CHOOSE YOUR OWN MINDFUCK: A Night in Eighth Block Tower (A54)
Bedlam Bible fans! Explore the Eighth Block Tower! Choose your fate! Don't succumb to the huummmmmmmmm...
You’ve set your alarm for 4AM…
Your alarm goes off at 4AM and somehow (thankfully) you manage to turn it off and sneak away from the couch without waking Lynda.
Your tongue is thick and stuck to the roof of your mouth from how dry the air is inside her apartment. You need a drink, and fast. It can’t wait.
You walk to the kitchen and open the fridge and aren’t all that surprised to see it’s mostly empty. Only a few cans of ginger ale and a stack of about four or five thick sirloin steaks are inside. And cheese. There’s an entire drawer full of assorted cheeses. Breakfast of champions, you think, then close the refrigerator door.
All you want is water, and you were hoping you wouldn’t have to drink directly from the poison tap, but your mouth is so incredibly dry you can think of nothing else. Poison or not, you need water.
You reach over the sink to turn on the cold water, but before you’re able to reach it, you feel a set of claws digging deep into the flesh of your hand, then something bites the tip of your finger. The pressure of its teeth is enough to break the skin. You can't help but to utter a short yelp, though (fortunately) you’re able to keep your squealing at a level that isn’t loud enough to disturb Lynda.
You look down at your attacker, sitting in the bowl of the sink. It’s Baby, Lynda’s cat. The amount of trouble this creature has caused you in the last few hours is enough to justify a scolding, but being the animal lover you are, you’re not angry about the attack. It’s just a cat doing cat things, you think, then look for something to dress your wound, but you’re only able to find a slightly soiled napkin. It’ll have to do.
You wrap the dirty paper rag around your finger, then tiptoe through the heaping piles of trash on the floor, all the way to the front door. You exit Lynda’s apartment and silently hope you never find yourself back there again.
You walk to the end of the communal hallway, then down the stairwell, and not even a full flight down, you’re greeted by the most wonderful sight you’ve ever laid eyes upon. Your heartbeat quickens and your palms begin to sweat. It’s a miracle, no two ways about it. It’s as if all your prayers have been answered. You can hardly believe your luck.
Lying on the stairs now, directly at your feet, are two bodies—warm, but dead. They’re the bodies of your former accomplices: Leonard and Larry. It’s pretty obvious how they died, as blood continues to gush from their open wounds. Of course, you’re not positive what led to their demise, but you deduce that one or perhaps both of them got greedy and attempted to rob the other, right here on the stairwell. Leonard managed to land a bullet straight in the middle of Larry’s chest, and Larry—being the deadeye that he was—put a bullet in the small gap right between Leonard’s eyes. Neither stood a chance at surviving.
But where’s the cash? A quick pocket search of the corpses suggests they never got around to finding the loot in the first place. But why did they kill each other? Out of frustration?
Something isn’t adding up…
Perhaps they were murdered? You examine the crime scene, looking for evidence of foul play, and it isn’t long before you find compelling evidence.
About twenty feet away, at the bottom of the stairwell, is a hundred dollar bill. It’s been stamped in blood with a design that could’ve only been formed by the bottom of a boot.
A few feet away, you find another… and another.
You follow the trail of cash down to the basement, collecting the bills and stuffing them into your pockets as you go. The place is dark and gives off a creepy vibe, but you’re armed, so you’re not too concerned about whatever may be lurking there.
Still, you don’t want to tempt fate—you’re not looking for trouble, that’s for sure—but every time you consider turning around and leaving, you find another bill and walk deeper into the darkness.
Suddenly, there’s movement over in the corner of the room, a flash of light moving through the shadows. Upon first glance, it appears to be a man holding a cell phone, angling it in such a way that its light is focused on his feet. He’s crouching down, with his back arched, and he’s dressed in an expensive business suit, which you immediately find odd.
He doesn’t see you. He seems preoccupied, playing a game of solitaire on the basement floor. You assume he’s a transient or squatter, but the man’s attire isn’t right for the assumption to be accurate. So, why would a man in a business suit be sitting alone in the dark basement of the Eighth Block Tower, playing with a deck of cards?
As your mind wanders, the thought occurs to you that it really isn’t any of your concern. You have two pocketfuls of cash and a three-minute walk to the exit of this godforsaken hellhole. You’re home-free, as long as you get to walking…
If you would’ve left at that very moment, odds are you would’ve been able to do exactly what you’d set out to do in the first place—get a new start on life.
But… you don’t go, because at that very moment, you realize the man in front of you isn’t playing cards at all… he’s counting stacks of cash.
Your cash.
This causes you to remove your gun from the waistband of your trousers and point it at the man.
“Hand over the cash now and I’ll forget you ever robbed me to begin with,” you say.
The man just looks back and you and lets out a short laugh. “I robbed you? You’re joking, right? This here is my money. Always has been. You crooks broke into the wrong apartment. I don’t take kindly to thieves. Now go, before you end up like your friends on the stairwell.”
If he’s armed, he hasn’t made it known yet, and if he’s telling the truth about your partners, then he’s clearly a dangerous man… but you keep staring at the stacks of cash piled up on the basement floor. There’s easily thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. Enough to get a head start on your new life. And you’ve already come this far…
You take a step closer, and before you even realize what’s happening, he rushes up on on you, shoving his cell phone into your face. As soon as the illuminated screen enters your peripheral vision, your eyes become fastened to it and your body numbs to the point you no longer feel the gun in your hands.
“I tried warning you,” he says. “What happens from this point on is all your doing.”
You’re not sure what he means by that, but you don’t give it much thought either. You’re more concerned with the numbness spreading throughout your body. You wonder if you’ve pissed your pants.
“How are you doing this with just a goddamn cell phone?” you manage to ask. It comes out slurred, but it’s clear enough he understand you.
“Well, it’s not just any cell phone, my friend,” the man says. “This phone is capable of taking you anywhere and to any time you wish just by looking into it. There’s an app on here called Cyber Solaris, and it’s the only phone in the world equipped with it. It’s a sort of… time travel device.”
“An app? But how?” You feel boneless. You’ve definitely pissed yourself.
“Well, it doesn’t work the way you’re probably thinking it works,” the man says, still holding the cell phone an inch away from your face. “I’d say movies are to blame. The moment anyone hears the words ‘time travel device,’ they automatically think of these giant machines, lightning bolts, Deloreans…but that’s just fiction. In real life, we can only achieve time travel through our own minds.”
Your eyes are hopelessly locked to the screen, now displaying old video footage of rolling black ocean water, its waves crashing violently into one another—some stormy sea. You can’t even close your eyes. It feels, in a way, as if you’re being absorbed into the device.
“How’s a goddamn ocean gonna send me back in time, huh?” you ask. The feeling of helplessness swelling inside you is starting to piss you off.
“The real time traveling device is already inside you. It’s your mind. Cyber Solaris is just how we access it. At a glance, the app appears to be nothing more than waves in a dark ocean, but it’s so much more than that. If you open your mind and stare for a few seconds, you’ll see what I mean.”
You watch as the black ocean water rolls across the screen, rising and dipping and rising again. The waves are as dark as the sky, and only visible due to the seafoam that collects as it writhes about violently. When the water peaks, it resembles a mountain forming and dissolving again, and as quickly as one collapses, another forms.
…rising and dipping and rising again…
After a minute or so, the man speaks up again. “Show me where you came from, where you were before you ever set foot in my apartment. Visualize it in your head, then see what happens.”
…rising and dipping and rising again…
The crashing waves of black ocean water part, pushing into the corners of the frame, allowing a new vision to fill the empty space on the screen before you.
Holy shit. It’s working. That crazy son of a bitch is a genius, you think, just as you feel yourself becoming one with the images onscreen.
You’re now at sitting on a bench at an elongated table, eating a tuna fish sandwich with at least thirty or forty others, all men, and all wearing the same outfit as you.
You know this place, and you know it well. You’ve eaten three meals a day in this room for the last few months. It’s the cafeteria at the Joliet Correctional Center.
Prison.
That goddamn madman sent you right back to the pen.
But this can’t be real, can it? No… it’s impossible, you think. It must be a simulation.
You decide to test out your theory by picking a fight with one of the guards. He brings the billy club down on your head and you hit the concrete floor with a hard thunk.
The pain, most certainly, is real.
Seconds later, you lose consciousness.
You awaken sometime later in a dark concrete room with no windows. It seems the guards have thrown you into The Hole, solitary confinement. You’re not sure how long you’ve been there, but by the looks of your injured finger, it’s been several days at least. Your wound is now infected and smells as bad as it looks.
A week later, one of the guards finally takes notice of your little problem and sends you off to the infirmary, where they inform you that your finger is dead and literally rotting away. They’re forced to amputate to prevent the infection from spreading throughout the rest of your body.
Sometime later, all-bandaged up, they send you back to your cell, and you meet your roommate, a large fella who goes by the name Bugg the Butcher. He asks how long your sentence is, but you’re unable to answer.
However… deep down, you know.
You’re going to be here for quite a while.
THE END