Ego (Part One of Two)

The Blend procedure: his mind will be with you just for a little while. It won't be intrusive.

EGO

Part One

A Susurrant Horror story

“And this is Mr. Alcedon.”

The man stirs slowly, as though he were in another world entirely. He shakes his low head. “I’d prefer Herman. Just call me Herman.” There is a deflatedness to his mannerisms, and his speech is laconic, but nonetheless as he observes me flatly, I see that there is a spark there. “Come to meet the patient, then?”

It is awful to say, but there is a non-human and shocking desuetude to Herman. Not just his manner, but his body. His skin is pale and sallow, and almost bleeds into the white-painted walls behind. Every part of him is tired, and his breath comes shallow and laboured. There is a tinge of rot, and ending, to him.

He notices me looking. “Yes. It’s not looking good, is it?”

I am unsure as to what to say. Mr. Alcedon – Herman, that is – is the one paying for all of this. “It’s…nice to meet you.” Not that that answers the question. I wonder vaguely if the man’s mind is confused, and he considers me to be a doctor. But that defiant spark…

The nurse smiles sweetly. “Alex, as you know – Herman will be your partner for the Blend program. We don’t always facilitate requests to meet, but in this case…well, Herman here is an exception.”

I am slightly confused. I had not requested any meeting. If I had simply slept through this entire process and put it behind me, it would’ve been a victory. Then I consider that it might have been this man, Herman – cancer-ravaged and almost-defeated – that requested the meeting.

He inspects me more, through the silence. “You seem healthy.” He sniffs toward the nurse. “She wouldn’t let me know too much. Which I said was fucking ridiculous. I’m going to know everything soon, right?” His eyes are like dark wildfire and I shirk slightly with the intensity.

The nurse intervenes. “We don’t like there to be a lot of complexity before a Blend. Knowing too much – having pre-conceptions – might affect the process.”

I decide that I have to speak. This is all new, and unusual, but something has to be said. “Herman…I want to thank you. It’s a lot of money. Thanks.” I am earnest. It is a lot of money. I don’t quite yet feel it burning in my pocket, as there are too many unknowns before it’s mine…but there’s something to look forward to. A way out of the debt. I don’t want to one day be old and suffering like this man, but with nowhere to turn. Money always helps – I’m sure of it.

Herman nods and smiles graciously, dark eyes twinkling. “You are welcome. You’re the one doing me a favour, after all. From my side, it’s just money.”

I nod, and find myself shuffling my feet. “You’ve got a lot of money, then, I take it?” I know it’s a vulgar thing to say, and as soon as it comes out, I expect pushback. Instead, there’s a raucous laugh.

“Ha! I suppose that’s a fair comment. But yes – I do. I was lucky enough to be an artist.” He looks wistful. “Still am, I suppose. Do you draw? Paint at all?” The nurse moves to intervene again, but I respond nonetheless by shaking my head. “Ah. Shame. Well – it’s still a gift. Art is what makes us human, I think – gives us our soul - and that can come in many different ways.”

I nod. It isn’t that I feel unsafe, really – but uncertain. As if great, weighty decisions have been made without me. I speak to both of them, but primarily to the nurse. “I know I asked this before but…will I notice anything? Will it be…intrusive?”

Though it was not directed at him per se, Herman responds laconically, as if he has himself asked the same question before now. “So far as I understand, it’ll be stranger for me. You’ll barely notice.”

The nurse swallows her reservations at this dialogue and continues with her sickly-sweet airs. “You needn’t worry, Alex. We call it the Blend, but it won’t feel like that. Mr. Alcedon’s consciousness will be housed within you, but there will be no interchange. Have you heard of heterotopic grafting?” I shake my head: of course I haven’t. “It’s used, for example, when a new ear or appendage is created. It’s affixed to the body at a place it doesn’t usually occupy, so it can receive blood and grow. Only then is it moved to where it needs to be.”

I nod cautiously. “So Herman will be…connected, but not forever?”

Herman grunts with a tinge of moroseness. “Nothing is forever, Alex. I’ll just be with you for a little while.” He is so pale, I consider.

The nurse smiles. “Mr. Alcedon will be on his own journey. You’ll be bonded, but it will just be for a short time. It will help Mr. Alcedon with his…transition.” She continues, assessing us both levelly but with a continued, almost uncannily saccharine smile. “I believe the team is ready. Shall we proceed?”

It is no different to being asleep.

Except for the colours. They’re so bright, and vivid – at first I think they are breaths of magnificent fire across the blackness that is my sleeping reality. Then those fires drip into splashes of paint. I think that there are colours that I couldn’t even begin to identify.

I wonder, in my torpor, if those colours are Herman. If the artist has become explosions of paint inside my very mind. If I am seeing the tethering of his soul to mine.

Just for a little while.

--

When I stir, it is with a degree of comfort. I am aware that the facility is heavily recommended for its patient care, but I expected this to extend more to Herman than to myself. After all – I’m being paid for this, not paying.

Four hundred thousand pounds. That colour of green buoys me. It can do so much for me. For my mum. I hadn’t considered what to tell her – I know she wouldn’t approve of this. When I think too much of it myself, I feel the green of sick instead. She’d be worried about my soul, I think – which is crazy.

Isn’t it?

I won’t tell her. After all, Herman won’t be here for long.

--

It begins with a drip.

They discharge me, but I feel a wetness in my mind. Something slick, sliding around – and yet it’s hard to describe it as a physical sensation. Some remote, removed wetness. I don’t know. I mention this to the nurse.

“Brains are funny things, Alex. It’s just the procedure taking hold. Everything was successful.” I note that she has become slightly more perfunctory now that they have their proportion of the medical fee, and now that Herman is gone.

He’s gone.

Isn’t he?

“Where is Herman? Mr. Alcedon, I mean? Did he…?”

She begins to pass me over to the hospital porter, even as she talks. There’s a harsh scent of cleaning chemicals pervading the corridor, biting my nostrils. I wonder what has been cleaned up. “He has moved on.”

But he hasn’t, has he.

The collection of bones and skin and tired meat is gone, but Herman is here. Is he that wet slime that seems to be everywhere in my mind, wrapping itself around it like a pool of rainwater?

Or like paint?

I am in the taxi home before I think to ask about the other Herman. The one that is a passenger in my brain now. I inspect the ride app distantly and without absorbing the information, and I wonder if Herman is reading it.

The roads are busy, and as the taxi pulls over at my flat, and I find myself seething a simple, “About time.” The driver looks at me with mild surprise as I exit.

I am surprised myself.

That does not seem like something I would say.

--

I dream of green again. Thick gobs of paint dripping and merging into something else. In this dream, they combine into something else and begin to take a colourful form. The form of a person, though only in strange abstract.

“This will do,” I dream myself saying, but there is an alienness to it. The figure-of-paint dances in shadow and begins to coat the walls with more of its viscosity. I feel that I am observing myself in the dream, from very far away.

“This will do nicely.”

Be sure to check back next week for the conclusion to this original horror story.