BY TRAVIS WALTERS
Copyright is held by the author.
LATELY, IT seems like I’ve been sleeping forever. Like I’ve been drowning in confusion, pain and darkness.
But finally there’s a light. Harsh fluorescent-white blinds me as my eyes flutter. I can hear muffled voices somewhere ahead of me.
“Oh, God!” a distinctively feminine voice says.
“Ho-ley shit.” A male says this time. Younger than the other.
A third voice, demanding and firm, silences the others. “Quiet! Or you’ll both have to leave!”
Sure enough, three figures come into focus. The young guy and the woman I don’t recognize, but they are both wearing scrubs. The man in front of me, a doctor I assume from the way he’s dressed, is familiar to me, but I’m not sure why.
My mouth is gummy, like I haven’t spoken in some time. “Where . . .”
The woman gasps and takes a step back. The young guy I realize is standing behind a video camera that is pointed towards me. He peeks out from behind with his jaw hanging limply.
“Relax,” the doctor says to me, “you’re in a hospital. My name is Dr. Klein. Can you tell me your name?”
My mouth moves like a reflex. “Nic.”
Not a gasp from the woman this time, but a low, frightened moan. Followed by a “woah” from the camera guy.
The doctor says nothing, merely silences them with a look. “That’s right. Your name is Nicholas Johnson: Nic. Do you . . . do you know who I am?”
I try to shake my head, but I can’t seem to move, so I say: “No, not really.”
“That’s OK,” Dr. Klein says, with open palms held out to me. “You came in to see me a few months back. You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“You were complaining of stiffness in your upper back. I gave you some painkillers and told you to do some stretches.” Dr. Klein gives a small snort-chuckle, but there is no humour in his face. “You should have come back sooner, before . . . well, I didn’t realize you were missing work.”
“Work?”
“Yes. You stopped going about a week ago. You had said the pain was so bad you couldn’t sit anymore. Yesterday, you came into the hospital and — ”
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why can’t I move?”
“It’s too much!” The lady says. I hadn’t noticed, but she retreated to the back of the room. “I can’t . . . I can’t.”
“Then get out!” the doctor snaps.
The lady in the scrubs doesn’t have to be told twice. She practically sprints for the door, on the verge of tears.
The doctor puts his hand up to me one more time, urging me to calm down, but he turns his head to the young guy behind the camera. “Are we going to have a problem here?”
The young guy slowly shakes his head but keeps staring at me.
“Why can’t I move? Why can’t I remember anything?”
“Stay calm, Nic. Let’s start with what you do remember.”
“I . . . nothing.” Jesus, I can’t remember anything. “I know my name, and that you’re a doctor but . . . nothing else. What happened? Was I in an accident? Did I hit my head?”
“Fascinating,” Dr. Klein mumbles as he jots down some notes. “No, uh, there was no accident. As I said you came to see me for back pain —”
“. . . I don’t remember that . . .”
“— upon further examination I found a . . . well, a tumour.”
“A tumour? Like cancer? Am I going to die? Is it like, pressing against my spine? Is that why I can’t move?”
“Please try to remain calm. The tumour is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. But I’m afraid it is close to your spinal column, which is causing . . . complications. And obviously a lot of discomfort. Now, you say you can’t move your limbs. Can you feel anything?”
“I think so.”
“Hmmm. Let me try something.” Dr. Klein reaches somewhere past my field of vision and touches me. “Can you feel this?”
“Yes.”
“Good, now am I pinching or tickling you?”
“Pinching.”
“Remarkable.” Dr. Klein stops long enough to jot down some more notes.
“That’s a good sign, though, right? Like I’m going to be, OK?” I’m suddenly tingly, borderline giddy. “If I can still feel, then I’m not paralyzed or anything!”
Dr. Klein clears his throat. “The tumor . . . it’s not exactly what we would call cancerous, but it is certainly irregular.”
“You can operate though, right? Cut it out?”
“I’m afraid it’s more complex than that.” He reaches for a small metal cart and picks up what looks like a mirror, and holds it away so I can only see the back. “Nic, it’s too difficult to explain, and would be easier if I just showed you. But I need to make sure you’re calm before I do. I understand that’s asking a lot, but panicking could be very bad for you in your current state. We’re monitoring some very concerning fluctuations in your blood pressure, and panicking could exacerbate the situation.”
“I understand. I’ll try. Just let me see!”
“Calm, remember, Nic.” Dr. Klein says, but I can hear the hesitation in his voice. He’s dreading showing me . . . whatever it is.
“OK Doctor, just please . . .”
Dr. Klein breathes gently out of his nose before slowly raising the rectangular mirror. All I see is my face staring back at me. Just my face and nothing . . . no wait. Something’s weird. My forehead goes on for miles. They’ve shaved my head! I guess it was necessary to . . . no, it’s more than that. My shoulders are high. Impossibly high. “What happened to my neck?” The mirror’s reflection shows my lips moving, but my voice sounds echo-y.
Dr. Klein clears his throat as he tilts the mirror up. “Your neck . . . is fine.”
With the mirror adjusted, I can make out my neck, somehow above my head, and the skin to either side of my face — it’s my shoulders! “What!? What happened? What did you do to me?”
“We didn’t do anything, Nic. This is how you came to us.”
“This is impossible! What happened?”
“Nic, I’m sorry.”
Sorry? He’s sorry! None of this makes any sense! My mind plunges, and I can feel my heartbeat louder inside my head. Pain explodes behind my eyes with each thundering beat. Then I notice it. My hair, sitting above my face. The shoulders, they’re not as they should be. It’s almost like I’m looking at my own back in the mirror.
Then Dr. Klein moves the mirror, and the little bit of sanity I was holding onto slips away. Above my face, is the back of my head my head, hanging low, slumped down like a passed-out drunk. And I can see the side of my face; a second face, only it’s where it should be me. Right in front of my head.
“You came to us in extreme pain. Complaining there was something wrong with your back. When we took your shirt off, we saw . . . well, a face. An exact copy of your face, growing out from between your shoulder blades.”
Oh, sweet Jesus . . . “No . . . this is impossible.” I try to shake my head to force the reality away, but I can’t move. In the mirror my face twitches from the effort. I suddenly feel trapped in a way I never thought I could be. Like I’m buried alive in a shallow grave.
“I understand how you must feel,” Dr. Klein begins, “and I agree, it sounds impossible, but it’s happening nonetheless. In order to, well, investigate the growth, we anesthetized Nic — ”
“I’m . . . Nic.”
“ — But as soon as we did, you woke up. You were confused and feral; you didn’t seem capable of speech. You were just mumbling incoherently.”
I slam my eyes closed. I can’t look at . . . that mirror reflection any longer. Behind my eyelids, Dr. Klein’s face floats in the darkness. An expression of childlike curiosity, coupled with a barely contained revulsion. “This is a joke . . . a prank. Special effects, make-up or something!”
“I’m afraid it’s very real.”
With my eyes forced shut, I suddenly know where I’ve seen him before. Some foggy nightmare. I woke up to him poking at me with a small knife . . . a scalpel! I woke up, and he was going to cut me! “How?! How in God’s name did this happen?”
I hear the doctor sigh and picture him slumping forward, defeated. “To be honest, we don’t know. Maybe just some inactive genes going haywire, maybe a twin absorbed in the womb, somehow still present. It happens more than you’d think. Or maybe some sort of mutation. Have you been exposed to any radiation recently?”
“No, I . . . I can’t remember anything!”
“That’s very interesting.” I hear his pen click, and he’s back to taking notes. “So, you don’t have access to any of Nic’s memories?”
“I AM NIC!”
Dr. Klein writes even faster now. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
That feeling of being buried alive intensifies. Like an extra ton of earth was dumped over my grave. I hear beeping from somewhere in the room. Some machine frantically crying out.
“Calm Nic, you need to stay calm.” Dr. Klein walks behind me, and a moment later the machine’s klaxon cuts out. “I need to ask a few more questions to clarify a few things. Unfortunately, we are pressed for time.” He pauses long enough to sit back down on his chair without giving me a chance to say anything. “So, you can feel sensation, but you can’t move. And you know who you are, but you have no memories of coming here. Do you have any memories at all? Family? Friends? Job?”
“I . . . I know I have . . . I do have a family; I just can’t remember them!” I can almost see them; picture them in my mind, but it’s like they are standing in a fog. When I try to look closer, they seem further away. This is all driving me crazy. I want to slam my fist against my temples, but I remember I can’t move, which only makes a tense pressure build inside my head. Tears run down my cheeks. “I can’t remember them, doctor. God help me, I can’t remember any of them.”
There’s a strange hollow sensation somewhere inside me. Like I stood up too fast after working hard on a hot day, and another machine blares out a warning. Klein and the camera guy both share a grave expression.
“I’m afraid we can’t risk anymore time.” Dr. Kelin says, but not to me. “We need to get him to the O.R.”
“What?” the young man asks. “You can’t go through with it now!”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Go through with what?”
“We have to.” Dr. Klein says to the young man. “If I don’t operate, he’ll die.”
“But you can’t! I mean . . .” the camera guy looks at me, a strange mix of pity and confusion. “He keeps saying ‘I’. He’s self-aware. That like, means something, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Klein spares me a quick pained smile before turning to the young guy. “Stop it. You’re upsetting him.”
I can’t stand it anymore. “What the hell is going on? What are you talking about?”
Dr. Klein looks back at me. Compassionate yet resolved. “I’m afraid the growth, er, you, are pressing dangerously close to the spinal cord and the carotid artery, reducing blood flow to the brain, risking long-term damage. We need to operate, or we . . . risk losing the patient.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m sorry.” Klein says, shaking his head ever so slightly. “There was so much we could have learned.”
“Jesus, Doc.” The camera guy says, shaking his head.
Dr. Klein picks up a needle from a tray next to him, stepping toward me and pulling a clear tube from somewhere behind my line of sight. Without looking at me, he slips the needle into a valve on the tube. “I’m sorry, Nic. I wish I had more time, but it’s . . . you’re growing too fast.” Slowly, his thumb presses down on the plunger.
“What are you going to do, just cut me out? Put me in a jar somewhere?” The hollowness inside me deepens, threatening to swallow me whole.
Klein ignores me, focusing on carefully watching the amount of fluid he adds.
“You can’t do this to me . . . it’s murder.”
“Jesus.” The camera guy says again, and my vision cuts out.
I can still hear though, but it all sounds so far away.
“This isn’t legal, man! He’s like . . . real!”
“That’s enough! He’ll live. The other . . . part, we’re just removing. Same as if it were any other growth or a tumour.”
It’s silent, and I think this is it. Then there’s a loud bang, and the rattle of metal instruments on a tray. “Dammit. We could have learned so much!” Another pause. “Did you get it all though? On camera?”
***
Travis spends his days helping to maintain the blood supply and surviving the hot and cold days that come with living in Manitoba, Canada. When he’s not hibernating, he’s busy writing. He has had a couple of short stories published on Commuterlit, and another coming soon to a podcast near you! You can check out his latest novel, Trent: The Devil’s Detective, a story about a slacker who crosses paths with the wrong devil and is thrust into a world of demons and cults.
