Kailus
The Previous Week
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“Didn’t know you could drive.”
“What, because of how old I look?” Seamus said while bending down beside his opened car door. “Quickly, otherwise I will really forget how to drive; the sun is barely above the horizon.”
I looked up at the cloud-streaked, purple skies with orange emerging in the distance. “The rising sun isn’t going to induce amnesia, silly old man.”
“It will if I have to see that sun rise many more times.” He paused in his seat and looked out his window. “You’re right, I’ll be gone along with my memories.”
“Start driving!”
“You’ll regret rushing me.” He put on his sunglasses, winked where I could see it, and put his hand on the wheel. My back pushed against my seat as I felt a large pressure on my chest, preventing a natural breath.
Within a few seconds, we floated above all the trees enclosing our tiny village, which, looking out the window, was smack in the middle of the island. A few more seconds later, the remote land became an indistinguishable dot behind us.
Soon, we slowed to a halt and descended onto a grassy hill overlooking a large and expansive building no taller than two or three stories. I stepped out of the car and the stale, gray-blocked building was surrounded by chain-linked fences erected around its perimeter; the only sign of life being the dull-colored objects hugged by overgrowth.
“Looks like the contents in my toilet,” I said to the air.
“I feel relieved for the biofuel that has to be ejected out of your factory,” Seamus grunted while picking up his backpack from his driver's seat. “Don’t even know what nonsense you have to eat to create that color.”
“This is a prison? How do people live here if it’s abandoned?”
“Of course people don’t live here now, unless you want to be its second guest after decades of abandonment.”
“Who’s the first?” I asked and looked at the ragged old Seamus in his dark robe, and he pointed to himself.
“This was my line of work prior to meeting you Explorers.”
“Living in prisons?”
“And communicating with its hidden and ghostly beasts with many eyes and sharp fangs,” he said, attempting to scare me.
“I want to see!” I briskly walked downhill ahead of him and he quickly caught up.
“Okay, you passed my first test.”
I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Hey, don’t cover your failure to shock me as some all-knowing scheme.”
“This way,” he said, ignoring me and pointing towards a gate.
“Can’t we climb over this fence?” I jumped and grabbed onto the chain-linked fence, inserting my fingers and the tip of my shoe into its empty spaces, then proceeded to climb.
“Kailus! Wait!”
I stopped and looked down at Seamus who let out a guttural outcry.
“Get off the fence. Now,” he said sternly. “You’re going to get injured if you continue up. There’s razor wire.”
I jumped down next to him and looked at the top of the fence, seeing a faint glint in the morning sun. “What’s that? Looks like a flimsy string to me.”
“It’s sharp metal and it will puncture or cut your flesh with ease. It can also snap due to its increased brittleness from its old age and cold climate—who knows what would be left of you by the time that happens,” he informed.
“Good to know,” I responded. We continued to walk alongside the fences and through the front gate, which Seamus said was where people entered and left for safety measures. It was the same dull colors as the whole vicinity—lacking any vibrance. It’s no wonder human habitats have overgrowth—there’s no life in them!
“So, how are we staying here, or rather, how did you stay here?” I asked, walking out the backside of the gate and swiping away a dangling vine.
“Sometimes I stayed in the car; other times I was in one of the sleeping quarters inside. For the rest of this week, we’ll be staying inside for your training.”
We traversed straight across a yard of weeds to the entrance of the stone building in front of us. Seamus pushed the door and its creaks echoed up and down its empty, dark halls. Walking through as he held the metal door, a fragrance of flora welcomed me, weaving its way into my nose for every step I took. The little light spreading from the crevice of the door was all that illuminated the halls in front of and besides us, and the sense of adventure drained out of me.
Immediately, I turned to Seamus, who looked at me with his typical face. Then it must just be me.
My heart pounded in my ears, and I sensed a yearning much stronger than any yearn for pleasure. A cold breeze was felt around my heart, and pain began to prick its surface like a subtle pinch. Tears flowed without warning—barely finding its way through my glasses.
“What’s happening to me?” I quietly whimpered as I attempted to compose myself.
Seamus breathed out a heavy sigh, then pointed his nose up to the ceiling with eyes closed. “You are very sensitive to the environment, but have little to no freedom to choose whether it will affect you or not.”
“But I don’t understand what I’m feeling! What is this?”
“That is for you to find out during our week here.”
“No… This is not what I came here to do!” I turned to walk towards the door. Seamus extended his arm to block the exit. “What are you doing!”
“This is what you came here to do, and you won’t be leaving until you finish.”
“You can call a different person. Not me.” I grabbed his thin, old arm and detached it from the door frame. The warmth of the morning sun wasn't something I thought I'd missed as I walked towards the gate.
Seamus let out another audible sigh behind me. “You see, if you leave, I will notify the Explorers to be abandoned. You were all chosen to work together as a unit. Everyone has their own challenges and training catered to them so that their strengths will really shine.”
I stopped in my tracks and side-eyed Seamus. “And how is feeling this inexplicable feeling my strength?”
“You’re ignoring what I said. Since you are very sensitive to your environment, you must be able to choose how it affects you,” Seamus said. “The Integrator told me about your little act of playing with your colleagues’ hearts—a perfect example of what you are capable of, but now in a more beneficial direction. Whether you trust me or not is your own decision.”
An unfair deal where my colleagues’ existence depends on mine? Why must it be binding? Is this what Seamus was warning me about with the beast having many eyes and fangs?
This unpleasantness wasn't something I ever want to feel in my life, yet Seamus wanted me to choose to walk into something so obviously harmful. A pain so entrenched in the heart that it could even cause death! Even with a momentary step inside, my heart wrapped and bound itself so tightly in its own grip. Simply thinking about the consequences of remaining in this place was enough to deter me.
I can do more beneficial things than this, too. Screw helping humanity evolve! By the time I am finished with this, I would have evolved to death—the greatest offshoot of human evolution! Kailus of Death—the one and only human to bring forth knowledge that bridges humanity between life’s diametric sides using his own life!
But the choice between the unspoken agreement of the Explorers or my own sanity—which was the best? Why must it be either or? I felt my body split in two opposing fires that began its inner battle to justify either existence. The fire of the sun or the fire of pain? The fire of pain was obviously more painful, but who would ever choose something more painful in their right mind?
For humanity? For the rest of the Explorers? No, those weren’t justifiable reasons. What do I get out of this? It is my choice, my life, my adventure, and also every one of my colleagues’ lives. Too complex. Need it much simpler. I’ll just do it! Whatever.
I turned around and walked back to the door with its old metal frame, which Seamus was still leaning on.
“I better be called the Conqueror of Death after this,” I told him. “The amount of pain in here is nuts!”
“You finally understand what a prison is, huh?”
“What, the pain or the nuts?”
“I’d say both,” he replied.
I pondered for a moment. “Don’t think you will be free from me after I finish!”
“Oh, I think I will,” he said with a wily smirk. I so want to brush his teeth so his smile would not be so lopsided.
With Seamus’ flashlight, we stepped into the central hall opened in front of us.
The yearning and pain in my heart was constant throughout the walk. Past opened cells and even more rows of cells above me, my eyes continued to drench itself until it could no longer continue. The faint breeze of the cell block reminded my eyes to release more tears, but I only blinked to shelter from its cold bites.
Dim light came through the ceilings and cracked walls that appeared on occasion. Otherwise, the sole reminder of bleakness were the echoes of our caged footsteps, and the pervasive black-painted bars absorbing color from encroaching vegetation. I felt the vibrance of my clothes and skin dissipating; the black luster beckoning me to forget myself and move on.
My nasal discharge became more apparent in response to the cold pain that writhes my heart; or maybe it was the cool breeze that carried winter from barren halls. Whichever it was, the odor of rusted iron almost made me hurl from various dimensions of pressure piling within me. Even in this empty and abandoned place, the air carried a burden where every breath was a gasp for life. It was not just my body wading through water, but my whole being. My body screamed to drop and succumb to the unidentifiable darkness, but I continued to trudge in its miasma. If I were to make it out to be with the rest of the Explorers, there would be no compromise.
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We arrived in the sleeping quarters of pre-integration guards and Seamus unrolled one of two giant sleeping bags tied to the top of his backpack.
“We will sleep here for the night, but in the meantime,” Seamus walked to one of the old cabinets on the corner beside a bunk, and pulled out some boxes. “We can play some cards or board games—which do you prefer?”
“Are we not looking for supernatural entities?” I asked.
“They’ll come when they’ll come. Now choose!” He shook both his hands—one held a deck of cards and the other had a board game I couldn’t make out in the darkness unreached by the flashlight.
I chose cards and he took out the deck from the box, asking me if I knew any card games. “I’ve never played any cards.”
“Then we’ll play something called blackjack.” He told me the rules of the game and it was very simple—have your cards’ numbers sum to twenty-one or less; the person with the highest sum is the winner of that round. If anyone’s sum goes over twenty-one, they automatically lose.
He passed two cards to each of us—one faced up and another faced down.
“Since you haven’t played cards, have you played anything else during your leisure hours, like video games?” Seamus asked, dealing the cards for each of us.
“No, I watch various films and act in my free time,” I replied. “Is distracting me from this place by playing games part of the training package?”
“Sure. I can tell that you’re looking way better and more comfortable than when you first stepped inside.”
“Still feeling queasy. Could've had a warning before stepping inside,” I said, grasping my belly and taking a look at my hidden card. “Why does this place continue to exist anyway? Shouldn’t it be demolished by now, considering you work with the Integrator?”
“Yes – this building will be demolished – but after our mission is done. We’ll be seeing at least one entity, but it hasn’t appeared since it’s probably shy,” he replied, passing a card to himself. “It will need to get accustomed to your presence.”
“How did you meet this entity anyway?”
“It wanted to play with me so it showed itself, that silly thing. Chase me, scare me, and do all sorts of things humans can’t do,” he snorted.
“Such as playing cards and board games?”
“No, it hasn’t asked for any of that fortunately. I’m not sure it can even hold physical objects. If it did, man oh man, what kind of game would it even come up with?” Seamus chuckled.
We played several rounds of blackjack until I noticed it had simple rules that didn’t make each playthrough unique, prompting Seamus to introduce a different card game. Many new games and configurations later, I defeated the veteran card player despite his many attempts for a rematch. With great attempts to ask me to continue playing, I declined because all card games were ultimately about chance under the guise of simple rules, which did not appeal to me. There was no personal impact that changed the way the other person played, rather, an invisible hand guided the progress of the game.
In the confines of these rules, it’s no surprise that the entity wasn’t attracted to such forms of entertainment. Life itself is a playground with no rules and only consequences, giving its biggest appeal to me.
Seamus stood up by the cabinet to pick out a board game, but I stopped him. “If all these games contain simple rules with little to no freedom to choose, I’d rather play the game of life.”
He glanced over at me, dropped the box back into the cabinet, and returned to sit across from me on the floor with a sigh. “You played the game of life when you entered here, but wanted to turn away. Now you turn away from simplicity. Would sitting in darkness be the middle ground for you?”
“I prefer choices and options.”
Seamus let out a hearty laugh and wiped his eyes with a finger. “And if there are no choices?”
“There will always be choices. Even your suggestion of no choice is a choice,” I told him. “Why would I live a life with no choices? Sounds like a bore.”
In the dim rays of the flashlight, Seamus’s ghostly pale face smiled. “Then let’s take a walk before knocking ourselves out!”
…
The next day, a vigorous shake awakened me and I groaned. “What do you want, Skinny Man Seamus?”
“You sound older than me! What has this place done to you?”
“You’re the one who brought me here, senile old man!”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You adapted to this place rather quickly and slept without screaming for mom. Sanity check.”
“I chose to be here after that unfair rule you introduced to me, of course I have to adapt,” I told him with a hint of a whine. I sat up and rubbed my eyes to get a better picture of the dark, empty room. Nothing else besides a few bunks and a cabinet—same as yesterday. “And I thought we were going to see some supernatural entities?”
“If you see them, you’ll see them. Stop asking every waking minute and get up and get some morning winter sun.”
I squinted as we walked out the front door with my body bathed in light. After my eyes adjusted, I looked around to see the same dull-colored exterior I wanted no part of in my palette. “Okay, I think that’s enough sunlight. Heading back inside.”
Seamus grabbed my shoulder as I turned and pulled me closer to him to whisper uncharacteristically in my ear. “Food! Yeah?”
“My goosebumps will become goose spikes if you talk like that to me again. What does food have to do with—”
My stomach grumbled.
“See? You haven’t eaten since you entered, now back to the car to grab the goodies and eat in the prison cafeteria; unless you want to eat where it’s more conducive.”
I decided to hike back up the grassy hill where the pristine car with white lights remained afloat, then returned to the prison cafeteria with some fruits for our second day’s stay. Instead of walking straight down the middle from the front door to the cell block, we went to the right hall, which opened to a spacious cafeteria with tables.
Compared to all the activities we have done since yesterday – which was mostly playing tabletop games – eating these fruits was the most revitalizing. Even so much as looking at the barren rooms and halls, or even the concrete outside fatigued my mind. But feeling the fruit juices spreading into my chest was something I longed for even after a single day of its absence. Besides tears of yearning and pain from whatever that was, I had tears of life that welled up. Tears that were just right—no mess.
Feeling much more exuberant, an obvious question arose that never appeared in hindsight. “Seamus, how are you able to handle this dense atmosphere? Even now, a haze remains around my heart, but it’s something that I can never ignore.”
The messy-haired pale old man took a long good look at me—his elbows on the table while holding a pear to his mouth. He took a bite through its white flesh with eyes remaining connected with mine, and leaned in to speak. “Did you forget I’m from the pre-integration era and this is a pre-integration facility?”
“So because you are from that era, you have felt this way before?” I asked. He gripped the pear with his teeth and furrowed his brow, with his now empty palms slapping his chest as if to indicate: well, what do you think? Hello? Your head empty?
I locked my eyes to his while taking a bite out of my own fruit, pretending to be bewildered by the implications of his arms and face with an innocent and tensionless blank expression. “Foreign language? Don’t know any of them.”
Seamus rolled his eyes and took the pear out of his mouth. “This atmosphere closely resembles that of pre-integration illnesses in the mind. With such a high concentration of ill minds in this facility, it is no doubt that serious impressions have been soaked into the air, quite literally.
“As for me, well, I’m different from most people back in those days. Since I was interested in the same stuff as I am now – supernatural phenomenon – I never had a reputation and was unable to communicate with most people because of their own beliefs on how reality worked. Had to deal with many that disrupted my work and even those who made attempts on my life. It was certainly not easy, and I had some of those ill-mindedness, too.
“I’m quite satisfied now that young ones like you have such malleability, yet do not take everything to heart. Speaking of ill minds, both of us would be considered so and be placed in buildings like these if we lived in those times again.”
Me? In prison? I don’t know how people became so ill that they would leave an impression in literal air, but I wouldn't harm myself to such an ill-minded extent. Now—were people ill-minded before coming into the building, or did they develop an ill mind?
“How do they decide to place people in here?” I asked.
“Many ways, but generally, the prisoner has done physical harm towards other people, and they undergo a trial to see how long they will stay. It could be a few days to a few years, or until their death.”
“Until their death?” I asked with a tense throat and felt a heaviness wash over my eyes. “In this painful atmosphere?”
Tears started flowing down again, and this time, it was resonating with the writhing pain in my heart. The haze had a bitterness, a yearning, a grasping, a tension, and a voice that could not be heard.
“This place—it feels unnatural. I feel a strong impression in my heart. The air pricks and burns, my heart squeezes, and it makes me want to hold onto something. Something valuable. Not an object because the object is always out of reach. It hurts my eyes and I could hear my heart beating in my ears—the pain of perpetual missingness. Something valuable is missing, yet it is far and intangible. A cold burn, and a burning freeze around my chest. The word is at the tip of my tongue!”
I looked at Seamus with burning eyes, making an effort to see the answer through the painful tears. He returned an incredibly relaxed face to the point even gravity dragged his eyes and mouth down. He knows the answer and he’s hiding it from me!
“Please tell me what this pain is!” I hollered. “I know this is no secret to you. It’s when someone is missing something. What are they missing? Their heart! Pain! Care! Friend! Justice! Freedom!”
By this time, my tears didn’t hold back, and neither did my nose fluids.
“George! Camilla! Stacy! Pam! Helen! Jess! Princess! Brianna! Noelle! Lia! Victor! Michael! Ashleen! Wilson! Jane! Sofia!”
My mind became empty as I closed my eyes and shouted names so foreign to me.
“Air. Sunlight. Beauty. Home. Food. Water. Alone. Loneliness. Love,” I whimpered with a wet face. “They are missing love. They are lonely.”
I sobbed and wailed without restraint with my head down on the table between my two elbows, hands grabbing and pulling tufts of hair. Heat and pressure on my back from Seamus’ hand moved in gentle circles, while I heard only my whimpers and sniffs in the empty cafeteria. My voice continued to crack as the thick air of loneliness seeped into my heart. Names of friends and family flashed through my mind, bringing the pain that came along with its remembrance, almost like a dying will engraved into the configuration of the dense prison air.
I didn’t know where these names came from, and I knew they were names I haven’t heard. The prison was a place of immense sorrow and dread, yet the most prominent feeling was the yearning of someone to hold beside them. Someone far away or someone that does not exist, but even that shadow of a fantasy was the greatest gift they held—the vicinity of another human.
“You did well identifying the emotion, Kailus,” Seamus said with a shaky voice. I looked up to him standing with his hand on my back and saw his red eyes glazed with wetness.
He certainly experienced the feeling of loneliness with how little tears he shed. To not affect him this much… to not affect him this much meant he understood the pain to an extent that I could not fathom. It would be difficult for me to replicate this feeling even as a joke. I wouldn’t want to be such a masochist anyway. I am only glad to have experienced this so that I never have to experience it again.
“So, when are we seeing supernatural entities?” I asked. A hard whack on my head ruffled my hair to a messy extent.
“You acclimatize to situations so quickly, you even look like a different person altogether,” Seamus said. “No one I have ever seen had such chameleon-esque abilities. How you undergo drastic changes in personality before, during, and after stepping into this building still puzzles me.”
“Well, I appreciate your ability to even handle such emotional pain. I don’t know how you survived that to this old age,” I said, wiping my glasses.
“That was my, or our nature back then. Now, I prefer emotions much lighter and more refined,” he replied. “Let’s get some sun and play around before sleeping, yeah?”
I agreed and we finished our meal to take a much longer stroll on the fields past the gate. I asked more about loneliness during the pre-integration era and whether there were more painful emotions. Seamus said that painful emotions were all relative to the person experiencing it—sometimes people found the heart to be more painful, while others thought of the arms and legs as major areas of discomfort. Essentially, there were different areas of the body where emotional pain gathered, but he didn’t elaborate further than that. I couldn’t imagine myself feeling more pain, and he even said some people had a combination of these emotions!
After this eventful second day, we returned to the dark sleeping quarters by twilight and surrounded ourselves with the sleeping bags in silence. Silence until the lights in our eyes went out.
…
I heard a muddled sob off in the distance, then various shapes began to cycle in front of my vision—rotating triangles and squares with circles revolving around them as a center point. The rotations at various angles and dissimilar speeds were disorienting and left me confused about my sense of place. Wind blew through my hair and even felt like it went through my head as if it were translucent and immaterial. Whatever the wind was, I could not hold and feel its tactility in its fullness; the experience was fleeting and ephemeral.
The sound of sobbing became more lucid as I remained still and focused in the direction it was coming from. I floated towards it in curiosity and began to see figures passing and going through walls. They appeared ethereal with subtly perceivable silhouettes. They were cloaked in a transient and breathing dimmed white light, disappearing and reappearing in sufficiently quick cycles that I could make out its trajectory in space.
Background colors were more saturated and every object glowed with perpetual brightness as if they were stars themselves; a radiance that wanted to engulf everything beside it. When I drew closer to the sound and passed through walls, it took a while to notice that I remained in the same place while the walls willed itself towards me. Behind the wall was the same wall in the same room, and everything spiraled in an amalgamation of colors. The sound of the sobs were of the same volume in every direction, and slowly but surely, the pretty colors faded as I opened my eyes to see a translucent, yet glowing face in front of mine that emitted the same sobs.
I squinted with my blurred vision, attempting to make out its features, but I could tell it wasn't Seamus.
My heartbeat ran to my ears and my throat tensed. Heat spread throughout my body and perspiration dotted my face. My eyes widened and I screeched.
Seamus wiggled awake in his sleeping bag and quickly inched towards me.
“Kailus!” Through my blurred vision, I could see Seamus facepalming a loud smack. “You scared the entity away!”