The Deepest Kind of Love

Fiery, searing pain assaults my consciousness much like… well, much like the filthy rubber boot that literally assaulted my skull. I wait for the ringing to stop. It always takes a minute. And you know what? I’ve learned to enjoy the wait. To return to my senses is to return to the unique, personal hell created for me by a skeleton team of torturers commissioned by my own government.

As the ringing subsides, a thought frolics through my mind. I hope that deep down, they like me. Isn’t that strange? Even after falling to my lowest point, then being crushed even deeper, I still hold a fleeting desire for my masked captors to find me personable. If opening my mouth didn’t remind me of gums now devoid of their previous enamel-laden tenants, I think I’d laugh.

Sometimes, as I search for slumber amongst the sensation of every nerve ending in my body screaming ‘don’t move, you idiot,’ I try to imagine what punishment is next for me. I know it will be something, as I simply don’t have the answer to their question.

“Where’s the locket?” they’ll ask me.

“I don’t know,” I’ll say.

A second or two will pass, two men in black masks and camouflage vests will nod to one another, and they’ll administer whatever treatment they think will help me remember. Unfortunately, they’ve only received clearance to prescribe pain and its close relatives, so that’s probably what I’ll get.

I'm reminded of what that trumpeter said, you know, in that song? “And I think to myself... what a wonderful world…”

*****

A knock on my grimy old apartment’s formerly white door. I examined the door curiously from my kitchen, racking my brain in an attempt to recall if I’d ordered a package I’d forgotten about.

I unlatched the deadbolt, turned the creaky brass handle, and opened my door about a foot. Staring at me impatiently was a woman in a full grey pantsuit. It looked expensive to me, but then, I’d never been the sort to dress formally. Distinct eyebags hung under her piercing blue eyes.

“Could I come in?” she asked, managing to manufacture a hint of warmth.

Now, I’ve never been the… cautious type, so I didn’t think twice of it. Perhaps if I’d just been a bit less hungover, a bit more intelligent, I would have listened to the internal alarm blaring somewhere deep inside me. But that’s just not me. Rather, I’m the sort of person who skeptics might use as a prime example to disprove the theory of natural selection. So, I let her in.

I pushed empty pizza boxes off my couch and took a seat, offering her the relatively clean leather chair positioned across from me.

“Listen, I don’t have much time,” she said, “so I’ll get right to the point. My name is Rebecca Smith, and I work for the CIA.”

She placed her badge on the coffee table between us.

“We have reason to believe you may have information essential to the survival of our nation.”

Bullllllshit, I thought. I didn’t even know how to hold down a steady job for more than a week at a time.

It’s funny how now, from the depths of what I can only assume is despair, I can acknowledge this so easily.

“Could you be a little more specific?” I asked.

“You’re Derek Wallace, right? Son of Barbara Wallace?”

“Sure am.”

“Derek, your mother’s gone.”

A moment of silence eventually became two. My mind locked up. I’d lost all bearing on where I was stationed. Reality? Or somewhere else?

“I’ve received clearance to discuss anything I deem necessary, so I’m going to lay things out as simply as I can. Your mother was working on a doomsday device for many, many years. A sort of… virus to be weaponized should the United States ever need it. She-”

“All right, I’m sorry ma’am. I just… I just can’t. If I’m being honest, you’re overwhelming me, and I have no idea what to make of any of this. You’re telling me my mother was working on some sort of virus, yet I haven’t spoken to her in six months. My mom and I… we’re not that close. She certainly never told me about-”

“She wouldn’t have. It’s classified, after all. I’m only telling you because like I said, Derek, time is of the essence. The problem is it’s… missing, along with your mother.”

“Excuse me?”

“Officials checked up on her private laboratory, and both the virus and your mother were gone. The lab was empty, Derek. We have reason to believe that whoever stole the virus may be holding your mother as-”

“Ms… Smith, was it? I just told you, I know absolutely nothing about this. What kind of information are you looking for here?”

The woman leaned back in her chair. She then interlaced her fingers and rested her hands on her lap.

“Tell me what you know about a locket shaped like a heart.”

*****

I like to think of what happened next as a series of rooms. Bright rooms, sterile rooms, expensive rooms, secret rooms. I was shepherded from one room to another, where inevitably, someone would ask me about the damn locket.

You know, initially it was a collaboration. Between myself and the government, that is. I suggested hypnotherapy, so we tried it. Uncovered all sorts of muck. Turns out, when you dig for repressed memories, you might just find some. Yet, none of them revealed information about the locket.

Talk therapy followed, I told the psychologists all about my childhood. I knew my mother as a surgeon, a damn good one. My body was living proof of her mettle. When I was in high school, I took a helmet directly to the sternum during the state championship football game, cracking seven ribs in the process. We were in the opposing team’s stadium, a ramshackle place in the middle of nowhere. I was taken off the field in an ambulance and transported to the local treatment center. I’ll never forget my mother interrogating the town’s poor doctors for their qualifications, ultimately demanding to perform the surgery herself. It’s maybe the best memory I have of her, I even remember how much the urgency in her voice surprised me. The memory proved that at some point in time, she truly cared about me. I began to tear up as I talked about it.

Unfortunately, this story wasn’t what they were looking for. They wanted a locket, and they were set on getting it. Specifically, getting it from me.

About a month in, I asked why they were so sure I knew about the damned thing. Each and every doctor and official had adamantly refused to tell me. Eventually, a psychiatrist I’d befriended clandestinely slipped me an envelope during one of our sessions. When I got home I opened the envelope, removing the photographs inside. The pictures were of a handwritten note. It didn’t take me long to recognize that it had been written by my mother, and a message on the back of the third photo told me that the note had been recovered at my mother’s home in the Hamptons. It detailed the protocol to follow should the virus ever leak, and contained quite a few contingency plans. The last paragraph read as follows:

“Finally, I’d like to cover an instance in which both the virus and the antidotes have been stolen, and my research notes have been destroyed. In this case, it would take years, perhaps decades of study to replicate anything which could feasibly combat the virus. As such, I’ve prepared a contingency plan. A final antidote has been prepared and hidden in the safest place I could find. The key is my only son, Derek. The antidote is within a special locket, specifically inside the heart. Once you recover Derek, the rest should be simple. I never wanted to drag him into any of this, so…” this was followed by a few scratched out lines, “be gentle with him.”

*****

In the coming months, I began to understand why everyone had been instructed not to reveal this to me. Never in my life had I felt a heavier burden. There it was, undeniable proof that I knew exactly where the locket was hidden, or at least I should know, and yet, an essential memory was missing.

This served as one half of the anchor which slowly, excruciatingly dragged me further and further into hell. The other half, of course, was the spread of the virus.

*****

Turns out, my mom knew exactly what she was doing with that thing. A 99 percent fatality rate, and it spread from person to person through the air, through touch, through… well, think about an infected person too long, and chances are you’d get it.

It was somehow released, and eventually blamed on Brazil, or something. Deemed an act of terrorism. As the country, and subsequently the world slowly devolved into a land of warring tribes, split at just about every religious, ethnic, and racial line imaginable, the pain inflicted upon me grew far more severe. The days of talk therapy and friendly scientists became smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror. After all, now there were lives at stake.

It wasn’t just the physical pain. It was the constant, unassailable notion that all of it was my fault. I felt I’d become the largest mass murderer in the history of the world.

*****

You know, there’s a lot to learn about hating yourself. Maybe if things ever go back to normal, I’ll teach a class or something. It feels like all the causal forces in the world are working together to play a cosmic joke at your expense. You’ll laugh about it, if you’re smart. It won’t make things any easier.

*****

That damned rubber boot slams into my head once more, as though the boot’s owner had decided that the first concussion would feel lonely by itself. I’m picked up, punched in the gut. They keep asking me the question, over and over. They tell me it’s only going to get more difficult for me. I ask how that’s possible. They kick me again.

*****

It’s the middle of the night, and the cold, steel floor of my cell is beginning to feel like home. I try counting sheep, and I feel a drowsiness blanket over the pain. Over the self-loathing. Over the fear. Then, I feel a needle pierce my neck. Not the first needle since I've been here, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Suddenly, cause and effect lose their link. I try to move my hand, and shake my foot instead. I try to make sense of things, and begin to imagine a rabbit. Voices begin to whisper into my ear. All sorts of them. That agent, Ms. Smith, asks me why I’m so incompetent. My psychiatrist friend tells me I’m a murderer. My mother… my mother mutters an apology. Then, silence. There’s nothing. Not cause, effect, sensation, it’s not just ‘a’ void, it’s the void. From the blankness emerges the sound of my heartbeat. I’m left no choice but to concentrate. The heartbeat…

The truth reveals itself to me. Of course, it came when I wasn’t searching for it. The antidote… is within me. Just like my mother said. I’m taken back to that rinky-dink hospital bed, shattered ribs and all. My mother’s concern is real.

It’s just not for me.

The drug remains in full effect, but I fight to regain my senses. My nails have grown sharp, very sharp. Just sharp enough to tear into my skin, just below my chest. The pain is inconsequential. I cut deeper, deeper, and tear the flesh. I reach inside my ribcage, coming closer, closer still to the heart. I delve inward with a single, disgusting finger.

I feel the metallic clink against my nail.