Every time I went to Rei’s Lake, I told myself it would be the last time I’d bother.
And yet, whether it took a day, a year, or something in between, I’d find myself shuffling my sneakers along the tire trails that snaked their way to the algae-crusted watering hole my dad called “the critter shitter” for, well, obvious reasons. I was never fortunate enough to run into any of the fauna that made the lake their refuse bin, but I didn’t have any reason to doubt my dad and any of his axioms.
Today’s trek felt different, though.
Ominous, almost.
I had left my studio apartment at daybreak, with just a rucksack with some water, a few snacks, and my journal and pens to take with me. I had a sweatshirt (“Go Red D vils, with the E having faded so much over the years that it wasn’t even legible) and blue jeans on, but I couldn’t resist slipping on some sandals, even with the path usually having at least one patch of mud to trek through. My mom always said I was the “hippie with the flippies” when I insisted on wearing flip flops in non-sensical situations, but it was more of a familiarity thing. I liked my routine, my structure, and when I was a tot, I wore sandals and flip-flops. So, off to Brent’s I went in my flippies.
I always went to Brent’s Diner before I went to the lake, as to get to the walking path, you had to walk through his acreage. He never once would’ve minded if I had just sauntered on through without asking, but I’ve been eternally cautious and polite when it comes to even trite matters. I’ve even had Brent tell me to fuck off when I tried to pay for a chicken sandwich that had been incinerated to charcoal briquette status by one of his strung-out fry cooks. I just added the $6 to the tip instead. (Brent attempted to hand the $6 back to me the next time I ate there. I politely declined.)
I pushed the door to the Diner open, catching a strong whiff of fried fish as the air whooshed out. It was “Fry-day” for Brent, meaning he always had plenty of catfish and crappie waiting for patrons, but with a particularly overcast and misty day outside, only a single couple was inside at the moment, while Brent lazily wiped off the countertop. I elected to not bother sitting down, so I wouldn’t be inclined to sit and eat prior to my writing time.
“Heya, Brent.”
Brent didn’t stop cleaning the counter, but did turn his ample bodyweight over to look me in the eye.
“Oh, hey Luce. You see this shit about Prather?” Brent gestured towards the grainy TV screen, where a man in a chemist’s outfit was speaking at a lectern.
“I just try and ignore it, honestly. Shit just puts me on edge, and I’m edgy enough as is.” I paused for a few moments, swallowing up the courage to ask the same question I’d asked numerous times before. “You good if I go back to the lake?”
Brent just nodded.
“Alright. Maybe I’ll stop back by after and get a piece of pie.”
“Yeah, like hell you will!” Brent said with a chuckle, and I took that opportunity to walk back out into the crisp November air, leaving Brent with his dishrag and the chemist.
A thirty-minute jaunt later, I was making my way to the final few crests before the lake came into view. The thin air helped make the trek a little easier than usual, so for once I didn’t feel like I was caked in sweat before even making it to the lake. On rare occasion, a hunter or trekker would be on the path with me, and I’d have to avoid eye contact and just shuffle along, but thankfully it was a quiet day when the green and brown mire appeared in the horizon. I finished the journey with a huff, and nestled myself into the familiar weeping willow tree that I always spent my time under. I took out my journal, a simple, non-descript notebook of 147 pages (three were lost in a tragic spider crushing incident when the willow deposited a daddy longlegs directly on my shoulder) and began to sketch out my writing plans for the day.
air up there
potential poem?
find a way to not sound like a dipshit
“LUCY!”
I dropped my pen into the muck, shaken by the booming voice of Brent.
“You need to get back into town, NOW!”
Brent’s breath was haggard, fleeting, as he tried to lumber his way through the trails leading back to the clearing where his old Chevy pickup awaited.
“Brent, what the fuck is going on? Why won’t you tell me anything?” I said between steps. Brent didn’t stop, instead sputtering out, “You’ll see…when we get…back,” over a one-minute period, stopping between each few words to hack in some quick breaths.
I had no idea what could be so urgent.
Is mom finally dead?
Did Brayden finally lose it and do something criminal again?
Is the Diner on fire?
Is Brent about to take me hostage or try and fuck with me?
A million more thoughts kept rolling through the meadows of my mind as we reached the clearing, but those four kept finding their way to the forefront.
We reached the truck, and I noticed that Brent hadn’t even bothered to shut his door before running out to get me. This alarmed me quite a bit. I hopped in the passenger’s seat, and before I could buckle in, Brent had slammed on the gas, sending me careening into the door with a dull thud.
“Dude, what the fu-“
“LUCY, SHUT UP. PLEASE.” Brent’s eyes were distinctly sheened with a glaze of terror, and the tone of his words, not menacing, more hopeless and curt, kept my complaints to a minimum as we torched our way to the Diner.
Brent unlocked the doors to the Diner (“Family Emerg/Closed 4 the Day,” read the sign on the door) and he barged right to the counter, grabbing the TV remote and flicking through the channels. All of them had the same variant of the same news program playing, with a press conference being held somewhere not on US soil. Regardless, the speaker was using perfect English, and Brent wildly gesticulated at the TV, trying to make closed captions come on for a few moments before they flicked onto the screen in black and white.
“-discovery is the zeitgeist of what we’ve been trying to accomplish for so very long. We have achieved a way to wipe the slate of the human brain completely clean. Not a lobotomy, no, a simple serum, injected safely in the arm, that erases everything about your character and gives us a chance to let the user define themselves any way they choose.”
A reporter in the front row of a throng of attendees was allowed to ask a question, and he threw a curveball right off the bat.
“So, Doctor Haringway, how many people have you already tested your ‘ZeroSerUm’ on so far?”
A fair question, given that in the past ten years, the amount of leeway doctors and medical groups had to experiment on humans had increased a hundred-fold in the wake of a sudden lack of technological and medical advancements.
Haringway wiped a bead of sweat off his greying eyebrow, then took the time to wipe his fogged up glasses down before responding.
“Well, would you like to meet one of them?”
“Them, sir? How many is ‘them?’“
Haringway paused.
“Five hundred and forty. No fatalities. A few minor setbacks here and there, but…let me just introduce you to Izanami.”
Izanami, a short, stocky blonde girl with a patient’s gown, appeared from behind Haringway. Izanami was a caucasian woman, but then she spoke.
“Minasan, kon’nichiwa!”
Haringway turned to Izanami with a smirk. “Miss Johnson, these fine people would prefer if you spoke English, just to make things easier for their viewers.”
Izanami giggled, then immediately switched from a timid Japanese voice to a normal, valley-girlesque speech. “Oh, my bad! Hello, everyone! My name is, er, was Cathy Johnson, until I had this infusion. Now, I’m Izanami Johnson!”
The reporter jotted something down in a notepad, then asked, “Miss Johnson, what do you remember from-“
“NO! Ahem, uh, I’m sorry, but there’s a protocol for how these things work. One thing at a time, you know. So until that’s resolved, let me ask the questions.”
CLICK
Brent shut the TV off and turned to me.
“Do you see this fucking shit? They’re gonna fucking wipe the minds of everyone now! They can just wipe all of us out with a quick fucking jab of a needle! This is the end of days, Luce, the end-o-fuckin-days!”
I blinked a few times while looking up at the now blank TV.
“Might be nice,” I said.
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