Dan Simmons: The Hollow Man

The door to the apartment had been left open, and the social worker heard noises. The social worker said later that she would not have entered, except that it sounded like some small animal was in distress. In a very real sense, that was the fact of it.

Robby had been sealed into the bathroom by the nailing of a piece of plywood over the bottom half of the door. His small arms and legs were so atrophied that he could not walk and could barely crawl. He was seven years old. There were wet papers on the tile floor, but Robby was naked and smeared with his own excrement. It was obvious that the boy had been sealed in there for several days, perhaps longer. A tap had been left on, and water filled the room to the depth of three inches. Robby was rolling fitfully in the mess, making mewling noises and trying to keep his face above water.

Robby was hospitalized for four months, spent five weeks in a county home, and was then returned to the custody of his mother. In accordance with further court orders, he was dutifully bused to the Day School for the Blind for five hours of treatment a day, six days a week.

When Jeremy boards the airplane on this April morning, he is thirty-five years old and his future is as predictable as the elegant and ellipsoid mathematics of a yo-yo’s path. On this same morning, eight hundred-some miles away, as thirteen-year-old Robby Bustamante is lifted aboard his van for the short voyage to the Day School for the Blind, his future is as flat and featureless as a line extending nowhere, holding no hope of intersection with anyone or anything.

The captain had dimmed the seat-belt sign and announced that it was safe to move about in the cabin—urging everyone to keep their belts on while seated anyway, just as a precaution—when the true nightmare began for Bremen.

For an instant he was sure that the plane had exploded, that some terrorist bomb had been triggered, so brilliant was the flash of white light, so loud was the sudden screaming of a hundred and eighty-seven voices in his mind. His sudden sense of falling added to the conviction that the plane had shattered into ten thousand pieces and that he was one of them, tumbling out into the stratosphere with the rest of the screaming passengers. Bremen closed his eyes and prepared to die.

He was not falling. Part of his consciousness was aware of the seat under him, of the floor under his feet, of the sunlight coming through the window to his left. But the screaming continued. And grew louder. Bremen realized that he was on the verge of joining that chorus of screams, so he stuffed his knuckles in his mouth and bit down hard.

A hundred and eighty-seven minds suddenly reminded of their own mortality by the simple routine of an aircraft taking off. Some in terror recognized, some in full denial behind their newspapers and drinks, some buoyed by the routine of it all even as a deeper center of their brains drowned in the fear of being locked in this long, pressurized coffin and suspended miles above the ground .

Bremen writhed and twitched in the isolation of his empty row while a hundred and eighty-seven careening minds trampled him with iron-shod hooves.

Jesus, I should’ve called Sarah before the flight left.…

Son of a bitch knew what the contract said. Or should have. It isn’t my fault if …

Daddy … Daddy … I’m sorry … Daddy …

If Barry didn’t want me to sleep with him, Barry should’ve called …

She was in the tub. The water was red. Her wrists were as white and open as a sliced tuber.…

Fuck Frederickson! Fuck Frederickson! Fuck Frederickson and Myers and Honeywell, too! Fuck Frederickson!…

What if the plane goes down, oh shit and Jesus and goddamn, what if it goes down and they find the stuff in the briefcase, oh shit and Jesus, ashes and burned steel and bits of me and what if they find the money and the Uzi and the teeth in the velvet bag and the bags like so many sausages up my ass and down my gut, oh please, Jesus … what if the plane goes down and … And these were the easy ones, the fragments of language that cut Bremen like so many shards of dull steel. It was the images that lacerated and sliced. The images were the scalpels. Bremen opened his eyes and saw the cabin as normal as it could be, sunlight streaming through the window to his left, two middle-aged flight attendants beginning to hand out breakfasts twelve rows ahead, people lounging and reading and dozing … but the panicked images kept coming, the vertigo of it all was too great, so Bremen undid his seat belt, folded back the armrest, and curled up on the empty seat to his left, still being pummeled by the sounds and textures and discordant colors of a thousand uninvited thoughts.

Teeth dragging on slate. The burned ozone and enamel smell of a dentist’s drill left too long on a rotten tooth. Sheila! Christ, Sheila … I didn’t mean to … Teeth dragging slowly across slate .

A fist crushing a tomato, pulp oozing between spattered fingers. Only it is not a tomato but a heart .

Friction and lubricity, the slow, rhythmical thrust and pull of sex in the dark. Derek … Derek, I warned you.… Lavatory graffiti images of penis and vulva, Technicolor hues, moist and three-dimensional. Slow close-up of a vagina opening ahead like a cavern between moist portals. Derek … I warned you that she would consume you!

Screams of violence. The violence of horses. Violence without boundaries or pause. A face being struck, like a clay figure being pounded flat again, only the face is not clay … the bone and cartilage crack and broaden, the flesh pulps and ruptures … the fist does not relent .

“Are you all right, sir?”

Bremen managed to sit up, to clench his right hand on the armrest, and to smile at the flight attendant. “Yes, fine,” he said.

The middle-aged woman seemed all wrinkles and tired flesh behind the tan and makeup. She held a breakfast tray. “I can check to see if there is a doctor aboard if you’re not feeling well, sir.”

Damn. Just what we need this morning … some feeb with epilepsy or worse. We’ll never get the geese fed if I have to hold this guy’s hand while he twitches and sweats all the way to Miami . “I’d be happy to have the captain check for a doctor if you’re ill, sir.”

“No, no.” Bremen smiled and took the offered breakfast, pulled down the tray from the seat ahead. “I’m fine, honestly.”

Goddamn, son of a bitch, fucking plane goes down, they find the sausages up my ass, motherfucker Gallego gonna cut Doris’s tits off an’ feed ’em to Sanctus for fucking breakfast .

Bremen sliced a bit of omelet, raised the fork, swallowed. The flight attendant nodded and moved on.

Bremen made sure that no one was watching, then spat the soft mass of omelet into a paper napkin and set it next to the tray of food. His hands shook as he set his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

Daddy … oh, Daddy … I’m so sorry, Daddy.…

Pounding the face into a flattened mass, pounding the mass until the marks of knuckles in ridged flesh were the only features, pounding the flattened mass back into the crude shape of a face to pound it again.…

Twenty-eight thousand from Pierce, seventeen thousand from Lords, forty-two thousand from Unimart-Selex … the white wrist like a sliced tuber in the bathtub … fifteen thousand seven hundred from Marx, nine thousand from Pierce’s backer …

Bremen lowered the left armrest and gripped it tightly, both arms straining with the effort. It was like hanging from a vertical wall … as if his row of seats were bolted onto the face of a cliff and only the strength of his forearms was holding him in place. He could hang on for a minute more … perhaps two minutes more … hold on for three minutes more before the tidal wave of images and obscenities and the tsunami of hates and fears washed him off. Perhaps five minutes. Sealed here in this long tube, miles above nothing, with no way to escape, nowhere to go.