INT. VISITATION CELL — INSANE ASYLUM

Rusted metal, out of focus, frames a square-cut pane of clear acrylic. On the other side is a narrow hallway, not much wider than the window itself but several meters long, and at the end is a windowless metal door, and attached to it is a water-stained poster. In the center, an animated cat girl with pointed ears, large, teary eyes and a drooping frown stares out hopelessly.

大丈夫じゃなくても大丈夫 is printed underneath in thickset characters.

SUPERIMPOSED TRANSLATION

IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE OKAY

Fluorescent tubes burn in corroded sockets, casting blocks of cold light onto the concrete walls and floor, with menacing darkness lurking past the boundaries. The light distorts as it passes through the layers of synthetic glass of the porthole, smearing into a blue glow framed in a dark vignette.

A lock releases with a loud clang but it sounds tinny and robotic, like a megaphone, as the jangle comes squawking out of a small analogue speaker at the base of the window, fed through bad wiring from the receiver of a telephone handle hanging from a cradle mounted to the wall on the opposite side of the glass.

The speaker crackles and pops as the door begins sliding left on ungreased, whining rollers, and bit by bit it disappears into the wall. Behind it is YELENA GORGO.

At first nothing more than a silhouetted, foreboding apparition until she takes her first step into the hallway and is revealed by the uneven light. Her blonde hair, wet and stringy, hangs over most of her face, which is tilted slightly off axis to the right. Her torso is confined in a straight jacket with her arms criss-crossed over one another.

Another dark outline stands behind her, wearing an officer’s hat with a badge on the front that catches light with a glimmer. They start roughly unstrapping her sleeves. The jingling metal buckles cling-clang and the yanking leather straps rip through the eyelets.

The sleeves slacken and, after a drawn-out moment, they fall to her sides. She gives a shrug, and several pounds of cloth, leather and steel slide off her shoulders and fall in a pile at her feet, leaving her in olive drab prison fatigues.

The officer steps back and waves his hand. After a beat, the door begins to slide shut, until it seals itself closed with a droning knell. You hear her ragged breathing as she starts walking forward, her feet scuffling across the floor as her weight lands unevenly on each hip, causing her to move with a disjointed gait, like a reanimated corpse relearning how to walk.

Her twitchy posture and gnarled joints move deliberately toward the window, but as she comes closer, the camera loses focus and the details of her portrait start to blur, like oil pastels smeared across a canvas.

By the time she sits on the bolted down stool, her features are an abstract glob of shifting colors that hint at the woman’s appearance but never defining any specific features.

Her head lifts and drips of what must be hair falls aside, revealing a white face with dark saucers for eyes. Where her mouth should be is a red stain, curving slightly down in the middle, with the two ends peeked up like a grotesque smile.

Her knotty hand grabs the telephone off the cradle. She slams it on the table three times, and each bang sends crackling feedback through the screeching speaker. Only then does she raise the handset to her ear and you hear her speak.

GORGO

Do we have your attention?

What’s with this we business?

And that voice—there’s something different about it. It isn’t their own, but rather something raw and distorted, like their words are being run through a meat grinder in their throat, then are torn to shreds by a serrated tongue before being sliced off at the end of every syllable with razor teeth like a guillotine’s blade.

But all that violent articulation doesn’t manifest as howling cacophony but rather a quiet, craggy whisper, like rage being forced through a sieve.

GORGO

We know what’cher thinkin.
Look at this production value.

They reel back for a moment to wave their hand around, giving a slightly clearer glimpse of the dried, crusty red stain spread over their mouth and jaw before they lurch forward, their face even murkier, and chuckles, Haa-Haa-Haa!

GORGO

Gorgo paid a lot of people a tidy sum to build this, not to mention the production crew and camera operator recording this right now.

Oh, we’re sorry.

When we are referring to just one of us, that’s Gorgo. Otherwise, you’re getting the package deal.

Clears their throat.

GORGO

Gorgo felt it would be an interesting way to sell her unpredictability as an advantage in this situation we have here. To the point: Puroresu Gacha Machine.

It isn’t the worst idea to juxtapose the chaotic mystery booking with the unpredictability that is a hallmark of her character against the backdrop of an insane asylum.

But we don’t care for semantics. It’s lazy writing and, quite frankly, we take our artistic integrity seriously.

So right before the director behind the camera called action, Gorgo and her shadow had a little conversation and together we came to a mutually beneficial prospect. Rather than talking to just Gorgo, you get to talk to—

Us.

She hits the telephone handset against the side of her head once, twice, three times. Not violently, but enough to cause the speaker to pop and ping.

GORGO

Forty one names on a list. Too many potential outcomes to predict. It’s a distraction. They know what they’re doing. They have their plans in place while the rest of us are supposed to get worked up in a tissy over manufactured chaos.

They wanna pit the Haves and the Have-Nots against one another and see what drama unfolds. The Haves see a list of threats against their championships and positions of entitlement. The Have-Nots see a fast track to the fortune and glory that has thus far eluded them.

What you nutballs haven’t considered is us.

Miracle Galaxy Pro is about the fight between Good and Evil. It’s baked into Wikipedia synopsis. The Just vs the Unjust with the sanctity of professional wrestling on the line. Forty names are more than happy to do that little dance because they don’t know any other way. They’re bots following standard wrestling parameters.

To them, life is binary: honor vs dishonor. Even the ones who pretend to walk the line in between ultimately choose one or the other. But these are two sides of the same coin. Every victory is a fleeting moment until the next flip. In the end, nothing changes. Tickets are sold. Fans clap with the enthusiasm of a ping pong tournament. Checks are cashed. Rinse and repeat.

Forty names are satisfied with this arrangement. One isn’t.

Their first slams on the small table surface that juts out from beneath the window. Over the speaker it sounds like a thousand nails hitting the ground all at once. Hollow and metallic.

GORGO

Satoshi Kato and Tatsumaki Aoi can’t see the real potential of Galaxy Pro. To them, puroresu is holy. Something to be revered and preserved.

Don’t believe me? Cue Exhibit A.

Over their shoulder, a picture-in-picture box appears. Tatsumaki Aoi is standing inside a wrestling ring. Smart fans will recognize the footage from Historic BIG BANG Evolution.

TATSUMAKI AOI

When I created Miracle Galaxy Pro, I wanted to give the best competitors in the world a place to showcase their skills and show everyone how strong they are. I think that mission was accomplished tonight… but it’s actually bigger than that. The balance has been upset and the fighting spirit of joshi puroresu is wounded. It’s up to all of us to work together and mend that wound so that it can heal.

In the video, fans applaud with respectful enthusiasm. Gorgo puts down the handset and begins clapping their hands together before curling them beneath their chin.

GORGO

YOU LIKE ME! YOU REALLY LIKE ME!

UNNECESSARY SALLY FIELD REFERENCE flashes across the screen.

Their hands move to their face and they roll around on their stool while the footage cuts to various shots of the crowd and the fans sitting like good little boys and girls making sure to emote the proper amount of appreciation. Not too much, not too little.

Gorgo shoos the pip box off screen with a wave of their hand before picking the handset up from the table and placing it to their ear. The receiver cackles with a low, rough laugh or, more accurately, a series of drawn out Haaaa-Haaaaa-Haaaaa’s…

GORGO

That was about eleven months ago. What’s changed? Not much. You still have your factions of good girls, your faction of bag girls, and your faction of habitual line steppers who ultimately lean toward the light more often than not. Sure, you had Jessi’s “industry-spanning” faction of cunts but you could never count on her unless she was given certain accommodations. After all, she’s “quite well known everywhere (she) goes” and expects to be treated as such.

They point at you, the viewer.

GORGO

This is your fault, you know. Yeah, you. You are a chronic enabler. You give Galaxy Pro money. You sit in your seat and clap and clap and clap like the deft flutter of a humming bird’s wings. You stare with your mouth agape and consume…and consume…and consume every shovel-full of shit they throw at you.

Just like Aoi, you don’t care about balance. You want implied balance, just like you want implied chaos. You want there to be balance between the factions until the story reaches the point of necessary conclusion. THEN, you sick little puppy, THEN you want what every addict wants: a big injection of dopamine and to go home happy.

This is where we come in.

I’ll give you balance. You won’t like it, but in the end, it’s the best thing for you. It’s like the psalm says, spare the rod, spoil the child. There are a lot of ladies in Galaxy Pro that are in need of a good spanking, and while my hand works just fine, I think more extreme measures are warranted.

With a crick-crack they stand from the stool, like an old skeleton animating to life, one bone at a time. Their neck bends forward, and their forehead presses against the glass. At this close, they are little more than an amorphous blob.

GORGO

One day, you’ll remember watching this video and you’ll look back and say, I was warned. You’ll remember us sitting here in this ridiculous set, talking to you over your great aunt’s kitchen phone, and you’ll know why we did it this way.

I want you to know that this is where I belong and if you knew what was good for you, the moment I walk off that airplane in Tokyo, a squad of police officers should swarm me, put a bag over my head, and find a deep, dark cell to throw me in where no one can find me.

You have the power to make this happen. Stop buying merchandise. Stop buying tickets. Stop watching. Sign petitions. Demand my firing. Demand my arrest. You could save so much suffering. You can punish me for all the awful things I’ve done in my life that you’ll never know about.

Be a good person.

A drawn out little Hheeeeee swims through the static.

GORGO

Or maybe you aren’t such a good person after all. Maybe you want to see what we have in store for Nightmare Galaxy Pro. Maybe the thought of me bashing Caponata’s head in on live television in living color makes you feel all tingly in your no-no place.

Clicks their tongue.

GORGO

I guess we’ll find out which side you land on. Good… bad… or maybe, just maybe, you’re tired of playing the game. Maybe deep down, you’re more like Us than you think. Well, partner, if that’s the case, then look on the brightside.

You could be like Karlie Nash. Kneeling on an American flag and struggling to quote your favorite bible verse because of all the pixelated penis in your mouth.

The phone handle slips from their hand and bangs on the table. The speaker howls with feedback briefly before strangling itself into a low whine, and then fades into background static until:

A whistle cuts through as They retreat back down the hallway. Slowly the tune flutters into a series of notes, one after the other, and then it stretches into a sequence of pleasing tones. A melody.

They whisper and whistle the chorus of Always Look On the Bright Side of Life as their feet nimbly navigate the hallway with newfound vigor. Every hop and a step leads them further into focus and by the time they reach the door you can clearly make out the letters printed across their back.

上昇
精神的
病院

ASCENSION
PSYCHIATRIC
HOSPITAL

They bang on the door. A beat, and then the familiar bang of metal rattles in the speaker, followed by the long groan of the door sliding open. Their weight shifts forward to walk out the door but something stops them. Playfully, their eyes look back over their shoulder and they say:

GORGO

See you soon.

They turn forward and—

CUT TO BLACK.

The sound of the door grinding shut…

XII

ASCENSION

“We’re living in a society! We’re supposed to act in a civilized way!”
— George Costanza, Seinfeld

JANUARY 28 2007

I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD when Donald Avery came to my mother’s house in Chișinău to deliver the bad news. He was in his sixties and wearing a black suit, with his thinning gray hair combed back to hide his bald spot. He introduced himself as my father’s attorney from America.

I knew something was wrong. Dad would never have sent him to find me otherwise. Mother was sleeping off a hangover so we went to the park to talk. Kids were running around playing in the snow. I remember sitting on the metal bench, bundled in a down jacket and hat, and watching my breath frost in the air as my world fell apart.

“The criminal charges were dropped,” Avery explained to me. “But the police refuse to let it go. The detective in charge of the case is convinced your father killed his wife and she has the district attorney wrapped around her finger. After Christmas they filed a petition with the court to have him involuntarily committed to Ascension Psychiatric Hospital in New Orleans. The judge signed it without offering us the opportunity to counter.”

That was a month ago. I had no idea. In 2008 it was still rare in Moldova to have internet access. I knew something was wrong when dad stopped calling but I didn’t expect this. I was scared and confused.

Avery took a pair of black-framed glasses from his inside pocket and slid them on. “He was apprehended at the airport, which didn’t help his defense. They argued he was a flight risk.” He reached down to his leather bag and removed a large laptop.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “If this happened over a month ago, why am I just now hearing about this?”

“Psychiatric hospitals aren’t like prisons,” he explained while typing his password on the keyboard. “He isn’t under arrest. He isn’t convicted of a crime. As such, his constitutional right to an attorney doesn’t apply. His doctor has the authority to determine if and when your father is allowed to have visitors. As such, my complaints to the court were ignored. It wasn’t until two days ago that I was permitted to meet with him. During our conversation, his most notable concern was, of course, you.”

He handed me the laptop. A video player was expanded to fill the screen. He pushed play and the black screen cut to a grainy, low resolution recording of my father. He was nearly unrecognizable. His head was shaved and he had lost quite a bit of weight since last I had seen him.

“Hej lille due,” he said. His voice was weak and cracking, and there was something distant in his eyes, like he wasn’t completely present. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.”

He continued to talk but sixteen years have robbed my memory of most of what he said. What I do remember is how I felt watching the video—hopeless and alone. The one person who understood me, who cared for me, was taken away and I didnt know if I would ever see him again.

“Jeg elsker dig,” he said at the end. “Mere end noget andet.”

“I love you, too,” I answered under my breath.

The recording froze on a still-frame of his frail face cast downward and his arms wrapped loosely around his body.

“What’s wrong with him,” I said as Avery took the laptop back.

“He’s heavily medicated,” The lawyer said with a sigh as he bent down to slip the computer back into his bag. Sitting back up, he added, “There was something Niels wanted me to tell you. I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea but he insisted.”

“Tell me.”

He huffed a wisp of fog out of his chest and, after a moment of thought, shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea to implicate you in this.”

An irritating noise cut through the urban soundtrack of puttering car engines, distant sirens, and laughing children. It was a grinding moan of metal on metal that I couldn’t ignore. I looked around, trying to find the source. It wasn’t the kids working on their drooping, wet snowman or the other group running around the playground.

My ears pulled my attention left, away from the new equipment that was installed last summer and toward the treeline where an old, rusty swing set that I didn’t recognize sat creaking and croaking as the lone seat slowly drifted back and forth. The rider, a girl my age, dressed like me, with blonde hair sticking out from under her hat like mine, was staring directly at me. Her face was my face, and she gave me a very Gorgo-like smile.

I felt…a strange feeling come over me that I can only describe as an out-of-body experience. I suddenly wasn’t in control of my body. It was as if my mind had been transported to a theater and I watched the events unfold like a scene in a movie.

This Other Me grabbed his arm, hard. Much harder than an eight year old should be capable of. When he looked down at her, he was frightened by whatever it was he saw in her eyes. Then she repeated the order, only it wasn’t with my voice. It was oddly guttural, coarse, and powerful.

“Tell Me. Now.”

He was frozen for a time. Seconds maybe, or maybe minutes. My memory isn’t certain, but when he finally yanked his arm away, he was trembling.

The lawyer said quickly, “He wanted me to tell you the name of the doctor at Ascension. ‘In case they kill me,’ he said. He didn’t want it mentioned in the recording. You don’t understand, Yelena. He isn’t well, mentally. It may be the best place for him.”

“The. Name.”

He gave in. “Corso. William Corso.”

My consciousness was pulled from the theater and returned to the helm, retaking control of my body and my voice. I take several long, deep breaths. He sits there in silence.

“I know he didn’t look well,” he said eventually. “They have him on medication to stabilize his mental state. They are also administering ECT twice a week. Corso said the goal is to reset his brain.”

I asked him what ECT is. He hesitated.

“Electroconvulsive therapy.”

I stood from the bench and shouted in his face, “They’re shocking him?!”

He leaned away while reaching for his bag. He nearly slid off the bench trying to stand. Maybe in an attempt to overcorrect his lack of a spine, he loomed over me and sharpened his words.

“I don’t appreciate that tone,” he said with a gruff shout.

I fired back, “And I don’t appreciate you fucking this up.”

He raised his hand and stuck his finger in my face. His voice went quiet, but growled with authority. “Listen to me, you little brat. I don’t know whether your father killed his wife or if she actually did commit suicide, but one thing I know for sure is he’s fucking looney tunes. That hospital is where he belongs. Not just for his sake, but for the general public.”

“It’s not your decision,” I said with a quiet rage.

“Actually,” he said with a smirk, “it is. No one knows you exist, little girl. As far as the United States government is concerned, Niels Gram has no living relatives, so I was granted power of attorney to oversee his medical care and estate.”

“What does that mean?”

He smiled. He fucking smiled. “It means if you want to keep getting your money, you should show me a little respect. Be happy I made the trip to deliver the video. Be happy your father’s bank account isn’t frozen so I was able to fly private, otherwise I wouldn’t have set one foot in this communist graveyard.”

I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to break his nose, tear an eye out, bite his ear off, slam my foot into his liver, throw him down and stomp on his face over and over and over until he was unrecognizable…until he had scars that would never heal, that for the rest of his life would be a reminder of what I did to him.

I wanted to do those things, but I didn’t. I watched him silently as he patted my head, turned his back to me, and walked away. I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill him.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

I was frozen.

And I hated myself for it.

JANUARY 15 2024

“I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE thinking,” I was now saying, only a few days ago. It was in a surgical theater, with a small pit surrounded by tiered rows of empty seats. It was humid and water could be heard dripping somewhere in the distance. It was dark everywhere except in the center of the ring, where a functional operating light was drawing enough juice to power on from a battery backup generator. Its bright circle shined down onto a stretcher and the patient strapped to its rails.

“You think I was afraid,” I continued telling the story I wrote about before. “You think it was fear that stayed my hand. Well, the truth is, Dr. Corso, you’re right.”

He mumbles, the old fat man, and jerks against his cuffs. I couldn’t understand him because of the rubber guard in his mouth and the duct tape sealing it shut. His clothes were disheveled and a spot of urine stained the front of his khakis, but otherwise he was no worse for wear.

“More accurately, I was terrified.”

I began setting up the electroconvulsive therapy device on the bedside metal handcart. First, I powered it on with a press of the big orange button. The rush of electricity from the battery generator hummed as the gauges and screens flashed on. The display read 5% above the dial marked PERCENT ENERGY. I cranked it all the way up.

“But not of Avery,” I clarified. “I was afraid of what would come after if I beat him to death in the street in broad daylight. The police. The arrest. The trial. The verdict. Prison. What I feared most was getting caught.”

The patient groans loudly.

“That was the last time I allowed myself to be afraid of anything.”

Next to the device was a burner phone docked with a bluetooth speaker. My finger tapped the screen and started swiping before giving one final tap. Music played—an organ ascending a chromatic d-minor scale.

“How about a little mood music?”

A drum hit counted four and the bass and guitar began plucking the introductory riff of Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida as I unrolled a small bag to reveal a syringe with an 18 gauge needle inside plastic caps. It was preloaded with a paralytic drug called.

After yanking his shirt sleeve up, I wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his bicep and pulled it tight, then I waited for the median cubital vein to puff against his skin.

“This is suxamethonium chloride,” I said while removing the cap from the syringe. He tried to get away but the straps kept him on the stretcher as my steady hand directed the large needle into the blood vessel. The medication flushed quickly into his system and within seconds rendered him motionless. Blood bubbled out of the injection site.

“That is to keep you still during the procedure. This, on the other hand—”

There was a small, unmarked bottle on the cart. I picked it up and unscrewed the lid while moving to loom over Dr. Corso. His flabby, double chin quivered when he tried to talk to me. Though paralyzed, he was conscious and aware of what was happening.

“—is a little experiment of mine. You know all about experimentation, don’t you Dr. Corso? Your medically unnecessary treatments and unapproved-by-the-FDA methods are the reason this hospital was shuttered in 2019. How was your year in prison? Did you make any friends?”

I squeezed the rubber top of the lid, drawing in roughly a millimeter of the medication into the dropper. When he saw it come out of the bottle, he panicked, especially when I moved it over his face. He caught on fast and went to close his eyes.

“Your eyes are so pretty,” I said over the music. “It’s a pity to hide them. Open your eyes, Dr. Corso or I’ll slice your eyelids off.”

Reluctantly he complied. His pupils followed the dropper as it first moved over his right eye. A gentle squeeze of the bulb released a single drop of liquid. It fell into his eye and spread quickly over the surface.

“Oh, I know it buns, but remember what I said about closing them? There we go. Just like that, doctor.” A second drop, this one landed in the center of his left eye. He moaned from the discomfort.

“In case you’re wondering,” I said while screwing the lid back on, “inside this little brown bottle is pure lysergic acid diethylamide.”

I returned the bottle to the cart and said, “I’m not a doctor, of course, so I’ll defer to your expert opinion, but based on my calculations, you have received about two thousand micrograms of LSD, or roughly five times the typical dose for recreational use.”

The heart monitor at the end of his bed begins to beep faster. I said, “Be careful, doc. A man of your age and fitness level should be cautious about sudden outbursts of energy. Not to mention the fact you really don’t want to vomit with that guard in your mouth.”

His muffled babbling blended into the guitar fuzz and banging drums while I carefully applied thermal pads to each one of his temples. After peeling the backing paper off the gel squares, I examined him. His skin was starting to shine with sweat and he felt a little warm from the increased blood pressure. I stretched his eyes wide open to note the endless black circles of his pupils surrounded by bloodshot scleras.

“What horrors you must be experiencing,” I said quietly, then added with a quip, “I think I’m a little envious.”

Back to the ECT machine, I bent down to read some fine print. “This other dial says ‘Brain Resistance.’ I’m not sure what that means. Let’s turn that one all the way up. You seem to have a very busy mind, after all.”

I turn around, hold my hands up, and say, “Nurse? Gloves, s’il vous plaît.”

Out from my shadow, the Other Me emerged, appearing at once next to me with a set of sterile gloves. She was dressed as Nurse Ratched but otherwise my perfect copy. Except for the smile. She always smiles, even when I’m not.

She slipped the first nylon glove over my left hand as I started talking to the doctor again.

“I wish Avery was here with us to take part in this little experiment.”

The right glove stretched over my hand as I said, “I’m not sure if you heard, doc, but the lawyer died. Two years later. I remember it distinctly because it coincidentally was the same week my father was released from the hospital. He killed himself, if you believe the medical examiner. Tossed himself off the roof of his condo building in Manhattan. Imagine the mess. No suicide note, though.”

Other Me held out two rubber-coated handles which were plugged into the front of the ECT machine by two thick cables. Metal electrodes in the shape of short cylinders capped both handles, with one marked positive and the other negative.

When my hands moved over my shadow’s, our bodies melted together and our minds devoured each other like twin stars collapsing into a super massive singularity.

We walked at one around the bed with the wires lightly dragging on the floor behind us until we stood above Corso’s face. Our head bent on a crooked neck over him, creating an eclipse with the operating light behind me. Our eyes met his, and he began breathing rapidly.

We pursed our lips and tried soothing him like a crying infant. “Shhh, doctor. Everything is going to be fine. If it gives you comfort, we decided not to kill you. You’re going to survive this…in a way. Allow me to explain. The goal of this procedure is simple.”

Our hands raised the electrodes for him to see. “I’m going to press the electrodes to the thermal pads on your temples. An electrical current will then pass from the right electrode, through your brain, and into the left. Now, as you are aware, normally the way this machine works is you get one shock per button press, but I made some modifications.”

His breathing quickened again.

Our teeth flashed a smile.

“It now produces a constant, sustained charge.”

The electrodes cackled with electricity when we moved them together. He was moaning again through the gag. It started low and soft before quickly swelling into a high-pitched squeal, like a pig in a slaughterhouse.

We shouted over him and the music, “You’re going to fry one second…for every time you put our father through this. Thankfully he was a meticulous record keeper. In total, over two years, you administered ECT to my father one hundred fifty three times.”

As tears ran down his face we said, “Truthfully, we don’t know what this will do to you. Maybe your heart will give out. The milliamps on this device are low enough it shouldn’t disrupt your cardiac rhythm but you are old and quite fat. If you do survive, you should consider joining the Vilaro System.”

Our voice cracked, “WHEN you survive! When!” A hoarse laugh coughed out of our chest. “Hmm. Maybe we should have played Survivor by Destiny’s Child…”

A defiant finger raised into the air. “No second guessing,” We shouted with glee. “Besides, according to my hypothesis, the combination of an elephant-sized dose of acid with two and a half minutes of electrical current firing through your frontal cortex will leave you in a vegetative state for the rest of your miserable life.”

Our face bent down further. Locks of our hair fell down around him as I said, “Or maybe you’ll just forget everything. Who you are. Where you’re from. The names and faces of your friends and family. How to do basic tasks like feeding yourself or bathing. You’ll spend years rehabilitating your ability to talk and care for yourself, but you’ll always see a stranger when you look at your wife Laura.”

My hands lowered the electrodes level with his temples. His shrieking faded into a pathetic whimper, like a beaten animal accepting its fate.

“Then, a few years later, I’ll come visit you in whatever nursing home your kids dump you in and we’ll talk about this moment, about everything I took from you and why I did it. Only then will my father’s vengeance be sated.”

He grumbled softly.

“Okay, Google,” we shouted at the phone but it didn’t respond. “You bitch. HEY, GOOGLE. HEEEYYYY GOO—Oh, that’s right. Yelena programmed the voice activation.”

We cleared our throat and said like Yelena, “Hey Google?” The music paused. “Set a timer for two minutes, thirty seconds.”

Google replied, “Got it. Setting a timer for two minutes and thirty seconds.”

As the timer began to tick down and Iron Butterfly came back on in the middle of a drum solo, our hands directed the electrodes closer to the thermal pads clinging to his hair and skin.

“The way out of hell isn’t a door,” we said and jammed the electrodes into the soft parts of his skull. His eyes rolled back and he began seizing as the volts fried his brain, causing his toes and fingers to stiffen, twitch and jerk.

“It’s not wanting out at all. Then you’re freeeee—”

—heeeeheeeheeeHAWW…

HAAA…

HAHAAAHAA…

HAAHAHAAAA!