“I Ran So Far Away”
Night falls quickly on the plains of the Serengeti. Once the sun goes down, the clear, dry air barely scatters the waning daylight, and the day shifts into night with alarming rapidity. The nocturnal animals of the African plains come out to feed, and any sensible human being retreats to the safe light of the fires.
It’s debatable whether you could call the collection of anthropologists, archaeologists, students, paid diggers, and assorted hangers-on around Amboseli Gorge “sensible”, but they nonetheless gather around the fire as the sun goes down. Perhaps it’s just because that’s where the parties are.
Monica doesn’t attend the parties. Instead, she heads back for her tent, her mind still on today’s finds. Amboseli Gorge doesn’t have the kind of secrets that would make an anthropologist famous, but it yields up consistently interesting finds to the patient and diligent, and Monica definitely qualifies in both regards. Besides, she doesn’t want to be famous. She’s happy with a life of quiet, anonymous respect from her peers. She doesn’t publish, she refuses to do interviews, and she enjoys fieldwork so much she hasn’t left Africa in over twenty years.
That’s what she tells everyone, anyway. It’s true enough, in its own way, but she knows it’s a half-truth at best.
She’s not really thinking about that, though. She’s thinking about picking up tomorrow where she left off, about a promising patch of ground perhaps a few inches across, and she doesn’t really notice the raucous noises of the younger scientists. There’ll be plenty of time to notice them early tomorrow morning when she’s prodding the hung-over ones (which will be most of them—without movies or television, liquor and casual sex provide most of the evening entertainments) to get to work under the African sun.
Monica arrives back at her tent and briefly considers writing up her findings for the day, but they’re not expecting more gas for the generator until tomorrow afternoon, and she strongly suspects that firing up her computer would cause the whole thing to sputter and die after a matter of minutes. Besides, she’s exhausted. She shucks off her dusty clothes, thinks about taking a shower but decides to let it slide until morning, and prepares to crawl into bed.
“Professor Sekowsky?” Monica tenses a little in embarrassment as she hears Fritz’s voice behind her at the entrance to her tent. Not because of her nudity—Monica has done enough fieldwork over the years, under conditions as rough as this and far, far worse, that she no longer has any particular taboos about that. Besides, even though decades of field work have kept her fairly fit for her age, she’s under no illusions that Fritz has any great prurient desires for a forty-seven year old woman, not when there are younger and drunker girls out by the fire.
No, Monica is embarrassed because she’d already taken out the pair of handcuffs. She holds them in her right hand, preparing to clip them around her left wrist, and even in the dim light of the distant fires, the gleaming metal stands out. “I have a tendency to sleepwalk,” she says in answer to the unasked question, the half-truth slipping out with practiced ease. “Not so bad in an apartment, but a very bad habit when you’re out in the middle of the African wilderness.” Not that she’d know. She hasn’t had an apartment in over twenty years now.
Fritz blinks a moment, but decides not to get inquisitive. “Oh,” he says, then falls silent for a moment. Then, as if rebooting, he starts up at the beginning again. “Um, Professor Sekowsky?”
“I’m not your professor, Fritz,” she says, but she’s smiling. She knows that she comes off as something of an authority figure on the dig, particularly for the younger men and women who are a bit too used to responding to older people as teachers and mentors. It’s even a role she enjoys, in some ways, but she’s a bit too laid back to really want to be the boss. She prefers to think of her job as showing these new kids the ropes of fieldwork, instead of treating them like students. “Call me Monica. Doctor Sekowsky if you really want to be formal, but I think that under the circumstances, it’s a bit late for that.” She gestures at her body without a trace of self-consciousness.
“Sorry, um, ma’am.” Fritz is obviously a bit more self-conscious about looking at her body than she is about displaying it. “I was just wondering if, um, you wanted to join the party.”
“Thanks,” she says, “but I don’t drink. Don’t like being hung over at the start of the working day.” That half-truth is even easier to say than the previous ones, but then again, she’s had more practice with it. In fact, she doesn’t trust anything that clouds her judgment. Sleep, liquor, drugs...she knows that when she relaxes too much, when her head gets a little too fuzzy, it’s just a little bit too easy to put one foot in front of the other and start walking. She’s not sure how difficult it would be to stop, but she decided long ago that it was best not to find out the hard way.
“Oh. Um, okay.” She can tell that Fritz is blushing, even though she can’t see it. She wonders if perhaps he’s got a bit of a crush on her, if he prefers an older woman with streaks of gray in her black hair to the young blondes fresh out of college. But she’s not in the mood to find out. Not tonight. Repeating the lies, being caught with the handcuffs, all of it has sent Monica’s mind down a path she doesn’t like to travel often, and it’s killed any romance that might be in the moment. If there is any, which isn’t guaranteed. “Good night, Prof—Monica.”
“Night, Fritz,” Monica says kindly. He turns and leaves, slightly dejected, and she hopes the young man isn’t hurt by the lack of an offer to stay. If he is, she’ll make it up to him in the morning. And perhaps the evening as well, if she’s not imagining things.
She clips the handcuffs around her wrist, locking the other manacle to the frame of her camp bed. The key is within easy reach—she’s never seemed to have any worries about unlocking it in her sleep, although she has woken up some mornings to find she’s dragged the bed several feet. She shivers. Even half a world away and some twenty years later, the call still has some power. She wonders for a moment if she shouldn’t call Fritz back. Tonight isn’t going to be a good night to be alone.
Even as she leans back into the pillow, she knows she’ll have the dream again.
“Come on,” Monica shouted over the strains of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’, “get that in your stomach! It’s not like you’ve got to be up early to study!”
“No,” Laura shouted back conversationally, “I’ve just got to get up early and start job hunting! We’re out of college, now, girl! Forced out into the harsh, cruel world with nothing but a sheepskin to protect us!” She tossed back the shot of vodka and spluttered a bit, causing a round of laughs from the rest of the group. Monica didn’t even know who half of them were. The epic celebration had grown far beyond the seven graduates and snared relatives, friends, friends of friends, well-wishers, and casual acquaintances looking to scam a free drink or two.
It had mostly been Cillian’s idea. “My student visa expires once I graduate,” he’d said. “So before I head back to Dublin, let’s have one last big pub crawl to celebrate!”
“What’s a pub crawl?” William had asked. He only knew Cillian through David, which was to say not very well, because David was studying for his bar exam. Tonight was actually the first time Monica had seen him in about three months.
She’d been about to explain that it was the British equivalent of ‘bar-hopping’ when Cillian had chimed in with his own, much more entertaining explanation. “A pub crawl,” Cillian had said, “is a fine old Irish tradition, which the English and the Scottish basically stole from us because they’re a bunch of bastards. You go from pub to pub to pub until you’re so drunk you can’t walk anymore, then you fall down in the street and puke.” Monica giggled at the memory of the manic expression on his face. “It’s more fun than it sounds.”
“Why don’t you just stay at one bar?” Laura had asked. Monica watched Laura, currently fighting to regain her ability to speak after her shot of vodka. It went without saying that Laura wasn’t a big drinker.
“Two reasons,” Cillian had replied. “First, it allows you to experience the distinct atmosphere and individual charm of different drinking establishments, soaking in their delightful and distinctive quirks over the course of the evening and discovering new places and new people as the night passes. And second, they’re less likely to cut you off if they don’t know exactly how many drinks you’ve had.”
This was the first ‘drinking establishment’ of the night, a loud nightclub called ‘Club Bang’, and Monica was taking it slow for now. That had something to do with Laura’s earlier mention of ‘job hunting’; the prospects for a woman with a Ph.D. in anthropology weren’t exactly so world-beating that Monica thought she could spend unlimited amounts on alcohol tonight. It also had something to do with a desire to have a strong, clear memory of the night’s events. Now that school was out for good and people were heading off to jobs, homes, and other things...she noticed Bryan and Dixie making out, clearly oblivious to everyone else in the room as usual...Monica had a sneaking suspicion that this was the last time they’d see each other for a while, and she wanted to savor the evening.
Which didn’t mean she’d turn down free liquor if someone offered it to her. “Here you go, kid,” Stefan said as he handed her a rum and coke. “This is what you’re drinking, right?” She couldn’t even remember who Stefan was here with, what with the tangled mess of interpersonal relationships, but he had a nice smile and he looked her in the eyes when he talked to her, and that was at least enough to earn him the right to ply her with free drinks for a while.
She nodded, and started to take a sip, but he held up a hand. “Hang on!” he shouted over the music, which had switched to Janet Jackson explaining exactly who she allowed to call her Janet and who was restricted to using the more formal ‘Ms Jackson’. He pulled out a little tube of pills. “Hangover remedy! I never go drinking without it!”
Monica rolled her eyes a little. She was cool with recreational drugs—she’d done pot, some LSD, and she’d tried amphetamines once the night before a big test, although she swore off those after her heart felt like it was going to explode. But a ‘hangover remedy’? “So what are they really?” she asked.
Stefan put on a look of injured innocence. “No, really! They’re herbal! They sell them over the counter in Austria, I have my brother mail me some. You take one—” he popped a pill into his mouth. “And boom, all the drink and none of the headache tomorrow!” He spilled another pill from the tube into his hand, and held it out to her.
Monica shrugged. She was around friends who’d take care of her if it had any weird side effects, and worst came to worst, Stefan would be on the same trip she was. She gulped down the pill, washing it down with a generous swig of rum and coke.
“Hey!” Laura said. “I heard that! Let me try some of the magic hangover pills! I don’t have the tolerance for alcohol you do, I need all the help I can get!” She held out a hand expectantly.
Stefan looked down at the tube reluctantly. “My brother, he won’t be sending me more for another two weeks...” he said.
“Oh, come on!” David shouted. Evidently he’d overheard the conversation as well. “This is the apocalyptic college party to end all college parties, man! You have a duty to your fellow revelers to ensure that our final salute to excessive inebriation turns out as glorious as possible! Two weeks of moderation will pass quickly, but the memories of this booze-up will last a lifetime!”
Stefan sighed. “All right,” he said, shaking out a couple more pills and handing them round. Then a couple more, and a couple more, and soon large numbers of partygoers had taken advantage of his inadvertent generosity. “I should have kept quiet,” he groaned to Monica.
“Kind of hard over all this!” she shouted out. “Come on, let’s have a dance!”
A few drinks and a few dances later, and David mentioned that he knew a nice authentic Irish pub called ‘The Shillelagh’ that Cillian had to see before heading back to Ireland.
“Call this authentic?” Cillian said boldly as he walked in. “Been here five seconds, and nobody’s called my mother a whore yet!”
“It’s early days yet, love,” said a passing waitress with an accent as thick as Cillian’s, and the whole group burst into laughter.
The pub had excellent beer, and it wasn’t long before Cillian was teaching them tips on how to make an Irish toast that Monica was ninety-nine percent sure he was making up on the spot. “And y’see, you take a pinch of salt and you sprinkle it in your beer—that’s to remember Cúchulainn and his battle with the sea. And you always face north...” He swiveled around, swaying slightly as he tried to figure out which direction was north. Finally choosing one seemingly at random, he held up his glass. “That’s because you never want to turn your backs on Northern Ireland, you see. And you say...you say...”
“Sláinte?” Dixie shouted out.
“Nah,” Cillian said, “just swaying back and forth a bit.” There was another burst of laughter, and everyone downed their pints of bitter.
Stefan bought her a replacement beer, and she smiled at him. Suddenly, the silence between them seemed awkward in the way it only really can when you’re just drunk enough to be unsure of social etiquette anymore. She groped for a topic. “Nice necklace,” she said. “Med student thing?”
Stefan looked down at the gold chain with the medallion on the end, and the image of the human brain on it. “Family heirloom,” he said. “My father, he gave it to me. Told me to wear it always.” He shrugged. “Seemed like good advice.” Monica laughed, and he joined in. The awkwardness melted away like it had never been.
Another few drinks, and William’s friend Doug mentioned a dive he knew where they served whiskey in pint glasses, and everyone had to see this one first-hand. Stefan’s hangover cure was definitely working its magic as far as Monica was concerned—he’d bought her plenty of drinks so far, and she was feeling nothing but the most wonderful buzz she’d ever had.
In fact, Monica was feeling so good that when they got to ‘Dead-Eye’s’, she decided she had to try one of these pints of whiskey for herself. Stefan was happy to oblige her request.
“You know he’s sweet on you, right?” Laura said. “I can see it in his eyes, he’s downright smitten.”
Monica laughed. “A few minutes ago, you told me the same thing about the bardenter. Bartender. And he only has one eye!” She suddenly realized she was talking a little loud, but the bartender didn’t seem to take any offense. He probably knew already.
“No, really! I’m telling you, if you want to go to bed with him, he totally wants to sleep with you!” Laura elbowed her in the ribs. “G’wan, this might be your last night of casual sex!”
Monica took another gulp of whiskey. She barely even noticed the burn now. She felt nothing but wonderful. “You say that as though there’ve been lots of nights of casual sex!”
“There have!” Laura said with a giggle. “Oh. You mean for you.”
A few drinks later (and more than a few stories that made Monica’s eyes water—she’d always thought of Laura as so innocent, for fucksake!) and they were hunting for a place that Dixie’s cousin Sarah remembered from the last time she’d visited New York, which they never did actually find but they found a place on the way to that place that Bryan’s roommate Ken went to all the time and swore was really, really good, called ‘The Living End’. By that time, more than a few people had dropped out due to attrition (which was a polite way of saying, “they’d passed out, puked up, gotten arrested, or staggered off home”), but the ones who’d taken Stefan’s magic hangover cure still seemed to be up for more.
They had really sweet live music at ‘The Living End’ from some band that Monica never did find out the name of, but the lead singer had his hair spiked up in a bright blue mohawk and he sang this song about walking in on his girlfriend with another woman that brought tears to Monica’s eyes. “This song is so sweet!” she said, sobbing on Cillian’s shoulder.
“Oh, it’s bollocks!” Cillian shouted. “Any man worth his salt, he walks in on his girlfriend with another woman, he’s not breaking up with her, he’s hunting for the Polaroid!”
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Stop that!” she said. “This is my favorite song, this is! I won’t hear a word against it.” Stefan brushed his hand against her shoulder and asked her if she wanted another drink.
“Yes, please,” she replied, swaying slightly on her feet. This was wonderful, really. Endless free drinks, and no nausea. “Gin and tonic.” She smiled at him as he walked off. “I really like him,” she said to Cillian. “I’m glad you brought him along.”
Cillian furrowed up his brow. “I didn’t bring him,” he said. “I thought he was with you. Still, yeah. Nice lad. Always free with his money and his booze, just what you want at a piss-up.”
Monica frowned. “He’s not with you either? That’s weird. Laura said she didn’t bring him, and Dixie said she’d never met him, and—ooh! Thanks!” She accepted the gin and tonic, tossing it back and feeling that weird, wonderful buzz that was better than any normal alcoholic reaction as the drink mixed with whatever had been in that awesome pill he’d given them...
A few drinks later, and the bars were beginning to close. Then Stefan said, “I know a place.”
Monica stirs from sleep, and at first she still thinks she’s walking towards that bar in New York City. Then she realizes that she’s doing exactly that, and a chill of sleepy terror runs through her body. Her eyes feel sticky, hard to open, but she manages to pry them far enough apart to see the handcuff dangling loosely from her wrist. Her feet are moving, one in front of the other, in a mechanical rhythm that she doesn’t quite seem to be able to halt.
She realizes that other people are walking alongside her, leading her towards a jeep. She tries to shake herself out of this strange daze, an unnatural exhaustion she hasn’t felt in over twenty years, but nothing seems to help. She looks over at the person next to her with half-lidded eyes.
It’s Fritz. He’s holding her arm, guiding her just a little bit as she walks, and she muses absently that maybe because of the dream still fogging her mind, maybe because of the chemical haze fogging it up even further, or maybe just because it’s true, she suddenly sees a resemblance between him and Stefan. Too young to be brothers, though. An uncle?
She should be more frightened, she realizes. She should be terrified, but instead, as she sits down in the jeep with the others and it starts into motion, she can’t feel anything beyond a numb despair in the pit of her stomach, smothered by the vague drifting pleasure that makes her head feel sleepy and thick. Fritz must have doped her up when he unlocked the handcuffs. Not that it will matter for long. Once she gets close enough to hear the call, that will subdue her mind more surely than any drug. If she’s going to do anything, make any attempt to escape, fight this at all, she has to do it now.
“It’s okay, just go back to sleep,” Fritz says as he leans in towards her, and she feels a sharp pin-prick on her arm, followed by a spreading sensation of coolness.
The last thing she sees before her eyes flutter shut again is the medallion around Fritz’s neck.
Stefan’s bar lay down a maze of alleys, and when the streetlights gave out halfway through it all, they had to hold hands and trust to Stefan’s ability to navigate in the dark while dead drunk. Which he swore he was good at, but Monica started to wonder after about five minutes, and only the fact that she was drunk too made this seem like a good idea at all. What part of New York even had alleys you could wander down for five minutes without getting back out onto a street? But she was feeling mellow and agreeable after, um...fivesixseveneight...um...many drinks, so she let Stefan lead her along just like the six or seven others who’d made it this far into the evening. (Probably six, unless a second Cillian really had joined them like she thought she’d seen.)
They finally saw one dim lamp, illuminating a door with no sign. “This is the place!” Stefan said. “Open all night.”
Sure enough, the door opened easily, and Stefan led them into a dimly lit room that looked like it was older than the city itself. The timbers of the walls were ancient and black, the tables looked like they’d been carved by stone tools (and Monica should know, she thought giddily, she was the expert) and the lighting was practically non-existent. All in all, it looked like the kind of bar that attracted suicide victims. Possibly after they committed suicide.
Still, it was open, and the waitstaff seemed happy to serve them. They sat them down at a couple of tables, brought out drinks, and even seemed to get a bit flirtatious. They were probably just bored to tears, Monica thought. There were so many of them that they outnumbered the customers at this time of night.
Stefan brought her another drink. “Here you go,” he said. “I think you’ve almost had enough.”
The room seemed to spin gently on its axis as she downed it, not even sure really what it was but not caring. “You kidding?” she said. “The night is still young.” She looked down at her watch, but it felt like way too much effort to read the numbers.
Stefan chuckled. “That’s not quite what I meant. You know, I envy you, Monica. All my life, I wished nothing more than to be like you, but...” He frowned, handing her another drink. “I must serve.”
Monica drank it down without even thinking about it. “What, you mean, like...” Suddenly, thinking about anything seemed to be an effort. “Like the army?”
Stefan smiled, but there seemed to be a sadness to it. “No. A family obligation.” He gestured around him.
Monica tried to follow the gesture, but her head went all swimmy whenever she tried to move it too fast. Instead, she just took the drink he handed her and downed it obediently. “I...no, that’s cool. My mom wanted me to be an accountant.”
“And instead,” Stefan said, “you have a glorious destiny.” He placed something in her mouth, and Monica chewed on it absently. It had the texture of a root, or a piece of bark, but the taste was more like the hangover cure, like the taste that had been so heavy in the last few drinks she’d had, like the taste she absently realized had been in her drinks to some degree all night long. She smiled dizzily. It was a good taste.
Her eyelids fluttered a bit. Maybe the drink was starting to get to her. She didn’t mind. It felt so good, now. She wondered if everyone else felt the same way. She thought about looking over at them, but she felt too placid to summon up the energy to do things on her own. She barely had the energy to follow one of the waitresses with her eyes as she walked past with another mug of liquid for one of the others. “Hey,” Monica said in muted surprise, her words slightly muffled by the root in her mouth and slurred by drink, “she’s got a necklace like yours!”
Stefan nodded. “We all do, those who serve,” he said, dipping his fingers into a mug and smearing her face with sticky liquid. Monica moaned as she felt a fierce tingling wherever it touched her, and she found herself slumping back into her chair. Stefan was undoing her blouse now, daubing her breasts with that same liquid, and it felt even better there. It felt like...not even arousal, it felt like she was actually being fucked, right there in the chair, the dreamy, warm pleasure of a cock pounding into her without even being touched. It felt like a song of bliss, strumming not into her ears but directly into her mind, and Monica found her moans and sighs falling into the rhythm of the song.
“You are ready,” Stefan said. “You hear the call, now.” He took her hand, and she felt like she was floating to her feet as he guided her along. She fell into step with him, and she saw in front of her that Cillian and Laura were both being led in the same way. She could hear William, Dixie, David and Bryan behind her...no, not hear, not exactly. She could hear the song, and they were a part of it. Not completely, not yet, but they were all beginning to become a part of the song. It was wonderful.
Stefan and the others led them through a door to a flight of steps, now, and each step they descended made the song that much louder, that much more beautiful, that much more enticing. Monica knew now that they were heading down into the source of the song, and she wanted nothing more than to join that, now and forever. She imagined sinking into the song like a pool of warm water, joining it purely and perfectly, without the bonds of crude matter interfering. She could see the soft, gentle glow as they approached it, and she almost wished she had enough will left to quicken her pace.
The steps didn’t end, she realized. They kept descending in a spiral, deeper down the same way she felt like she was sinking into the song. She didn’t know how long they’d been walking, time ceased to have meaning now that she had the song to hold and comfort her. All she knew was that she could see it, the pool of gently glowing water, and the steps just coninued down into it. Cillian’s guide stopped at the edge, but Cillian kept right on walking, and his sighs of rapture as he sank into the water were glorious to her ears.
It was thick, she realized. Not quite buoyant, but thick like gelatin, and Cillian sank slowly and easily into it. She could see others within it, singing the same wonderful song, and she sighed out in pure joy to know that soon she would no longer just listen to the song, she would sing it herself. Nothing could be more wonderful.
Laura’s guide released her hand, and Laura walked past her guide, past Cillian’s guide, and sank slowly into the pool and into the song. She would join with it for eternity, communing with the others, joining their thoughts together into wonderful, endless bliss, spending all time with her friends in the same joyous dream...
Then she broke a heel.
She stumbled against Stefan, and her head brushed the medallion he wore against his neck. It felt like someone had dumped cold water into her mind. The root in her mouth tasted bitter all of a sudden, like wormwood. She looked around in a sudden panic of confusion, the song gone from her mind...
And she recoiled against the wall at what she saw. The glowing gelatinous substance just a few feet below her had so very many people floating in it, suspended in its depths, but...oh, god, they weren’t all there anymore. The gel was almost completely transparent, and the deeper Monica looked into its endless fathoms, the worse it got. She could see their flesh dissolving—not at any rate visible to the naked eye, but further below Cillian and Laura, she saw clothes melted away, then below that skin, then below that flesh, then below that all that was left were mere skeletons with nerve fibers intertwined around them, and below that...
Nothing but brains. Brains and nervous systems suspended in a goo that ate everything else away, leaving them with nothing but the gelatinous liquid to sustain them. And it fed, she realized, it fed on the bodies of the newest victims, eating and growing and singing and living and calling out, endlessly, for fresh meat to feed its endless hunger. And Cillian and Laura, she realized, they had already joined the song, they were a part of it now...
Monica turned and ran. She would remember that moment in shame for the rest of her life, realizing that she didn’t even try to help the others, forever hearing that sickening glutinous splash as Dixie lost her balance when Monica shoved past her. But she was so scared, terrified that whatever effect touching the medallion had would fade soon, leaving her to hear the song, making her want to follow the call, making her want to join the group mind...
So she ran. She ran back up through the bar, her progress unimpeded by guards—they relied on the drug to keep their victims subdued, didn’t they? She ran through a maze of dark alleys, tripping over garbage and slamming into walls, bursting into tears of frustration and panic as she fled. She ran out into the streets at last, she ran because she couldn’t let herself stop. She ran and she didn’t stop until New York was a distant memory, she ran so far that she couldn’t hear the call in her waking mind anymore. She ran as far as she could.
And now, her eyes open again, and she sees that it wasn’t far enough. They found her. She wonders now if she’d ever managed to lose them at all, or if they’d just waited, patiently, allowing her brain to season with extra memories so that she would be a better addition to the group mind. She can’t bring herself to care anymore. This close, the call is too strong to even think about resisting.
She can hear her friends, their voices raised above all the others in the song, so happy to know that their reunion is at hand. She walks down the steps in a daze. Fritz doesn’t need to hold her hand. She can’t do anything but keep heading down, now.
There are fewer steps than there were, but still too many to count. The group mind has grown, over the years. Idly, she wonders just how far down it goes, how deep the shaft leads into the earth. She wonders how long the others have served it. She wonders how much longer she’ll be able to wonder.
Then she takes one final step, and Monica joins the song forever.