DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 43

Back, drip.

Forth, drip.

Betty gags. She's covered in Tanya's blood. She screams. Backs away. Her feet slip out from under her. She clutches the light's chain on the way down.

For a second, the chain remains taut. The light is extinguished. Betty's weight rips the chain, the entire fixture, from the ceiling in a shower of blue sparks.

She smells burning insulation and, finally, the blood.

Betty rolls over and vomits. Painful spasms fill her mouth with sour bile and the sting of old alcohol.

She's bent over, clutching her stomach.

She hears a footstep.

Larry said that he was still Johnny's friend. Larry said that he would "appeal" the decision. Larry also said that he would do what he could about the "empathy" treatments that Larry said were "cruel and unusual."

Larry said a lot of things that Johnny couldn't understand.

What Johnny understood was the fact that he had to meet Larry in a small gray room that separated them with a giant sheet of gla.s.s as thick as Johnny's thumb. What Johnny understood was the fact that Larry could no longer pat his hand. What Johnny understood was the fact that Larry might not be his friend.

While Larry appealed, Johnny would have to endure at least one empathy treatment.

The treatment was supposed to be like one of those video games, but more.

They not only put that funny helmet on you, but they also put wires into your head.

Johnny didn't like that. If Mosh was in his head, they shouldn't put wires there. It might get Mosh angry- Worse, they might let Mosh out.

Johnny tried to explain this to them, but they shaved his head anyway.

Beyond the door next to her, on the porch, Betty hears him.

(John Schaefer.) She scrambles to her feet, smearing her own vomit on her hands and her knees. She gasps for breath and her heart wants to tear loose from her rib cage.

Mosh is a maniac.

(John Schaefer is a maniac.)Betty's thoughts fly in crazy directions. She scrambles through the dark. The windows down here are shuttered and curtained. She's as blind here as she was on the stairs. She stumbles away from the sounds by the door. She can hear it opening, behind her.

In her dash to get away she grabs something soft and wet. She screams again and stumbles off in another direction. Behind her she hears Tanya's body fall.

Drip.

Thud.

The door creaks and a widening sliver of moonlight folds open across the blind TV ahead of her. A shadow crosses the rectangle of light, and Betty runs for the barely visible kitchen doorway.

After the first treatment, Johnny cried for weeks.

The first appeal failed.

Johnny screamed all the way to the second treatment. They had to restrain him. He whipped his head so much that they had to inject a sedative to fit the helmet on him.

After that treatment, Johnny tried to kill himself. They placed him in solitary confinement for six months.

The second appeal also failed.

As the time for the third treatment came, Johnny became violent for the first time he could remember. He clawed, and bit, and the guard sprayed mace in his eyes. They jabbed a needle in his arm before taking him from his cell.

After that treatment, Johnny didn't move for two months. The doctors said he was catatonic. The guards said he was faking.

Five Supreme Court justices said that empathy treatments weren't "cruel and unusual."

The treatments were supposed to make him realize what those women went through at his, Mosh's, hands. Johnny had thought he'd understood that. But he'd been wrong.

The treatments were worse than anything Johnny had ever experienced. The drugs wiped his mind, and voices in his ears convinced him that he wasn't him.

It was worse than thinking Mosh actually lived inside his skull. Johnny could believe that Mosh was in his own head and still know that he was Johnny.

But when they had finished whispering in his ear, he was no longer Johnny.

When the voices finished whispering, he was one of the fifteen. He was in their reality, his brain locked behind the mask and the wires, not knowing the world it inhabited was no longer the world Johnny lived in.

First they made him Ginger Harper.

Then they made him Pauline d.i.c.kinson.

Then they made him Tanya Gideon.

While he was strapped into a sickbed, wired to New York State's computers, he lived their last moments. Wires triggered their fears in him,ignited their pain in him. And, each time, they took a little more of Johnny away from him, leaving nothing but death to replace what they had taken.

For his fourth treatment, four guards and a doctor came for him. Johnny tried to fight, but he was skinny and weak from years in prison. The needle found his arms before he barely had a chance to struggle.

The worst part of all- Each time, it took the voices less time to convince him he was someone else.

She's trapped. There's no other way out of the kitchen and the killer is coming toward her. She sees a window over the sink and she dives for it.

Outside there's blowing snow and blue moonlit drifts, but she doesn't think of the cold. All she thinks of is escape- (John Schaefer is after me.) Mosh is after me.

-but her fingers sc.r.a.pe against a handleless frame, painted shut. Her eyes water as a nail peels back to the quick. She grabs a frying pan from the sink and throws it against the window.

The window shatters.

The wind claws its way in with icicle scalpels.

The blue night outside turns dead black as light floods the kitchen.

Reflexively, she turns around to see- (John Schaefer.) NO!.

-to see Johnny. He's bundled for the weather, but she sees blood on his jeans. He's holding a shovel, not a snow shovel, but a spade for turning earth.

The blade is caked with mud.

Johnny holds it like a weapon.

She knows that Johnny is going to kill her with the shovel. Time slows as Johnny raises the shovel above his head. Betty tries to scream, but her breath is like mola.s.ses in her throat. Her body doesn't move. The deja vu is back, a ghost gripping her heart.

It's Johnny.

Not Mosh.

His face is wrong. His height is wrong. His clothes are wrong.

This isn't the man that killed her.

The shovel reaches its apex. She can't move, rooted by the same force that moved her hand when she dislodged the mason jar. The same force that drove her down the stairs.

The same devil's whisper that's been moving her all along.

She fights it.

She can almost hear the voice, now. It tells her to stand still, wait for the shovel to impact her skull. Tells her to feel the full force of the impact driving bone fragments through her brain. Tells her to feel what it's like to be murdered.Tells her to feel what it's like to die.

The voice is dark, seductive . . .

Her heart shakes her rib cage like a prisoner trying to escape.

The shovel whistles through the air, arcing toward her head.

She forces herself to move.

The scene slows even further as she resists the voice. The shovel's blade screams closer. She feels, knows, that she's been here before.

She's died here before.

The devil with the dark, dominating voice drives her through this circle of h.e.l.l, again, and again, and again.

Betty is no longer even sure of who she is. She could be a nineteen-year-old prost.i.tute named Ginger Harper. She could be a twenty-six-year-old waitress named Pauline d.i.c.kinson.

She could even be Tanya Gideon.

That thought, knowing that Tanya's body is only a few yards away, allows her to move. Events snap back to normal speeds as she ducks to the side.

The shovel clangs into the sink.

The gong of impact shatters the devil in her ear. She can direct her own body for the first time.

Johnny- (The killer. My killer. Tanya's killer.) Johnny is frozen in shock. He isn't supposed to miss. Betty knows that he is the devil, supposed to kill her over and over, until the end of time.

But she can move, and her devil is gone.

Johnny lifts his shovel, but it is an unwieldy weapon. Betty sweeps a counter full of crusty dishes to shatter in his path. Johnny steps back, raising his shovel.

Betty sees a dirty butcher knife.

Like a machine, Johnny raises his shovel. Betty knows that it is the only attack he can perform, because Betty Dupree's body was found with a shattered skull. She doesn't know how she knows this, but she knows that the muttering devil will only allow Johnny to follow his program. Johnny must kill her. He must kill her with the shovel.

She won't let him.

She grabs the knife and closes on Johnny.

His shovel hasn't reached its apex, and Johnny's eyes widen as she plunges the knife, two-handed, between his collarbones. Even as blood sprays from his mouth, his shovel still travels upward. He is as much the devil's slave as she was.

She yanks the knife and stabs him again.

He backs and tries to bring the shovel to bear, but she closes and stabs him again.

And again.

And again.She stabs him until the shovel drops.

She stabs him until he drops.

She kneels over him and stabs him repeatedly. She yells at the devil, "I've killed him. I've killed your torturer. No more! No more death!"

Betty Dupree stabs Johnny. "No more!"

Ginger Harper stabs Johnny. "No more!"

Pauline d.i.c.kinson stabs Johnny. "No more!"

Tanya Gideon stabs Johnny. "No more!"

Finally, as the kitchen fades into darkness, Johnny stabs Johnny. "No more!"

Then there's only Johnny.

Then nothing.

It hurts when they yank the helmet off. The doctor leans over with a look of concern. It is the only sympathy the man's shown in four separate treatments.

"Are you okay? Can you understand what I'm saying?"

That's the voice, the devil's voice. It seems a victory, remembering that.

The room is cold, and there are more people here than usual. More than the guards. They must have come from beyond the ma.s.sive one-way mirror that forms one wall of the empathy room.

"I'm so sorry, Johnny." The doctor says. "You shouldn't have gone through this."