PREVIEW: Welcome to the Deep Estate -Chapter 2

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It’s safe to say I’ve stepped directly into one of Dad’s paranoid delusions. The hallway stretches out longer than the building should allow, and I can’t tell if we’re above ground, below ground, or if the concept of "ground" even applies here.

We pass an interrogation room as a suit walks out holding a steel carrying case, and I catch a glimpse of one of the earlier candidates, naked and rocking back and forth in the fetal position, like he just found out he played Seven Minutes in Heaven with his grandma.

That’s either super promising for my job prospects or my impending doom.

They sit me down in a similar room. Director Combover takes the chair opposite, placing a small matchbox with Scotch tape around the ends on the table. "Who are you?"

"John Doe. And you are?"

Director Combover ignores me. "Why are you here?"

"Look, man, do the gruff-guy routine. I get it—it’s your G-man thing. But first impressions are important. If I don’t get a name, I’m just gonna go with what I’ve been calling you in my head, and once the glue sets on that label, it’s gonna be a bitch to replace it with something proper. There’s gonna be, like, sticker residue, and in this day and age, it’s insensitive to define a person by their physical characteristics, you know?"

He intensifies his glare and repeats himself. "Why are you here, Mr. Doe?"

"I don’t know, Sneery McSnearington. Why am I here? Where even is here?"

Combover smirks at that, and it’s not a good look. "Cute. Why are you here?"

I lie. "Must’ve taken a wrong turn. Was hoping to apply as a temp for Quantum Analytics Whatever-the-Fuck next door."

A cricket inside the matchbox lets out a muffled chirp. Cold, metallic prongs press against my neck, and everything goes white. When my vision clears, I’m staring at the linoleum, feeling every muscle in my body try to tear itself apart. Hands grab me, and I’m back in the chair with the world spinning around.

"Why are you here, John?"

I wipe the drool off my mouth and groan. "I saw the open interview in a newspaper."

The prongs press against my neck again, but Combover holds up a hand. The matchbox stays silent. The prongs retreat. "Explain."

"This weird-ass newspaper came to my door. I saw your message, and it intrigued me."

Combover leans forward. "Describe this ‘weird-ass’ newspaper."

I pause, not wanting to sound crazy, which is when Combover motions to the matchbox.

"This is Jiminy. He’s a cricket and calls out bullshit. For instance, I’m six foot five."

The cricket inside the matchbox chirps.

"I believe I’m a good person."

The matchbox chirps again.

"If I don’t like the answers you give me, I’ll shoot you in the back of the head and dissolve your corpse in a vat of acid."

Dead fucking silence.

"You see how it works?"

I nod.

"Then start talking, Pinocchio. Describe this newspaper."

"It was the KC Sun. Not The Star. The Sun. And everything was off—Bizarro World off."

Combover straightens. "Was it in English?"

"Proper English."

"How are the Monarchs doing?"

"They beat the Brooklyn Dodgers four to one." I pause. He knows what I’m talking about.

"It was an Errant Newspaper," he explains. "They show up from time to time. It’s always today’s news—just from… somewhere else. It’s disturbing how many of them are in German. So, you come across this newspaper, then what?"

"The fifth letter of each missed connection formed a hidden message: ‘Open interview for freethinkers needed to study the odd and eccentric. Today, 3 PM, Corporate Woods, Building 5, Suite 555.’"

His eyes narrow. "How did you know to look for a message?"

"I had a hunch." The cricket chirps, and the prongs press against my neck. I blurt out, "My dad was nuts and used to find messages like that all the time! Something pushed me to do the same—I don’t know what. It was like a hunch, an urge, a vibe! Sometimes I get vibes!"

"Now we’re getting somewhere. This ‘vibe’ is what brought you here?"

I nod. "Walked around the fifth floor five times and found a door that led to an elevator."

Director Combover looks off, drumming his fingers, then exhales. He motions to the goon behind me. The Suit takes his taser and leaves. “There is no open interview, but… I’m sure you’ve gathered that by now."

"That’s okay. My references were just gonna be me doing shitty regional accents."

"The applicants you saw are the best in their field; short of one, who’s quite simply an exceptional specimen. You, from what I can tell, never even graduated high school."

I cringe. "I would have, but dear old Dad kept us moving around a lot. I spent most of middle school alone in a remote cabin. I’m a pretty solid autodidact, though."

He holds up a hand. "It doesn’t matter. It seems the gods are working in your favor."

I hesitate. "Is that a figure of speech, or are you talking about actual—"

"Figure of speech," Combover says, then adds, "Probably."

A Suit enters and hands Combover the metal carrying case that came out of the other interrogation room. The Director turns back to me. "What we do here is study and contain The Weird. Weird with a capital W."

"Like Errant Newspapers or a lie-detector cricket?" I say, pointing to the matchbox.

Combover shakes his head. "There is no cricket, or maybe there is. In thirty years, nobody’s opened the matchbox to find out. All we know is that it’s a Schrödinger’s Box that chirps at bullshit as long as no one opens it. Anomalous objects often appear mundane, but they’re anything but. They can range from a lucky penny that always lands on heads to 500,000 square miles of ocean that tends to swallow up ships."

I shift uneasily. The mention of a lucky penny was too on the nose. He was listening to my conversation with Murder Girl. Worse, I don’t know why he’s telling me this. It feels like a confession he knows I’m going to take to the grave… or acid vat.

Combover places the metal case on the table, enters a code, then turns it around to face me. "This is the first test." He slowly removes his hand and stares me down. "In here is a horror beyond human comprehension. To stare into it is to stare into the mouth of madness and glimpse pure, unadulterated Hell—"

I casually crack open the case, and Combover abruptly pulls back.

"What?" I glance at him. "It’s a spooky thing. I get it. I want to see."

Inside the case is a blue Fisher-Price View-Master. I pick up the kids’ toy, feeling its weight. There’s a speck of blood on it. That should concern me, but it doesn’t. I pull out the picture disk, see Winnie the Pooh, shrug, and pop the disk back in. I look into the View-Master. In the first slide, Pooh Bear is fisting a vat of honey, and Rabbit is standing there, hands on his hips, probably bitching at Winnie for having a good time.

Click. Now Winnie is walking with Eeyore, holding a hammer and… I squint. Okay, wow. Rabbit’s in the background, crucified to a tree, entrails hanging out of his gutted stomach.

I mutter, "Winnie don’t fuck around."

Click. And now Pooh is, uh, making love to Eeyore’s decapitated head—and not in the mouth. I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. "If you think this is a horror beyond human comprehension, wait until I show you the internet."

Combover watches me, still dead serious. "It’s on the next slide. I should warn you: the applicant you saw naked in the fetal position lasted only five seconds. The applicant before him stabbed himself in the eyes with a ballpoint pen after ten."

"Uh-huh," I say, and pull the little lever. Click.

I’m floating tits-to-toes naked inside a swirling vortex of bone, menstrual blood, entrails, and gore. Thousands of eyes open, each shaded with a synesthete’s palette the human retina was never meant to process. A goat’s iris colored by the taste of rotting human flesh. Octopus eyes swirling with the hues of colon cancer. The Eye of Sauron, if Sauron were the color of the vet clinic that put your family dog down, seen from the fourth dimension. It’s all real mind-raping stuff. They pierce my soul, judging me as the mouths open—oh "Bob," so many mouths. Mouths in places mouths have no business being. Distinctly vaginal mouths, too—like if the labia had teeth, and the clit and cervix had their own sets of chompers. They all curl open in unison and speak in tongues no mortal should hear. The whole space writhes, twists, and pulsates to the words, its geometry making Euclidean space its bitch and tying my brain into a knot as I try to comprehend how something can be simultaneously inside-out and Tuesday.

I pull back from the View-Master and rub my eyes. "Whoa. That’s cool."

Director Combover stares at me, dumbfounded. "You think it’s… cool?"

"And kinda trippy," I add, "It’s a bit like being inside the cover art of a Tool album if it were made out of a slaughterhouse waste bin. What’s the record for looking into this thing?"

"What?" Director Combover’s lips flap. "There is no record. We don’t keep records. Nobody’s lasted longer than thirty seconds and survived."

"Weird. I feel fine." I turn back for another look. "Oh, it sprouted butthole knives."

Combover turns to the two-way mirror. "Are you recording?"

A voice comes over the PA. "Yes, sir."

"How are you doing this?"

I shrug from inside the horror void. "I don’t know." The matchbox chirps, and I roll my eyes. "Okay, fine. Dad knew this old hippie who used to go on about being at Woodstock. When I was fourteen, I was rooting through his stuff and came across a sheet of blotter acid. It turned out it wasn’t just any acid but that infamous Brown Acid—and probably one of those weird things you’re talking about—just looking at the grid of Snoopy stamps would send you on a nightmare trip. Me and my friend called them 'spooky trips' and we used to do them all the time and in the worst places we could find: abandoned asylums, underground tunnels, an old folks’ home."

Click. I change the slide, hoping to see what it considers "next level," but it’s just more of the same. "Now that was scary. But this? I don’t see what the big deal is. I get it’s a ‘horror beyond human comprehension,’ but how can I fear it if I don’t know what I’m looking at? Has anyone ever translated what the freaky mouths are saying?"

"We… we tried, but the captured audio recording drove the linguist mad."

"Oh, because I’m pretty sure it’s that one kid’s song—‘Oh, McDonald’s is my kind of place. Hamburgers in my face. Dill pickles between my toes. French fries up my nose—’"

Director Combover grabs the View-Master and puts it back in the case. "I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Mr. Doe, but you’ve proved it."

I motion to the View-Master. "If this place deals with this kind of stuff, I want in. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel it in my core. I was made for this."

He looks off and curses as whatever standards this place usually has are thrown out the window. "I’ll give you a chance. One chance to show you’re B.O.B. material—"

"Yes!" I hoot. "Sign me up."

Director Combover holds up a finger. "Hold on. If you join our ranks, you will no longer exist. Every record of you will be wiped off the face of this earth. If you fail, you’ll end up in a ditch with no memory of the past year."

"Cool by me. It wasn’t that great of a year to begin with. How’s the pay and benefits?"

"Extensive and more than adequate. Anything else?"

"Yes. What is the B.O.B., and what’s the job?"

Director Combover blinks several times, then mutters, "Jesus Christ."

* * *

Murder Girl’s actual name is Edith Sinner. Yes, that’s actually her last name. No, her mother wasn’t a porn star, though she did once pose for a series of erotic daguerreotypes. It’s those little details that make her Director Combover’s “exceptional specimen.”

"Age?" the interviewer asks. He’s been trying not to wither under her unblinking stare. The human eye needs to blink approximately 900 times an hour. She hasn’t blinked once since sitting down.

"I stopped aging at twenty-two," she says.

The interviewer looks down at the form and isn’t surprised to find the next line is specifically for her. "And how long have you been twenty-two?"

Edie glances at the two-way mirror and sees only one person in the room. She runs her tongue over her canines. It’s an old habit that reminds her exactly how long her teeth are. She turns back to the interviewer. "One hundred years."

"Occupation?"

She takes a breath—not because she needs to, but because she’s more than a little annoyed. "I’m a killer. I’ve fought in every major conflict since World War II. I’ve had the honor of killing not just the fake Hitler in the bunker in ’45, but the real Hitler in Rio in ’51. After a tour in 'Nam, I went stateside and freelanced in the South. The FBI considers it domestic terrorism, but I did my part for the civil rights movement—particularly the violent parts. I didn’t cross the bridge at Selma, but I made sure Montgomery’s Klan didn’t bomb it when I visited one of their little racist ice cream socials."

The interviewer checks a file. "That’s when you killed thirteen Klan members and crucified their Grand Dragon to a burning cross, correct?"

"I nailed him to the cross, then set the cross on fire. They squirm too much if you do it the other way around. After that, I applied my expertise to the needs of the Pentagon, then had a bit of a falling out with MKUltra."

"Is that the event that left a hundred and thirteen dead in San Francisco?"

"Mhm." She pauses, then feels the need to add, "I was also a night DJ in the late-70s to mid-80s. I played mostly smooth jazz."

The interviewer swallows and nods, moving on to the next question on the form. "What guarantee can you give us that your… condition will remain under your control?"

"It’s always been under my control." Edie smiles in a way that’s the opposite of disarming. It’s alarming. Very alarming. "Just don’t give me a reason."

The interviewer moves on to the next question, which, again, is somehow already listed on the form: "Please list those reasons."

"Office birthday parties. Is that actually on the questionnaire?"

"Naturally," the interviewer says and gives a shaky laugh. And that’s one of the weird things about the Bureau: they use the same document in every single department because the K-form is the only document they need. The K is short for "Kafka" because it’s preternaturally Kafkaesque in its thoroughness. No matter the subject, a K-form will have all the right questions to ask, along with a maddening number of questions that either don’t need to be asked or do need to be asked, you just don’t yet know why. All of it is seemingly designed to make you go insane checking every single box and filling out every subsection. It’s what the receptionist handed me to keep me busy while they tried to figure out who the hell just bumbled into their secret lair.

The interviewer turns the page and frowns. For the first time he’s ever seen, the K-form has an end, and it’s an abrupt one. All that’s left is a final question: "Were those gunshots?"

Edie raises an eyebrow. "Come again?"

* * *

Special Agent John Smith sits in a nearby interrogation room, fidgeting in place, realizing decades of hard work blending in are falling apart before his eyes. It stings on a very personal level because blending in is kind of his culture’s whole thing.

"How many siblings emerged from your… what is that?" His interviewer leans closer to the K-form and squints. "Crees? Creshay?"

He shows Agent Smith, who shifts his hulking frame to take a look. He fidgets a little more and says, "Crèche. It’s like a nursery. That’s a weird choice of word."

The interviewer chuckles. "Well, this is a weird form."

"I’m the oldest of three," Smith lies. He glances down at the matchbox, imperceptibly relaxing when it doesn’t call him out. It should, but from the agent’s perspective, he was the first to exit his crèche, which makes him the eldest in his people’s eyes, and of the few who made it out of the infant battle royale, he is one of the three.

The interviewer moves on. "Other than Parseltongue, what languages can you speak?"

"English, Spanish, Farsi, and Russian," Agent Smith says, hoping the answer is impressive enough to gloss over that very specific question.

"The Bureau of the Bizarre is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and the following answer is voluntary and will not impact your application: What is your race?"

"White, not Hispanic," Agent Smith says.

The interviewer shifts. "Sorry, there’s only three options: ‘Human (Non-Lizard),’ ‘Lizard,’ and ‘Decline to answer.’"

"I’m human."

The matchbox chirps. Both Agent Smith and the interviewer stare at it.

Then it happens—fast. The interviewer stands, reaching for his holster. Agent Smith lunges forward, grabs him by the tie, and pulls down, hard. Bam. The guy's face dents the metal table, leaving most of his front teeth behind. Before he can even moan, Agent Smith has his gun. He chambers a round and fires point blank into the man’s head.

He calmly straightens and turns to the two-way mirror. The three Lab Coats on the other side don’t move an inch, coming to the conclusion that the scary man can't see them, and they’ll be fine as long as they don’t make a sound.

Except a two-way mirror is only a two-way mirror if one side is darker than the other, and Agent Smith casually flicks the light switch, turning off the lights.

* * *

Muffled pops come from the hallway. Murder Girl’s interviewer stands, pulls his jacket aside, and reaches for a gun that isn’t there. He looks down at the empty holster, curses, and starts patting himself down with the growing panic of someone who just realized they somehow left the pin to a live grenade in their other pants—actually, this is worse, because at least then he’d have a grenade to throw into the gunfight.

Edie does the interviewer a solid and completes the form, answering the last question, "Yes, those were gunshots."

"Shit… Check your pockets," the interviewer says, finding only lint and a sandwich card with enough punches for a free sub. Something he now realizes he’ll probably never collect.

More gunshots. Closer now, but Edie isn’t worried. "Why? Did you lose your gun?"

"Yes!" the interviewer shouts, frantically looking under the table, "So check your pockets, now!"

Edie gives her pockets a pat, pulls out a round, and squints at it. "How'd this get in there?"

The interviewer goes slack as his last words come to him, catching in his throat. "It’s right where it’s supposed to be." Then the door kicks in, and his brains splatter against the wall.

Edie sighs and holds up a finger, as if she’s stopping a waiter from clearing her plate. "Wait. Exit wounds make such a mess, and I’d like to keep my face."

She turns, looks the shooter over, committing him to memory. "Okay, go ahead."

Her head snaps back and to the side, leaving a pencil-sized hole just under her left eye as the bullet takes a chunk the size of a baseball out of the back of her head.

* * *

So I’m cowering underneath the interrogation table. It’s not very heroic, but what else am I supposed to do in this situation? Director Combover peeks out the door and confirms that his goons are dead and the goon-killer is heading in our direction. He presses against the wall and undoes his belt.

I watch him, confused. "Hey, man. I get that everyone reacts differently during a crisis, but is now the best time for you to be whipping it out?"

The director pulls his belt out of his pants, glaring at me as the gunshots grow closer. "It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a weapon."

"You don’t have a gun?!"

"No, I’m the guy who tells the people with guns what to do."

I point out the obvious. "Those guys usually also have guns. Patton had guns."

Director Combover hisses, "Will you shut up!"

"Okay, okay. But just tell me one thing before we die: What the hell is your name?"

He stares at me, dumbfounded as more shots ring out, then says, "It’s Harold Lipp."

I blink. "Really? Your name is Harry Lipp?"

He rolls his eyes. "It was my father’s name, and his father’s name before him."

"Did they also have—"

"No, they did not."

I snort, try not to snort, and end up snorting even louder. "Okay, then. Well, you’ve got my respect, Harry. If Cash has taught me anything, it’s to never mess with a boy named Sue."

We go stiff as the footsteps stop in front of the door. Lipp winds the belt back.

Bam! The door bursts open. Agent Smith storms in. Lipp swings his belt as though the active shooter knocked over Daddy’s happy juice, and surprisingly, it works. Smith flinches as he fires, missing Lipp entirely. The shooter stumbles forward, holding his face. He fires and misses again, punching a hole in the floor, almost hitting me.

Seeing that I’m already in a prime cowering position, I decide to do just that, but find myself staring down at a revolver between my knees with "CKV .45" etched into the barrel.

Did the Bad Guy with a Gun drop his gun? Does that now make me the Good Guy with a Gun? Let’s find out.

I grab the revolver and stand. No pithy one-liner comes to me, so I just aim and shout, "Hey, cut that shit out!"

Agent Smith flings Harry aside and faces me. He blinks with his reptilian nictitating membranes… which is a thing he totally has.

I freeze, dumbfounded. "Holy shit, you’re a—"

Smith hisses and raises the Glock that he definitely did not drop and is definitely still in his hands. I dive and hit the ground as he unloads in my direction, and the revolver accidentally kicks in my hand. The round goes wild—and when I say it goes wild, I mean it brings all that Big Dick Magic Bullet Energy that made a mess of a 1961 Lincoln Continental. The round hits the side wall, then ricochets off the ceiling, the table, then the two-way mirror, making that sound you only hear in old westerns: Pa-chow-schwing!

Agent Smith drops the gun and clutches his stomach, blood seeping into his shirt; first red, then green. He stumbles back into the hallway, where he’s hit by a blur. After that, there’s a whole lot of off-screen screaming as he’s torn apart by what sounds like panther badgers.

Director Lipp stumbles to his feet and turns to me, panting, his comb-over doing everything but covering up his bald spot. "Where the hell did you get that gun?"

I quickly put it down and step back. "I don’t know. I thought the guy dropped it when you went all Tiger Mom on him."

Combover grabs the revolver and checks the side, muttering, "It’s a Chekhov gun—of course it is… Fuck me, if that ain’t a sign."

"What’s a Chekhov gun?"

"It’s a meta-object. The gun has a tendency to show up right when you need it." He hands it back and walks out of the room, pointing in the direction of the screaming. "Agent Doe, deal with Edith Sinner while I get a handle on our casualties."

I sputter. "Wait. Did you just call me ‘agent’? Did I get the job? Am I an agent?!"

"In training. Now get Sinner under control and try not to get torn apart in the process."

I go into the hallway and find Murder Girl being very murdery. I cautiously walk closer, and the details just get worse… and weirder. There’s more green blood than red. With a snarl and a sickening peeling sound—like duct tape made out of raw bacon—Murder Girl rips off Agent Smith’s face and tosses it aside. It hits the wall and sticks there like cooked spaghetti.

"Hey, uh, yeah, Sinner. I think you got him. You can stand down—" Murder Girl’s gaping head wound catches my attention. "Wow. You definitely need a Band-Aid for that."

"Find it…" Edie says with a full mouth. "Need… fill… hole head. Hole head."

"Yup. There’s definitely a hole in your head."

Edie turns and snarls, some of her brain sloshing out. "NO, I NEED A WHOLE HEAD!"

"Okay! Okay! Jesus, did the polite part of your brain flop out?"

I follow the blood and chunks to where they interviewed Murder Girl… and it’s a bloodbath. Holy hell. I slip and catch myself on the table, trying my damnedest not to hurl. There’s a tangle of hair beneath a chair. It’s definitely Edie’s hair… still attached to Edie’s head. Gross. I pick it up and groan. I didn’t expect it to still be warm, but it is. A chunk of her skull is attached, but not the full amount. I root around the gore on the floor until I manage to find the missing skull fragments… as well as a sandwich card with all the holes punched in it. Nice.

I jog back to Edie, who’s still macking on her victim. "Okay, lady, Hometown Buffet is officially closed." Murder Girl straightens and pulls her hair aside to give me access. I stare at the wound in a state of… shock? Awe? Horror? I don’t know. "How the hell are you still alive?"

She turns and glances at me, panting. "Fix."

"Oh, you want me to—Are you sure? This might necessitate a trip to Urgent Care."

"Just fix!" Edie hisses, then takes a breath and adds, "Please."

I kneel behind her. "Should I get some glue?"

She shakes her head, and more chunks of blood and brain slosh out.

"Nope, definitely don’t do that." I pick one of the smaller skull fragments, carefully place it where I think it should go, and it just fuses back into place. I place the other pieces around the hole, then plug it up with the larger chunk and squish her scalp back into place. "Okay. Wow. So you’re straight-up Wolverine. That’s cool."

Murder Girl sighs and falls against the wall. "Thank you…"

"No problem. Should I get you some Neosporin or—"

Edie holds up a finger, and I go quiet. "Stop… My brain rebrain… Caesar time."

"Caesar time?" I repeat. Then Edie goes rigid as a board and starts convulsing as a whole lot of her gray matter begins to regrow all at once. It clicks. "Oh, it’s ‘seizure time.’ Gotcha."

I turn my attention to the mess that is now the no-longer-active shooter. It’s only then that I notice the scales underneath the flesh—and the bloody face hiding underneath the human face Edie ripped off.