A Lost Ambition

By: C.R. Merz

I knock on the door three times per the instructions on the paper.  The door slit whips open. Two beady eyes peer through.

“What do you want?” The voice crackling.

“Umm…”

“We don’t sell ‘ums’ here, son.”

“I’m supposed to get help from Dr. Valintine. My name is Michael.”

He slams the slit closed. I hear numerous metallic slides and twists. The door bangs open. Before me is a thin pale man. Arms wide open, he chants, “Come on in. We’ve got lollipops…minus the ‘lolli’ and I suppose a little pop, but drugs, yeah, I’ve got those.”

“Whoa, I’m looking for Dr. Valintine, the expert in latent traumatic memories.”

“Well…why didn’t you say so?” He whistles a tune as he walks me through the entryway. In the middle of an ambitious yet primitive laboratory, a crude mechanical seat houses what appears to be some sort of digital enhanced goggles attached to an iron band. Cables ran to  motitors that lite the dark room with a pale green hue. He yanks me into a seat and snaps wrist and ankle restraints on me.

“Wait! What are you doing?”

He sticks a cigarette in his mouth, saying nothing.

“I think you have the wro-”

He shoves a mouthguard between my teeth.

 “Bite down on this, son. Oh, and if you make it out alive, we can talk.  Name’s Valintine,” he says through a lit cigarette as he pulls the goggles over my face.

***

Black. No smell. No touch. No sound, as though my body were void of all senses. Terror and dread wash over. Was this all an elaborate rouse to steal my kidney? I might die here, alone. Forgotten.

The hair on my neck stands erect. A putrid stench, like nothing I’ve smelled before, wafts from behind. A voice hisses. “Excruciating isn’t it, to be left behind and forgotten.” The pause between phrases is agonizing. “I would know, after all, you don’t even remember me; we were close once.” I can feel the fingers of this mysterious specter dancing on my shoulder.

“Who? What are you?”

“So many questions. Why don’t you answer one for me first?” the voice taunts. “Why can't you ever complete what you’ve started, Michael?”

“W-what?”

“Tsk, tsk…always the quitter. You’re so good at it, you’ve even forgotten my name!”

“Please! I don’t recall anything.”

The voice says through sloppy growls, “That’s why you’re here.” He continues, “Because you’ve NEVER FINISHED ANYTHING.”

I recoil. Two hands grip me, turning me around. A partially decayed face with blue skin fills my vision, every tendon and gaping hole oozing black mucus. Worms and roaches crawl in and out of a void eye socket. Skin sloughs down a monstrous cheek, writhing as if the skin itself were in agony.

He speaks again, with flesh undulating up and down as maggots slithered through his decaying flesh. “You don’t honestly believe that we just wither away once forgotten?”

I try to speak. My mouth is fused shut.

His fingers brush against my now void face. “I didn’t say you could speak,” he snaps. Now pacing the monster hums “Ahh, where do I begin? How about the start?”

The creature speaks in my voice, from childhood. “I wanna be an astronaut, Mommy!” His voice returns momentarily, “Or how about this one? My personal favorite.” The voice now shifts to my adult voice, mocking me. “I am going to graduate college and get out of the slums! I won’t rot in the same villiage my parents did.” A hideous contrived smile now glints with festering rot. “My! You gave up on that one so quickly, didn’t you?”

He smirks again, muscles contracting through mottled flesh. He unhinges his jaw, forming an ellipsoidal void that can fit my entire being. Desperately I try to pull away, but the pull is inescapable as if the darkness within the creature holds magnetic properties. I am done for; this is where it ends. I try to muster my last scream; only muffled groans are perceptible. The creature’s mouth blankets my vision.

***

 Suddenly, Valintine flips my goggles up, pulling me back into the light. I gasp for air and my body convulses in chaotic rhythms.

Cigarette in hand, he points. “So, you give up on dreams?”

“W-what was?” I mutter through shallow breath.

The doctor takes a drag from his cigarette, “That? A little bit of this, a little bit of that. But mostly a nasty conglomerate of things you’ve given up on, manifested into one vindictive little bastard.”

“Why, so real?” Micheal Said Stammering.

“Well, that’s ‘cause it is. This sexy piece of equipment,” he slaps the chair, “allows the user to experience mental traumas as real beings. Yours, that’s one powerful S.O.B. I see dream specters quite often, but yours son, it’s on a whole new level.”

Smoke plumes upward. “Looks like you’ve given up on much. ‘Bout time to forgive yourself. That shit could eat you alive…quite literally.”