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One of my earliest memories of Tara is from our grandparents’ farm in Darke County, Ohio.
It’s summer, and black thunderheads are rolling in, the air hot and thick like syrup. Thrumming like a livewire with the approaching storm, a crackling you can’t hear with your ears, but feel in your back teeth, in your fillings, in the fine hairs standing up on your arms. Our moms have already given up calling us inside. Lunch – Gramma Jean’s tuna salad sandwiches – is sitting out on the screened-in porch, somehow managing to get both soggy and dry. We’re vaguely aware that we’re in trouble, but the summer, the glorious summer, stretches so far ahead that we feel invulnerable.
We’re in Fantasyland, as Tara calls it, and nothing bad is allowed to happen here. The farm, the fields, the church and the little town at the end of the winding road – they’re straight out of a storybook about princesses and castles and deep, enchanted forests. I’m a whole year younger than her and completely in awe of my older cousin, drinking in every word like gospel.
Trying to silence our giggles, we sit in the hayloft of the barn. We’re not supposed to go up the ladder, but we do it anyway, legs dangling over the edge. Looking down causes a pleasurable vertigo to tickle the pit of my stomach. It smells of dust and dry hay and Pop-Pop’s tractor, which he sold off years ago, but the memory of which still lingers in the shape of a big oil stain on the dirt floor, a persistent ghost. Rain is coming. I can sense it even though it’s still a ways off, a steadily building whisper on the horizon.
Just minutes ago, Tara was her usual self, but now she edges away from me, her face turned to the wall. Her dark hair swirls around her shoulders, which stick out of her tank top, thin and pale in the darkness. Suddenly uneasy, I say something inane, wishing to break the strange silence. She doesn’t respond. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Touching her bare arm, I feel a jolt pass through her. She shrugs off my hand and spins round, and I can see it’s not Tara, but a stranger wearing her face and body and clothes. The stranger’s eyes are dark holes, brimming with something unfathomable and terrifying. I want to shout at her to leave Tara alone, but there’s only air beneath me, my arms and legs flailing, and someone’s screaming and I think it’s me as the ledge falls away, the black dirt rushes up to meet me, and the stranger’s familiar face recedes as if down a tunnel until all is black.
––––––––
Aunt Denise’s voice is just the way I remember it. Gravelly with decades of chain-smoked American Spirits, the voice of a woman disillusioned and hardened by life’s failures, all softness eroded until only hard, cruel edges remain. It crackles down the line – she never switched her landline – with all the harshness that’s etched into my memory. “Hello? Who is this?”
Seconds tick away and I’m painfully aware that every single one makes it more awkward for me to say something, but I can’t seem to gather the words, or expel them past my suddenly numb lips. Despite all the intervening years, I’m reduced to a child again, Aunt Denise’s pale eyes watching me from their nests of premature wrinkles, judging me and finding me wanting.
I must have made a sound, because her tone grows sharper, immediately on the offense. “Speak up, whoever this is. I can barely hear you. Least you can do it talk like a real human being.”
It’s taken me a week to steel myself for this conversation, and only seconds for my resolve to be crushed completely, turning me into a mess of raw nerves. “Hi, Aunt Denise,” I say, and introduce myself. I hate the way I sound. “It’s been a while.” Been a while? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
There’s no response for a while, and when she finally speaks her voice is dripping acid. Malicious and mocking, poisonous with all her long-held resentments toward the world. “How kind of you to call,” she says. “I’ve been expecting it. Expecting you’d remember your dear Auntie Denise these days. My father isn’t even cold in his grave, and the vultures are already circling. Have I got it right? That’s what you want after all these years, isn’t it?”
My underarms dampen with nervous sweat. I choke back my immediate impulse to explain myself, to justify. It drives my brother Brian crazy. Stop being a doormat, he says. Stop trying to get them to accept you. You don’t owe anything to anyone. Punch back. “We missed you at the funeral,” I say, trying to do just that. Aiming for sarcasm, I fall somewhere between whiny and apologetic, like it’s my fault.
Aunt Denise scoffs on the other end of the line. I decide to interpret this as meaning that my punch has landed. “Go there for what? I’ve got plenty to keep me busy here. If you’d ever had to take care of yourself, you’d know what that’s like.” Freak. Unnatural. I can read between the lines. “Besides, I could hardly afford it. Dear old Pop-Pop wrote me out of his will. Remember? Three kids, and none of us are getting one red cent. A disgrace, if you ask me.”
“That’s not what-” I cut myself off, trying to regain my composure. Don’t let her drag you down to her level, Brian chimes in my head. Like there’s a switch I can flip. “I didn’t call to get into a debate, Aunt Denise. I’m trying to get a hold of Tara. Do you have her number, or an email address?”
Hostile silence hisses down the line. “There’s paperwork she needs to sign,” I say quickly. “We’re selling the farm. But the estate lawyer needs all five grandkids to sign off on it. Those are the terms of the will.”
I hear the unmistakable snick of a lighter, the deep, wheezing inhalation. It’s easy to picture Aunt Denise in her dark, junk-cramped living room, rocking back in her old recliner, the one with stuffing bursting out of its sides like dirty snow. Dust bunnies the size of fists collecting under her varicose-veined legs.
“I haven’t heard from my darling daughter in months,” she says around mouthfuls of cigarette smoke. “Can’t say I miss talking to her, either. Last time we spoke she asked me for money. Right before she started screaming at me. Accusing me of ruining her life. Which I can tell you isn’t exactly music to a parent’s ears.”
“I’m sorry,” I say mechanically, even though I’m not sure what I’m sorry about. Maybe about having this pointless conversation. We can have Tara declared incompetent, Brian suggested, but that would only mean we have to deal with Aunt Denise instead, and Tara won’t see any of the money. “Look, this is really important. I need to get a hold of Tara. Okay? We all need the money, and we can’t do this without her.”
Aunt Denise toys with me for a few minutes longer, but by the time she hangs up, I have an address and a phone number. Unpeeling my sweat-soaked t-shirt, I chug a glass of water and wait for my heartbeat to slow down, preparing for the next step. Tara’s palmer went offline after her first stint under emergency observation – excessively stimulating, the shrinks had opined – and she’s never had a social media presence. After my injury, my parents started inventing excuses to avoid Aunt Denise and her hyper-aggressive daughter. We lost touch over the years and have not been close since we were children.
I dial the number. A faint ache, phantom or real, throbs in my collarbone. The break took forever to heal, and it hurt like hell, every minute of it. But heal it did. Some injuries never do.
“Yeah.” A gruff male voice, almost without inflection. “Who is this?”
I stammer out my name, feeling like an idiot again. Great start to the day. “Is Tara around? I’m her cousin. I really need to speak with her.”
A long silence stretches out. When the voice comes back, it’s deeper than before, but oddly sounds less masculine. “She’s gone,” it says, and hangs up.
––––––––
It isn’t possible for a person to exist entirely off the grid.
Not in this, our most connected and best-integrated century, where virtual interfaces track not just your every move, but every expression – who knows, maybe even thought – and semi-autonomous software controls everything from water and parking meters to stock markets. Metered credit, metered living space, metered water to drink and wash with. Yet Tara somehow slides through the late post-information age like a duck through rain, without a single digital bead sticking to her feathers. She exists in none of the myriad meta-interaction forums, trails no slave-chain of long-forgotten personality avatars across the usual networks. The few friends I manage to track down and who consent to speak with me all agree: Tara has done the impossible, slipped through the information net without a trace. Even her most recent job, through which she receives her credit allotment, knows nothing. Her account has not recorded a login in months.
Gone.
The phone number was a bust, but I still have the address Aunt Denise gave me. Like a gumshoe in a noir novel, I have to resort to following clues. I catch a train to the city, and let the monoliths of glass and steel close up and swallow me whole.
One thing I’m definitely not looking for is trouble, and Tara has made a habit of keeping some unsavory company over the years. The rough voice on the phone is all the reminder I need. A quick online search reveals that the address is some sort of group home – part halfway house, part rehab center, run by a community mental health care program. Aunt Denise said Tara was crazy, which I now understand to be more than just a figure of speech. This looks serious, and I wonder if my cousin has finally gone off the deep end.
The bus stop at which I alight and the rows of dilapidated storefronts that stretch along the empty street confirm my fears. Broken glass glitters on the sidewalk and the alleys smell of piss. Scrawny men loiter on the stoops, their glances furtive and hungry. Pale faces float behind dirty windows. It’s not quite the bad part of town, but it’s not where you stay after dark either. Certainly not if you look like me, a magnet for thugs and muggers of all stripes. Curbing a strong impulse to run after the departing bus, I walk up the steps of a narrow townhouse and mash the loose buzzer.
A dead camera’s single black eye throws back my upside-down reflection. The door is thick and barred with steel, easily the most solid part of the building. A memento of last year’s deadly downtown riots. Someone has spray-painted a crude but lifelike obscenity on the reinforced window shutters. I stare at it, half-fascinated, until the lock clicks and an inner door scrapes open, followed by the one I’m standing in front of.
“What?”
A pallid-washed-out apparition hovers in the doorway, the security chain still in place. Lank, dirty long hair, fishbelly-white skin, bloodshot eyes that seem to take up most of the narrow face. I brace myself against the smell of bad teeth and unwashed clothes that wafts from the interior. “I’m looking for someone,” I say, and give him Tara’s full name. “She lives here. Or used to. I’m her cousin.”
There’s no flicker of recognition. “Never heard of her,” the guy says, already losing focus, staring past me, through me, into the street. The nails gripping the doorframe are ragged, gnawed down to the quick. His head is shaved at the temples, with round red marks in the stubble, the telltale sign of a ‘trode freak. I realize that I’m losing him, and fast.
“Do you know where I can find her?” I hope this sounds gruff enough to seem menacing. “She’s not in any trouble. I promise. Just need to talk to her, that’s all.”
“Look, you’re in the wrong place.” The longer I listen to his voice, the less convinced I am that this is who I spoke to on the phone. The door starts to close. “We’re not supposed to talk to people,” he says. “I mean, not like this. Only in therapy sessions. Messes with the healing process otherwise. You get what I’m saying?”
This is the part where I’m supposed to stick my foot in the door, just like the movies taught me. In reality, all that will garner me are a few broken metatarsals. “Wait,” I say, a little desperately. Whipping out my palmer, I wave it at the gaunt face disappearing in the darkness. “That’s her picture. Right here. Just take a look.”
“I don’t know, man. Don’t wanna get involved.”
“Please.” It’s an old photo – the two of us on the cusp of teenhood. “That’s us. She’ll be a little older now. Do you know her?”
The man does a classic double-take. Not of the photo. Of me. I’ve gotten used to it over the years, but each time there’s a pang of uncertainty in my stomach. What reaction will my appearance provoke? He looks like he’s about to say something, then changes his mind.
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” he says, but his eyes do that thing they do when people are lying. The gap starts to close, but the door doesn’t shut all the way. “You say you’re related? How close?”
“First cousins.”
He mumbles something I can’t quite catch, a jumble of words about synapses and receptors, and how it’s sometimes hereditary. Then a name I scramble to type into my palmer, almost dropping it in my haste. The search returns a hit. A club in what used to be the meat-packing district. Sketchy.
“Is that where she is?” I say, flailing to put it all together. “Where she works?”
“She doesn’t go by Tara.” At least that’s what I think I heard. “Whatever they offer you, say no. Don’t mention my name.”
“Why? What’s going on there?”
But I’m talking to the closed door, the footsteps behind it retreating in a hurry.
––––––––
If it wasn’t for the neon signs, leached of color by the bright daylight, Club Nova would be indistinguishable from the several other drinking, dancing establishments set in a line of repurposed warehouses. Places like The Stockyard, Yoke, and The Jungle – this last after some long-dead twentieth-century writer. Fizzing tubes and dirty brick walls and heavy iron doors, guarded by what look like clones of the same scowling, shaven-headed meathead with slablike muscle grafts covered in tattoos. It’s barely past ten in the morning, but a rave is underway in one of the buildings, bass thumping under the wet concrete. Biolumed bodies gyrate in the darkness, spinning and weaving in perfect synchronicity, a single many-limbed organism. Either they started early, or last night’s revelry hasn’t ended yet.
The bouncer in the entryway of Club Palatine looks me up and down and apparently doesn’t like what he sees. “Member?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you on the member list?” His smirk tells me he’s already made up his mind and is just toying with me to kill time. When I shake my head, he points at a flight of concrete steps leading into the basement.
“That area’s off limits,” he says, flexing his massive shoulders, as if challenging me to disagree. “Make sure you stay on the main floor only. Any personal recording devices?”
I hand over my palmer, feeling misgivings. The bouncer sticks it into a Faraday box and hands me a plastic token. “Enjoy Palatine,” he declaims, as if reading off a teleprompter. I step past him, into the dark, echoing space filled with the fug of sweat and theatrical smoke.
Clubs aren’t really my scene, but this one isn’t so bad. Past the crush on the dancefloor is a bar with dim lights and ersatz wood paneling. The music is low enough to make out a buzz of conversation. At this early our, the bar is mostly empty, but the booths are arranged so it’s hard to tell how many people are in it. Mirrors break up the contours and contents of the space into strange angles.
The clientele is eclectic – a booth crammed with loud college bros, a group of sober, suited salarymen who look out of place and a little confused as to how they ended up here, several clusters of clubbers in nineteen-nineties period-piece attire. Behind a counter of artfully contorted rebar, bartenders in black tie are busy mixing and whipping and agitating. In the back is a small blue-lit stage, like what I’d expect to see in a strip joint, but all it shows is a mime dressed in black, face elaborately painted, going through an incomprehensible routine.
Bellying up against the bar, I ask for a drink and make it bartender’s choice. The glass that is slid in front of me looks like beer, only tinted bright pink. It tastes good. If I had a clue about alcohol, I’d probably order one just like it. I take another sip and study my surroundings in the mirror behind the bar, trying to figure out what to do next.
When the bartender passes my way again, I wave her down.
“Did I get it wrong?” Her smooth brow creases as she nods at my drink. “Happens to the best of us. Let me get you something else.”
“No,” I say. “The drink is fine. I wanted to ask you something.”
Her dark eyes cloud with an exasperated look – she thinks I’m making a pass. “Not like that,” I hurry to add before she can move on. Shut-ins don’t make great detectives: I’ve managed to raise her hackles without even getting to the point. “It’s about a girl. She might work here.”
“We’re not supposed to talk about it.” Her glance darts to the side, toward a narrow metal door on the far end of the bar.
“This is her picture.” I grope for my palmer, then remember the thug at the front door. “Um. Her name is Tara.” I stumble through a description of my cousin, but the bartender’s attention is already wavering.
“Let me get you another drink,” she says, with a smile so strained it looks more like aggression. Grabbing my half-full glass, she hurries down the counter.
I sense a presence and the stool next to me creaks so loud I can hear it over the music. When I turn round, an enormous man in a striped sweatsuit is looking down at me, smiling pleasantly. “I understand you’d like to lodge a complaint about the service,” he says, nodding as if to encourage me to proceed.
It’s not easy to remember that I refuse to be intimidated. Not with his bulk straining the ClimaWeave material at the slightest movement. Next to this specimen, the meathead from the door would look like an underfed waif. “I’m looking for someone,” I say, squaring my shoulders, forcing myself to meet his eye. “My cousin. I believe she works here.”
“Many people’s cousins work here,” the giant says. “While we appreciate the importance of family ties, we take a dim view of folks making inquiries during work hours. It’s bad for business.”
Over one huge shoulder, I glimpse one of the club staff approach the booth with the suits. After a brief exchange, they all get up and walk toward the metal door, which opens soundlessly. The men file inside and disappear. I’m trying to connect the dots, but the sight of the giant’s huge, scar-corrugated fists saps my powers of concentration.
“Understood,” I say, with what I hope is a nonchalant shrug. “What’s a good time to pop in after work hours?”
The man spreads his arms, his lumpy face twisted in a parody of regret. “Ah, but that’s just the thing, you see. This is a twenty-four-hour establishment. Says so right on our license.”
I swallow hard past the obstruction in my throat. Thankfully the music has picked up and the tremor in my voice is less apparent. “I suppose I’m out of luck, then.”
“I don’t necessarily agree,” the giant says, shaking his head. “I think you’re very lucky. You get to walk away from this. Provided you stay smart and keep on walking.”
His eyes scan me up and down. I should be accustomed to it by now, but it still makes my skin crawl every time. “You a lawyer?” he says, with a flicker of genuine interest. “You’re too small to be a cop, and I doubt that any reporter would be crazy enough to come here.”
“Just a concerned citizen,” I say, fumbling for my wafer, trying to regain some dignity. The giant waves my offer of payment away.
“On the house,” he says. “We’d greatly appreciate a five-star review on the socials.”
He opens one catcher’s-mitt hand. My palmer is in it, and when I reach out for it I feel a jolt of dread, imagining those fingers closing around my wrist, crushing it. But they don’t.
My cheeks are burning and my legs feel like rubber. Somehow I make it outside. The bouncer studiously ignores me. Seized by a sudden suspicion, I lean against a dirty wall and flip my palmer open. All my photos are gone, Deleted off the device, and from my cloud storage.
Gone, just like Tara.
––––––––
Of course it starts to rain while I’m hunkered in the alley opposite the club’s rear exit, doing my best to ignore the eager rustling of rats in the trash bags lining the walls. Of course I’m in the same light clothes I wore for my ill-fated foray into the establishment four hours earlier.
Within seconds, I’m drenched to the skin and shivering. Squinting through the downpour, I keep my gaze on the back door. The neon sign above it turns the raindrops into a scatter of colorful gemstones. Club Palatine may be a twenty-four-hour establishment, but its staff are still flesh and blood, and work in shifts. Of course I have no idea when one shift ends and another begins. Wrapping my arms around myself, I settle in for a long, cold wait.
Eventually the door opens and figures spill out, putting on slickers and opening umbrellas. They walk quickly and disperse into the street. I crane my neck to peer around the corner, but can’t tell if Tara’s among them.
A small, solitary figure darts past the alley, high heels clicking in the puddles. Before I can hide, she notices me and jumps away with a small cry. It’s the bartender from earlier, her eyes wide and running with rain-streaked mascara, her free hand reaching into her purse. I envision a taser, or a can of pepper spray in my immediate future. Flustered, I grope for something to say, something that won’t make me look like a deranged stalker, or worse.
“Hey,” I say, stepping back, raising my hands to show I’m not a threat. “It’s okay. It’s just me. Remember? From the bar.”
Her face remains blank, terrified. At least she stays put. “I was looking for my cousin,” I say. “All I want is to ask you a few questions. That’s it. I promise.”
She glances back at the door. “You could get me in trouble.”
“That place-”
“-isn’t what you think it is.” She sounds defensive, but also resentful. “You need to stay away. If your cousin is there, she doesn’t want to be found.”
“When does her shift end?”
A shadow crosses her heavily made-up face, and for a moment her features waver in the gloom and rain. “There’s the basement,” she says. “If that’s where your cousin is working, her shift doesn’t end.”
“What’s in the basement?” I remember the bouncer’s warning, the men in suits filing through the metal door. But the bartender presses her lips shut and shakes her head. “Are they – is she being forced-”
“No one forces anyone to go in there,” the bartender says, already moving along the sidewalk. “If your cousin is working the basement at the Palatine, she signed a contract. Nothing illegal. Now I have to go.”
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a crumpled piece of paper. Thankfully I had the foresight to print out one of Tara’s photos at an autokiosk. “This is her,” I say to the frightened girl. “Tara. Have you seen her?”
A shake of the head that’s not exactly a no. “That's Reyna,” she says. “She’s one of the girls downstairs. But you can’t go in there. They have a list.”
“She goes by Reyna now?”
Either I’ve spooked her, or she’s decided she has risked enough. She grabs my wrist, leans in, and whispers something in my ear. Then she wrenches herself away, flinging the printout in my face. “Get the fuck away from me, you freak,” she shouts, tottering a few steps before regaining her balance.
I catch her look and follow it back to the club exit, where two hulking shapes have appeared in the lit rectangle of the door. Turning, I double back into the alley, running into the dark geometries of the buildings. I listen to the girl’s heels beat a receding staccato against the grimy asphalt. Grime that no deluge of rain can even begin to wash off; grime that seeps through to the dirty, rotten heart of the city.
––––––––
Several hours and a half-gallon of coffee later, I get up from my laptop. My eyes are smarting from staring at the screen and nausea roils my stomach. My online search has left me feeling coated in filth outside and in, wanting to hose off the inside of my skull, to sluice the hideous images down the drain of my subconscious.
Puppet parlor. Jacked in. Remote immersive interface. It could be that my sheltered, bourgeois upbringing has left me unprepared for the wonders of the cybernetic sex industry. The words swirl around and I hope that means they’ll go away, but they don’t, and I end up retching over the sink in the crappy bathroom of my motel unit. A carousel of visions flashes behind my forehead as my insides turn themselves out.
White-walled halls bathed in harsh, unremitting light. Dungeons painted black, populated by creatures from nightmares, gargoyles and body-modified satyrs leering and looming, underlit by lamps designed to evoke the flickering of torches. Heavy doors slamming shut, the darkness within broken up by biolumes programmed to pulse to lifeless electronic music.
Cages everywhere, cages enclosing king-sized beds and contraptions whose purpose I don’t even want to guess at. Human bodies within, connected to cables and consoles, writhing and squirming. Groaning and contorting themselves in positions that may have started out as sexual, or sensual, but have come to signal pain, or utmost depravity.
The bouncer at Club Palatine had taken away my personal recording device. But someone must have smuggled a palmer, or a microcamera, into that strobing, grunting, thumping hellhole at some point. Because the videos are everywhere, heavily overlaid with age verification checks and extreme content warnings. Synaesthetic transfer is the phrase used by the peer-reviewed papers I’ve dug up on the topic. A technology first developed for military drone operators, spilling over quickly into commercial use once the regulatory environment bent to inevitable market pressures. Ecstasy by proxy, the more depraved the better.
To rent your body out, to willingly allow a stranger to inhabit it, abuse and debase it in the worst ways imaginable – did Tara need money that badly? She had a good job, reasonably secure and well-paid in this gig economy, which she’d managed to hold onto in spite of her problems. The more I wrack my brain about it, the more I realize just how little I know about my cousin. Tara was never someone who kept close friends with anyone, and her relationship with her mother has always been fraught to say the least. Maybe the answer lies deeper, at the root of her mental health crises.
Which brings me to the other part of my search. Terms like dissociative reaction and Multies, which is forum slang for persons with multiple personality disorder. Discrete selves occupying a single body. The notion brings to mind old horror films, and the information I find online is contradictory. Psychiatric science is still hopelessly split on whether dissociative reaction should be recognized as a legitimate medical condition, or dismissed as fiction, a hocus-pocus term used by unethical quacks. It doesn’t matter. I feel it’s true.
In light of this new knowledge, all my past experiences with Tara start to make new and frightening sense. Tempestuous changes in mood and behavior, from body cues to the way she used to dress. A stranger lunging toward me in the shadows of the hayloft, shoving me off the edge. I catch myself rubbing at my collarbone. Had it been someone malevolent and angry, looking to hurt me? Or disoriented after waking up in unfamiliar surroundings, lashing out in fear and confusion?
Multies. Alternative selves like the faces of a prism, taking their turns in the light. Was that so different from my own experience, from the existence I’d chosen, opposing the one birth and social mores had tried to slot me into? If the world wide web is right, there are many of them out there – shunned by the normals, neglected by the system, denied treatment. Necessity makes them reliant on each other, which means they’re vulnerable to exploitation. Was this how Tara – Reyna – ended up at Club Palatine?
My phone rings again. Brian’s been calling me four or five times every hour. I finally break down and answer.
“Where the fuck are you?” He’s upset: I can count the number of times my brother has cursed on one hand, and have fingers to spare. “The idea was to find Tara. Not to lose yourself.”
“Almost there,” I say. His kids are making a racket in the background, and I can hear Lainey, his wife, trying to quiet them down. That’s Brian all the way – solid, good wife, a solid, good job with a solid, good, credit rating, a solid, good life in a gated suburb. “I’m in the city. Got an address for Tara. I’m going to meet her at her new job.” If you squint a little, It’s not an outright lie.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says, sounding exasperated. “The lawyer wasn’t able to find Tara. We’ll put her share of the money into an earmarked account. She loses nothing.”
He’s right. Brian is almost always right. But I feel that Tara has gotten herself in trouble and that she’s in real danger. No one has given a shit about her in all her short life – myself included, if I’m honest. The thought makes me angry, and Brian is a convenient target.
“Sure,” I reply, trying to inject as much sarcasm as possible into my voice. “Stick the money in a trust, and appoint you as the guardian. Give you full control. Am I getting this right?”
“It’s in her best interest.” Brian sounds hurt, and immediately I feel like a grade-A asshole. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but it isn’t getting you anywhere. Go home.”
Am I doing this to help Tara, or salve my own conscience? I’m not quite ready to tackle that answer. “I’ll let you know how it goes,” I say, and hang up before he can reply.
––––––––
Early next morning, I’m in front of the row house, dodging commuters as they tramp down the trash-littered sidewalks. A light is on in a second-floor window. I catch sight of a silhouette passing before it. A man, but it doesn’t look like the ‘trode freak from yesterday. AT once hopeful and anxious, I ring the bell, listening for the footsteps on the stairs.
“Whaddya want?”
My heart leaps into my throat. It’s the gruff voice I heard over the phone. What if it’s Tara’s boyfriend, or partner – or worse, a pimp, someone working for the club?
“We spoke on the phone,” I say. “I’m looking for Tara. Do you know where she is?”
The door inches open. I can’t make out a face in the dark of the hallway, but the person inside is no taller than I am, and not particularly large. Not that this makes me feel any safer.
“She doesn’t want to be found,” the person inside says. Only now I hear something not quite right with the voice, as if the hoarseness is deliberate, an affect to disguise its pitch. “Go away. If you come back, you’ll be in trouble. Big trouble.”
“Open the door,” I say. An understanding is forming at the back of my brain, but adrenaline makes it hard to think clearly. Before I can think twice, I take a run-up and shove the door with all the force I can muster.
There’s a slight resistance, but the chain isn’t on, and I’ve taken him by surprise. I drive him back into the hallway. We tussle briefly, and there’s a moment when I feel like my noodle arms aren’t up to the task, but my opponent is even weaker than me. Our legs tangle and we tumble to the floor. Something tips over and shatters with an almighty crash.
Physical violence is really not my thing, in case that isn’t already abundantly clear. I roll to my feet and crouch on the floorboards, speechless with effort and apprehension, trying to anticipate my opponent’s next move. Then the light falls on his face, past a shock of dark hair, and I know who I’m looking at. In my head, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
––––––––
“Tara?”
She looks up at me from the ground, scowling. One hand gropes across the floor, presumably for something to brain me with. I back away toward the half-open door.
Tara is dressed in jeans and a thick flannel shirt, and her features are familiar. Anger blazes in her eyes. “You can’t just break in here,” she says between gasps. “If you’re not out in two seconds, I’m calling the cops.”
“Wait,” I say. Part of me is certain this is Tara, that she’s putting on some weird show to mess with my head. Another part realizes that it isn’t. Something has changed, and I’m looking at a stranger. “You remember me,” I say, repeating my name like an idiot. “It’s been a while. But you have to know me.”
“I don’t have to know shit.” Tara has picked up a large and ugly-looking shard of pottery. A piece of the vase we broke in our tussle, I realize. She’s waving it at me, warning me to keep my distance. “I don’t have any cousins, either. So better get moving before we both do something we’ll regret later.”
There’s something about this person that’s distinctly not-Tara. Not-female, too, despite clear evidence to the contrary. I flounder for a moment, then remember my online research. Dissociative disorder. Fractured personalities. “Is your name - are you Reyna?”
For a moment, she looks like she’s about to pass out from sheer terror, her face so pale it shines in the gloom of the hallway. “Don’t speak her name,” she says, with a fearful glance up the stairs. I follow her glance, almost expecting someone standing on the upper landing. But there’s no one. Of course there isn’t. The phantom that is Reyna resides in the same skull as her. “If she hears you, she’ll come out. Then there’ll be hell to pay. You’ll be sorry you came.”
I can’t even begin to process this, but if I’m going to keep this person talking, I have no choice. “Then let’s keep it between us,” I say, lowering my voice to indulge her. “Tara, pop-Pop is dead.”
No reaction. “Mark.”
“What?”
“My name is Mark,” the person says, then seems to make up their mind. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
I’m not sure what that’s a reference to, but I follow Tara – Mark – into a tiny and messy kitchen, mold-blackened linoleum and a sink overflowing with dirty dishes. He must be one of Tara’s alternate personalities. Inwardly I shake my head. That’s not how the articles described it. Tara and Mark and any number of others are all in there, simply existing.
“Better to get out of the hallway,” Mark says in his harsh, but not-quite-masculine voice. “The asshole on the upper floor is on Reyna’s payroll. He’ll report everything he hears.”
He must be referring to the ‘trode freak I saw the first time I knocked. Clearing a spot on the crowded counter, I lean against it and try to formulate a question out of the confusion in my mind. “Pardon my ignorance,” I say, “but how does this work, exactly? Which one of you is running the show?”
Mark sighs, and for a moment I glimpse Tara peeking through. “We’re all our own people,” he says. “I know that’s hard for a normie to understand. Different personalities, different character traits. All of us are equally real. We just happen to share the same body.”
“So Tara – Reyna – isn’t aware that we’re talking right now.”
“No.” Again that furtive glance. “Think of it as being put on a stage. We only know what takes place while we’re in the spotlight. Those are the events that shape our individual memories, our personalities. Like branches on a tree. Separate limbs and leaves, but the same trunk, the same roots.”
“But there was an original,” I say, hoping I’m not being offensive. “Before the, uh, branching started.”
Mark nods. “Of course, we remember the person we all were before the severance. I suppose that was the Tara you know. But even back then it wasn’t just Tara. Aspects of us have been around from a very early age, because I remember being a child.”
The face of the stranger on the hayloft flashes at me through the shadows. “I think I understand some of it,” I say, rubbing my shoulder. “So I don’t know the polite way to ask, but can I speak to Tara? This is really important.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” Mark shakes his head. “I couldn’t step aside, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. This is the only life I get to live, and I’m not giving up a single moment of it.”
He runs his fingers through his longish hair. “We cycle through the spotlight in increments. Three, four days at a time. Sometimes a week. That’s the problem, you see. Fair use is one thing. We’ve learned to adjust our lives to the cycles. But now one of us wants more.”
“You mean Reyna.” He flinches, as if struck. “I take it the rest of you don’t see eye to eye with her.”
“I told you not to say her name.” Mark’s face is a mask of pure loathing. “She’s different from Tara and me. I think she’s tired of sharing.” He taps his temple with a forefinger. “She wants to be the only one in here.”
“Can she do that?”
“She’s doing something,” Mark says. “Our cycles are getting shorter and shorter. She must be taking more time for herself. It has to do with that club she’s working in. That filthy place.”
His expression is one of horror and misery. An icy worm crawls up from the base of my spine.
“She’s forcing you to do it against your will,” I say. My head spins as I try to wrap my thoughts around the notion. Sexual abuse doesn’t even begin to cover it: the ultimate rape, mind and body at the same time, over and over, as you scream helplessly inside your head. Mark said he’s not aware of it once he’s out of the spotlight, but I wonder if that’s true. If the trauma sticks with you in the black recesses of your consciousness.
“I’ve tried running away.” Mark’s voice is very small. “One time I drove across the country. But there’s no escaping her. She brings us back every time. Soon there won’t be any other aspects left. She will have eliminated us all.”
“How?”
Mark shakes his head. “I don’t know. I remember only what I’ve experienced. Same with Tara. Sometimes we follow each other in the spotlight, and we’re able to pass notes. But she’s getting wise to it. She’s trying to kill us. I think it has something to do with the machines they use at the club.”
My anger boils and bounces inside me, finding no outlet. My cousin is being murdered – neuron by neuron, one piece of her at a time. But how can I hate her murderer, when they’re the same person?
“There has to be something we can do,” I say, glancing back into the gloomy hallway. Some of Mark’s paranoia must be rubbing off. “Check you into a facility. See a doctor who can help.”
Mark scoffs. “The medical profession denies we exist,” he says. “Aspects have no legal standing. Even if the doctors believed me, what do you think their response would be?”
I’m embarrassed to admit that the same thought has crossed my own mind. “They would encourage you to go through with it. Get rid of the aspects until there’s only one of you left.”
“That’s right. Want to take bets on who comes out on top?”
I hesitate to bring up something else. It would be easy for Reyna to pass herself off as Tara. To claim the inheritance and use the money to speed up what she’s already begun. “Where does that leave you?”
“No idea.” Mark’s face darkens. “But I do know one thing. I’m not going back to that basement. Ever.”
I’m about to ask how he plans to achieve that. Then understanding dawns, and my knees go weak. “You can’t do that,” I say, with distant horror. “You have no right to. It can’t be your decision alone.”
Mark picks up a paring knife from the dirty sink and starts toying with it absently. “Living in the wrong body is bad enough. I suppose you know that already.”
He’s right, and I nod.
“Now imagine being abused inside that wrong body.” He shudders. “Aware of every awful second of it, but unable to make it stop. Unable to so much as blink. You’d do anything just to put an end to it.”
It’s not just your body, I want to scream, but the sight of the knife warns me against escalating tensions. “What if there’s something else we can try? A way to, I don’t know, turn the tables on her?”
Mark looks skeptical. But he doesn’t say anything, and I know he’s running out of options. I decide to take his silence for interest.
So I go on, and he listens without interrupting. When I’m done, he’s still frowning, but he seems almost convinced. Which is good. Now all I have to do is convince myself.
––––––––
At its core, synaptic interface technology is surprisingly simple. The first homemade device was jury-rigged by a couple of bored teenagers, using a pair of first-generation immersive entertainment consoles they’d picked up at a yard sale. They achieved a connection of almost four seconds before a neuron emulator blew and left one of them temporarily catatonic. The late and unlamented military-industrial sector got wind of the gimmick and poured trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of labor-hours into perfecting it. But even in its most advanced version, all you need is a steady connection, good bandwidth, and a massive amount of processing power.
Not to mention, someone desperate enough to plug into the receiving end.
Times have changed. Most modern armies – crippled by budget cuts – can no longer afford even a single remote-puppeting mainframe. Club Palatine, that shining temple of unregulated capitalism, owns an entire room full of them. In keeping with the times, commercial use of synaptic interface is neither completely legal, nor against the law. All it takes for me to book a couple of hours with the lovely Reyna is a single swipe of my citizen-consumer card.
Without a hitch, the transaction goes through, neutrally labeled as emotional counseling. The remote payment terminal spits out a small plastic chip into my hand. Technically, Reyna isn’t selling sex; technically, my body isn’t participating in any. If the price tag makes my eyes water a little, concerns about my physical safety quickly push any financial ones aside. I can only hope that the security at the Palatine has forgotten me, that the sheer volume of faces passing into the basement will be sufficient disguise.
The thug at the door could be the same one who’d let me in before, or a completely different individual cast from the same mold. Behind mirrored glasses, his eyes barely flicker over me, taking in only the red chip I wave in front of them. He gestures over his shoulder, at the staircase. Welcome to Club Palatine,” he says, his attention already moving past me, to the next body in line.
At the bottom of the stairs, a door opens and another figure ushers me into cool semidarkness that smells faintly of antiseptic. Past the small entryway is a locker room where I strip down to my underwear, then continue into a wider space that looks like a bathhouse, all scrubbed tile and mosaic and muffled mood music. But there is no pool, no steam room. Only a row of pristinely white elevated coffins, each sprouting a bundle of cables which lead up to sockets in the ceiling.
Following the attendant’s instructions, I snap on a pair of goggles and what looks like a bath cap. I hand over the chip and slide open the lid of the immersion tank. The memfoam fits itself to the contours of my body and a headgear that looks like a medieval torture device slips over the cap, emitting a not-unpleasant tingle across my scalp. Transdermal diffusers attach to the bare skin of my arms and legs, flooding my bloodstream with neurotransmitting chemicals. Helpless on my back, I give the attendant a thumbs-up. The lid closes over me and turns opaque.
Gel envelops me, and then darkness – a sensation like sinking without ever touching bottom. Claustrophobia presses down on my chest, compressing my breath, but the drugs are so strong my heart rate barely rises. It’s like drowning in indifference. This was a mistake: I can’t take it. I grope for the call button, intending to summon the attendant back, but the tickling under my hair intensifies and I’m no longer there.
––––––––
It’s not like an immersion flick, although that’s the closest reference point. It feels real: the strange body encasing me, unfamiliar muscles slowly responding to prompts from my remotely connected brain, the pulsing reds and blues of cage-floor lighting. Low, throbbing music is picked up by someone else’s ears and channeled into my hearing. The rush of sensations is so intense that I recoil mentally, almost breaking the connection. But after a panicky moment, it’s not so bad. The body is an odd fit, like a shirt buttoned the wrong way, but all I have to do is focus and sense the host.
Hosts.
I can feel Mark and Tara, and the one who calls herself Reyna. Echoes in the background, a thousand miles away. Helpless.
I tear my eyes off the glistening plastic tools laid out on racks around the bed. Even if the sight of them didn’t make me sick to someone else’s stomach, they’re not what I’m here for. Not that I’m entirely sure that my idea will work either. Closing Tara’s eyes, I home in on those distant echoes and plunge after them. Sweeping through the dark realm of the subconscious, I seize them and fold them under my wings, brooking no resistance..
They try to fight me off, but I’m titanic, world-spanning. I sweep them before me like an elemental fury. In this world, I’m the Alpha and the Omega, bending the rules to my whim. At least for as long as the neural enhancers rage in my blood.
Light crests the horizon that takes shape from the endless black. I aim toward it, spinning out of a night sky, slamming into the memory with enough force to rob all four of us of our collective mental breath.
It’s a familiar one. Fantasyland. I pick myself off a damp, grassy ground. Pop-Pop’s barn rises over me, at least three times its actual size, skewed by my childish perspective. Dark and brooding, it’s like a haunted castle. A single light shines above its door and the sky is dark with the approaching storm.
It makes sense. This is the memory that binds us all together – not quite the place where Tara’s severance started, but close enough. Pain is a powerful mnemonic device, and I’m counting on that pain to root me deeper in the soil of my memory, giving me an extra edge.
I’ll need that edge. Because this is Reyna’s memory too, and she might be stronger here.
She’s over by the barn door, looking around in a daze. When I speak her name, she turns to me with a fearful expression. But it vanishes quickly, replaced by a calculated cunning. I remind myself not to underestimate her. That would be a fatal mistake.
“I remember this place,” she says. “You fell. You got hurt inside.”
She looks and sounds exactly like Tara. Then the light shifts, and I can see differences. Closer, there’s nothing of my cousin in her sly features.
“I didn’t fall,” I say softly. “You wanted to hurt me. Tara didn’t let you. You couldn’t force her to do your bidding, so you decided to kill her. Plotting over the years, until you figured out how to do it.”
Maybe it’s the neurochemicals, but I feel no anger, no desire for vengeance. Only a vast, hollow fatigue because of what must be done.
Reyna seems about to contradict me. Then her lips spread into a smug grin. “One can’t be two,” she says. “Or three. It gets a little crowded up here.” She looks me up and down. “You of all people ought to know. After all the things you did to yourself to change the form you were born into. What I want is no different.”
“Except I didn’t kill anyone.”
Reyna laughs sharply, straightening up. With a pang, I notice that she’s a good head taller than me in this memory. Stronger. “Neither will I. Those other two are biological glitches. Irregular thoughts. They won’t feel a thing. They’ll just disappear.”
“They might have a different take on that.”
She glances over my shoulder and her eyes go wide. Two figures walk into the light. Tara is almost a carbon copy of Reyna, only sharper, leaner, a determined set to her stance. Mark resembles the male twin she never had. Broader at the shoulder, but wiry, masculine. He is her twin, in a manner of speaking, just like Reyna is: an aspect of the same fractured psyche.
The three of them face off across the darkening yard. Their features are melding, synchronizing, and flowing to more closely resemble one another. I realize that the Tara I knew does not exist anymore. She has been devoured by this trio, who never asked to exist, but now that they do, insist on surviving. Who refuse to be swallowed by the black waves of the cortical ocean.
Out of one, many.
The bulb over the door fizzes, almost goes out, then steadies itself.
Reyna’s fluid features twist into a wrathful mask. I see a similar expression taking shape in the blurry faces of the other two. There’s no telling what will happen next. One of the aspects could emerge triumphant, or the confrontation could wedge the fracture deeper, into some cataclysmic break with reality. Into a chasm that will devour all three, leaving behind – what exactly?
As Mark steps forward with the noose dangling from his fist, as Tara half-circles to the opposite side, cutting off Reyna's escape route, I realize they don’t know it either. I realize that they don’t care.
Reyna snarls and lunges at them, determined to resist to the end. She feints one way, then twists in a different direction, heading for salvation, for the darkness of the approaching neural storm. Her outstretched hands encounter the bristling thicket with which I’ve surrounded the barn. It’s not cheating, if you get to play a god. Well, maybe it is a little.
She screams as we seize her and drag her toward the gaping door, up to the hayloft. The rope creaks ominously from a thick rafter, but it holds her weight as all four of us plummet down. Faster and faster, breathless, into oblivion.
––––––––
I swim in a pool of bright light, the membrane above me dimming and flaring, changing color. Rhythmic sounds reach me as if through viscous fluid. They resolve into voices, into the beep of machines, into the grating susurrus of ventilator-assisted breathing.
I don’t want to break the surface. I could stay down here forever, in this amniotic state of pre-Being, where I can be whatever I want to be. Or nothing.
A chemical claw reaches down and seizes me, pulling me up. I open my eyes.
The space around me is bleached, sterile. Two figures in white are conferring at the foot of the bed. A doctor and a nurse, my brain catches on sluggishly. Their outfits are practically identical, but their attitudes leave no doubt as to who is in charge.
“Some kind of accident,” the doctor says, scrolling down her tablet. “They were dumped behind the emergency bay. If you ask me, they’re probably sickos from one of the fetish clubs.”
She’s speaking to the nurse, but she knows I’m awake. From the glare she directs at me, I’m sure she meant for me to hear it.
As the nurse busies himself adjusting my backrest, the doctor repeats my name until I nod. “You were lucky,” the doctor says. “We scanned you and didn’t see any permanent damage. The tox screen and liver panel also came back clear.” Her gaze is both hostile and inquisitive. “I’d like to keep you overnight. Run a few more tests. But it looks like you’ll live.”
The nurse reaches in and pulls out what looks like ten feet of rubber hose from my mouth, none too gently. Gagging from the pain and the rubbery stink, I manage to ask if there was anyone with me.
The doctor gives a curt nod. “One patient. Female. She’s in a coma, but no visible injuries.”
“Do you know-”
She cuts me off. “I’m not at liberty to disclose details,” she says. “But I have to inform you that the police have been notified. They may have questions for you.”
After the doctor and the nurse leave, I wait for the noises to quiet down in the hallway, then slip out of bed. When I can trust my wobbly legs again, I stagger over to the door. The hallway is clear; chatter and laughter are coming from the duty nurses’ station. As quietly as I can, I shuffle outside, holding onto the wall for support.
Four or five rooms down, I find Tara. She lies in a casket not all that different from the one I went into at Club Palatine. Her head is shorn and there are ‘trodes all over her stubbly scalp. Behind inflamed lids, her eyes move rapidly. I imagine electricity pulsing in the dark of her mind, memories changing and being erased, long filaments of neurons remodeling themselves. Memories, and who knows what else. Her breath is a light fog on the plexiglass as her vitals beep and scroll across the monitors.
Minutes pass, or maybe hours. I stand over the bed, following every twitch of the face within, so familiar and yet so utterly strange. Watching, waiting to see who emerges from the universe inside that fragile skull, whose eyes will open on me first.
CONTRIBUTORS
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Warren Benedetto writes dark fiction about horrible people, horrible places, and horrible things. He is an award-winning author who has published over 200 stories, appearing in publications such as Dark Matter Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and The Dread Machine; on podcasts such as The NoSleep Podcast, Tales to Terrify, and Chilling Tales For Dark Nights; and in anthologies from Apex Magazine, Tenebrous Press, Scare Street, and many more. He also works in the video game industry, where he holds 35+ patents for various types of gaming technology. For more information, visit warrenbenedetto. com and follow @warrenbenedetto on Twitter and Instagram.
Eoghan McGrath is a writer from Dublin, Ireland.
R. K. Olson was 11-years-old when he first noticed a display of books next to the comic book racks at the local newsstand. One book cover showed a muscular man fighting an ape wearing a red cape. That was Conan Book One. The author was hooked and still enjoys a Conan story as well as others of a similar ilk. He has penned a few sword and sorcery stories himself with more on the way.
Jason Van Luipen is a mechanical engineer professionally licensed and registered with New York State with 12 years of experience. He has been writing and storytelling for 9 years in a personal setting and is now attempting first-time publishing to bring his personal stories to a wider audience. He continues to complete more stories based on his experiences in hopes of future publications.
Wayne Kyle Spitzer is an American writer, illustrator, and filmmaker. He is the author of countless books, stories and other works, including a film (Shadows in the Garden), a screenplay (Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows), and a memoir (X-Ray Rider). His work has appeared in MetaStellar—Speculative fiction and beyond, subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, among others. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from Gonzaga University, and an A.A.S. from Spokane Falls Community College. His recent fiction includes The Man/Woman War cycle of stories as well as the Dinosaur Apocalypse Saga. He lives with his sweetheart Ngoc Trinh Ho in the Spokane Valley.
A college administrator by day, Bob Gielow (he/him) spins tales in formats we all use when communicating with each other: text messages, emails, fictional Wikipedia posts, and diary entries all allow him to be clinical and thorough in describing his characters, their thinking and actions ... without diminishing his ability to explore the resulting human emotions. Bob utilizes these epistolary styles, and others, to tell tales that frequently explore the most common of human experiences, death.
Kyle Brandon Lee is a Texas born writer of poetry, prose and plays. He's published at Mirror Dance, Fiction on the Web and Soft Cartel. If someday they open an old and dusty tome made of pecan bark and armadillo hide, perhaps they'll find his work within. Hopefully, it will be plentiful. He can be found at his website www.hillsdreaming.com or on Instagram @HDT Mountains.
Anthony C. Ermi is a 20-year-old writer and English major from northern Virginia. He’s written plenty of short fiction, but also recently completed the first draft of a novel. More of his work can be found on his blog, www.anthermi.com, or you can peruse his library of almost 100k tweets (or are they Xs now?) at Twitter.com (or X.com?)/anthermi. The latter’s name change has very much complicated shameless account plugs.
Thomas Kearnes is a 30-year-old author and artist from East Texas. He is an agnostic and an Eagle Scout. He has published or will publish fiction in Blithe House Quarterly, flashquake, Bound Off, Wicked Hollow, Southern Hum, Underground Voices, Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly, Forbidden Fruit, Mad Hatter’s Review and Citizen Culture. He has published or will published photography in Bathtub Gin, Skidrow Penthouse, Events Quarterly, Tattoo Highway, Fiction Attic and Noo Journal.
Damir Salkovic is the author of the story collection Collapse Years, the novels Kill Zone and Always Beside You, and short stories featured in multiple horror and speculative fiction magazines and anthologies. An auditor by trade and traveler by heart, he does his best writing on cruise ships, thirty-plus thousand feet in the air, and in the terminals of far-flung airports. He lives in Virginia with his wife. When not writing fiction, he reviews horror movies, discusses books, and shares his unsolicited opinions on just about everything on his blog, Darker Realities.