Chapter 19, end of Act II

Chapter 19, “Talk About Cathartic”

“Where’s Carl Sagan?” she asked as we made our way down the steep rocky slope of the crag.

“Haven’t the mistiest, as you told me once. Maybe tracking Vanasmas or something. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

We followed quickly after Golbez and Blake, Annie proving unsurprisingly (to me) to be quite nimble and steady in her nocturnal footwork. My reason for tailing them was just to see how they got down to the lagoon, and after that, where the entrance to the underground river lay. Some crack or crevice on the far side of the lagoon, not visible to the naked or clothed eye, I guessed.

We did indeed find a way down to the lagoon: a long, curving black staircase carved into the rock of the isle itself. I thought it was a rather cool find, and I had fun going down it, though I can’t explain why.

It took us all the way down to a rocky shore at the base of the black island (which wasn’t really an island, more like a small nub of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the turquoise lagoon). This shore had a bit of a roof to it; the wall of the island jutted outwards about ten feet up, forming a kind of overhang over the entire shore. For a completely unrelated visual, think of a Christmas tree, where the lowest branches hang over the ground, and think of the sheet spread below the tree to catch falling needles as the shore. It gave off a cave-like feeling, or maybe that of a parking garage. Sorry if I can’t provide you with more elegant prose; I’m a malcontented hero, not a writer.

            But we didn’t have time to properly take in any of those details quite yet, for as Annie and I stepped off the last of the stairs we heard Golbez’s voice again, and soon Blake’s, right around the bend, and we threw ourselves back on the staircase, out of view. I didn’t catch what they said, but I remember the moment of silence while we held our breath being filled with noises that didn’t really match the environment we were in---the first, a series of beeps, as if punching in a number on a phone, and the second, the click-click-clicking of a degree-based dial being turned. Then one more beep, and Golbez from around the bend said, “That’ll do it. Eighteen hours to lift-off.”
            We heard the two get into their motorboat and speed off across the lagoon. We watched as the light disappeared into a hidden hole in the cliff-face that would not have been visible from above. Then we ran down around the roofed shore to where Golbez and Blake had been.
            Apparently Golbez had been pressing numbers (or letters) into a number pad (with letters) that was built into the stone wall, a screen display above it. Next to that was a metal plate with a gray plastic dial with the words “Eruption Sequence” above it. The dial could be spun to indicate anywhere from one to twenty-four hours. Currently it was at nineteen. Golbez must have accidentally bumped it up an extra notch.

Next, a quizzical look passed over my face as just to the left of the technology we found a stone slab down-sliding door that looked exactly like the one at the temple’s entrance. It was gray against the black rock of the island.
            “Well shoot, that beats me,” I said with an exhalation of breath and a scratch of my head. “Any theories, Annie?”

That moment, everything changed. All it took was a simple question to trigger it. A request meant more to be a tiny tidbit, a mere morsel of small talk, acknowledging her existence.

But in Annie’s fractured, pitiable mind, an acknowledgement of her existence entailed another simple little thing: hope. Hope for that enemy concept I had, until then, so successfully kept at bay.

Romance.

“You...want me, Jack?”

She stood apart from me, perfectly straight, perfectly still. The air took on a calm but eerie atmosphere. Her voice felt...strange. Different.
            “...No---” I said, hesitating, unsure how to play this. “I just asked---”

“You told me ellipses were key things when talking about secrets. Do you have a secret, Jack? A secret you want to share with me?”

“I don’t, but I think you do.”

She didn’t respond. Not to that, anyway.

“Hold me, Jack,” she said, staring at me like she was hypnotized. “Please?”

I shook my head. But maybe this wasn’t the time for refusals. She took it poorly.

“Jack, please. Please hold me. Please hold me. Hold me, please, Jack! Hold me! HOLD ME!”

That last one was said in a near scream. Had I broken her brain?

No, her brain was already broken. That I knew. Then was it my responsibility to fix it? I was the hero, after all.

So I embraced that role, and I embraced her. Not a full, loving embrace, but I caught her as she practically fainted into my arms. In fact, she did faint into my arms; her body went limp, her head fell into the crook of my elbow, and so I kept her upright.

I held her.

She awoke a few seconds later, blinking. She looked up into my eyes, her face radiant with happiness.

“You...saved me,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck.

She tried to kiss me. I leaned back and turned away, denying her. I was not going to fall for this. Her sweet strawberry lips weren’t worth it. Not even worth sparing her the crestfallen look in her once-sparkling eyes, or the disappointment that any other man would see and pity her for. Not worth giving in to romance. I had already neared giving in, back when we found Carl Sagan. It wouldn’t happen again. This wasn’t a casual battle for me. This was about the survival of my soul. The autonomy of my being. My own self-sovereignty. What was left of it all, after being metaphysically ravaged by the gods.

After the disappointment, a darkness crossed her features. An angry, vengeful look. But it passed. Then things got weird.

“I have to do the right thing,” Annie said, as if to herself. “I have to do the right thing. That’s how it’ll work. I have to do the right thing.”

“What’s the right thing?”

“Doesn’t matter, just do it.”

“How can you do the right thing without knowing it?”

“Other people do it all the time. We have to do it. We have to.”

“No. I will do as I please.”

            Except---that wasn’t me. I was not the one replying to her words. I wasn’t speaking at all. Annie still was. Kind of. I said “as if to herself” up there, but I really should have just said “to herself.” It was monologue, not dialogue. Or maybe it really was dialogue.
            Scary. But I knew it had to happen at some point.
            I backed away, pushing her out of my arms. Her face had taken on Paula’s visage, Paula’s aura. The same as had happened at the smugglers’ encampment earlier today. And as I stepped back, she stepped forward, moving with seductive grace.
            “Jack,” she said with a sultry smile. “Jack, you know what this is about, don’t you?”
            “Paula,” I said with a slow, careful nod, acknowledging her arrival.
            She simply smiled wider as she backed me up against the gray stone door. Her soft hands curled around my biceps, then moved under my jacket to my chest, then slid down to my sides. She leaned forward, apparently after another kiss.
            I stood on my tiptoes and raised my chin, trying to keep away from her, prepared to slug it out with this woman if it came down to it, when her hands, wandering around to my back, gripped my gun and pulled it out.
            Once it was in her hand, she backed up very quickly, aiming it at me. It was very odd, to see Annie, or at least the appearance of Annie---short brown hair, white button-down blouse, nose cute as a button, whatever the hell that cliche means---pointing a gun at me, the long-time object of her tender affections.
            But I knew what was going on. And because of that, I was in control.

“Paula, why did Dr. Aperture tell you that you and Annie are genetically identical? It’s not because you’re twins, is it?”

She paused before shaking her head no.

“You just happen to inhabit the same body,” I said. “I can understand that. I’ve seen villains like that before.”

“I’m no villain!” she cried. “You don’t---you don’t understand.”

“Go ahead and shoot me,” I said, groaning inwardly at stealing a line from decades ago. The problem was it was true. And I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

“I don’t want to have to, Jack,” she said. “I just want to run away with you. Take the gold and get out of here.”

            “You know that’s never going to happen. But tell me---who was in control the majority of our adventures together?”

She smiled. Different from her seductive version. This one was wicked. “She was the one with you. But under my control the entire time. She is weak. She needed me to help her.”

“So you took her hostage, is that it? You threatened her.”

“I guided her. We both have the same goals.”

“Which are?”
            “The gold...”
            “And?”

“...you.”

“Me, romantically?”

She gave the tiniest of nods. I took a deep breath and let it out with a long, tired sigh.

“That makes you my antagonist,” I said. “My background antagonist. The one that’s working against me the entire time without me knowing it. Paula, I’m afraid I can’t let you win. That would be contrary to my nature.”

“Rejecting me is contrary to your nature!”

She had a point. I decided to change the subject.

“Whatever happened to that crossbow you had?”

            “Ad nihilum. Who knows. Quidquid. McDowell, if you don’t take the gold and then take me right now---”
            “Like I said, try and shoot me. See what happens.”
            Her eyes flared open and she shook with anger. Then she cocked the hammer and fired. But of course, nothing happened but a click.
            “See, thinking you can use my own weapon against me is foolish in the extreme,” I said, perfectly calm. “That’s Wrench you’re holding there. He won’t turn against me. But apparently a part of Annie would. Here’s what I think about you, Paula. I don’t think you want me the same way Annie wanted me. She wanted love and romance. You know what your deal is? You want power over me. You came to this island for one reason or another and made your conquest. You took power over the most powerful man on the island, Golbez, my father. And now that I’m in town, I’m the most powerful man around, and you wanted power over me. Annie’s so sweet and docile and humble, and you’re so---”

“I HATE HER!” Paula said furiously, throwing Wrench to the ground. “She’s weak, she’s a coward...”

Annie suddenly took over. I could tell by the look of hurt and innocence that emanated from her face.

“No, Paula!” she said. “I’ve never done anything wrong to you! I’ve never tried to hurt you! Why do you have to be so...mean, so calloused, so...so loose?”

“I want to kill! I want to seduce! I want to destroy!”

            “No! That’s bad! The wrong thing! I want to love! I want to be loved!”
            “VENGEANCE! BLOOD! SEX!”
            Annie blushed at that last word.
            “Shut up, Annie!”
            “I didn’t say anything!”
            The two personas continued to wage warfare against the other. I...had no idea how to react. Would you? Honestly, would you? Would anyone know what to say or do in a situation like that? And it was because of that paralytic feeling that I could have sympathy for whoever the core being of Annie and Paula was. ‘Conflicted’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
            “You have a man’s name! Do you want to be a man?”
            “It’s got an A on the end of it! It’s feminine!”

“But you act like a man all the time! Obsessed with...sex! And violence! Killing things!”

            “And what about you? Do you just want to be rescued all the time? Be something useless? Something that hinders plans?”
            “I don’t want to have plans. We don’t need to have plans at all! We can just ask nicely! Be kind to people! Do the right thing! Remember, Paula? How you wanted to do the right thing, like Jack said?”
            “But that would give him the power! I can’t believe how naive you are. Letting yourself be tossed around like that. How dare you call yourself a woman!”

I sat down on a nearby rock formation to watch. I admit, the Golbez inside me made me want a bag of popcorn to accompany the show.

            “Hey!” the women said, turning on me in a completely different persona. “I heard that thought. My name is California Poppy and I will have you know that if you so much as even think of this as entertainment, I will make it so you can never have children!”
            “No!” Annie cried, voice coming from the same body. “I won’t do that because I want to have his children!”
            “Oh, you’re so hooked up to the system!” screamed California Poppy. “Just look at all of us, women struggling to find our true identity in a male-dominated genre! Look how awful it is! We only have the two choices---femme fatales or damsels in distress! What is WRONG with us, that we can’t be more?”
            “Shut up, Poppy!” said Paula. “You learned all your feminist nonsense from precious Daddy! Listening to him, a man, trying to tell you how to be a woman! Well damn it, Poppy, I am a woman! Look at the power I have!”
            “You’re not a woman, you’re an object to be used and admired!” Poppy blasted back. “A sexpot designed to entertain males! Bending to their every whim! They want sex? You have it. They want violence? Bone-crunching, spine-shattering, patriarchal-thuggery violence? You do that too! The power you have is just enslavement to men’s desires!”
            “Damn you!” screamed Paula, spittle spewing from her mouth. The words echoed beneath the overhang, then all around the cliff-bounded body of water.
            “Please!” said Annie, covering her ears. “Please just stop! Everybody! Please...please. I just---we all need to rest. Please...”
            And silence again returned to the lagoon.

In her weariness, Annie crouched down and held her head in her hands.

“Are you...Annie...again?” I asked with some tenderness that I confess was genuine. But not out of romantic feelings for her. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

            She nodded slowly. Then she shook her head with vigor, still not looking up at me. “I don’t know---I don’t know which I am anymore. Maybe both. Maybe all three of us. Maybe there’s even more in there. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
            “Well, maybe...maybe it would help if we just talked. Will you talk to me?”
            She nodded but didn’t speak.

“Can you tell me about how this all came about?”

            She shook her head with the same vigor as before, but remained silent.
            “So maybe...maybe it would help if I shared some of my past first?”
            She nodded again, still without looking up. So I sat down against the gray temple door (probably the exit, though I hadn’t had time to think that theory all the way through), and we talked. Talked to each other like human beings. No plot development. Just two people sharing their stories. A human connection.
            “Okay. So let me tell you about my parents. Mom was a martial artist and an excellent homemaker. She really loved me. And my dad used to work for Golbez. My stepdad, I mean. It’s still weird that that man isn’t my father. He did all those dad duties, raising me, teaching me how to ride a bike, how to shoot a gun, how to pull off hipshots, how to shoot a gun while doing a shoulder roll, how to take advantage of moments of slow motion to kill multiple guys at once, how to throw a ball...all that dad stuff. I even look a little like him, too. But no. Not my real dad. Apparently. They told me after I tried to kill myself for the fifth time.”
            Annie---it must have been Annie---looked up for the first time in a while.
            “You tried to...kill yourself?” she said.
            “Five times,” Jack said, nodding. “But it wasn’t because I hated myself. I just wanted to escape. It took me a long time to accept my fate. It was some random movie that clued me in to who I was. I had survived a motorcycle accident without more than a single scar on my chin. But that just helped to serve the image. The gods were watching me from a young age. Grooming me. But the movie that I saw showed me who I was when I was just nineteen. At first it was wonderful. I tried all sorts of crazy things, and I got to experience the thrill, the raw thrill of immortality. That’s what I thought it was. That’s how it looked to me. I could do anything I wanted and I wouldn’t get hurt. Well, it would, as I came to find out, but I was never totally incapacitated; I could always walk away and I could always manage to punch another bad guy out cold before losing consciousness, or rationality, or whatever it is that happens after the adrenaline leaves you alone with your bruises and breaks. I was like a superhero, but after some time fighting crime and megaomaniacal villains, I got…well, I got bored. But it wasn’t just boredom. It was a prison. And that’s what that thrill turned into. Slavery. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different. So yeah, I tried to escape that prison five times over the years. Each time I tried to commit suicide, it was somehow foiled or rewritten or something, and I got sucked into a new story. I tried to crash my motorcycle but those just turned into chase scenes with bad guys chasing me, and every time I tried to do something lethal, it just turned out really cool-looking. The fifth time I went out on my motorcycle with the intent to kill myself, a film producer visiting my dad saw me in the fields behind my house and hired me on the spot to be a stuntman. So I did that for a while until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was being a lesser copy of what the gods of pulp fiction wanted me to be. And as a result, it wasn’t very fulfilling. I wanted to be the best person I could be at whatever it was I was doing, but it turns out that I didn’t have a choice of what it was that I was doing. So the sixth time I tried to kill myself, I kind of succeeded. I didn’t kill myself, but I did get hurt. A word came into my head in the very moment I jumped my bike off a cliff: mercy. And it was like someone else was taking over, taking command. But in taking command, they gave me the command. They let me decide for myself. I didn’t die then, but I did go to the hospital. And my parents finally took note. Well, to be fair I didn’t tell them about any of it. But that’s when they told me who I was, where I came from, and where I could go to learn more. And, you know, frankly, I haven’t really learned anything. I’ve just gotten more confused.”
            “What has been confusing you?”
            “Mostly Golbez.”
            Annie actually smiled here. “He confuses everyone.”
            Annie fused with Paula. I doubted “Annie” had ever met Golbez in person.
            “But to me...I’m still trying to figure out how that man is my father. One thing I don’t understand is that I have pretty white skin. Tanned, maybe, but not the brown skin Golbez has. I guess it’s a recessive trait. Or maybe my mom drop-kicked it out of my chromosomes. Anyway, Golbez is such a different person from Johnny. Oh, Johnny’s my stepdad. Johnny Hit. He was a reformed hitman. But he changed, got his life turned around, realized the something or other of his ways, and he’s an actor now. Mostly in mob movies. I don’t know how he got so many roles, because he was a terrible actor. But apparently he used to work for Golbez, some thirty years ago. She did too. They told me they left the business together, but I learned the other night from Golbez himself that he had sent a hitman after her and it was easy to put together the puzzle. He sent Johnny Hit out to kill her, and somehow they fell in love and had me, I suppose. Oldest cliche in the book. They even explained that they fell in love as he was trying to kill her, in a weaponless, suggestive wrestling match thta ended up with them passionately making out. I kinda wish they hadn’t told me that part, but they never explained why he was trying to kill her in the first place. Now I know it’s because she stole me away from Golbez as a baby.
            “But my mom told me the truth about it all, except for that last part, after that last suicide attempt. And that explained why she had kept my last name “McDowell,” and some other little things. She actually gave me a sealed letter to take to Golbez. I think I left it back at the Moon Base in my room. I never opened it; I assume it was just some reconciliation or closure or some bullcrap like that, and I didn’t want any part of it. But they were kind enough to pay for everything and use their connections to get me out here, on that flight in the jungle and everything before it. And that’s what led me here. Into that plane. Where we met, where this whole crazy adventure started.”
            Annie looked...healed. Maybe not all the way. But after a catharsis like that, tears are bound to flow, and then they’re bound to dry. And nothing conveys the image of recovery like dried tears.
            “Now it’s your turn,” I said encouragingly.

“My full name,” she said, “is California Poppy Ann Paula Palamander. I know I’m not right. In my mind, you see. But yes, you saw.” She gave a nervous chuckle, as if unsure what my reaction would be. “It’s something that’s hard for me to control. Hard for the Annie part of me. For Paula it’s a little easier. She can direct Annie to do things. Poppy hardly ever comes out. She never has, on this island. Isle, I mean. She’s as...straightforward as Paula but she doesn’t have much use in a place like this. Paula took control early on, and led me, us, here. She only used Annie in specific times. Like when she needs to disguise herself. Like on that plane.”

“Was that Paula in the plane, then?” I asked.

“No. Well, sort of. I was doing what Paula told me to do, but it was me doing it. I’m really not a bad investigative reporter. That’s what I wanted to be before things got messed up a few years ago. I like writing, but I was there to figure out who you were and why you were coming here. I was...investigating you. That was my job.”

She hung her head in shame. I recalled figuring out the whole “investigating” thing a while back, but for some reason or other, had forgotten about it. Too many distractions on this stupid isle.

“It’s okay,” I said to her. “I understand. Like Golbez said. It was just doing what you were supposed to do. Just like it’s my job to save people. Including you. You needed it several times, so I did it. We’re characters, remember. We don’t have much control over our lives. But I remember seeing you as you dove out of that plane, into the water. I remember seeing something more than what you presented on that flight. Something underneath that trench coat.”

“There was a reason I never took that off,” she said. “I was wearing Paula’s clothes underneath. And I had a wig in that big pocket. Paula’s wig.”

“When were you being controlled by Paula, and when were you Annie?”

“Always,” she said. “It’s like I said. When I was Annie, I was Annie, with all her traits and inhibitions and everything. But it was like Paula was constantly behind me, holding a gun to my back.”

“But why?” I asked. “What did she want you to do so badly?”

She paused a moment. “You said it earlier, Jack. We wanted the same thing. Just for different reasons.”

I thought back. Ah, yes. They both wanted me, but for different reasons and using different methods. “Paula wanted power over me. You...just wanted to be with me.”

“I thought I loved you. And maybe I really do. But right now I don’t know much. Once I figure out who I am, I’ll let you know.” And she smiled weakly.

It felt nice to see that smile. It meant I was doing something right.

“Maybe we can figure it out together,” I said. “What about your parents? Your dad was mentioned a couple of times in your little catharsis.”

“Oh, Daddy was a free spirit. From the sixties, you know. A hippie minister. Loose. On drugs, some of the time, but none of the really scary ones. I don’t know why he married my mom. But he named me partly after him. His name was Paul. My mom’s name was Cowbell. Paul and Cowbell Palamander. My mom---she was very...withholding. Of... information.”

“What kind of information?”

She blushed, and I knew for certain it was Annie in control right now. “Growing up, blooming, that kind of thing,” she said, blushing deeper. After a little silence, “Sex, okay?”

This was one psychologically messed up girl.

“Living with them,” she continued, “It’s like I knew everything and nothing at the same time.”

“And that’s where the split is,” I conjectured. “Paula knows everything, and you know nothing. Or perhaps very little.”

Annie looked away, obviously embarrassed at the whole subject. But it was beginning to make sense to me.

“I don’t know when I began being more than one person. Not specifically. It happened over time. Different voices starting popping up inside my head. Telling me to do different things, or displaying different...desires. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about that too much. It’s really scary for me to think about.”

Thinking about it all, I guessed that these varying characters in her mind were never wholly separated. Each hidden, latent identity, seemed to have subconscious influence over the surface identity, and they used that influence to subtly obtain what the latent identity wanted. For instance, Annie wanted to be with me, and badly so, but because she was so shy, the desire was pressed into Paula’s identity, who then tried to seduce me. And when I refused her, she attacked me. Annie would never do either of those things, but Paula would. They were always there, implicit in her subconscious mind.

            And thinking back on it, I realized that always the change between the two were triggered by something I said or did. When I refused her that first night in the woods, she stormed off into the jungle and became Paula. When I rejected Paula’s advances in Golbez’s villa and told her what I liked in a woman, she reverted back into Annie and tried to be good. All the while taking unconscious orders from Paula so the both of them could get what they want.
            Me.
            “Well, Annie, if that’s who you are right now, it’s been quite a day, and I think it’s time for a nap. And I believe we both need some time to think about things, so I suggest we split up for the night and part ways for now. I’m going to curl up on this nice comfy rock here, and I guarantee you I will be asleep in twenty seconds. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t want to see you here.” Her eyes, not meeting mine, plummeted at this, and I quickly explained further. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a personal thing. It’s because we’ve hit a crossroads in the plot, and I am very pleased to admit that I don’t know what’s going to happen next. So here it is, something that I think is a little more important, to you at least, so listen carefully: as seemingly the only significant female character on this island, you have your choice of roles, and where the story goes now is up to you. What you choose to do. Where you choose to go. With whom you choose to converse. And most importantly, who you choose to be. Remember that. It’s always a choice. Maybe not for me; I’m not so lucky. But for you.”
            She just nodded silently, looking miserable. I hated to leave her alone, but now that the adrenaline of that incident had faded, I too was fading. Fast.
            “Good night, California Poppy Ann Paula Palamander.”
            And like that, both of us were gone.

End of Act II