Chapter 33- Replication

Chapter 33

Replication

Cavill, Virginia

Patterns form in the most unlikely places.  Deep within the Earth, there are mineral patterns and formations, shapes that are amazing to behold.  Within natures work there are so many incredible formations and patterns, from the scales on a tiny fish all the way to a vast cloud of starlings.

There are patterns of behavior too, passive aggressive, escape and evade and direct hostility.  There are so many routines that people get caught in, the argument that you avoid seeps into every last corner of your life, the fight you don’t want to have hisses in the corner like a snake.

There are patterns deep within the very DNA of every person, swirls of molecules that resemble tiny galaxies.  Each spark and flame that runs through the mind, connections and neurons firing away, more patterns.

In the town of Cavill, they were used to patterns too.  For instance the town “drunk” Alex Pinkley would usually finish his drinking at the “Tom Jackson” and head home at about eleven.  He’d stop off at the 7/11 on the way home and pick up a cheap bottle of something, probably a cider or a beer.  Then he’d stagger back to his ramshackle place and pass out.

Except tonight of course.  Tonight he was walking away from the 7/11 when he ran into someone he wasn’t expecting to see. 
“Shit, Robert.  You scared me to fuckin’ death,” he slurred.  His drunkenness made the word sound like ‘fuggin’ but the meaning came through.  Robert Lewis was a painter, a contractor who lived in town with his wife Anna.

“Hey Alex, I just found a huge bag of bottles been dumped out the back of Mister Percys house.  You want some of them?”

Somewhere deep in Alex’s chemical ravaged brain there was still the vaguest semblance of the bright young lad he had once been, long ago.  But the temptation was far too strong for him to resist.

“Sure, sure that sounds good to me,”  he replied.  He followed Robert Lewis back through a cramped alleyway and behind Mr Percy’s house, where the high fence obscured them from view.

“Shit,” muttered Alex as he tripped over a log.  It was too dark to see much around here.

“We’re nearly there Alex,” came the voice of Robert Lewis.

Some deep seated part of Alex’s mind fired up a warning flare.  ‘We are lost in the dark.  This doesn’t add up.’  But another part of his mind, a much more dominant part simply said ‘Free booze!”

Alex reached backyard and tried to make out where Robert had gone.

“Robert?” he asked, his voice low.

“Right here,” came the whispered reply.  Alex spun around as fast as he could and saw Robert stood right next to him.  A hand came up with incredible speed and caught him by the throat.  Alex reached up with both hands to try and prize this hand from his neck but the strength of it was incredible.

The other hand reached up to his face with horrible slowness.  Long dark nails had grown from his fingers.  Alex tried to cry out, a scream bottled in his throat like a rat stuck in a drain pipe.  The clawed hand sunk horribly into his face and ripped.  Alex was released and fell to the ground with a low and long moan.  He rolled and tried to crawl away from his attacker, blood seeping out onto the dark grass beneath him.

Robert Lewis, who had been through something rather similar earlier that night, crouched over him and looked down at his helpless victim.  He reached down and took hold of his ruined face, bringing it closer to his own.  No expression ever passed over that serene face, even as he crushed the drunken man’s skull

Alex stopped moving and his wrecked body lay on the floor.  The form that resembled Robert reached down and drove a hand into the ruin of his face.  There was a hiss and a gentle puff of smoke began to emerge from Alex’s head.

A few minutes later and Robert stood up, his hands soaked in blood.  He walked calmly back into the house where Mr Percy lay slumped over his table.  There was blood splattered onto the ceiling and all over the fridge. 

Robert turned the sink on and washed his hands.  He picked up a towel and dried them off.  He took the now bloody towel and carried it outside.  He sat down next to Alex, whose face was already being knitted back together.  Alex sat up without a sound.  Robert passed him a towel and Alex wiped his blood off his face.

Alex, the town drunk, got to his feet and staggered away heading back to his tumbledown shack of an apartment.  Robert Lewis walked around the corner slowly, keeping his pace slow and even.  He knocked on the door.

“Whose there?” came the voice on the other side of the door.

“Anna, it’s me. I’m home,” said someone who looked a lot like Robert Lewis.  Anna Lewis had always wanted a spyhole in the door but they hadn’t gotten around to installing one.  If he she had looked through the door, she’d have seen nothing that would have alarmed her, right up until the moment when she opened the door.

Then Robert Lewis suddenly smiled a smile that showed warmth and kindness that he simply did not have, a smile that had simply jumped into existence. 

“You’re late tonight!” she said smiling

“I got caught up with something,” he said to her, closing the door behind him.

Just another pattern being repeated, like a swirl of galaxies inside a human body.