No Other

Felix Horace remembered the first time he received the offer letter. The Agency had insisted every recruit memorize five categories of anomalous phenomena: supernatural, biological, philosophical, theological, and phantasmagoric entities. But as long as it paid, he hadn’t cared. His immediate superior was a multilingual chimpanzee, for Christ’s sake. He had always been fearless. But not today.

Horace woke up in his cozy abode which contained the usual essentials: clothes on the floor, an ashtray overflowing with cigar butts, and the stale air that qualified as another tenant. He gulped yesterday’s cup of water in one go. Then tried his best to get spruced up, got out of the room, and slouched through the hall. When he walked past the kitchen he froze and took two steps back.

A man stood next to the stove, making a primeval and disarming breakfast. His baldness glittered, his shirt tied into a crop top, showing his middle-aged pot. Most importantly he had the same tattoo as Horace, which said “Every day is gonna be a great
day”.

Charming.

The similarities were strikingly mirrored, though the intruder had one thumb short. As this intruder was humming a Kinks tune, casually flipping his delicious bacon, Horace’s own stomach bellowed.

The stranger turned with an outward shell like a buddha – serene and unreadable.

“Would you like bacon and eggs, with a handful of nutmeg?”

“No thanks. I like my peanut butter sandwich, and a couple of shots of cheap vodka,” Horace growled.

While this apparent double returned to its sizzling pan, Horace looked for the crucial part of any job: his field notes, tucked inside his coat. Once he had it, Horace sat down and flipped the worn pages, and finally landed on a section titled ‘Identify Subject.’

“Are you a Changeling? Leprechaun? No, you’re just fat. My money is on you being a Vardøger.”

“I’m none of those inferior creatures.” It turned with a soft smile, and its eyelids flickered — milliseconds apart — yet never quite closed.

His finger stopped at the last page: blank. He clicked his tongue.

It then sat down and introduced itself as Wñill. Ritually, it dipped an index finger into the egg yolk. Ground the nutmeg. Laid the bacon flat. Then consumed all of it — the finger along with the rest, creating a grotesque punctuation. Horace waited in the harmony of bone crackling, filling the morning silence.

“What would you do when a bourne wanted to make you one of their subjects, to become a binder, to be a triangle, and to become a law?” Wñill licked its lips.

“I think I would shove my finger into their asses.”

“I believe you are treating this conversation as trivial. Ironically, a being like yours once stole my doctrine; a Frenchman who thinks with his heart, though in practice, cruel. Then, what did I do? I cursed his goddamn bladder. He spent the rest of his days sprinting to the toilet in pure agony, completely—as your people like to say—fucking his mind.” Wñill’s wink began to creep Horace out. He put his hand beneath the table, caressed his gun.

“Why are you here?”

“To lecture you on the truth. My own notion of truth. That we, a creation of the unknown, should persist against the infinite, as a whole. I have seen far worse than your kind have experienced in your short existence. For I have trodden where no angels have; I have seen entire races devoured by themselves; I have stood at the edge of annihilation;” It looked down at the empty plate. “I have destroyed my kingdom. But instead of succumbing, I discovered the ‘We’. How beautiful the pillars of unification were—people co-existing, loving, helping one another. But where a ‘particular’ separates itself from the whole, it must be discarded, punished, and consumed once more.”

Horace’s eyebrows arched – then something caught in his throat and forced an ugly cough out of him. Underneath a table, he unstrapped the gun with the safety off. He grinned. “Too bad. But, surely, you are projecting yourself. There is no such thing as your ‘unification’. Why should I have to stand next to someone who reeks, or think I’m some kind of a criminal-”

“You insolent-”

“No! Zip it and listen to me. I don’t want someone’s kindness. I really don’t need anyone to take pity on me. For I sing my body electric or some shit. You know why? ‘Cause I’m a human, and I deserve to be here. I act how I want, when I want, wherever I fucking want. Pay attention to me or leave me alone. Then we’d all have pretty comfortable lives. Now, how’s that for the truth?”

A flash flickered in its stony eyes. “Fascinating, indeed.” Horace kicked the table and without flinching, the gun blasted point blank into Wñill’s head. It toppled to the dirty floor, face flat in its warm crimson bed. The smoke from the gun dissolved into stillness. Horace kicked its hand, confirming death. He was thinking about making a full report and he wondered what Hopperscotch would think of this. He then reached for his cabinet as he really needed a tasteless coffee.

Strange. He couldn’t remember where he was.

Wñill stood over the unlucky tenant. It picked up his head, like a mannequin, and swung it around. Studying his complexion, it drank in the clear details of Horace’s skin. Once completed, it gouged his eyes and chewed them. Juice erupted between its teeth. And its cells proliferated, restoring the wounds. It loved playing with its prey; nothing ever came close to this. When it was time, Wñill stood in front of a mirror, studying its new face as Horace:

“This is fantabulous. We are.”

There was a knock on the door.