Chapter 3 - Second Thoughts

  I lay still in the open tank, heart still hammering, brain looping the death I hadn’t died. My fingers brushed Lisa’s faded bracelet, and I wondered if the salt in the tank would be the final insult that damaged it beyond repair. My brain looped the last few minutes, unable to let go.

  Everything was vivid again. That death vision hadn’t been real, just a vision, maybe a weird effect of the tank. Part of me wanted to get up and leave, but the unnamed dread returned, and each attempt to rise drove a nail behind my eyes.

  After about five minutes of struggling with myself, I decided to close the tank, let my body settle, and use up the rest of my hour. There was a gentle thud as the lid sealed, and my body stilled; the feeling of the waves and motion receded until all sensation was gone.

  The distant pain in my forehead returned, just as it had before. The odd double heartbeats returned. I tried to focus on the flecks in the darkness, but all I could think of was the sight of my body on the pavement. A few minutes later, the soft blue light turned on with an electronic ping.

  Nothing was right, and I could barely bring myself to open the lid. Grudgingly, my arms obeyed and pushed it open. It was the same gray world. My emotional response was sharp, but I didn’t let it control me. Whatever was happening, I vowed to myself to find a way out.

  I climbed from the pod, toweling off, the terry cloth grazing my skin. Salt lingered in my nostrils, the textured surface grating at bare feet. All my senses worked; they had the texture of reality, yet somehow, my brain registered it as unreal. It wasn’t a dream; it was fully lucid. I was myself and in control. The world looked and acted like the real world, but somehow diminished, darker, quieter, and less tangible.

  Skipping the shower, I slipped into my clothes and hurried to the lobby. My focus narrowed, struggling to scratch the itch in my brain, to understand what the hell was going on. Entering the lobby, Luanda turned to me, and I focused on the flicker around her edges—the shimmer I’d mistaken for double vision. It wasn’t double vision, where images move uniformly. These were faint, ghost-like versions of her, all moving slightly out of sync: some slightly ahead, others slightly behind. The only word I can think of to describe them is “afterimages.” Maybe they were choices—paths she might take, echoing what could be. Maybe not.

  As the main Luanda spoke, I could vaguely hear the other versions of her talking as well, starting slightly before or slightly after—the soft variations blending and sounding like she was speaking from under a blanket. Her question barely registered, “How was it? Did you like it?”

  I kept looking at her, examining her thick, dark lips as she spoke, seeing the same wispy afterimages but less clearly. I studied her hair and dark eyes, watching the creases of her thin white blouse shift with her movements. The afterimages flickered in and out of existence, some nearly imperceptible, others more pronounced.

  She gave me a weapons-grade glare, and I realized I had been staring at her for a good fifteen seconds. Her voice, a bit sharper and higher-pitched, broke the silence. “Please, take in the wonder that is Luanda. I’m here for your viewing pleasure,” she said sarcastically. Her hand quietly slid into a large woven purse on the counter as she spoke.

  My cheeks flushed, and I raised my hand to cover my face in embarrassment. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I looked down. “I don’t know what it is. Everything seems off since I got out of the pod. Is that normal?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Her head shook back and forth, and she said, “Normal? Nothing about you seems normal. If you don’t want people to think you’re hitting on their girlfriends, don’t leer at them. The guy you mentioned came by, and I stupidly lied for you. Now I’m starting to wonder if I should have.” Her voice was rigid and commanding with a hint of betrayal.

  “When was he here?”

  “I don’t know; a few minutes after you came in. He even had a driver's license photo of you. Not the kind of thing you would expect from an angry boyfriend.”

  “I don’t know who he is,” I said, pulse racing, hands clenched as I turned to scan the street. The threat was so close now, and I needed an escape. The blue Nissan was in the same direction as my rental car, about a block away—maybe 150 yards. It faced Stillpoint, angled for a clean line of sight. I wasn’t a gun expert—hell, I wasn’t even a gun amateur—but a single shot in the center of my head seemed like a good shot.

  I considered two options. First, I could try to make it to my rental, but that meant moving toward the Nissan, trying to get in, and driving past. Alternatively, it was possible to exit on foot in the opposite direction. The problem with that was that if he saw me at any point, there would be no place to run; it meant hoping he wouldn’t spot me or that he couldn't identify me from the back. Neither option sounded great.

  Facing the door I stood thinking for several seconds when Luanda called out, in a confused tone, “what the fuck are you doing just standing there?”

  “Just weighing which direction I’m more likely to die in. Give me a sec.”

  “You think he’s just going to shoot you in the middle of the day in a strip mall with a hundred witnesses? Either you are the most paranoid person who ever lived, or this isn’t about his girlfriend. Something is very wrong with you, but I don’t want any part of it. Please leave.”

  Her tone was both mocking and insistent, and my options were limited. I went with walking away from the shooter. Hopefully, he was watching other stores when I left. After I turned, I figured he wouldn’t be able to identify me just from the rear. I even considered walking out the door backwards, but that felt like it would just instantly draw someone’s eye.

  Approaching the door, I kept my body angled away from where he was parked and exited, walking away at a steady pace. Everything still looked false, sharpening my fear. I kept expecting to hear the crack of the rifle, and be pulled out of—whatever this state was.

  Each step was a tiny victory. When I passed the block, I briefly considered going down the alley, but I wasn’t even sure if it exited anywhere, so I kept walking. If I could make it to the next intersection, I could turn and run, create some distance, and escape.

  The afterimages of the people out here were more varied than those around Luanda. Most were similar, but occasionally, one of the afterimages would disconnect entirely from the person to whom it was attached. One woman stopped to look in a store window before slowly fading to nothing. A ghostly child darted ahead of his father—then vanished. I didn’t let it distract me, and I kept moving with a deliberate pace.

  When I was almost at the corner, the blue Nissan passed me. The windows were tinted so I couldn’t see in, but when it was about a car-length past me, it stopped, blocking traffic.

  The door flew open.

  I ran.

  Crack.

  Glass exploded ahead of me. Did he miss?

  Staggering, breath on fire. Something warm was in my mouth.

  Voices screaming.

  Another step.

  Another shot.

  Two holes in my back. A river of red pouring out—but I’m not there.

  My focus locked again on the friendship bracelet—Lisa’s gift.

  Remembering her

  small,

  soft fingertips brushing my wrists as she tied it on.

  My wrists cold and lifeless now.

  The pull came, then darkness.

  These visions weren’t death, but I couldn’t endure them much longer. I surfaced in the tank, shaking and soaked. Lisa’s threadbare bracelet clung to my trembling wrist, but the throb in my forehead whispered: death wasn’t done with me.