Stretch

By Alex Moore

First. Knives.

Everything is black.

Perhaps it is raining. An old man sits on a garden sundial, his blackened feet dangling a few inches from the loamy earth. His wings are too large for his body, and too extravagant. Golden wires and metallic mesh adorn his putrid flesh and his hair, masking his age. What might have appeared ancient and wise has been bastardized into something merely old. His eyes do not exist.

And I cannot see him, not in the physical sense of the word. He is less than my shadow, as I am vaguely aware of my shadow. The garden and the old man dissipate into nothingness as I find myself staring at an empty sky, vainly attempting to read the position of the sun. It is staring back at me, glowing more passionately than the haughtiest deity. Its eyes are blacker than the deepest hole.

And everything is black.

A knife appears in my hand. It means nothing to me now, as far as deep meaning might be applied. No deep meaning at all; it's merely fear jabbing me in the gut, paralyzing me. A long-running, irrational, stupid phobia. Aichmophobia, I think it's called. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I cannot look directly at the knife. My arm goes numb. My grip loosens.

Knives.

Knives, knives, knives. Absolutely everywhere. Everything is red, and very sharp. Jagged.

KNIves, KNIves, KNIves, sliding beneath my flesh, prying off my muscles

The old man screams and drags his bladed fingers down his face, rending wrinkled flesh as if it were air

KNIVES KNIVES KNIVES KNIVES KNIVES

This place is making it worse, this place, oh this place!

Vincent?

The walls bled white as Vincent Barlow was startled awake. He fidgeted in his little white chair.

Little white plastic chair, lined up in a boring symmetrical column. White walls – too white, blinding white. White, spotless, glossy floor. White tables and ashtrays, white magazines with white text. White "pick a number" machine with little white number tickets. White flat-screen television projected a silent slideshow of surrealist paintings, all redone with a white palette. It was odd to see Salvador Dali's Christus Hypercubus completely re-imagined in shades of white, and slightly off-white, and luminous white, and grays that looked more white than gray.

"What is this place?" Vincent had asked the redheaded receptionist when he'd first walked in. She had blood-red hair, matching lips, matching nails, matching eyes. She flashed him an entirely false grin.

"Waiting room, sweetie pie," she said. Her voice was too pleasant, if that was possible.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Waiting room. It's a room where you wait for something."

"Wait for what?" Vincent muttered half-facetiously, taking a seat in one of the hard lumps of white plastic that sort of resembled a chair. He fiddled with his laminated reporter's pass for a minute before nodding off. The phosphor-dot pictures in his head were innocent enough, to begin with. The three-thousand dollar sum he'd be receiving for his exclusive story. Splashing around in a hot tub full of beautiful, splendid, over-exaggerated money. Paradise, for once. No more dank, rotting hovel of an apartment. He could pay off his mountainous electricity debts, and live forever on beautiful white sands, sipping margaritas and having dice-roll sex with gorgeous women, sitting atop a golden throne, happy, and utterly alive.

And then… a garden. It was a garden in the truest sense, in that Vincent could smell the flavors of the earth melting and converging and coexisting, bubbling together in a spectral cesspool of – incredibly – miracles. Life was potent there, in that sudden and irrelevant garden of darkness. He felt strangely comfortable, despite being dethroned from his sandy Paradise.

It was all a nightmare after that.

The redheaded woman grinned at him, puckering her lips. "You alright, sweetie pie? You looked half-past Styx just then, all screams and moans."

Vincent shook his head to clear it, and then wearily glanced at the receptionist. "I think I'm alright."

She nodded and turned back to her computer screen, as if it had been telling her a wonderful secret that Vincent's nightmare had interrupted. Vincent tried to get comfortable enough to sleep again, but the chair always found some way to poke him in a bad spot. He began to wonder how he fell asleep in the first place.

He gazed around the room, looking for a clock – there. It was still a bit too early. Vincent idly thumbed through a blank issue of Reader's Digest, checked his text messages, finished thumbing the magazine, and checked the white clock on the wall. Three hours had passed.

A man materialized in a nearby doorway and beckoned him inside.

They took an elevator way, way down.

They stood side-by-side. No introductions. Wordlessly, the man pressed in a series of commands on a glossy touch screen in the elevator wall. It was a peculiar elevator (but then everything was peculiar in this place) and the ceiling was deeply domed. There were no buttons to speak of, merely the tiny touch screen on the door. Vincent could feel the air become thin as they plummeted into some dark place beneath the Earth.

Three or four minutes later, they emerged. A white hallway, of course. No doors or panels or carpets, just a hallway, all glossy and sleek.

"Hello, Vincent Barlow. I am called Dr. Bing," said the man as he led Vincent down the hall. His lab coat seemed to flutter in a nonexistent breeze. "You shall address me as Dr. Bing."

Vincent was thrown off by the man's sudden introduction, but he kept his wits.

"Sure thing, Dr. Bing," he said. It came out wrong.

"And none of that, either. There's not enough room for that, in the place we're going," the doctor said. His features were made of the earth. Rough, dark skin the color and brokenness of old clay pottery. Eyes like syrupy primordial swamps. He was ageless and relatively emotionless, and his raven black hair was braided into a thick, shiny ponytail that reached his waist. Vincent could just barely make out a gruesome scar running along his throat.

They strolled down the hallway… no, only Dr. Bing strolled. Dr. Bing strolled, and stared forward, and kept his face locked in an entirely contented frown. Vincent began to cry in agony.

One hour lasted eons. They walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, the scenery unchanging. White walls, melting into one another. Rest came slowly in the form of hallucinations, of mirages and of nightmares. The hallway never ended, no matter how deeply Vincent became involved in a one-sided conversation with Dr. Bing, no matter how much he complained, no matter how hard he tried to daydream about white sands – no! – nice, normal brown sands and a golden throne and beautiful women and a hot tub full of money. The hallway would not end. And Vincent inevitably collapsed, plummeting into dreamless darkness.

Dr. Bing sighed and, rather impatiently, tapped Vincent on the forehead. He awoke with a muffled scream.

"We're almost there, Mr. Barlow. On your feet. You can't afford to look scruffy. Not now."

Vincent realized that he was lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling of a dark red, empty room. His shirt was damp with sweat. Gathering all the energy he could muster, he pushed himself onto his feet. His eyes were so used to bright white surfaces that it was actually a bit difficult to see now – but he was grateful, and he told himself that. Grasping the glossy red wall so that he wouldn't wobble, he slowly followed Dr. Bing through the room.

A wide glass panel made up one of the walls, but he couldn't see anything out of it. Just black. Perhaps he heard faint screaming on the other side, but there was no way to truly tell.

Vincent stumbled forward, quickly getting his bearings back. "Where are we going, again?"

"Secret experiment, Mr. Barlow. Just beyond this door."

Dr. Bing was pointing to a black door with a crude paper sign taped onto it. Vincent took a deep breath, pushed himself off of the wall and carefully walked forward, squinting to read the sign:

WARNING TO ALL VISITORS TRAVELING BEYOND THIS POINT

Due to heavy computer processing requirements, we are currently employing a portion of your unused brain capacity for backup processing. Please ignore any hallucinations, voices or unusual dreams you may experience. Avoid all concentration-intensive tasks until further notice. If you can read this paragraph, please disregard all previous statements.

Thank you for your cooperation.

-STAFF 26443

Vincent stared at it for a few moments before giving up. The words all seemed to blend together in a broken mesh of foreign symbols and squiggly lines. "What language is this written in?"

"American English, Mr. Barlow," said the doctor, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his stony lips. "Don't worry about it. Come, follow me."

Dr. Bing pressed his fingers against the door and it silently slid open, recognizing his presence. They walked inside.

"Dr. Friedmont?" Bing called out.

It was a staggeringly cavernous room, about the size of a high school auditorium. White everywhere, but it was off-white, a crusty white. Easy on the eyes, for once.

It was entirely empty, save for an enormous glass pod sitting in the center. Thick white wires, rods and tubes ran from the pod to the ceiling, making an intimidating nosebleed tower that immediately caught Vincent's attention.

And at the base of the tower, inside the little glass pod, was a man. Vincent didn't notice him at first; the tower of wires, pipes, antennae and tubing demanded most of his concentration. Upon close inspection, the man was sleeping peacefully. He was very rough-looking, with short, uncombed hair and a pudgy face that had seen a lot of fights. A sickening amount of wires was connected to his head.

"Is this Dr. Friedmont?" Vincent asked. The man reminded him of a videogame villain.

"Of course not," Dr. Bing said. "That is."

Vincent turned around and… stared. "That's Dr. Friedmont?"

A short figure with shaggy, chopped-up black hair stood at a panel on the far side of the room, rapidly tapping buttons.

"Let's meet the doctor," Dr. Bing said, ushering Vincent forward. It took a surprising amount of time to walk across the enormous room.

Taptaptap… Dr. Friedmont was typing extraordinarily quickly, completely absorbed by the bright lights of the panel.

"Dr. Friedmont?"

No response. The typing continued, and the figure twitched.

"This is Vincent Barlow, our VIP for the morning."

Still no response. Dr. Bing gasped as he realized that the doctor was wearing ear plugs. "Ah! I've entirely forgotten about the safety precautions!"

Bing tapped Friedmont's shoulder, who suddenly whipped around and…

"Hey! Vincent B-b-barlow, I was expecting you!"

Vincent's words were caught in his throat – he wasn't expecting Dr. Friedmont to be a woman, let alone one so young. The doctor seemed to be in her early twenties, and had a pale, eerie glow to her. Her voice was a series of unsure shrieks and stutters.

She was surprisingly nice to look at, and Vincent took a quick moment to stare. She was a petite, small-breasted girl with eyes so used to fluorescent lights that they had been shocked gray. Her jet-black hair was hacked to a boyish shortness, and had a scattered asymmetry that Vincent felt oddly attracted to. Her mouth hung open ever so slightly, and her chrome braces glinted in the pale light of the room. Underneath her lab coat she wore a blue and yellow floral-print dress.

"You look a little familiar, Miss… er…"

He forgot her name.

"Hang on," the girl said, removing her earplugs. They were grayish-black and absurdly long, and came out after a few seconds of gentle tugging. They made a sickening slurping noise as she removed them. "Ah, sorry about that! My name's Doctor Lila F-friedmont."

"Hello, Doctor… uh…" Vincent said. He'd forgotten her name as soon as she said it.

"Just call me Lila," she said, jutting her little hand out in front of her. She seemed slightly unsure whether it was the correct gesture or not, and she glanced at Dr. Bing. Shake hands, right? Yeah, that's it.

"Lila then," Vincent said, shaking her cold, slender hand. It was like greeting a mannequin. "I'm sorry, have we met before?"

She smiled a basement-dweller's smile, that broken and amateurish smile of a person unused to new people. "I don't know," was all she said. She seemed to be trying her hardest not to stutter. She shot Dr. Bing another frightened glance, and then turned back to her work.

"So, I guess you're c-curious about the pod, huh Vince?"

Vincent turned and stared at the enormous tower of tubes and wiring, accented by the little glass dome at the bottom. "You could definitely say that."

"Well this," Lila said, running towards the pod and raising her arms for effect, "This is my b-baby. This is my youthfulness, my cause. This is what I've been – oh, I'm sorry Dr. Bing – what we've been slaving over for the past—"

"He doesn't need to know its development cycle, Dr. Friedmont," said Dr. Bing, calling after her. Their voices echoed.

"Aw, but I like b-b-building it up!" Lila yelled, leaping and skipping towards the contraption as if it were a fully loaded Christmas tree. "C'mon! It's the StReTCH Pod – can I at least…?" Lila started. She trailed off. No use arguing.

"Anyway," she said, "this is the StReTCH Pod, Vincent. Come on, lookit."

"A stretch pod? Like… exercise?" Vincent called as he chased after her; it was a decent jog to the center of the room.

Lila was still out of breath by the time Vincent reached her.

"StReTCH Pod," she said, spelling it out. "It's like… y'know, like the t-term laser – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Silly little acronyms – I love it! This is the StReTCH Pod – Stimulatory Rehabilitation T-t-through Captive Hebetation."

Vincent searched his pocket for a pen that wasn't there. "Er… could you elaborate?"

Lila smiled at him again, finally getting her breathing back to normal. "You want me to elaborate or just d-dumb it down for you?"

"Fine. You caught me. Dumb it down."

"The StReTCH Pod holds people, p-puts them in a state of virtual reality for t-twenty minutes, and then lets them go."

"So," Vincent said, scratching his eyelid. "What's the big deal with that?"

Another metallic and childish smile. "How long have you been here, Vince?"

"Too long, if you ask me."

"And based on your t-t-time here – based on the things you've seen here – does twenty minutes seem like a big deal now?"

knives knives knives KNVIES KNIVES

He stared at her for a minute, trying to see past her eyes. It was like staring into a very pretty brick wall. "Nevermind."

"Twenty minutes in the outside world roughly t-translates to twenty years in the StReTCH Pod. It's extremely efficient, to say the l-least."

"Jesus," Vincent breathed.

Lila laughed. "Yeah, and once they get out... bleh! Can you picture it, Vince? Can you picture twenty years of your life just... disappearing? Just like that?"

A long pause. Vincent understood.

"What are your thoughts on the StReTCH Pod, Mr. Barlow?"

"I dunno… 'what has science done' seems pretty appropriate, I guess," said Vincent dryly, doing his best to keep himself calm. "Heh."

Dr. Bing's face was stone. "That's funny, Mr. Barlow. Hilarious."

"I'm sorry, it's just… surreal."

"After everything you've seen in this facility, this strikes you as surreal?"

Vincent shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Well… yeah. To be honest, this is the most horrifying thing I've seen so far."

"So, what is it about t-this procedure that uns-s-s-settles you, Vincent?" Lila asked, fiddling with her bangs.

"Well… it's just that this procedure," he began, nervously rubbing the edge of his collar. "This procedure is the only thing that's real in this place. That's why it's so scary, I think."

The old man laughed. "Nothing we do here is technically real, Mr. Barlow. It's just a random soup of brainwaves, floating around with nothing to do. The mind makes it all seem very real."

Vincent could feel his heart thump hopelessly in his chest, heaving in disbelief. It wasn't a sickly feeling, just… surreal. A dreamlike panic seemed to wash over his entire body, consuming him like a drug. Thoughts slurred together, bumping into one another, stabbing his brain as they wiggled about. His body froze, lost in a flood of hazy fear.

He blinked several times, suddenly terrorized by a stray eyelash.

"May I try it?"

Lila started, but then looked at Vincent as if he were on fire.

"W-w-what?"

"May I try the StReTCH Pod? I mean, you don't have to put me in there for the full twenty minutes, do you?"

"Of course not, but…um… Dr. Bing?"

Bing stepped in. "No, you may not try it. The Pod isn't something that a person would try, especially not, erm… someone like you. You… would not last the first year in that horrific place, Mr. Barlow."

"How do you know?" Vincent calmly asked, staring at the StReTCH Pod.

"Vince, in the six hours that you've been here, you've vomited uncontrollably, passed out multiple times, sobbed yourself into a stupor and almost c-c-committed suicide. Mentally, you're nowhere near ready for the Pod," said Lila.

"I concur," said Dr. Bing, his arms folded neatly behind his back.

"I don't remember any of that," said Vincent, trying to recall anything besides his own nightmare and the endless hallway.

"Exactly," said Dr. Bing. "That's the way it should be."

Silence for a while. "Sure," Vincent finally said. Lila seemed to relax.

"So… what did he do?" Vincent asked, choosing his words more carefully now. "What does a person have to do to deserve the StReTCH Pod?

"Uh… murder. Quite brutal. Crime of passion, ap-p-parently," Lila mused, turning back to the display and pressing a few buttons. "He tortured the girl first, watched her bleed to death, chopped her to bits and then gobbled her up. Took him six days."

"Wow," said Vincent. "Er… how did you get a confession like that?"

She was silent for a long time. Vincent suddenly noticed the gentle hum of machinery in the background; it seemed to inhale and exhale with her. "Let's just s-say that we didn't ask him," she finally said, smiling.

Vincent glanced at the murderer, and all the technology strapped onto his head. He then turned to Dr. Friedmont and Dr. Bing, rapidly pressing hologram buttons on the panel. He put two and two together, and grimaced. Jesus Christ, this place… this place. He couldn't come up with a word.

Vincent frowned. "So… what? You just take criminals and you torture them until they're sorry? Sounds sort of like terrorism or something."

"We don't just take criminals – that's inefficient, unsystematic and annoying," Dr. Bing snapped at him. "Run-of-the-mill inmates – the people that just went wrong, where one moment of anger in the eighties granted them a lifetime of misery behind bars – those normies aren't the ones we want. We… we liberate the worst of the worst, the seriously deranged and depraved; the ones who stalk their targets for years and murder them with the most inhuman methods possible; the ones who enjoy experiences that would make the toughest inmate vomit and faint; the ones who deliberately hurt others or themselves for some ridiculous purpose that spans beyond pleasure or pain; the ones who do all of these things and they don't know why. Those people, those demons, are our lovely patients, our delinquent muses, our sick and unstable army of wolves and sinners."

Vincent was quiet for a few moments.

"Welcome to our w-world, Vince," Lila said, turning to type in a few random sequences of numbers. Up close, Vincent realized that Lila's little panel didn't have traditional buttons or keys, or even a touch-screen. Various see-through symbols seemed to float in space above a central eye, and responded to Lila's touch as if they were solid. Holograms, Vincent thought. The tappingnoise was merely Lila's clumsy fingers hitting the panel below.

Dr. Bing cleared his throat and pressed a holographic button on Lila's hovering keyboard. A door on the far side of the room silently slid open. "On that note, Mr. Barlow, I believe it's time for you to leave."

"But…" Vincent started.

KNIVES KNIVES KNIVES

"Erm… yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good idea," Vincent said. He slowly started to walk off.

"Let me show you out," said Lila, sliding her arm into the crook of his. It was something a young girl might learn from watching romance movies.

"Mr. Barlow?" Dr. Bing called out to him.

"Hm? Yeah?"

"Mr. Barlow, you're more than welcome to return to our facility – alone, mind you. Though… I highly advise that you come prepared next time."

"Next time?"

"Y-yeah, Vince! You should t-t-totally come back and visit. I'd like to see you again, do a few tests."

Vincent stopped breathing.

"What?!" He squeaked.

"Dr. Friedmont! You'll scare him off!" Dr. Bing said, laughing heartily as he patted her shoulder. It was the first real emotion Vincent had seen the man express, besides annoyance.

"Nah, he's fine. I think he got it all out of his s-system, huh?"

"If you're up to it, Mr. Barlow, we'd be excited to have you back."

Vincent stared at them, his mouth hanging open. "Uh…"

"Or not, or not. It is entirely your decision. But… I'm sure the public would absolutely love to know even more about us, don't you think?"

Three grand? Hmph! Chump change next to what you could be making. You're got it in the bag, Vince. Every news company in the nation wants to hear about this, and you know it.

Vincent looked around a bit, at the white walls, at the cavernous ceiling. The StReTCH Pod and its towering wires. Then he looked at Dr. Bing, and finally Lila. Her chopped-up hair, gray eyes, pale skin and glinting braces made a cute portrait.

"I don't know. I just… I'm not sure if I can ever be ready to come back to this place, y'know? I mean, how long have I been here?"

"Roughly six hours," Dr. Bing said without looking at his watch.

"Six hours, and I've gone through enough torture to keep me traumatized for life."

"T-trust us, the next visit w-won't be so bad. I promise!"

"I don't know…" Vincent said again.

Suddenly, Dr. Bing stepped forward, placing his big wizened hand on Vincent's shoulder. He cracked a small smile. "In this place, Mr. Barlow… you must ask yourself certain questions, questions that will keep you sane. For example, when does immorality become courage? When does violence become strength? When does insanity become immunity?"

Vincent soaked in the doctor's wise words… no, 'wise' wasn't quite appropriate. 'Well-rehearsed' felt better. Either way, Vincent was uncomfortable.

"Think about that, Mr. Barlow. In the meantime, Dr. Friedmont will escort you to the exit."

The young girl smiled wide and slipped her arm around Vincent again. "Are you ready?"

She led Vincent through about ten minutes of mazelike white tubes until they finally reached the elevator, rode it up – back up to the realm of sanity, the real world – and stepped out into the waiting room. The air felt thicker here, and more lively. Vincent's thoughts seemed to shift from grayscale to full color.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had absolutely no proof of what just happened. His pencil and notepad, gone. Even the little camera pen that he'd paid three hundred dollars for at the Spy Store – that stupid pen was missing, never to be seen again. He had no idea when or where it had left his pocket. Now that he stood there and tried to remember, the entire experience felt like a distant dream.

"I had a wonderful time Vince," said Lila, smiling awkwardly and standing at an angle. He realized that she was leaning towards him, just slightly.

"Um, yeah. I had lots of fun," Vincent lied. Silence.

Behind them, the elevator slid open and Dr. Bing poked his head out.

"Dr. Friedmont," he said, his cracked earthenware face completely stolid. "I hate to interrupt your goodbyes, but we have a situation."

"What do you mean?" Lila said after a quick pause.

"I mean… we have… a sit… uation." He calmly walked over to them both, and placed his hand on Lila's shoulder. "Let Vincent leave. He is not needed for this."

"Hey, no! I think he should see it. It's just a routine malfunction, right?"

"No," he said. "This is not routine at all, Dr. Friedmont. At. All."

Lila searched for Vincent's hand for a minute, and squeezed it. "I still think he should go."

Dr. Bing wasted no time. "Of course. Vincent, please prepare yourself."

And, as quickly as it had come, Vincent's freedom was stripped from him.

He did not remember what happened after that. Just pain.

Chaos tore through him; his mind became a spectral soup of metaphors and oxymorons and horrifying contradictions. Everything became red and sharp and loud. He couldn't tell how long his brain simmered like this – it might have been weeks, or years, or eternities. Eternities upon eternities of unspeakable agony as his brain was separated from his soul.

Sunlight burned against Vincent's face, and he woke up. It was the most restful sleep he'd ever had.

The first thing he noticed was the earth – oh, the beautiful earth! – that pressed up against his cheek. He was lying face down on a patch of soft, warm weeds, and the intense sunlight against his flesh was absolute proof that he was outside. No more white walls. No more labcoats. He was free.

He slowly rose to his feet; his body and mind felt stronger than they had ever felt. He felt sharp and intelligent and wise, as if everything he had ever learned was resting at his fingertips, time and memory and age all illusions now. A sense of pure happiness bubbled deep within him – pure and effortless happiness.

He saw Lila Friedmont sitting a few feet away, in a stupor.

"Lila? Lila!" Vincent half yelled. She seemed to snap out of her trance at the sound of his voice.

"What? Vince? Where am I?" She said, looking around and squinting in the sunlight. "What happened? Vince, is that you? What happened?"

"I don't know," he said. "All I remember is Dr. Bing saying that there was a situation, and the StReTCH Pod and… Lila?"

She was starting to weep, he realized. "Oh my God, it wasn't routine… it wasn't routine…"

"Lila?"

"This is the StReTCH Pod," said Lila, horrified. "This is the StReTCH Pod… oh God! Oh Jesus, we didn't take the pill! We're sober! We didn't take the pill!"

"What are you talking about?"

Lila was sobbing now, her lab coat getting grass and dirt on it as she slumped to the ground.

"We're inside it. The StReTCH Pod. We're inside it. Do you remember what happened? You're supposed to be on medication before you go inside it. It soothes your brain and puts you on a certain specified path. It regulates what happens during your twenty years of purgatory and we didn't take it! We're at the mercy of our own minds, oh God –"

She began to scream, a series of strident, screeching wails.

"You're not stuttering anymore," said Vincent, suddenly and calmly. Lila cried for a few more seconds, and then came to realize that he was right.

"I'm not," she said. "I'm speaking… like an adult…"

"Is it the Pod?"

"I'm speaking… like I know exactly what I'm doing," said Lila, the realization hitting her like a truck. She turned to Vincent, her face sticky with tears. "It's the Pod. This place is a soup of the mind. There's no way that the body can interfere. This is the place where blind men see. Where the crippled may walk."

"So you're cured?" Vincent asked.

"Not cured," she said, smiling grimly. "I'm just speaking the way I always do, in my brain."

They were both silent after that, squinting in the sunlight. A group of vultures squawked overhead. What was a group of vultures called? A flock? No, no – a venue. A venue of vultures. Vincent was amazed that he had remembered that. His mind was absolutely crystal clear, organized, and powerful. Pure. There was no clunky body holding him back.

"C'mon," he said. "We should probably start moving, try to find somewhere to go."

"Trying to find refuge in one's own mind," Lila said, "is the first step toward sociopathy."

"We don't have a choice," said Vincent. Lila knew he was right.

They walked for days, across fields of half-dead weeds and blazing sunlight. Occasionally the land might slope into a hill, or they might encounter a deer's skeleton, or a broken tree. Sometimes vultures would circle high above them, but the vultures could find nothing to eat. Sometimes they'd encounter an old brown snake that slithered past their ankles, flicked its tongue menacingly and slithered away – and by the third time it happened, Vincent was certain it was the same old snake, following them around because it had absolutely nothing better to do. But the weeds and the sunlight were constant. It all looked as if the world had been ravaged by something evil long ago, and the beautiful flowers and ancient trees and majestic animals had all become extinct. Vultures and snakes and weeds. They were the strong ones, the ugly survivors.

The two travelers did not feel hungry or tired for some strange reason – perhaps it was willpower. Perhaps they didn't ever have to rest in this place, Vincent told Lila, but she quickly corrected him. She'd built the machine. She'd watched people's lives unfold in their own minds. Eating was just as important as it ever was.

Well, maybe it is willpower, he told her. She said nothing.

To pass the time, they told stories of each other's dreams and fears and childhoods. Lila didn't have much of one, and didn't elaborate. She said she had a Ph.D. in engineering and psychology, that she loved chocolate cupcakes and that she hated taking care of animals, and Vincent believed her. Vincent had been raised by a single stepfather, of whom he'd forgotten the name. Never went to college, found a niche in freelance journalism and stuck with it. And of course, he was deathly afraid of knives. Or rather, he had been deathly afraid of knives – perhaps the StReTCH Pod had cured him. There was no real way to find out.

On the fourth day, they noticed a distant black dot on the horizon, and they headed toward it.

On the sixth day, the dot became a rickety old house, built out in the middle of nowhere. They approached it cautiously, as it reminded them both of an old haunted house in an old horror movie, complete with creaking shutters and spiderwebby curtains and years upon years of dust.

Vincent thought he smelled something foul, then quickly realized that his nose was telling him nothing. It was his intuition, his sense of danger. He could smell the rotting remains of a man's sanity, and it was very, very close by. He shuddered.

"No knives here, Vince. It's okay," said Lila. She was trying to be strong for both of them.

He didn't believe her, but he followed anyway.

The house truly was a rickety thing, and the front door almost fell off on its hinges. They stepped inside, shocked by the way the wind seemed to blow through every nook and cranny. The house moaned and groaned and grumbled, annoyed.

A man was standing in the living room. Smiling.

He wore a navy blue zip-up hoodie with 'FLESH' printed in peeling gothic lettering on the front. The hood was tightly drawn over his eyes – almost painfully so – and his magician's nose curiously peeked out from under it. His otherwise spotless jaw was dirtied by random patches of blood red hair, but it didn't look like a hackneyed shave job, no – it looked to Vincent as if it just grew that way, all grimy and curly and disgusting like that. Maybe he couldn't help it.

Propped on his head – over the hood – was a filthy old top hat, scarred and wizened. Various multicolored zippers, pins and ribbons adorned the shabby thing, but they didn't distract one's attention from the hat itself. They couldn't. It seemed that everything the top hat touched became an extension of its filthy gray being. Vincent felt itchy just looking at it.

"Edward Alexander Topper, at your every whim," the man said, politely removing his battered hat and giving Vincent a deep, flourishing bow. His voice was a forced, intoxicated, exhilarated whisper.

Lila and Vincent shared a glance. Whose mind did he come from?

Vincent's reporter instincts kicked in. Keep him occupied. Show no fear. "What exactly do you do… ah… Edward? What are you here for?"

"Moi? I'm a soul eater – best in the business," he said, snapping his head up and grinning. His teeth were puke-yellow, and very shiny. "Well, whatever you could consider business in this cesspit… but I truly cannot complain. You want to know what I do? You want to know what I do? Here it is, m'boy – here's the long and short of it all. I let my customers wallow around a bit, and then I let them murder who they'd like, all according to plan and such, and then – oh and here's the fff…fff…fffabulous part, Vincent – chomp chomp chomp! Down the hatch goes their soul, their inner workings. Tastes a bit like putrid peanut butter, but once you get used to it, oh it's everything. It's everything!"

Vincent shared an anxious glance with Lila as Edward Alexander Topper gently shied away from himself. The man's half-hidden face seemed to twist and unravel, twitching uncontrollably as he recalled the taste of human souls. There was a broken, uncomfortable sense of beauty to it all, really.

"You're unclean," Edward said, suddenly controlling his fits of euphoria and pointing his masked head toward Vincent. "No… no, you're not just unclean – you're pig-disgusting, Vincent. I shall refuse to work with you, given the opportunity to do so. I'd get foooood poisoning, right-o."

"So you… do what, exactly?" Vincent said, raising his eyebrow. He didn't question how Topper knew his name.

"I swallow souls – and knives too, if you'd like. Would… would you like that, Vincey boy?" He said. He'd come unnervingly close to Vincent's face, and the grimy top hat grazed his forehead. "Would you like me to show you a little magic trick?"

KNIVES KNIVES KNIVES

"I'll pass, sir," Vincent said with a shiver. He saw Topper's tongue flick in and out; it reminded him of a millipede. Perhaps that's what it was.

"Hm. Fine, then. Not everyone likes sword swallowing," said Topper, his yellow-green grin never fading. "Creeps people out, y'know. It's not exactly aichmophobia, but rather rhabdophobia. People tend to lose their sense of reality when they see a blade go down someone's throat. It's the same kind of people that can't watch Cirque du Soleil with a straight face and a full stomach."

Vincent nodded pensively, yet head was absolutely empty for the first time in days. Disturbed beyond thought.

"Nobody likes real magic these days," said Topper, grinning his sorrow away. "The real gory stuff. The meat, bone, meat, bone, meat, bone kind of magic. The kind that you never stop having nightmares about. It's real darkness, real darkness. So dark that even the rats get lost in it."

"People don't like to be uncomfortable. At least, as far as I'm concerned," said Vincent.

"Oh, they don't, do they?" Topper wheezed. "Whaddaya think superstitions and slasher flicks and roller coasters and religion are all for, Vincey-boy? People live to be uncomfortable. It is our… unmistakable life-blood. Here, sit down. Let me show you something."

Chairs seemed to materialize underneath them, and Topper sat down. "Sit, sit, I insist," he said before Vincent and Lila reluctantly planted themselves on the rickety wood seats. They felt and sounded waterlogged.

Fluidly, Topper produced a bouquet of wilting white roses from his front pocket, smiled, and then made them poof into nothingness. "See that?"

"Yeah," said Vincent. "That's actually sort of impressive."

"That's not impressive at all, boy. That's a parlor trick. You could do that if you really wanted to. But you know what you can't do? Not in a million years?"

"Meat, bone?"

"Meat, bone," said Topper. His hands became rusty hooks, and his smile widened to overcome his entire face. The hooks slid inside the wrinkly gray pockets of his cheeks, dug down deep and wet until they became dark red. His face stretched out three feet, until it looked to Vincent as if he could step inside and use him as a sleeping bag.

His bones – all of them – suddenly shattered, and Edward Alexander Topper screamed, sagging to the floor in a pile of rotting flesh and blood and ivory. Meat. Bone. Meat. Bone.

"Aw, hell!" Topper said as he poofed back to normal. He looked disappointed and angry. "Getting old, m'boy. Trick just isn't as impressive as it used to be. Hell."

"I think it might be the booze," said Vincent, tipping his head toward a crusty, half-empty glass of something that resembled Jack Daniel's. It sat on a nearby coffee table, and Topper's spit almost glowed neon on the rim. Journalist's instinct: get inside their addictions. Let them know it's obvious when it really isn't. "It looks like it's digging away at your soul, sir. Have you ever considered quitting the bottle?"

Topper lazily pointed at Vincent, as if ready to say something. After a few seconds of inactivity, he lowered his finger and burped. A thin, grimy trail of yellowish slime trickled past his lip, getting caught in his patchy beard. He swayed in his seat a bit, and his skin beamed gray. Hunks of oily, curly red hair poked out from underneath his hood, his dusty hat. A bit more slime oozed through his beard and onto the floor.

His words were as sharp and clear as diamonds.

"Humans were drinking alcohol five thousand years ago, and they're still drinking it now. It is our lubricant for reality, to make sure that our gods and goddesses can shove it all in without a hitch, without rebellion. A life through sober eyes is a life wasted."

He paused, taking the time to breathe rather than to think. He didn't have to think – he never has to think, Vincent realized. The gritty soul-eater had plucked his words from a massive spectral bucket, thousands of years before his birth. He knew when to use them, and where and how and why. He knew.

"Alcohol is humanity's friend, Vincent. I can't just abandon a friend, can I?"

And then he laughed. It was the most disgusting thing Vincent had ever heard.

"Here. Let me show you another trick. Real magic, m'boy."

And with that, he tipped his head forward and let the grimy top hat tumble to the floor. He dusted off his hooded head, plucked a few tiny squirming worms from the crevices, and loosened it.

Edward Alexander Topper had no eyes. There were saggy, scarred flaps of flesh hanging over his empty eye sockets, like meaty twin veils. As far as a casual observer could tell, there was no reasonable explanation as to how the man could tell what he was doing, or what his companions looked like. He simply knew. He knew what people looked like, inside and out. Hence the hood, and the constant smile.

Vincent ignored the rotten taste developing under his tongue, and tried not to look directly at the scarred creature sitting in front of him. "The first humans murdered each other too, Topper. Murder's been around since the dawn of man. Are you saying it's a good thing?"

"I haven't abandoned murder either," said Topper, nibbling his black fingernails.

A long bout of silence. Vincent couldn't think of anything clever to say.

"I want to go," Lila finally whispered. Vincent agreed with her. He turned to Topper and nodded a quick goodbye, and they slowly made their way out of the creaky sitting room.

The rain began to fall as soon as they stepped outside. Ghostlike streams of lightning flickered across the sky, and instant raindrops splattered against Vincent's face. Lila cringed in the light drizzle, as if she had never felt rain before.

"Mine's the last house for decades," said Topper, materializing next to them. His top hat and hoodie were securely refastened to his head. "And I humbly offer you a place to stay. How 'bout it?"

"We'll take our chances," said Vincent, and the rain suddenly became hail. Thick, thick shards of bladelike ice began to slam against their faces, icy nails, and icy knives.

"I don't bite, my children. It's all just magic," said Topper, grinning and spitting a yellowish glob onto the grayish grass. "The real dark, real dark stuff."

Vincent took the couch in the sitting room (which was amazingly comfortable), and Lila decided to sleep in a small closet upstairs. The rain lasted into the night, which came quickly and suddenly. And it was real dark stuff, too. No stars. Just dark – real backwoods dark. Simple dark. The kind that monsters like to creep around in.

Vincent decided to check on her, make sure Topper hadn't swallowed her soul. He made his way up the creaky staircase and opened Lila's door.

He'd completely forgotten to knock, and Lila sat in the middle of the closet in her underwear.

"Ah! Sorry, Lila!" He said as he began to retreat.

"No, no! Come back Vince," she cried, hopping up and dragging him back inside the little room.

The naked light bulb dangling over their heads was worthless, and Lila was sitting in the dark.

"Can you see in here?" Vincent asked idly. "This feels like a little coffin or something."

"Nah, I can see just fine," Lila said, her pale grey eyes glowing in the dark.

"Well I can't. Here," said Vincent, digging into his pockets, "I found some candles and matches in the kitchen."

Lila grinned like a little girl on Christmas, her metallic teeth gleaming ear to ear. She grabbed the dinky pack of birthday candles, but ignored the matches.

"Lookit this," she said. She felt around the closet for her lab coat, dug around in the pocket for a minute, and finally produced a small hunk of steel wool. She grabbed a flashlight from one of the many drawers in the closet, removed the battery and started to rub it against the metallic fluff. Hellish, blood-red sparks appeared, and she used the heat to light a few candles.

"How did you do that?" Vincent said, genuinely impressed.

"Science," she said. "There's a lot you can do with science. A lot of people have seen what I can do with science, firsthand. A lot of bad people."

Vincent liked the way the candlelight hit her skin. "This may sound a bit off, but do you have any friends, Lila? I mean, besides Dr. Bing?"

She was quiet for a minute, watching the candles burn. "To be honest, I haven't seen a real person in a long time," she said. "I mean, someone who isn't wearing a lab coat and a nametag. Or being tortured. That's why I was so excited to meet you."

Vincent noticed that a black mark was stamped on her left shoulder blade. The intense contrast of white flesh and black ink made his eyes hurt, even in the dim light.

"I see ya' staring at me," Lila said, smirking and twisting her head toward him. "Like the ink?"

"Yeah. It's pretty," said Vincent, unsure what to say. "What's it supposed to be?"

The tattoo was about the size and shape of a stick of gum, and looked like nothing more than a random sequence of lines and numbers. "It's a barcode," said Lila. "The exact barcode of the first fully-functional StReTCH Pod. Every number is intact, every line is perfect."

Vincent found himself inching closer to her in the gloomy candlelight, staring at the intricate design. "I've never seen anything like it. It's beautiful. Better than a lame butterfly or dragon, y'know?"

She smiled and agreed with him, nearly forgetting that she was holding her bare breasts in the crook of her arm.

"You must have been really devoted to the StReTCH Pod, huh?"

It took her a moment to respond. She smiled and let her eyes wander. "This thing is, by far, my greatest invention."

"It's a pretty impressive machine, I'll admit."

"It's a very impressive machine, Vincent. And I made it. I mean, I don't wanna toot my own horn, but it's probably one of the most impressive pieces of technology ever built. And I built it. I built it."

They were silent for a long time, their eyes glazing over as they gazed into nothingness. Lila's arm slowly dropped into her lap, leaving her breasts exposed. After a few minutes, Vincent caught himself staring – not a wolf's ogle or a pervert's gawk, but merely an idle gaze. Icy, soft, perfectly paper-white flesh, made orange by the flickering candlelight. Her bluish-black tomboy haircut fell over her soulless eyes, just slightly.

Vincent cringed, almost unnoticeably. Lila Friedmont – her mind, her body, all of her – was a blank canvas, trained for science and psychology and not much else. Based on the way she treated Dr. Bing, he must have been like a father to her, keeping her safe, teaching her the bland basics of life. It had probably been decades since she'd seen the sun. The real sun, not this virtual stuff.

And he cringed. Not because Lila had undoubtedly been raised indoors, but because she – impossibly – had a personality. She had a particularly girlish, insane, unorthodox personality that Vincent would be hard-pressed to find, even out in the real world. Lila was beyond unique – she was a… miracle? No, that's pushing it. Phenomenon? Yeah… yeah, that's better. Lila was an absolute phenomenon, and it was up to Vincent to protect her from her own mind.

He sighed and rose to his feet. "You gonna be alright in your little hovel?"

"I'll be super duper," said Lila. She licked her braces and sighed. "Hey."

"Yeah? What's up, Lila?"

She bit her lip. "Do you think we'll ever get out of here?"

"Of course I do," said Vincent, hopelessly. "In twenty minutes, we'll be as free as birds. You'll see, sweetheart."

"That's what I thought."

Vincent stood there in the doorway for a few awkward moments, then fell to his knees and dug in his pocket.

"What are you looking for? More candles?" Lila said.

Without a word, Vincent produced a small red metal tube, about the size of a lipstick. He flicked it, and a silvery blade reared its majestic head. "Found this in the kitchen, too. Let me show you something."

He tossed the knife up and down a few times, slowly and excruciatingly steadily. He twirled it around in his fingers, and he slid the dull side against his throat. He cut a few fingernails. Played around. And he was smiling.

"How did you do that?" Lila whispered.

"Magic," said Vincent flatly.

She stared at him. A little girl's stare. "Topper would be proud," she said, horrified by the idea.

Vincent nodded and slid the knife away. He suddenly felt very weary, and very old. "Good night, Lila," he said.

"Good night, Vince," she said. There was no happiness in her voice.

He retreated to his room, and the rain.

Twenty years in this place.

Oh God, this place. This place.


Author's Note: Hello again, and welcome to the StReTCH Pod. I originally began writing "Stretch" in 2007, worked on it on-and-off for a year, and then stopped because I wasn't quite sure where to go with it. It got some light attention from the FictionPress community, and I liked what I had written, but I always felt that I could do so much more with the concept. After a little over six months of doing nothing with the story, I finally decided to take the idea and start a fresh story with it. The result was something much more mature, compelling and flat-out cooler than my original story, and I plan to continue the epic tale of Vincent Barlow in this fashion. Expect longer chapters with little-to-no artificial breaks. To all that have read, reviewed and subscribed over the years, I thank you very, very much. Enjoy.