The Dark Tether: Part 1

She stops crying and wipes her eyes. “What are you going to do?”

I knew the question was coming. Still, I’m not ready for it. I feel like I’m going to throw up. I meet her gaze and struggle to speak.

“I need you to cut off my head,” I say quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“I need you to cut off my head.”

“As in remove your head from your body?”

“Yeah,” I say, attempting a level of calm that I know she can see right through. “That will stop the progression. I might even wake up in their dimension.”

“There’s a hundred percent chance you’ll be a headless corpse in this one.”

“I’m dead anyway.”

“I can’t just cut off your head.”

“Severing the vagus nerve is the only way to break the passenger’s connection.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll sign a waiver or consent or something.”

“There’s no waiver for this. It’s murder.”

“Physician-assisted suicide, really,” I correct.

When she doesn’t reply, I continue. “A headless guy could be tricky to explain. It seems like some paperwork could help with the inevitable questions. Or maybe a video?”

“Even if I agreed to do this — which I’m not — I don’t have the right equipment.”

“I thought you were an ear, nose, and throat specialist.”

“You’re such a dumbass,” she says without so much as a smirk.

“What about the light treatment the news has been blathering about nonstop?”

“Heliotherapy? It’s a mixed bag. Grayson’s team is making some progress. These bastards really hate UV. It weakens the link and slows the spread, but it doesn’t stop it. And you know what happens once it’s fully tethered.”

“Spores,” she replies.

“Spores,” I affirm. “Well, first comes the indescribable pain, then the psychotic break, and finally the shutdown.”

“You’re telling me that your spooky government lab friends don’t have any viable treatment.”

“These people are definitely not my friends. And no, just the —” I drag my thumb in a cutting motion across my throat. “One quick, clean cut and poof — no more multidimensional parasite.”

“I probably don’t want to know how they figured that out.”

“Probably not,” I say. “Thankfully, my work keeps me away from the butcher shop. Kind of hard to do psych evals on a freezer of meat —”

“Stop.”

“Sorry.”

“Do they know you’ve got it?”

“We’ve all got it.”

“You know what I mean. That it’s activated.”

“I wouldn’t be standing here if they did,” I say, my calm facade finally cracking and fear seeping into my words. “I’d be locked up at one of our black sites, a mile below ground. They would let me pop under observation, harvest the spores for research, and then dissect me like a frog.”

“What did you mean about traveling back to its dimension?”

“There’s a paper from one of our units in Sweden that has the team fired up.”

“Wait,” she holds up a finger. “Does the paper actually say that these otherworldly monsters drag our souls back to their world?”

“No. It’s a pile of crazy math relating to the behavior of specific neurotransmitters. It all points to a unique type of bond between host and —”

“From novel neurochemical behavior to waking up in a different dimension is quite a leap, Mark,” she interrupts me. “Like, totally insane. You realize that, right?”

“Yeah, I do. But it’s all I’ve got, Jess. Do I think that I’ll wake up in a different world? No. I really don’t. But I don’t want to die. It’s something I can focus on besides not existing. Because that really sucks.”

I hate that I’m doing this to her. I hate how she’s looking at me. But this has to happen. I press on.

“I have three days tops. I cannot endure what comes next. I’ve seen it. I can’t do it. And if I go out on my own terms, the spores will come. I can’t do that to anyone else. This gives me a quick exit without all of the ugliness. Plus, you get one hell of a story. Did I ever tell you about the time I cut my boyfriend’s head off?”

“Boyfriend? Now you’re my boyfriend? After what, three and a half years of — whatever this is. That’s convenient,” she says sharply. “Ass.”

“Please, Jess,” I plead. “Please let me punch out on my terms.”

She stares at me for a long time, her mind working behind glassy eyes.

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

“Jess —”

“I said I’d think about it.” She stands and walks to the door. “I need some air.”