Friends In Dark Places - Part Five: Great Expectations
Mar 14, 2016 18:07:26 GMT -5
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Post by Non Compos Mentis on Mar 14, 2016 18:07:26 GMT -5
Publicity shots painted the Polynesian Beach and Golf Resort in Myrtle Beach as a haven for those middle-aged professionals who sought a week away on the South Carolina coast to relax and unwind. It certainly was not.
The heavily preened pictures provided great expectations for guests, but all great expectations are made to be shattered.
The disillusioned middle-management schlubs looking for a week of beach bathing and hitting dimpled balls with sticks would be disappointed with the fetid stink of damp and beds that left you itchy the morning after. If you were unfortunate enough to visit the Polynesian on a chilly afternoon in mid-March, you would also find yourself grabbing an extra layer to compensate for air conditioning that had all the power of an asthmatic blowing through a straw.
It was courtesy of Cleric Altman that Sean Rhodes found himself at the grotty hotel, thankful that it was the Order operative that had shelled out the exorbitant $45 for that single-bed slice of depression. The instructions were delivered in typical clandestine style and demanded his presence at the hotel. Who was he to deny them?
The disgruntled clerk at the front desk barely noticed Non Compos Mentis as he walked past and ascended the staircase to the first floor before traversing the balcony. Less than a week removed from Trauma 188, Sean still walked with a limp thanks to Mikey Wryght and his technically focused attack. His limp left leg dragged behind him slightly as he approached room 127.
Pulling the frayed key fob from his denim jacket pocket, Sean slid the key into the lock and gained entry. The gloom inside was favourable to the sight that greeted him when he soon flicked the light switch. A lonely, dishevelled single bed sat surrounded by drab brown furniture and walls stained with mismatching paint, used to hide the telltale black blotches of mould.
A sense of dread filled Mentis as he walked into the room and felt the happiness-sapping surroundings alight him of any positivity he'd carried in. Glancing around, he caught sight of the only thing he cared about as it protruded from underneath the bed. A Manila envelope, neatly placed and meant exclusively for the man staring at it.
Rhodes closed the door behind him and carefully lowered himself onto the bed. The springs uttered a geriatric groan beneath him and he leant over and grabbed the envelope. In it was more than a letter, something heavier, something electrical. Carefully Mentis opened the package and pulled out the black slab within, holding it up to the flickering light.
It was a tablet, but one that bore no makers' marks or identifying features. It was a plain black slate meant for discretion and secrecy. It was, no doubt, an object designed and used exclusively within the Order.
With no other options, knowing that he had been called to that exact room to find that precise piece of equipment, Sean located the subtle power button and pressed. The screen suddenly pinged to life, going through a short and inconspicuous start-up procedure before being diverted straight to a pre-programmed destination.
That destination was a video.
“Ezra... Ez... Ra? I need you to listen to me right now, Ezra. Do you understand?” The words of an unknown entity behind a camera crackled at first but became clearer, just as the picture did. The first thing Sean saw was the sterile environment as the camera swirled around the room, looking for its target. The walls were of crystal clear, impenetrable glass and pitch black obsidian. How did he know the glass was impenetrable? Because he'd been in one of these rooms before.
“I'm not listening to any more of your lies.” It was strained and tortured, but Sean recognised the second voice the moment he heard it. Just then the camera, which Sean had assumed to be located somewhere on the unseen man's person, caught a flash of silver hair and he knew then this was no trick.
“I'm not part of Calder's operation, Ezra. I'm a friend. I'm here to help.” The unseen man, gruff and full of haste, spoke again and the camera tried to focus closer on the Guardian... Sean's Guardian. It struck Sean that the young man, once a devout follower of Calder and his agenda, now called the men he perceived to be Calder's minions liars.
“Help?” A pained, deranged and resigned cackle reverberated through the vocal chords of the young man, but as the camera focused he looks less and less like the young man Sean remembered so fondly. “You want to help? How about you give me that pee-shooter of yours and turn your back, huh?”
Finally the picture came to a relatively stable halt and settled on a face. It had been well over a year since Sean had seen him, but even beneath the tight, yellow-tinged skin, the hollowed eyes and the spider of matted silver hair, he knew he was looking at Ezra Colne. He couldn't believe it though, as Ezra pressed his bony finger to his temple and mockingly pulled a hopeful trigger.
“I can't do that.” The grim cameraman uttered.
“Sure you can't. Some help you are.” And Ezra, who was knelt on a thin sheet meant to resemble a mattress, fell backwards against the wall in defeat.
A few seconds passed uncomfortably as the broken Guardian stared off into the ether, dreaming perhaps of the sweet relief of a bullet. Finally Altman's man, for Rhodes was now sure he was under orders from Cleric Altman, broke the silence. “I have a message from Sean.”
“Sean? Don't be silly, he's dead.” Ezra ridiculed the notion, almost whimsically in tone. Meanwhile Sean watched on knowing he'd thought exactly the same not that long ago.
“And he thinks the same about you, but he'll know better soon. He wants you to know he's trying to help you.” 'He'll know better soon.' And now he did. Just as he had requested from Altman the last time they'd met, here was proof that Ezra was alive, if not alive and well. Not only that but he had tried to give Ezra hope of escape.
“Help? You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.” And the shrivelled young man cackled to himself in madness again. “You could get me out of here, if you're so helpful.”
“I can't do that, either.” Sean began to feel an intense anger rise in his gullet, a helplessness and a frustration he could not abide. Yes, he had this evidence, but what use was it?
“Of course not. What was I thinking?” What use was it to have a man infiltrate into Calder's operation and not be able to do a single thing to bring Ezra to safety. All it had accomplished was to cause more mental anguish for a tortured boy. Sean could feel his body tense and he could feel the darkness slowly begin to rise.
“Look, I only have a couple of minutes. Sean is alive and he's helping us, but we need him to see you to keep him...”
“You want to keep him cooperative, huh? Sure sounds like you're really helpful. Not like you're blackmailing bastards, or telling me he's alive just to break my spirit.” What had he expected? Not just proof of life, a renewed drive to save the man to which he was inextricably linked, something more solid?
Great expectations, as he'd thought before, were meant to be shattered.
Just like beating a World Champion, having a golden opportunity to conquer the International Champion too, and then failing terribly. Like promising a powerful man that you would destroy an inhuman evil, and having that evil slip through your hands at every turn. Alexa Black was the key, her wrath infected everything she touched and was such a concern that Altman had arranged this mournful viewing to solidify Mentis' help in ridding the world of her. But no matter the expectation Sean had, Alexa had been too devious and had escaped his grasp.
The last week had been one failure after another and, to make matters worse, now he stared at an image of a man he cared for on a level very few others could ever appreciate... broken and haggard, inches from death but kept alive to taunt him. And in just over a week, he'd be in the ring with the person whose malevolence brought him that very vision.
“I don't need you to cooperate. I could have taken a picture and left you to rot, but I'm giving you a chance here.”
“Well gee, thanks for this opportunity to be bored as a chair leg. I'm make sure to write it in my diary.” Despite crippling exhaustion and the bleakness his life had become, Ezra continued to taunt the man he still thought to be his captor. The sleeves of his blank black hospital-style ropes hang loose from his arms as he lifted them in gesticulation. “The fuck do you really want, peon?”
Finally having taken enough of the verbal slings and arrows, the interloper with the camera in his lapel turned to leave and Sean felt a pang of hurt as he thought he'd seen Ezra for the final time “Suit yourself, I have what I need. You could say something, anything... I'm not lying to you, whatever you think.”
The gruff intruder went for the door, the camera swirling around the pristine room in a blur of motion. Anger swelled further in Sean. The anger of failure upon failure racking up, not only against Mr Showtime, thought that stung worse than many would imagine. He had failed Ezra many months before and that failure left him in that room with his skin clawing back toward his bones. He had failed to get rid of Alexa Black, an indiscretion that, if corrected sooner, could have released Ezra already. Now he had to face that wrath head-on, when Altman had already explained the inhuman level of lunacy that would be.
“Wait...” Rhodes, who had dropped his head in self-pity, lifted it at the voice he hadn't expected to hear again. “What the hell, you're probably a lying scumbag but you can't do anything else to me now.”
The camera turned again and settled on an image of Ezra, now meeting the lens at chest height as he used any strength he had to climb to his feet. The robes had done a good job of hiding his body as they bunched up as he was crouched, but now they hid nothing. They hung limply off his body and exposed the chains that Sean saw now, attached to his red-raw wrists and ankles. “Sean, if you actually see this, I still love you... and get me the fuck out of here.”
The moment of revolt was the last Sean saw as the screen abruptly cut out and went straight to black. There was no reaction from the tablet to his touch as he tried to find a way to replay the video. Black the screen remained, no matter what Sean did. All too quickly the troubled NCM realised the video was a one-time deal, that the tablet had been rigged to shut down for good after the video had finished.
In the back of his mind he hear the last words Altman had spoken to him in Raleigh a couple of week before. ”You'll have your proof, Sean. Now get me mine.” And now, with the acrid distaste of this 'proof' in his mouth, Sean had to do his part.
He held the useless tablet in his hands, the malnourished vision of Ezra burnt into his eyes and the intense pain of knowing that it was all his doing haunting him.
The darkness, for it was the only thing he could call it, rose with him. The darkness took over.
As the tablet struck the wall and shattered into a hundred shards and components, Non Compos Mentis ripped the complimentary coffee maker from the wall and speared it into a picture frame containing a disappointingly faded print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. The frame smashed and sent glass all over the room but was drowned out as NCM grabbed the set of brown kitchenette cabinets and tore them to shreds with his own two hands.
Any and all furniture that wasn't nailed down, and most that was, found a violent home in some other surface of the room. By the time Mentis had nothing left to destroy, and the red mist had settled, he found himself standing in the centre of another kind of mist entirely.
All around his, clutching at his skin, was the smog he had seen around Nathan Saniti and Kelli Starr. It enveloped him, sucking on the ether that escaped his pores. It was the ether of anger, the ether of wrath.
Surely he should have been disturbed, but he wasn't. As the smoke fed on his wrath, it turned. Instead of concern, he felt sadness. Instead of alarm, he felt tired. So... very... exhausted. The one piece of furniture in the room left untouched by Sean's onslaught was the bed. As disgusting and bug-ridden as it was, he found himself sitting down on the edge and tumbling to the side.
Alexa had infected him too, her wrath feeding off his own like a pack of leeches draining every last drop. He curled up, hoping the failure would end, hoping that he could stop Alexa and get back everything he had lost. He hoped, more than anything, not to be sad anymore. That at least one expectation would not shatter this time. And as he drifted into a broken, tearful sleep, the mist took what it wanted.
The heavily preened pictures provided great expectations for guests, but all great expectations are made to be shattered.
The disillusioned middle-management schlubs looking for a week of beach bathing and hitting dimpled balls with sticks would be disappointed with the fetid stink of damp and beds that left you itchy the morning after. If you were unfortunate enough to visit the Polynesian on a chilly afternoon in mid-March, you would also find yourself grabbing an extra layer to compensate for air conditioning that had all the power of an asthmatic blowing through a straw.
It was courtesy of Cleric Altman that Sean Rhodes found himself at the grotty hotel, thankful that it was the Order operative that had shelled out the exorbitant $45 for that single-bed slice of depression. The instructions were delivered in typical clandestine style and demanded his presence at the hotel. Who was he to deny them?
The disgruntled clerk at the front desk barely noticed Non Compos Mentis as he walked past and ascended the staircase to the first floor before traversing the balcony. Less than a week removed from Trauma 188, Sean still walked with a limp thanks to Mikey Wryght and his technically focused attack. His limp left leg dragged behind him slightly as he approached room 127.
Pulling the frayed key fob from his denim jacket pocket, Sean slid the key into the lock and gained entry. The gloom inside was favourable to the sight that greeted him when he soon flicked the light switch. A lonely, dishevelled single bed sat surrounded by drab brown furniture and walls stained with mismatching paint, used to hide the telltale black blotches of mould.
A sense of dread filled Mentis as he walked into the room and felt the happiness-sapping surroundings alight him of any positivity he'd carried in. Glancing around, he caught sight of the only thing he cared about as it protruded from underneath the bed. A Manila envelope, neatly placed and meant exclusively for the man staring at it.
Rhodes closed the door behind him and carefully lowered himself onto the bed. The springs uttered a geriatric groan beneath him and he leant over and grabbed the envelope. In it was more than a letter, something heavier, something electrical. Carefully Mentis opened the package and pulled out the black slab within, holding it up to the flickering light.
It was a tablet, but one that bore no makers' marks or identifying features. It was a plain black slate meant for discretion and secrecy. It was, no doubt, an object designed and used exclusively within the Order.
With no other options, knowing that he had been called to that exact room to find that precise piece of equipment, Sean located the subtle power button and pressed. The screen suddenly pinged to life, going through a short and inconspicuous start-up procedure before being diverted straight to a pre-programmed destination.
That destination was a video.
“Ezra... Ez... Ra? I need you to listen to me right now, Ezra. Do you understand?” The words of an unknown entity behind a camera crackled at first but became clearer, just as the picture did. The first thing Sean saw was the sterile environment as the camera swirled around the room, looking for its target. The walls were of crystal clear, impenetrable glass and pitch black obsidian. How did he know the glass was impenetrable? Because he'd been in one of these rooms before.
“I'm not listening to any more of your lies.” It was strained and tortured, but Sean recognised the second voice the moment he heard it. Just then the camera, which Sean had assumed to be located somewhere on the unseen man's person, caught a flash of silver hair and he knew then this was no trick.
“I'm not part of Calder's operation, Ezra. I'm a friend. I'm here to help.” The unseen man, gruff and full of haste, spoke again and the camera tried to focus closer on the Guardian... Sean's Guardian. It struck Sean that the young man, once a devout follower of Calder and his agenda, now called the men he perceived to be Calder's minions liars.
“Help?” A pained, deranged and resigned cackle reverberated through the vocal chords of the young man, but as the camera focused he looks less and less like the young man Sean remembered so fondly. “You want to help? How about you give me that pee-shooter of yours and turn your back, huh?”
Finally the picture came to a relatively stable halt and settled on a face. It had been well over a year since Sean had seen him, but even beneath the tight, yellow-tinged skin, the hollowed eyes and the spider of matted silver hair, he knew he was looking at Ezra Colne. He couldn't believe it though, as Ezra pressed his bony finger to his temple and mockingly pulled a hopeful trigger.
“I can't do that.” The grim cameraman uttered.
“Sure you can't. Some help you are.” And Ezra, who was knelt on a thin sheet meant to resemble a mattress, fell backwards against the wall in defeat.
A few seconds passed uncomfortably as the broken Guardian stared off into the ether, dreaming perhaps of the sweet relief of a bullet. Finally Altman's man, for Rhodes was now sure he was under orders from Cleric Altman, broke the silence. “I have a message from Sean.”
“Sean? Don't be silly, he's dead.” Ezra ridiculed the notion, almost whimsically in tone. Meanwhile Sean watched on knowing he'd thought exactly the same not that long ago.
“And he thinks the same about you, but he'll know better soon. He wants you to know he's trying to help you.” 'He'll know better soon.' And now he did. Just as he had requested from Altman the last time they'd met, here was proof that Ezra was alive, if not alive and well. Not only that but he had tried to give Ezra hope of escape.
“Help? You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.” And the shrivelled young man cackled to himself in madness again. “You could get me out of here, if you're so helpful.”
“I can't do that, either.” Sean began to feel an intense anger rise in his gullet, a helplessness and a frustration he could not abide. Yes, he had this evidence, but what use was it?
“Of course not. What was I thinking?” What use was it to have a man infiltrate into Calder's operation and not be able to do a single thing to bring Ezra to safety. All it had accomplished was to cause more mental anguish for a tortured boy. Sean could feel his body tense and he could feel the darkness slowly begin to rise.
“Look, I only have a couple of minutes. Sean is alive and he's helping us, but we need him to see you to keep him...”
“You want to keep him cooperative, huh? Sure sounds like you're really helpful. Not like you're blackmailing bastards, or telling me he's alive just to break my spirit.” What had he expected? Not just proof of life, a renewed drive to save the man to which he was inextricably linked, something more solid?
Great expectations, as he'd thought before, were meant to be shattered.
Just like beating a World Champion, having a golden opportunity to conquer the International Champion too, and then failing terribly. Like promising a powerful man that you would destroy an inhuman evil, and having that evil slip through your hands at every turn. Alexa Black was the key, her wrath infected everything she touched and was such a concern that Altman had arranged this mournful viewing to solidify Mentis' help in ridding the world of her. But no matter the expectation Sean had, Alexa had been too devious and had escaped his grasp.
The last week had been one failure after another and, to make matters worse, now he stared at an image of a man he cared for on a level very few others could ever appreciate... broken and haggard, inches from death but kept alive to taunt him. And in just over a week, he'd be in the ring with the person whose malevolence brought him that very vision.
“I don't need you to cooperate. I could have taken a picture and left you to rot, but I'm giving you a chance here.”
“Well gee, thanks for this opportunity to be bored as a chair leg. I'm make sure to write it in my diary.” Despite crippling exhaustion and the bleakness his life had become, Ezra continued to taunt the man he still thought to be his captor. The sleeves of his blank black hospital-style ropes hang loose from his arms as he lifted them in gesticulation. “The fuck do you really want, peon?”
Finally having taken enough of the verbal slings and arrows, the interloper with the camera in his lapel turned to leave and Sean felt a pang of hurt as he thought he'd seen Ezra for the final time “Suit yourself, I have what I need. You could say something, anything... I'm not lying to you, whatever you think.”
The gruff intruder went for the door, the camera swirling around the pristine room in a blur of motion. Anger swelled further in Sean. The anger of failure upon failure racking up, not only against Mr Showtime, thought that stung worse than many would imagine. He had failed Ezra many months before and that failure left him in that room with his skin clawing back toward his bones. He had failed to get rid of Alexa Black, an indiscretion that, if corrected sooner, could have released Ezra already. Now he had to face that wrath head-on, when Altman had already explained the inhuman level of lunacy that would be.
“Wait...” Rhodes, who had dropped his head in self-pity, lifted it at the voice he hadn't expected to hear again. “What the hell, you're probably a lying scumbag but you can't do anything else to me now.”
The camera turned again and settled on an image of Ezra, now meeting the lens at chest height as he used any strength he had to climb to his feet. The robes had done a good job of hiding his body as they bunched up as he was crouched, but now they hid nothing. They hung limply off his body and exposed the chains that Sean saw now, attached to his red-raw wrists and ankles. “Sean, if you actually see this, I still love you... and get me the fuck out of here.”
The moment of revolt was the last Sean saw as the screen abruptly cut out and went straight to black. There was no reaction from the tablet to his touch as he tried to find a way to replay the video. Black the screen remained, no matter what Sean did. All too quickly the troubled NCM realised the video was a one-time deal, that the tablet had been rigged to shut down for good after the video had finished.
In the back of his mind he hear the last words Altman had spoken to him in Raleigh a couple of week before. ”You'll have your proof, Sean. Now get me mine.” And now, with the acrid distaste of this 'proof' in his mouth, Sean had to do his part.
He held the useless tablet in his hands, the malnourished vision of Ezra burnt into his eyes and the intense pain of knowing that it was all his doing haunting him.
The darkness, for it was the only thing he could call it, rose with him. The darkness took over.
As the tablet struck the wall and shattered into a hundred shards and components, Non Compos Mentis ripped the complimentary coffee maker from the wall and speared it into a picture frame containing a disappointingly faded print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. The frame smashed and sent glass all over the room but was drowned out as NCM grabbed the set of brown kitchenette cabinets and tore them to shreds with his own two hands.
Any and all furniture that wasn't nailed down, and most that was, found a violent home in some other surface of the room. By the time Mentis had nothing left to destroy, and the red mist had settled, he found himself standing in the centre of another kind of mist entirely.
All around his, clutching at his skin, was the smog he had seen around Nathan Saniti and Kelli Starr. It enveloped him, sucking on the ether that escaped his pores. It was the ether of anger, the ether of wrath.
Surely he should have been disturbed, but he wasn't. As the smoke fed on his wrath, it turned. Instead of concern, he felt sadness. Instead of alarm, he felt tired. So... very... exhausted. The one piece of furniture in the room left untouched by Sean's onslaught was the bed. As disgusting and bug-ridden as it was, he found himself sitting down on the edge and tumbling to the side.
Alexa had infected him too, her wrath feeding off his own like a pack of leeches draining every last drop. He curled up, hoping the failure would end, hoping that he could stop Alexa and get back everything he had lost. He hoped, more than anything, not to be sad anymore. That at least one expectation would not shatter this time. And as he drifted into a broken, tearful sleep, the mist took what it wanted.
