Frightened Boy

Chapter Eleven - Predestination

11. Predestination

The wide circle of the train track sped around the city, sometimes briefly rising out of the tunnels to avoid the complex sewage system. In these moments, I could see an angry orange sun trying to shine from behind the greasy smudge of the downtown skies.

I was lost.

Then a soft voice licked my eardrum, crossing the precipice of my panic attack. A female voice sung out behind me, lips only millimeters from my ear. Felt her warm breath, the percussive, wet tap of her tongue on her teeth, and the slight crack of her lips parting.

“’Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.’

That’s Yeats. 'The Second Coming.' It’s one of His favorites.”

A warm, furry creature jumped into my lap and pressed itself against my face, coiling around my neck before stalking flirtatiously across me to gaze out the window. The Strangers.

I turned around expecting to bump noses with Whisper but instead found her to be at the back of the train, walking steadily toward me.

When I turned around and looked up toward the front of the bus, giant brown aviator glasses took up my view so completely I might have been wearing them myself.

Escher’s face and mine filled the same space, and I was four years old, being scolded by my father again.

“Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight,” he said. “Do you know what the Spiritus Mundi is, Frightened Boy?”

“No,” I whimpered.

“Yeats believed it was the spirit of the world—the common knowledge we all share, the symbols that are universally true to every human, no matter the breadth of his experience or knowledge.”

“It’s a fantastic concept,” Whisper said, “but to believe in it requires a belief in God.”

“This is true,” Escher said. “Or a belief that you are God. I think the Spiritus Mundi is one's own vision, because whose vision do we have to trust but our own? Can I ever see through another person’s eyes?” he appeared to be trying “No, I cannot. Therefore, objectivity as you know it is a lie. There is no such thing. There is only your subjective interpretation of reality. So there is no shared experience, there is only me,” Escher said.

I turned away, and something hard scraped across my skull. Out of my peripheral, I see Whisper is holding a pistol against my skin.

“Don’t kill me,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’m bait. You have to get out of here. That Voice—that person on the cell phone—he can do things. He cheated me. He tricked me. Please don’t kill me.”

“My work is a game, a very serious game,” Escher said.

Escher stared through my eyes, a pair of high-voltage blind-the-shit-out-of-you spotlights blasting into my two dim candles. I was staring right back, but I couldn’t see a thing. “You’ve been working for the other side,” Escher said.