Walter Williams - Deep State

“I don’t know what to do,” Ismet said. “I tried holding her, but-”

“Will you stop talking like idiots and help me!” Dagmar demanded. Ismet reached for her.

The corporal shook his head. “No,” he said. “Don’t touch. She’ll read it as a threat.” He unslung the rifle from around his neck and put it out of sight in the kitchen.

“Let me try something,” he said. “One of my mates was in Afghanistan-came back with a similar problem.”

He crouched near Dagmar’s feet. Dagmar drew her legs up, away from him, and threatened him with her claws.

“Miss,” he said. “I’d like you to look at the sheet. Could you do that for me?”

She considered the request and wondered if it was a way to divert her attention so that he could attack. But she decided she could spare the sheet a glimpse and look at it.

The sheet, left behind by the apartment’s actual tenants, was fine white cotton with a wide blue Mediterranean stripe. There was the faint aroma of myrrh, Ismet’s scent.

“See how stripy it is, miss?” the corporal said. “How smooth?”

“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. Light gleamed wickedly on the Indonesian blades that menaced her.

“Blue and white,” the corporal went on, “that’s the Greek national colors, miss. It’s like their flag.”

Dagmar wiped tears from her eyes and considered the sheet and the Greek flag and wondered if she was going to be buried under the Greek flag.

“Maybe you’d like to look at the couch?” the corporal suggested. “It’s a different shade of blue, isn’t it?”

Slowly the corporal called her attention to the actuality that surrounded her: the couch of robin’s egg blue, the lamp with its parchment shade, the ceiling fan with blades that shone with their brass fittings. It was the reality that Dagmar had all along knew was present, lying like an underground river running quietly beneath a surface filled with overwhelming terror and menace. Once her attention was drawn to the quotidian world, the horrors-the Indonesians with their knives and ferocious eyes-began to seem less plausible.

Over time they faded away, though she could still feel their presence, clustered in some other dimension separated from hers only by the thinnest possible membrane.

Dagmar found herself lying naked in the front room, her hand clutching the sheet up to her neck. The soft-voiced corporal squatted at her feet in his camouflage battle dress. Ismet, wearing only his trousers, stood guard by the door, keeping out the others who Dagmar sensed were clustered on the balcony.

The corporal smiled at her. He was dark and square headed, the sleeves of his battle dress peeled back from hairy arms.

“Are you feeling better, miss?” he asked.

Her heart was racing like the engine of a Ferrari.

“I think so,” she said. The words felt strange in her mouth, as if she’d never spoken before.

“If you have this problem again, miss,” he said, “you just concentrate on your surroundings. The furniture, the ceiling, your clothes-whatever you’ve got around you, right?”

“All right,” she said.

He winked a bright brown eye and grinned at her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Poole, miss,” he said. “Roger Poole.”

“Thank you, Roger Poole,” Dagmar said.

“Perhaps you could do with a bit of refreshment,” Poole said. “A cup of tea, perhaps?”

“Yes. Why not?” She found herself willing to follow any suggestion at all.

Poole rose carefully to his feet, watching her carefully to make certain she didn’t see the movement as a threat. He walked to the kitchen. Ismet approached, watching from a carefully calculated distance.

“I think I’d like to wash my face,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. Ismet moved toward her to offer a hand, then stepped back. It was the first time Dagmar had ever seen him when he didn’t know how to behave. It was almost comical.

Dagmar wrapped the sheet more securely around herself and rose to her feet. A narcotic eddy seemed to swirl into her head, and for a moment she tottered on her feet. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself and then walked to the bathroom.

While she was washing she heard Poole make a report on his radio and Ismet open the door to tell everyone there that whatever happened was over, they could leave. Dagmar ignored this, toweled her face, and looked at herself in the mirror-she saw an older woman there, pale and prematurely aged, hair in disarray, skin sallow in the overhead light. She stared at herself for a moment, stared into her own bleak future, and then picked up her comb. She arranged her hair and then went to the bedroom to put on some clothes.

When she returned, she saw Poole and Ismet both looking at her with cautious anticipation.

“It’s over,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

Till next time, she thought. Which was probably what they were thinking as well.

Poole had the kettle on and had found teas on the kitchen counter. Dagmar picked a Darjeeling over something herbal-she didn’t want to be eased back into a sleep where the hallucination could strike again; she much preferred staying awake till dawn.

The three of them sat in the dinette and drank tea and chatted for an hour-chatted about nothing, because Poole proved an expert at harmless blather. He talked about football, pop stars, movies, anything airy and unlikely to send Dagmar back into whatever psychic mine field she’d stumbled into.

After it became obvious that Dagmar was unlikely to relapse into a raving, weeping maniac, Poole washed his cup in the sink, picked up his rifle, said his polite good-byes. He made sure they knew that he’d be on guard till six, then let himself out.

Dagmar looked in wonder at the closed door. “The kindness of strangers…” she murmured.

Ismet placed his cup carefully in his saucer.

“Has this happened before?” he asked.

“It wasn’t this bad, usually.”

“This bad? Like with police breaking down the door?”

Dagmar shook her head.

“No police,” she said.

“How long has it been going on?”

She looked down at her teacup.

“Three years. Since my friends were killed.”

He studied her through his spectacles for a long moment.

“Are you… in treatment?” he asked.

She ran her fingers through her gray hair. “I figured it would get better on its own. And it was, mostly, until I came here. And now, with people getting killed, it’s all coming back.”

“Do you think you should see a doctor?”

Dagmar shook her head.

“I have this job. I run a company.” She laughed. “I’m running a fucking revolution, for Christ’s sake! I can’t afford any downtime. And I’m often running my company on borrowed money-and there’s no way a bank is going to loan money to a crazy person. And-” She shook her head. “We can’t afford insurance to cover mental disorders, so I’d basically be on my own.”

He considered this, head tilted.

“I think you should see a doctor, anyway.”

She waved a hand. “After this is all over.”

Apparently Ismet decided not to press the point.

“I’m going to go on the balcony and smoke a cigarette, okay?” he said.

“By all means.”

He rose from his chair.

“I only smoke when I’m under stress,” he said.

She had already observed this. She offered a faint smile.

“No time like the present,” she said.

He collected his shirt and cigarette pack from the bedroom, then stepped out onto the balcony.

Poor man, she thought. He signed up a gaming genius and got a crazy person instead.

Dagmar sighed, rose, washed the tea things. When he returned, she waited on the living room couch. She looked at him, patted the cushion beside her.