Another step closer. Thomas squeezes his eyes shut, hoping it’ll all go away. The dreaming part of him doesn’t want to see anymore, either. Wants it to end.
“Look at me, boy,” Dad says with a snarl. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Thomas can’t help it. He always does as he’s told. His dad looks calm now in every way except one: those fists. Fingers and knuckles white.
“That’s good,” Dad says. “Good boy. Look at your daddy. Do I look crazy to you? Huh? Do I?”
He shouts those last two words.
“No, sir,” Thomas says, surprised he can say it without shaking.
“Well, you’re wrong, then.” Dad’s face pinches with anger again. “I’m crazy, boy. I’m a madman. I could eat both of you for dinner and love every bite.”
“Stop it!” Mom screams, a sound so loud it pierces Thomas’s eardrums painfully. “You stop it right now! I swear to God I’ll rip your heart out if you touch my son!”
Dad laughs. Not just a chuckle, either. His whole body shakes and he throws his head back as booming laughter pours from him, filling the house with its noise. Thomas has never heard something sound so wrong before. But the man keeps it up, laughing and laughing and laughing. “Stop it!” Mom screams again. She repeats it over and over until finally Thomas can’t take it anymore and covers his ears.
Then the doorbell rings, barely loud enough to be heard. But both of his parents go silent. Dad looks in the direction of the front door, his face suddenly showing fear.
“They’re here to get you,” Mom says through a sob. “My sweet, the love of my life, they’re here to get you.”
Thomas woke up.
Frypan, Swipe Removal Operation
Frypan looked up at his nurse, and though nervousness filled his gut, he knew he was doing the right thing and forced himself to relax. He was about to get his memories back. His memories!
He couldn’t wait to see his past.
The woman swabbed a spot clean on the side of his neck, then poked the needle into a vein before he could get another word out. There was a sharp sting and then warmth flowed through his body.
“There,” she said. “Just rest for a few minutes. We’ll lower the mask as soon as you fall asleep.”
“How does it work?” Frypan whispered; he couldn’t help himself—he wanted answers. “What is the Swipe, anyway?”
“Just relax now” was all she said in response.
Frypan closed his eyes and resolved to shut up. The answers would come soon enough. He breathed deeply, doing his best to follow directions, to calm his nerves. The warmth he’d been feeling expanded as weariness trickled in, pulling him toward sleep.
“You ready?”
Frypan’s eyes snapped open to see his nurse staring down at him through what seemed like a white haze. He tried to speak, but only a mumble of something unintelligible came out.
“You look ready,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know I’m about to lower the mask. You don’t need to do anything—go ahead and close your eyes again. When you wake up you’ll remember everything.”
He grunted, closed his eyes. He hadn’t been this tired in a long time.
Something squeaked, followed by a grating sound, then a few hard clinks. He felt the pads of the mask on his skin. Something whirred, reminding him of the Grievers, which sent a brief spurt of panic through him before it got swallowed by his exhaustion.
Just before he lost consciousness, he swore he could feel cold worms trying to burrow their way into his ears.
* * *
Frypan swam in a pool of darkness.
Somewhere on the outside, in the periphery, he was aware of pain. It bit at his nerves, sliced through his head and brain. But a dullness, the fog of drugs, numbed it, made it a thing he didn’t care about.
As he floated in the absence of light, he remembered how others back in the Maze had described the Changing—an awful journey into a swirling white tornado of their imagination. And that was when recalling only a few flashes of memory. They talked about the extreme pain, and he wondered if he was about to go through something like that. He wasn’t too keen on the idea—a good burn from the stove was about the worst thing he’d been through before.
Things developed differently than he could’ve ever guessed.
He floated in an impossible vacuum—with no gravity, no sense of direction or space. Finally an unseen ground solidified below him and his feet touched a hard surface. He pulled himself together and looked around, hoping for a light to banish the darkness that pressed in on him, scaring him.
Something creaked close by and he turned toward the sound, saw an open door, a soft light spilling out to reveal a stone path between him and the entrance to who-knew-where. He knew this all had to be imagined, that he wasn’t actually in this place, seeing what he was seeing. It had to be symbolic, something formed in his imagination to be able to process whatever the doctors were doing to his brain with their mask machine.
He reached the door in just four steps, hesitated in front of it, then pushed it open wider and entered a sea of blackness. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was in a long hallway that stretched into the distance as far as he could see. The walls, floor, and ceiling were no longer black, but white. They went on until they converged into a single point.
A series of screens was set into the right wall, one about every three feet, seeming to continue as far as the hallway itself did. The screen closest to him suddenly flickered with static; then a moving image formed within its square, perfectly clear and crisp. Frypan stepped closer to get a better look.
A man, standing at a kitchen counter, his arm moving furiously as he mixes something in a bowl. Frypan is sitting on the floor, staring up at this man. His … dad. The man turns to face Frypan, a huge smile on his face. “These are going to be the best pancakes ever eaten by humans. Almost ready!” Frypan laughs.
The screen goes black. Frypan realizes this was his first memory, the earliest his mind can go back; he was maybe three years old. He is remembering his dad, his kind face full of love as he smiled and spoke.
Frypan knows what to do next, reminds himself that it’s all imagined—this is how his brain has chosen to give him his life back. He walks to the next screen.
He’s sitting in a small pool, splashing and shrieking, crying when too much water gets in his eyes. Warm hands reach down—a woman’s hands—and wipe his face; then he begins all over again. A ball is thrown in and he kicks it. His mom’s body keeps appearing and disappearing in the background as she paces back and forth. She’s just learned some awful news about the disease spreading across the world.