Grave Instinct

ONEDuval County, Jacksonville, Florida June 6, 2003 Grant Kenyon grabbed his head in his hands and pleaded, "Stop asking me to kill. Stop making me kill." Grant sat upright in the lonely Jax-Town Motel bed in his empty room, catching glimpses of his mirror reflection as if it were someone else. "It is someone else. Sure," he said aloud to himself, yet if he worked at it, he recognized something in the twisted image--the boyish face, the sad and deep-set eyes. But here in the semidark, there was something else going on. Nothing fit--not his features, not his manner and not this place so far from his wife, Emily, and little Hildy. Staring into the looking glass, he felt that the real Grant Kenyon had fallen into it and metamorphosed into what he now saw. "It's really not me, this guy in the mirror. It's some other force that has hold of me." He lifted the beer and toasted to the uncanny image toasting back, and he hated what he saw. He clawed his way to a standing position and, once sure of his footing, Grant bellowed and charged at the reflected image now moving toward him--that other entity--and they nearly collided where they met, face-to-face. "What the hell do you want from me?" he asked the stranger in the mirror. "Just do what you're told" replied the other. "Leave me, now! I don't want this...this kind of life... this possession of me by...by you." His reflected image in the half-light showed an irregular brow, eyes too close together, a crooked nose larger on one side than the other, a sad set of dark eyes, a mouth in perpetual downturn. Do I feel as bad as I look'he wondered. "I've grown 350 percent since your ancestors crawled out of the muck, Grant," his reflection said, as if it had a brain independent of his. Grant beat a fist on the bureau top and glared at his Hydelike reflection. "Damn you, how many times're you going to tell me that? How fucking many times? I am pleading with you, my insistent brain, to never repeat that goddamn number again." "Three hundred fifty," it replied. "I've heard it all before." "Your simian ancestors discovered that eating the brains of their enemies increased their mental capacity,"the reflection said. "Read about all the folk remedies of the Chinese, Tibetans, Hindus and Arabs.""I know...I've heard you say it a thousand times. I know man's brain is a stimulant, an aphrodisiac, a medicine to expand the powers of rational mind." The man in the mirror grimly replied, "Then you know why we're doing what you're doing.""I'm not doing a damn thing. You...you're doing it," he replied to his reflection. "And I won't allow it again! Not once more. I forbid--" "Not once more. Not once more," mocked his mind of the distorted image. Then the voice turned deadly serious. "What are you saying, Grant?""I'm saying, don't lie to me. It's not working. I know it's a twisted obsession, a morbid craving that--" "Me? Lie? But me is you and you is me, Grant." "All that crap about your being somehow special, the descendent of all the prophets, all the philosophers, all the teachers, the wise men and the great spiritual leaders since time began." "How then do you account for me, Grant? The most highly organized material substance on Earth----the human brain?""You're just an organ, an electrochemical factory." "Nonsense! I am the great raveled knot, the----""I've heard it all be--" "--world has ever known. I am the enchanted loom, the giant--""I don't want to hear it!" Grant tore out tufts of his hair, hoping the self-inflicted pain would blot out the voice inside the himinside the mirror. It failed to help. "Within this 'chemical factory,' as you call me, are the secrets of the universe. I...you...us...we have the blood of kings running through our veWalker, Robert W. is the author of 'Grave Instinct', published 2003 under ISBN 9780425191705 and ISBN 0425191702.