His body was lifted, placed by sharp legs onto the back of a giant creature. He could sense more than see being carried down, down into the depths, toward the nest. His world lifted up and away as he went lower and lower, his fingers dragging in soft dirt as darkness encompassed him completely.
He was set down inside a chamber as vast as Solomon’s palace, an entryway to the massive honeycomb of caverns and tunnels already reaching beyond the city, spiraling downward and outward; new catacombs being even now created and traveled, reaching even further. His eyes prickled, sharp needling pains shooting through them. He opened them, blinking, and was surprised he could now see clearly within the depths – a duotone yellow showed every crevice of the cavernous fulcrum.
The vast walls crawled with countless golden shells.
He was no longer fed. He was so full now, and he could digest no more. He defecated, his body emptying itself, and the creatures methodically combined it with their own waste, spread out in great piles throughout the cavern. The Meketaten covered Alfie with the waste, then rolled his bloated body – his stomach a giant flexed womb of nutrients pumping through his system – into a great pile of dung. They continued to roll him into a massive ball of dirt and shit, inside which he laid, dormant, at the center of a chrysalis, awaiting transformation.
In the quiet, warm dark, Alfie curled into himself like an unborn child; could hear his heart beat faster, faster. Visions and information translated into his mind like a hurricane, expanded his brain, physically reshaping his human skull into an oblong cranium, the parietal plate breaking and pushed backward, stretching new skin. His mind reformed into an antenna which could communicate with the One God as well as the other Meketaten; to receive and provide information, relay the will of the great one.
Lead them.
As the transformation slowly continued, he felt – numbly, with awareness but no pain – his limbs crack, reshape, lengthen, then quickly heal. Stronger than before. Stronger than bone, than steel.
A thick secretion spilled from his pores, hardened around him, over him. His back broadened, shoulders separated and extended, muscle ripped apart and regrew, sinew sprouting like weeds inside as his skin became shell.
His new mind started to finalize its ultimate form, and the part of him still human wondered if he would fly, if he would swarm with his brothers, his children, and watch the destruction of what mankind had built from high above, caressed by the cool mist of clouds, the warmth of the One God spread across his impenetrable carapace like a guiding hand, the hand of a father.
They will call him Ateuchus, and when he emerged the new world would begin. His creatures, having created this new man, will scream like locusts, “See him! See the great one, uniting the earth!”
And he will rise, burning like the golden sun.
ID
1
WE MET IN a mental hospital.
Wow. What an opening line, right? Doomed from the get-go. Why go on?
It’s okay, it’s okay. It all ends up just fine.
Trust me.
SO YEAH, I was suffering from a spike in my lifelong battle with chronic depression, one that led to a sad attempt to kill myself by popping twenty-plus Ativan while blasting Foghat and drinking a bottle of cheap California Merlot before settling myself into a hot bath in a lightless bathroom save for a flickering scented candle (that was supposed to smell like vanilla but came off more like perfumed cake batter) while waiting to pass out and drown. I woke up at 3 a.m. freezing my ass off and jittery as a blue bottle fly high on cocaine. I took a walk around the block, lugged a brick through an ex-girlfriend’s window then drove myself to the ER where they promptly admitted me for an abnormally high heartrate and a nasty hard-on for classic rock suicide.
When I say admitted me I don’t mean for general health care. I mean they admitted me for psychological evaluation. Which I passed with flying colors, ha-ha.
THE MENTAL WARD was part of the main hospital. To get into the mental ward, however, you needed to run a gauntlet of locked, oversized metal doors that separated the sane and stable from the confused and emotionally-challenged. Upon entry, security would beep you through the first door, which literally said MENTAL WARD on it, plus there was a big red lightbulb that popped on when the door buzzed open for access, and a security camera so the guard inside could see you clearly. Once through, you entered a stunted hallway, not unlike the cleansing chambers you sometimes see in movies when the guys in white hazmat suits get sprayed down before going back into society so as not to carry any rogue bacteria that might be clinging to them.
Once you’re in the decontamination chamber, you must sign in with the glass-shielded guard before being escorted through one of two internal doors.
The first door had a green stripe across it and the tightly stenciled words: Green Ward. The words hovered carelessly above a small, likely bullet-proof, window, that revealed only a maddening tease of what lay beyond. This was the door for depressives, the socially anxious, mildly disturbed, paranoid, moderately delusional, fringe psychotic, et cetera, et cetera. This was the path for the soft ones. The passives, you might say. My diagnosis was clinical depression, anxiety and mild schizophrenia. In other words, soft.
The other door went to the Blue Ward. This area housed the folks you see in horror movies. Guys bumping their heads against concrete walls, patients in white gowns shouting curses, dudes in straightjackets… you get it. These were the psychotic and borderline dangerous, the patients who would not only hurt themselves, but potentially others. Not murderers or anything, but the ones who lived nowhere but in their own heads. The ones who could hurt you and not even know they were doing it.
If they steered you toward the Blue Ward, you were nine kinds of fucked, to put it mildly. If they steered you toward the Green Ward, you most likely had bandaged wrists or a sullen disposition, potentially comatose. Maybe you heard a voice or two, but nothing, you know, too crazy.
By the way this isn’t foreshadowing. You’ll never see the Blue Ward. Not in this story. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.
My first night in the Green Ward my roommate was a guy named Milo, a pretty laid-back fella, especially since he was strapped to his bed at his wrists and ankles and force-fed meals. We didn’t talk much.
I remember that first night vividly because Milo woke up screaming. A few nurses came in and gave Milo a needle to shut him up. I was so absorbed by my own depression and altered circumstances I barely registered the experience before falling back into an anxious sleep.
The next morning Milo was gone. I never did get another roommate.
Which brings us to Crystal. The moment you’ve been waiting for, right? Yeah, well, it wasn’t that glamorous, believe me. Don’t bother cueing the slo-mo.
My third morning in the bin I was ditching the group session (again) and sitting in the hallway sort of rocking and moaning (again), my brain anesthetized by hospital-grade tranquilizers and mood suppressants. I was just debating going back to my Milo-less room to groan in private when I heard the already too-familiar buzzing of the entry door.
Then I heard loud, urgent voices. Then screaming.
