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Havana or Hell

I

When I was a kid, my father built a small recording studio in our back yard. That was back in 1993, two years before the voices in his head told him to pack up and move out. It wasn't a fancy studio with automated mixers, digital recording gear and George Martin behind the knobs. Rather, it was a simple shed built from plywood, fitted with an aluminum roof, and just enough room to squeeze in a reel-to-reel tape recorder and two mike stands for himself and his guitar. It wasn't the first time he tried to launch a music career for himself either. He'd already released a one-off 45 single back back in 1971 when he was nineteen and a local record company tried to market him as a country-western singer named "Billy Kent," although his proper name was Eugene. I was only five when he left, and my sister was four. I don't remember much about my father, and Katryn remembers even less. I don't even remember his speaking voice, or if he ever kissed or hugged us. All he left behind is that scratched-up 45 he recorded twenty years earlier. The music is standard guitar-driven country, not too different from something Ricky Nelson might have cooked up, but the lyrics are strange and unsettling. Something about apologizing to a small child he's hurt on the A-side, and a song about being eaten alive on the flip-side. It's pretty crazy stuff, so it doesn't come as a surprise he didn't make it to Nashville. But I must have listened to that record a hundred times over, just to know his voice. The shed still stands, but mom never goes in there. She doesn't like to be reminded of the past, and she would probably pay someone to tear it down, if it wasn't for Kat and me.

A few days ago, I was sitting in that same studio, listening to his 45 when Kat burst in.

"Mom's worried about you," she said. "All you do when you come to visit, is to sit in this stupid shed and mull over that old record."

"It's DAD!" I insisted.

Kat sat down next to me, and together we listened to the two tracks he'd left behind for his future kids. We looked at the cover, like so many times before. But now I'm 22. Three years older than the kid on the front. I'm older than my own dad, but we share many of the same features. That same unruly mop of auburn hair, the same brown eyes, the same haunted look. Until two weeks ago, I never understood why he had such a worried expression on his face, like he was afraid something evil might jump him from out of the shadows. But today, I fully understand.

"So, what happened?" Kat asked.

"I've dropped out of college." I replied quietly.

"Is it because of the murder?"

"Yeah," I lied.

Sure, I could have told her about the conversation I had with my professor, Dr. Oatley, but she would not have understood, and I couldn't find the words to explain. Dennis Oatley is a graying professor in his late sixties. He's well liked among his students and faculty alike. But he is bipolar, and yesterday, over coffee and sociology, he trusted me enough to admit he was in fact the renaissance astronomer, Galileo. At first I thought he meant it in a figurative way of speaking -that his teachings were misunderstood, or under-appreciated by his peers, so I nodded and took a bite of the chocolate muffin his wife had prepared.

"Sure," I mumbled, my mouth full of muffin. "I understand."

"You don't get it," Oatley replied matter of fact. "Sometimes I'm also the emperor Nero. But I don't like being Nero. He wasn't a very nice individual." Most of his colleagues write Dr. Oatley off as a bright, but slightly dotty colleague, but I understand him all too well.

My name is Daniel Kent, I'm 22 years old, I was born and raised right here in Oakfort, and I'm a demon.

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II

Two weeks prior, I decided I needed some time off. Mid-term exams were coming up and I was poorly prepared. Concentrating had become increasingly difficult with each passing day, and my head was piling up with uninvited thoughts that were better left unthought, and they wouldn't let go.

Screw it.

I closed the sociology textbook and pushed my stack of notes aside. I leaned back, lit another cigarette and gazed idly into the pale October sky. I needed to get out, needed to get away and let the fresh air into my head. I took a taxi downtown. The traffic was slow and we kept getting stuck. Jimmy the cab driver turned the NO SMOKING sign around that dangled from the rear view mirror and lit himself a Winston. Then he offered me one. We watched in silence as the traffic jam dissipated like the smoke from our cigarettes, and we drove on to the annual Oakfort Games Convention. Jimmy didn't like to drive in this part of Oakfort. "Too many crazies out there in the traffic," he said. I kept my mouth shut. With a belly full of Olanzapine, and a fistful of Thorazine in my back pocket, I felt pretty safe I wasn't one of them.

At least, not today.

The moment I set foot in exhibition hall three, I was enveloped by darkness. Excited, disembodied voices chattered around me while my eyes adjusted to the dim light. I felt small in the huge convention hall. Small, alone and abandoned in the darkness. I knew this sensation, and I should probably have left at that time, but I had already spent twenty bucks on the admission ticket and I wanted to make the most of my day off. Everywhere, posters and booths advertised the latest in role-playing games and paraphernalia. Vendors, dressed in medieval garb sold foam swords and leather armor for LARPing events. Fantasy Cos-players paraded the hall, some sword in hand, others hand in hand, and some pushing baby strollers.

I exhaled slowly. So far, so good.

Nobody took any notice of me, so I did my best to relax and flipped through the latest issue of Dragon Magazine at the book sellers. The headline of one main feature read Uncommon loot for high level players. I turned to the later pages and read a comic strip by Phil Foglio. I laughed out loud; maybe louder than you normally do from a comic strip and the vendor cast me a suspicious glance. I bought the magazine to appease him and walked away from the booth, clutching it tight. A muscular barbarian, a red dragon and a Valkyrie with colossal breasts on the cover page beckoned me to open it and take a second look.

It's still there, I told myself, and turned the pages to Uncommon loot for high level players. I couldn't care less about reading the actual feature. I don't play D&D, I don't have any high level characters, and Dungeon Magazine is something we read back in elementary school. But lately my mind had developed a disturbing habit of rearranging written words into new sentences that almost make sense. It's like trying to read something in a dream. The words and their meanings twist and squirm, and turn into something new and unrelated with every passing glance. And it's difficult to cram for exams when your sociology textbook rearranges itself to speak directly to you. When that happens, I know I'm in for a rough night. To my relief, the headline of Uncommon loot had not changed by as much as a single letter.

I was OK!

I began to whistle and headed into the open square. The food court was nearby, tempting me with promises of spicy kebab and mugs of almost authentic mead, tapped from a large plastic keg with a faux wooden finish. It had been so long since I had taken some time off, and I strode across the floor, proud as a king, towards a hand-painted sign on the sales cart that read:

Killing and Blood, Five cold corpses.

An icy shiver crystallized down my spine and I stopped mid-step.

No, no, no!

I prayed and blinked. When I opened my eyes, the sign read

Kebab and Coke, Five gold coins.

A mistake -an honest mistake. These things happen in the dim light and all the excitement. I had read the sign wrong, but I had to make sure. The sweat from my hands dissolved the print on my copy of Dragon magazine, and the barbarian's face was now an unrecognizable smear.

Please God, I thought. Don't let it have changed on me.

Once again, I turned to the same feature article, but this time the headline read:

Uncommon death for low level traitors.

Disgusted, I threw the magazine into the nearest wastebasket. I had been at the_Oakfort Games Con_ for less than an hour, and now I realized that coming here had been a mistake.

"There he is!" cried a woman.

I wanted to dive into the nearest corner and hide in the darkness. I knew the voice of that woman all too well. Her name is Karen and she has been with me for more than six years. She talks to me a lot, but they say, she only exists as a chemical imbalance in my brain. She makes observations of the things I do, and makes endless comments on them. Her voice conjures up the image of a privileged white woman in her fifties. Always slightly aloof, always knowing better and forever eager to criticize. I looked around, hoping I was mistaken, and that the voice belonged to some real person in the crowd. But I could not see anyone nearby, pointing or gesturing.

"What is he doing here?" a man's voice called out and I gritted my teeth. That voice was unmistakably that of my other unseen companion,The General. If a tree-trunk could talk, it would have the voice of the General; dry, earthy and commanding. Unlike Karen, the General is neither privileged nor condescending, but he is used to barking out orders, and he expects people to follow troop. I do my best to ignore him, but that only annoys him even more and makes him curse and spit nails. Of course, he doesn't exist either.

Hello General, I sighed. How nice of you to stop by.

"He shouldn't be here", said Karen. She sounded concerned. "It's too dangerous."

Dr. Elaine Campbell, my psychiatrist has books on her shelf that explain how Karen and the General exist only when a surge of dopamine washes across my brain like the biblical flood. It drowns out all coherent thought and everything else gets mixed up like driftwood. Sights, sounds, touch, smell. When the god of dopamine throws a fit, I can't trust any of my senses. I see things that aren't there, I hear voices nobody else can hear. I feel the touch of insect legs climbing up my back. But I always carry an ark in my pocket. Only, my personal Noah carries a holy tablet called Olanzapine, and a handful of these calm the waters and put a stop to the voices. I leaned up against an exhibition armory and felt the coolness of plate metal pressing against my forehead. It felt good, for I was sweating profusely and felt panic on the rise.

Stupid! I shouldn't have gone to an RPG con of all places.

The dim lights, the crowd and the walking dead cos-players fucked with my mind and everyone around me gradually turned zombie-like. Their faces grew gaunt and bloodless, and everyone stared at me through hollow, black eye sockets.

Shit! The Olanzapine must have expired or something.

I was panicking badly. I needed to get away from the crowd of zombies, and get some fresh air. I bolted towards the nearest fire exit and flung myself though the door and into a dimly lit basement corridor. Clear green luminescent arrows showed the way to the exit. I stumbled forward, just wanting the hallucinations to stop, and for Karen and the General to shut up and leave me alone. Unexpectedly, a loud noise like a thunderclap boomed out from a place further down the corridor. The noise sent echoes bouncing off the concrete walls. It stuck to my mind like Velcro and kept looping, until the feedback turned into a high-pitched wail. I bolted and almost crashed into a tall figure in a gray suit that stood motionless in the corridor. He was as real as any other person, but his face was horrible and deflated, and his empty eye sockets cried bloody tears. I tripped over a leftover piece of plumbing as I screamed past him and caught my shoulder on the end of a pipe that protruded from the wall. I winced and cried out in pain and almost fell flat on my face. Another loud thunderclap boomed in my mind, and the wall launched an army of gray butterflies that swarmed around my ears. I rounded a corner and almost stumbled over two figures sitting on the floor. Both figures were human, but one had a zombie-like face with very large eyes. The other looked like a regular human. I stopped and looked at the odd couple. The human had short red hair and a red goatee. A pair of glasses, framed in silvery wire dangled aimlessly halfway across his face. His eyes stared, but not at me. His gaze seemed fixed at some point in the ceiling. Next to him, a zombie creature was on its knees, holding the human as if cradling an infant. Its mouth formed words that I could not hear.

"They are all zombies," I groaned and clenched both hands to my ears, but it did little to stop the noise. "Then you'll need this," said the creature and offered me a short, magic wand. I grabbed the stick and bolted down the corridor. Hallucination or not, I just wanted to get away from this place.

"Don't take it!" shouted the General. "It's too dangerous."

"He must take it," said Karen. "It's poison."

"Shut up!" I screamed at my dark companions. "Shut the fuck up, and help me for once."

The zombie made a strange howling noise and pointed a sore-covered hand towards the end of the hall, from where I had come. The tall man with the gaunt face had rounded the corner and was sliding through the corridor towards us, holding what looked like a snake in his hand. Another thunderclap boomed and echoed through the corridor. The snake hissed and flicked a forked tongue that spat out a stream of poison. The venom hit my leg, and I tumbled to the floor.

Poisoned!_I groaned. _The snake bit me.

Karen had been right. She had warned me about poison and the snake bit my leg. I didn't know what hurt the worst; the venom coursing through my veins, or the fact that Karen was right. I crawled the last few feet towards the exit on my hands and knees, until I burst through the metal door and stumbled up a short flight of stairs that led into the sunlit street with a leg that wouldn't quite carry me.

"The snake bit me," I shouted at the passing convention goers, then I collapsed and couldn't get back up.

_Come on, man. You were freaking out and the snake was only a hallucination,_I tried to convince myself. I have had hallucination dogs bite me before, and it hurts just like a real bite, but the pain normally fades away when I blink. But this time it was different. My leg throbbed like a broken toe, even though I kept blinking and blinking. Two men grabbed me by the arms and helped me to my feet. I recognized them as convention security by their clothes and their badges. The world was easing back into normal and people looked human again. I swore I'd visit Dr. Campbell on Monday to get some new meds, because Olanzapine sure wasn't working.

"You're not going anywhere, buddy," said the guard. "Not with that bullet in your leg." I looked at my leg, and with the hallucinations dispelled, the wound in my leg was clearly not a snakebite. I had been shot.

My field of vision dissolved into a mad puzzle of mousy gray spots and I knew I was about to pass out. As my world faded into black I briefly caught a glimpse of someone standing in the doorway to the fire exit. Someone tall with a gaunt face, and dressed in a gray two piece suit. I stared at him and he stared back. In that moment I realized, I'd just locked eyes with a murderer.

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CONTINUES

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