Minion

Alex Sombora came to his senses standing in the middle of an eight-by-twelve rectangular concrete cell. An iron door flaked with rust was set into the forward wall and the floor was hidden by two feet of warm, murky water. The fetid scent of mold, mildew, and sewer refuse dominated the humid air and the only sound he was aware of was his own frightful breathing as flashes of crimson light came from an emergency beacon attached to the ceiling.

How he had gotten here he didn't know. He could only barely remember his name was Alex and that he was married to a woman named Susan or Sonya, something like that. He believed he was thirty years old, a lawyer at a prominent firm, and Susan or Sonya -- whatever her name was -- sold real estate. The best he could recall, they were happily married and perhaps they had a child together but he wasn't altogether certain about this. In fact, the only thing he was entirely sure of was that he felt it imperative he escape this room as quickly as possible. But how? The walls, floor, and ceiling were of reinforced concrete and the iron door was firmly locked from the other side. How he could know these things without touching the walls or pulling on the door he couldn't say, only that it was a veritable truth.

Another veritable truth that he suddenly became conscious of was that he suffered from claustrophobia. It came from being locked for hours at a time in a dark closet as a small child by his two older brothers, John and Jake. Like back then, the terror of being in an enclosed space began to work its mojo and he stifled an urge to scream like a madman. It wouldn't help anything. Never had helped when he had been little. John and Jake had only let him out when they were ready to.

Gritting his teeth and summoning up all his courage, he tried to keep his fear in check by making the constructive part of his mind go to work. First, he had to take full stock of his situation and find a way out. He slowly turned a 360, his eyes taking on a hint of lunacy at the hopelessness of his predicament, when a sudden splash in the water near the rear of the room made him jump backward.

Something's in here with me! was his only thought as he flailed away from the disturbance until the back of his head, shoulders, arms, buttocks, and heels were firmly pressed against the rusty iron door. Rising up on tiptoes to get his legs far out of the water as possible, his frightened eyes never left the concentric ripples flowing outward from the splash. Slowly, the center of the splash began churning ominously.

A terrified shriek made it halfway out of his mouth before he cut it off. He refused to let hopeless panic take possession of his mind. With his first wall of defense firmly in place, he noticed his body trembling all over and that his breathing could almost be described as hyperventilation. From these signs alone he recognized he was still on the verge of completely losing it when self-preservation overtook him.

He stepped forward and assumed a defensive stance: feet planted firmly apart with his body slightly crouched, arms extended, hands in tight fists. His eyes concentrated on the churning spot of water, expecting the worst but still determined to go down fighting. Where he had learned this fighting stance was a mystery to him.

As Alex waited with heart trip-hammering and nerves humming terrifically, the churning water began producing sudsy foam. And this foam bubbled upward, ever upward, until it reached a height as tall as him, being roughly twice as wide. Underneath the red bursts of the emergency beacon it resembled a crude personage of bloody spume.

"C'mon!" Alex suddenly shrieked, wanting to face the conjuring evil and get it over with. It was evident he was going to have to fight for his life and though he was frightened beyond measure, dragging out the inevitable had never been one of Alex Sombora's long suits.

The coagulation of foam made no advance and Alex remained steadfast in his decision to call it forward. He doubled his efforts, lacing his demands with curse words and derogatory epithets. It was then that a calm feminine voice sounded from the bubbling foam, rebuking him.

"Why are you so frightened, Alex? If I wanted to attack you I would have already. You're my guest so you might need to consider being nice to me. I haven't said anything scathing about you or your maker."

Alex was shocked speechless. While he wrestled with the impossibility of articulate foam he noticed the temperature had risen at least fifteen degrees. He also noticed it was suddenly hard to breath, like he was in a sauna, except there was no steam.

"You still with me, Alex, or have you lost touch with reality?" the voice teased.

"I'm here," Alex stated hoarsely. "Who are you?"

"I'm your deliverer. But to find out how, you're going to have to come give me a hug." At the end of speaking the voice smoothly transitioned into a cackle of derisive laughter that raised the short hairs on the back of Alex's neck and twisted his testicles in knots. While trying to cope with this latter sensation he reached down to discover he was completely naked. Shocked and dismayed, he asked the first thing that popped into his head. "Where are my clothes? Why am I naked?"

"Guests of my domain don't wear any clothes. They have no need for them here," the feminine voice replied. "Now master your fear and come to me. Else, I'm going to come to you."

Alex trembled at the threat. He wanted to refuse, but knew he could not. He hesitated a moment longer before taking the first step. His feet and legs sliced easily through the water. He made himself take another step and then another.

"That's it," the feminine voice from inside the foam cajoled. "Just a few more steps."

Alex stopped one step short of contact. "What do you want from me?" he asked with quavering voice. "What are you?"

"I'm a friend that sympathizes with you having to sleep with a nightlight on since you were three. That is, on the nights John and Jake didn't steal it out of your room and hide it from you." Again the voice transitioned into awful laughter. "Now wasn't that mean of them!"

Alex shuddered at the pealing laugher while fighting the urge to cringe away. But where could he go? There was only so much space inside the cell and no way out that he knew of. The only course of action left to him was to step forward and accept his fate. And he knew he would, as soon as he found the courage.

"You have to take one last step and I have a surprise for you. You will hardly believe how wonderful it'll be. You'll remember everything you've ever forgotten and learn a great many new things you've never suspected."

Though Alex still trembled, he closed his eyes and spread his arms wide as he took the last step.

The bubbling suds had the consistency of slick dishwater. It cascaded over his entire body and then he came into contact with what seemed to be a voluptuous female form. Her flesh felt hot and naked and squishy against his bare body like heated blubber. He automatically enclosed his arms around her and laid his head against hers. He could not dismiss the sensation of feeling that he was literally bonding to her in some kind of unnatural way. She promptly reciprocated his embrace.

For a second or two it felt like he was back home in the safety of his bedroom, dozing between the silk sheets of his king-size bed. His wife Shirley was embracing him, cherishing him, succoring him into a more healthy reality. Then the feeling turned dark and foreboding. Strange and terrifying truths assaulted his consciousness, alerting him to things that he previously had been ignorant of.

Shirley was unfaithful to him. Every house or apartment she sold came with the added bonus of her helping the buyer christen the bedroom by participating in all kinds of immoral wickedness, debauched acts she wouldn't dare perform with him. She had only married him because she needed someone to float her living expenses until she had gotten her real estate license and began making her own money. She'd also made up her mind to leave him if he didn't make vice-president in the law firm by this time next year. Even more heartbreaking, the kid he and Shirley shared wasn't really his and the leash hadn't hanged their pet cat Chester by accident. Their supposed son Tommy had done it because he liked to see things die.

His mother's sins were revealed now. She was the one that had prompted John and Jake to steal his nightlight and imprison him in the closet for hours at the time when he'd been a child. She had convinced his brothers it would make him less scared in the long run but really knew it would screw him up for the rest of his life. And his father hadn't died in a railway accident; instead, he was very much alive and a prominent force on Wall Street. In her youth his mother had been fond of selling her body on street corners for sexual kicks.

More truths came like lightning. His boss, Mr. Patterson, was slurring Alex's impeccable work performance to the president of the firm because he was jealous. Through false allegations and doctored documentation, he was on the verge of bringing about Alex's disgraceful dismissal. And Vivian, Alex's private secretary, was in on the plot.

With all this information flowing into him, Alex felt his mind expanding and creating new memory space to store the info for instant retrieval. On a physical level it felt like a spider scurrying around inside his head, squeezing open new vistas to previously inactive departments. This sensation made the skin crawl on top of his head and he sought to break the embrace with the woman inside the foam. To his consternation, he couldn't make his arms release her and she wouldn't let him go.

"To get to the good you have to go through the bad," the womanly figure admonished. "And I promise you there'll be some good. Enough so to even outweigh the bad."

Hitherto Alex had kept his eyes closed since stepping into the foam. He tried to open them and discovered his eyelids didn't respond. He was paralyzed and helpless to fend her off, an unwilling participant in this supernatural event. He feared it would drive him completely crazy if he didn't get free because after learning all this bad, how could anything possibly be good?

"Stop struggling and open your mind to accept the truths of your life," the womanly figure instructed. "You have to know these things if you are to attain the position in life that you desire."

"Why would you want to help me do that?" Alex asked, further freaked out to discover his mouth and tongue weren't producing the words.

For an answer a piercing pain suddenly shot though his mind from left temple to right, quick as a thought and more hurtful than any of the bad he'd heard so far. The womanly being declared in an ominous voice, "Don't be concerned with why. Over the rest of your life you'll become handsomely wealthy and live a life others can only dream about. Now stop struggling against your destiny and claim what is rightfully yours, or I'll leave you in this prison forever. You'll never die and you'll never get out, spending all eternity with not so much as a bed to sleep on, only concrete and sewer water for comfort."

Alex stopped struggling and let the information flow easily into his mind. He had no other choice. And toward the end it was true, that the good did outweigh the bad. He'd become filthy rich. His peers would exalt him right soon and he'd have his pick of desirable women. Enemies would fall by the wayside and his wife and supposed child would die before the sun went down on this day.

How they would die came to him in an instant, like a five-second news flash. Tommy sneaks up behind Shirley and pushes her off the second story balcony. In his mind's eye Alex could see Shirley slipping over the rail, but not before she wraps bright red fingernails in the front of Tommy's shirt. They fall together to make a broken and bloody splash on the tile floor below.

In another news flash his boss, Mr. Patterson, is caught doctoring documents with Vivian's help and both are promptly fired. An audit of Mr. Patterson's accounts reveals a chasm between his practices and firm's policy. Alex is nominated to fill his vice-presidency and in less than two years the death of Alfred Groger, president of Groger and Associates, makes Alex president.

On a very intimate note he saw himself upgrading to a penthouse apartment, complete with a beautiful new wife named Tiffany (ten years his junior and a former Miss America contestant). She is cultured and refined, the perfect partner to assist him in his rise to greatness.

All this and more came to Alex like scenes from a movie in fast-forward. How this woman in the foam could show him these things with only an embrace no longer concerned him. He suddenly desired nothing more than to return to his life as quickly as possible and triumph over all his adversaries.

Of course, he realized his ascent would take time and a lot of hard work. But then, wasn't that wonderful part of already seeing his future? Knowing without a doubt that he would win, win, win and indulge all his whims and fancies while bathing in the accolades of his peers.

"Thank you," Alex's mind voiced his most heartfelt gratitude to the foam lady. "Thank you so very much for this."

"You're very welcome, so as long as when I call on you again you remember my generosity," the lady replied. "Now go claim your destiny."

Abruptly Alex felt a change in the embrace. His arms somehow drew tighter around the woman, like she had suddenly lost fifty pounds, and her flesh was no longer squishy. She suddenly felt like a real flesh and blood mortal woman.

After a few moments he realized that he was hugging an entirely different woman now. And they were standing in a steamy shower setting. He surmised it was his wife Tiffany. His face was lying against her freshly rinsed red hair and the familiar scent of her fragrant shampoo wafted up around him. She was returning his passionate embrace, her fake breast implants pressing tight against his chest. She felt like heaven to him. He was overwhelmed to tears to be back inside the safety of his home.

After a moment, Tiffany spoke up in her all too familiar you're-trying-my-patience-voice, "I'd love to hug you all night, Alex, but your retirement banquet is scheduled to begin in less than an hour. I have to get dressed and ready and you have to shower now. I've already laid out your tuxedo and the limo will be here shortly. Now hop to it, honey. As soon as we get this over with the sooner we can start our retirement in the Bahamas.

Alex remained clinging to her, knowing he'd heard every word correctly. And the three words that stood out foremost in his mind were your retirement banquet.

Retiring at thirty had always been a secret dream of his. Instantly his memory conjured up his lavish mansion overlooking a beautiful pristine beach. It was almost too good to be true, but he couldn't argue with what he knew to be fact. More tears of happiness streaked down his cheeks.

Alex finally released Tiffany and turned away as she exited the shower because he didn't want her to see him crying. As he turned toward the shower wall and wiped his eyes he realized something wasn't right.

The marble wall of the lavish shower he was standing in was an accoutrement of the penthouse apartment he was to own in the future. The very future the woman in the foam had shown him just a few moments ago.

Images began flooding his memory: Shirley and Tommy's funeral. The day he had first met Tiffany. The way the realtor selling him this very apartment had congratulated him after he had signed the mortgage. The way his life had gotten tremendously better once he'd married Tiffany. Of him ruling the law firm with an iron fist and making obscene profits. Fancy galas and exclusive dinners, consumed with work and play. People bowing down to him everywhere he went and praising him for all he had accomplished in one mortal lifetime.

The sudden truth was anathema to him. Everything the foam woman had promised him had come true but somehow he had missed it. It had already taken place in his past. He knew this before he ever looked down at his withered hands and body or examined his wizened face in the shower's vanity mirror. Tears of happiness quickly turned to tears of abject misery.

"This can't be!" he wailed, beating his frail hands against the tile wall in anguish. "This isn't fair! I deserve to live my life. It is mine and I deserve to live it to the fullest in my time."

As Alex continued to despair, the hot and cold water taps twisted on of their own accord and the showerhead jetted streams of warm water onto his back. Without giving it a thought, he leaned back under the water to let the cascading streams of warmth caress his body.

This was immediately soothing to his old bones and parchment skin and therapeutic for his beleaguered mind. Underneath the deluge of warmth he stopped despairing and once again became the brilliant, conniving, methodical lawyer he had always been. He deftly began dissecting what exactly had happened to him and what reprieve, if any, was due him.

His lawyer's brain told him that the supernatural foam woman had (under the guise of being omnipotent) only shown him a destiny that had already been slated for him since the day he was born, and that she could not legally establish she had anything to do with him becoming successful. He had been on the fast track before their encounter, so she could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she had manipulated the future to favor him. That part was clearly a misrepresentation on her part.

But it didn't explain how he had lived the better part of a lifetime in only a few minutes. That didn't make any sense at all.

He quickly deduced that the foam woman, though she had nothing whatsoever to do with his success, had somehow sped up his perception of time. It was the only explanation that made any sense. And that being the case, then wasn't it conceivable that she'd be able to slow it down, reverse it even? Of course it was! All he needed to do was persuade her to. And that wouldn't be too difficult; he had more than enough experience convincing twelve people of different backgrounds, sex, and personalities to side with him on a regular basis. All he needed was a good argument to stand on.

And the cornerstone of that argument would be that premature aging was an abomination against life and humanity, that under no circumstances could it ever be considered permissible. Becoming extremely confident in his case, he believed that once he presented this argument with conviction then the foam woman would have no choice but to grant him a reversal.

Longing for the opportunity to argue his case, he turned his thoughts to the rejuvenating power of water. Shower water had been a friend to him since ... well, since .... Suddenly the inkling of his unfinished thought made lurch for the glass shower door.

He had to get out! And get out now! She used water as a conduit to enter this world. In the past thirty-one years she had visited him all of sixteen times. And it had always been in the shower. Tonight she was coming again. Only this time her visit was for the sole purpose to make him remember her generosity. There would be no persuasive argument on his part to get a reversal. He was damned and that was all there was to it.

Alex could feel her sinister essences pouring from the showerhead into the shower with him and as much as he banged on the glass shower door, it wouldn't budge. Instead, the clear glass slowly turned a rusty red underneath the quick flashing of an overhead emergency beacon.

"You cheated me!" Alex screamed in wrathful fear. He turned around as fast as he could in the filth-ridden knee-deep water, flitting his eyes back and forth across the back of the cell.

"And here we are again," a sugar-sweet feminine voice stated from behind him, "back where we started."

Alex turned around to discover her standing directly behind him against the rusty door. For the first time during any of her visits, there wasn't any evidence of foam and he could see her exactly as she was, naked and grotesquely bloated with bulging dead eyes and the blue-blotched skin tone of a decomposing corpse. Her long, brown hair was stringy and limp, a matted mess of nastiness plastered to her rotting scalp. The putrid scent of death permeated the air inside the cell.

Alex blinked rapidly at the horror standing before him. In his terror he reiterated his one transient thought. "You cheated me!"

"I cheat no one," the woman replied coldly, her smile turning malignant. "You got what you wanted. You did all those things you remember."

"But I've aged." Alex raised his arms to show the wrinkled skin of his hands. "I want my youth back. To enjoy my rise to wealth and power."

The dead woman shook her head and asserted her authority. "That's impossible now. But for one last act of obedience I'll let you live out the rest of your life in normal time."

Alex's resolve to argue crumbled under the powerful gaze of the dead woman. He accepted that though he was old, maybe his life wasn't over and done with yet. He still had life in him. He could feel it coursing through his veins with every quick palpitation of his terrified heart. Tears began flowing unheeded from his eyes and his parted lips quivered around his false teeth. "What do you want?"

"Make my son your sole heir."

Alex's mind struggled with a question he had to ask. "What does your son need with my possessions when he already has someone as powerful as you on his side? You could make him the richest person in the world as easy as anything."

"And I will, in time. But before that time comes you will help him. And with your help, and other minions like you, he will become ruler of your world and everyone in it."

The image of a young man taking the oath of President of the United States seeped into Alex's mind. A black aura radiated from his handsome countenance and when he spoke, fabulous lies flowed out of his mouth. The nation promptly descended into chaos under his leadership. Religion was outlawed, marriage abolished, whoredom encouraged, thievery rewarded, murder exalted, and a host of other crimes against humanity became the code of conduct for millions of citizens. The young and strong of the nation preyed on the weak and elderly.

"Oh my God!" Alex whispered, horrified by the thought of this future coming to pass in his lifetime.

"God won't help you, because you sold your soul to me instead of Him. Now enough of your foolishness! A man will bring a will for you to sign at your retirement banquet tonight. Sign the will or suffer my wrath. But keep in mind that I reserve special torments for disciples that don't follow my orders. And don't delude yourself. You are my disciple. Now do what I've requested."

Alex nodded his acquiescence, feeling the room and woman fading from his vision. One last question demanded to be asked. "How old is your son, Mistress?"

The red door of the cell slowly came back into focus and the dead woman as well. She beamed happily, "He's a toddler right now, but when he grows up he's going to do great things with his inheritance."

Alex smiled grimly and nodded his head in approval. Deep inside he was secretly thankful that he was now an old man and wouldn't ever live to endure such a monster. He was careful to keep the relief off his face.

"But don't worry," the dead woman promptly admonished, "I'll see to it that you get the opportunity to praise him and grovel at his feet before you die."  ◊

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