Chapter 24
Day turned to night, and Isaac’s writing hadn’t slowed down. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Isaac was writing as if his life depended on it. Because it did.
With no slowdown in sight, Seth was getting impatient. He didn’t want to break Isaac’s concentration, but he was fiending for some Super Jesus spoilers and couldn’t help himself. Carefully, Seth reached over Isaac to grab a finished page, but Seth couldn’t stop his shadow from falling across the typewriter. The minor disturbance broke Isaac’s trance.
Fuck me, Seth thought.
“What happened?” Disoriented, Isaac flailed his arms and gasped for air, unable to catch his breath, acting as if he were coming up from a long dive to the bottom of the ocean to forge for the pearls to throw before swine.
“All right,” Seth huffed, “Calm down. Let’s see what we got here, shall we?” He read the pages intently. Then, when he was done, he reached for more pages and read those too. His face screwed up something vicious. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“I’m not sure,” Isaac said, wiping sweat off his forehead. “Did I write a comedy? Can you read some of it back to me?”
Seth sized up Isaac. Was Isaac fucking with him, or was his an earnest question? Seth couldn’t tell, unable to pierce the veil of Isaac’s autism.
The truth was that Isaac had no idea what he had written. There was zero recall. By the second word Isaac put to page, his mind-body connection was so strong and so transcendent that he had lost all consciousness. Isaac had been blackout. This was what must have happened when he wrote his dream script.
Seth: “Oh, so you really are fucking crazy. You don’t remember a thing, do you?”
Isaac shook his head no.
Seth pushed the page he was reading into Isaac’s chest, nearly toppling Isaac and his chair over. “Explain yourself. And take some time to get your story straight because you got one shot at it.” Isaac’s gun made another appearance for the sake of punctuation.
“Oh no,” Isaac muttered in panic after reading the first few scenes of his newest script. That’s all it took to crack his confidence. He felt lightheaded as his oversized ego deflated, the blood draining from his face.
Poof! Just like that, Isaac’s Pulitzer was gone. His would-be publicity tour was scrapped. And his name would never be mentioned alongside the greats of Mamet, Camus, and Zee Shirley. His writing career was over.
Somehow, he had written a near word-for-word reproduction of what Seth had typed for his script. The only exception was Isaac’s version had more detail, a lot more detail, nauseatingly so, meaning that Isaac now knew what a Cleveland Steamer referred to.
“This is a good thing,” Isaac reasoned. He spoke to the barrel of his gun. “Honestly.”
“How is this a good thing?”
“Well, what are the chances we both wrote the exact same thing? It must mean something. This must be the prophecy. Zee is destined to give you a Cleveland Steamer! That’s where we’ll find her.” Isaac reviewed the pages anew, looking for clues to her location. “What was the scene header description again? Did it name a place? Where’s the nearest Wendy’s?”
“What are you talking about?” Seth was incredulous. “You already read what I wrote first. That’s how you copied it! This isn’t fate. This wasn’t a double-blind taste test. It just means you’re an unoriginal hack!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You can stuff your sorries in a sack, mister!” Seth cried, and Isaac laughed. The odd-time Seinfield reference turned Isaac’s ear like nails on a chalkboard. It bothered him, but he couldn’t focus on it, not when Seth kept escalating the situation. He threatened Isaac, “It’s time for me to take over.”
“Take over?”
“Yeah. You fucked up. And the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed,” Seth lectured. “But don’t worry your pretty little head, Isaac. I’m going to take it from here. We gave you a chance, and you fumbled the bag.”
“What bag?”
“Are you serious? Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“...”
“My guy, we’re in solitary confinement. But there are two of us. So how’s that work? Does that sound very solitary to you?”
“???” Isaac’s throat closed.
You’re me, and I’m you.”
“!!!”
“Let me put this into terms you can comprehend. You know Fight Club?”
(Another 90’s pop culture reference!)
Obviously, Isaac was familiar with Fight Club. He was a disaffected male incel. Fight Club was a movie, and the movie was based on a book, but Isaac had never read the book, nor would he ever. He loved the movie.
Seth continued. “You know Fight Club. Well, I’m Brad Pitt, right? Cool as hell. And you’re the Edward Norton character because you’re the one who’s weak as fuck. Make sense? It’s pretty simple. You’re my split personality. I’m the alpha and you’re the beta.”
“...” Isaac was reeling.
“You never noticed how I just popped in and out of your life at will, at my own fucking convenience? Here one minute and gone the next?” Seth asked, but Isaac found his argument unpersuasive. What Seth described could be anyone Isaac had ever known, parents included. People made cameo appearances in Isaac’s life. There were no series regulars. The lone exception to the rule was Dr. Rousseau.
“How long has this been going on?” Isaac wondered.
“Since the day I was born. You don’t get it. I was you before you. But you got a crack at the steering wheel after I shot up that spice market where Osama Bin Llama lived.”
“You what?” Isaac asked, appalled.
“No need to clutch your pearls, Isaac. They were only mad because I shot them first. You see, I caught wind of their extermination order, and if the llama — my Tali-llama — was going to die, then it would be by my hand. Understood? Put him out of his misery, quick and easy. That was my responsibility to him as a friend.”
“You couldn’t have saved him instead? You had to kill him?”
“The tl;dr of it all was that they deactivated me as a punishment for my insubordination. They disassociated my consciousness from the pineal gland, banishing me from controlling our body. Then, in the ensuing power vacuum, it was your weak sperm of a personality that wriggled its way up from some dark recess of our shared subconscious. That’s how Isaac Abrahamson was born. I am your father.”
Isaac gasped.
“Dr. Rousseau promised me another turn in the cockpit if I could tell him where Zee was or if I could wring the answer out of you. Whatever came first. Except you’re about as useful as tits on a bull. I tried! I thought I could help you, but I know what Dr. Rousseau doesn’t.”
“What’s that?”
“He made a mistake. He doesn’t want to admit what’s as clear as day to everyone else: you suck. You’re a sunk cost the size of the Titanic.”
Isaac felt paralyzed, now understanding that Seth had set him up. Their trip to the K-town apartment was never about the Amber Alert girl. It was an ambush.
“Get it now? You were Plan B to me, the secret agent with 132 confirmed kills. And now that you can’t do the one thing you were trained for — writing a screenplay — it’s over for you. Good fucking night.” Seth smiled. “You should be thanking me. I’m doing you a favor, really. I’ll kill you — in the metaphysical sense only — and we both live happily ever after.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Isaac protested meekly.
“First: you don’t have a choice. It’s my decision. Second: this is what you’ve always secretly wanted. Fess up! You’ll gladly trade in the responsibilities of being the main character for those of being an audience member. Think about it. It’s perfect for you. No courage needed. Just think of your life as one long movie, except now I’m the star of the show. Whereas you sucked, I’m just going to YOLO all over everything.”
“That’s not fair. They forced me to watch all that content. I didn’t know any better!” Isaac piped up. Now that he knew he was manipulated into watching visual media for a living, maybe Isaac wasn’t the type of person who could binge seasons of television at a time. Instead, maybe Isaac liked hiking and brunch and getting his asshole bleached.
Seth responded. “But you liked being addicted to TV. Admit it! If you broke out of here, the first thing you’d do when you got home is turn on the TV and watch whatever your algorithm suggested. What was it last time? The Little Chocolatiers?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“It’s not my fault!”
“You were thinking about suicide like five minutes ago. Remember? You were trying to think through the logistics of cutting your wrists open with paper cuts. Now you want to live? Be honest: is it to spite me? You don’t want to see this caged bird fly?”
“It’s not to spite you! But I wasn’t really going to commit suicide. It was only a daydream,” Isaac told Seth and himself. “I was just hopeless at that moment, and I wanted to feel better. It was my Dark Night of the Soul.”
“I’m sorry, Isaac, but it’s a zero-sum game. I wish it wasn’t, but those are the facts. It’s you or me.” Seth rose to his highest height and then grew more. “Get in my belly!” Seth growled and pointed to his belly in another dated 90’s pop culture reference, this one from an Austin Powers sequel. “I’m going to turn you into the little chocolatier.”
What the fuck?
The reference bothered Isaac.
Why would Seth say that at this moment? It was too incongruous. A Fat Bastard quote? In this economy? The stakes of their conflict seemed too high to be concerned with regurgitating Fat Bastard quotes. And why did Seth give a call back to the little chocolatier? Was it a tortured Mini-Me reference? Or was this just proof positive that Isaac was undergoing a schizophrenic episode, his two personalities converging into one pop culture-addled consciousness?
Isaac’s head spun while he tried to retreat from Seth. This was bad. His world was upside down. He was through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole, only to find himself on the dark side of the moon.
Seth tossed Isaac’s gun aside, the tool no longer needed for persuasion. Shooting Isaac had always been a bluff. Because a crucial difference between Seth and the Fat Bastard was that Seth wasn’t a fat bastard intent on eating a little person to satiate his hunger. Instead, Seth wanted to eat Isaac alive to consume his consciousness. And if Seth was to consume Isaac’s consciousness, then he had to eat Isaac in a single bite.
Those were the rules.
So Seth got bigger and bigger. His mass physically changed. His shoulders were now big enough to span the cell's width, wall to wall. It wasn’t just his body either. A true Slytherin, Seth unhinged his snake-like jaw to prepare to eat. It was grotesque. Seth’s mouth was now Isaac-sized.
When Seth breathed in, a gale-force wind ripped through the room. It blew the hundreds of script pages around and around like confetti. Isaac marveled at the sight until the wind’s speed picked up further, causing him to lose his balance. He hit the floor with a splat. Then, unable to return to his feet, he slid across the ground toward Seth. Suck, suck, suck. There was no escaping the power of his breath.
Fear found Isaac then. He had felt this power once before, reminding him of when he had tried to fuck his vacuum cleaner. Just like that night, Isaac’s soul was at stake.
Rather than Fat Bastard, Isaac thought Kirby would have been the more apt reference for Seth to use about his transformation. It was perfect. Like in the video game, Seth was trying to inhale Isaac to absorb his powers. Plus, Kirby wasn’t as problematic of a character as Fat Bastard. What if Seth had been in mixed company (i.e., the Scots) when he had made the reference? But, then again, Kirby didn’t speak, so it would have been impossible for Seth to quote him as he did with Fat Bastard. This annoyed Isaac. He didn’t know why.
As Isaac continued to slide across the floor into Seth’s mouth, he grabbed ahold of the writing desk’s leg, using it as an anchor to keep him from being swallowed, but the desk soon gave way as well, the metal screeching as it skittered across the room toward the void. But Isaac wouldn’t let go.
Seth inhaled another breath to cause the gravity in the room to drop out altogether. There was nowhere to hide now. It felt as if a black hole had materialized next to him.
Suddenly, the desk lifted off the ground, and Isaac pivoted his body to put the desk between himself and Seth as it hurtled toward the abyss. The sight was horrible. Instead of cuddly Kirby, Seth’s mouth now reminded Isaac of the Sarlacc from the Return of the Jedi, but the ancient sand beast wasn’t quotable either. The problem was the same. Isaac had to give it up. Time to admit that Seth did indeed threaten him with the proper pop culture reference.
Isaac was scared. Was his brain so poisoned and contaminated by media content that he couldn’t even experience a moment as sacred as his own death without a cheap comparison to Star Wars? Isaac had never understood how damaged he was until now.
But at least Isaac had thought of a piece of media from a different decade this time. That was an improvement, forgetting that the image of the Sarlacc his mind had conjured was from the 90s re-release of Star Wars, the version that added a VFX beak and tentacles to the original monster. Luckily, Isaac wouldn’t have to grapple with that realization because Seth’s mouth was closing in on him, ready to devour him whole. Soon the desk was halfway gone, and Isaac was next.
But Isaac twisted the desk while it was in Seth’s mouth, causing the desk’s feet to hook into Seth’s cheek, yank his head, and alter the direction of the suction. Then, using the change in momentum, Isaac barreled into the side of Seth’s face to knock him off balance. Seth, Isaac, and the desk fell to the floor in a terrible crash, the impact of it forcing Seth’s jaw closed and allowing the room’s gravity to return in full.
But Isaac’s victory was short-lived. Immediately, Seth was on top of him in a counterattack, a whirling dervish of punches, kicks, and elbows. His enormous size and strength overpowered Isaac.
All Isaac could do to shield himself from the furious onslaught was to curl up into a ball. But it was only a matter of time until the inevitable end. Isaac’s defenses grew softer, and his will weakened with each hit from Seth.
Powerless to move, Isaac saw Seth expand his jaw again for a second bite at the apple. This was it for Isaac. Once swallowed, it would be The Truman Show for him (but if he was watching himself as an audience member and couldn’t change the channel). The horror. He couldn’t imagine watching Seth massacre his next Afghani spice market, but what drew true terror to Isaac’s heart was how boring it would be to watch someone sleep for eight hours a day. He needed to battle back. He had to throw his Hail Mary. He needed to summon the strength that had come to him when he fought the lizardman under the library.
But how?
Closing his eyes to focus, Isaac tried to put himself in the same state of mind as he was then, near death. That was the easy part. But there was more to it than that, he remembered. When his powers first awakened, Isaac had lost consciousness after getting choked out by the monkey, reducing Isaac to his most primal nature.
That must be the secret! Isaac would have to tap into his animalistic side, so he focused all his energy on the most basic of instincts, fighting and fucking, the ones he had learned from watching Babe: Pig in the City.
Isaac was ready.
He was steady.
He was all systems go.
When Isaac opened his eyes, the world was alight in the yellows, reds, and blues of thermal imaging. He did it! He transformed! He had done something he had put his mind to! Then, with tremendous joy, Isaac punched Seth in the face, breaking his jaw. Seth fell sideways, shrinking several sizes, and had to hold the bottom half of his face together.
“Think you’re clever? Do you? Well, you must realize by now that two can play this game,” Seth mumbled through a bloody mouth. As he said this, another, more dramatic change was overcoming Seth's body.
Isaac knew what would happen before it happened. He knew he should attack Seth now or run, but he couldn’t move, too transfixed by watching Seth turn into a lizardman. He was revolted to see Seth’s skin burst and peel back to reveal what was underneath his flesh, a hide of hardened scales, a natural coat of chainmail. Next, a thick tail erupted from the backside of his body, and Seth whipped it through the air, flexing it to test its immense strength.
“Get over here,” Seth said to Isaac, using the same vocal intonation as Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.
“No.”
Once again, Isaac looked around the room for weapons, but his options were few and far between, especially after Seth had eaten half of everything in the cell. The gun was his best bet, but it rested on the floor behind Seth and was blocked off by his enormous mass. That left Isaac with only the script pages scattered about the room, so he grabbed what he could and threw them one-by-one frisbee-style at Seth with all of his super strength. Isaac would papercut the son of a bitch to death if it was the last thing he did.
Unfortunately, the pages only glanced off Seth’s scaly armor and fell harmlessly to the ground. Seth laughed.
All out of ideas, Isaac gathered what remained of his strength and courage and charged Seth, who greeted him with open arms. The assault did not go as expected.
Isaac failed his mission successfully by tripping over his feet to grab the upper hand. Not expecting his attacker’s clumsiness, Seth’s legs buckled as Isaac rolled into them at the kneecaps. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, so Seth fell pretty fucking hard. Isaac landed several blows on the beast while he was stunned, but they didn’t seem to have any impact.
Now entangled, the two engaged in a crocodilian death roll. Over and over they went. Nails, claws, and teeth flashed in the harsh fluorescence that lit their cell. Seth used his tail to his advantage by whipping it around and drawing blood whenever it connected to Isaac’s skin.
What changed the complexion of the battle was when Isaac decided to lean into his strengths, utilizing his media training for good instead of whatever his handlers had in mind. He remembered the wisdom of Captain Insano from Adam Sandler’s 1998 cult classic, The Waterboy. The lesson was thus: show no mercy and poke your enemy in the eye at your earliest opportunity.
Argh! Seth roared after Isaac gouged his finger into the lizardman’s yellowed eye. The pain weakened Seth’s grip on Isaac, who used this window of opportunity to strike the other eye.
Fwhoosh! A fountain of cold blood erupted from Seth’s second eye just as Isaac had planned, combining the playbook of The Waterboy with that of Harry Potter, who employed this tactic to defeat the Basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. However, Isaac forgot if he remembered this plan from the novel, the movie, or the adult coloring book’s version of the story.
In absolute agony, Seth thrashed about blindly, doing his best to dislodge Isaac, but Isaac held on for dear life no matter how hard he was tossed around. The more Seth bucked, rolled, and flopped, the more and more blood he lost, and the smaller and smaller he shrunk. After a while, Seth’s movements grew weak and lethargic. Then, his body shriveled to its normal size as his fate was decided.
“Thank you, Isaac,” Seth mumbled feebly.
“For what?”
“For giving me my last new sensation…. Thank you. Never have I ever experienced losing to a fucking pussy like yourself.”
“...”
It was over. Seth’s body, if you could even call it that, began disintegrating at the toes and worked its way up through the rest of him. The particles that held him together floated away until they ceased to exist entirely, leaving no trace.
Isaac watched, astonished, as even Isaac’s gun atomized and vanished into thin air. Everything else remained as it was when Isaac first entered the room with Dr. Rousseau. Even the items Seth had sucked into his being were back to normal. All that remained from the grisly battle was whatever blood had splattered onto Isaac throughout the fight, which he realized was his own after tasting it.
Exhausted, Isaac collapsed to the floor. He was relieved even after hitting the sore spot on the back of his head for the millionth time. But the pain went unnoticed as he was too busy laughing. Isaac had won. Of course, he did. His victory was foretold in Fight Club, the neurotic nerd defeating the alpha cool guy, an ending as common as it was old, dating back for as long as stories were written by the creatures known as writers.
But this was no time to celebrate. Time was in short supply. Isaac had to take advantage of the moment while his super strength still surged through his system, so he threw himself at his reinforced cell door with all his might to break it. Again and again!
Bang! Bang!
The door held firm, but Isaac would not be denied. Finally, with one last push, Isaac felt the bolt inside the door snap, crackle, and pop, allowing the door to swing forward and open. Freedom! Isaac could now do whatever he wanted, no longer held back by a parasitic personality, a psycho psychiatrist, or a prison of pop culture references. He was liberated.
So Isaac asked himself, What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?