Sheila

The spy game.

Sheila

No, I won’t!

I won’t divulge a thing.

Drugged and waterboarded, deprived of light and laughter, I’ll face the Great Hereafter.

I’d rather croak than sing.

Again that soft crack widens…the door and jamb divide…the sounds of fencing voices…a figure slips inside. Beatings or injections…electrodes…come what will, the code will never pass my lips.

I’d rather die than spill.

A woman shows, dressed all in black…breathes my number, names some names, peels an eyelid back. She knows the mission’s details; each player, every mole…it’s almost like she’s scanned me, like she’s read my flagging soul. Angel or demon, Our side or Theirs…right then she’s Mercy, sweet Mercy--she’s all that cures and cares.

She claims she’s from Extraction. She thought she’d find me dead. She frees the straps and checks my pulse. She gently lifts my head.

She says her name is Sheila.

“Pleased--” I wheeze, “but…what are you? A figment, a whim…an implant, a sign…a drug-induced seductress…”

Her eyes burn into mine.

“Whatever,” I breathe, “you’re the loveliest illusion these bleeding eyes have seen.”

“Hush up,” she says. A pistol parts my lips. She checks the used syringes. A penlight sears my eye. “They’ve shot you full of crap, man, so cut the tough-guy quips. I’ll make it short.” That barrel rolls and reams. “All I want’s an answer; a simple, straight reply:

“Are…You…Compromised? We’ve got to know! Did you leak the code? Focus! Yes or no?”

I lose my lunch.

“Get up!” she snarls, and lifts me by my dreams.

The woman prods me left and right, across the room and out the door. What happens next is all a whirl: she leaps and lobs a small grenade, shoves me retching to the floor. Half the building falls in heaps, half is blown aside. Stumbling through the smoke and dust, we kick our way outside. I’m in awe, in tears, in shock and crippling pain.

Sheila has to drag me to a step van in the rain.

Fading, falling, barfing out my brains, puking from that lethal stuff they pumped into my veins. Sheila hauls me nape and heel, boots my logy butt inside, hops up front, regains the wheel, straps in for the ride.

“The code…” I heave. My eyes are glazed, my toes and fingers cold.

“Wake up!” she barks. “And cool it with the code! Don’t ever render ciphers! Hear? ‘For Base’s Ears Alone’!”

Sheila turns the engine over, slams her into gear.

I’ve never seen a woman drive so fast or brake so hard. Sheila knows which ways to take, which ways to disregard. I burrow under packages, a hacking, heaving ball. It’s bumps and curbs and potholes; all tangled up I sprawl, a mass of purple bruises, battered wall to wall.

The front end swerves, a tire goes, the grille takes out a guard. My field of vision narrows, barrage by black barrage, as Sheila rams our hearse into an underground garage.

She eyeballs taken spaces, finds an unlit place to park.

This is it…I’m going…gone…too many freaking sessions on…that stretcher in the dark.

Sheila scurries to the rear. “Don’t die!” she cries. Her lips light on my brow, then navigate each cut and bruise to find my quaking chin.

No, I won’t take secrets with me…I’ll tell her here and now. Before I die I’ll bring her in: one final breath, one final sin.

I gasp and blurt the code into her ear.

And the van dissolves.

Those four familiar walls return, but certain things have…changed. The stretcher’s now a bed, the details rearranged. That same old stench of sweat and fear…the tape recorders,

mics and gear…a hundred horrors coalesce, roll past and disappear…the victors’ voices mingle, break up and trickle by.

The door shuts with a sigh.

My angel hovers.

Flickers.

Blurs.

“Love is brief as breath,” she purrs, “only Death endures. We’re not who we appear, my dear, we’re merely what we seem. Nature or injection, a dream is just a dream.”

“Witch!” I cough, and strain to rise on forearms made of lead.

Her eyes, seeking redemption, return to mine instead. “A ‘drug-induced seductress’. I’m sure that’s what you said.”

Filling out my fantasy, her tough exterior shed, Sheila strips and sprawls across my body on the bed, crawls out of reality, and back inside my head.