A game room exists - built by Kettering and Mo. The floor is made with translucent stone slabs. A lime-green light – Thurman’s favorite color since he was a boy – shines up through the slabs.
“It’s meant to be a metaphor of some sort, but one thing is concrete: There’s a winner, and there’s a loser.”
“Thurman’s and Spencer’s minds can paint whatever ‘scenes’ they want. When one tries to survive, that’s what happens. It’s a defense mechanism - a way to justify their actions!” said Mo.
-
As a boy, Thurman loved the snow; he would make angels for hours and never get cold. At school, Thurman was recognized for winning the Winter Spelling Bee.
“S-p-o-n-t-a-n-e-o-u-s.”
His teachers were always impressed, but the other students made fun of his high-pitched voice. At night, before going to sleep, he would pray for a deeper voice.
In the morning, Thurman would read the newspaper and drink coffee, like a grown-up.
-
“But I want to go with you,” said young Spencer, sobbing.
His father felt a dull, pulsing ache beneath his ribs.
“Spencer, you can’t. You just can’t. Stay with your mother. She needs you to be the man of the house.”
He stared at his son for a moment.
Spencer looked ill. The vessels in his eyes were pushing out and his face was wet.
“I’m ‘fraid to fight,” he whimpered and his words were broken. Saliva kept his lips together and a bubble formed as he exhaled and tried to ask his father: “if you die, do you just go into the ground forever?”
-
Thurman was said to have “the mindset of a scientist and the heart of a poet,” by one of his classmates, Anna, who later became his wife. It was easy for her to fall in love with him. She loved the low-pitched, interval-like sounds produced by Thurman’s voice. One night, she fell asleep to his lullaby, but soon a nightmare draped her like a black, silk blanket. It covered her entire body, but there was no warmth.
-
Anna –
Thank you for your sacrifice. I am indebted to you. I assure you that Thurman is an essential part of carrying out the Grand Scheme. There is a purpose; our efforts shall not be in vain! Keep us in your prayers.
- MT Kettering
-
Spencer’s professors noticed that he absorbed details with ease. He would always win in memory-games with his friends. He decided to study law.
The law school library was vast. Mahogany shelves reached up and seemed to support the ceiling, which held a large, silver chandelier. It was slowly rotating clockwise and prisms slid across and in and out of the book spines. These effects impressed Spencer. It had been several hours since he looked down again at his article about tort reform. He was usually the only student in the library late on weekend nights. Tonight, though, someone else quietly pushed and swung through the glazed-brown doors. It was a handsome, older man in a tuxedo. Immediately, he walked toward Spencer and, in a whisper, asked a question.
“Can you paint?”
-
“Who’s our universal enemy?” Thurman was curious.
“Death,” Kettering said, looking to the side.
“What am I supposed to do about that? And where are we?”
“We’ll find Spencer.” The numerous collages on the walls distracted Kettering. “But for now, paint me a picture. Will you Thurman?”
He picked up a brush. A red coat had dried on its tip. The handle felt smooth between his fingers.
“Actually…wait. Hold on.”
-
Spencer could not stop shivering; it was his natural reaction to anxiety.
Mo held out his hand toward Spencer. “How can you be proud of your handshake? It’s cold.” Mo waited for a second, and then he told Spencer not to worry about it. “You’re a fighter. Believe that.”
“I don’t understand. What am I supposed to be doing?”
-
“Try doing a Monet!”
Kettering urged Thurman to move his paintbrush in swift, Impressionistic strokes for a few hours at a time. After being the art-slave, Kettering forced him to eat a Caesar salad and drink a glass of Merlot, “as a chaser.” He liked the taste of berry and plum mixed with leaves, but he was not fond of the dressing – it was bitter. For no apparent reason, Kettering would joke about poisoning Thurman – “that’s why it’s bitter, man!”
That night, in his sleep, Thurman knocked lightly on a brown-glazed door. Nobody answered. Again, he knocked. Still, there was silence. For him, it was an out-of-body experience. He could see himself gradually beginning to bang on the door, harder and harder. After a bit, he forgot what he was doing.
Why was the law school so clean? Was that yesterday when it snowed? Do I really have amnesia? Kettering is probably just spinning around in his chair with a crystal glass of water…
Kettering suddenly opened the door. It moved through him. Thurman did not notice until his fist pounded into Kettering’s eyeglass lens. Tiny glass splinters tore into his face and Thurman’s hand. Kettering began to yell and scream. Thurman began to hear a loud ringing. The sound was like an air vacuum inside his ear canal and he felt his membrane pushed from inside his head outward. The ringing kept getting louder and louder; Thurman looked to his left and saw a man dressed in a tuxedo turning a large silver volume knob completely clockwise. Moving his head back to center again, he saw Kettering’s head was only a large mouth – his lips were larger than his arms and his tongue had waving taste buds.
The tongue reached out at Thurman’s face and the ringing sound kept getting louder and louder until a sense of deafness arrived.
Who is Spencer?
-
“It’s not really ‘a game.’ There’s a purpose to all of this,” said Mo.
“What? To paint pictures? I think I’ve developed the “aesthetic sense” that you’re trying to teach me, but now I am having panic attacks because I don’t know why I’m here.” Spencer’s stomach was small and heavy.
“Spencer, why would I waste my time and my resources, if there were no purpose?” Mo was smiling and boosting morale.
-
“I thought I saw Spencer, but it was nobody. Just a random person.”
“There are no random people.”
-
A large, flat liquid crystal display screen separated Kettering and Mo. They often met in this manner – it was their “talks.”
Kettering looked nearly the same as Mo. Kettering wore a gold tie and a pinstriped suit; Mo wore a tuxedo. Negotiations had been underway for hours.
“Remember the Revolutionary War?”
“No,” Kettering responded.
“What about the War on Terror?”
They both laughed.
“History can teach us what not to do.”
Meanwhile, Thurman whispered to Kettering. “… you see Spencer?”
“Not yet.”
Thurman rested back in his seat. Suddenly, his brain felt an electric strike: “Wait! Dresden and Vonnegut; I read something years ago…” Thurman began to see flashes and images from his eleventh grade history books on World War II and Vietnam. He remembered it being difficult to fathom that those wars actually happened, because the people were mostly black and white or faded color, or maybe it was just the images themselves that were black and white…
Nevertheless, he knew that he was taking part in a new kind of war – a softer, more poetic kind of war. One in which soldiers can justify their positions in the back lines, if they want.
-
Mo kept saying: “There is art in war.”
Spencer’s wrist was hurting from the repetition of the numerous brush stokes.
“Don’t worry, Spencer, you’ll create something exquisite in there! The public may never know about it – sometimes, what you create can just be too disturbing. I would do it, but I’m not really an artist or painter at all. I like to train younger kids, though.”
-
“Do you have a headache? You are rubbing your forehead like you have a headache.” Kettering asked.
“Are you talking to Thurman?” asked Mo, still on the screen.
Kettering reluctantly responded, shaking his head up and down, waving his hand at Thurman, and pushing him back out of sight.
“Let me see him. Can I see him?”
“Not yet. First, tell me where you are.”
“Can I see him?” Spencer, out of Kettering’s sight, quietly asked Mo, wanting to get a glimpse of Thurman. He kept rubbing his own hands, trying to warm them.
Kettering and Mo continued to deliberate for hours.
-
“Let’s send them to the game room, now.”
The conversation was diplomatic. Kettering and Mo were proud of their negotiation; there was no need for any third party mediator.
-
Kettering pointed up a large, grassy incline. They were standing at the bottom of a hill. The horizon seemed far away.
“Go into the ‘game room,’ and win – for us. Concentrate in there. Pay attention. Be an artist and create something beautiful and meaningful.”
Thurman walked for what seemed like hours, up the hill farther and farther, and then he reached a black dome. There was a glowing, lime-green opening at the base of the dome.
Once inside, Thurman felt like the game room was a dream. Is that Spencer? Ocular pressure was building in his sockets. Spencer was a blonde-haired man; his face was blushing and the lime-green light combined with his red cheeks, making his face look bruised. He was shivering and feigning a smile.
“Hi.” Spencer whispered.
Thurman gripped his brush. I don’t know how to fight. I should slice this into his forehead. I miss painting…He could be my friend in another life. He was conditioned to feel this way – a success for Kettering. Sometimes, he thought, the only motivation is to stay the course.
-
Spencer looked across the room, wanting to cry out loud. His face felt like it was burning.
Thurman is beautiful –
I’m not a fighter. I’m an artist.
Spencer remembered what Mo said, and he justified his brutality. He closed his eyes and swung his arms this way and up and over the space between him and Thurman; in his mind, he was creating an image of a heaven where Thurman could go. It only took seconds…
Thurman fell to the ground. His body was still, except for his shaking foot. He muttered something in a high-pitched voice very quickly: “S-p-o-n-t-…” His throat clogged up.
For hours, Spencer laid there with Thurman, rubbing his forehead, tears falling down off his cheeks and mixing with Thurman’s bloody face. Thurman had killed Spencer with a rusty sword Mo had given him.
Spencer’s hands were the warmest they had ever been; he wished Thurman could feel his warmth. His throat was swelling with pressure. He knew he had just entered a club – one whose members kill people like that.
-
Kettering and Mo stood outside the game room, but on separate sides.
A man slowly walked out over the horizon, crying out. Kettering’s heart was fluttering with a sense of victory and pride like that of nationalism, but then, upon noticing the man was a stranger, Kettering’s knees weakened. He lost.
-
Outside the game room, lilies continued to bloom; waves still crashed against the shores; it kept raining. People kept talking, writing and arguing and smiling. Cities consumed power. Nothing changed, except for the people who knew Thurman and Spencer.
-
“I never had enough time to get to know him,” said Spencer.
“You have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.”
Doctors are matter-of-fact, he thought, as he lived in a lime green nightmare.
-
“We need more respect. I believe the world’s not the way we need it to be.” Kettering expressed his opinions on the highest of stages and behind closed doors.
“I’ll get some people to help me paint.”
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