what it did.
Was it real? I want it to be fake. I consider the doctor’s diagnosis—that my brain is screwed up and sees things that aren’t really there. I don’t want that thing I saw to be real. I want it to be all in my head.
I shiver reflexively, the involuntary twitch you get when you touch something disgusting. The thought that the maggot could be in my head almost makes me gag with revulsion—and then I remember the faces of the Red Line victims, hollowed out and bloody. What if the maggots were in their heads, laid there like eggs, nestled up in their sinuses, and then ate their way out when they hatched? The thought makes me gag again, and I throw up; I’m still tied down, and the vomit covers my chest because there’s no way to get it anywhere else.
It can’t be true. It can’t be. I feel a wriggle in my head, as if something’s writhing against my brain, and I throw up again. I force myself to think about something else, about anything else, about the walls and the ceiling, about the nurses and the other patients, about Dr. Little and Dr. Vanek and everything I can possibly think of. They say that I’m crazy: what if they’re right? Dr. Vanek said that my hallucinations are probably based on some kind of real experience; that my brain is constructing its artificial sights and sounds out of old memories and emotions, filtered through the lens of imagination and fantasy. If that’s true, then the things I think are real could potentially be explained away, the same way you’d interpret a dream.
The maggot wouldn’t have to be real.
But how can I possibly decide what is real and what’s not? The mere thought of it hurts my already-throbbing brain. There’s Shauna, the night nurse, who I thought at first was Lucy. Nobody else knows who I’m talking about. With no visits from my girlfriend, did I create a fake one?
And then there’s the Faceless Men, and the pile of faceless corpses. I thought before that the corpses might be a result of my battle with Them, but what if it’s the other way around? What if I saw a Red Line victim somewhere and was traumatized by the experience, and my brain created the Faceless Men as a way of dealing with it? That must be it—I saw them on the news, back when the very first body was found …
… except that I don’t watch the news. I don’t watch TV at all, and the people who do—my dad, my boss—don’t ever talk to me. The only person I really talk to is Lucy, and of course Dr. Vanek, and something like a serial killer never comes up in those conversations. It’s entirely possible that I saw those faceless corpses sometime in the past and simply blocked them all from my conscious mind, waiting for the day my subconscious dredged them up and created a delusion. My biggest block of lost memory is from that two-week period before I was put in the hospital, but my memory before that is anything but perfect. Does anyone remember 100 percent of everything? Can I account for myself every hour of every day?
But how and why would I ever come into contact with the Red Line’s victims, unless I was the killer?
My head nods, and I think about the horror of my own body’s rebellion. Someone was controlling me—no matter what excuse Dr. Little comes up with, I felt it. My body was not my own. What if someone really can control my body, fully and completely, and they’re using it to kill people? What if I’m just a puppet, dancing on the end of a string, while a nameless, faceless killer sits in the dark and controls my every move?
Cell phones—that’s got to be how They do it. Cell phones and computers and TVs.
Do I really have something in my brain? Do They control me through a chip in my skull? Or is it something worse—is there really some kind of grub inside me, drinking my blood, nestling against the motor functions of my cerebellum, picking up a signal and passing it on, wearing my body like a glove?
That maggot was real—I saw it, I heard it.
Was it real? I want it to be fake. I consider the doctor’s diagnosis—that my brain is screwed up and sees things that aren’t really there. I don’t want that thing I saw to be real. I want it to be all in my head.
I shiver reflexively, the involuntary twitch you get when you touch something disgusting. The thought that the maggot could be in my head almost makes me gag with revulsion—and then I remember the faces of the Red Line victims, hollowed out and bloody. What if the maggots were in their heads, laid there like eggs, nestled up in their sinuses, and then ate their way out when they hatched? The thought makes me gag again, and I throw up; I’m still tied down, and the vomit covers my chest because there’s no way to get it anywhere else.
It can’t be true. It can’t be. I feel a wriggle in my head, as if something’s writhing against my brain, and I throw up again. I force myself to think about something else, about anything else, about the walls and the ceiling, about the nurses and the other patients, about Dr. Little and Dr. Vanek and everything I can possibly think of. They say that I’m crazy: what if they’re right? Dr. Vanek said that my hallucinations are probably based on some kind of real experience; that my brain is constructing its artificial sights and sounds out of old memories and emotions, filtered through the lens of imagination and fantasy. If that’s true, then the things I think are real could potentially be explained away, the same way you’d interpret a dream.
The maggot wouldn’t have to be real.
But how can I possibly decide what is real and what’s not? The mere thought of it hurts my already-throbbing brain. There’s Shauna, the night nurse, who I thought at first was Lucy. Nobody else knows who I’m talking about. With no visits from my girlfriend, did I create a fake one?
And then there’s the Faceless Men, and the pile of faceless corpses. I thought before that the corpses might be a result of my battle with Them, but what if it’s the other way around? What if I saw a Red Line victim somewhere and was traumatized by the experience, and my brain created the Faceless Men as a way of dealing with it? That must be it—I saw them on the news, back when the very first body was found …
… except that I don’t watch the news. I don’t watch TV at all, and the people who do—my dad, my boss—don’t ever talk to me. The only person I really talk to is Lucy, and of course Dr. Vanek, and something like a serial killer never comes up in those conversations. It’s entirely possible that I saw those faceless corpses sometime in the past and simply blocked them all from my conscious mind, waiting for the day my subconscious dredged them up and created a delusion. My biggest block of lost memory is from that two-week period before I was put in the hospital, but my memory before that is anything but perfect. Does anyone remember 100 percent of everything? Can I account for myself every hour of every day?
But how and why would I ever come into contact with the Red Line’s victims, unless I was the killer?
My head nods, and I think about the horror of my own body’s rebellion. Someone was controlling me—no matter what excuse Dr. Little comes up with, I felt it. My body was not my own. What if someone really can control my body, fully and completely, and they’re using it to kill people? What if I’m just a puppet, dancing on the end of a string, while a nameless, faceless killer sits in the dark and controls my every move?
Cell phones—that’s got to be how They do it. Cell phones and computers and TVs.
Do I really have something in my brain? Do They control me through a chip in my skull? Or is it something worse—is there really some kind of grub inside me, drinking my blood, nestling against the motor functions of my cerebellum, picking up a signal and passing it on, wearing my body like a glove?
That maggot was real—I saw it, I heard it.
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