John's Lawn

I raised an unsteady hand, then put it down, “I’m sorry, I’m still not sure what it is I’d even be agreeing to. What’s going on in there?”

“About half of everyone who knows what’s going on in Tenyit Lane is in there.”

“So government conspiracy theories? I think I’d like to go home.”

“You have to know what’s going on, he kidnapped you too, you must’ve seen what I had on that computer.”

“No, I–” My mind flashed back to that morning, I’d woken up, seen the laptop open, no file transfer notification, “I mean, maybe, but I was too drunk to remember anything I read.”

“Darren wouldn’t have known that though. Just come in, we have evidence I’m not bullshitting. I mean, look at you, 30 minutes ago, you ate that asshole’s arm, you killed a man, and look at you. So just give it a chance, maybe I’m right, maybe shit around here is off, maybe, just maybe, the government is keeping a close eye on all of us for some crazy reason.” He pulled a necklace from under his shirt, “See how this crystal glows?”

“I’ll grant you your other points, but if you’re trying to tell me something that could have an LED in it is magic, buddy you are not preaching to the right choir.”

“Here,” He pulled it off his neck, unwrapped the twine, and handed me the bare crystal, “Look at it closely, as it’s sitting in your hand, just look at it.”

Rolling my eyes, I humored him. But, there was nothing there, looking into the glowing blue crystal was akin to looking at scuffed glass. I could see my hand straight through the entire gem, “Weir-”

“Now, close your eyes, and focus on your hand.”

I turned to face him, chin down, eyebrow raised, “You did not just ask me to do that.”

“No, seriously, just do it. If nothing happens, I’ll take you home. But, if you do feel it, you have to agree to join us.”

I gazed out in front of us, staring at the ten-foot concrete wall, “Okay.” I faced him, “If I feel anything, I’ll come in.”

He looked excited for a moment, before catching on, sighing, “Alright, that’ll have to do, but you have to stay and talk with a couple people at least.”

I took my turn to sigh, “Fine.” Closing my eyes, I focused on my hand, only a few seconds passed before I noticed it. It felt like something was taking up the empty space inside the atoms that made up who I was. Like the emptiness between the electrons and the nuclei was being filled. But as I focused more, a new sensation came through, like a magnet, the energy was being pushed away from something inside of me. Like an immune system fighting off a disease, the energy was halted, and whatever was inside me grew more aggressive.

I dropped it, my eyes sprung open, and I threw the door off its hinges, wanting, needing to get away from it. I shook my body, rubbed my face, and silently cursed to myself as I stamped in circles, trying as hard as I could to forget the maddening sensation.

I heard something from Scott’s direction, “WHAT!”

I finally stopped, staring at him as he spoke, “Just come inside with me, it’ll all make sense, it must’ve rejected you or something.”

“OR SOMETHING!? Oh that’s rich! You think I’m going to follow you in after!..” I took a breath, trying to think, “Whatever the FUCK that was!?”

His face lost all emotion, “YES GODDAMNIT! You said you would! Now you’re going to follow me inside, and we’re going to discuss everything! Do I make myself clear!?”

“The fuck we are!”

He made his way over to me, “Jesus Christ! Despite EVERYTHING, we couldn’t be more different!” He calmed, putting his hands on my shoulders, “Now, we’re gonna go in there, have a talk with the others, and you’ll understand everything. Do you hear me?” He stared uncomfortably into my eyes. 

Despite his serious expression, his eyes were flat, like a dead fish. Yet, there was something relaxing in them, “Yeah, I uh… sure. Let’s have a talk, I agreed to it and all.” Following behind him, we made our way into a house, then down a set of stairs to the basement, which is where he pushed a tool cabinet aside, and we made our way down a set of stairs.

“How lo–”

“Let’s just make it down, then you can ask.”

About 10 steps down, I could hear the sound of laughter, before we eventually made it to an underground mancave. It had to be a good 20-30 feet below the road.

A couple of people went quiet as we reached the bottom, where ten or so people were gathered. An older woman made her way to us, the second person being a younger man, a mid-20s artistic type. He probably listened to The Beatles, and turned on Beethoven when his friends got in the car for the sake of it.

“Welcome Joseph, seems you’re new to town, and already sticking your nose in all sorts of government secrets. They sure have been slacking.”

“What the hell was on Scott’s laptop?”

A couple of seats scooted, and a few more voices went low, “Scott? You had unencrypted data on your computer?”

“He brought it to my, or Darren’s computer shop, when he was erm… still alive.”

The 20 something was about to say something when the woman’s tone quieted, approaching a whisper, “Allow me to get this straight Scott, you not only had freely accessible data on your computer, highly incriminating data that could rat all of us out, you also took it to a computer shop. It would be greatly appreciated if you could explain every little detail involving that.” She gripped one of his shoulders, and I could see the pain grow on his face. Then, she turned to me, smiling, “As for you, I need you to tell Brandon here everything that happened at, wherever you two came from. Don’t miss any details, we haven’t seen Scott in a couple of days, and everything around here goes by word of mouth.” She waved me off Scott following behind.

“Alright, let’s hit the bar, you can tell me everything there.” His voice sauntered as he pointed his thumb to an indent in the concrete wall to the right.

“God, that sounds amazing.”

—————————————————–

“Really? That’s everything that brought you two here?”

“Yeah.” I said, finishing off my second pint of whiskey, “Guess it kind of explains why I can drink so much, but I’m still iffy. What do you think?” Without hesitation, he grabbed my wrist and sliced a bit of skin off my forearm. I shot it back, “Hey! What the FUCK!”

“Pull your arm back out, let’s have a look.”

I eyed him, putting it out in front of me, “So wha-” I stared, hesitation taking me. It was already clotted and scabbed over. Which reminded me of the hole that’d been stabbed into me. I pulled my shirt up, seeing there was only a tiny scab left, and there was already extensive scarring around it. “I-I need to sit down.”

“You uh, you already are.”

“Then I need to lay down.” I stood, hyperventilating.

He slowly helped me to a couch, asking a little too politely for everyone to get out of the way, then leaning me down.

As my head hit the arm-rest, my brain pounded like I stood up too fast with a caffeine headache after a bender. My vision blurred and the room was too bright. All of the days events played on a loop, running through my mind at the speed of sound, only stopping momentarily to focus on the most traumatic events.

Eventually, my breathing slowed, my vision cleared, and my mind became more tolerable. “I-I need to l-leave. I don’t belong here. I need to go back to my life. I have to–”

“Didn’t you just ea– or ki… Isn’t your boss dead now?”

“I… need to get back home. This isn’t where I should be. I need to get back to Te…” My mind was struggling to latch onto something. Something familiar, yet completely foreign, like a language you’ve heard of but never learned. “I need to leave this place.”

“Hey, is he alright?” I heard Scott ask. 

I rolled to my left side as much as I could to look at him, “What do you think?” Right as he went to open his mouth, “I want you to take me home, right now. I came in like I said I would, but this place, I just… I can’t. I’m sure I might help at some capacity, but honestly, I don’t want any part in what you guys are doing. There’s nothing for me here.”

He glanced at Brandon, who took him aside. A couple minutes later, he came back, “Look, we can’t have you leave just yet. There’s too much we’d be risking. So we need to ensure you won’t tell anyone.”

“So what, you’re gonna bug my phone and shit?”

“Actually, we’re going to rewrite your memories of getting here. As well as my name. Everyone else here uses an alias, but, well, you’re gonna forget my real name so it doesn’t matter too much.”

“Is it safe?”

“Well, you’ve already been through a similar process a few times, you should be fine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His eyelids flattened, “Just follow me.”

My memories around that point in time get distorted. I remember someone sitting me in a chair, then them holding my head between their hands, and in the moment I forgot Scott’s name as well as a few other details. Then I was blindfolded, and ended up at my house. At the time it felt like I’d just been on a long drive after the whole Darren situation.

I wanted to drink, I wanted to simply stop existing, I wanted everything to end. The next couple hours are still a haze, though I presume it was mainly due to the alcohol consumption as opposed to anything else. However, one aspect of that day/night has stuck with me, parts of it haunt my dreams, other parts relieve me to this day, and I honestly can’t say whether or not I’m glad I made the decision. But no matter how much I think on it, I can’t take it back. It was something about sitting on the couch, then I set the bottles on the coffee table. Then I was in the kitchen holding the business card with a D on it. I think it was shortly after that when I grabbed the bag from my junk drawer and downed the whole bag of mushrooms.

I remember after 20 minutes or so a strange sense of anxiety washed over me, and my stomach twisted. I stumbled my way to the bathroom, convinced the shitty whiskey was finally getting to me. I laid in front of the toilet for a good while, waiting for something to come up, when my vision grew wavy, then a crash of euphoria hit me and I started giggling. Feeling better, I headed to the couch to throw something on.

A short while later, a new wave slammed into me and I couldn’t see anything I was looking at anymore. Tears streamed down my face as kaleidoscopes twisted in my eyes. The swirling color took on a life of its own as it no longer had regard for spacetime. I could suddenly feel each eternity between the seconds of reality. My brain was working at the pace of a supercomputer, causing me to age a millenia a minute. My mind was malleable, reforming lost neural connections, and I could feel each fiber reconnect, causing lost memories to surge their way through my mindseye. My body was fused with the couch, all I could do was sit and experience. My mind was suddenly just that, floating consciousness in a vibrant void, and even my brain was simply along for the ride, running calculation after calculation with no regard for my conscious self. I was no longer crying, but the universe was, even the universe was simply another piece of a much grander design, simply an electron in the atom that was our multiverse.

For a few minutes, my eyes were able to focus again, I could process my surroundings with minimal distortion. Patting my face, I felt water still pouring from my eyes. I wiped it away with my shirt, then grabbed a blanket and pillow from my room, laid on the couch, and went back to the show. But before I could focus on the screen, my brain leapt forward, crashing hard into a tidal wave of emotion and colors.

Once again, I was no longer me, but simply a bundle of chemistry and experiences. While no definitive memories resurface, I recalled clumps, as if I’d dropped too much flour into my soup at once. Terry, Jane, a murder, Maerod, 7/11, seemingly random details broke surface tension, revealing a broad variety of emotions, agony, hope, loss, rage. I could only feel my vocal chords giving way, but no sounds made it to my ears, because they no longer existed in that moment. I had no control over it, and in that moment the truth dropped out of the sky, splattering my sense of self. “I” was simply a construct that no longer held weight to my brain. It was going to do its thing, the mind has already made its decision before the conscious self has allowed it to surface. The subconscious influences the conscious, while the conscious can choose to focus on something, the subconscious is what’s really pulling the strings, which–

Before I could finish the thought, the water gave out from under me, and I was suddenly drowning. All coherent thought had left me, nothing but pure emotions left, I think I screamed as I cried, but I still couldn’t hear anything. Despite that, an added shakiness came to my twisting vision periodically.

I’m not sure when I resurfaced, the coming hangover coupled with how mentally checked out I was by the end of the trip made it hard to tell. But I did eventually wake up, suffice it to say, my pillow was drenched, and I had to get a new couch.

I threw my pillow, blanket, and clothes in the wash after coming to. I felt hollow, not quite empty as emptiness implies a feeling of something that’s supposed to be there being gone. But that wasn’t it, hollow as if that’s how it was supposed to be.

I sat in the shower as it rained over me. I scrubbed slowly, trying to get the smell of piss out of my skin. I couldn’t believe myself.

After my shower of shame, I got dressed. As I left the bathroom, I did it again, “Hey Terry–” Which jogged loose a compilation of memories. My mindseye was flooded with experiences in a shabby apartment. Watching anime with a distorted fragment of a person. Cooking as two familiar voices discussed something. Then the big one came, the first time he revealed himself to me. The memory was blurred, like a moving analog camera, but the emotions were strong.

I stumbled my way to the living room, sitting on the floor beside the coffee table. As the memories faded back into being just that, I glanced to my left, noticing that strange card with the D on it. I grabbed it, flipping the card in my hand several times, then bit my lip, glancing to my right at the office door. I wanted to gain access to whatever private data the town had on me. But I knew they wouldn’t keep it online, too easy for the wrong person to snag it.

They might keep it on paper, but I can’t just ask for something like that. Clearly I’m not supposed to have any memories. So where can I go that’ll have the data I need? I dwelled on the thought for a moment, then, It might be a long shot, but if Darren… I shivered. If Darren left the laptop at the shop, I might have a chance. Whatever was on there was bad enough he was willing to kill me. Which means… I sighed in disdain, I have to see ‘him’ after I’m done.

I didn’t know where ‘he’ lived, but if I was lucky, there was a chance I could find some residual gps data when I got a hold of one of the laptops.

Grabbing a hoodie, I made my way out the door, heading out on foot due to the snow that had accumulated.

When I got there a few minutes later, the door was locked. Then I remembered how I’d gotten in just a couple days prior. Grabbing the bottom of the single window sill, I yanked up as hard as I could, hoping to break it free of the ice. Something definitely broke, but it was a more metallic sound than I’d expected. Quickly climbing through, I saw the lock had bent and tore the screws out of the window. The clanging had come from the lock piece dropping to the ground.

Shaking my head, I made my way to the desk the laptops had been. But unfortunately, they were already gone. I kicked a chair, wanting to get more pissed at the situation, but the emotional impact from the night before wouldn’t allow it. I searched each cabinet, hoping to come across anything that could point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, he hadn’t left a trace, so I hopped back out the window to try and think something else up.

If the drive from his house to one of the walls was about 15 minutes or so, and the drive from there to my house was about 10… My thoughts trailed off, Weren’t they supposed to warp my memory? Could it be the same thing as earlier? I shook it off, trying to focus, So, about 10 minutes from my house to a wall, which means… I glanced back at the shop, taking in the large concrete construct behind it for seemingly the first time. Then, I glanced down my right side at the “entrance” to town only a few blocks away, right past the bar. Trying to focus my mind, I pieced together a mental list of houses that could fit the parameters I had. In doing so, I came up with a list of four different streets, then I headed back home, threw some chains on my car, and left for the first street. 

——————–

By the third street, I started to get nervous. I thought my short look at it while leaving wasn’t enough to go off of, or that they might’ve warped my memories of the place. Or even if I found the place, the murders had already been reported. But by the time I got to the end of that street, I found the house I was looking for. It looked untouched, so I parked and went up to the door. Opening the door caused a memory to overtake me. I saw Jane, her body just laying there, head missing, cold blood pooled into a murky puddle of depression. As it passed, despite the nausea that followed the memory, everything in the house was clean. The house smelled like pine and gingerbread. Whoever had cleaned the place didn’t matter, I ran through the house searching for one of the laptops.

It took some time, but I eventually found it in his locked dresser. Running downstairs, I bolted out the door just for the ground to disappear, and suddenly, the gray sky was in front of me. The laptop slid from my fingers just before my head made contact with the doorframe, nearly knocking me out. I staggered to my feet, being cautious to not slip on the ice under the snow. Looking around, there was a small indent in the field of white. Walking over to it, I picked it back up, flipping the computer open, thankful to see it was still alive.

Sliding it under the cushion of my back seat, I got in my car, and was just about to turn the key when a sudden knocking at a window nearly gave me a heart attack. I turned the ignition, rolling the window down. Looking over at the man at the passenger side window, I couldn’t help but feel my heart drop. He looked serious, like a business man out on duty… in the snow.

“Can I help you? Erm…”

“The name’s Donavan, and I believe that depends entirely on whether or not you could answer a few of my questions.”

I blew out my nose,  “I uh, no, not particularly, I’ve–”

“Got somewhere to be? I’m sure you do, and so do I. May I?” He gestured to the door handle.

“I’m sure I don’t want anything you’re selling, so may I go.”

He pulled out his phone, scrolling while he talked, “Unless you’d like me showing this to the police, I think it’d be mutually beneficial if you allowed me into your vehicle while we had our discussion. Wouldn’t you agree?” He flipped the phone, showing me a short video compilation of me eating Darren, as well as killing one of the other guys.

Despite my desire to get as far away from the man as possible, I unlocked the door, “Sure, get in, dickswab.”

———————-

“Now then, might you be able to explain something that’s been itching at the back of my mind?”

“Please my good sir, there is no such need to display your extended understanding of the English lexicon in such a manner.”

“The least you could do is take me the slightest bit seriously.”

“Look man, you blackmailed me into letting you into my car, I’m sorry if I’m not ‘like, so totally stoked’ to talk right now.” I turned right, he’d instructed me to just go around the same few blocks until we were done.

“Alright then, who gave you this?”

I glanced over, seeing the card with the italicized D on it, “Ah, I see, you broke into my house. Pretty sure that’s a crime.”

He looked down his nose at me, I could almost see his imaginary glasses slide down a bit, “Just answer the question.”

“It came with a small package. I wasn’t even home when it was dropped off.”

“Is this the one to which you’re referring?” He held the small brown package with no label, along with the small bag that I’d so recently… emptied the contents of,

“I think what’s going on here is pretty obvious.”

“Do you?”

“I’m really not part of any one of the “third parties,” this town seems to love hosting. I’m just trying to figure out why everyone seems to have it out for me.” Remembering Scott, I glanced in the rearview mirror, wanting to get to whatever secrets that laptop held.

He also glanced in the rearview mirror, but I got the sense it was for another reason, “You know, it’s difficult to add something to a machine that’s already running. You can’t just cut a live wire when you need to add a new resistor. You can’t throw a turbo in a car while it’s on. You can’t swap a normal trigger for a hair trigger while shooting the gun. You gotta set it down, make sure everything’s stopped and cool, then you can go in and meticulously add or replace a part to whatever needs it. But the thing about new parts is, you can’t immediately leave them be, you gotta keep an eye on them, make sure they aren’t faulty. Even if you have a manufacturer’s guarantee, sometimes you get a bad part.”

“Aaaaand.”

“Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what we have. But when a replaced part is internal, and you don’t have a check engine light, well you have to rely on the effects of the engine as a whole. See, if anything has gone wrong since you added the new part. Well, you know what happens when it’s discovered a part is faulty I’m sure.”

“Sooooo…”

“So, that car you noticed a little while back, that’s why it’s following us. The effects are starting to show.” I checked the rearview mirror again, sure enough, there was a car following us, a black two door with tinted windows and a glossy finish, “Which brings me back to this card, I’m a reasonable man, if you tell me who gave you this card, I’m willing to help push this ahem side effect, under the rug.”

“Listen, I really don’t know. I was telling you the truth.” I hesitated, thinking it over, “But, if you, ‘push it under the rug,’ as you so delicately put it, I can help you find whoever sent me the package. Deal?”

“And what cards are you willing to show me to nudge me along?”

“He sent me a package once, clearly he has contacts here given the lack of any shipping details. Which says he must also know the me from yestermonth. If he has personal ties to me, there must be a way for me to lure him out.”

He smirked, “You’d really screw over the person that resurfaced your memories?”

“Anyone who has people here but refuses to save me isn’t really worth getting killed over.”

He stared at me for the rest of the block, then glanced the rearview mirror, “Well damn, I suppose I can’t argue that logic.” He pulled out a pen and small piece of paper, scribbled something down, then, “You can pull over here.” We’d reached the front of the house we started our ride in front of, “Here, call me if you get any leads, we’ll do our part to keep things under wraps.” He stopped halfway out the door, “And hey, if you do your part well enough, you might even be allowed deeper in the engine.” Then he was off, calling someone as he walked down the street.

“Yeah, whatever metaphor-man.” I crumbled up the paper and tossed it in the back, driving home in silence to finally get into what the hell was going on.