Vesper, Shadow Queen of the Death Swamp

By L. G. McCary

How are you doing? Warrick’s text appears on the floating screen next to my head.

Dead inside and out. Same as always. Think-to-text is so exhausting.

I’ve been having a hard time, too.

He’s having a hard time? I’m the one whose mind is hanging out in a computer simulation while my body is who-knows-where being pumped full of chemo and stem cells. I’m the one who looks like an outtake from a Pixar movie. That’s what happens when a glitch in the system gives you the effect of full-body Novocain. If only my boyfriend could see me now, slumped like a ragdoll on my bewitched Persian rug floating in the middle of a muddy bog that smells like rotten eggs and disappointment. I’ve made my little corner of this simulation as gross as possible so no one will bother me. Hail, Vesper, Shadow Queen of the Death Swamp!

Warrick would laugh at everything but my hair. It’s why I insist on texting, not video, even though I can make this lump of pixels speak—if I try extra hard. I’ve never told him my avatar is bald. When I started chemo and my hair came out in clumps, he cried and helped me cut it into a pixie. I know he misses my old hair. I tried to keep my long ringlets in the simulation, but they kept falling in my face. Cheney’s minions programmed my follicle physics to be obnoxiously realistic. Better to be a bald hag and still able to see.

No one is around to see me anyway. I’ve made sure my swamp is the last place the other patients would visit in this farcical existence. I have all the essentials: a murder of crows flying overhead, green-flamed torches made of skulls, and ominous accordion music playing at half speed.

Dr. Cheney is working on something new.

We agreed not to talk about the Emperor of False Promises.

It’s some kind of interface with the outside. There’s a video.

Sneaky. Cheney knows I stopped reading his messages months ago, so he’s using Warrick. If I could feel my eyes, I would roll them. I think “play” toward the big red button floating next to me. The video shows a metal box that reminds me of a minifridge with the door missing. It’s filled with metallic fabric. Dr. Cheney sticks his hand inside, and the fabric wraps around it like water.

“The haptic cloth both transmits movements into the simulation and uses pressure and motion to simulate your response in the real world,” Cheney explains. “Movements have to be slow and small right now, but once the connection to your neural interface is established, it should create a ripple effect in your tactile programming and hopefully correct the sensory functions for your avatar.”

I watch the fabric ripple and flow within the box while he drones on about the mechanics. What is the point? He’s tried so many software patches over the last year. I’m still The Hopeless Glitch. That would be a good name for a band…

Did you watch it? Warrick seems desperate.

I don’t believe him. I can’t get my hopes up again. I just can’t.

He says I could start by trying to hold your hand.

I’ve never been a touchy-feely person. The British royals indulge in a bit too much PDA by my standards. But Warrick comes from a clan who loves loud and hugs hard. I used to hate that. I look down at my computer-generated hand, flopped at an unnatural angle. I try to arrange it more gracefully. It glitches upside-down as if to spite me.

Please? I’m ready in the lab.

So they’re ganging up on me now.

Traitor, I think, then erase the word. Warrick is the one person in the real world who still cares about me. Even though I’d never admit it, I miss how he’d squeeze my hand twice to say “love you” like a little secret code. And I miss the way he would kiss my forehead because he’s half a head taller.

I finally send him a shrug emoji. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn’t, I’ll haunt Cheney from my swampy digital grave.

Warrick guides me to a menu in my avatar that enables the external connection, but it also disables my already limited mobility. Great, now I’m a sentient lump of Jell-O.

And we wait. I don’t know how long, but it feels like hours. Warrick keeps saying not to quit, that my neural net has to process the data before it can make connections.

Feel that?

Nothing. I’m so bored. I can’t even change positions! Cheney is going to hear ghostly accordions for the rest of his life.

A pinprick. Then a hundred pinpricks like the memory of my hand being asleep. I can’t decide if this is better or worse than nothing. Maybe both. The pinpricks melt into a searing heat, and it’s definitely worse. My avatar seizes uncontrollably, and a scream out of a robot’s nightmare rings in my ears. The crows caw and flap away in terror.

Something soft, like a butterfly, lands on fingers I barely remember having. My digital skin ripples and flows, and I can feel my whole hand.

I watch my fingers bend slightly as I feel Warrick’s invisible fingers slowly interlace with mine. I can’t think. I can’t speak. I just stare at the empty spaces where his hand would be.

Is that you, Ves?

I fight to make my fingers move. I finally have a hand, and I’m going to use it. My server must be smoking right now from the effort.

My index finger twitches, then my thumb.

I concentrate as hard as I can. It’s just four fingers and a thumb. I can do this.

Don’t give up, babe.

I’m exhausted, but I finally squeeze the ghost of his hand.

Once.

Twice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L. G. McCary is a homeschooling mom of four and the wife of fellow Havok author Caleb McCary. She writes supernatural and science fiction with strong emotional cores, complex characters, and plots that twist your brain in knots. Her faith fuels her to create stories that ask tough questions, explore hard truths, and demonstrate the goodness and beauty of God.

---

More Stories | Author Website | Facebook| Instagram