Chapter 22: A Battle of Will

It took Paulie a long time to regain control of himself. By the time he had finally stopped crying and dried his face he was a wreck. He felt hollow, a deep numbness that seemed to reside in his bones, the cracks in his mental armour seeming to run through to his very core. He would need to shore them up later, but couldn't muster the energy at that moment.

He stood with a groan and walked towards the bathroom, stripping his clothing off as he went. He only had the one pair, he would have to ask Mack for more changes and maybe a more casual pair of shoes.

Paulie stepped into the bathroom, now fully nude. He walked to the mirror and looked at himself. He was surprised at what he saw. Gone was the clean shaven and soft looking thirty-two year old he remembered. His body had hardened from his recent experiences, the soft edges burned off by the rigours of his captivity and following flight. His chest still showed that faint spiderweb of scarring that he suspected would never fully go away.

His hair had grown a little and his chin now sported the first dark shadow of a beard. He turned to the side, even the slight pudge that had been forming around his gut had shrunk to a barely noticeable cushion of fat that just covered his abdominal muscles.

He stood straight again. He looked like a different person, scarred and hard. What would his friends back home think of him now? Not such a softie now, was he? He chuckled at that, he didn’t really have any friends to miss besides Dana. And he was pretty sure she had only ever talked to him because he was the nicest guy at the store.

He shook his head and frowned. He bared his teeth and then grimaced, a toothbrush would not be amiss. His breath was likely horrid after so long without the proper hygiene. Surely they had some manner of fancy technological gadget he could use to take care of the problem? He searched through some of the drawers without finding anything that remotely resembled a toothbrush. He did find what looked like a large stiff comb and what looked exactly like a small rotary sander with a buffing wheel.

He figured that with so many different types of aliens the apartment complex likely stocked tools for all of them. Scales, fur and skin. Probably everything in between. He shook his head and replaced the tools before moving over to the main part of the small room, the configurable shower booth.

He looked at the dials on the face of it, the space inside separated from the rest of the room by a large pane of semi-opaque glass. He wondered briefly if it was only opaque to visible light as he had noted that not every species here seemed to require it. Mack had made a passing reference to Jakiikii seeing in other spectrums and he had sworn he saw a few aliens without eyes, he shrugged to himself as he set the dial to the most human looking setting. He heard a slight whirring sound as something within adjusted and then the door clicked open automatically.

Paulie frowned slightly and then stepped inside. It looked nearly identical to the one he had used previously, except for the additional buttons and dials. On the front of the shower was what looked like a small screen with scrolling alien text. But he didn’t understand the alien symbols and so just set the temperature and pressure settings as he had before.

Soon he was relaxing under a pressurised stream of hot water that steamed as it hit his skin. The slight aches and pains he had been carrying with him for days seemingly melted away like butter in a hot pan. He thought he heard a slight noise and looked around but saw nothing but the steam, the condensation on the glass door obscuring what little vision he may have had of the outer room. It had sounded like a small buzz or maybe a thud.

He ignored it and washed himself quickly. Forgoing the strange sonic drying mechanism of the shower and instead stepping into the bathroom dripping wet. He searched around the cabinets beside the sink and strange looking toilet-like device before finding what he was looking for. It was what looked near enough to a towel, though the texture of the fabric was a little odd. Rougher than he would have preferred, but serviceable.

Paulie strode into the main living room, closing the bathroom as the fan worked to clear the humidity out of the air. He sat along the edge of his bed and stared at the large wall simulation screen. Briefly he debated setting it for the same thing Mack had done, his brain longing strangely for the stimulation of that awesome kaleidoscope of colors.

As he thought of them he felt a nudge inside his head. He stood and looked around the room as he felt eyes on him, his skin prickling and the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

“Who’s there?” He muttered. What was he doing? Talking to the walls?

Paulie sat back down and looked towards the corner of his room. In it he saw a tall boxy contraption he had noticed the night before but had not investigated. He shook off the feeling of being observed and walked over to the strangely old looking device, one hand holding onto the edge of his towel as he had it wrapped around his waist.

The strange device came up to about the middle of his chest. The top was dominated by a rounded boxy case with a curving screen set into the front of it. It looked a lot like an old cathode ray television, all big and blocky in the back. The front of it was covered in dials and knobs with more than one slot that looked as though they were the perfect size to accept his laserkey.

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He cocked his head at that and walked to the table near the kitchen. On the corner of it he had piled his personal effects, his wallet and lasercard. He had lost his phone and keys when he was abducted. Grabbing the green crystal plaque, he made his way back to the strange device and started trying the slots.

After the third one he jerked back as the lasercard lit up via stimulated emission. The device whirring slowly and then accepting the card, the small emerald square being pulled inside as a flap closed over it.

He stood again as the device started to light up, slowly and then with an increasingly loud humm that made him want to step back the screen flickered to life.

On it were lines of descending text like water running from a faucet. The symbols flashed by too fast for him to really get a good read on them, but it didn't matter much anyways. They were clearly that same indecipherable alien text, yuuvian as Mack had called it earlier.

Paulie snorted in mild annoyance. Great, he had figured out how to turn it on, but he was still at a loss as to its function and purpose. It could be anything, a way to order alien room service, an advanced computer or something as simple as the television it passingly resembled.

He was about to give up when he got an idea, clearing his throat he nodded and spoke, “Turn on.” Nothing happened. He swore under his breath. “Device, primary function?” Still nothing.

He might as well have been talking to the wall for all the good it was doing. He snorted again as he stooped to gather his clothes. As he did so he once more felt a tickle on the corners of his mind and whipped up, clothes flying from his fingers as he assumed an instinctive defensive stance.

He looked around, heart beating as his adrenaline spiked. “What the hell?” He said breathlessly as he looked suspiciously around the room. But this time the tickling didn't stop, instead it started to grow. It grew until there was what felt like a pounding whine inside his skull, his hands flew to his head as the headache took him completely by surprise and he collapsed onto the side of the bed as he opened his mouth in silent agony. The pain he experienced feeling oddly familiar, almost as if he had felt it before.

He twitched and shook as he wrestled with the pain. It seemed almost like a living thing as he tried to grasp onto it mentally, his pained bewilderment morphing slowly into horrid fascination as he tangled his mind around the pain and then seemed to grab a hold of it as a man might held a venomous snake. But it wriggled free of his grasp.

He jerked again, falling first to the floor and then clenching his fists as he crawled painfully to his knees.

Paulie growled aloud, the sound dark and primal as he fought with the demon inside his mind. No, he wouldn't let this pain take him. He would conquer it as he had every other, force it down deep into the farthest corner of his mind.

He imagined the struggle in his head, visualising that he stood atop the tallest battlement of the fortress that was his mind. A towering hero of old in heavy plates that shone silver and burnished gold in the light of his memories. In one hand he held a terrible flaming sword that was his rage, usually kept safe within the scabbard of his will. Now unleashed to fight this terrible dark invader.

He could see it all in his mind’s eye. This dark phantom, like a shadowy dragon. All dark scales and rending claws and teeth. It flew at him like a whirlwind of death, most would have fled screaming in terror from the sight. But not him, no, he had seen worse beasts and slain them all in turn. This thing was a whelp, an earthworm to crush beneath his armoured boot. It thought to attack him in his own mind? That was where he was strongest, it would learn to fear him.

He widened his stance, great flaming sword held aloft in a two-handed power grip that screamed for release. ‘Come and face me!’ He screamed inside his own mind, brandishing the sword as the light of his rage glinted off the silvery armour he was clad in.

Standing atop the fortress of his mind, he was invulnerable. Nothing could topple its titanic walls, the edifice of dark grey stone had stood against flood and earthquakes alike. Death and pain was all it had ever known and yet still it stood. Its surface cracked and pitted from the scars of countless battles, but it remained undeterred and strong.

The dark mass shifted and a slithery voice seemed to issue from it. Less words and more like pure meaning. The darkness spoke of pain and chains, a slavery of the mind and the promise of sweet release in that dark oblivion.

Paulie spat in disgust. ‘You will never break me, demon.’ was all he thought. Even as his body seemed to shake from pain, his mind stood against that darkness like a pillar of pure might.

He felt the gaze of something indescribably horrible. Vast beyond reckoning and so ancient that the very weight of its knowledge made the walls of his fortress quake. Cracks spread through the foundations as whole blocks like boulders were dislodged to tumble end over end into the dark endless void it was built atop.

Paulie screamed in defiance again in his own mind. A terrible feeling seemed to grip his very soul as that dark wyvern’s head split open like rotten fruit to reveal a single glowing yellow orb.

That terrible dark pupil turned upon him and stopped. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe. His heart stopped beating for a second as his entire mind froze in fear. In that moment of infinity Paulie’s mind experienced all the ages of the universe as if he had lived them himself. It was too much for the conscious mind to comprehend and so he closed his unseeing eyes. It took a monumental amount of effort, as if the thing were forcing him to look.

He gasped as he looked away, the darkness seeming to recede to be replaced with some tiny squirming thing near to the tarnished boots of his now corroded armour. His sword barely glowed with heat and rage, small embers like sparks drifting slowly from the blade as it sputtered fitfully. But he lived, he breathed and his mind was still his own.

In his mind he stood atop the rubble of his mental fortification. A castle that had held against the darkness. The squirming thing cried out pitifully as he stooped and grabbed it with a gloved hand that creaked, flakes of rust falling from it as the tiniest hint of silver peeked through the grime.

The thing that squirmed seemed to be made of nothing more than the echoes of the pain it had projected before, and he at first wanted to crush it to paste. To cast it from the walls of the fortress in his mind to fall into the dark places that swirled in that endless void. But he stopped himself as he gave it a wide smile. It shrieked as he imagined an unbreakable cage made of the same stone as his fortress and stuffed it inside. Hanging it from his belt, this new fear he had conquered beat against its prison to no avail.

Paulie lay on the floor in a fetal position. His mind was pounding like there were ten-thousand horses trying to get out in an endless thundering herd. He groaned as he pulled himself to a kneeling position on the side of the bedding. He was mentally exhausted, memories of flaming swords and screaming darkness pressed close on the corners of his vision and he shook his head to clear it.

What had just happened? The feeling of being watched was gone, replaced by a bone deep numbness that made him shiver despite the warmth of the room. He groaned and pulled his still shuddering body into the sheets of his bed. Not even bothering to get dressed as he closed his eyes with a wince.

Flashes of the struggle filled his mind as he fell into a fitful sleep. But he slept free of worry as he had caged the beast, its silent screams of rage and frustration forever caged deep in the farthest vaults of his mind. Tucked neatly alongside repressed memories of his childhood and the half-forgotten traumas of his youth.