Percy: The Spindly legged Savior

 
I didn’t realize I’d drifted until, by swatting an annoying tickle on my chin, I found myself staring through a haze of confusion at the sheet tenting my toes. Coming from somewhere, a hand—it turned out to be my own—brushed over a new tickle on my nose, but by then a buzzing attacked my ear. Through a kind of detached awareness, I felt my left shoulder twitch up to confront it, and the buzzing stopped. I shook my head against the threat of a force behind my eyes, drawing me back to the strangely inviting cocoon in which I wanted more than anything to curl up.
 
I sucked in as much oxygen as the tight binding around my ribcage would allow, and let out the spent breath.
 
Just then, I noticed a fly on the sheet just below my navel, peering up at me. I puzzled over it. This was unlike any fly I’d ever seen—twice, three times the size. I locked my heavy-lidded eyes on this portly pest, as I fought against the slumber that was trying to reclaim me. I chastised myself for having already drifted. I blinked. My eyes were slow to open, and I had to refocus. Could this fly be my unlikely hero? Sleep was not a good thing.
 
Also, I dared not raise my eyes to the ceiling. They were up there. The doctor even acknowledged their existence. But smiling at my anguish, he denied the ferocious movement I saw. It was the torchlight playing on their surfaces, he told me ... that and the effect of the narcotic on my judgment. That was what caused the movement. I'd see the truth of it when I woke up.
 
Ha! When I woke up! I was right back at the first problem. The narcotic would keep me forever asleep. I would not even be aware of the creatures ripping me to pieces.
 
At this point there was nothing better to concentrate on than this fly.
 
It was now sauntering toward my face on four spindly, multiple-jointed legs, two on a side, and two stubby ones angling out from either side of what must have been his neck. Those two would be the explorer legs. Sure, they tested the terrain, left and right, giving the all-clear to the four behind. At this moment, all six were progressing toward my face.
 
It settled for a time at my sternum—I supposed to assess its options. Gingerly, I brought my chin down and craned my neck just short of cramping so I could more closely watch it. I’d have sworn it rose up on its back four legs to get a better look. I squinted to keep it in sharper focus. While it rubbed its front legs together in what was probably a thinking mechanism, it allowed me time to study those enormous disc-like eyes. The glassy surface shimmered between black and green, reminding me of an oil slick on a puddle. Meanwhile, the lenses rotated on hidden axes in continuation of its vigilance, surely to decide whether to alert the wings to escape or to communicate to the back legs the decision to continue their trek toward its target’s head.
 
Its image kept fuzzing out. I blinked a few times and squinted again, to help bring a tighter focus.
 
Keep observing ....
 
What originally resembled an oil slick, now refined itself to green clouds floating across the surface of an ink-black sky. I was reminded of the Rorschach test. Good, thought ... My other-life-Viktor knew all about the Rorschach test. Before he executed his backwards one-and-a-half off the bridge to splash on the boulders, Viktor knew what all the Rorschach symbols meant. No matter the chimera, or the skeptics among his peers who disavowed the possibility of meaning, Viktor knew the symbols had their exact counterpart in reality. The shadow was always connected to the shadow-caster. Viktor had mastered the hidden meaning of them all—used them to heal.
 
I began to mold recognizable shapes from the green clouds as they swirled, billowed, thinned and thickened on the fly’s giant lenses.
 
I dared not move my body, or even breathe deeply for fear the critter might lift off the sheet. Without having the fly to concentrate on, I was certain to slip into the eternal oblivion.
 
Garvin’s words rolled through my mind as on a reel, “We must keep Jed awake. If we let him fall asleep, he won’t wake up.” The narcotic was to relieve Jed’s pain. The doctor gave me the same narcotic for my pain ....
 
My eyelids were leaden curtains.
 
Exercise. Exercise will help. Forcing my eyes open, I stretched the muscles around them so much I thought my cheeks would split. Then I slammed the lids shut, and behind them I rolled my eyeballs in their sockets before I blasted my eyes open again.
 
I refocused on the fly which had lowered his lazy lenses fully on me now, and appeared to be amused by my entertainment. The four legs continued forward, hopping down a ridge and into a fold of sheet; for a moment it disappeared, then scaled the incline closer to me and perched on that white ridge. The entire movement brought it about an inch closer to my face.
 
It trained its lenses on me in a challenging way. The black-sky surface mirrored back the double-reflection of a drawn, weary, stubbly-cheeked face, staring back with a bewildered look. I continued to stare at it wondrously, until with a tossing back of its little head, my reflection slid off the lenses.
 
Why did he throw his head back?
 
And why am I questioning the motives of a fly? I smiled at the thought. The truth was ... I found myself growing fond of this fly.
 
With incredible concentration, I whispered what I considered a joke over thickened tongue and through lips that felt like stacked pillows, “If we ... share thith bed ... needth intro-duth ... I’m Doc-treth.”
 
I was exhausted from the effort. I waited for what must have been a full minute. “Well?”
 
Whether it was my imagination or random coincidence, I’d have sworn he cocked his head.
 
“Lovely eyth, um ... Perthy.” I smiled. “Perthy? That ... okay?”
 
I watched an idiot grin on his lenses. They twitched in their sockets, briefly scattering my reflection before it reformed, then slanted up and away from me.
 
I forced myself to study the clouds again on his upturned lenses while I fought another wave of demon-sleep sliding in behind my eyes. The clouds gathered, pooled into puffy clumps of varying sizes, squeezed together as tightly as grapes on a vine.
 
“Got to keep me awake, Perthy, my handthome Perthy,” I murmured through a grin, as I isolated a mountain from the clouds, and watched it slowly elongate, flatten out and the end of it break off, and curl up to become a kitten. Beside it another kitten took form, or puppy. No, not a puppy—a full grown dog—or a wolf. Massive now. Without a sound it reared his head back and went through the miming of a snarl. I feared for the kitten, but when I glanced back at it, it was no longer a kitten. A frog squatted there instead, staring back—and the clouds were no longer needed as a medium for my imagination. A sudden, full-blown realization squeezed the air from my lungs. Percy’s lenses were reflecting the creature-crawling ceiling back to me.
 
I brought my gaze to the sheet beyond him, keeping my eyes off his lenses while a cold, gray melancholy washed over me. Percy had violated me. Even while thinking it, the emotionality of my thoughts troubled me, but I couldn’t seem to abstract myself from its flow. I still had enough rational mind left to tell myself it wasn’t really Percy. He was just a stupid fly, but that didn’t keep me from silently asking Percy, “Why do you want me to look at all those creatures, Percy? Why? You know they’re waiting for me to sleep “
 
I blinked away tears I couldn’t control, tears that were an acute embarrassment to me; moreover, I didn’t want Percy to notice them. I blinked again and reluctantly looked back at him.
 
I bristled! Obviously, Percy didn’t care for my feelings. In fact, at this moment Percy was performing a victory dance on the sheet just inches from my face. Indeed, of all his six feet, no two touched the sheet at the same time—a marvel!—and his filament-thin, jointed legs quivered with jubilation.
 
What’s happening to me? I’m General Doctrex. I’m fighting the effects of a narcotic. It’s got me talking to a fly. Naming it. Befriending it. Allowing it to wound me. Then, feeling betrayed at its dance.
 
My heart pounded in my chest. Would Viktor have diagnosed it as narco-psychosis?
 
I couldn’t let fear overtake my imagination. Think! Think! The creatures’ movement on the lenses was natural. My imagination had created them from the clouds and they had to move because I knew, logically, that movement was the nature of clouds. Clouds move.
 
Besides, there was more, and it left me with a feeling of calm. As long as I had Percy here, I wasn’t looking directly at the ceiling. Monsters on a theater screen can’t hurt you. Dread still prevented my looking up. These phantasms were on the surface of Percy’s lenses. As long as they remained on the lenses they couldn’t harm me. Could they? The illogic of the argument aggravated me, but I couldn’t let go of it. I wasn’t prepared just yet to surrender my reasoning mind to these same creatures who threatened me when the doctor was here.
 
As though hearing my thoughts—realizing break-time was over and it was time to get back to work—Percy lowered his lenses to me. I saw myself slip into view, half-closed eyes, head bobbing, but forcing myself to keep my eyes open against the chemical forces. Percy looked up and gave me the briefest of views again of the drama those clouds and my imagination had conspired to conceive, before bringing it back down to me. It kept its lenses on my face for just an instant, and then raised them again. I watched the clouds some more, and the creatures fashioned from them, who couldn’t harm me. I even recognized a warm comfort in this, snuggling my consciousness up against the clouds like they were cuddly, familiar blankets ....
 
I jerked open my eyes.
 
My breath raged against my heartbeat. I had let sleep ravage me again. For an indeterminate period, thought had been blotted out and I had been absorbed by the puffy slumbering clouds, themselves, not by the imagined creatures those clouds produced on Percy’s lenses.
 
So add one more enemy to do battle against—the narcoleptic clouds.
 
All my enemies were gathered on one plane, attacking me from different flanks. The moment I had one under control, another would attack. I can’t ... Narcotic sleep was their commanding general. He was aloof, patient, waiting, letting his capable warriors do the work.
 
His warriors were the creatures on the ceiling who were waiting to attack me directly as soon as I acknowledged them, or after I surrendered to their commander.
 
The only one with me to face the enemy was Percy, sweet Percy, my guide, my ... my spy ... or, wait! Was Percy the enemy’s spy? I chose him. I played right into his hands. Examine the evidence: he continually taunted me with the reflected images of the creatures, teasing me into recognizing them, then pulled his lenses back on me so I could gawk at my horror-filled face! It was so easy when you considered the evidence dispassionately Yes, you Percy! Your dance, when I first saw the many faces of my enemy. Why wouldn’t you dance? They were your brothers-in-arms, pasted on your lenses—you couldn’t contain your joy, could you? Oh how you danced!
 
A melody recklessly played through my mind. I hummed. Words followed:
 
                                                Oh how you danced
                                                On the night we were wed ....
 
Why? What’s happening to me? I’m General Doctrex. I lead the mighty Kabeez army. I am not the narcotic. I must be rational. Keep thinking ...
 
If Percy was, indeed, the enemy’s third flank, then once he realized I was using his lenses as a buffer between me and the General’s soldiers, and that I refused to look up from the lenses at the creatures directly—damn you Percy!—you allowed the fourth flank, the clouds floating across your lenses, to seduce my embattled imagination into surrender.
 
I suddenly felt the full, massive weight of entrapment settling over me. I breathed dry, hot air, rapid and feathery; my heart raced. I would not yield to the enemy’s general. I would die before I surrendered.
 
“I ... too ... am a general.” I said, loudly and with conviction—amazed that my words didn’t make it to my throat. Still, I was adamant in my resolve. I could no longer shift back and forth in my allegiance.
 
Gathering every bit of courage I could muster, I threw my head back, fixed my eyes on the ceiling, and felt my breath leave me; when it returned it was tugging a gasp that sent Percy circling above, before he dropped back to me, as on a piece of decaying carrion.


          TO BE CONTINUED ...