King Yellow: Endless Road
34,200 words
This was a slow month. The next few may be slow as well. Bear with me.
writing and other stuff
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Friday, February 2, 2018
Free! February 2-6!
From February 2nd through 6th, the first two books of the Approaching Infinity series and all of my short stories will be free for download at Amazon.com.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Endless Road: Progress Report 5
King Yellow: Endless Road
31,400 words
Not a great month, but not a bad one either—just shy of my monthly goal. Had a bit of writer's block, which took some time to overcome, but overcome it I did! Woot!
31,400 words
Not a great month, but not a bad one either—just shy of my monthly goal. Had a bit of writer's block, which took some time to overcome, but overcome it I did! Woot!
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Last Words
Jennifer, please forgive me. If there’s anything left of you, please forgive me.
I don’t imagine I have much time, so I shall attempt to be brief. I may have only moments before some wandering denizen of this infernal house happens along and re-inspires the hunger for savagery that has clouded my reason for untold hours. That I am at all lucid right now shocks me, considering my circumstances, and I must apologize for the crude medium I’ve been forced to use; I have a quill, some paper, but only my own spilled blood for ink, and that I have in abundance.
I was the favored student of one Professor Gordon at the university, though I’ve only recently come to realize the damnation such favoritism could mean. He is a professor of abnormal psychology with an unhealthy interest in the occult. He invited my fiancée and me to this house, ostensibly for dinner, but his true purpose was far more sinister. Had I any inkling of the experiment to which he wished to subject us, I would have taken Jennifer and gotten as far away from this place as possible. Of course, it seems ridiculous to make such statements now; there was no way to know and wishful thinking is profitless.
The house itself is a monstrosity, nestled securely within the thickly wooded hills of a stretch of forgotten Massachusetts countryside. It is the professor’s hereditary estate and only he and the cruel ghosts of his ancestors know all the horrors perpetrated here; for surely God Himself would have intervened long ago had He the faintest notion of what goes on within these walls. But this is knowledge I learned at a dreadful cost; when Jennifer and I first saw it, we were entranced with the place. The drive was long and we were pleased to have arrived, just beating the onset of a terrific storm, which proceeded to paint the place into an ominous, yet intriguing picture: It looked for all the world like the archetypal haunted house. We were both very amused by our singular reaction, for our field of study had done much to expel such mythical concepts: Haunted houses, we both knew, existed solely in the realm of popular entertainment. I know better now.
We were greeted at the door by the butler, a strange little fellow whose features eluded me for the shadows, and whose voice was a tittering wheeze. He escorted us to the library where we found Professor Gordon. The Professor bragged of his arcane books and spoke always in a conspiratorial manner as if there were others present in the room who were keyed in to the hidden significance of his words. Jennifer was clearly perplexed, and I could offer no explanation since his demeanor seemed so different from that exhibited in the lecture hall, but it entertained her greatly and she did her best to accommodate him. As I look back, there was the clear air of madness about him: His eyes shone with mirth, but it was a sadistic kind of mirth as I was soon to realize. At the time, I thought it was the brandy in him.
After a fashion, the butler announced that dinner was ready, and at his words, the Professor nearly shuddered with pleasure. Jennifer and I shared a look of confusion as we moved into the dining room. The Professor remained at the head of the table straining with inexplicable anticipation as he told us to sit where we would. The conversation at dinner was much like that in the library, though now the Professor became more intense. He asked me my goals, both professional and personal, and asked the same of Jennifer. He seemed to find great irony in the confluence of our career paths, explained himself with a chuckle, and continued in silence with his meal. The food was appetizing but unidentifiable and it appeared to differ by plate.
Eventually, the Professor became intrigued with the clock and said, “Tick tock,” as the hour struck nine. Just then, there came throughout the house a resounding clamor that I later realized was the sound of countless bolts being shot and bars falling before the windows. The Professor put down his utensils and became more cordial again. He asked us about the food, taking special interest in Jennifer’s opinion. In a sick parody of response, she began to convulse slowly but with great force. As I attempted to voice my concern I found the sound of my own voice a strange and unfamiliar thing. My limbs had grown heavy and the room began to spiral: I could not move.
The professor’s face took on a nightmarish quality as he cackled and spat. “You, my good Richard, have merely been drugged,” he said. “She, on the other hand, has partaken of a very special dish. One that is sure to change her life.” He laughed anew at his own macabre humor. He stood up and backed out of the room. “I’ll open the house to you in a little while, but first, I’ll give you some time to be reacquainted.” With that, he exited and locked the door behind him.
At first I feared for her health. She seemed wracked with unutterable agony but then it became clear that something else was happening. I could do nothing but watch my poor, lovely Jennifer undergo a hideous bodily transformation, the details of which I am loathe to pen. For the first time now, I began to fear for my own safety and not hers. The thing she had become stared and sniffed and dashed the china from the table. It leapt before me and sank both claw and fang deep into my breast. My head was astir and I felt the pressure of her clinch, but because of the narcotic, pain was something far, far away. I watched with understandably mixed emotions as my life-blood rushed down my front and sullied the chops of what had once been my fiancée.
In my prison of flesh I became aware of the beating of my own heart as it began to drown out all other sounds. It slowed and slowed until I was aware of nothing else. I would be dead soon. Or so I thought. It would have been so simple had that been the case. My dinner plate, gaudy and large like the rest, exploded suddenly and without provocation. The shattered remains revealed something odd that I could not help but focus on as I began to slip into darkness. It looked rather like a face; a mask really, wrought in fine, stippled ivory, which somehow had been baked into the plate.
My next recollection was of waking up alone in the dining room except for several bloodied forms strewn about the floor and upon the table. The door was flung wide and there was the sound of activity beyond, something scrabbling down the hallway. All was dark, but I was able to see fairly well, which I cannot really explain except that it must be some property of the mask that I found affixed to my face and which is still there now. The noise from the hall grew louder and something entered the room. It wasn’t altogether human, nor was it purely animal, but some ungodly combination of the two.
As it crossed the threshold, my will abandoned me and was replaced with indescribable fury. My vision immediately became a thing filtered through blood-soaked gauze, and my body began to move of its own accord. I was as a passenger on a train unable to affect my own course, and I watched as my fists struck with precision and unmitigated violence. My knuckles were soon slick and red and that incited me all the more. It was then that I heard the voice in my head. First I took it for lunacy, then I knew the truth: It was the voice of the mask.
“My price is blood, my product is power,” it whispered.
“I am dying and I am to do it insane,” I thought.
“My price is blood, my product is power,” it repeated.
“My delusions are insistent,” I thought.
And then it said something that made me think I might be hearing the voice of another and not that of my own madness. It said in its horrible whisper, “Blood is blood,” and I began to comprehend its meaning.
I was dimly aware now of my fists rending flesh, tearing at organs, and shattering brainpans; indeed the dining room was a gory mire and blood flowed in rivulets. The room had filled with hideous hybrid creatures and I seemed to be a staunch nemesis to each and every one. A whispered laugh echoed in my head as reason faded into the now familiar and intrusive lust for carnage.
I can only remember flashes of particularly abhorrent actions I witnessed myself perform—and I am strangely unmoved by them now in my sobriety. When the last heart besides my own stopped beating and nothing more entered the dining room, a semblance of coherent thought returned to me. I found myself panting as I climbed clumsily over masses of broken and unholy corpses. The mask spoke again.
“Power is satisfaction, is it not?”
It laughed at my attempt to deny this.
“Who are you?” I said aloud.
“Look in the mirror,” it whispered in my head, and then it laughed all the harder when I couldn’t bring myself to do this.
“You are my jailor,” I whimpered.
“Perhaps. But I am also your liberator and savior. Do you not live and breathe?”
“Yes, but for how long and for what purpose?”
“As long as there’s blood, and you have already guessed it.”
“To pit two obscene powers against one another and the two of them against the dangers of this house? Do you answer to the Professor?” I said.
“I answer first to blood, then to you. You wish to kill him.”
I tried to protest, but it plumbed the depths of my own mind far better than I ever could.
“The Professor is clever, but there is a larger threat which my design will not allow to go unchecked,” it said.
“Jennifer.”
“Yes, though she as you knew her is gone. . . Mostly.”
I would say that we struck a bargain, but I know that really this was just my dawning acceptance of a course I could not alter. The mask requires blood, and I require the mask for survival or the wounds I had incurred would finally take their toll as they are beginning to now. I also realized that the mask was not so alien. It looked into my psyche and extracted what it needed. I was capable of the things it helped or made me do, it merely acted as a focusing lens and continues to do so, but for how much longer I cannot say.
What troubles me is how thin the wall is to rabid, animal violence: I nearly crave it now if only to keep myself alive—and alive for what? Justice, I suppose. Or maybe it’s better to call it what it is: Revenge.
I found Jennifer and we fought. I have few and fragmented memories of our exchange. What remains of her is across the room before the bookcase. I do not know what to feel. I have killed a monster, a monster which sought to kill me, but which was once the love of my life. My victory, while far from complete, is perhaps tenuous: One of her blows left the mask with a long crack and it has grown silent for a time. I go now in the hopes that the mask is still hungry, that blood is its balm for all things, for I intend to satiate it, if at all possible, with all that remains in this wicked, wicked house.
Richard Shields
March 3, 1918
I wrote Last Words in 2001. It is three things in one:
I don’t imagine I have much time, so I shall attempt to be brief. I may have only moments before some wandering denizen of this infernal house happens along and re-inspires the hunger for savagery that has clouded my reason for untold hours. That I am at all lucid right now shocks me, considering my circumstances, and I must apologize for the crude medium I’ve been forced to use; I have a quill, some paper, but only my own spilled blood for ink, and that I have in abundance.
I was the favored student of one Professor Gordon at the university, though I’ve only recently come to realize the damnation such favoritism could mean. He is a professor of abnormal psychology with an unhealthy interest in the occult. He invited my fiancée and me to this house, ostensibly for dinner, but his true purpose was far more sinister. Had I any inkling of the experiment to which he wished to subject us, I would have taken Jennifer and gotten as far away from this place as possible. Of course, it seems ridiculous to make such statements now; there was no way to know and wishful thinking is profitless.
The house itself is a monstrosity, nestled securely within the thickly wooded hills of a stretch of forgotten Massachusetts countryside. It is the professor’s hereditary estate and only he and the cruel ghosts of his ancestors know all the horrors perpetrated here; for surely God Himself would have intervened long ago had He the faintest notion of what goes on within these walls. But this is knowledge I learned at a dreadful cost; when Jennifer and I first saw it, we were entranced with the place. The drive was long and we were pleased to have arrived, just beating the onset of a terrific storm, which proceeded to paint the place into an ominous, yet intriguing picture: It looked for all the world like the archetypal haunted house. We were both very amused by our singular reaction, for our field of study had done much to expel such mythical concepts: Haunted houses, we both knew, existed solely in the realm of popular entertainment. I know better now.
We were greeted at the door by the butler, a strange little fellow whose features eluded me for the shadows, and whose voice was a tittering wheeze. He escorted us to the library where we found Professor Gordon. The Professor bragged of his arcane books and spoke always in a conspiratorial manner as if there were others present in the room who were keyed in to the hidden significance of his words. Jennifer was clearly perplexed, and I could offer no explanation since his demeanor seemed so different from that exhibited in the lecture hall, but it entertained her greatly and she did her best to accommodate him. As I look back, there was the clear air of madness about him: His eyes shone with mirth, but it was a sadistic kind of mirth as I was soon to realize. At the time, I thought it was the brandy in him.
After a fashion, the butler announced that dinner was ready, and at his words, the Professor nearly shuddered with pleasure. Jennifer and I shared a look of confusion as we moved into the dining room. The Professor remained at the head of the table straining with inexplicable anticipation as he told us to sit where we would. The conversation at dinner was much like that in the library, though now the Professor became more intense. He asked me my goals, both professional and personal, and asked the same of Jennifer. He seemed to find great irony in the confluence of our career paths, explained himself with a chuckle, and continued in silence with his meal. The food was appetizing but unidentifiable and it appeared to differ by plate.
Eventually, the Professor became intrigued with the clock and said, “Tick tock,” as the hour struck nine. Just then, there came throughout the house a resounding clamor that I later realized was the sound of countless bolts being shot and bars falling before the windows. The Professor put down his utensils and became more cordial again. He asked us about the food, taking special interest in Jennifer’s opinion. In a sick parody of response, she began to convulse slowly but with great force. As I attempted to voice my concern I found the sound of my own voice a strange and unfamiliar thing. My limbs had grown heavy and the room began to spiral: I could not move.
The professor’s face took on a nightmarish quality as he cackled and spat. “You, my good Richard, have merely been drugged,” he said. “She, on the other hand, has partaken of a very special dish. One that is sure to change her life.” He laughed anew at his own macabre humor. He stood up and backed out of the room. “I’ll open the house to you in a little while, but first, I’ll give you some time to be reacquainted.” With that, he exited and locked the door behind him.
At first I feared for her health. She seemed wracked with unutterable agony but then it became clear that something else was happening. I could do nothing but watch my poor, lovely Jennifer undergo a hideous bodily transformation, the details of which I am loathe to pen. For the first time now, I began to fear for my own safety and not hers. The thing she had become stared and sniffed and dashed the china from the table. It leapt before me and sank both claw and fang deep into my breast. My head was astir and I felt the pressure of her clinch, but because of the narcotic, pain was something far, far away. I watched with understandably mixed emotions as my life-blood rushed down my front and sullied the chops of what had once been my fiancée.
In my prison of flesh I became aware of the beating of my own heart as it began to drown out all other sounds. It slowed and slowed until I was aware of nothing else. I would be dead soon. Or so I thought. It would have been so simple had that been the case. My dinner plate, gaudy and large like the rest, exploded suddenly and without provocation. The shattered remains revealed something odd that I could not help but focus on as I began to slip into darkness. It looked rather like a face; a mask really, wrought in fine, stippled ivory, which somehow had been baked into the plate.
As it crossed the threshold, my will abandoned me and was replaced with indescribable fury. My vision immediately became a thing filtered through blood-soaked gauze, and my body began to move of its own accord. I was as a passenger on a train unable to affect my own course, and I watched as my fists struck with precision and unmitigated violence. My knuckles were soon slick and red and that incited me all the more. It was then that I heard the voice in my head. First I took it for lunacy, then I knew the truth: It was the voice of the mask.
“My price is blood, my product is power,” it whispered.
“I am dying and I am to do it insane,” I thought.
“My price is blood, my product is power,” it repeated.
“My delusions are insistent,” I thought.
And then it said something that made me think I might be hearing the voice of another and not that of my own madness. It said in its horrible whisper, “Blood is blood,” and I began to comprehend its meaning.
I was dimly aware now of my fists rending flesh, tearing at organs, and shattering brainpans; indeed the dining room was a gory mire and blood flowed in rivulets. The room had filled with hideous hybrid creatures and I seemed to be a staunch nemesis to each and every one. A whispered laugh echoed in my head as reason faded into the now familiar and intrusive lust for carnage.
I can only remember flashes of particularly abhorrent actions I witnessed myself perform—and I am strangely unmoved by them now in my sobriety. When the last heart besides my own stopped beating and nothing more entered the dining room, a semblance of coherent thought returned to me. I found myself panting as I climbed clumsily over masses of broken and unholy corpses. The mask spoke again.
“Power is satisfaction, is it not?”
It laughed at my attempt to deny this.
“Who are you?” I said aloud.
“Look in the mirror,” it whispered in my head, and then it laughed all the harder when I couldn’t bring myself to do this.
“You are my jailor,” I whimpered.
“Perhaps. But I am also your liberator and savior. Do you not live and breathe?”
“Yes, but for how long and for what purpose?”
“As long as there’s blood, and you have already guessed it.”
“To pit two obscene powers against one another and the two of them against the dangers of this house? Do you answer to the Professor?” I said.
“I answer first to blood, then to you. You wish to kill him.”
I tried to protest, but it plumbed the depths of my own mind far better than I ever could.
“The Professor is clever, but there is a larger threat which my design will not allow to go unchecked,” it said.
“Jennifer.”
“Yes, though she as you knew her is gone. . . Mostly.”
I would say that we struck a bargain, but I know that really this was just my dawning acceptance of a course I could not alter. The mask requires blood, and I require the mask for survival or the wounds I had incurred would finally take their toll as they are beginning to now. I also realized that the mask was not so alien. It looked into my psyche and extracted what it needed. I was capable of the things it helped or made me do, it merely acted as a focusing lens and continues to do so, but for how much longer I cannot say.
What troubles me is how thin the wall is to rabid, animal violence: I nearly crave it now if only to keep myself alive—and alive for what? Justice, I suppose. Or maybe it’s better to call it what it is: Revenge.
I found Jennifer and we fought. I have few and fragmented memories of our exchange. What remains of her is across the room before the bookcase. I do not know what to feel. I have killed a monster, a monster which sought to kill me, but which was once the love of my life. My victory, while far from complete, is perhaps tenuous: One of her blows left the mask with a long crack and it has grown silent for a time. I go now in the hopes that the mask is still hungry, that blood is its balm for all things, for I intend to satiate it, if at all possible, with all that remains in this wicked, wicked house.
Richard Shields
March 3, 1918
I wrote Last Words in 2001. It is three things in one:
- it's a piece of video game fanfiction
- it's a dubious homage to H.P. Lovecraft
- it's the origin of Richard Shields and, along with Skeleton General Skull Kaiser, the origin of the Approaching Infinity series
Thanks for reading!
Monday, January 22, 2018
Episode 53 : There Is No Asylum
Skeleton General Skull Kaiser(The Dark)
Skull Kaiser, formerly one of Samhain's greatest generals, stages a rebellion against impossible odds. The fate of countless worlds rests upon his ability to protect the Loss Queen and beat back her assailants. Along the way he is forced to fight old friends and make new allies...
Episode 53 : There Is No Asylum
The episode opens with Shields busy trying to shoulder the door to his padded cell open. He stops for a moment, backs away and tries to loosen the grip of the straitjacket by shaking his body, pulling one arm as hard and fast as he can then the other, back and forth, over and over again. There is a brief ripping sound and he stops with a crafty grin on his face—he looks pretty crazed at the moment—but the arms have loosened slightly and he seems pleased with this. But the sounds of screaming come from the halls again, and he becomes concerned. He hears a woman cry out and he whispers Jennifer's name to himself. He again sets about butting the door open with his shoulder and after several tries, what looks like a black cloud gathers around him and the door bursts outward with one final blow.As he stumbles through the doorway, he notes that the lights are low, that they're on the emergency generators. He as much as ignores the fact that the sleeves of his strait jacket have come completely free. The halls are empty, though there should be nurses and orderlies all over the place. He walks cautiously down the hall, paranoid of every noise he hears. There are screams and moans coming from all sides, but nowhere particularly near. He decides to head back to the offices, and as he goes, he begins to see blood smeared on the floor and walls. He sees things wrapped up in formerly white sheets, now soaked with blood. Focusing his eyes in the dark, Shields sees one of these things still moving, but it's too small to be a whole person. It's wrapped in more bloody sheets and attempting to drag itself with gnarled and twisted arms, reaching out from under the sheet to get past a swinging door along the hall. Focusing even more, Shields can see one hand raise up a dirty syringe and jam it into its other arm, fumbling to force whatever fluid is there into the remains of its body. There is a strange repetitive noise coming from beyond the swinging door and many moans can be heard on the other side. Shields allows the little thing to scurry far enough a way and then, taking a gulp, pushes the swinging door in.
The room is a mess, a desk is overturned, there is debris all over the floor. Also, a giant is sitting on an indistinct pile of something (something characterized by occasional movement and horrible inhuman moans) with his back to the door and he's working at something. He's bent over pulling at two opposite ends and that's the source of the repetitive, wrenching sound, with each pull there is a louder and louder grunt. From the right side, we can see that the giant is tugging on a pair of legs, somewhat indistinct in the darkness. There is a snap and the giant separates the two halves. He pushes the left-side half away and picks up the right-side half and carefully walks them to the wall where there are many like pairs standing up. We can see that there are things sticking out all over the giant's body, like fat, sparsely distributed quills. The giant bends down, and while holding the legs with his left arm, he removes the shoes. This posture turns the giant around somewhat, and he becomes aware of a presence at the door. Shields stands horrified as the thing looks at him, turning its head with animal curiosity. Its head is completely wrapped in gauze and so faceless. Shields can see that by the dress, this person must have been a patient and judging by his fixation, it seems to be Mr. Sabotini, but with the face covered he can't be sure. Evidence pointed to it being Sabotini, but Sabotini was never that big an individual. This man was fairly bursting out of his clothes. It's clear that there's no human reason left in the giant and then the brute's head drops as he notices Shields's shoes. Shields looks down and understands all too well. Sabotini looks up and Shields, with fear plain on his face, turns to bolt down the hall. Sabotini leaps over the obstacles in the room and gives chase. Shields runs and tries to beat back his fear. He asks himself if he's dreaming. Can this really be happening? Can he believe anything he sees anymore? His hallucinations are becoming more constant than his reality.
As he's running, Shields notes that the main exit to the care wing is just ahead and as he begins to feel the least bit relieved, he trips in the dark.
When he opens his eyes, he's looking at a twisted face frozen in a permanent, silent scream. Shields lets out with a very audible scream of his own and scurries back against the wall as best he can since his arms are still in the long, loose sleeves of the strait jacket. He sees that the floor here is littered with stiff corpses, all twisted into strange shapes. Then he notices an exact duplicate of the giant he was running from piling up twisted bodies before the exit doors. It's arranging bodies, creating some kind of sculpture, twisting bits here, curling things there, sort of like a non-functional gate, or maybe it's just trying to plug up the exit the best way it can (but it really thinks it's being artistic). It turns its head and looks at Shields with the same animal curiosity the other did. Now it's clear that the "quills" are countless syringes sticking out all over his body. The other giant can be heard approaching and its pace seems to have slowed. Shields stands up, laughing hysterically, saying that he gives up, if he's gone crazy, or the world's gone crazy, or some combination of the two, it doesn't matter anymore. None of this can be real, so why not play along. He says this as he shrugs out of the husk of the strait jacket and the other giant comes into view.
Season 3 : END (CANCELLED)
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Episode 52 : Breaking Point
Skeleton General Skull Kaiser(The Dark)
Skull Kaiser, formerly one of Samhain's greatest generals, stages a rebellion against impossible odds. The fate of countless worlds rests upon his ability to protect the Loss Queen and beat back her assailants. Along the way he is forced to fight old friends and make new allies...
Episode 52 : Breaking Point
Richard Shields is tossing and turning in his bed, having a nightmare.We cut to an image of the horrific Gordon we saw in the dream sequence from episode 50. He's standing some ways away from Shields and Jennifer. Shields looks down and sees that he's holding onto Jennifer's arm. Everything is black except for the figures. Gordon says he's giving Shields a head start to his destiny and smiles that evil, sharp smile. Shields rallies Jennifer, and the two start running away from the laughter that seems to fill the blackness completely. They're running and running and eventually, they tear through a black curtain into a lush jungle. Shields finds himself alone, the jungle teams with life and the deafening sounds produced it. Through the noise, a regular pattern emerges like a speeding heartbeat, fueled by anxiety. Shields continues through the jungle and he becomes more frantic and desperate until he stops abruptly at a clearing. Here the heartbeat sound is loudest, fastest, and most insistent. He looks all around then focuses in on something that blended in with the scenery too well before. There is what looks like a loaf of tofu mostly caked with dark brown, moist dirt. It's about the size of large football and it pulsates with the sound of the heartbeat. Over the noise, we can hear Shields whisper to himself, "Strauss," (it's the very thing Strauss described at the beginning of episode 51). Then Shields looks slowly and deliberately to his right where Strauss is standing, shaking his head sorrowfully. Strauss is handcuffed and surrounded by a bright, yellow corona and says, "This one is yours."
Shields sits bolt upright in bed clenching his hand to his mouth to stifle a scream. He's sweating and breathing heavily and notes that it's 5 am. We cut to the still-dark streets and Shields is walking away from 2 slumped figures in the shadows, shaking blood from his fists. He finds the Columbia Building in the skyline and for a moment thinks he sees something on a grand scale coming from the building, it looks almost like a sea anemone's tentacles waving in the ocean, but again, on a grand scale. The tentacles seem to be issuing out of the building and some even approach him, one comes very close and almost grazes his cheek, it is animate and acts playfully as if intelligent, but as he steps to avoid it and watch it it fades and disappears. He starts to walk off again and he curses Strauss in his head. He points out that his life, though boring, was pretty normal before Strauss entered into it. He's beginning to resent Strauss. He thinks Strauss knows more about what's going on than he's telling and he's being selfish about keeping the knowledge to himself. While lost in his reverie, a familiar man (the dapper one in the black suit from episode 51) steps from the shadows and says that Shields has an interesting hobby. He nods back over Shields's shoulder to the two prone figures. Shields just glowers and tries to continue forward. With his hands in his pockets, the man steps with his right foot, locking it around Shields's right foot, then leans forward, casually knocking Shields to his butt on the ground. Shields becomes enraged and demands to know what this man's problem is. He simply tells Shields that he's noisy and as Shields looks, a strange, swirling aura surrounds the man and Shields mutters that he feels sick, and as he's passing out, the man says, "Of course you do. But you're almost ready."
We cut to Shields waking up to near darkness. Gordon's face appears overhead and his smile is not at all genuine. Gordon asks Shields how he's feeling and before Shields can answer, Gordon continues saying that Shields did the right thing by checking himself in and by telling him about his fights, his dreams, and his hallucinations. We zoom out and realize as Shields does that he's slumped up against a padded wall, wrapped up in a straitjacket. Shields is beside himself with shocked confusion, but gathers his composure. Gordon goes on about stress and the awkward situation Jennifer has put them all in. Shields doesn't believe any of what Gordon says and he tells him that while he doesn't know what to believe anymore since his senses seem to betray him at random, Gordon is still the last person he'd open up to. Gordon, sighs and says that Shields's case is far more advanced than he would have guessed. This morning Shields must have had a brief moment of lucidity, but now he's in denial and still delusional. Shields reiterates that even if he is going crazy or if he's already there, that Gordon is the last person he wants help from. Gordon becomes somewhat grave and tells Shields to be careful talking that way to the person who holds his future in his hands. Shields laughs out loud and asks if that's supposed to be new, like his smart new jacket. There is the sound of muffled screaming from somewhere else inside the building and Gordon's attention is immediately drawn away. Shields ignores it and continues saying that Gordon always seemed to like keeping him in his pocket, that in the earlier years, they had a good reciprocal relationship, but Gordon grew accustomed to keeping Shields under his thumb. Gordon looks off rather nostalgically and still preoccupied with the sounds of screaming, saying, "Yes, it was always so... easy. But that old potential future of yours pales compared to this new one." Now Shields becomes somewhat grave and wants to know what the hell Gordon's talking about, demanding for him to drop all pretense. But Gordon is completely preoccupied now, constantly looking towards the door until he finally says he has some things to attend to, leaving Shields alone in the padded cell. Shields gets up and stands in the middle of the room for a moment, breathing heavier and heavier until he shouts out Gordon's name three times, each louder and more vehement than the time before and then the episode closes.
To Be Continued...
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