Chaingang

But his mind does not work the way an ordinary man's does. As he mentally screens the retained word groups, graphs, sometimes entire pages at a time, he brings to the reading greater focus, concentration, and specificity. When most of us read, it is a passive act, but in the beast's labyrinthian brain recesses, his computer searches for stored data. Searching his spectacular knowledge of the clinical disciplines and general sciences, he probes for hidden gold: some piece of information that, when retrieved and applied to the subject matter at hand, will give him—once again—that sharp and lovely edge.

A remembered and reread phrase has triggered a flow of images, and he scans them, letting them flow through his subconscious as he reads the now familiar word blocks: he senses blood pouring from extremities, secondary anatomical targets, superior vena cava, pathology of death fetishes, inferior vena cava, theoretical fluid mechanics and applications of Cartesian and general tensors, right auricle, hydrastatic wave-effect stress in surface flow, right ventricle, molecular symmetry in abiogenetics, pulmonary artery, aliphatic open-chain structures.

And as the subconscious triggers open-chain structures, yet another level of his brain considers the chain—his “flexible killing club"—and the chains that bind. Considers tension, specificity of heavy-metal laws, kinematics of motion, vector algebra, angular momentum theory, quasi-conformal variationals in isometrics, self-mastery practiced as a physical or engineering science, elliptical intuition, aura-manipulation and wish-fulfillment application to the loosening of bindings, essentials of quantitative prediction and advanced muscular control. These assert themselves. Test the bonds. File automatic situation reports.

The beast is aware of these intrusive thought associations only in the most subliminal way as he senses severing of pulmonary artery, raw umbles, mucoprotein absorption, human and animal spoor, application of nonmetric affine geometry to the healing arts, pulmonary veins, geodesist survival vaults, left auricle, fundamentals of vertebrate rhythmic contraction of life-support pumps, sevenfold man in phylogenetic transition, left ventricle, involuntary organ donations, oracles and auricles, dimensional space and karmic mythologizing of physical nonspace, the human aorta, images that flow by as he scans and senses related possibilities.

Good enough, the beast thinks, mentally reading those words, the closest he comes to telling himself a joke, letting his thoughts run free in lost wordplay through the mortal ritualistic eating of the dead on an island that bears the name. A pun—for someone else. For him it is a fantasy trigger, and he thinks of a heart he took, fantasizing, as he has ten thousand times before, about the boundless pleasures he recalls from the consumption of his enemy's life force.

The beast makes an involuntary noise under the facial restraint, coughing loudly into the biter. A harsh and frightening sound like the attempted ignition of a cold engine. The sound of an outboard motor's initial cough as the starter lanyard is pulled. The barking, metallic noise of a recalcitrant lawn mower. It is the sound of “occupant” laughing.

Does the sudden sound jar him or is it something else? Whatever early-warning system protects this strange, anomalous creature suddenly shuts down all his thought processes. He no longer reads, puns, fantasizes, or scans the bloodied, inexplicable darkness of his mind. He is back in the now, physically and mentally in Cell Ten of the hole, in Marion Federal Pen, and inside his head he pours blackness into his mind until it is absolutely empty and black as night.

Slammed down tight in solitary confinement of one sort or another, beyond the fringe of sanity, Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski has become master of his own inner wellspring. Calling on deep paranormal reserves, forcing himself through the walls of normalcy, he has learned to control his vital signs: to slow and still his breathing and the beating of his strong heart, and to freeze his mind into a state of perfect calm.

The beast-man has almost stopped breathing. This human who can hold his breath for four minutes, this monster who can bring his own powerful pulse-beat almost to a standstill—he closes his mind to the absolute blackness, imagining a black balloon dropped into an ocean of ink.

Imagine the balloon floating in the dark, inky sea. Now prick a tiny hole in the top of the balloon, and as it sinks, pour into it a stream of white milk. White pouring down into black, sinking, pouring, falling, the thump of his heartbeat now virtually stilled. His mind filling with bright, white milky essence. White as purest snow. Blank paper. And on the blankness of his receptor screen his presentient warning system keys a single word.

It prints a word across the blankness of his thoughts, bright red neon letters on dazzling white:

WATCHER