The Little Demons Inside Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  THE LITTLE DEMONS INSIDE

  Micah Thomas

  Copyright © 2017 Micah Thomas

  Cover Illustration Copyright © 2018 Micah Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  To everyone battling their little demons inside

  PROLOGUE

  "A MOTHER TONGUE is not a foreign lan lan lang language l/anguish anguish - a foreign anguish." M. NourbeSe Philip

  Forgive me.

  Symbolic thought is not my mother tongue. No matter how much exposure to your language I've gathered, its nuances escape me. Your collective images, stories, idioms, and poetry are a slightly better fit.

  The pratfall, the spit take, the meet cute, the Wilhelm scream, the laugh track. These make sense to me.

  We are like these things. A concept without thinking words.

  Motion.

  Change.

  Stasis.

  Duty.

  Failure.

  Mother.

  Father.

  The latter, not in a biological sense, but the postures mean something familiar to me. I want you to understand me, but the language is missing to describe what I am. The language lacks the proper analogies. I want you to understand what was at risk, what you had to lose, and why we wanted it so badly. First, I suppose, you should know that we even exist, and to the extent I can even explain, the stuff of which we are made.

  We are not the architects of humanity, but I see now that we are within certain archetypes, although independently evolved from very different origins.

  We are unchanging. Unyielding. Ourselves without confusion. Sprung forth from some ancient mind, we are aware, to different degrees, of our own eternal and pointless existence. We inhabit a place different from your physical world. No real analogs exist. A different dimension? Perhaps, but not an easy comparison to the dimensions of your five senses. Our home is near and far. Our lands are not lands at all. Our orbits, some other configuration, distinct from your knowable universe. Even our selves are not directly perceivable as objects, without someone else providing a frame of reference. Yet, we exist. I know that because here I am. How can I explain that? I cannot.

  But you, you harbingers of change, with imaginations wild and unhinged from all limitations, are real, too. Physical sensations, highs and lows, brief lives of agonies and ecstasies. And above all, a newness, untutored, born naked and unknowing.

  What price would we pay for that virginity? You are an opportunity to us, a lemon to squeeze and drain. We would devour you. Indulging in your fantasies, making the absurd a reality, and ultimately locking you, every man, woman, and child, into our own doomed exhaustion.

  I'm not entirely unsympathetic to that hungry, carnivorous approach to you. Why should we be given lust and no sensory organs to experience it? Why notionally embody the death drive, when we can't partake or even properly witness it? Music is built into our very being, yet we have no ears to hear it.

  Even in the beginning, we were never young. A pantheon of disordered energy, cycling through endless arrangements, finding no satisfaction, locked in our world set apart from any other. The thoughtless elementals, themselves constrained minor concepts: a force of burning excited leaps of energetic transition; another, the very tendency towards entropic stasis driven to pause the motions; binder elementals seeking coherence through alignment; and those who only know chaotic disentanglement. Higher up the proverbial food chain, we competed mastery against fluid movement, English gardens versus tangled jungles; fear and pain against compulsion of desire without satisfaction. Our menagerie is vast and includes even more conceptual aliens, not suitable for polite discussion.

  Though many perceptual aspects of your world are entirely non-factors in our place of intangibility, we did know of Time. Not in a measured sense, but that time elapses. Are we eternal? Immortals? Perhaps, at least to each other, but we are certainly not inexhaustible. The cycles, our own personal anacyclosis, joining, dividing, thrashing against ourselves, eventually slowed, and one by one, a quiet fell upon us. No victory in our battles. Just a sleep. A deep and lasting slumber.

  Then, a visitor came.

  An entirely different energy. One that the few of us, sleeping with one eye open, so to speak, even detected. The minor elementals never really slept in the first place, content to buzz like bees in their own circles of endless churn. They may have noticed, but I saw it for what it was. As you say, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I was the witness to the arrival of a luminous egg. A self-contained matrix of experience and personality that called to me. It called, and I answered. We fit like hand in glove. The first time of making contact surprised me. Like us, but not like us. A common language of emotions found, but so very strange.

  I immediately recognized the immaturity in the being. It could not communicate without symbols. Yet, behind those symbols were things I knew, the sentiments and emotional impulses behind the language. Practically instinctually, I found I could run my essence through the matrix, and the merger of our energies produced a cohabitation in its world, where both were changed, influenced by each other. I could feel its flesh, tactility, and beauty. But this was no empty vessel. I ran through it like light through a filtered glass. And I changed it, too, pushing out its meager mentations, as I expanded within. Even I, given to wisdom, did not know the impact this joining would have on the underlying biology, but I knew I was taking something vital from it.

  Your body is a wonderland.

  I'm in love with your body.

  Shitting. Eating. Drinking. Breathing.

  I took up residence, nested and filtered through this thing I'd found, and because of it, I fell in love with its world. I've been corrupted, irreparably, just as you have been, or will be, by my kind. My own thoughts are tainted by your perception, and my ability to form words is, completely, as you say, fucked. It is irresistible, you see, to tell the story through your own eyes, your biases and judgments. The more I saw, the more I felt something inside changing. But there was more.

  Almost immediately, I knew, with absolute certainty, that the others should never find this place filled with such innocent and beautiful creatures. That no more such eggs should ever find the others out. I was protectively covetous, and even in my greed, I knew I would be a benefit to you, these innocent creatures. Where the others would consume, and take, and run their cycles through this world until it resembled our own futile place in history, I would give you gifts to keep you safe for as long as I could. I could have left any time. Closed the loop and perhaps, that would have been best, but none of us are infallible. Forgive me. Please, forgive me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MEANWHILE, BACK IN the wastepaper basket that was Los Angeles, California, in the land of late night television, a studio audience giggled and chattered, excited visitors there on vacation to watch a live taping. It's easy to get into the audience of any given live show. Families on vacation looking for a cheap thrill filled out an application and strapped in for the ride that was live entertainment. Empty seats looked bad
when the camera pans, but the Jimmy Show hadn't had problems with attendance. His ratings were doing just fine, even if it was only fluff. Let the other hosts and talking heads interview politicians and handle serious stuff. Jimmy's motto was that life was too short to be serious, and that was the only thing he took seriously.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back! We're going to do something a little different today on the old Jimmy program. I have a real treat in store for you. A real treat! I met someone today."

  The warm reception of cascading oohs and ahs of the live studio audience were music to Jimmy's ears. Nothing quite like a warm room, he thought.

  "Not like that, you filthy minds! Stay out of my love life, unless you know someone that can cook pasta Puttanesca like dear, old mom! No, I met someone with a very special gift and asked them to come on the show."

  Jimmy was the rising master of late night television. The format had been in existence for years without innovation. Monologue, interviews, and musical acts. Jimmy's contributions were to introduce an infectious novelty, a humble self-deprecation with a penchant for gross-out gags.

  The young starlet sitting to the right of his big desk looked nervous. The commercial break had cut off her canned promotional talk for her new movie. She smiled anxiously, wanting to get back to the script. Jimmy was prone to springing oddball challenges, sometimes involving green goop dropping from the ceiling. Her manager had insisted that her rider agreement forbid anything that might ruin her very expensive loaner dress from a prominent designer. This special guest had not been discussed.

  "Give a warm welcome to my new friend, just met him today, and feel like I can tell him anything, Mr. Wiseman! Come on in here!"

  The audience clapped and an unassuming, black man of indeterminable age walked slowly out from behind the curtain, taking the seat offered up by the ingénue. He took the hand of the starlet, kissed it, and whispered something close into her ear.

  "Ok, ok, ok. Should I let the people know what you are here to do? How me met perhaps?"

  Wiseman looked directly into the camera and spoke in a voice of smooth bourbon over paired with a fine cigar.

  "Thank you for having me, Jimmy," he said.

  Like Moses hearing the voice of God on the mountain, the audience was hushed in an immediate change. Even the ever-jovial Jimmy sat silent, face expectant as a trained dog awaiting instruction.

  Wiseman rubbed his hand over his balding head, long fingers moving with a languid grace over his short grey hair.

  "Let us begin," Wiseman said solemnly.

  He turned in his seat to look the young actress directly in the eyes. The television audience and camera held on the exchange, unsure of what might happen next.

  "You know, I really enjoyed your movie. The one about the plucky three-legged dog and the great adventure to be reunited with your family."

  "Thank you," she said, blushing slightly.

  "Acting really is an art form, and movies, what a blessed invention to keep the mind calm."

  "I think so, too. I really do," she replied.

  "But, alas, it's all lies. I'm here today for a little truth. We all need to prepare for a little bit of truth. Perhaps even the truth can be a distraction, I hope."

  "Um, sure."

  "Now, there's the truth you know you know, and there's truth you don't know that you know. Let's explore the latter for a moment."

  Jimmy, breaking from his silence, jovially interjected, "I don't even know what's happening but sure! What do you need?"

  "Hush now, Jimmy."

  The host slumped in his chair, like an admonished child. The motion was strangely unsettling and the audience picked up on it with a collective gasp.

  "What's a problem you wish you could solve in the world today?" Wiseman asked the actress.

  Her brow furrowed in concentration.

  "Think about that plucky three-legged dog. If you really were that little girl in the movie, that delightful film, what might you do to make it better if you could?"

  "I'd give him his leg back. That's what!" she said looking like she had just solved world hunger.

  "Ok. Let's make something that could do just that. Hold out your hand."

  The actress, her face doll-like, docile and obliging, with a trace of a smile, did exactly as she was told. Wiseman took her small hands and placed his long fingers on top of hers.

  "Do you see the plans on how it might work?" he asked.

  Her expression was distant, almost trance-like, "I do. It's simple cellular regeneration. There's plenty of matter to work with, just shift it around and organic structures can be rebuilt using existing DNA blueprints."

  "Let's make the device. It will be fun," Wiseman said.

  There was a ripping sound, coming from nowhere and everywhere, like a heavy fabric tearing apart, and there in their hands, as if spliced into the frame of existence, was a small black wand.

  "Hold it up so they can see."

  The wand was like something out of Harry Potter, but with a button on one side and a red bulb on the end. A child's toy.

  The audience cheered at the trick and Wiseman turned to Jimmy and said, "You may speak now."

  "Isn't that just something folks? Isn't it?"

  "You are right, Jimmy, it's really something that didn't exist one moment ago, but here it is. Let's see if it works."

  "What does it do?" Jimmy asked.

  The actress eagerly chimed in, "It regrows limbs!"

  Wiseman smiled broadly and asked, "Is there anyone in the audience that wants to try it out?"

  A man in the audience stood and the camera awkwardly turned to him as the crowd handler brought him down to the stage. He was missing his left arm. Audience chatter in the studio broke the norm for the show and a sense that something special was happening filled the airwaves.

  Wiseman asked the man, now standing a bit uncomfortably on the stage, "Can we ask, how did you lose your arm?"

  "Iraq. I lost my arm in the war."

  Wiseman gave up his seat to the veteran who sat down next to the smiling actress, who was wielding the wand like a fucking fairy princess.

  "I think it's time you had it back," Wiseman said.

  The audience roared with approval.

  "My dear, go ahead."

  With a flourish taken from the Glenda the Good Witch playbook, she brandished the wand at the offered stump and pressed the button. The light on the end lit up with a pleasant red glow.

  To everyone's absolute wonderment, not the least of which felt by the veteran himself, his left arm slowly materialized, at first a fuzzy pixelated haze before solidifying into an arm, twin to his other, like new.

  He yelled a hoot of excitement, waived his new limb, pumped his fist in the air, and hugged the actress who was beaming with an expansive smile. The whole room erupted in cheers and excited yells. Wiseman took a low bow and walked off the stage without another word.

  "People, we have just witnessed a verifiable miracle!" Jimmy was weeping, the soldier was weeping, the whole damned audience was a mess.

  The producers, too stunned to remember to cut to commercial, let the scene play out. Somewhere in the studio offices, the phones began to ring.

  ***

  In the summer of 2017, the country was basking in the wellness of middle class poverty. Living the dream, one nightmare at a time. Alright, there were problems, but it was a slow news day and the troubles of the world were still far away. Choked with boredom, the people became uniformly, like Erdrich wrote in a poem, a mad dog biting its own tail for sympathy. What a grand malaise to be fed, fattened, to have gas money, to work in air conditioned cubicles, soft hand work. What nightmare is this? The fat times didn't feel real, the largess not even tangible.

  The nation, together and not without gnashing of teeth, had elected a ridiculous man into the highest office. They almost always did. The noise of social unrest was real if you were plugged into the internet, more real if you were shot by deranged internet-dependent maniacs, abs
olutely real if you were shot by the police, which was, as it had been for many generations, a higher probability if your skin was brown instead of white. But all that noise, it was background to a certain subculture, fragmented and not connected by anything except a common situation; the world of the homeless. In fact, for the poor in general, world events swept over the nation in cycles of wawawa bababa nonsense, lip service from leaders, social elite preaching Horatio Algers myths, neo-cons drunk on Ayn Rand fantasies. The wars against foreign powers thinned the numbers of the poor and distracted the masses. The wars against drugs and citizens of various stripes kept the spirit of revolution down and placated the masses. For the lowest and worst off of these, the distinction between 1917 and 2017 was a matter of new names on same old shit.

  Phoenix, Arizona, bearing an auspicious name barely chosen in favor over Pumpkinville, was sweltering in its usual fashion. Sunny days, blistering 110-degree breezes hit you in the goddamn face like hot air escaping an oven. The already-always-testy populace retreated to air conditioned rooms, darting out with pissed off expressions on their faces to refill their diapers, detergent, booze or, in many cases, their meth. This place had voted heavily in favor of the new President, the fascist in chief, the grand Cheeto-colored buffoon, and yet, nothing had changed for them. That fact might have pissed them off even more.

  In one of a dozen suburbs falling under a generalized umbrella of still-Phoenix, Henry loitered outside a Circle K, one of a thousand in the city. He gazed out at the busy intersection and the strip of businesses around it, absolutely ordinary in their sense of hideously-replicated patterns comprised of grocery store, pharmacy, grizzled pan handler, and gas station. A stranger to the city, to the state, to the desert and its politics, he was someone that had never voted in his entire life. Like others that shared his class of slip-through-the-cracks homeless, he was only vaguely aware that there was a new president. The times had always been tough. New administrations didn't really change that. He'd only just arrived, and yet, he knew that he was not in a good place to be him.