Part 3 – You Are Nothing

Chapter 11 – Anger

Cradling his head, Marisa groaned and narrowed his eyes at ‘Oswald’. The way he held the knife, it was clear he didn’t have much experience using it as a weapon. Still, Semara moved to the edge of the couch and kept an eye on the pointy end of the knife. Marlise, kindling her Seth thought processes, considered all the things she might say. The truth was a complicated thing depending on what they could believe of what they’d been told.

Tightening the rigid feeling of her expression, Marlise took a breath and told Oswald, “You don’t threaten us, especially when any one of us could grab your lanky rear and chuck you at that cube. You really don’t want to find out what *it* does to people…” Oswald’s knife hand trembled as he clenched his grip on it. Marlise’s words were half a bluff as Marisa’s questioning grimace showed.

Marlise continued, “But if you want to know what’s going on...Here’s the no plop version…this is what we know. There’s a being keeping us here which claims this is Hell and we’re already dead. Our souls are supposedly possessed by it….signed away by a contract when we were still alive. And it claims it can do anything to us it wants. We disagree and intend to escape.” Marisa added a beat later, “And kick his ass.” Marlise gestured to Marisa and nodded.

Oswald clenched his teeth as he listened and muttered, “Lies…You’re lying! I was just conducting a business meeting not even thirty minutes ago. Then I came home to change and you three invaded my home!”

Offering a shrug, Marlise said, “I didn’t say I believed what this being claims. I’m just relaying his words. But I have seen some stuff since we each woke up in small, sealed cubes.”

It was just a moment but Marlise caught when Oswald’s eyes fluttered wider with a quick sense of recognition. She called him on it and said, “You know what I mean…”

With a huff, Oswald shook his head. “I don’t have to listen to this nonsense.”

Marisa threw up his hands and fumed, “You don’t like that answer? How about this…you’ve been captured by a syndicate of criminals who have left us trapped here to starve with no way out. Does that work better?”

Only glaring, Oswald remarked, “Your insincerity is all over your face.” Marisa’s answer was to stick out his tongue and respond, “So, what do you expect me to say? You obviously have a particular truth in mind already.”

Dipping the knife only slightly, Oswald looked strained until he answered, “Drugs. I was drugged in my house. No. I’m being too cogent for a hallucination.” He dipped his head too. Marlise laid out her hands as an offer for him to continue with his supposed explanation.

Thinking a quiet moment, Oswald jerked his head and reignited his fury, claiming, “I don’t need to explain it to you! You explain it to me. Without any crap about the afterlife… or I will strike you!.” Marlise gave only a quick, involuntary twitch at Oswald cursing. That part of her Marley feelings was getting easier to restrain.

Semara, who had kept quiet through the entire conversation, didn’t flinch either. In fact, with Oswald’s words, he rose steadily to his feet, clenched his hands, and said, “No! You put that knife down and stop being a complete ASS HOLE to us right now!” The voice had Marley’s usual cadence and a slight, feminine tenor but it rose with a feeling that Marlise could easily imagine heaving at Sim.

His words pushed Oswald back a single but significant step from where he was standing, still brandishing the knife. Marlise folded her arms and said to herself, “What would my brother do?” She shut her eyes and tried to imagine.

She tried to put together the pieces of what she knew about her brother. The newest pieces she’d gotten from being near the black box only contained the details she’d told the others. She felt there was more. She begged and urged there to be more. She tried visualizing times when she sat down with her brother to watch the things she mentioned. The book. All those details. They should’ve been like links in her memories to more, but the connections felt severed. The pieces were everything.

Then there was this Oswald. More of his memories seemed present than with the three of them. A flash of suspicion and jealousy surged through her. This man could be another iteration of Sim, showing up before the real Oswald, as he’d done with Marley.

Despite that possibility, Marlise treated Oswald at face value when asking, “What do you remember of your life?”

He looked at her awkwardly and glared at each of them in turn, growling, “Everything, of course! Nothing I’ll tell any of you…but I remember it all! I’m a very important person in a major corporation…” He then reiterated what he’d told them a few minutes ago.

Marlise pointed this out, “You said that before. If you remember everything as you claim then say the name of any place where you went to school.”

She anticipated his flash response of, “I don’t have to prove anything to you! Return me to my chateau and I won’t need to use this!” He stretched the knife out again.

Marisa was obviously at the end of his tolerance as he said, “Put the freakin’ knife down first!” He hopped up from the couch and moved towards Oswald, who immediately began backing away. Holding his hand out, Marisa gave him every opportunity to turn over the knife before he finally backed him into a corner. Trapped, Oswald gave a flailing slice of the knife at Marisa’s hand.

Wincing, Marisa cried out when the knife struck him and caught against his pointer finger. Clenching his teeth, he pulled the knife out of Oswald’s grip as it was still lodged in his flesh. Staring, his back quivering against the wall, Oswald watched as Marisa yanked out the knife, saw his hand was fine and without wound, and chucked the knife right at the black box, where it slid against the edge.

Brushing his hands together, Marisa announced, “With this male body, I wouldn’t mind using it to punch you in the face. But how’s about we start over without you being what Semara said?”

Trembling, Oswald slid down the wall and held his face in his hands, muttering, “Not real…not real…” Not at all amused, Marisa cracked her fingers and replied, “You’ll see how not real that punch I mentioned feels.”

Tumbling over himself, Oswald flailed to get out of the way, proclaiming, “Don’t touch me!” Holding his hand out like he had with the knife, Oswald was about to yell something when he noticed a revolver gun clutched in his same left hand.

Before anyone could react, he pulled the trigger and a single round, with far less smoke and flash than Marlise was expecting, shot out the barrel. The noise was ear-splitting even from where Marlise and Semara were sitting. Marisa grimaced with the noise and moved to speak when he realized something was wrong.

He clutched at his chest and, while it wasn’t bleeding, he felt a sudden weakness there as he muttered, “What…happened…” That was all he said before he collapsed in a human heap on the floor, motionless. Marlise stared, wide-eyed, as Semara tried not to wail into his hands.

Oswald seemed the most surprised that the gun had actually worked. He said to himself a quiet, “Fuuuuuck…he threatened me. Had to…” He lowered the gun and swallowed before stabbing his gaze at the others, accusing them, “This is your fault! You brought this upon yourselves! Let me go NOW!”

Still wide-eyed, Marlise rose to her feet. Semara begged, “Please don’t! Please!” Marlise didn’t look back. She took one step after the other towards Oswald, who jerked the gun up and announced, “I’ll do it again! I swear!” Marlise kept walking, her hands clenched at her sides. Oswald aimed the gun at Marlise’s head and demanded, “Not one more step…”

Marlise expected to hear Semara behind her but he was silent. She stared ahead and took that next step. Oswald pulled the trigger, but the chamber rotated with a heavy click and nothing else. Marlise flinched then curled her face in a snarl as she rushed at Oswald and brought her knee firmly into his crotch.

His eyes swelled and he toppled as Marlise slammed her fist into his face and reached for the gun in his hands. She easily pulled the gun out of his grasp as he bowed forward in agony. Standing over him, Marlise shook and gazed. She wanted to pull the trigger again and again until it did something. She wanted to beat him with the heel of the gun like she remembered vaguely from some movie she and her brother must’ve watched once. She glanced over to where Marisa had been lying. There was now a solid wall and the space they were in resembled a large, long hallway.

Leaving Oswald rolling around in agony, Marlise pounded and tried to call for Semara but she could hear nothing through the material, which was as tough as the stuff in the first cube. Bashing it with the gun didn’t help. She looked back to Oswald, who was still curled up on the floor. She kept her distance.

She’d been operating on adrenaline and the throbbing was starting to catch up with her as she felt herself sweating and trembling. She looked at her legs and hands. As she softly reiterated to herself, it was what she never would’ve been able to do to Marley’s father, to anyone else who threatened her. She’d been strong but it was also stupid because she could’ve had whatever happened to Marisa happen to her too if the gun had fired. She clutched it in her fist, wanting to chuck it across the room or tear it to pieces.

Oswald had stopped squirming, he didn’t even seem like he was breathing. He just lay on the ground with his face down. Marlise took a deep breath. She tried to keep it together with Seth-like resolve but the after-image of Marisa’s stillness was lodged in her head.

Above all else, she knew who to blame, saying aloud, “Sim…you demonic fuck. How dare you! You’re too cowardly to try to hurt us yourself! Wherever you are, I will find you and I WILL DESTROY YOU!” She stared around at the walls, expecting them to start pressing together to crush them. She checked on Oswald, almost as an afterthought. He was running at her with his body quivering and his hands reaching out.

Marlise’s counter was no match for him barreling into her. They rolled around and fought with the gun, swinging back and forth with the end of the barrel. Marlise kept pulling the trigger but it was just click after click. She tried to bash it into Oswald’s skull, but he pushed it out of her grasp. The gun went clattering across the room. Oswald didn’t go for it. Instead, he wrapped his hands around Marlise’s throat as she clawed at his wrists.

It was getting harder for her to breathe. She kicked and strained as a fuzzy blankness washed over her thoughts. Everything blurred. She could barely see Oswald. His body seemed more like Marley’s father, vague, looming, and dangerous.

She couldn’t even squeak out a scream as streaking tears washed out the rest of her vision.

Then, she was suddenly released to cough and feel tingles all over her head as her throat throbbed. She coughed long and retched a moment without spitting anything up. Still bleary, she saw that Oswald was across the room in a fallen heap as a tall, bright form loomed to her left. A hand reached down.

“You alright, miss?”

The voice clicked instantly in her memory with warm feelings and soft sensations. The pain was momentarily forgotten as she tried to blink her vision back to clarity. The man helped her to her feet and she kept her eyes on him till she finally resolved a familiar smile smirking above her.

Standing in front of her, in the clothes she recognized from her visions and memories, was her brother Steven.