The Headshrinker's Dilemma

Chapter Ten

The apartment smelled. Eggs and some aroma therapy. Not a good mix. The decorum was off putting as well. Weird paintings, art and sculptures that had twisted bodies with animal faces on them, some kind of pseudo-religiosity or maybe even cultic. It truly had an eerie feel like there was something other worldly in the air, it was palpable and distinct. Dale followed the girl through the apartment. They hadn’t said much to each other, only the words she spoke calling him in and then once they were inside to follow her. And he did. They were headed into a back room…

Dale and the weird roommate approached a door that was layered with beads streaming down like a waterfall. There was a putrid smell coming from the inside of the room. That must have been the egg smell and the roommate was trying to use incense or some aroma therapy candles to smother the smell. It wasn’t working very well. Instead, it created a horrible blend. But standing near the room, the egg smell was strong. The longer they stood there, the more he felt like he wanted to vomit. He couldn’t imagine how rank it would be once they stepped inside the room. The weird roommate turned to him.

“You did this… You can fix it,” she said.

Her words startled Dale and his heart sunk inside his chest. Worry filled him. How did she know it was him? He dared to ask.

“Come,” she said.

Dale followed the Jamaican girl into the room. The room smelled like someone or something had died in it. It was literally the worst odor he’d ever smelled. In the far corner, was a bed. A figure, small, thin, laid in the bed. Dale already knew who it was. Felicia. He didn’t want to see anymore, knowing that the more he saw the worst he would feel; he had done this to her. And now, here he was seeking absolution in his own way, hoping that this thing that he had done to her had actually been her fault. Dale suddenly realized how selfish and despicable he really was and that maybe it was not his victims that were being judged but him. To have to leave with this, the knowledge that he was responsible for the destruction of lives was a fate worse than death. This was hell. His own personal hell just like Milton wrote. Dale’s hell was very present within him and now, he could see it externally. It was directly in front of him.

The Jamaican girl led him to the bed.

“Oh my God…” Dale heard himself say.

It was surreal. Looking at her. Felicia. It was like he had detached from his body. This couldn’t be real. His mind tried to wrap itself around the figure that lied in front of him. She was super thin and small, withered really. Although he had shrunken her head, her head was no bigger than her body, that’s how miniscule she had become. Dale couldn’t decide what looked worst, the disfigured and shrunken head or her malnourished looking body. It pained him to look at her: Felicia’s head was an odd shape, a lump on one side and her eyes were now not lined up evenly; nothing about her face was congruent, it was all leaning, fixed at an awkward angle, her eyes and nose and mouth, eyebrows, everything.

“I don’t understand,” Dale said.

“What you did… It changed the chemistry of body, the the biology. The body and mind are made a specific way and for a purpose. You shrinking her head, where the brain resides, corrupted everything.”

Dale continued to look down at the misshapen figure.

“Eating, drinking, everything is off and wrong. Her brain, nothing functions the same. And because of that she’s been left like this…”

This wasn’t the reason he had come. He was ashamed of the reason that he was there now: Whether she had done anything in her life to deserve judgment was irrelevant. No one deserved this. The worse of so called sinners didn’t. And to think, he thought for a second that he was possibly some avenging angel, some holy emissary of a higher purpose. No. This was just all kinds of f****d up and there was nothing more to it than that.

The Jamaican girl turned to him. There was tears in her eyes. He knew what was about to happen and he would have given anything and everything for it not.

“Fix her,” she said but it was less of a command, more of a plea.

“I…” he didn’t want to say it. “I can’t.”

There was a finality to what he said. He wanted to slink away. It had been a mistake to come here. He shouldn’t have come – selfish and counter-productive to what was necessary at the moment. Felicia would provide no answers for him, only more questions that would lead to more wonder and ultimately more guilt. Dale turned to walk away. He would run. Hide in the furthest hole he could find until he was forgotten even by himself.

“No! Stop!” she shouted. “You did this. So you can fix it.”

How did she even know it was him? Dale was missing something here.

“How do you know I did this?” he asked.

The Jamaican girl stared at him curiously. And then he saw it, some realization or understanding come to her that she hadn’t had before. She moved towards him, passionately.

“You don’t remember… This – This explains everything!”

Dale was at a lost. The Jamaican girl bounced around the room crazily, mumbling to herself or was it more of a chant? Suddenly, she seemed frantic, unhinged, her hysteria was clear. Dale backed out the room. Slow. Easy. He passed through the beads.

“Wait,” she called out to him.

Dale tried to hurry. But the Jamaican woman latched on to his arm and spun him around. Her eyes were wild and her mouth was foamy. Something had happened.

“We need you,” she crooned. “She can’t be made whole without your touch – TOUCH HER!”

Her voice boomed loud, louder than it was supposed to. There was an echo quality to it and Dale felt it inside of him. It knocked him off balance, like he was turning to his side, the way a person who was sea sick would feel on a boat; his body felt like it was careening around some wave, nothing short of vertigo. Dale grabbed on to the Jamaican girl to brace himself, trying to regain his balance. But it was to no avail. Everything was turning upside down suddenly for him and he could feel himself leaving… He didn’t know where to, but it was trippy… Dale could feel himself leaving. Up was down. Down was up. He was on the floor and the Jamaican girl was standing over him but he was on the ceiling and she was below him. How could she be above him and below? Dale’s head throbbed. And then he wretched and everything went black.

***

Dale opened his eyes. The Jamaican girl was standing over him. He looked around himself. He was lying on a sofa. Something was different. The apartment was different. There was no weird art or paintings like before. The odor was gone, no longer eggy mixed with aroma therapy candles. Everything had changed. He tried to get up but she stopped him.

“Hang on,” she said.

She moved to help him up, grabbing his arm to pull. Dale was back on his feet. He scanned the apartment. Nothing was like it had been before he… Had he passed out? He wasn’t sure anymore. He thought he had.

“I don’t know what’s going on but –” he started.

“Shhh,” the Jamaican girl said. “There’s a lot that you need to know Dale and there’s not a lot of time to tell you.”

She then walked off. Dale noticed that she had her coat on. She walked out the apartment door. Dale looked around himself one last time and followed her to the door. Still unsure of exactly what was happening, he eased out the door. The Jamaican girl was headed downstairs. Dale followed. They were both on the bottom landing. It was a fairly nice day, gray, cloudy, but it had warmed considerably from earlier.

“Dale…” she sighed. “You have to fix this. You’re the only one who can.”

“Me?”

She turned him. “Felicia needs to die. She isn’t finished. You left her in between and that’s a different kind of hell. Fix it.”

Dale couldn’t keep up. She was speaking to him as if he had some kind of prior knowledge for all of this already. There was some missing information that he desperately needed.

“Look, I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know why any of this is happening or how I got the ability to shrink heads!” he was becoming more flustered with each word. “I just know that my entire life – which wasn’t that great before – is now f****d. I’ve killed two people for God’s sakes!”

The Jamaican girl nodded as if this was common knowledge or something that you hear every day. It bothered him that she was so cool with all of this. Who was she really? What connection did she have to all of this? Dale knew that she was connected somehow, she knew more than he did, and she seemed more than ready to point him in the direction of finishing the job and killing her roommate. Dale cleared his throat and stepped forward. He looked the Jamaican girl in the eyes. She met his fiercely as if she expected this from him.

“Tell me what all of this means! You obviously know more than I do – Why? Help me. What –What happened to me? When I passed out? Why can I shrink heads? What the hell is going on?!”

The Jamaican girl took a deep breath and then exhaled. There was a slight smile forming at the corner of her mouth that annoyed the hell out of Dale, but he didn’t say anything.

She took Dale by the hand and walked him. Her touch was soothing, calming. The fluster dissipated. He knew that he shouldn’t be out in the open so much but he had no choice, he needed information, this was why he had come to Felicia’s, to learn about what was really going on. He hadn’t expected it to come from her roommate but it didn’t matter at this point, he just needed answers finally.

“I chose you,” she said plainly. “I’m not who I appear to be – let’s just leave it like that okay? If I told you who I really was, you wouldn’t believe me.”

Dale wanted to interject, but didn’t. He wanted to know, even more so now that she had layered her identity with such mystery. However, he didn’t want to impeded the truth about his role in this from spilling out any longer.

She continued: “You were chosen to be a kind of Avatar for me – well more so for powers that I wanted to use. There were four people that needed their heads shrunk for very specific reasons – they couldn’t just die – that would free their spirits, in death I needed their spirits trapped.”

Dale’s head was spinning listening to what the Jamaican girl had to say. It all seemed so impossible but nonetheless him actually having ability to shrink heads should also be impossible. Yet, he could. They had walked all toward the campus cafeteria, more people were out than earlier. This made Dale nervous. He was a wanted man an after all.

“Dale, once imbued with the powers you were drawn to the people that I needed their spirits trapped. Circumstance and events led you to them. Felicia was the first. But you left that unfinished. Your power was new and raw and something about you showed restraint. The thug that attempted to rob you and then his friend. But you left one out. Felicia is an easy fix. It is the other person that is going to be the problem.”

As unbelievable as it all sounded, it made sense. Hindsight, Dale could remember the feeling and the pulling towards places and people and it all did seem like it was happening to him. Standing outside of the campus cafeteria, Dale began to feel better than he had felt in weeks, it was like a sudden jolt of energy had hit him. Things had begun to make sense. He still didn’t know who this girl really was and at this point he didn’t care; it didn’t matter to him if she was the devil himself or herself, he had no religious affiliations and nothing about him that necessarily made him want to be on Team God. He was just glad to have answers and a purpose. He now knew what he had to do…

“Finish Felicia… That will merciful. Okay, I can do that,” he looked at the Jamaican girl, feeling like he truly knew what to do. “And then find that other thug – the last one and do him – shrink his head.”

But the girl shook her head. He didn’t understand. There hadn’t been any other person to… And then it hit him.

“No…” he said, not wanting to believe what he was thinking.

But the Jamaican girl nodded and said two words that Dale didn’t want to hear: “Cashier girl.”