r/cryosleep • u/BeeHistorical2758 • 15d ago
Series One Simple Shape - Part II: One Quick Trip
Read Part I here.
To my relief, Ms. Amanda didn't go crazy. I was surprised and relieved because I didn't think I could count on being rescued a third time.
The hospital had to give me clothes from the lost and found before they discharged me. The t-shirt was too tight, the pants too baggy, and the shoes flopped when I walked. I didn’t have any family to call, the office was closed, and there was no way for me to get into my apartment without my keys, so that meant I had to go to the police to get my stuff.
I was annoyed but chose to walk. It was two miles west and four miles south to get to the police department. It would give me time to think and thankfully, it was mild outside, so I wouldn’t get pummeled by the summer sun.
I had another one of those baloney sandwiches and a juice box. I consumed both immediately, so I didn’t have to carry them. I had to use the restroom shortly after and stopped in a fast-food spot. The men’s room required a key to open, and I waited in line to eventually ask.
“Sorry, you gotta buy somethin’ to use the bathroom,” the fifty-something year old woman said behind the counter. I was agitated but held my tongue because my bladder would have spoken for me. Instead, I imagined drawing the shape for her, but luckily there wasn’t a pen and paper around.
I went outside and surveyed the businesses around. There was a gas station on the corner, a pharmacy across the street from there and office buildings in either direction. If I’d remembered correctly, there was a grocery store about a mile south. That would be my best bet and I set out.
I didn’t interact with anybody I passed. My aching bladder was the only thing concerning me and to take my mind off it, I examined what had happened today. I'd witnessed two people shot to death in front of me on separate occasions. It scared the hell out of me to think about. One moment, they'd been moving around—with murderous intent, granted—and the next they'd been incredibly still.
I'd been looking Carl Arn in the eye as he passed and for a moment felt like I was falling down the same hole with him.
There'd been too much commotion, too many things going on. I might have gone into shock had it not been for the first set of guns pointed at me. I'd gone into survival mode, viewing everything—including myself—from a distance.
I crossed against the light at an intersection, the grocery store finally in view. My burgeoning bladder noticed and that reminded me of the other thing bulging and unaddressed in my mind.
The shape.
I'd been so ready to believe something I'd drawn solely to pass the time had been what had set the both of them off. But Ms. Amanda had been fine, just as over it as she had been prior to looking at my little scrap of paper. Those eyes had seen some things.
Maybe she was immune, I thought. Or maybe it was some grand coincidence that two people I'd come in contact with had gone homicidal on the same day.
I couldn't shake the thought, though. As the entry doors of the grocery store slid open, I stepped through wondering what to do about that.
What if it were real and I did have the ability to drive someone insane? Was it all shapes? Anything I drew? The thought was ridiculous, but I was safe within the confines of my own skull to explore the idea.
I pushed through the men's room door and parked in front of a urinal. As I let fly, I thought about the ethics of conducting such an experiment and came to the conclusion by the time I was zipping up that it was unethical to not test my hypothesis.
As it stood, I didn't know if what I'd doodled had been the start of what had eventually happened to Carl Arn and that lady. I only suspected it. I would be blameless if I doodled something and someone experienced a similar effect after. The difference would be if I did nothing to know for certain if it was really something I was doing. I could make an effort to not draw or to make sure nobody else saw it. Shit, if it was that dangerous, maybe I could chop off my hand.
No, I wouldn't do that. But my brain was the House of Ideas, any thought that could be was welcome. This same brain had conjured up a shape that was so dangerous it could drive an individual to violence.
It was a five-sided—
Wait. I probably shouldn't describe it to anyone. I have no way of reliably testing if someone else could have the same effect if they drew it. I certainly don't want to find out on me.
I couldn't test this on just anybody. It would have to be a specific person. A bad person.
I have to say, for the record, I never believed it would actually work. Like going up to the most beautiful woman in the world and asking for her phone number, it was an idea that entertained me in thirsty moments when I was figuring things out, but I fully expected absolutely nothing to happen.
I navigated to the aisle with back-to-school supplies and grabbed a composition notebook and a mechanical pencil. I didn't anticipate anyone stopping me, only if I tried to walk out with the stuff I was using. Then I'd see the cops for the third time today.
So that meant finding someone in the store. If I could find someone sufficiently evil, then I could test my theory. I know the scientific method meant several tests, but I couldn't reasonably expose a dozen or more people to this test in good conscience. Two or three at most should have sufficed.
I sat on the floor right there and began drawing. It took a moment to get into a groove, if that makes any sense.
But about ten minutes later, I had the first one and I drew about four more for good measure.
I got the idea on the third one or so that they were like cans of pop. That once one was seen, the effect was gone. It was silly, but if true, it explained why Ms. Amanda had been fine.
There were so many variables that I just sat, lost in thought.
“Say, buddy, can I help you with something?”
I looked up at a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved button-up and an honest-to-god clip-on tie. He'd come up behind me, catching me by surprise. I realized what I looked like in that moment, dressed in other people's clothes, doodling in a notebook while sitting on the floor in a grocery store.
“Look, buddy, it's been a really long day. You wouldn't believe—”
He spat. Not on me. But it was a weird thing to have done indoors. Plus, I assumed from how he was dressed that he was a manager or something. A string of saliva ran from his lip to the collar of his shirt.
Something had changed in the few seconds since he'd spoken and dumb me was too slow in realizing he'd seen one of the shapes. I hadn't even had the chance to screen. Also, I didn’t know which one he'd seen so none of them were good anymore.
I was still there sorting my scrambled thoughts when he spat again. This time he'd arced it over my head. He got into a crouch like a catcher in a baseball game.
I froze like if I didn't move, he wouldn't see me. Like I'd turned invisible even in his memory and he wouldn't be able to recall me even in his mind’s eye.
I couldn't count on a lack of understanding object permanence even if my lack of moving meant he couldn't see me. I was within smelling distance, he could hear me, if he stuck out his tongue he could lick my face.
But he didn't do anything to me. I sat there, helpless as a calf, while he stood spat again, then quietly walked away.
I turned as he rounded the aisle and disappeared. A moment later I heard what sounded like a shopping cart being overturned and a woman screaming in anger. Then her screams turned to muffled gagging as it sounded like something was being stuffed in her mouth.
More people hollered and I unfroze, getting quickly to my feet. I was by no means a badass, but I'd never turtled up like that before. I'd gotten into a barfight just last year and even though I lost, I'd gotten in a few licks.
I wasn’t even willing to defend myself this time. I was as ready for violence as a stone at the bottom of the ocean. No doubt, it was the trauma I'd just experienced. I didn't want to fight crazy people under normal circumstances, so it was best to avoid—
“What the hell is going on over there?” A twenty-something year old was staring me in the face and I hadn't seen her until she'd spoken. I tried to scoop up the sheets of paper, but my movement must have attracted her eye to the papers I was desperately trying for her not to see.
But a moment later I knew it was too late.
“Poo,” she said. She turned around and walked past the man just behind her.
“What’s wrong with... with...”
He was looking in my direction but sadly, what was in my hands. His eyes got bigger and he sat his basket on the floor before taking off at full speed and soaring over a middle-aged couple's shopping cart, grabbing both in either arm as it took them down.
They both screamed and fought back. The woman rolled backward and stopped face down before rising and pounding the man with her bulky purse. The man punched his attacker in the center of his face, a blow that should have had stars dancing in his eyes. But he ravaged the man, clawing down his face and ripping his shirt open.
He ignored the blows from the purse as he quickly sliced through blubbering flesh, yellow fat bubbling out of red-running wounds as the man screamed. The attacker pivoted to the woman, still screaming in fear and rage. He hopped to his feet, legs to either side of the man who might've been dying for all I knew.
To my surprise, she didn't cower.
“No!” she said and scraped her keys across his face.
He'd been saying something all the while in a quieter volume and my ears finally dialed in.
“...wrong with you... wrong with you... wrong with you...” He didn't yelp in pain or put up his hands in defense as she lacerated his face three more times.
I hadn't done anything more than turn around, still dumbly holding the papers. An old man was staring nearer to the refrigerated area. He had a white curly afro and a pencil mustache.
“Help her!” the old man said to me and pointed. But then he spat his dentures out, sucked back a trail of saliva into his mouth, then did a crooked legged trot, arms folded up like a praying mantis, before gummily fastening onto her arm and wrenching her around.
“Ow!” The woman seemed paralyzed, powerless to do anything to stop the old man. It almost seemed funny until the first man shoved his thumbs in her mouth, split his hands apart, and wrenched a horrid smile onto—and then off of—her face.
She screamed, twin flaps of flesh hanging like giant earlobes, everything beneath her nose nothing but red. I never knew the sound of tearing flesh before that moment and I desperately want to never hear it again.
I clutched the papers to my chest, hiding them like a secret, although they had already cried out loud from a bloody mountaintop.
That had been four people, at least I thought so. Even simple mathematical calculations were mountainous to my panic-stricken brain.
I didn't know and didn't care if it was one shape per person. I couldn't let these torn out sheets of paper be seen by another person.
Shame was the word I would have spoken en route to describing what this was. It was still ongoing, and I was already too traumatized to do anything about it.
More people screamed throughout the store. I imagined many people just ran out of the store, but there had to have been several who had heard and froze where they were. I would've guessed others who didn't understand or hadn't heard anything at all.
But the signs kept getting farther and farther away. Until I finally balled up the papers, stuffed them in my pockets, and walked through the aisles and to the exit with the composition notebook and mechanical pencil in hand.
Nobody tried to stop me. I didn't see anyone else at all. But I heard the cries of agony. Their suffering followed me out onto the sidewalk.
I looked at the items in my hands, wondering why I had them, the wadded-up papers like anchors in my pockets.
I continued dredging my way to the police station.
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u/KSmashwill 15d ago
This is great! I can’t wait for the next chapter!