Pavel Kravchenko - Project Antichrist

Shortly afterwards I found myself at the entrance to my building’s parking garage.

The monitor lit up at the check-in, a pink, triangular face on it. George, or Jeffrey, the front desk kid. He looked worried.

“Mr. Whales?”

“Ah… How are you, buddy?”

“Yes. I just wanted to let you know that two draft marshals have stopped by to see you.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, trying at the same time to cast a confused expression over my face.

“Did you say ‘draft marshals’?”

“Yes, sir. I assured them there must have been a mistake, but they insisted on seeing you.”

“Did they say when they would be back?”

“Uh, well, no. They’re waiting inside your apartment.”

“What?”

“That’s right, Mr. Whales. We weren’t supposed to tell you, but Mr. George felt it was the least we could do.”

“Did they have a warrant?”

“Of course, sir. We would never have let them in without it. ”

“All right. I’ll go up and see them… Jeffrey. Can’t argue with the government.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“And tell Mr. George I appreciate the warning.”

The monitor darkened, and the striped black-and-yellow arm rose up to the ceiling, like a guillotine blade. Letting go of the brakes, I numbly allowed the car to roll inside. It rolled down a level and into a double space marked “7805.” I pushed the button to set the roof in place. I turned off the engine and remained seated. Just like that the draft was back, making everything else seem distant, trivial. The recent promise to stop by Dr. Wright’s office was erased from my memory. Jennifer returned to the shelf of uncorrectable mistakes. The triple-layered ski hat faded like a pleasant dream.

Five minutes later I climbed out, locked the door, patted the hood and headed for the elevator. It dropped me off on the seventy-eighth floor, where I was picked up by the not-long-enough curving hallway and delivered to the dead end of my door. I pressed my thumb into the keyhole. The lock clicked. Cautiously, I stepped inside.

The hallway greeted me with dead silence, and then suddenly the phone started ringing like crazy. I almost had a heart attack. When the palpitations subsided, I was ready to cooperate with the officials, who would react to the door and the phone, but there was still no sound of movement. I let the phone ring until I could stand it no longer.

“Listen, I’m not going to try anything, so you don’t have to ambush me.”

No answer.

“I’m going to answer it! Just letting you know.”

Nothing.

With a shrug I said, “Phone. Pick up.”

Jimbo’s face appeared on the door display. A flicker of hope came and went.

“Luke, what the hell are you doing dressed?” he hissed.

“Tell me good news, pal.”

“You need to give us more time. We have the best in the business working on it.”

“More time? Jim, draft marshals have already come for me.”

“What? Already? How did you get rid of them?”

“I didn’t. In fact, I was sure they were waiting for me here.”

“So you went out?”

“Yes, I went out.”

“Didn’t I tell you—?”

“Not now, Jim.”

“Fine. So where are the marshals?”

“Beats me. I’m half-expecting them to pounce on me the second I step inside the living room.”

“What?”

“Jimbo, I don’t know what. I walk in, expecting to be handcuffed and hauled off to some boot camp. Instead, I find your pretty face on the phone and possibly a couple of deaf, mute and armed draft marshals hiding in my bedroom. You tell me what.”

“Well, let’s assume they don’t hire deaf and mute people to be draft marshals, old sport. That would mean, if you’re completely certain the cops have been there before, that they left. And that would, in turn, mean, the people who are trying to save your ass from Uncle Sam have more time to do their job. Now. Go take a nice shower, take your pill, shave and stay put. Does that sound like something you can make happen?”

“Are you done patronizing me? I’m under a lot of stress here.”

“He’s under stress,” Jimbo inhaled. Then it occurred to me.

“Hey, Jimbo, how do you know about my pills?”

“What?”

“You said just now, ‘Take your pill.’”

“Shit, old sport.” He waved a hand at me. “Everybody knows. Wait for my call, all right? Until then, cooperate with authorities.”

The screen went dark.

Everybody knows? How the hell do they? But it was the case of trying to stuff too many gum-sticks in your mouth at the same time. Pushing the question out of my mind, I locked the door and opened the closet. At that moment I became aware of two things: the smell of coffee and the buzz of the Auto-Vac coming from the kitchen.

So the law enforcers helped themselves to my twenty-dollars-per-pound coffee and made a mess. Slamming the closet door shut, I marched to the kitchen…

…Where I must have blacked out for a second. When light returned to my eyes, I saw that propped against the cabinet under the sink sat, staring right at me in surprise, a bulky, bald and completely dead man in a suit. In the middle of the man’s chest, where the coat had fallen open, there were two black bottomless holes framed in crimson. An empty cup of coffee lay on its side by his shoe. Another cup was on the table, half-full. My poor Auto-Vac buzzed with dumb, determined and fruitless effort to push the body out of the way, so that it could clean and incinerate a small pool of blood that had accumulated between the man’s back and the cabinet’s doors.

First I screamed. A pitiful, abrupt, desperate squeak. I took a step toward the body and immediately several away from it. Looking everywhere at once, I ran. In the living room the TV pulsed on, and I wanted to scream again, but only managed to freeze in the middle, grabbing my head in both hands.

This was Munch’s painting. The real “Scream” had no sound. What the crazy Norwegian had captured on canvas was not the act of screaming, but the need, the desire to scream. When you’ve just seen something you wouldn’t have been prepared to deal with even in a normal state, and you are far from normal, because you may have missed a few days of your depression treatment, and the day hasn‘t exactly been salubrious up to that point. When you’re so terrified that your lungs collapse and the vocal cords tighten around your Adam’s apple and you squeeze your temples in a desperate effort to prevent a capillary from exploding inside your brain. When you want nothing more than to scream, but no sound comes. And all you can do is beg for monsters to go away and although they don‘t, if you’re strong, or thick-skinned, or just lucky, the oxygen will reenter your parched mouth in a moment or two and you will live.

I was lucky.

But as soon as I was able to interact with myself, I realized that the pills I’d been taking were not simple antidepressants.

I must be schizophrenic, I thought feverishly. That’s why the medicine had no name. That’s why it all seems so real. They all knew about it, but never told me the real diagnosis. They humanely drugged and supervised me for five years and since I was making a fortune on TV and had no lapses and the medicine seemed to work so well and I got used to taking the pills as if it were brushing my teeth in the morning their guard slackened and they left me alone one ugly Wednesday and the first thing my wrecked and suddenly freed brain ordered was to toss the bottle out of the window so that it could take the gracious host out for a thrill ride. And none of today happened. I probably did not get out of bed yet. Probably, I am still under the covers, staring up at the ceiling. The doc, Jimbo, Jennifer — they’re all in on it. Shit, old sport. Everybody knows.