In the last chapter, Mother put a grand plan to rest. Welcome back to The Listening Room for the last installment of “Hypnotic”.
9.
A car door opened and a weathered black boot stepped onto the dirt road. The door closed with a hollow thud as the person approached a circular clearing pressed down with gravel. Atop it was a dark green picnic table and a nearby grill which had seen better days. Beyond it was a modern rectangular cabin with smooth siding and a sloped roof with a water barrel at one side.
David sat at the picnic table in a pair of pale denim jeans and a gray hoodie. His feet were bare. He swept his toes against the coarse rocks, back and forth as if it were a ritual. He focused on the feel of the coarse and uneven stones against his skin. They were warm from the afternoon sun and pressed onto a layer of sand. He dug his toes in deeper and swirled it into the sand.
Approaching footfalls pulled him out of his trance. He looked up to see a face he knew well, though he couldn’t believe she was real. The moment of recognition curdled to a deep and rising disgust. The corner of his lip curled in a half scowl.
“I should properly introduce myself. I’m Toby.”
He looked at her outstretched hand, but didn’t take it, then tracked his eyes up to her face, studying it for a few moments.
Her pleasant expression wilted and she withdrew her hand, stuffing it into her pocket.
“Mother…” he said plainly.
“Her too,” she said, standing awkwardly just beyond the bench seat, waiting for an invitation. David had already looked away, shaking his head and rubbing the back his neck with his hand. She would buzz around despite his swatting, so with a deep sigh, he motioned for her to sit. She sprang from her spot onto the seat across from him.
Her presence was a collision of the surreal and sobering, like meeting a book character in real life. But Toby, who looked mostly the same as her dream avatar, was flesh and blood, a realization which thrust him into a state of surprise over and over like a skipping record. The amethyst eyes were actually a honey brown. It was a shame to have covered them with jewels since they were already so striking. Mother’s intricate updo was now a high brown puff with blonde tips.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Thought I said not to bother coming.
“I-I wanted to see you, uh, check up on, h-how you were doing,” she stammered.
Toby’s face was a plea for absolution, only David wasn’t close at all to forgiveness. He narrowed his eyes at her, his scowl cutting lines into his face. He let the uncomfortable silence linger. He wanted her to feel it, some juvenile stab at justice, but it was what he had. He crossed his legs at the ankles and rested an elbow on the table, not breaking her gaze. She fidgeted.
“How are you?” she asked, leaning in across the table.
He rubbed his palms against the thighs of his jeans. He didn’t want her here or even to tell her how he’d been these last few months alone. The truth was a piston ready to fire and he couldn’t hold back.
“Okay, I guess. The open space helps,” he said, relenting with a shaky exhale. “Mancuso, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, her face brightening with a twinge of something like hope.
“I looked you up. You were much too smart to get wrapped up with those people,” he said.
Toby’s shoulders fell, tacking on his disappointment on top of everyone else’s. She could feel her stomach twist into knots then loosen even in this brief conversation. She wanted so badly to break through the membrane between them, to know someone she’d only observed through images on a screen. She knew they were both navigating the discomfort of meeting what only existed in a phase of reality.
“I wanted to be mad at you, as angry as I was at the rest for their parts in this, but you were different. I saw what you were trying to do,” he said.
She nodded in agreement. It was all she was going to get and all she deserved. They said nothing for a while and listened to the sounds of the forest. Chipmunks chased each other through the brush, as David stared out onto the tree line. What he needed most was time to untangle what had been scrambled. The test runs were not idle experiments, but forms of torture that bent reality to where the colors were melded and couldn’t be distinguished from one another. He needed to engage with nature and re-establish the definition in the colors of his world.
“Tell me about the project,” David said firmly.
Toby straightened up on the bench and folded her hands. There was so much to tell and she pinched her eyebrows together. Start simple, she thought.
“Vincent Vogel and Molly Fitzgerald were the heads of the project. Her ideas and his execution. Somewhere the design got… perverted or maybe it was the entire point,” she said retreating into her thoughts.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Controlling a human mind is the ultimate high,” she said.
David nodded for her to proceed.
“There were seven of you, each playing a role in the assassination plan. Some members were for purely misdirection while others were helpers to lay resources out. Each was in the same facility where you stayed and were evaluated for particular aptitudes. There’s a variety of different types of dreamers—“
Toby broke off when she looked up at him, self conscious about the amount of information she was laying out. The theory was not as relevant as the people. She continued.
“So, there were seven. Number one was Peter. The day of the assassination attempt, he induced your hypnotic state using the same totem you were already programmed with, that yellow square along with a key phrase. Number two was the assistant at the senator’s office. She turned off the security cameras and left the senator’s office door unlocked. Number three supplied the weapon and served as your double. Four and five were false witnesses at a coffee shop on the corner. Those three, numbers three, four, and five, provided misdirection for your escape. Authorities would swarm the immediate area but also chase you uptown. Meanwhile, you’d be headed west. Number six handled evidence plants to point to someone else. You were the seventh. Vincent never wanted to kill that senator, though, just show that it could be done. Got to admit it’s a bold show of power,” she said.
The information was heavy and he dipped his chin to his chest under its weigh, swaying his head slowly from side to side. Questions flooded his brain about the plot that was years in the making. There must be thousands of pages of research notes, terabytes of data from the test runs, and hours upon hours of surveillance tape. They made a choice everyday to gradually pry him away from his senses.
David sat quietly with fluttering eyelids, pressing play in his mind. His vision drew in close to notice the black bird on his tote bag, then wide to see two laughing women arm-in-arm walk past him to the coffee shop on the corner. His head was a fuzzy lump of tv static where little could break through. He heard the click of departing heels as he climbed the stars to the senator’s office and the calm that settled in his belly as he was sure every piece was moved into its proper place. His steps swung backward in a blur, rewinding to the subway and the blackness that overtook him before he got off the train.
David’s tipped his head up and his jaw creaked open. Toby sat in tense silence, watching the crashing waves of truth lap over his wet eyes. She didn’t disturb the process, only scrunched her face in a pained expression. It’s coming together, she thought.
Inside his spooled memory, he was stuck. There were only snippets in the moments before his descent, save for the rock of the train in a soundless void. He tugged at the tape, but it didn’t go beyond that moment and he feared he’d lose it all, so he relaxed.
Spit had pooled in his open mouth and he pulled his bottom lip in before it dribbled out. He wiped his mouth with the heel of hand and shook the memories loose.
“Why?” he asked in a desperate plea.
“It’s a valuable process with few leaks that would have no shortage of buyers,” Toby said.
“So, just lure people in like they did to me and subject them to experiments to see how suggestible they are,” David said. It’s wasn’t a question.
“Exactly. But further than that, how the individual can be best used. Each person has a profile generated that’s linked to a role. That’s how you build the team.”
“Do the others know?” he asked.
“They don’t. They didn’t go through what you did, so they just went about their lives afterward. I think for now, the cops don’t even have them at all. There’s the senator’s assistant Gianna so far. Poor girl is taking a lot of heat right now,” Toby said.
“Such a shame. It wasn’t her fault,” David said.
“That’s how these setups work. The New Directions rehab facility was a funnel for some of the more rigorously tested subjects like you. If a subject could not be used and seemed suggestible enough, we would plant a backstory and send them to treatment to cover everything up. Bury the truth,” she said.
He nodded and was quiet for a moment before raising his head to speak.
“What will happen to Vincent and Molly?” he asked.
She laughed bitterly and tipped her head to one side, weighing the possibilities.
“I released what I called The Kill Shot to local government about the kidnapping and fraud, but nothing on the experiments. They’ve both been arrested. And since the facility they ran was a farce, the residents are being re-evaluated and assessed for release. Another company will take over the building.
“I’m not confident Vincent will serve any time. Someone very wealthy had to help put this all together. The tunnels connecting the parts of this project, as far as I can tell, stretch a long way.
Molly may not go down. While she’s behind a lot of the core project, juries don’t like to convict tall, pale, redheads. Pretty sure it’s a little know fact.
She chuckled at her own joke. David couldn’t tell if she saved that one up just for him, so he politely let the corner of his mouth rise to register his amusement.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone about the experiments?”
“Because. Better to be arrested for white collar crime than be known as an evil scientist. The government loves those. I want to bury the project, so I took everything.”
“You have all the files?” he asked.
She nodded. “Everything. I’m the only one who can read it all.”
David stiffened. He was suddenly cautious of this small woman. He narrowed his eyes.
“What will you do with it?” His voice quavered.
“Study it. Get to the bottom of how they were able to get inside your mind.”
“Why not just destroy it?” He was gripping the seat between his knees and breaking splinters free. He drew in gulps of air to steady himself.
“The minute you find whatever key you’re looking for, someone will take it from you. It’s what happens to every do-gooder in a story. Destroy it,” he said through clenched teeth.
Toby leaned back and the choice lingered between them. She was caught in the desire to know and to preserve the information. It was unlikely the project had been entirely a secret so she had to be able to scramble it so no one else could put it together. She admitted quietly to herself that collecting the files would put all the pieces together. Once she figured it out, she could bury those pieces.
David broke through her thoughts.
“It’s not a battle you can win,” he said. “Evil finds a way no matter what. You had some control in the dream world and I appreciate you trying to make the best of a shit situation, but not out here. Your hands don’t stretch that far. I think you already know that,” he said.
She massaged the webbing between her right thumb and forefinger. It was hard to admit he was right. In the dream world she walked on air, but out here, she was barely over 5 feet tall and a computer nerd. She was also a coward for hiding in the shadows and playing puppet master with David’s dreams. The information was not just valuable, it was dangerous.
“You’re right,” she conceded. “People would probably kill me for this research.”
“Yeah,” David agreed. “Or they’d make you work for them. Or worse… scramble your brain to trap you in the hell Victor talked about.”
“You remember that?”
“The insomnia is back, but it’s mostly because I’m afraid to go to sleep. Guess the treatment was a bust,” David said.
They both heavily breathed out, then caught each other’s eyes and smiled. They were silent for a while, tracking the sun against the sky as it beat down on the cabin by the lake. At some point, David rose to get drinks and snacks. They ate and chatted about idle things, not like old friends but people who were linked by where they came from.
Toby could see a friendship blossom as she belly laughed to one of David’s animated stories. He was sincere and funny, while she was delightfully awkward and charitable. She liked him and could tell David felt genuinely about her. They would see each other again and she would continue to do her penance little by little.
“Make no mistake, it was still cruel. I still grieve Sam and Carmine sometimes, but I’m forgetting their faces. The dreams aren’t vivid like they were in the facility. Part of me is glad for that but the other part doesn’t want to let them go yet,” he said.
“I could pull some images from my files if you want. Keepsakes,” she suggested.
“Nah. Not right now,” he said.
He could feel his breath hitch as sobs knocked against the back of his throat. He held them back.
“I don’t want to talk about that anymore. Not right now. Just stay with me.”
As her spinning wheels threw bits of gravel into the air, Toby stuck her hand out the window to wave goodbye. David studied the fingers of her outstretched hand, counting one, two, three, four…and five. Just in case.
David turned away and his smile fell. Toby was a sweet girl, but still the enemy after all and the less suspicious she was, the better. It had been hard humoring her, like the slow creep of a lackluster date, where he filled her need to be heard even though he wasn’t listening. The test runs taught him well and he did get the information he needed. He would meet her again for more until he got his hands on the files himself and assured they were destroyed.
He lied about the insomnia. The truth was he slept more than ever, practically nodding off at the dinner table each night. But he was also free and in the end, that’s what mattered. He was no longer a weapon.
David went back into the cabin, rung out from his performance. After a quick shower, he changed into the pair of shorts and tee tucked under his pillow. He plopped onto the bed and sleep drifted in like a fast-moving fog. His eyelids drooped like they were made of lead and his vision doubled trying to keep them open. Before he felt asleep, he needed a certainty. At least one. It’s how he knew it was all real. He lifted up his left hand and it bobbed within that fog, phasing in and out.
He snapped his head the side to sharpen his focus on his hand, his certainty. But all his muscles were so relaxed and felt like jelly. He felt himself sinking into the mattress deeper and deeper. He blinked hard and focused again on his hand, but really didn’t want to bother. He was no longer a prisoner of an egotistical maniac bent on creating human weaponry. It was just him in this cabin, alone and safe. Carmine and Sam were not real. Vincent and Molly were in jail. The underground facility lay stripped of its equipment and shrouded in darkness. It was over.
David rubbed his eyes and yawned. His hand weighed a ton and he let it drop onto his chest. Out of habit, he counted anyway as sleep overtook him.
“One, two, three… four.”
