Posted on December 9, 2008

Karaoke Quintessence: Chapter 6: Black Wool Coat

He sat through class and felt sick.  His head buzzed and the words–FIND IT FOR ME–screamed at him in blurred and shimmering flashback.  Danny didn’t know what it was like to go insane but he bet it was something like this.  And now, as the history professor articulated the highs and lows of the Bolshevik revolution, Danny gave genuine thought to notifying the police.  I’m losing it, he’d tell them.  If I try to buy a gun, I want you to know I might be real dangerous.

He bit the inside of his cheek.  He tasted blood.

It wasn’t just memories.  No, the sudden degradation of his sanity had not stopped when he’d left his room yesterday, when he’d run from the words on the screen and the white board.  The process had been a continual horror.  He’d dreamed when he slept and heard awful sounds while awake–whispers in the back of his mind and messages scrawled indistinctly at the corners of his vision.  Danny had begun the hate himself over the last twenty four hours, deriding himself for powerlessness, for weakness in the face of this experience.

He’d come to class to be surrounded by people.

But it didn’t work.  Even now, the professor turned with chalk in hand, and wrote on the board: large while letters forming CULTURE BOX and then, below it, FIND IT FOR ME.  Danny turned away, but he could still feel the words.

He stood up.  He had to leave.

The professor stopped, looked at him.  “Mr. Weeks?” he said.  “Is everything okay?”

The other students shifted to face Danny, seeing his pale skin and red eyes.  “I’m okay,” Danny managed.  “Just a little sick.”  He worked his way down the row of desks to the aisle, then up it to the lecture hall’s exit.  

Out in the hallway, he felt calmer, but only barely.  There was still blood in his mouth from the broken skin of his cheek.  He sucked on it, thankful for the overriding sensation of the pain.

He’d left his books, left his backpack, inside the classroom, but he couldn’t go back for them.  He had to get out.  He had to find the box.  To do so would be to give in to the insanity, he knew.  The culture box was nothing but a figment of his imagination, a product of his mind’s slippage.  But the search would calm him.  Even thinking this brought a degree of the desired effect: the buzzing in his head subsided slightly and the words just out of range of his vision, the messages hiding at the edges of his blind spots, grew pale.

Danny left the building, stopping only to get a drink of water from the fountain, and then walked in the direction of the bus stop.  He’d go home and see if he could conjure up the chat bot again.  Whether it existed or not didn’t matter.  He’d summon the mysterious messenger, either from the depths of the Internet or the corners of his mind.  He’d ask it how to start.

The bus arrived and he climbed on, keeping his eyes away from the rows of advertisements above the seats, trying not to look at anything displaying text that might shift into those hated words.  He squeezed into an empty bench spot facing across the isle, mumbling an apology to the fat woman next to him.  She grunted and turned away, pulling her purse closer to her chest.

Danny’s stomach shifted with each bump and his head swam.  Was the pain intentional?  Was it another indicator, like the constant text, that he needed to get moving, to find this culture box now and not wait another minute?  Jesus, he thought.

He looked up to stare out the window, hoping the view of the passing buildings would reduce his queasiness.  Across from him, in the opposite bench seat, was a man in a black wool coat.  The man saw Danny and smiled.  Danny tried to smile back and then broke eye contact.

The man leaned forward.  The bus was loud with conversation and the noise of the road, but Danny could hear him perfectly.  His mouth barely moved as he said, “I’m afraid you won’t be going home, Danny.”

“Excuse me?” Danny said.  He wasn’t sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard and couldn’t rule out the possibility of auditory hallucinations.  “Did you say something?”

The man shifted the leather doctor’s bag he was carrying off his lap and leaned even closer.  “Of course I did, Danny.”

Danny shook his head.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m awfully tired and I don’t feel well.  I don’t want to talk, if that’s okay.”

“Oh, quite okay, Danny,” the man said.  “In fact, I rather prefer it.”  He stood up.  The woman next to Danny simultaneously did the same.  She brushed off her pants and walked to the front of the bus.  The man in the black wool coat sat down in the spot she’d left.  “Now, Mr. Weeks,” he said, putting his hand on top of Danny’s, “I’m sure he haven’t the faintest idea who I am”–Danny shook his head–”but I need you to listen vary carefully to what I have to say.”  He moved his mouth next to Danny’s ear, whispering.  His voice was still loud and perfectly clear, even over the noise of the bus.  “When this bus stops next, you and I are going to get off.  We’re going to walk two blocks south and you will say nothing during that time.  When we get to our destination, we will rendezvous with a companion of mine who will take custody of you.”

“Am I under arrest?” Danny asked.  He was having difficulty concentrating on anything but the man’s voice.

“I am not an officer of the law, if that is what you mean,” the man said.

“Oh,” Danny said.

“But you are most assuredly not free to go about as you please.”

“Oh,” Danny said.

“This other man will take you somewhere and he will ask you questions.  I advise you to help him with whatever he needs and to do so without fuss.  Do you understand?”

“Who are you?” Danny said.

“I am someone who seeks the same item you do.”

“The culture box?”

The man in the black wool coat didn’t answer.  Instead, he opened his leather doctor’s bag and took out a metal instrument like a pair of narrow pliers with three heads and a rubber grip.  He lifted these to the side of Danny’s head, just outside Danny’s field of vision.  Danny found he couldn’t move and, more horribly, didn’t want to.  The cool metal touched his ear.

“This will be painful,” the man in the black wool coat said.  “But necessary.”

Danny only felt it for a moment.