Eleven

More Fun with Alex

     There was a bird picking at him. A black bird.
     "Get off me," Alex mumbled. "Leave my gut where it is."
     The bird picked its head up. "Caw!" it laughed.
     Alex shunted off the chain that bound his hands to the boulder and swiped at the bird, but it disappeared when he did, as did the boulder and all of Hades. He was on his couch. Grimalkin perched above him, looking down with a typically quizzical feline expression. "Prroww?" he said.
     "Dreaming," Alex said. "Just dreaming."
     Alex shook his head to clear out the ghosts and mists of leftover sleep. He was asleep in his living room, where in fact he usually slept, his computer screen glowing before him as the Simpsons romped across his screensaver, a low mutter of voices speaking out from his similarly glowing TV set, on which a plastic-smiled woman was demonstrating some ridiculous-looking kitchen gadget.
     "Weird dream," he said to the cat, "Stranger than usual. A bird, pecking at my gut, not a vulture but a raven. Something to do with Poe? No, that doesn't ring true."
     The cat shook his head, obviously agreeing.
     Alex reached up and scratched Grimalkin on the chin. "All I can sense is that it was important, something just now coming into play. Something unforeseen and potentially troublesome. Hmm."
     Alex stood and stretched, glancing as he did at the Keptar apparatus in the corner. Its wheels were still - they only moved when he performed the Ritual of Zendakk, when they were aligning energies at his command. Once the energies were aligned, they took on their own momentum and no longer needed the Keptar Device to instigate them. Nonetheless, the apparatus was alive with energy, an invisible life force that Alex could see, if only barely, as a rippling field of charged atmosphere around it.
     "Keptar, Keptar, have you ensnared a strange fly in your whirlwind web?" He looked at the apparatus, stared at it really, then blinked and turned his attention elsewhere.
     "Or is this something totally unrelated, some strange message from my subconscious? What do you think, huh?"
     The cat seemed quite bored with the entire question and hopped off the couch, heading into the kitchen with hopes that Alexander would follow, ready to prepare a snack.
     "You think of your stomach constantly, Grimalkin. Or did my dream's juxtaposition of 'bird' and 'gut' trigger some instinctive hunger reaction? Either way, if you think I'm going to follow you..."
     Grimalkin's commentary was brief and to the point. "Rrraaooww!"
     "Oh, so be it. Dawn seems imminent, anyway. There are things I can do as the sun arises..."
     Alex stepped into the kitchen and opened a cupboard, thinking yet again how odd it was that such trivial activities continued to be so necessary even now, as he stood on the crest of a new era.
     He withdrew a small can that bore the image of a smiling feline (he could not swear to ever having seen Grimalkin "smile", though the cat was somewhat expert at looking amused) and poked a hole in the top with his can opener, the old-fashioned manual turn-key variety. He turned the aforementioned key a half-dozen times, and a meaty scent burst forth, to Grimalkin's obvious delight.
     With a spoon he scooped a glob of the jelly-like substance and plopped it onto a small plate, which he placed onto the counter. Grimalkin sniffed it suspiciously, then began to eat. Alexander Horowitz at his familiar and felt an odd sense of calm.
     And then the room began to spin.
     He was halfway to the floor before he recognized the symptoms of a "psychic attack". He had been prone to them since he was a child; his well-meaning parents had brought him to a series of inept physicians who subjected him to an incessant barrage of tests and drugs and more tests. All of which were of course ineffective; these attacks (and the other phenomena which often surrounded him) were something that he would eventually learn to conceal from others around him. A miracle cure!
     He was fortunate this ability came to him before his parents had sought the aid of an exorcist. Or a surgeon.
     An attack as strong as this one would have floored him in any event. At least he was in the privacy of his own home. "How fortunate!" He thought, as he hit the floor, twitching.
     The attack lasted only a few moments. Not the worst he'd ever suffered, but hardly a jaunt in the Bentley.
     Back up. What did that mean?
     He propped his head up with his elbow, rubbing his temple with a still-shaky hand. An English colloquialism. Hmm.
     "Who do we know that's English, Grimmy?" he asked the cat.
     Grimalkin shrugged with his eyes, as only cats can.
     Alex sat up, shaking his head to clear it. Like a psychedelic trip, there were often hidden messages contained in the details of a psychic seizure. What had he seen as the room spun, as he fell? He remembered pressure, closing in on him like amorphous arms wrapping him in a bear-hug. An electrical sensation in his mouth. An odd, sterile smell, an top of a much fouler scent. And, yes, he had seen something, something that was at the same time present and not present in the room with him.
     A circle of figures. Surrounding him. Shadows. White shadows.
     If he were a religious man he'd say they were angels.
     But he was not a religious man, not in that way at least; hence, he instantly saw them for what they were.
     Doctors.
     After all, he'd seen enough of those, hadn't he? He could even picture the expression on their faces, even though these particular doctors were wearing white masks. It was the expression he thought of as "Well, now, let's have a look, shall we?" The inquisitor's stern scrutiny, the detective's skeptical scowl. They were doctors, observing something.
     "Mmmrrroowwell," Grimalkin said.
     Alex pictured a Roswell alien laid out on a dissection table and laughed. "Funny, Grimmy. You know that's not what I saw. Well, probably not."
     But the idea was the same. It was a dissection, of sorts. But he didn't think the patient ever got cut, and he most certainly was alive.
     How else would Alex Horowitz have been able to see out of his eyes?