Brainstorm Read online

  He should change the picture, he told himself.

  He thought about that boat trip, the waves crashing on the bow of the boat, Evie’s bright smile when she was happy and the conundrum of code he had been working on. The radio voices inane chatter came in and out of these thoughts. So much so, he had to get up and turn them off. He sat down again and listened to the silence in his apartment. To the bass hum of the heating/cooling system.

  Sat and stared and listened. Like he was too exhausted to do anything else. Which he was. Getting up in the middle of the night ─ what did he expect? Even geniuses couldn’t have insights when they were dog tired.

  As the hum seemed to grow louder, he wondered if he shouldn’t just get in the car and go to work. The traffic wouldn’t be bad now and he could replace his apartment’s low frequency background noise for the sounds of the office building. But then, his buildings hum seemed to rise and fall in pitch and that could get on a person’s nerves. (He had had the thought that perhaps it was the undulating hum that had caused the nightmares.)

  He would have gotten up and gotten his things together to leave, but for the sudden queasiness in his stomach. Something that had been happening to him most nights. As well as during the last few days. Flu symptoms. Evie had had it. Just after he had moved out. She had been off for a few days. So had a few of his team members.

  Then there was this pounding in his head that sometimes went with the upset stomach. He had it now. A slight pain behind his right eye that would eventually include the left eye. What he should do was take a few pain killers and maybe make some peppermint tea. That usually made him feel better. Afterwards he’d go to in to work.

  He would have done so. But suddenly, he began to shiver. Like his body temperature had shot up. Only his hands were like ice. And his face gushed a cold sweat.

  Then something so strange happened, he was sure he was hallucinating. The waves on the computer screen. They seemed to be moving. Crashing for real on some unseen shore. Crazy, he thought. Maybe he should see a doctor.

  He reached for the screen as this crazy thought entered his head: Maybe if he put his hand on the illusion, the waves would stop moving. Crazy because, of course, the waves weren’t really moving. It was just the effects of his feeling ill. Like when the room starts to spin because you’ve had too much to drink. But as he extended his hand, he stopped suddenly. Everything in his vision had begun to swirl as if he were about to pass out.

  Gripped by this nausea, his body shook when another strange thing happened. Or didn’t happen. He couldn’t move his outstretched hand. Couldn’t touch the screen. Couldn’t pull it back. It remained frozen in this position. His hand inches from the screen. Watching what appeared to be waves rolling across his monitor. Crazy! He had to talk to Evie when he got to work and get the name of the doctor she had recommended to him. These sleepless nights had to stop.

  But what happened next was even crazier. He suddenly had the creepy sensation that he had just been swept under by these waves. That he was drowning. And he didn’t dare breathe if he was under water. He held his breath as long as he could. Turning blue. Gagging. All the while watching those hallucinatory waves roll across his computer screen. Frightened as hell. And when he finally did exhale, he felt such a powerful sense of despair that he thought he was truly drowning. That his gasping breath was the life force leaving his body. His next breath became a moan. The sound of which he had no control in silencing. And the breath after that ─ a whispered, “No!” As if he were talking to the screen. “No,” he kept repeating without a sense of what it meant. Or for whom it was meant. Of, if indeed, it was even he who was speaking.

  But speaking aloud seemed to prod his senses. If he could just turn off his computer, he thought, then everything would get back to normal. It was this damn flu. People said it did strange things to you. Made you feel dizziness. Even depressed. Yes, colds did that to you, he thought, trying to reason away what was happening.

  But his hand still seemed frozen in mid-air as he struggled with trying to move it towards the screen. It began to shake from the effort. Like it was playing a game of hand wrestle with some unseen adversary. And his head continued to throb. While his stomach threatened to heave up its breakfast. Then suddenly, whatever resistance he had been trying to overcome vanished. With a sheepish smile, he sighed an exclamation of relief. This damn flu.

  So, he thought, he’d shut the computer down and to hell with the rolling waves. And to hell with the upset stomach or head ache. He’d leave for the city and, once over the bridge, stop at that café on 23rd Street and get an extra-large coffee.

  His fingers went down to the keyboard. To press the key that would shut down the computer. Only when his finger touched the key, he felt this electric shock of emotion that seemed to run up his arm and into his head. A skin-crawling sense of horror. Every hair on his head bristled with fear and panic. Before he had time to think about how he felt, he screamed. An inhuman-like scream. A cry of terror so other worldly that every muscle in his body twitched with fear. For when his finger ─ when it pressed the key, it went right into the keyboard! Sucked in and became one with the keyboard as if both had turned into a soft jelly-like substance, as if the keyboard and his fingers were merging into one mass. Instinctively, he thrust out his other hand towards the monitor to push himself free. But when his hand met its surface, it found the same horror. His palm pressed and then disappeared into more soft jelly-like substances. It was as if the computer screen and the keyboard were some kind of oozing, plastic quicksand. Sucking him in. His fingers disappearing into the keyboard. And his hand up to his wrist also becoming one with the screen. And with their disappearance came a sickening odor. A wispy mist that smelled like a rotting carcass.

  For a moment, his eyes became vacant. Zombie-like. Then they widened in horror. A powerful sense of loathing gripped him. Both for the throbbing mass and for himself. A repugnance for himself that so overwhelmed him, that he began to imagine all manner of gruesome ways to die. Something to end his life. To stop what was happening to him.

  He continued to struggle to free himself. He knew without forming the thought that his only escape from this terror was to get out of the building. As quickly as he could. Yes, that was it. It was the building that was trying to consume him. And he couldn’t let that happen. It would not only be the end of him but the end for everyone. Everything and everyone would be lost.

  Wild eyed, he looked around for an easy means of escape. He saw it. The window. He could leap to safety. That was it.

  That’s when he heard the voice. The voice of the girl in his dream. “Help me. Please.”

  His fist had already disappeared into the keyboard along with half of his other arm into the jellied screen when it seemed he had lost his fight to free himself. For now, it was not only the computer that had turned to this sickening jelly-like substance. The table and the chair he was sitting on ─ they had begun to soften. And now their surfaces were sucking at the rest of his body. While the mist around him made him want to retch.

  “Please, help me,” the voice called to him. “Please!” Crying out its plea over and over again.

  As the voice became louder, the computer screen and the table had begun to merge into one gelatinous mass of colored shapes that swirled and pulsated like bubbling lava. And out of this mass, a face began to form. The face in the dream. First an undefined oval that swirled around a center point like a newly formed star. Its pulsating motion matching the rhythm of his heart. It’s black eyes still unattached on either side like nebulae blobs. It’s lips, just a slash of black at the bottom of the form. Its hair slowly coalescing out of what was left of the waves in the monitor. Coming together into long strands of blackness. All bubbling away as they formed into the dream girl’s face. While his body writhed motionless in terror. While the girl’s pleas gushed from the slash of blackness as it became two lips. “Help me. Please.”

  He stared at the image. Unable to turn his head away. Unable
to free himself. He felt such an uncontrollable sense of loathing ─ both for what was happening to the monitor and for himself becoming one with it ─ that if had had a knife in his hand, he would have plunged it into his heart. He tried to shriek away the sensation but he couldn’t make a sound. And when something did eventually erupt from his lips, it was the dream face’s words. Not his own. “Please. Help me.” With these words, both their lips gave out a great sigh. Like a death rattle. Then another sigh of despair. Then another. Of hopelessness.

  Suddenly. As swiftly as the horror had begun. It was over. The surfaces around him ─ the table, the chair, the computer screen, the keyboard ─ they hardened and became their real selves again. His arms, still shaking from the effort to get free, shuttered violently. They fell to his side. Lifeless. His head crashed onto the table top. Lifeless. And the voice’s face ─ the dream girl ─ it began to break apart into indistinct shapes. Its eyes and lips swept under the foam of the last wave that rolled across the screen image. The motion of the water pulling at the dream girl’s hair until it came away from her face. Until there was just a photograph of waves on the desktop.

  3

  “Connie. Quit staring at her. It’s not going to do you any good.” Marlene gave him a pat on the arm.

  It had been a hell-of-a morning. Waking up an hour after his alarm had gone off. His head pressed onto the keyboard like it was some pillow. It had taken him several breaths to realize he wasn’t at his desk at work. Several more as he tried to remember last night. Why he was still at his computer.

  He had fallen asleep a number of times at his desk at work. But at home? Never. Then there was the splitting headache that had woken him up. Splitting, because it felt like it was right down the middle of his forehead. He added to his list of morning irritations the lukewarm shower he had taken. (The other tenants he had met had warned him that the maintenance people were having troubles with the hot water system.) Plus there was the hellish drive into the city. (Battling road rage BMW drivers and waiting for traffic cops to clear a lane on the bridge because of a number of accidents.) It might have ended ─ the dark mood of his morning ─ after the weekly team presentations to the suits where ─ because Hal still hadn’t showed up for work ─ he had been pressed to give his teams presentation. (He hated talking in public.) That might have been the end of these irritations except after the meeting, when he had gone up to Evie to ask her the name of the doctor she had told him about, she had pretended not to hear him. Suddenly laughing at something Habib had said to her.

  “I’m not staring at her.” He gave Marlene a hard look.

  But he was. Sitting next to Marlene and Vince. After work. At Eddie’s Speakeasy and Karaoke Bar. The pub on the main floor of their building. They sat in a booth in one of its darkened corners. Below imitation tommy guns on the wall and photos dating back over a hundred years to the Prohibition Era. Billy Chan (the Eddie of Eddie’s Speakeasy) claimed it had indeed once been a hangout for city gangsters during prohibition. But there was no proof to that. And no one who came into the bar cared, anyway, since there were never any prohibitions on how much you could drink.

  Evie was sitting several booths away. With Habib and several other male twenty-somethings. Unlike Connie, she liked that her strands of hair wanted to cover one eye. It was a practiced look. Her signature look since the fashion of the day was either short hair for woman or the retro bed-head look that proclaimed you were a “wild” girl.

  Vince, who was on Connie’s team, was also staring but not at Evie. At the new girl who the suits had gotten to replace Mai Lin. He, like most of the coders, including Connie, were twenty-somethings. (Marlene was considered the grand-dame of the team, and even the whole company, because she was forty-something. Perhaps even fifty-something.) And it seemed, it was the duty of all twenty-somethings to not only work eighty to a hundred hours a week but to ogle anyone of the opposite sex. Connie and Evie had been like that. Until they had gotten together.

  Marlene patted his arm again. “It’s not your recurring nightmare, dearie, that made her break it off.” She had a loud voice that matched her clothes. A pony tail that was out of date. And a smile that you wished your mother had.

  “Shhh. She’ll hear you.” Connie purposely turned his head away from Evie’s direction.

  Vince was motioning to the new girl to join their table. He wasn’t like the smooth-talking Romeos in marketing, but he liked to pretend he was.

  “Dearie, you’ve got to wake up and smell the roses. Little Evie was not what she seemed. And look at her now.”

  The new girl sat down at their table. She wore a baseball cap of the local team ─ turned around, naturally ─ because someone had told her that’s what all the cool coders wore. But ball caps were yesterday’s wardrobe. No one would be caught dead in one now.

  The three of them greeted her with “hi’s” and friendly smiles.

  “How’re you finding your first day? Vicky isn’t it?” Marlene asked.

  “Yes. Okay, I guess. Just getting used to everything.”

  “Have a beer,” Vince said, motioning her with the beer in his hand. An attempt at a cool smile. Only he spilled some of his beer onto Marlene’s arm.

  “Vince!” she complained. He tried to wipe up the spill with his sleeve, but she pushed his hand away. “Mind your beer, Vince.” To Vicky, she said, “Your first job?” Vicky nodded.

  Connie was again looking at Evie.

  “Do you sing?” Vince asked her.

  “What?” She gave him an incredulous look.

  “Oh, don’t mind him,” Marlene said. “Vince’s our Karaoke super star.”

  She shrugged, not sure how to answer. “Sing? I guess. But not in front of people.”

  “Too bad,” Vince said. “We’d make a great duo.”

  Marlene gave him her don’t act like an asshole look.

  Connie began to slide out of the booth. “Excuse me,” he said to Vicky who had taken the seat beside him.

  “Connie, what are you doing?” Marlene put a soft restraining hand on his arm.

  Vicky stood up to let Connie out. “I should be going, anyway.”

  “Connie. Don’t make a fool of yourself.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No, you gotta stay, Vicky.” Vince was too far from her to put a restraining hand on her arm. But if he had been beside her, he would have. “You can’t leave yet. This is our second home. Where we do our real work.”

  “Oh. Well. I can’t stay long. I just thought I’d introduce myself to everyone. I didn’t get a chance today.” She sat down again. Tentatively. “I’m meeting a friend soon who’s going to give me a ride home. And …” From the look on her face, she was glad she was sitting next to Marlene and not Vince, who was motioning for the waitress to come to their table.

  “I like your hat, dearie. Lovely,” Marlene told her. Not bothering to hide the frown on her face. Vicky took off the cap.

  “Marlene, order me another beer.”

  “Connie, don’t go over there.” He shrugged the shrug of a man who couldn’t get the woman he liked out of his head. “Oh, what am I going to do with you?”

  “Don’t mother me, Marlene.”

  “Well, somebody should. You should’ve left her months ago.”

  “I didn’t leave her. She left me.”

  He walked over to her table.

  “Pardon us for hanging out our dirty laundry, Vicky. But there are no secrets among us toilers.” She shook her head at Connie. “Oh well. A fool and his girlfriend are soon parted.” She patted Vicky’s arm. “Don’t mind me.” She smiled. “I’m the mother hen to all these children.”

  Vicky crunched her cap in her lap and felt uncomfortable. The way a person feels walking in on a private conversation.

  Connie stood by Evie’s table. Waited for a break in the conversation, which was mostly punctuated by over eager male laughs. She didn’t look up. He tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey!”

  She turned and smiled at hi
m as if she hadn’t realized he had been standing there. Which she had. “How’re you doing, Connie?”

  “Good.” He tried to ignore the condescension in her voice. He couldn’t. “Can I speak to you for a moment? In private.” That stopped the conversation at the table.

  “Oh, Connie. I don’t think this is a good time.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “Look, Connie.”

  She glanced at the others at her table. Four males. Two on either side of her. All of whom were having trouble keeping their eyes away from her plunging neckline. All of whom wore the latest men’s hair style and nearly identical hoodies so that they looked like matched manikins in a store window display. And Evie, the main attraction ─ dressed in tight, strategically torn jeans, an Indian print blouse, unbuttoned to advantage, and just enough makeup to make it appear she wasn’t wearing any.

  “Connie. As one friend to another, we’ve got nothing to say to each other in private. In public, you can talk to me all you want. Have a seat. Join us.”

  He had become a fool. At least for love. For Evie, his first serious relationship. But not foolish enough to be one male in five at her table.

  She gave him an encouraging smile. (The smile she used for all males. Before, during and now after their relationship.) But he wavered. Then when he looked like his wavering was wavering, she dropped her smile. “Do you know anything about Hal?” she asked him. “What’s happened to him?”

  “About Hal? No. He didn’t show up today.”

  “I know. I phoned his place several times. All morning. I’m worried about him.”