There’s a worm living in my head,
I was on a flight back to the U.S. that afternoon, but it took two days before I was able to track down Hannah. She had moved out of Terry’s house after the funeral, the property apparently being absorbed into the family’s wealth much as his bank account had. Her new apartment back in her northwestern hometown was a big step down from the beachside mansion she had spent the last three years in.
In fact, it reminded me a lot of my own place.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I fucked up. I fucked myself and now I’ve fucked you too I guess.”
The girl sitting in front of me was a ghost of the Hannah I knew. She was cooperative enough—I’d half expected her to hang up on me when I finally got her on the phone, but she’d told me where she was living and agreed to meet. I was up there the next morning, and I had to work to hide my shock when I saw her. She looked like she had lost weight and hadn’t bathed in days, her hair hanging in greasy strings around her pale face. But worse, she looked like something inside her was missing. Like some spark, maybe the will to live, was either guttering or already gone.
Sitting in Hannah’s bare and dingy living room filled with boxes she hadn’t bothered unpacking, I felt sympathy for her, but it was being overridden by my fear and anger. “Just tell me what happened. Who these people are and how I can stop this.”
She let out a dull laugh, her eyes flicking to meet mine before falling away again. “You can’t stop this. Neither of us can.”
Trying to keep my voice even, I tried again. “Just tell me.”
When I first met Terry, it was like a dream come true, you know? He was like a prince in some kind of fairy tale, coming to take me away from my boring life and make small-town Hannah his princess. I know that might sound like I was in it for the money, but that isn’t true. I didn’t care if he was rich or poor, though I admit that in the beginning I liked the perks of being the girlfriend of someone that could go anywhere and do anything.
Still, I came to hate the money over time. It tied him to his family, for one thing. At first, I liked them. They were always nice, treated me well, didn’t act stuck up or anything. But once I stuck around for awhile, once they saw I might become a part of the family permanently, things started to change.
It was little things. They would talk about some expensive trip they took to some fancy place and then ask if I had ever been, knowing there was no way that I had. They would talk about some obscure thing they learned at their Ivy League schools and then apologize to me. Tell me they were sorry, and they were happy to talk about something I was more familiar with. As though they were doing me a favor by lowering the conversation to my level.
Passive-aggressive shit like that. Stuff that was small enough that I’d look insecure and petty bringing it up to Terry. And at first, I just laughed it off and tried to ignore it. But as I grew to love him more, I found myself caring more, even though I knew it was stupid and I shouldn’t care what they thought. I started becoming insecure—more awkward when we went out to a fancy place or on a nice trip. I started thinking I wasn’t good enough for him.
When he proposed to me, I panicked. I was in a bad place at the time with all this stuff, and I almost turned him down. Told him he could do better. But I loved him too much for that, to let his shit family psyche me out or let my own weaknesses keep me from the man I loved. So I said yes.
Less than a month later, a friend from high school contacted me. Told me about a clinic they had went to in Iceland. Bear in mind, when I knew this dude, he was huffing glue behind the bleachers and getting Cindy Palino pregnant. But apparently he had gone on to become a semi-successful real estate agent in Seattle. I didn’t know why he was contacting me or telling me about this place, but he was a good enough salesman to keep me on the line.
It was a place where they could give you new memories and knowledge. Totally safe, and really amazing stuff like something from a sci-fi movie. He said they had very flexible financing and had actually done his treatment in exchange for an old speedboat he’d had for years. That now instead of sucking at the financial side of his business, he was able to handle complex accounting like he had been doing it for years.
Long story short, I wound up doing it. Terry had given me a car for my birthday the year before, and I gave that to them. Made up a story to him about going to visit my sister and the car getting stolen while I was actually away at the clinic. In exchange, they gave me what they called their “higher education and culture package”. Two weeks later, we were at a family dinner and I was the one doing the apologizing and telling them that we could talk about something they knew more about.
It was wonderful.
A few days later, the man I’d first met from the clinic, Mr. Aller, contacted me. He said there had been problems with the trade. That the service I had received was actually far more expensive than the worth of the car. Instead of being worth $75,000.00, it was actually worth $3.2 million.
I didn’t have any way of paying it. Even Terry would have had trouble paying it without tons of questions from his family, as almost everything he had was controlled by the trust. And I wasn’t going to involve him or them in it anyway. I wasn’t going to prove his family right by asking for money like that.
So I argued with Aller. Told him it wasn’t my mistake, a deal was a deal, and he could fuck right off. He told me that I had a month to reconsider and either pay the money, or recruit someone else to take the treatment. I said sure thing and shut the door in his face. Tried to forget about it, figuring he was full of shit.
A month later they came for me. I don’t remember much about it, but when it was done, I was sitting outside our house on the driveway. It was early morning and it was cold, but I barely noticed. I was too busy thinking about the two years I had spent trapped in a basement being tortured when I was a teenager.
The funny thing is, there’s some part of you that knows it’s not true, right? Especially that first bad memory. They alter it a little, make everything seem a little off. In that first bad one, everything was red. Like a camera with a red filter on it or something. They do it on purpose. Call it a “tint marker”. A way of letting you know it’s something they added. And a way of making you understand that it doesn’t matter if you know they put it in you, it still hurts.
I walked into the house, expecting Terry to be terrified with worry. The love of his life had been abducted for several days, right? Except no, he thought I’d gone on a sudden trip to visit my sister again. Because apparently I had texted and called him about it. I didn’t remember any of that, of course, but I was starting to get how little that really meant.
Now I understand more. They don’t care about the money. That’s just a trick to make you think you are dealing with a business, dealing with something normal you can fight against or bargain with. I think they do want the new customers, though I don’t really know why. What I do know is what happened after I gave them you.
I hated to do it. I’ve always liked you, and Terry loved you like a brother. Hell, way more than he loved his actual family. But after he died so suddenly, I was broken and desperate. They left me alone for awhile after that first bad memory, but then Mr. Aller contacted me again, telling me that “my obligations were still not fulfilled.”
So I lied to you. Tricked you into going. Probably damned myself by betraying you and the love Terry had for you.
The next weekend I woke up screaming, remembering how I was driving the car that killed my mother and father last year.
I checked, and my father really did die last year. The records say he died of a heart attack while having surgery. There’s no indication that he was in a car wreck. There’s also no indication that my mother died at all.
See, I haven’t seen my mother since I was six. She was a junkie, and when she started using around me, my dad threw her out. She could be dead for all I know, but I don’t have any other memories of her since then except for the night that I killed them both in that wreck.
That’s the trick of it, you see. I know logically that the memory has to be false. Has to be implanted. But my brain and my heart don’t really believe that. The memory is too strong and feels too real, especially without any of the “tint markers” the first one had. I feel like what I know has to be true and what I know is true are two different things. And that difference is tearing me apart.
“The only thing I can suggest is running. They will probably still find you—they somehow found me even though I was hiding out after setting you up—but it’s worth a shot I guess.” I could tell from her weary expression that she knew it wasn’t worth much at all.
“Why didn’t you go to the police or something?”
Her mouth split into a terrible grin as she stared at me in disbelief. “You don’t think I tried? Why do you think you haven’t called someone? Try it. They put all kinds of stuff inside you. You can’t tell on them.” She lowered her gaze again. “You can’t even kill yourself.”
My eyes widened. “Hannah. You didn’t.”
Shaking her head, she stood up. I thought she was done talking, but she paused before walking away.
“Before they’re done with you, you’ll try too.”
and it tells me terrible things.
I’d like to tell you I found some way to get the money or to fight them. Some way to trick or outsmart them. But in the end, I ran. For all her past deceit, I knew Hannah had been telling me the truth, or at least the truth as she knew it to be. And I had no way of winning against something like that, so my only hope was that if I disappeared, they would leave me alone.
Ten days after I learned to play the guitar, I learned that I was the one that killed Terry.
The memory was strange and slightly surreal, with everything tinted a deep blue. But despite this, it was very detailed and real to me. I remembered calling him up, asking if it was okay if I visited him in a couple of days, but to keep it just between us that I was coming. That I met him out in the parking lot of our old school, now closed and scheduled to be renovated into some kind of group home the following spring. I remembered his confused laughter when I pulled the knife on him and how he started to squeal and beg as I began to hurt him.
I remembered it all and knew it was true, even though every bit of it was a lie.
Because Terry had died of a sudden stroke while he was playing golf and I was over a thousand miles away. By the time Hannah had called me, he had already been declared dead in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Blue “tint marker” aside, there was no way that I could have killed him. But despite that objective reality, I could feel the weight of murdering my best friend crushing me.
No one even bothered contacting me again, either to shake me down for money they didn’t really want or for “new recruits” that I had already decided I would never give them. I wouldn’t make the mistake Hannah had made, dragging down someone else as I drowned in the sea of horror they were slowly pouring into my head.
Maybe they somehow knew I wouldn’t help them. Either way, two weeks later, I woke up in a strange motel room in Nebraska. Now I knew how I had always loved torturing animals since I was a young boy. How excited it made me, even now. I wanted to deny it, to say it went against everything I thought about myself and other memories of my life, but I was beginning to appreciate how little those internal protests actually meant in the face of the thing poisoning my mind.
Like Hannah, I tried repeatedly to tell someone, anyone, about what was happening to me. But somehow I could never get the words out. Like she predicted, I tried to hang myself in the closet of that same Nebraska motel room with a drying cord from the dirty bathroom. But my hands wouldn’t cinch it around my neck. The following day, my feet similarly betrayed me, refusing to step out in front of a passing concrete truck.
Three days ago, I was taken again, though this time I actually remember some of it. I remember waking up to people surrounding me, and the low drone of the plane’s engines while we were in flight. I remember being taken back to the clinic, not through the beautiful lobby, but through some dark service entrance that sent back the lonely echoes of our footfalls as I was pulled back inside. Yet even then, I was surprised at how little I struggled, at how few noises I made. I could see and understand everything well enough by that point, having woken from whatever stupor they had induced, but I still found it hard to do much other than look around blandly while my insides felt like they were dissolving in an acid bath of terror.
Then I was in the procedure room again, stripped naked and strapped to the chair and staring at that one blemish on the white wall. There were several people around me, but there was no show of giving me injections this time or scientific fanfare of any kind. I wanted to ask questions, but I found I couldn’t speak, and no one would speak to me. So I was left staring at that dirty spot on the far wall, and at first I thought it was my imagination that it was growing larger. But no, it was, or at least the white was disappearing as the wall slid away to reveal a black tunnel.
Suddenly, Mr. Aller was beside the chair. He glanced down at me, his smile cold. “Welcome to Tier Three.”
Someone behind me began to roll the chair forward into the yawning darkness. I felt hot air that smelled of sulfur buffeting my face as we cleared the threshold of the room, leaving behind the clean precision of the modern clinic for the rough hewn dark walls of volcanic rock that surrounded us on every side. There were five of us including Aller, and the three attendants all had flashlights clipped to their shirts now, the jostled illumination dancing back and forth across the slowly deepening tunnel as we progressed further out and down.
I wish I could say I don’t remember any of this, but I do, at least for now. I also remember when the tunnel finally flattened out and widened into a stone chamber that seemed impossibly large. The walls to either side were only ten or twelve feet away, but they seemed to run ahead of us and upward forever, far higher than should be possible considering how deep I thought we must be. And the walls themselves were pocked with row after row of holes that appeared to be tunnels half the size of the one we had just left. I had the thought of a beehive, though I knew it was a bad comparison.
I was more afraid at that moment than I had ever been, more than I ever thought I could be. I found myself hoping I would just die from being afraid, but it was just me lying to myself again. I wasn’t going to die, and I could still be much more afraid.
They turned and began to push me toward one of the smaller tunnels, and as we grew closer I saw something moving in that deeper dark. I was so transfixed by trying to see what we were approaching that I almost didn’t hear Aller talking to me again.
“Back in 1783, there were a series of volcanic eruptions near here. It lasted for eight months, if you can believe it. Killed many people, you know. Famine and fluoride poisoning mainly, though some died of other causes.” My eyes were still fixed on the indistinct shape coming closer, but I heard him chuckle. “Many people call it Skaftareldar. A few of us know it meant much more than just fire and destruction.”
The chair had stopped moving now and I was able to make out the dim outlines of the thing before us. Its sides appeared to be a deep, slick red that resembled a brightly-colored slug. I had no way of knowing how large it was, because its undulating length went back into the darkness without end. My eyes kept wanting to avoid looking at what I assumed was its head, a mass of hard, deeper crimson flesh and squid-like arms that were ran though with jagged calcifications of black stone that endlessly dripped a thick, white fluid from the wounds the rocks had produced. As the first drop of that hit my bare skin, I felt my leg begin to go numb.
“This place, these wonderful beings, no one knows for sure if they were always here and just awoke during the eruption, or if their arrival actually caused Skaftareldar. What we do know is that soon after the eruptions died down, the first of us discovered newly opened caves that led us to this blessed place. Ever since, we have helped them with their work and reaped the bounty of their wisdom.”
I felt the first tendrils of the thing climbing my body, touching my legs and groin almost gingerly as it made its way toward my head. I felt like I was going insane, but then I suddenly spoke, my voice calm as it uttered words not my own. “What is their work?”
My head turned toward Aller, who was looking down at me with a smirk. “Glad you asked. Why it’s the study of the human soul.” I felt the tentacles of the creature coiling around my neck and head, holding me fast toward Aller as he went on.
“They want to see what it takes to shape a soul. To refine it or break it. Are they immutable, or can they be changed through experiences? Ideas? Different beliefs?” Aller looked over at the thing above me with some mixture of love and admiration. “In past centuries, these studies have taken many forms, but lately there has been a focus on the effect of convincing someone of a false past. Can you make a person better or worse by giving them memories that they had a better or worse life than they actually had? Can you make a person more virtuous or depraved simply by making them believe they have been so in the past?”
He looked back to me. “These are the questions we are working to answer. But there are many, many of these beings, you see, and we are always running out of participants in our experiment.” He frowned slightly. “And before you think us unfair, we really do try to be even-handed. We have people that we make much happier by erasing bad memories and creating better replacements. It’s just…well, there has to be a group that is pushed toward darker extremes, and unfortunately for you, that’s the lot you’ve drawn.”
I wanted to say more, but then the world went white, then red, then dark. When I woke up, I was back in my apartment. I remember several more things now. Terrible things I can’t even bring myself to write. Not that I think it will matter much longer anyway.
You see, I’ve been looking back over what I’ve written, and I already don’t remember most of it. I started writing this to create a record, but how much will it help me if I can’t recall the truth of it and no one else will believe me? I’m surprised I could even write it at all, but perhaps they know the pointlessness of it and so they don’t mind. I don’t know.
What I do know is that I feel like I’m being dissolved—boiled away in a stew of false memories I can’t discern and strange impulses I don’t understand. But what will be left when the boiling is done? What will be the shape of my soul when they are done refining it?
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Credits
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