(Page 1 of 2) Dark Light by Christopher Alen F.
 (2 ratings)
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SUMMARY: Entry for the April 2009 Flash Fiction contest, "forbidden."Johnny was an old man when the magi came for him.
They arrived in a black Cadillac, dressed all in black -- black coats, black shoes, black hats -- and they told Johnny to come with them. Four of them. Big brutes, but slender. The black legs of their black pants a shifting pinstriped frenzy as they moved against Johnny's carefully maintained white picket fence and stalked up to the door. Their faces black. Their eyes, blacker.
Johnny didn't open the door.
"I can't. I won't."
Their eyes were like photographic negatives -- backwards. Dark where light should be, and where there should be dark, just more black. And in the black, swirling motes of still darker black.
// You can. You will.
Some called them wraiths. No matter how many times he saw them, Johnny had never gotten used to them. Not since the day they showed up. Appeared out of the machine. Or appeared because of it. Taught them how to perfect it. Self-sustaining, infinitely complex. The promise of infinite sentience.
"I'm done with it. Done! I can't... I -- I won't..."
Black sutures stretched grim structure across their fused, slitted mouths. Vestigial hale pinky flesh screamed weakly from the seeping black that rolled like ink under their skin. Gossamer folds of necrotic, putrescent earlobes dangled and flapped. Shivering gullets trembled down silvery sweating throats as if some decaying, vinegary Baco Noir were threatening to return to the bottle from whence it came. Maggoty forked tongues darted between the seeping wounds between sutures.
// Mr. Brandigan, you can and will.
Johnny's increasingly ashen paleness began to suffuse into his vision. He wavered uncertainly on his feet and began to collapse within his tattered grey nightrobe. One of the strangely scentless magi moved -- seemed to float -- toward him. Through the door. Through the cracks of reality. And around time.
// Mr. Bandigan, I must ask: why do you conflate the two?
"I... what?"
// Mr. Brandigan, your answer will assist us greatly in easing others like yourself into the transition. I ask why you conflate "cannot" and "will not." They are not equivalent.
"I... I can't--"
// Yes, Mr. Brandigan, we are aware of your objection, and rest assured that we feel it with as much immensity as yourself. Such is the state of our attenuation: your emotional response is utterly visceral, and quickening. But we ask only that you clarify: why do you conflate inability with refusal?
Johnny blinked at the swimming, blackening world before him. As he felt himself go over, the magi's slender arm shot under his waist, tilting him head-down to the earth. He recoiled pathetically at the sensation of temperature-less, reptilian skin as the magi gently caressed Johnny's face.
// Hush now, Mr. Brandigan. We have your personnel file. Of all those we have summoned, you are uniquely qualified to answer our question. Please. If not for us, for the others. For yourself.
In the recesses of his mind, Johnny felt reason halt in its retreat to the id. His id promised his ego that reason might provide a means of escape.
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