Chapter 21

“¡Dios fucking mío!,” Isaac wheezed. His brain blistered in pain. Before he could brave the act of opening his eyes, his hand sought out a sizable welt on the back of his head. A souvenir from K-town. Given its tenderness, Isaac thought it felt like the bruise could be up to a day or two old, but what the fuck did he know? He wasn’t a doctor. What he did know was that his hair felt freshly shampooed. He was finally free of the stink of the LA sewers and Fierce by Abercrombie. That was something, but it wasn’t enough.

The physical brain damage was one thing, but he was hurting on a metaphysical level, too. Isaac struggled to wrap his mind around the implications of reading his starring appearance in the Super Jesus sequel, his life foretold. Every time he tried grappling with questions of destiny, free will, and his own prophetic powers, his consciousness collapsed, unable to operate, crying out for something to doom scroll. He craved fluoride.

Best not to think of it.

Isaac pushed himself up from his cot and into a sitting position. He assessed himself and his surroundings. First was the institutional jumpsuit he wore. The cotton was as crisp as it was white. Not a great sign. What was worse was the room. Its four walls were painted a brilliant shade of white to match his uniform, and the 2-in-1 sink and toilet combination suggested prison, but the adjacent desk said maybe not so fast. Curiously, it held an old-fashioned typewriter and an accompanying vase of arranged flowers — poppies, obviously.

“Dios fucking mío,” Isaac sighed when his eyes finally landed on his bunkmate. He tried to fight off the recognition and what it would mean but couldn’t. His migraine exploded anew. “Hey, I know you,” Isaac wheezed.

“You don’t know me,” the man countered. He sat on his very own cot across from Isaac. The supports bowed from the man’s bulk. Luckily, a Hufflepuff House badge was affixed to the man’s matching uniform, putting Isaac at ease. “You don’t know me if I don’t know you.”

“You wouldn’t. I met you in a dream.”

“Oh,” his roommate said flatly, shrugging it off as if this was a run-of-the-mill revelation.

“The man of my dreams,” Isaac laughed at himself. What else could he do but laugh? He was talking to a figment of his imagination. The man described as “The Taller Figure” in his Super Jesus 3 script laughed back. He had a big belly full of chuckles to work his way through.

Isaac was sure this was the guy. The massive height, the vulnerable eyes, and the sad-sack face made him perfect for playing the part of a patsy, a look that Isaac recognized from the mirror. Its familiarity spooked Isaac so much that he had to refresh his visual palette by going to the room’s lone window.

“Jesus Christ,” Isaac muttered. Though a spider web of metal mesh inlaid into the reinforced glass, he could see yet another familiar sight: downtown LA. From this vantage point, way high up in the sky, he could see the LA coroner’s office and retrace his steps from when he followed Super Jesus into the drain pipes by the LA river.

Only one place in LA could claim this view.

Isaac groaned, and his cot’s springs echoed the sound as he sat back down. He would have to get comfortable because he’d be here awhile. This cot, and now himself, belonged to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, LA’s receptacle for its refuse, home to those who refused to go along with polite society or live on Skid Row (which was yet another city landmark he could see from this room with a view).

But who brought him here? And why? If only he had been able to read more of the Super Jesus 2 script before he was knocked out.

“What happened in your dream?” the Taller Figure wondered. “Was I flying? I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly.”

“You don’t want to know. One man’s dream could be another man’s nightmare.”

“....”

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Isaac bit his lip. “In my dream, a lizardman ate you.”

The taller figure mulled that over briefly before asking, “Was it Xzaylax-Delta?”

“...” Isaac choked on his tongue.

“He didn’t eat me,” the man said as a matter of fact. “I’m still here. See?”

Isaac took a moment to process this before speaking, “Confirm something for me, okay? Did you and Zee break into the Annenberg to steal Captain Flapjacks from Super Jesus?”

“Yup.”

Isaac let loose a long, low whistle. “Sheesh. I knew that, of course, but it’s another thing to hear it straight from the source.” He paused, wheels turning, “So, is Zee here? Did they capture her?”

“No. No. No.” The Taller Figure said, holding up his hands to reveal bandages where his fingernails should have been. “My name is Mark Appleton,” Mark Appleton explained. He extended a bloodied hand to Isaac for a formal greeting.

Isaac recoiled. If this is how they treated this dumb bastard, what would they do to a super genius/wizard like Isaac? “What happened to you?”

“I’m trying to find Zee.” Mark looked at his fingers, counting them. “Did you know that sometimes pain can help you to remember things?”

“No.”

“That’s what the doctors taught me. But... it just hasn’t worked on me yet. You’ll learn all sorts of cool science facts while you’re here. We’re in a top-secret lab. I’m a secret agent.”

“That makes two of us.”

Mark put a palm to his forehead. “Have you ever remembered one thing by remembering another thing?”

“Sure,” Isaac said, now augmenting his vocal register to the same tone society uses for toddlers for the sake of this man who was as simple as two plus two. Mark was someone at home in the Twin Towers, who belonged in the Twin Towers, unlike Isaac, who was of sound mind and body. Isaac had to figure out an escape route. “What did you remember, Mark?”

“I remembered that you know Zee. So now it’s your turn to remember where she is. Maybe you could write it down?” Mark tried to keep a straight face, but one of his eyes escaped and looked across the room.

Isaac followed the fleeing eye to where it landed on the typewriter. Huh. Something didn’t add up for Isaac. Whoever plucked Mark’s nails out would surely know better than to damage his fingers if they wanted Mark to use the typewriter. Unless it wasn’t Mark’s typewriter at all, but it was meant for Isaac, the one-time screenwriter laureate of Super Jesus 3. He recognized the typewriter's make and model as the kind used in the monkeys’ writers’ room at Fox Studios.

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“Did the doctors put you up to this? Did they ask you to ask me to write a script?” Isaac pressed Mark, but his mind was racing, thinking only Mr. Lennox could be responsible. He should have never read that Super Jesus 2 script. He had been warned.

“No,” Mark protested, putting both his bandaged hands up in surrender. “I want to help Zee, and these doctors promised me they’d protect her once you found her.”

“Like they’re protecting you?”

“Mhmm,” he nodded. “And they’ll protect you, too, if you write the script to find Zee. You can find her with the typewriter.”

“Do you feel protected?”

“You only get something if you give something,” Mark recited. “We all want to find her.” He puffed out his chest, “And I’m tough. I can take it. I’m doing my part. That’s why Zee brought me with her to the Annenberg. Plus, the food ain’t half bad here.” He ruminated on this point for a moment before saying, “I would like to go home, though. Once we find Zee, we will go home. They pinky promised.”

“Why did you guys try to steal Captain Flapjacks?”

Mark sighed, having been asked this question a thousand times before. “I don’t know. I was the muscle. Need-to-know basis only is what she said. All I was told was that we would save the world.”

“Did she say how?”

“Only that we had to save the cat.”

“Of course.” It was now Isaac’s time to sigh. He could see how wise Zee was to keep this dimwit in the dark, a decision that was paying dividends for her. Isaac paused. “What’s your relationship to Zee?”

Mark blushed and turned inward, seeming to shrink in size like a smitten little kitten. “We — we don’t have a relationship sort of relationship, not like that, but I have told her that I like her, like like-like her.”

“I take it she’s single?” Isaac inquired for a friend’s sake.

“She wanted Captain Flapjacks so she could make her boyfriend mad. I think.”

“Who was her boyfriend?” Isaac asked, wanting to see how he stacked up against the competition.

Mark swallowed hard. “Her boss. Mr. Lenny.”

“...” Isaac didn’t have to work too hard to figure out he meant Mr. Lennox. He gritted his teeth. How incestuous this was turning out to be. And how could someone as hot as Zee date Mr. Lennox? How old was he anyway? She should have been dating him instead.

“So, will you do it? Will you tell me where she is?”

“I’m sorry, Mark, but I don’t think I can. Even if I could, these people, these doctors, are not your friends, nor are they Zee’s.” They must be Mr. Lennox’s friends, Isaac thought.

“You lie! The docs told me you could do it. That you’re made of magic.”

“I can confidently say that I’m not made of magic,” Isaac said without much confidence.

“You’re a Slytherin, aren’t you?”

Isaac gulped. “Yes, but that’s not real. Hogwarts isn’t real. I can’t do magic. And I can’t remember how to write a script. That was a one-time thing, a burst of genius, divinely inspired. Have you ever heard of Samual Coleridge and the Kubla Khan?”

“No!” Mark roared, rising up to tower over Isaac at his full height. His face was ruddy with rage, and he pitched his posture forward with menace. “Pain will help you remember, remember? You will remember how to write,” Mark growled.

“Not very Hufflepuff of you.” Isaac gulped again.

Mark held his bandaged hands up, brandishing them like clubs. The welt on the back of Isaac’s head throbbed harder at the sight of them. Isaac backed up, retreating from Mark until he hit the back of his head against the cell door, blocking his escape and shooting a fresh ripple of pain from his head’s bruise to his nerve endings. Isaac winced.

With nowhere for Isaac to go, Mark reared his hand back, taking aim. But before he could bring down a haymaker, a mechanical click from the door handle stopped him. The door opened automatically, causing Isaac to fall and Mark’s twisted face to unspool into a silly smile. “Time for breakfast!”

The tension in the room evaporated as soon as Mark’s growling moved from his mouth to his stomach, a response Isaac found to be particularly Pavlovian. There was a bounce to Mark’s steps as they walked down the hall toward the cafeteria together. They passed other patients on the way, all of them in various states of lucidity, everything from mumbling and stumbling to outright bumbling, but what really caught Isaac’s attention was that every patient aside from himself wore a house badge, 95% of them Slytherin.

Without a word to each other, Mark and Isaac stopped short of the cafeteria in unison. Somehow, the rec room was calling to them. The room was dark inside, aside from a glow that flickered against the back wall. Curious, Isaac peered inside and discovered rows and rows of patients, all oriented toward a giant projection screen.

It was movie day at the Twin Towers, and Isaac immediately knew what was playing when he saw Super Jesus. On-screen, the second coming was hanging ten on a surfboard, hair whipping in the wind, while he raced down the barrel of a tsunami toward the open and waiting maw of the Kraken of Atlantis. Spiked tentacles thrashed all around Super Jesus, leaving him no chance of escape, a moment of high drama in the movie, but Isaac knew how this battle would end. He had read it in the stuntman’s script. Super Jesus would send the tip of his surfboard through the beast’s eye, slaying it to save the day, all with his Birman sidekick perched on his shoulder.

Isaac was watching the first cut of the Super Jesus sequel.

He was struck dumb and held his breath, waiting for his own character to appear on screen. Who would play him, he wondered? Clooney? DiCaprio?

Out of all the craziness and absurdities that had come to dominate Isaac’s life of late, state asylum inmates getting an advanced screening of the most anticipated movie in the world was by far the most bizarre, surpassing his discovery of lizardmen from space. This development was so unfathomable to him that his brain began to work overtime to figure out the reason, trying out theories, formulating hypotheses, and conceiving of outlandish conspiracies to try and explain the situation, but nothing clicked until Isaac remembered his conversation with Mr. Lennox, how the big shot producer complained about how his focus groups weren’t responding appropriately to the test screenings. These inmates were the Super Jesus focus group!

A quick review of the audience confirmed Mr. Lennox’s assessment. If Isaac were him, he would also be very concerned by what he saw because each person watching the movie looked bored out of their minds, completely stupefied by what they saw on screen despite the thrilling action unfolding before them. Isaac couldn’t understand why. Super Jesus remained cool as hell, and the Kraken’s rendering looked real enough that Isaac wondered if the beast was CGI or if the production team actually unearthed the leviathan from the depths of some long-forgotten oceanic trench.

Something was wrong. Despite the impressive visuals and a pounding score, the audience remained unmoved, practically comatose. Isaac would have thought they were all dead, but their shallow breathing was still strong enough to rustle their paper-thin hospital gowns up and down. He watched a fly wash its hands on someone’s unblinking eyeball.

Isaac was so creeped out by the scene that he didn’t even want to stick around to see what actor was playing him. “C’mon, let’s go get breakfast,” he urged Mark, who had stopped along with him, except there was no response from his roommate. When Isaac turned to him, he saw Mark facing the screen with the same vacant stare every other audience member wore. He tugged Mark’s arm to get his attention off the movie, but it was useless. He was gone. There would be no breakfast. Mark was out to lunch, and he was never coming back. Isaac now understood the problem. The audience wasn’t bored. They were hypnotized.

Isaac looked to the back of the room for answers, where the movie’s projector hung from the ceiling, but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about it, only a blue-colored strobe of light beaming out from the lens. However, what was underneath the projector proved to be more interesting. There was a room-length mirror, and Isaac knew it was two-way instantly. He wondered who was behind it, who was watching the watchers, and who was watching him. Somebody was.

“Time’s up, buddy. Let’s move it along,” someone barked. Two burly orderlies appeared behind Isaac, their eyes hidden behind the dark-colored lenses of RealD movie glasses. Isaac didn’t see them since his eyes were too busy watching the screen again, where the Avengers forced Super Jesus to cook them a platter of beer-battered Kraken calamari to celebrate his victory. It was hard to look away.

“Here,” said one of the orderlies. “This will help.” Isaac felt a pill pressed into his palm. Instinctually, he lifted it to his mouth. The pill was blue with ALOCA spelled across it. “Nothing a little fluoride can’t cure,” the orderly assured. It was true. Once it was down the hatch, Isaac’s brain pain abated.

The first orderly held Isaac while the second pulled a hood over his eyes, but not before he saw the hospital light glint harshly off their Slytherin House badges. Isaac laughed at them.

“Time to see the doctor,” the second orderly grunted as he strong-armed his patient forward, taking a series of twists and turns through the Twin Towers that Isaac didn’t even try to memorize. When they stopped, Isaac heard one of the orderlies knock respectfully at a door.

“Come in!” The door creaked open, and an “Ah! Hello, there!” greeted Isaac. “Thanks for taking the time to come down and see me. I hope you’re doing well.”

Isaac groaned. He didn’t need his mask removed to know who was talking to him. The voice was instantly recognizable, for no one else could reproduce that specific tone of smugness. It belonged to one person only. “Are you ready?” asked Dr. Rousseau.