NINTH - The puzzle
It wasn't dawning. Time passed, but the clocks all stood still, and the sun wasn't rising. There was no sign of dawn anywhere, and he suddenly realized how much he wanted to see the sun. Although they were outside, he knew that they were actually prisoners of an invisible dungeon and that the road and the forest and the sky were just an illusion. They were closed, as much as they would be if they were lost in the depths of some huge cave. Evidence number one: no sunlight. Evidence number two: they don't know how to get out.
He shook his tired head and put it back in his hands, as he had been sitting since the traumatizing resuscitation of Mariana. Now Bentley held her in his arms, all warm, rosy and sweaty, wrapped in a blanket, his hands under the blanket, on her bare skin. The sight made his skin crawl. He would never want to touch her again, not after what he felt. Bentley could not feel it, perhaps he could not even recognize the feeling, because he did not have as much experience in medicine and pathology as Pop. He wondered if perhaps Bentley's instincts would have raised the alarm if he had been as close to the girl as Pope was when she collapsed. Oh, Pope knew that no one could get rigor mortis, livor mortis, and the general image of certain death in a matter of seconds, but he also knew that he recognized all those signs on her, just like the ones he'd seen on dead bodies in practice from pathologies. Because of those practices, because of their cruelty and the obvious fatalistic message they gave ("look, children, one day you will be this meat for chopping!") he realized that he was not able to finish medicine, but fate cruelly mocked him and threw him jobs at hospitals and private clinics, as helping staff, where he nevertheless encountered enough sickness, desecration of life and enough death to harden his heart forever.
He rationally told himself it was impossible, and when he realized the girl wasn't breathing and her heart wasn't working, he decided he didn't have time for anything other than what he knew he had to try: CPR. It wasn't good. When he pressed his lips to hers, he felt only cold flesh, dry and smooth. He almost got sick, but he got over himself and started performing CPR in which Bentley was readily helping him. It was a terrible experience. He had a disgusting, bizarre feeling, which made him hate himself at that moment, that he was trying to do the impossible, like trying to revive a steak. He could almost hear the voice of his pathology professor, who was saying maliciously, "Young man, what are you trying to do with that body? It's dead, dead, you can't revive something that has no more life in it than this bench."
But he did it, didn't he? As impossible as it seemed, her stiffness began to loosen, she began to twitch and finally, she opened her large eyes. She still had bluish spots on her body and the ashen skin of a drowned woman, but she was alive. He didn't really know what to do in this situation, but he suggested that they warm her up. What else could he suggest? For someone who was dead until recently, she was very strong. She tore her clothes off and badly injured Bentley who was trying to help her. Pope wanted to believe it was some chemical she had taken, but he hadn't noticed she had taken anything, and besides, he didn't know of any chemical that would cause this reaction.
He was definitely right about one thing. Bentley had no idea what kind of hell Pope went through by reviving Mariana. For Bentley, Mariana represented a comfort and a warm refuge, tucked into a soft, attractive package of feminine sensuality. He saw no connection between her and this place and even when he felt her cold and dry skin under his own fingers, he did not allow himself to accept what his instinct immediately told him (she was dead). Besides it could be some weird form of "rebirth" in this pace or a serious health issue. And if she had health problems, he could not blame her, since he was aware that he had problems himself. There were moments when he wondered how real his "transferring" was, or if it was just a delusion of his sick mind. Is it possible that there was nothing supernatural there and that he would simply wandered off somewhere, then forget about it and remembered that period as a period of emptiness and being in some unusual place, which could only be in his head. In any case, if she had problems, so did he, so at least they were equal in that respect. Even if she was the only one of the two who had a health problem, it didn't matter to him anyway. One day, when he "transfers", he will simply never come back. He knew that. It will be like those people from urban legends who went to the corner to get cigarettes and never came back. Or they came back twenty years later, looking exactly the same as the day they left. This terrifying thought fascinated him, even made him a little happy. He will never just die. He will disappear.
He didn't have many women in his life. He wasn't just shy. Since discovering his unusual and utterly terrifying talent, he has come to see himself as a freak, and this has led him to build a barrier between himself and other people. Elena crossed that barrier easily, with the impudence of a young, beautiful girl, with great self-confidence and that lovely, youthful self-confidence immediately won him over. He almost stopped seeing himself as a flawed man. He had almost removed the barrier he had been holding towards people. Because of that, her betrayal later made that barrier even bigger and stronger, and him terrified of any kind of closeness, attachment, trust in any human being, especially women. The only ones who crossed that barrier were Pope and Dick, and even in his relationship with the two of them there was a small, almost invisible barrier, which the two of them still didn't cross, either because they didn't want to, or they weren't even aware of it. And then, the two of them were men, so far less of a threat to him. They could not manipulate him, fool him, seduce him and charm him. They were friends. He trusted them more than he would ever trust any woman.
Then Mariana arrived and frighteningly easily, just like Elena, she moved into his personal space, got too close to him and made him vulnerable. He was aware that she could hurt him now and that scared him, but he enjoyed her presence too much to push her away from him. She was sweet, she was cute, she was sensual and intelligent, and he wanted her. He wasn't about to let her completely take over his heart, nor did he even entertain the hope that she would stay by his side. He reasoned, in his fatalistic way, that she would be by his side for a certain, limited time, and then she would certainly leave him. To prevent himself from being hurt, he won't let her make him dependent on her, he won't let her into his soul. He will simply allow himself to enjoy her being with him just a little. Even this situation in which they found themselves, which did not promise anything good, did not change anything in Bentley's firm beliefs. Maybe death awaited them here, maybe this place was a peculiar vortex, maybe none of them would ever see the light of day again, but he was too old to change, it was too late for him. Mariana couldn't know any of that, but he knew that she would easily get over him one day. Aren't all women like that, practical, resilient and rational? A sweet little hedonist like her will easily forget a loser like him
Regarding the night's events, Bentley had a reasonable explanation for everything. Jasmine had an accident, and in an unconscious state she experienced terrible dreams or hallucinations. How that accident happened without the car being crashed, he didn't care. He didn't understand these things and it didn't matter to him. He had no idea what happened to Mariana, but he was sure that it was some kind of latent disease that flared at the time, like a seizure, and maybe it was serious but he didn't want to push her to tell him about that until or if she wants to. As he rationalized like that, he convinced himself that everything that happened to them could be explained. Well, he thought, it still wasn't dawn, but then again, maybe they had the wrong idea about what time it was. After all, all the clocks and androids stopped so how even to tell time? Still, he couldn't stop the irrational terror scratching in the inside of his skull like a rabid dog locked in a shed. His hands were cold and clammy and he was shaking. Subconsciously, he knew that Jasmine wasn't lying, and he knew that Mariana wasn't lying, he just wouldn't acknowledge that. They waited for dawn, huddled together like frightened children, so they could look for Dick and Sergei, but it seemed it was getting darker and darker. Pope, in the manner of a medical worker with practice, was tending around Jasmine, trying to be useful. Mariana already calmed down in deceptively comforting arms of her new friend, and was now snuggling up next to him, naked and sweet, enticing and deceptive, in an almost identical way Elena had once been. Pope, Mariana and Bentley occasionally circled around looking tired, hoping that at some point Dick would appear from somewhere, shaggy as usual, and announce with a smile that he had finally found them and that now they could go from here. No one except Jasmine took Sergei's existence too seriously. The descriptions of the person in question by the two girls who had "seen" him didn't sound convincing at all, though Pope had to admit that the descriptions were oddly matching each other. Still, he didn't want to leave anyone in this horrible place, so he would definitely feel better if they all left from here together.
"Did you notice it's getting darker?" Mariana asked him.
He nodded his head. She continued.
"I have a strange feeling in my stomach, like I'm sinking into a hole, deeper and deeper and there's less and less possibility of getting out."
He hugged her with a gesture that meant "stop thinking like that" even though he had a similar feeling himself.
"Sergei told me that the laws of physics don't apply here" Mariana said suddenly and Mickey noticed that Jasmine got startled and turned to listen to them "He said that the way out of the vortex is only symbolically a straight line up, and in fact... here the laws of physics don't apply. This is a vortex in essence. It is pulling us towards the center. And the closer you are to the center, the harder it is to get out. And we are falling deep."
"Well, what's in the center?" Pope asked.
"How do I know," said Mariana, "I am just repeating what I heard."
"When did you see Sergei?" Jasmine asked.
"While I... while I was unconscious." He was..."
Suddenly, Pope waved his hand to silence her. There were sounds of movement and chanting through the grass between the trees, many footsteps approaching. It seemed as if they were surrounded on all sides. Mariana began to quickly put on her jeans, which were already quite worn out. Chanting sounded weirdly threatening and echoed all around them. Pope always thinking faster than the others, was already climbing into the driver's seat of the van, calling Jasmine to sit next to him. Mariana and Bentley ran towards her car.
Meanwhile, Ivan Richards, known among his friends as Dick, was looking for the next well-deserved gift from an unknown donor. Surrounded with darkness, but with generous light in the center so that he could work on precious riddle he had received as a gift, he was working as the dust covered everything like a cloak, even his shoulders and hair. He was not aware that with his disheveled hair and face covered with layers of dust, tears and dirt on his clothes, he looked like a wild hermit locked away in caves far from people for a long time. He didn't care. He was happy and completely engrossed in what he had to do. Once he solves this puzzle, his life would finally go in the right direction, all his problems would be solved, he was sure of that. He let a little scream of happiness when he found a precious package, wrapped in brown paper, as a present under a rock. Oblivious to the shadows moving around him in disturbing numbers, he opened the package and took out one piece of the puzzle. This was good, it was progress.
As long as he can remember, hardly anyone has called him by the name Ivan. They called him Dick by his last name, because it was "funnier". He was a funny man and probably therefore had to have a funny name. It's not that Ivan was particularly witty, nor did he have a above the average sense of humor. He couldn't tell jokes and when he tried to be funny on purpose, nobody found him funny. His face was also not funny face, just plain but handsome, rather youthful face of a man in his early 30s. His body was also normal, boyishly lean and muscular. Still, something about him was funny to people. And when he was at his most serious, even when he was in a particularly bad mood, people would magically cheer up just by seeing him. Funny Dick is coming. No one knew what exactly about Dick was so funny, it was the whole package, his appearance and things he would say, the ways he would say it, his movements and his behavior, would bring smiles to people's faces. Except when he was trying to be funny on purpose, then he wasn't.
It wasn't that bad being a "funny man", except when he wanted to be taken seriously. Most of situations that would be serious in other people's lives, would turned his problems into a mockery and made a joke of his suffering, of his life. When Nikolina left him, it should have been tragic. Instead, the whole thing felt like a dark comedy. He loved her. She was also one of the few people who never called him Dick, but by his full name Ivan. He was in love and sure that she was the right one, so he invited her to live with him. He was sure that she knew he was living with two roommates as they haven't found way to pay all the bills and have separate places to live. She showed up at his door unannounced, all ready to move in, with at least five huge suitcases, furious that he didn't telepathically sensed or heard that she was moving in today so he hadn't helped her with her baggage. Exhausted from the concert they played the night before, which lasted until the early hours of the morning, Ivan appeared in front of her, sleepy and wearing only boxer shorts, but ready to help. They had barely begun to bring her things into the kitchen, when Bentley came out of the bedroom in full size and in every sense, because he was wearing only tighty-whities and with quite visible morning erection. At the same time, Boris chose to leave the bathroom, all green in face from hangover and throwing up in the sink. Nina was disturbed, but not as much as when she realized that Ivan planned all four of them to live together "until they manage", which, given the financial situation of the "Omen" group, could be very well into the quite distant future. Boris and Bentley, being still under the influence of alcohol from last night's concert, did not improve the situation at all. Bentley stared blankly at the stunned girl who was still holding the suitcases in both hands, probably unaware that he had pointed something other than his eyes at her, and Boris stuck his head in the sink, cursing, throwing up right into it.
"Shit, I threw up on a cockroach!" he grunted trying albeit unsuccessfully to clean the sink by running the water on full blast.
"Well, that's only in the beginning," Ivan was trying to explain to Nina, aware that that wasn't entirely true, "we're a band, we work together and we're friends, and the two of them have nowhere to go."
Nina's face showed growing horror as she noticed the terrible mess in the kitchen, the smelly food scraps on the floor, the stove burners that couldn't be seen at all from the food that had boiled, burned and stuck to them, dirty handprints on the refrigerator door, cobwebs in the corners and cockroaches that carelessly marched on the walls and over the floor. She looked at Ivan, who calmly extended his arm to take the suitcases from her, and a whole painful scenario went through her mind as to what it would be like to live with the three of them. Shaken and scared, she dared to ask where she should sleep.
"Well..." Ivan dragged on, and it was clear that he hadn't thought about it at all. They could sleep on the third bed, which he would have to buy now. Or one day when he saves enough money.
Poor Nina, who hadn't yet had the dubious honor of seeing the bedroom (they mostly met at her apartment when her parents were not there), soon realized that the third still non-existing bed would be in the same room as existing queen sized bed and that bedroom was a tiny, dusty room that reeked of men's sweat, alcohol, and hardly ever cleaned dust. He was trying to convince her to stay right until she dragged the last suitcase into a taxi and drove away from him and out of his life. Boris and Bentley found the whole event very funny, maybe because they were drunk, and maybe because they didn't realize how much Nina meant to Ivan. The two of them didn't linger too much around any woman. Boris had strings of short meaningless relationships, and Bentley hardly made any effort at all to pursue any relationship, and when, by some miracle, it would happen, he wouldn't make any effort to keep that relationship.
If Ivan tried to confide his problems and troubles to someone, to complain to someone who would understand him and who would be sympathetic, somehow everything would turn into a joke. His problems seemed like a joke, to everyone else but to him. When there were problems with sleeping together in joined beds, it was always Ivan who would be woken up by someone's morning erection pressed against his lower back. When someone from the audience threw something disgusting at them during a concert, like once, for example, a used condom, it almost always hit him. When he got sick, it was always an illness that was impossible to diagnose and identify, and which had such twisted symptoms that he would always be asked: "Could it be maybe something... psychological?", pausing cautiously before the word "psychological" as if he had anger issues and they didn't want to upset and enrage him.
It's not that he didn't like to be the one to bring smiles to the faces of the people around him, especially in this country where people smile so little. At times, however, he would be painfully aware of how misunderstood he was and how little he meant to people outside of the comedic context. He had other ambitions. He has always loved music in the purest possible way. Even as a child, when he first saw plastic toy guitar in a shop window, he did not rest until he got it. Somewhere around the age of twelve, after a series of frivolous toy musical instruments for children, in one music he found a brilliant, albeit small and compact drum set that had just about everything he could need, and because of its practical construction, could fit in a fairly small space. He has been saving up for two whole years until he bought those drums. Everyone around him was amazed at his determination, which went so far as to give up everything else he might want to have, in order to save money for those drums. Playing musical instrument was always a ticket to a good position in society. You could be a really repulsive and boring person, but when you can play musical instrument, for example, a guitar, you can became the center point of any party. Everything would be forgiven and Ivan realized that quickly. Unlike the drums, the guitar was easily portable, convenient to place and take anywhere, but the guitar could never inspire him as much as the drums. He played guitar often, thereby buying his position in society, the undivided attention of people, even acquaintances, but when he was alone, in his room, he returned to his true love: drums. Over time, he managed to get quite expensive and high-quality equipment and was very proud of it.
He met Boris on a summer vacation, where he captivated Ivan with his voice and ancient, classical guitar, which he played with such precision and perfection, but also with such love, that Ivan was truly impressed and enchanted. He joked that the two of them could start a band. Pope liked the idea so much that he also found a keyboard player and that's how "Analytics" was born. They should have known that the love for music and many years of work and training, the perfect precision and perfectionism with which they worked, were not enough. Someone once suggested that they must include a few girls with great bodies in the group, either as backing vocals or dancers, just to commercialize at least the visual impression. They didn't do that. Bentley was the first to get revolted, of course, but both Pope and Dick were also disgusted by that idea.
Now he will solve all the problems. When he fits the last piece, his whole life will also fit like puzzle pieces, exactly where they belong. At times, from that inexplicable, irrational trance, he was still plagued by the thought at the back of his mind that fitting the last piece of the puzzle could mean his death.