Fractured Reality

It was his fear, mixed with the strongest painkillers he'd ever taken, that gave him the strength to leap over the railing without hesitation and crash to the ground two meters below without feeling a thing. His pants tore at the knees, blood staining the fabric red. He dove into the crowd, closely pursued by the park security. People screamed behind him as they were shoved aside. A heavyset father, playing the good Samaritan, grabbed Billy by the arm, gripping his jacket. "You scumbag," the man growled, disgust twisting his face as he stared into Billy’s unusual features.

Billy’s eyes widened in disbelief: it was the man who had moved into his and Vivian's apartment. Now, here he was again, with his whole family, baby in tow, crossing paths at the amusement park. Fueled by sheer panic, Billy found the strength to wrench himself free.

The humid air cast a rainbow-like glow over the park. The wet ground reflected the vivid colors of the surrounding stalls and attractions. Everything flashed and blinked, horns blared, vendors shouted, people screamed in delight. It was chaos, a sensory overload. When Billy finally broke free of the crowd, he found himself in front of a haunted house.

The building looked like an old mansion, with a flying saucer crashed into the upper half. The UFO still blinked, with white smoke pouring into the sky. Flashing LEDs framed the entrance sign, which read in big letters: THE LAB OF MAD PROFESSOR SAJEM DANTHROS.

Billy dashed up the three steps onto a wooden platform, where a large mirror reflected the actors on stage. He grabbed the lab coat off a deranged-looking professor mannequin (probably Prof. Sajem Danthros) and threw it on. The mannequin was bolted to the floor, continuing its mechanical experiment on a patient strapped to a chair, screaming in pain toward the rain-soaked sky. The sound came from a speaker at its feet. Billy froze behind the scene, striking a pose as if drawing an imaginary syringe. A few kids gathered around, marveling at the creepy display.

"Mommy, look how scary and real that puppet is," one boy said, tugging on the giant stuffed animal his mother carried under her arm. Billy had to resist the urge to startle the kids. At that moment, a group of five armed guards walked past. Past the kids, past the parents, past Billy.

His heart pounded in his chest.

He stood perfectly still.

They didn’t see me.

Dear God. Is that a good thing or a really bad sign?

He wanted to look in the mirror behind him, but he was terrified of what he might see. Curiosity battled fear. Like a newborn vampire afraid to confront the truth of what he had become, Billy dreaded the sight of what he had turned into.

He relaxed slightly, ready to jump off the platform once he was sure the coast was clear and the guards were gone. But the chaotic scene of flashing lights and moving bodies was so confusing that he missed Conrad Blake, just as Blake nearly missed him.

Billy flinched at the worst possible moment.

"Stop right there!" Blake bellowed, pulling his pistol from its holster.

Billy spun around and darted past the creepy mannequins, shoving his way through the line of waiting customers. He pulled out his payment card, swiping it at the ride’s payment terminal.

Please, let there be enough money left!

The machine clicked, a green light flashed, and Billy practically threw himself through the turnstile. He wasn’t just running from Blake (who always seemed to appear wherever he was) but also from the furious amusement park visitors loudly cursing him out. He cut in front of a mother and her child and jumped into the first open car. "Sorry," he muttered, but the kid was already crying as the haunted house ride jolted into motion...

...And what Billy was about to experience inside was nothing short of pure horror.

_____

The front of the haunted house car pushed open a set of doors, and Billy was immediately swallowed by pitch-black darkness. Then, strobe lights from every possible angle flashed, pushing his brain to the edge of an epileptic fit. The wails of tortured test subjects, kept like lab rats by Professor Sajem Danthros, screamed through nearby speakers. Billy glanced over his shoulder just as a blood-soaked, grotesque figure shot out of a dark corner, its shriek nearly bursting his eardrums.

The animatronic dolls were screaming for help.

He would have liked to do the same: Conrad Blake was sitting in the car behind him. Even through the cacophony of tortured souls, the unbearable whirring of bone saws, and the wet sounds of guts spilling onto surgical tables, Blake’s deep voice cut through with police orders. The haunted house car rolled outside again, where rain continued to pour over Luna Park, the visitors below just harmless little dots from up here. Harmless—except for the armed guards gathering in droves at the exit, waiting for Billy.

As the ride burst through another set of doors, Billy jumped out, unsure where he was or what to expect. The strobe lights flickered from massive operating room lamps, casting an eerie glow. He found himself wandering through a maze of glass pillars, resembling futuristic stasis tanks. Inside floated grotesque alien abominations and deformed human figures, suspended in some kind of preservative fluid. Horrors only the most twisted imagination could conjure. Billy didn’t even notice the goosebumps crawling up his arms as he stared at the misshapen creatures.

They look... so real.

Gaunt, hairless, and sickly thin, horribly disfigured by tumors and mutations. The eerie scene didn’t just send chills through him; it triggered a strange déjà vu. He couldn’t explain it, but he was sure he’d seen this before... somewhere.

The thrill of it all disgusted him, he had always avoided these kinds of attractions. So why was he suddenly consumed by such raw panic?

On a surgical table, Prof. Sajem Danthros was operating on a poor soul, the victim’s endless screams looping in the background while thin columns of smoke rose from the floor. Billy passed through a blue-tinted hologram that showed a series of images documenting the professor’s experiments to create a Frankenstein monster—a Modern Prometheus, a hybrid, part human and part alien. The professor was trying to defy mortality by creating a being that could live forever.

I need to get out of here.

Just then, an ear-splitting crack erupted behind him. He flinched and ducked instinctively. Glass shards rained down on the back of his neck as real screams echoed through the narrow room. This time, they weren’t pre-recorded sound effects. They were the terrified cries of the people in the car behind Conrad Blake. Smoke curled from the barrel of Blake’s gun.

The crazed corporate cop had fired multiple shots, shattering one of the glass cylinders. The alien embryo inside slid out with a rush of fluid and splattered onto the floor. Another bullet whizzed right past Billy’s ear.

They don’t want to arrest me. They want to kill me!

Blake vaulted out of the car and marched toward him, his steps steady and unrelenting.

"Look, Daddy! The police are trying to catch the alien before it escapes!" A group of kids in the back of the car stared, wide-eyed in amazement. Suddenly, the cheap haunted house attraction had turned into a first-rate spectacle, complete with live actors. Only these weren’t actors.

This was deadly real.

As Blake saw Billy trying to jump into an empty car to escape the deranged lab, he fired again.

Bang!

The bullet ricocheted off the metal handrail that Billy had just been holding, the deflected shot thudding into the ceiling above.

"Wow!" the kids cheered.

Billy, making a sharp turn, ran in a crouch toward the emergency exit as glass cylinders shattered around him, genetic experiments splattering onto the floor. He stepped over the deformed body of a female doll, sparing it only a brief, horrified glance as he hurried. It was a truly gruesome sight.

Conrad Blake had emptied his clip and didn’t even bother to reload. He tossed the gun carelessly to the ground and marched toward Billy, who was now crouching just five meters away, hiding behind the professor’s operating table. Only that table stood between them.

"This is it," the kid told his dad. "The cop’s gonna get the ugly alien any second now."

Billy’s entire body trembled. His heart pounded from sheer terror. It was too late—Blake darted around the table with lightning speed, grabbed Billy, and spun him around, sending the mad professor's display crashing to the floor. Strobe lights flickered, and Sajem Danthros’s maniacal laughter boomed from the speakers as Billy fought desperately for his life against the cop. Their shoes skidded on the slick, wet floor, both of them scrambling for balance.

Like any street fight, the first to fall wouldn’t get back up.

Blake moved fast, ducking low, wrapping his arms around Billy’s legs, and slamming him to the ground with a powerful shove.

Cheers erupted from the ride behind them.

"Bravo!" the kid shouted, completely absorbed in the "show" unfolding before him. Blake’s hands clamped around Billy’s thin neck, squeezing tighter, like a relentless hydraulic press. It didn’t feel like Blake was trying to strangle him, it felt more like he was crushing his throat.

"Where is the data?" Blake growled.

Blood rushed to Billy’s head, his airways completely cut off. Even if he knew where the data was, there was no way he could answer. His windpipe might’ve already been crushed.

Billy couldn’t scream.

He couldn’t even take a breath.

His legs kicked helplessly in the air as his last ounce of clarity surged through him.

He stretched out his right arm, fingers fumbling across the slick floor.

Everything was going dark.

Then, his hand found the scalpel, the very one Professor Sajem Danthros had been using to perform his twisted experiments.

Without a second thought, Billy didn’t question why Blake had switched from arrest to murder.

Instead, he drove the blade into Blake’s neck.

Blake’s eyes rolled back.

He immediately let go, and Billy gasped, gulping down air as he watched Blake stumble backward, his heels splashing through a puddle.

Blake tripped over the deformed woman’s body, slipping on the pool of preservative fluid. His feet flew out from under him, and his head smacked against the tracks.

At that exact moment, another haunted house car rolled over his neck.

A gruesome crack echoed through the room as the wheels severed his head from his body.

While the head tumbled somewhere beneath the rails, his body lay sprawled out, limbs twitching uncontrollably like a machine short-circuiting.

My gosh, why the hell arethey still moving?!

One kid shouted, "Look! The cop’s really a robot!"

Another chimed in, "A robot? How did they make it look so real?"

Thick, black, syrupy fluid oozed from his neck. The cables connecting his head to his body had been messily severed, and sparks flew where the copper ends touched, skittering across the floor before they fizzled out. The air was filled with the stench of burnt wires, scorched rubber, and machine oil.

Billy didn’t dare get any closer.

He breathed heavily through his mouth, as if he’d just run a marathon.

The fight had drained every ounce of stamina he had left.

And the truth... well, that had cost him the last shred of his sanity.

"This can’t," he gasped, pausing to catch his breath, "be real."

A girl in the front of the last car had her hands clamped over her eyes, while her brother was wide-eyed with amazement. "Wow, did you see that, Dad?" he asked.

"Yeah, pretty damn good," his dad agreed, grabbing a barbecued chicken wing from the striped bucket wedged between his knees, taking a big bite. "Really damn good," he added as their cart rounded the next bend, disappearing from view.

Conrad Blake was an android.

But as far as Billy knew, androids didn’t even exist.

It was the year 2050, not some distant future.

That kind of technology wasn’t supposed to be possible yet.

Just like artificial intelligence wasn’t supposed to exist either, he thought, his mind flashing back to the fortune-telling machine. What was Thandros Corporation hiding from the world?

Suddenly, a voice boomed from a nearby room, ordering Billy to surrender to the police and not resist arrest. The voice came through a megaphone. The other guards and officers were already inside the haunted house, searching for him.

He stumbled toward the next illuminated exit sign, moving like a zombie. One who, lacking any functioning brain cells, couldn’t make sense of the world around him. All the while, a single question nagged at him: would he have preferred red blood or black motor oil?

He was relieved that he hadn’t killed a human being, but the fact that Blake was an android had shattered his entire understanding of reality.

Everything he thought he knew was now in ruins, like a shattered mirror, and every time he tried to piece it all back together, those jagged edges cut him.

What could possibly happen next that would surprise him?, he wondered.

And instantly regretted asking the question.