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Make Your Move (655 hits)

Category: UberMadness! Entry
Labels: myfiction

Rating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)

Submitted by Razor <Jeremy_21117.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2005-07-26 10:42:32 EDT

This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.

On a quiet and otherwise unremarkable Sunday afternoon, a timeworn Chevy Impala made its way through an exclusive neighborhood, passing its betters on every side. It stopped at a gate at the bottom of a hill, and its driver rolled down the window and pushed a button to request access.

A video screen sprung to life, unintentionally showcasing the exquisite features of the woman who answered it. She wore an Egyptian headdress which the practiced eye of the Impala's driver identified as real gold.

"May I help you?"

The man in the car casually flicked open a badge.

"Yes, my name is Detective Bill Mulanski. I'm here to see Jeffrey Alexander."

The woman's face remained impassive.

"One moment, please."

A short time later, the gates slid open quietly, and Detective Mulanski drove his car through them. He wound his way up the hill, the drive comfortably shaded from the summer sun by the massive oak trees lining it on either side. It opened up at the top of the hill to reveal a sprawling and immaculately maintained stone mansion of recent build.

The detective stopped at the front entrance and got out of his car.

Before he could knock, the front door opened. There to greet him was another woman, as beautiful as the first, scantily clad in an outfit which, the detective could not help but notice, was designed to reveal more than it concealed. She also wore a headdress in the Egyptian style, a coif of pure gold.

"Welcome, Detective Mulanski. I am known as Ashley. Mr. Alexander will be with you in a moment. Please, come in and make yourself comfortable."

The motif did not end with clothing. Littered throughout the house were statues of Bath and Anubis, mixed in with a bevy of Egyptian symbols the detective recognized but could not put a name to. Classical music played faintly in the background at just the right volume, piped through the house via speakers cleverly concealed from view.

The woman Ashley led him to an elegantly appointed sitting room and gestured to a leather chair. The detective took the proffered seat.

"May I bring you a drink, detective?"

"I'm okay, thank you."

"Then I bid you good day."

As soon as the woman had left the room, the detective stood up and began to look around, taking in as many details as he could. After a moment, his eyes settled upon a piece of stone mounted to the wall, protected by a glass display case. Though it was worn with time, the picture carved into it was still clear. Cattle, marching single file, to an unknown destination - the carving was but a piece of some larger, unknown work of art.

"Old Kingdom. Fifth Dynasty. From the time of Khufu. Cattle on their way to the pharaoh, a tribute sacrifice."

Bill turned around.

Jeffery Alexander was a young man, in his early thirties, and immaculately groomed. He was bronzed, fit, and truth be told a bit shorter than Bill had been expecting. He was wearing nothing but a bathing suit, and was drying his hair with a towel as he walked in. He extended his hand.

Bill took it.

"Khufu was the Pharoah who made the Great Pyramid at Giza," said Mr. Alexander, turning to the bar on the far wall. "He wanted to be remembered for all time. It worked."

"Well..."

"I've thought before, that when I die, I might build a pyramid in some dry part of America, like Death Valley. Build one twice the size of Khufu's, just to get people's attention. What do you think people would say?"

"They would probably call you arrogant."

Jeffery Alexander turned around, a glass of scotch in his hand, and smiled. "The Egyptians said the same of Khufu, I'm sure. And yet they teach his name to every high school student in the world. How can I help you, detective?"

Bill looked at his fingernails for a moment, nonplussed. He was used to being in command of any situation he found himself in while on duty; within thirty seconds this man had left him trying to figure out whether he had been engaged in casual conversation of the recipient of a threat.

"You ever hear of a man named Roosevelt Chapman, Mr. Alexander?"

The smile on Jeffery's face twitched, just for a moment. "Can't say that I have."

Bill scratched his head deliberately, looking away for a moment, and then looked into Jeffery's eyes. "Lies don't become you, Mr. Alexander. Won't you have a seat?"

"On the contrary, detective, I think you should sit down. You appear to suspect me in some sort of crime, and you will outline your case against me immediately."

"I'm afraid that's not how it works..." Bill began, and paused. His temples were throbbing horribly. He rubbed his face and took a seat.

"Two weeks ago, on Friday the sixteenth of March, Roosevelt Chapman, manager of the Chase Manhattan bank near the old World Trade Center site, stole approximately seven hundred thousand dollars of hard currency from the vault after the bank was closed. From what I have gathered, he drove to an unknown location, got rid of the money, then went home, drew a bath, and slit his wrists."

"Please continue, detective. This is most interesting" said Jeffery, sitting down opposite him.

"I was assigned to the case. What troubled me right away was that there was no apparent motive for either the crime or the suicide. Mr. Chapman had no history of any criminal activity, no outstanding debts of any kind, and no family members that were in trouble. He was squeaky clean. As a matter of course, I took his home computer and looked over it. Three days before the robbery, he looked up this address on his home computer."

"And where did that lead you?"

"After getting your name, I checked his work computer. Apparently, that day you spoke with Mr. Chapman and closed your account with Chase Manhattan. It seemed odd that Mr. Chapman would look up your home after what should otherwise have been a routine transaction, so I looked into you."

"What did you find?"

"Barely anything at all, and that made me even more curious. The deeper I dug for information, the more of an enigma you became, Mr. Alexander. Your records seem to have been frequently deleted by clerks who were unable to account for their actions, people who were associated with you at one point or another seem to have died mysteriously or forgotten they knew you, and even things as simple as your driving record cannot be located. All I really know is that you were an electrical engineer working for a small company for forty eight thousand dollars a year, and three years later you own a gigantic mansion and all records of you seem to have vanished."

"Why did you come here?"

"I came here to put some pressure on you, find out if you knew anything, or whether I was pursuing a dead end, spurred on by coincidences. Figured I could drop Mr. Chapman's name, see if you reacted like someone who was guilty. You did."

"Yes, I suppose I did. Thank you detective, that was very enlightening."

"You're welcome."

Bill paused, lost in thought, then jumped, startled. What the hell was he doing, spilling all the details of his investigation to his suspect?

Jeffery laughed warmly, and gestured to the seat. "Please detective, don't be startled. Sit back down, get comfortable. Really, we have much to talk about. And don't worry; you didn't have a choice when it came to telling me what I wanted to know."

Every hair on the back of Bill's neck stood up, screaming silent alarm.

Something Is Wrong Here.

"What do you mean, I didn't have a choice?" asked Bill, trying to sound more confident that he felt. Run, he thought. Flee. Escape.

"I have powers far beyond your understanding, and you are helpless to resist them."

"What are you talking about?" said Bill, edging backwards.

"Let's say, for example, that I wanted you to dive headfirst over the chair you're trying to move around. You would do it."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Shall we dispense with the foreplay, detective?"

Bill dove headfirst over the chair.

As he picked himself up off the ground, rubbing blood from a cut by his temple, Bill was reminded forcibly of a time when he was a rookie cop, making traffic stops.

He had pulled over a stolen car, but when he ran the plates nothing came up because the kid behind the wheel had only stolen it five minutes beforehand. When he walked up to get the kid's license, he found himself face to face with a handgun. He and the kid stood looking at each other, neither knowing what to do, not saying a word. Bill had never felt so helpless in his entire life.

That was nothing compared to what he felt now.

"Take a seat, detective. You wanted to find out who I was, and I will grant your wish."

Bill sat back down, unable to disobey.

"Have you ever heard of someone waking up during surgery? Please, feel free to speak."

"Waking up during surgery? What are you talking about?"

"When they put you down for surgery, they don't just give you a single drug. They give you a cocktail."

"A cocktail?"

"A combination of drugs. One of them is an anesthetic, designed to make it so you feel no pain. Another is a paralytic agent, designed to prevent you from the natural movements that any human makes, even in sleep. It would be drastically inconvenient for someone to roll over and scratch their nose while in the middle of having a kidney removed."

"I see."

"Too much anesthetic can kill someone, so doctors are extremely careful to put together just the right cocktail based on body weight, metabolism, and other factors. But sometimes, tragically, the anesthetic wears off in the middle of surgery while the paralytic is still functional. It leaves the person in surgery fully awake and in agony, but unable to move a muscle, make a sound, or indicate to the doctors in any way that they are alert."

"That's horrific."

"You have no idea. People have attempted to describe it, but language lacks the words to describe that kind of pain."

"I can..."

"No, you can't. You only think you can. I awoke to find my doctor slicing my throat open to remove a lump on my thyroid. I was experiencing a pain beyond anything the most expert torturer could provide, and he was talking about the Red Sox."

Jeffrey Alexander paused a moment, lost in recollection.

"People who have been through a similar experience speak about reaching out with every fiber of their being... fighting through the pain, focusing the entirety of their existence into twitching a finger, making a sound, or trying to silently scream for help."

"I was one of the latter... only, in my case, something happened. I felt something in my mind come into sudden focus, and I screamed to the doctors that I was awake... only I screamed it with my mind instead of my voice. And they heard me."

"The surgeon dropped his scalpel. He turned to the anesthesiologist with a look of fear on his face and before he could say a word, the anesthesiologist said, 'I'll give him more anesthetic.' I drifted away."

"None of the doctors ever mentioned the incident to me. No doubt they rationalized it in their minds as imagination. I did the same, at first."

"But before I left the hospital, I had come to realize that the trauma I experienced had unlocked something within me. Nurses would bring me water before I could buzz them to ask for it. When my brother showed up, and he rambled on and on about his troubles with random women, I remember wishing he would shut the fuck up. And you know what happened? He did. Right in the middle of a sentence."

"After I left the hospital, I began to experiment. I commanded strangers walking down the street to drop their briefcases. I commanded a man to rear end a car at a stoplight. These things were done with ease. However, one thing I could not do was read minds. I can only push thoughts into the minds of others."

Jeffrey chuckled. "I guess it doesn't really matter though. I can command people to tell me anything I want to find out. You've experienced that first hand, detective."

"My ambitions were petty at first, only what I suppose you would call semi-dishonest. They were the ambitions of a man who had not yet realized his potential. I had my boss give me a raise. Convinced my neighbor's kid to turn down the volume of his music. But then the inevitable happened."

Jeffrey paused, and Bill realized he was being prompted. "What was the inevitable?"

"I went to a bar."

"Going to a bar was inevitable?"

"Don't be coy with me, detective. I went to a bar, and realized within moments that I didn't have to bother buying women drinks anymore. I picked out the most attractive woman in the bar, and had her take me home. After we made love, I tried an experiment."

"Experiment?"

"Yes. I went into another room, and told her to forget what had happened."

"How can you command someone to forget?"

"People forget things all the time. And I'm not talking about where they put their keys. People suppress memories of being abused and molested, they push things they would rather not remember to the back of their minds, they rewrite history in their memory to suit their self image."

"I take it that your experiment was successful."

"Yes. I walked back into her living room; she took one look at me and screamed. So I ordered her to calm down, and we made love again."

"Are you going to make me forget?"

"Detective, that wouldn't be very useful. After all, you have all the notes that you have undoubtedly taken in your investigation, records on your computer that you spent time looking up."

"So what are you going to do to me?"

"All in good time, detective. I am not done with my story. Later that evening, in this woman's bathroom, I had a revelation."

"Well, th..."

"Don't bother. It's not funny. I was sitting on this woman's toilet, relieving myself, looking through the Victoria's Secret catalog. I was admiring one of the women in it, when I suddenly realized 'Why not?'"

Bill looked at Jeffrey with dawning realization. "You didn't."

"I did, and there was no-one to stop me. And that was just the beginning. I've had virtually every model and movie star in the country. I've had singers, news journalists, and because it struck me as amusing, both of the President's daughters at the same time. I've got a video gallery that puts Paris Hilton's wildest ambitions to shame. But it had to end."

"Why?"

"Katie Couric gave me gonorrhea. That, and I was sick of modifying the memory of paparazzi everywhere I went. A photo of me made it into the National Enquirer with Keira Knightley. Believe it or not, she sued them and won. Of course, I had the photographer admit that the photos were faked."

"Regardless, the harem I have here is more than enough to meet my desires. They have been reshaped to meet my needs. When I feel the urge, I will, on occasion, dabble in the celebrity pool again."

"What did you do after giving up on celebrities?" Bill asked.

"As I sat in the doctor's office after my diagnosis, I came to realize that I was wasting my time. Not with the sex, which was enjoyable enough... but I was proceeding through my life without any regard to the direction I had been heading, like a child freshly out of grade school, wandering about from one Bacchanalian pleasure to the next."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. And I had come to the realization that powers such as mine should not be squandered on the mundane. So I set out to explore my potential. I studied powerful figures from the past, and came to the conclusion that while they had ambitions, they lacked the means to carry them out on a more than temporary basis. I, however, am capable of reaching the goals that all before me have failed to achieve."

"Which are?"

"The same ambitions that lie in the heart of every man, whether he is honest enough to admit them or not. Power. Wealth. Immortality."

"Immortality?"

"You speak of immortality with contempt, detective. Yet, were I to ask you an hour ago what you thought of psychic powers, you would undoubtedly have spoken with the same contempt, would you not?"

"I... I suppose I would have."

"I have the best and brightest scientists in the world, men and women from many countries, working around the clock to unlock the secrets of aging. I have over thirty people studying my brain, helping me to discover the true nature of my powers. While it is easy to compel people with my mind, I find it is often easier to work through conventional channels to secure the necessary equipment and assistants, and for that I need funding. The bank robbery which led you to me is merely one of the many activities I have undertaken in the past year to acquire the necessary material resources."

Jeffrey paused, lost in thought.

"I have gone about erasing the traces of the man that I once was, but your presence here suggests to me that my work has not been thorough enough. Tomorrow I will begin acquiring new identities, which I now see I will take or leave at my convenience. Perhaps... but these are details best left for me to work out on my own. We should turn to a more pressing matter. You."

"Me?" asked Bill, surprised by the sudden shift in topic. "I..." he trailed off.

"No, please detective. Go ahead."

Bill stood up. "Let me serve you. It is clear to me that you are unstoppable, and I wish to have a place of honor by your side in what I am sure will be a glorious new world order."

Jeffery's eyes narrowed. "Detective, tell me the truth."

Bill winced. "I have no intention of serving you. I remembered that you said that you couldn't read minds, and I was hoping that I might be able to stroke your ego by telling you what you wanted to hear. My plans were to escape at the first opportunity, and to come back and kill you when the opportunity presented itself."

Jeffrey nodded. "I thought as much. You will go home, destroy any written evidence in this case, and any computer files you have pertaining to me. And, I think, for your insolence, I will have you kill yourself."

Bill went for his gun... and found that he was pointing it at his own head.

Jeffrey began yelling "Idiot! Insect! You lack vision! There is no-one and nothing that can stop me! Within two years I will be in complete control of the American government, and that is only the beginning! My slaves will unlock the secrets to prolonging life, and I will rule uncontested for all eternity!"

Bill looked at him in silence. Jeffrey continued to rant.

"You think you can get in my way? That your petty little scheme to kill me would go undiscovered? I am already nearly invincible! There is nothing you can do to stop me, nothing anyone can do to stop me!"

Jeffrey paused, smiling. Bill's arm dropped to his side, free of the compulsion.

"But you're welcome to try. Go ahead, detective, make your move."

Bill looked at him impassively. "It would seem I already have."

....................* * *....................

Two men stood over the dead body of Bill Mulanski, a former co-worker. The younger turned to the older, and spoke. "It doesn't make any sense, Eddie."

"Strike those words from your vocabulary, rookie. Everything makes sense if you have enough information to go on. As a detective, it is your job to gather that information."

"Mulanski didn't seem like the suicidal type."

"I know. I know, kid."

Eddie Benaducci tapped a trash can lying near Mulanski's body. "Looks like he burned some papers right before he killed himself. Did a pretty thorough job too, nothing's left."

"Think he was in some kind of trouble he didn't want anybody to know about?"

"It's possible... check his body, see if he left a note somewhere on his person."

"Hey Eddie! He's got a tape recorder in his coat pocket. It's still running!"

Eddie turned around. "Hit Rewind."

User Reviews

Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2005-10-26 21:26:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2

That was my 5000th review, by the way. I've been saving it for this.

Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2005-10-26 21:25:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2

Me = pwned.