Trick Room

It was an illusion, it had to be. Diane was safe. He knew she was safe. She had done what he had asked her to and taken Marie to a hotel outside of Senka so the two of them would be safe until Ardezinni and his gang of misfit minions blew through town. So why was she here? Why was she standing in front of him now?

Carol blinked several times, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Diane was safe. Marie was safe. He had talked to the two of them just the other day. His little girl was upset that she couldn’t start her ballet lessons this week. That’s what she had said on the phone. But she said that she was glad she got to stay with her mother and she hoped daddy would come to see them soon.

Carol swallowed hard and stared at Diane. No, this couldn’t be real. Ardezinni wouldn’t waste his time going after his family. It just didn’t make sense. What made even less sense was the fact that Diane was standing -on her own, no less- in the middle of a factory warehouse on the Styx River. If she had been taken captive, her face would be bruised and marred by dirt. Her perfect strawberry blonde hair would be a mess. She would be bound and gagged and crying and scared.

This was an illusion, it had to be.

Yet the gun in Carol’s hands still wavered.

This, whatever it was, had to be the work of Ardezinni’s right hand man, a sadistic sociopath known only by the name ‘Grim’. Grim had a reputation as an illusionist who greatly enjoyed using his skills to torture and eventually break his victims. Carol knew this from experience. Seven years had passed since his last encounter with the sociopath, and he still hadn’t recovered.

“You’re not going to shoot me. Carol? Put the gun down. It’s me.”

Carol looked up at Diane. She wasn’t real. She couldn’t be real. “Prove it,” he hissed.

Diane looked shocked. Her hazel eyes widened in disbelief and her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ for a split second. “Car- I-”

“Tell me something that only you would know if you were real,” Carol demanded. He had to make sure. If he fired his gun, and Diane turned out to be real, he would be killing his wife.

“I-”

A bead of sweat trickled down from Carol’s spiked mess of black hair, running down to his jaw before flinging itself onto the collar of his shirt. His hands shook and he bit his lip and tried to steady them. His breathing was ragged and came in short gasps. If it was Grim, he was already dead. If it wasn’t, Diane was in even greater trouble than she had been before leaving Senka. “Just- anything will work, but it has to be unique. Something only you and I would know.”

Diane looked terrified, but Carol could tell she was thinking. Hard. She closed her eyes and tapped her fingers against the sides of her thighs like she always did when she was nervous or trying to think. Seeing that, Carol almost believed she was real, but he had to be sure. Finally, Diane opened her eyes and looked up at Carol. “I have something,” she said softly, “something we both know.”

“And?”

A horrible, black-lipped smile split her face suddenly, revealing teeth sharpened to points. “You were right.” Diane’s form burst apart in a spray of black matter, hissing and contorting before fizzling out of existence.

Carol sucked in a deep breath and dropped his arms to his sides, his gun in his right hand. He had been right. Damn. If only he had been given a clearer indication, he would have shot Grim’s little puppet straight through the face. Now he was free of the fake Diane’s presence, but still trapped in the illusion.

Remember what Nicodemus said; ‘illusions are built off of what the illusionist knows about you’, Carol reminded himself. Grim knew a lot about him, unfortunately. That being said, Carol knew he wasn’t a very difficult person to figure out. Nor did he have any skill in placing barriers in his mind to repel the energy leeching information from him that no doubt filled the warehouse. The little shadows were invisible to the untrained eye fed on the thoughts and memories of anyone that stepped in them. Carol knew the warehouse had to be swarming with them. Great.

Still breathing hard, his heart fluttering in his chest like a dying bird, Carol turned and headed for the exit. If he was lucky, he could get far enough away to break the illusion. The man never made it to the garage door that acted as the way in and out of the warehouse. The illusion broke and reformed.

Carol gasped, and blinked hard, his eyes adjusting to the new light. He was in a hospital room. The sounds of heart rate monitors and nurses shuffling around outside drowned the sound of his panicked breathing. Carol looked around the room, seeing nothing strange. There was no one in the bed in front of him, yet the heart rate monitor beside it showed a fluctuating line, as though it were hooked up to an invisible person. Unnerved, Carol gripped his gun tightly and spun around in a three-sixty, exiting the room. He had expected to see nurses and doctors running around in the hallway, and was surprised when, though it sounded like there were people around, there was no one in sight. Carol paused a moment, looking first down the hall to his right, then to his left.

To his left, the lights in the hall flickered, and a great shadow loomed at the very end, obscuring anything that might be back there. Carol hesitated, the shadows were pushing him away from the hall to the left. That was not the way he was supposed to go. He was still in the illusion. Carol felt his heart rate spike. Blood rushed in his ears and he turned and went down the hall to his right.

The soles of his black shoes tapped against the ice-white floor of the hospital. As he walked, the lights behind him flickered out. Carol was aware of this, but he dared not to look back, lest he see something horrible, like the mangled corpse of his wife or daughter or one of his friends. The voices and slight, nearly invisible movements around him became louder as he walked, his Colt .45 gripped tightly in his white, shaking hand. Grim knew exactly what to do to set him on edge. This was a bit of knowledge that nearly scared Carol out of his skin. What tactic was Grim going to try next? He already had the hospital down; Carol had always hated hospitals, but what next? Was he going to make him shoot a friend? Or maybe he’d make the walls close in and play on Carol’s claustrophobia, or set the building on fire, or force him to kill himself, or have the floor fall out from under him, or-
Stop it! Carol grit his teeth. He knew that thinking about what Grim could do to him would only heighten his fear. But the anticipation was killing him. His heart was pounding painfully against his ribs, his blood rushed in his ears, sweat dripped down his face, his whole body shook, his legs felt weak, his vision was getting blurry, he felt like he was going to be sick. Carol broke into a run, and the lights in the hall behind him began to make popping sounds as they burst out in rapid succession. Carol rounded the corner, skidding into the room at the end of the hall and whipping around to face the way he had come. The last light blew out and the entire hallway became petroleum black.
Carol panted, still facing the hallway, wiping sweat out of his face with the sleeve of his leather jacket. He bent over and put his hands on his knees, wheezing, sweat dripping from his brow and spattering onto the floor. He swiped at his face again as he righted himself and looked up to see who or what he was in the room with.
Carol’s heart skipped a beat. Two beats. Three! He sucked in a gasp and took a step back, grey eyes huge with horror and shock.
“Grim...”
The dark man laughed, white teeth standing out in stark contrast to his skin. “Hello again Carol,” he grinned savagely, “still think you can run away, hmm? You never change. You’re still the same scared little boy I came after years ago.”
Carol swallowed hard, nearly choking as he did so. His throat felt like it was lined with cotton. “L-look Grim, I- I was only doing what I had to! Antonio came after me with a gun! What was I supposed to do?! I was getting married for cripes sakes! I couldn’t just die!”
Grim tilted his head to one side, still smiling, yet his eyes narrowed dangerously. “You killed Mr. Ardezinni’s brother,” he drawled, “did you really think he was going to let that slide?”
Carol took an involuntary step back, his hand tightening around his gun. Of course it had to be about that. “Look, if it means anything, I still lose sleep over that.” Antonio had been the first person Carol had ever had reason to shoot. It had taken weeks for him to finally recover from the shock of it. It didn’t help that now Grim had to bring it up again.
Grim shook his head. “As cute as that little effort to save yourself is, it won’t help you.” He unfolded his arms from behind his back and stepped towards his victim. “You’ve already realized that this is an illusion, yes? Good, because this-” the world around the two warped and contorted suddenly, sending lights flickering across Carol’s field of vision, blinding him momentarily and leaving him to blink bewilderedly up at Grim when everything settled, earning him a cruel smile from his adversary, “-isn’t”
It wasn’t the same hospital room Carol had been in during the illusion. He could tell even though he couldn’t see everything because his vision was so blurry. He figured it out when he saw the red floral design on the wall in front of him. Grim was no longer in front of him. Funny, Carol thought that he would have wanted to remain confrontational, like last time. Carol blinked and rubbed at his eyes, groaning. When he looked back up, the room focused suddenly.
That wasn’t a floral pattern on the wall. No, not at all. That was- “oh- oh god!” Carol’s hand flew to his mouth and he took a step back, eyes huge, the color draining from his face. His foot slipped on the red running across the floor, and he had to grab the door frame to keep from falling over. The hand which held the Colt grew suddenly slack, allowing the tremors that wracked through Carol’s whole body to shake the weapon too.
Carol’s insides knotted and twisted, contorting as he stared on at the scene in front of him. “W-what the h-hell?” and then, “oh god! Oh g-god!”
A spray of blood rested on the wall, trailing down in little red threads, connecting to a larger puddle that had spread across the white floor. In the center of that lake of red lay Diane, her eyes wide and glazed over in death, a bullet hole through her throat. Carol felt the meal he had for lunch start to make its way back up, and he swallowed hard to keep it down. He was still transfixed by the scene before him when a horribly familiar voice cut into his head.
“You have no idea how hard it was to find a way to lure her in here,” Grim said, nodding down at Diane’s corpse, tapping her side lightly with the toe of his boot.
“Don’t touch her!” Carol snarled, bristling, coming to his senses suddenly. Where the hell had Grim come from? He hadn’t been there before.
Grim laughed, “I was worried with how to draw her out, but then I saw her with that little girl, and I thought ‘oh yeah, Carol has a daughter now,’ and I knew what I needed to do.”
The room shifted ever so slightly, and Carol became suddenly aware of Grim holding onto his daughter by her hair. Tears streaked down Marie’s reddened face, and a bruise painted the left side of her face purple. Carol sucked in a breath, then hissed through his teeth, raising his gun to aim at Grim’s head. “Let. Her. Go.” Carol wished that he could make his voice sound less scared, less weak, for his daughter’s sake. It’s okay Marie, see? Daddy’s not scared. Don’t be scared Marie. Don’t be scared. Daddy’s here. Daddy will take care of you-
Grim laughed and jerked Marie’s head, forcing her to take a step forward, yelping from the sudden pain at her scalp as her hair was brutally torn. Fresh tears rolled down her face and she sobbed as she stared frightfully up at her father.
Carol swallowed hard, his gut twisting painfully. “L-look, just...just let her go...She’s not a part of this. Take me instead, please!”
Grim’s hideous smile only got wider. “Oh, how cliche,” he tutted, “willing to sacrifice yourself for your daughter? Please. I can only tell you how many others I’ve put in this same situation. And you know what?” He twisted Marie’s hair, hard, causing her to cry out in pain and claw at his hand, “it’s rather fun to see the outcome.”
The outcome. Carol’s heart dropped to his feet and rolled across the floor. Oh god, he was going to kill Marie. Grim was going to kill Marie and he was going to be powerless to stop him because the second he tried anything his daughter’s throat would be slit open. Carol didn’t think it was possible for him to tremble any harder, but his body somehow managed it. Yet he held his gun pointed firmly at Grim’s head. “Let her go,” Carol breathed, a bead of sweat rolling down the back of his neck, causing him to shudder slightly. And it was as he shuddered that he noticed something was off.
It lasted only a second, but a second was all Carol needed.
“This isn’t real,” he breathed.
Grim’s smile faded a bit and his eyes narrowed sharply. “Of course it’s real. This is your daughter,” he twisted Marie’s hair again, but this time the little girl didn’t cry out. Instead she stared up at her father with huge eyes and a scared face.
“We’re in Epicent,” Carol turned his head towards the window, nodding at it. “We were in Senka before. There’s no way we could have gotten here-”
Grim’s sudden burst of laughter caught Carol off guard and he lowered his gun slightly. “You really are scatterbrained, aren’t you?” Grim looked down at the bloodied form of Diane. “I killed her for nothing,” he said sorrowfully, then looked back up at Carol. “When you were under last time, we threw you into a truck and drove you out here. I had one of my men hold onto you until you had come to enough to stand on your own. Then we gave you your gun back and I held onto your daughter.” Grin added a flourish to this statement with a gesture of his free hand.
Carol lowered his gaze, thinking hard. Had he felt hands on him holding him up before? Maybe. But it could have just been his leather jacket. If Grim had been keeping him under, it would explain why his sense of time was so distorted. But no, Carol had turned around when he had first entered the room. No one had been there. If he had been waking up, he would have seen them through the fog clouding his senses. He would have known they were there. “You’re lying,” Carol said softly, lowering his gun completely, letting his arm drop to his side.
Marie let out a whimper. “Daddy!” she cried, then broke down and continued to sob.
Carol stared at her, grinding his teeth. Oh god, what if he was wrong? What if he was wrong and he did the wrong thing and Diane was really dead and he did the wrong thing and then Marie wound up dead because he didn’t do the right thing? Carol shook his head to clear his mind and glared back up at Grim. There was only one way to break Grim’s illusions. Only one way to get him out of your head. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
Carol felt the cold nose of the Colt against his temple as he raised the gun to his head.
Grim’s expression changed, his smile fading completely. “Are you really willing to do that?” he asked, “are you sure that you’re right about this?”
Carol pursed his lips, staring first at Diane’s broken, bloodied corpse, the red splashed on the walls, the hole in her throat, her stained hair, her vacant eyes. Then he looked to Marie, his daughter, and saw her bruised face, the redness in her cheeks, the fear in her eyes, the tears streaming towards her jaw, the way she chewed on her lip. Look away baby, he thought towards her. Even if she wasn’t real, it still killed him to see that look on her face. She was too young to know what a gun was, but she knew it was dangerous by the way Carol held it. She had to. Look away from daddy. This isn’t real. I’ll see you and mommy soon, okay? Then Carol raised his eyes to stare Grim down. “Absolutely,” he said firmly.
Then he pulled the trigger.