Project Maigo(92)

The pressure is unbearable, like a black hole just formed at the center of my cranium and is sucking me in, spaghettifying my brain. Ironically, a black spot appears in my vision. It grows larger, blocking my view. Is it real? Is this a physical thing I’m seeing? I fall back, cringing away from it, terrified by the darkness. I see Endo around the black spot’s periphery, standing over me, shouting something, but I can’t hear him. Then I can’t see him.

Darkness is all that remains. It’s cold and silent. Empty.

While I can’t see, I sense something in the black. A force. An evil presence. Full of hate.

It knows I’m here.

It wants to kill me. Destroy me.

I try to run, but where can I go? I’m nowhere.

I’m... I hear music.

Not music. A TV. A laugh track. Someone is watching a sitcom.

I feel the rug beneath my fingers before I can see it, but the image soon resolves. It’s a beige and gold design. Ugly as shit. But I know it.

I turn my head up. I’m in my childhood living room.

The scent of pine fills my nose. It’s Christmas again. Not again...

I’m crouching by the tree, the familiar ornaments hanging on it create an ache in my chest. I know this moment. I know what I’ll find. And despite a nearly overwhelming urge to run and hide, I step forward.

Standing on the far side of the room is my father. His work shirt is open, revealing his white T-shirt, freshly stained with duck sauce from supper. He’s holding a gun. I’m not sure where he got it. I’ve never seen a real gun before.

I’m paralyzed with fear. Too afraid to say anything. And it gets so much worse when I see her. My mother lies on the linoleum floor—the rug is gone. She’s dead. Shot.

“It was an accident,” my father says, then raises the gun and shoots my mother again. “She did it to herself.”

This isn’t right.

This isn’t what happened.

This is...Maigo.

“Open your present, Jon.”

I turn toward the voice. Maigo, the beautiful little girl with the Hello Kitty backpack and a bloody hole in her chest, stares up at me from the floor, lying beside my mother. Or is it her mother?

“Your mother killed herself, Jon,” my father says. But he’s not my father anymore. His face is stretched out. Distorted. Like a hammerhead shark.

The broken puzzle of my psyche starts to reassemble.

I’m in Scylla’s mind, but the monster is fighting back; pushing me out with the strength of its raw emotion.

“Your mother killed herself, but she killed you first!” The gun rises toward my chest and fires.

Pain flares like an explosion.

I fall to the floor, gasping for each breath.

Maigo watches me with large, black, dead eyes. “Open your present, Jon.”

With the last of my strength, I roll to the Christmas tree. A small, ribbon-wrapped gift box sits under the tree. I reach for it.

Scylla-father screams in anger, no longer intelligible, and storms over to me. Somehow I know that if he reaches me and kills me, I’m screwed—and not just in this mental world, but in the real world.

With the last of my strength, I tug on the bow. It slips apart easily. The box tips toward me and opens, spilling its contents onto the floor. Dark red blood oozes out, rolling down the lines of grout like Maigo’s mother’s blood.

What kind of gift is blood? I think.

Then I remember who it’s from and what it’s for.

The blood isn’t Maigo’s or her mothers.

It’s Nemesis’s.

As my vision fades and Scylla-dad closes in, I slap my hand down in the viscous fluid. It’s warm and tacky. A small measure of strength returns on contact with the blood, but it’s not much. I need to ingest it, to allow Nemesis in. I lift my hand, bring it to my face and lick.

It tastes horrible. I want nothing more than to spit it out. But I don’t. I hold it in my mouth, even as it begins to scorch my tongue. Then I swallow.

The burn moves through my body, tearing a scream from my mouth. But the burn isn’t physical. I’m not on fire.

What I’m feeling is anger.

Rage.

White hot, burning fury. I’ve never felt any emotion as strongly. As clearly. The hate and the pain it brings is...

I would destroy the world if I could.

I would end the universe.

This was Maigo’s gift—the raw, manic indignation that fuels Nemesis, unhindered by the girl’s calming presence.

Scylla’s psyche doesn’t stand a chance. While the monster is a descendant of Nemesis-Prime, it didn’t endure the tortures of the beings who left Prime on Earth to exact judgment on mankind. Scylla has never really experienced pain. Or loss. Or desperation. And it lacks any kind of self-direction, having been led by Gordon since its birth.