6.7  ·  Pure Dissociation

Sherri gave Kasyr a wide, joyless grin as the Kromagg burst into the room, and switched on the lights.

“Ah, you came back,” she cooed, doing her best to hide her anxiety. “You really care about me, don’t you?”

Kasyr didn’t reply, opting instead to stare at her, arms folded over her chest, as two more Kromaggs entered the room. One, a soldier, was carrying a heavy-looking machine by a handle, which he placed on the floor to her right. The other, who wore a lab coat, moved to her left.

“Is that a boombox?” Sherri asked. “Hey, can you play the Spice Girls?”

Kasyr’s head fell to one side. “I don’t know what nonsense you’re spouting. But it doesn’t matter.”

She nodded to the soldier. “Activate it.”

Sherri couldn’t see what was happening, but after hearing a few switches being flipped, the air around her filled with an unpleasant static energy. Unpleasant, but not painful per se.

“Tuning…” said the soldier. The energy around Sherri seemed to shift in a way that she couldn’t describe, but it gave her a tingling sensation in her extremities.

Then, all at once, it felt like a lightning bolt struck her. She cried out as a pain shot through her, and then subsided.

Sherri laughed. “I’ve had worse.”

She wasn’t lying, either. When she’d been merged with Maggie, the continuous pain towards the end had been on a scale far greater than whatever that had been.

“We weren’t trying to cause you pain just now,” Kasyr said. “That was just a bonus.”

She approached Sherri, looking at her intently.

“So that’s what you really look like. Fascinating.”

What did they do to me?

Sherri grimaced, squirming in her shackles.

“Ah, that wiped the smile off your face, didn’t it?” Kasyr laughed; a smug, mean-spirited laugh that bared teeth, but left her eyes without light in them. “Whatever cloaking technology you’re using is close enough to our own perception alteration that we’ve been able to adapt our nullification field to you.”

She stepped back, gesturing to the Kromagg to Sherri’s left.

“You can’t be from this Earth. But, you didn’t come here with Quinn, either. Where is your Transdimensional Facilitator? It must be hidden somewhere.”

“Trans what?” Sherri genuinely didn’t know what she was talking about.

Kasyr sighed. “I believe Quinn calls it his ‘timer.’”

Sherri’s smile returned. “Oh.”

They don’t know I got here without one.

“Oh, you know. It’s hidden somewhere in that other tree. Good luck finding it.”

Maybe this can buy me time.

Kasyr nodded towards the Kromagg in the lab coat, and Sherri’s head felt a strange sensation, as though there was a tongue licking her brain. She screwed up her face.

“Eww, what the hell?”

“Commander, there’s no TF device,” the Kromagg said.

He went into my head? Oh, not cool.

Sherri hadn’t come all this way without preparation, of course. She had learned numerous techniques to resist mental manipulation, but it wasn’t like she’d had a Kromagg around to train with. This was a new experience for her, and one she’d need to adapt to.

From Quinn’s notes, it didn’t seem like they could reach very far into a person’s mind. They could tell lies from truth, and perhaps read surface thoughts. Sherri would just have to keep her mind clear. Ignore the questions. Distract herself.

John would be useful right about now. Where is he?

“Who is ‘John?’” the mind-reading Kromagg asked.

Sherri winced, and forced herself to think about something else.

A movie. What’s a movie you’ve seen lately?

She filled her mind with scenes from Titanic. The Kromagg scowled, grunting in frustration.

“What is this garbage?”

“Garbage?” Sherri asked, with an innocent smile. “It’s only the highest grossing movie of all time.”

As she tried to hold on to the thoughts, the scenes kept slipping away from her mind. She wasn’t sure if it was through the effort of the Kromagg or simply that her memory was failing her. She scrambled to flip through her vast pop culture knowledge for more distractions.

Then, she heard music.

It wasn’t her mind, it was coming from somewhere else. A familiar three high-pitched notes that made Sherri’s heart jump.

Plink-plink-plink. Plink-plink-plink. It was a delicate, magical sound, and Sherri knew what was coming next.

“Come with me, and you’ll be…”

The knot in Sherri’s stomach unravelled as John stepped through the wall, dressed in a purple coat and brown top hat, and a large bow tie. He wore the same candy stripe trousers Al had given him.

“In a world of pure imagination…”

Gay Willy Wonka.

Slung over his shoulder hung a sparkling keytar, with which he played the three notes as he walked towards her.

Sherri grinned at him, and began to giggle. He winked back at her, his eyes gleaming with mischief.

“Take a look and you’ll see, into your imagination…”

The Kromagg in the lab coat faltered.

“What…” he said, struggling to comprehend what was happening.

Kasyr’s eyes, which had been locked on Sherri, drifted towards John for a moment, before she caught herself, and moved her gaze back to Sherri.

“We’ll begin with a spin, travelling in the world of my creation…”

“Something is interfering with my concentration, commander,” said the mind reader. “All I’m picking up is some… song?”

“What we’ll see will defy explanation.”

Kasyr lurched forward, her face stopping inches away from Sherri’s. “What are you doing?”

Sherri avoided her gaze, as John moved to her side and she watched him perform.

Between lines, John leaned in, whispering into her ear.

“You’re gonna be okay. Trust me. Just hold on a little longer.”

Despite everything, that whispered assurance was all it took to ease her mind.

John took a step back, and switched the instrument synth on the keytar from glockenspiel to strings.

“If you want to view paradise,” he sung in his pitch perfect falsetto, “Simply look around and view it…”

Kasyr’s head turned towards John again.

“What’s there?! Why do I keep looking at nothing?”

“Anything you want to, do it…”

The mind reader looked perplexed. “I can’t see anything, but for some reason I’m picturing a human with… a top hat?”

Sherri joined John’s performance, and together they sung the next lines.

“Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it…”

Kasyr grabbed the mind reader by the wrist.

“Get out of here,” she said, roughly pulling him towards the door. She turned to the soldier on the other side of the room. “You too. Leave, the both of you.”

The Kromaggs hurried out of the room, as the enraged woman slammed the door shut. She turned back around, rolling up her sleeves.

“I don’t know how you’re doing this, but let’s see if you can keep it up after I’m through.”

Sherri ignored her, keeping her gaze on John.

‘Hold on a little longer,’ he’d told her. Whatever he’d meant by that, that was exactly what she’d do.

“There is no life I know, to compare with pure imagination,” John sang, with Sherri quietly singing along.

A fist landed square in her stomach, winding her. She gasped for breath.

Ignore it. You’re not here. You’re with John.

John’s face flinched as the woman threw another punch.

Sherri kept her eyes glued to his, pleading silently for him to pretend with her that none of this was happening. He seemed to understand, and continued his song, looking away from the violence that he couldn’t stop.

“Living there, you’ll be free, if you truly wish to be.”

The pain of the beating dulled as Sherri began to dissociate. Each blow tried to pull her mind back to the pain, but the further her mind got away from it, the less difficult it was to resist feeling it.

By the time a fist to her head knocked her out cold, she didn’t feel a thing.