Chapter 20

Isaac had triumphed. With no more responsibilities on the horizon, he was free — a Friday night of the soul. However, there was one last homework assignment for Isaac. It was a math problem. If he wanted to forget everything traumatic about the past 24 hours, how much weed would he need to smoke? He stuck out his fingers to add up the ounces, but he came up short. Because, much like in Mean Girls, the limit did not exist.

He would just have to smoke it all.

There was a method to Isaac’s madness. He knew short-term memory only converted to long-term memory during a REM sleep cycle, so he’d be able to forget his recent trauma(s) as long as he corrupted his short-term memory before he went to bed. His wounds were still fresh enough that they didn’t have to scar. And weed would be his salve, a drug infamous for inhibiting short-term memory function, or at least that’s what he remembered from DARE. So if he consumed enough THC before he hit REM, he’d avoid getting PTSD, which would mean his NDE would be NBD, allowing Isaac to recapture his BDE.

It made perfect sense.

Isaac was losing his mind.

Meaning everything was going according to plan.

He had to act fast.

If things didn’t go to plan, and he couldn’t smoke enough weed before bed, then one day soon, Isaac would wake up, look in the mirror, and see the same 1000-yard stare he saw in Seth’s eyes whenever his sponsor was sober. Witnessing the blood sacrifice of his buddy at the hands of Super Jesus was frightening, but that wasn’t it. What frightened Isaac most was discovering his thermal vision and super strength. He wanted to forget all about these superpowers. That was his most painful potential memory, more than the murder and more than the discovery of the lizardmen.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” His conscience called.

That saying nagged at him ever since he had thought of it at Anne’s. And whenever he thought of it, it made it harder for him to ditch the Captain Flapjacks situation. The feet that walked him out of Anne’s office grew cold because his Spider-Man-informed code of morality compelled him.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

He couldn’t escape it. But Isaac’s power was better than great. It was super.

“With superpower comes super responsibility!”

The line was pithy yet profound. It was the gold standard of morality marketing slogans, up there with the other greats, such as “Do unto others,” “Because I said so,” and “Just do it.”

“I was going to save the world, but then I got high,” Isaac sang, impersonating Afroman. He was feeling good. According to his phone, the Lyft he requested would be here any minute to take him to his favorite dispensary.

Unlike the boardwalk — a tourist spot that sold seeds and stems at tourist pricing — the Nile Collective was a hidden gem of Venice. They sold a specific strain of Sativa that often had Isaac forgetting everything from his name to the age of consent.

His mouth watered.

Patience, he told himself. Any minute now, he’d have his fix, craving nothing more than bong hits between sips of a cold brew coffee. An anticipatory buzz began to bubble in his blood at the thought of the indulgence, a physical reaction no different than your knee jerking during a reflex test or how a little pre-cum dribbled out of Isaac whenever he turned on his vacuum cleaner.

Life could be simple if you made it about simple pleasures. That was something Isaac should try to remember. Seth had been on the right path when choosing to devote his life to experiences and sensations, but he was doing it all wrong. Chasing the exotic and the novel was a mistake. Isaac now had an appreciation for how exhausting and dangerous that could be.

Comfortable consumption was the answer rather than becoming embroiled in a murderous conspiracy, no matter how many superpowers he gained. But, unfortunately, he had fallen victim to the oldest human fallibility — greed, wanting more than what he had, and what he had was a nice, quiet, anonymous life in Santa Monica, where the only people who recognized him were the employees at the local mom and pop shops where Isaac was no longer considered welcome.

Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

Isaac should have known better. His first instinct of being a lazy POS instead of a main character from a movie had been right. But, like most geniuses, Isaac’s best ideas, in retrospect, were his most obvious.

Liz was the only hitch in Isacc’s plan to wipe his memory. He didn’t want to forget her. There was a part of him that wanted to continue his daydream dalliances about her, a sexual tension he could not deny, and neither could she, he knew. After all, she was his love interest.

But Isaac had no other choice. He was a loose end, one that the Illuminati would be looking to tie off with a hangman’s knot. He had to get off the grid and trust her to find him. If it was meant to be, then it was meant to be. That’s true love for you.

To survive, Isaac would have to become a total recluse. No exceptions. He would have to go solo, meaning Liz wouldn’t be the only sacrifice. Seth was next. When his Lyft arrived, Isaac was thinking of possible secluded destinations for himself. Mexico was an option. His gut told him to go to Egypt, but he decided to run away to the lost city of Atlantis instead.

“What the fuck?” Isaac screamed in surprise when he got into the back seat of his Lyft.

“Buckle up, buttercup,” suggested Seth, who twisted his body around to get a better look at his passenger from the diver’s seat. His sharp teeth formed a smile. “For your convenience, I’ve placed mints and complimentary sheepskin condoms inside the seat pocket in front of you. I’ve also engaged the door’s child lock. Is that Fierce by Abercombie I smell? Good on you, Isaac! I was more of an Axe guy myself.”

Isaac suffered some light whiplash as Seth jammed the accelerator only to pump the brakes as soon as he merged into traffic. Isaac felt sick. Seth was driving in the opposite direction of the Nile Collective.

“Where have you been? Where was my backup?” Isaac demanded, his memory of fighting the lizardman and monkey two-on-one still vivid. “And where are we going? And — and you’re a Lyft driver?”

“I used to be an Uber guy, but then Uber fucked around with the Muslim ban and was scabbing taxis. Now, they’re in the finding-out phase. You know, I didn’t do two tours over there in Afghanistan, saving those sand niggers’ lives for people over here to be afraid of them.”

“...”

“There was this one dude,” Seth snapped his fingers several times to aid his memory recall. “We called him Osama bin Llama because not only did this guy have the longest neck in the province, but he could also spit twice the length of a fucking football field. I swear this guy could have irrigated the entire desert—”

“Thank you for your service,” Isaac interrupted, hoping the usual platitude could placate Seth before launching into the more important matters at hand. “This is not the way to my preferred dispensary.”

“You can forget that. We’re on a business trip.”

“I think that label applies to all Lyft rides.”

Seth smirked. “Oh, we got a philosopher on our hands here, huh?”

“If the shoe fits,” Isaac said.

Seth grew serious. “The Amber alert isn’t over, Isaac. There are still missing girls out there. It’s all of our business. It takes a village to raise a child,” which was all he had to say to drain the blood from Isaac’s face.

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Isaac groaned. He had completely forgotten about the missing child. “No. No. No. I’m done playing savior.”

“You’re what?”

“I’ve put myself out to pasture. It’s not for me. I’m retired.”

“Since when?”

“About five minutes ago.”

“Bullshit. I’m a secret agent, and you’re a sleeper agent, remember? So we’re going to move, and we’re going to groove, and we’re going to get this girl out of the clutches of some fucking creep. Those are the rules.”

“Please, no. Let’s be real. She’s probably dead.”

“All the more reason to go. We’ll just change the mission parameters from search and rescue to search and destroy.” Seth’s knuckles turned white around the wheel, which in turn made Isaac a little green around the gills. He knew Seth meant business, and no amount of arguing would change his attitude. As the car weaved up the boulevards and down the avenues, all Isaac could do now was plan an escape.

Seth had the goods. There was an address. He got it from a contact he had at the DMV, cashing in on a former friendship forged back in his days of scamming parking validations. This was someone who could track down the kidnapper’s getaway car from the original Amber alert video. And when Isaac asked Seth why he didn’t refer the matter to the police, Seth explained how the police were in on the conspiracy, which Isaac, of course, knew to be true. So if the girl were to be saved, it would be up to them. How unfortunate, Isaac thought, for both them and the girl.

Seth stopped the car, and Isaac investigated their new surroundings. They were in K-town if the neon signs and foreign characters were to be believed.

“Thar she blows,” Seth said. He pointed across the street to his white whale, the red minivan from the Amber Alert. The owner had done their best to obscure its presence by throwing a tarp over it, but it wasn’t enough to trick Isaac’s trained eye or cover up the foreboding aura that seemed to seep out of the van’s exhaust pipe.

Isaac had never known a malevolent minivan before now, but this one was more disturbia than suburbia. It freaked him the fuck out. Something bad was about to happen. He imagined this was how Joe Pesci’s character must have felt in Goodfellas when he opened the door to his made-man ceremony only to find the room empty.

“This is the place,” Isaac agreed, looking up at the darkened stucco apartment above the carport where the minivan was parked. “I’ll keep an eye on how the situation develops out here. I’ll honk once if the police come, twice if it’s the kidnapper, and three times if it’s an Amazon delivery.”

Seth laughed until he didn’t. “Good one, but I know how slippery you can be. Never there when I need you. You’re coming with.”

Isaac started to protest that Seth had it the other way around, but he shut his mouth as soon as he exited the car, not wanting to upset the hush that enveloped the area. Curiously, they were insulated from the reverie of the karaoke bars that populated the nearby streets. Isaac wished he were in one of them, belting out a sloppy and slurred rendition of R. Kelly’s Remix to Ignition instead of approaching the apartment of a potential pedo.

It wasn’t fair.

But Isaac got another opportunity to showcase his vocals anyway, letting loose a womanly scream after seeing Seth reach into his waistband to arm himself with Isaac’s gun. Casually, Seth used the butt of it to break the handle off the front door to pop it open.

“What the fucking fuck?” Isaac demanded, but Seth silenced him by putting the gun barrel against Isaac’s lips to pin them close. Isaac winced. This was not the easy-breezy retirement he had imagined. Where was his Corona? Where was his beach?

Once through the door, Isaac’s eyes adjusted to the gloomy dark, and an empty apartment greeted him. It reminded him of his own in Santa Monica. This was the residence of a homebound drifter. The living room was spartan except for a large flat-screen TV and a sectional couch that boasted an ass depression in only one of its cushions. The main distinction between this place and Isaac’s was that whatever Isaac owned in his apartment, this person could afford one brand deviation better, the difference between Honda and Acura, Ritalin and cocaine, or Gerard Butler and Russell Crowe.

Unfortunately, Isaac didn’t see any evidence that an abducted girl lived here or died here. There were no dolls, hair bows, or plastic tarping. If the girl was brutally murdered, Isaac expected to find at least some blood or trace amounts of sugar, spice, and everything nice, but there wasn’t much of anything. Isaac knew these facts weren’t exculpatory, however. Whenever he had thought of trying homicide on for size, leaving behind a trail of evidence was never part of the plan.

“Take the far room,” Seth said, pointing to a closed door at the far end of a hallway that connected the living room and kitchen with the rest of the apartment. Isaac nodded and moved toward it with small and slow steps.

Left foot, right foot.

Right foot, left foot.

“Can I have my gun back?” Isaac whispered, but Seth had vanished, already conducting a sweep of another room. Isaac gulped, imagining he was on the path to a torture chamber or a lizardmen's nest. He tried to stand firm, but the gravity of the situation pulled him closer to whatever awaited him on the other side of the hall door.

But what Isaac found inside that room was not a torture chamber for abducted children nor even a den of inequity but one of LA’s most sought-after luxuries, a second bedroom-turned-office. Isaac turned green with envy. There was a standing desk cranked to full height at the far side of the room, a reading chair, and even a mini-fridge stocked with sparkling mineral water, but what stood out the most was a clue.

Like Anne’s office, framed pictures of movie stars covered the walls. Isaac saw Keanu Reeves, Paul Walker, and even Michael B. Jordan. But these photos weren’t headshots. Instead, they were taken from various movie sets. Upon closer inspection, Isaac noticed these photos were not really of Keanu Reeves, Paul Walker, or Michael B. Jordan but of a single stuntman in costume. A wig out of place here, a mistimed profile shot there, and some patchy blackface exposed the movie magic, but what really tipped Isaac off was when he saw a picture of the stuntman standing side-by-side with an actor he was portraying. In that photo, he and Manny Ortega wore full Super Jesus costumes.

Isaac gasped.

Not from shock. Isaac wasn’t surprised to learn he raided the home of Super Jesus’s stuntman. (Isaac didn’t think he could be surprised anymore.) He was afraid.

Of course, the missing Amber alert girl was wrapped up with the Super Jesus production. Isaac swallowed his stomach, and his vision darkened around the periphery, facing incontrovertible proof that he was dealing with a higher power. He was resigned to that fact.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t free himself from the clutches of this grand conspiracy. Its tendrils went too deep, embedded too far into his very existence, and the more he struggled, the tighter they seemed to grip him. Trapped in QAnon quicksand, Isaac had been a fool to think he could extricate himself from this situation.

All roads led to Century City.

Finally, Isaac understood that his dreams for an unmolested life, as brief as they were, were dashed. There was no quitting his mission. He would have to see this out to the end, but to what end? At this point, he needed something with a pointy end, as suicide was the only option that felt under his control.

Isaac trusted there would be something sharp enough in the standing desk to do the trick. Perhaps a letter opener or a fountain pen would do the trick, but he found something else while rifling through its drawers, a thick stack of worn and marked pages held together by three big brass brads. It was the stuntman’s copy of the shooting script for the Super Jesus sequel, written by Zee Shirley, the very same script that Mr. Lennox withheld from Isaac under penalty of death.

Isaac had to find out why.

“Seth!” Isaac called, wanting a second set of eyes to verify the existence of this Holy Grail, but Isaac couldn’t wait another second longer before digging in past the title page. He skimmed a couple of scenes, looking for something salacious. But, instead, what he read was a big set piece where Super Jesus faces off against the underwater beast known colloquially as the Kraken and a big miracle montage that featured Super Jesus curing male-pattern baldness, granting dogs an increased life expectancy, and birthing a viable third party for American politics. What Isaac didn’t see, disappointingly, was any scene referencing Captain Flapjack’s whereabouts, but he was startled to read one about himself.

Representation on screen was important, but this was a bridge too far for Isaac. Right there, in courier font, was Isaac’s name, and it wasn’t just a cameo appearance either. Isaac had a supporting role in the Super Jesus sequel. As Isaac read more and more pages, he grew more and more frightened, now understanding why Mr. Lennox hid this from him. It wasn’t a movie Isaac was reading, but his life as a B plot.

Apparently, Isaac wasn’t the only screenwriter in Hollywood who could predict the future. Every word Zee wrote in this script matched Isaac’s life exactly, down to the notes about where to place the holes in his jeans. So there Isaac was, on page 24, going to Dr. Rousseau to bear his soul, while page 39 documented his adventures in trying to track down Super Jesus. Embarrassingly, the writing wasn’t particularly kind to Isaac. On page one, Zee described him as an all-American asshole.

Isaac was going to flip to the script's last page to see how it all would end, but his eyes got caught on page 65, just past the midpoint, where the scene narrated Isaac’s investigation of a suspected pedo’s K-town apartment. The pages followed Isaac’s every step just as they were, from his abduction by Seth to how he stumbled upon the very script he now held in his trembling hands.

Isaac was entranced, gripped by the story. In painstaking detail, Zee described how helpless Isaac was at this very moment, so paradoxically engrossed in reading about the slithering shadow closing in from behind him that there was nothing he could do to defend himself against the slithering shadow closing in from behind him. And while Isaac may have tried to adopt the morality of Spider-Man, he did not have the web slinger’s power of spidey sense.

“Thunk!”

That was the word choice Zee Shirley used for the sound of the blunt instrument that struck Isaac’s head.

Ouch! Isaac could feel the plot thickening all down his face. If Isaac were to quibble with the accuracy of anything Zee authored, it would be that the state of consciousness that overtook him after being hit in the head was anything but a “peaceful slumber.” Instead, she should have written, “Isaac’s consciousness plummeted into a nightmare of torment and agony where his physical pain was only exceeded by the existential dread he felt upon realizing he was about to go to sleep without getting high, damning him to lifelong memories of his foray into world-saving of which there would be no escape until the sweet embrace of death.”