’s not my uncle?No, yes ... we mean ...Trent begins to freak out: Do you want to do THAT to me?Have we said we wanted to do that?Bill lowers his hand. He’s trying to smile, but his lips writhe and jerk. A doctor might diagnose that as a nerve issue, which wouldn’t be too far off. The bit of us that stayed in Bill and took total control, maybe it’s still trying to figure out how to drive that lump of flesh. After just a few hours in Trent’s well-tuned body, we’d started to forget the A-1 horrorshow of Bill’s sagging muscles and dea
Absolute Unit 17.
17. We drift througha snowstorm.White particles flicker in the harsh light stabbing through broken glass. Snowdrifts rise on Trent’s hands and sift into the folds of his shirt, stick to the blood drying on his lips and forehead. We try to stick his tongue out, the better to collect some of it, but Trent’s body must have taken some damage during the crash, because moving it only a millimeter past Trent’s teeth sparks a wave of pain so intense that he moans—Stop complaining, we tell him. We’re trying to get you some medicine.What? I—Before he can say anything more, our efforts with his tongue are rendered moot, because a few flecks drift up his nose, and—zoom. Trent’s next words are lost in a screaming pleasure-storm, his nervous system exploding like the Fourth of July, his every cell a fireworks display, throbbing, pulsing, exploding—My God, my universe, this is AMAAAAAAZING—This is why we exist. To feel, to experience, to taste everything this weird mixture
Absolute Unit 16.
16.Carrie stomps onthe gas, propelling her car down the alley at its laughable top speed. “Duct tape in the glove compartment,” she says. Trent retrieves the tape and wraps three long strips of it around his shoulder. How am I looking in there?Good, we reply. His blood loss slows to a seep as the vessels clot, and his other vitals seem normal enough, considering everything he’s endured over the past several hours. Maybe they can set him up in a hospital room next to Bill.At the end of the alley, Carrie turns onto the main avenue without checking for traffic, leaving startled drivers honking in her wake. She takes a deep breath, exhales loudly, and destroys Trent’s fragile calm: “We messed up back there.” “No shit,” Trent yelps.“Big Jim’s expanding into cocaine. He hates the stuff, says it means too many cartel people up his ass, but since the state’s legalizing weed soon, he’s got to find another line of business.”“Why doesn’t he just sell legal weed?”
