💯 Story Challenge

Metaversal Kraken of the Heart

№77 —

"Look deeper", came the disembodied voice in his head.

He knew she was driving but even so he didn’t like ceding control. Not that he knew where he was going anyway. He had to let go. He had to trust.

Never mind how much a deep part of him screamed that it would all end in betrayal.

He looked down at his hand, not his hand, but the hand of his childhood self. The pudgy little fingers unclenched to show a pink corkscrew shell.

He heard a voice, too young to be his mother but when he turned to look, it was her. In reality he was older than she was in this memory. She was beautiful and attractive, a traitorous part of his mind noticed.

He shoved the thought down and listened to her voice, “Listen to it honey, you can hear the ocean.”

He looked down into his little hand. He trusted her so much then, he could feel it. A warmth in his chest radiating outward.

God how much did he miss that feeling.

He raised the shell to his ear.

He heard the ocean.

And something else.

“Go deeper.”

He pushed the shell to his ear until the sharp edge bit into the soft skin and cartilage of his four-year-old body.

He pushed harder still until he overcame the resistance of his mental framework of physics. The moment he rewrote the laws his ear went into the shell, then his head and his whole body.

And then he was falling.

Falling and tumbling, head over heels, and laughing as the mirror-like surface of a lake rushed up to him. A world of flat glass reflecting lazy clouds and a small dark speck that grew and grew until he slammed into the water.

Every bone in his mental body shattered, a flame of pain erased his soul and scattered the atoms of his mind everywhere.

“Come back, you’re not done.”

He came back to himself, floating on his back, staring up at the clouds.

“Good boy.”

He rankled at that comment and started sinking, the water grew thickening, more viscous, his anger fuelled the thickening to quicksand and he sank.

Gasping for air, he sank beneath the surface.

Help me!

His out stretched hand still above the surface felt the last cool freedom of the air before it too sank beneath the surface. He held his lips closed and refused to breath in the sand-filled water.

Swim.

He tried to level out, to swim out. He fought himself not to thrash not to panic.

But he failed. He failed and he failed and he failed. Panic exploded from his core and he opened his mouth. Thick liquid rushed in as a powerful limb yanked him upward.

His body broke free of the surface propelled by a muscular tentacled limb. It held him fast and crushed his body as it cast him onto the surface of a wooden ship.

“Damn you! This is too much,” he formed a harpoon in his mind, at once it was in his hand and he hurled it at the maw of the kraken. Never mind, it was his saviour.

He knew it was her and he hated her. She’d betrayed him after all.

The harpoon struck in the center of a large soulful staring eye, it popped and burst into a gooey shower of blood and viscera. The sight and his act sickened him.

He fell to his knees and vomited.

He emptied his stomach of everything he could remember eating and everything else. He vomited bile. He dry heaved and the rage burned back inside of him and he spewed forth angry bees.

A great swarm of them shot into the air like a massive migratory host of swallows, the bees grew and twisted and attacked the kraken.

"Reset," her voice calm and patient.

Damn her control.

He was on his back, a pain in his hand. It consumed him and he writhed on the floor, howling and bellowing.

Not bellowing, but roaring. Raging until his breath was ragged.

He spent himself and lay panting, his tongue lolling outside his mouth.

Looking up at the sky with its lazy clouds he noticed savannah grass and acacia trees. And a light tickle on his stomach and then a small figure standing up on its hind legs on his furred chest.

“I’m trying to help you, why are you fighting so much?”

“Ok, ok.” he whispered finally. He lay back and unclenched his paw.

The mouse, disappeared and the a moment later the pain in his paw vanished. He felt something in his chest shift, a trauma in his mind moved.

Just a fraction.

“End session.”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“We made progress today. Remember it’s my job to stir things up. But you did well today, don’t beat yourself up. I’ll see you next week.”

He removed his headset and left the therapy pod, nodding to the receptionist-bot, he palmed the payment on the counter and walked out into the acid rain of evening.

“Court-mandated therapy be damned,” he muttered as he stepped into a waiting government black town car.

“Where to sir?” it asked.

“Back to the oval office, I need to get back to work.”

💯 Story Challenge (77/100)

Zane Dickens can't stop thinking our only hope is to merge with the machine.

Bradan, thank you for the nudge, I'd been gathering way too much moss. I claim 10 points but I'll go with your final judgement. ;-)

And dear editor, Jann, please accept my story and subsequent challenge to write your own Monday Mashup. Or FJCMontenegro perhaps another cyberpunk interpretation of these constraints?