Peripheral Visions: Alien Hand

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Alien Hand

"Hey, Darrow! The super wants to see you."

Henry Darrow didn't bother to protest that he was about to collect definite evidence of the thief who had been stealing from the storeroom where food for the guards, officers, and civilian workers was kept. It had been the camp supervisor who had put him on that case in the first place; the super could pull him off that task and reassign him at any time, for any reason.

The guard escorted Darrow to the super's office. Unlike most of the six thousand prisoners at the camp, Darrow was free from harassment by the guards; where another prisoner would have been beaten as a matter of routine, Darrow was simply show to the door. The guard stood back as Darrow entered the super's office.

Darrow wondered if his special status made him party to the atrocities that went on in the camp. He didn't mind tracking down thieves and killers for the super; he'd had such a long career in law enforcement that such things were part of his essential nature, almost as much as his innate sexuality... which was, Darrow reflected, the reason he was locked up in the first place.

No one in the concentration camp located outside of Peoria, Illinois, was there because they had murdered anyone, or committed rape or arson, or even pulled off some sort of white-collar financial crime. They were all there for reasons the current government viewed as even more egregious: They were journalists who had criticized the president. Or they belonged to faith traditions that had been banned, like Mormonism or Catholicism, or Judaism or Islam. Or they had once belonged to unions, or they had gotten a divorce, or they were people of color – or, worst of all, they were queer, as Darrow was.

Like other queer inmates, Darrow wore a pink triangle on his dingy gray uniform. Unlike other queer inmates, though, his patch also had a bright gold streak running across the top, cutting through the pyramid near the top. The bar meant he was a trustee; the gold color meant that he was in the direct service of the camp supervisor. The man had no military or administrative experience, and no inkling about how crimes were solved – he had been recruited off the street based on a loyalty pledge, as so many in the Kirsch government had been. However, the super knew enough to surround himself with people who know what they were doing.

Inmates who knew what they were doing, that was. The supervisor wasn't the sort to work with other party members when he could rely on people who literally lived and died at his pleasure... or his whim.

"We have a problem," the super said as soon as Darrow entered the room. He was seated at his desk – imposing, blocky, and covered with papers and manila folders. It was a strange sight in a nearly paperless era, but the resistance had besieged various government operations with cyberattacks for years now. Paper, pens, and even antique typewriters had proven to be the best and cheapest defense against hacks.

The super had spoken without looking up from the file he was reading. Now he glanced at Darrow and waved the file at him. "Two days ago, one of our guards shot his partner while he was on patrol. Then he shot himself. Security cameras caught it all."

"Then you have your perpetrator," Darrow said.

"No. We have a mystery. The guard was a good man – a family man, wife and three kids, spotless service record, one of our best guards."

That, Darrow knew, would translate to the guard having been ruthless, maybe even sadistic, in his dealings with the prisoners.

"He didn't seem to want to be doing what he was doing," the super added. "And after he shot his partner, as he was struggling not to shoot himself, he started screaming that his hand was not his own – that it was acting on its own volition."

Darrow's mind flashed through multiple possibilities: Somatic schizophrenia, which, as far as he knew, was only a theoretical affliction; Lesch-Nyham syndrome, a congenital condition in which people involuntarily harmed themselves; so-called "alien hand" syndrome, in which one hand would do things outside of a person's conscious control, and which typically affected people whose brain hemispheres had been surgically disconnected.

"I'd show you the video," the super added, "except it recorded areas of the camp that are off-limits."

"I don't suppose the guard had any history of brain surgery?" Darrow asked the super.

"Alien hand syndrome? The camp doctor suggested that," the super said. "No, he never had brain surgery, and he had no history of brain trauma that we know about. Any other ideas?"

"I don't suppose he grew up with his hand sometimes involuntarily trying to pluck out his own eye, or pulling at his teeth?"

The super frowned at Darrow.

"It's not likely," Darrow said, "since that condition involves an inability of the body to purge uric acid and would have caused other health issues. The guard almost certainly wouldn't have been fit for duty."

"Then why did you ask?" the super asked, his tone nasty.

"You wanted to know if I had other thoughts, and, as unlikely as it was, that was the only other possibility. Except for somatic schizophrenia, but that's never been proven to exist."

"What the hell is that?"

Darrow frowned. "It's a condition in which the native intelligence of the body... a kind of cellular awareness... becomes mentally ill."

The super rolled his eyes and waved a hand impatiently. "Don't waste my time with that kind of nonsense."

"No, sir," Darrow said.

The super was about to say more when there was a muffled sound of several gunshots, followed by yelling and clamor. More gunshots followed.

"What the fuck!" the super exclaimed, dashing out from behind his desk. "Come with me!" he ordered Darrow, before plunging out the door. Gesturing to the guard in the hall to follow, the super led the way to the refectory, where guards and other camp workers were eating lunch. The refectory was ordinarily a calm area defined by long tables set out in precise rows; now it was a scene of confusion, with several tables overturned, food scattered about, and maybe half a dozen bodies scattered throughout the room.

"What happened?" the super demanded.

One of the guards – a sergeant, according to the stripes on his arm – stepped forward. "It was Donaldson, sir," the guard said. "He was eating lunch when all of a sudden he stabbed himself with his own fork, then grabbed his gun and started shooting."

"Stabbed himself?" the super asked.

"Yessir, stabbed his own hand. Then he drew his sidearm and opened up. He killed five people... another guy is wounded. Then Michaels took him down."

The super looked over at where Michaels stood talking to a small cluster of guards, who were standing with their long guns at the ready. The young man was tall – over six feet – and had wispy pale hair. He seemed to be in shock, his face white and his eyes wide.

"May I talk to Michaels?" Darrow asked.

"Nobody told you to speak, dirtbag!" the sergeant screamed at him.

"Back off, Harris," the super ordered. "This is Henry Darrow."

"I know who he is. Gay ghost chaser."

"Darrow was with HomeSec. He still would be if he hadn't rather impetuously quit," the super said.

"I don't care if he's the man in the moon," the sergeant said. "He's a faggot."

"That's true, but he's a useful faggot," the super said. "So back the hell up and don't make me repeat myself."

The sergeant saluted. "Yes, sir." Still, he glared at Darrow.

"Let's let the kid Michaels finish making his statement to the officer of the watch," the super told Darrow. "You and I can help by getting out of the way, looking at the security video, and waiting for the preliminary report."

*** *** ***

"Just like Harris described," the super said.

He and Darrow were watching security cam footage of what had occurred only a few minutes before in the refectory. Darrow took note of how Donaldson – a squat man with dark hair and a somewhat Neanderthal face – seemed to be in the middle of telling a joke or a funny anecdote to the others at his table when his right hand suddenly plucked the fork out of his left hand and then jammed the fork's tines into the fleshy part between thumb and index finger. Donaldson jerked back, then grabbed his left wrist with his bloodied right hand. The fork, firmly embedded, waved back and forth as Donaldson seemingly wrestled with his own arm; then his right hand crossed over his body to the holster on his left hip, dipping out of view as Donaldson twisted and strained. The hand came into sight again, gripping the gun, and then flashes erupted from its muzzle as Donaldson shot three people at his table and then fired across the room at additional targets. "I can't stop it!" Donaldson's voice could be heard above the tumult of cries, shouts, and chairs being tossed aside in the confusion. "I can't stop – " He was cut off as his body was suddenly thrown backwards by the force of Michaels' slugs. His head drooping forward, Donaldson – dead in an instant – slid to the side and then crumpled to the floor.

"Well?" the super asked, watching Darrow as closely as Darrow was watching the video.

"His right hand was acting without his conscious control. That's another reason not to think he was affected by some typical form of alien hand syndrome," Darrow murmured. "In those cases, the affected hand is usually the left one, not the right."

"Donaldson was left-handed," the super noted.

"So I saw. That might have something to do with what happened to him... but I just don't know how." Darrow looked at the super, who was scowling at him. "I don't know what's happening here. At least, not yet."

"I thought this sort of thing was your specialty?" the super snapped. "Are you telling me you're gonna be useless here?"

"No, sir, I'm not saying that at all," Darrow said. "Just that the situation isn't making sense yet."

"What will make it make sense?"

"Some good old-fashioned footwork can't hurt. If you can provide me with a record of what Donaldson was doing and where he went over the past few weeks, that might yield a clue. As detailed a record as possible would be good."

The super laughed. "Easy. We use AI to summarize all the assignments and security cam footage, so we can call up a minute-by-minute timeline of anyone's activities for any given day."

"I'll also need a similar report on the guard who shot his partner while he was patrolling the camp," Darrow said. "If that's possible."

*** *** ***

Much of what Donaldson and the other affected guard – whose name was Miller – had done over the last three weeks was utterly routine: Rise at 5:00 am, shit-shower-shave (as the military still called the morning routine), report for breakfast, report for duty... Darrow examined their movements through the camp. Miller's duties took him outdoors half the time, whereas Donaldson had more of a desk job. When not working at his slate, Donaldson was guarding the camp's brig, coming into contact with other military servicemembers more often than with prisoners.

Their off-duty hours were not that different, either. Both men liked table tennis; neither attended Tuesday movie screenings. And both...

"What's this?" Darrow asked, pointing out an item in both reports to the super.

The super looked at the slate Darrow was using. "They got massages. So what? A lot of the guards get massages."

"Massages?"

"It's stressful work. And we have a few massage therapists in the camp – socialists, activists, queers."

"They both saw the same massage therapist, a guy named Firkin."

"Yeah, he's a Crescent." The super meant the prisoner wore a patch showing him to be interned due to his Islamic faith. A Star of David indicated a Jewish prisoner; a green cross indicated a Catholic; a red crescent marked someone of the Islamic faith. Darrow had never noticed any prisoners wearing that particular patch, but then, there weren't that many people of that faith left in America after the multiple purges of the last sixty years. Moreover, the camp's prisoners were grouped together according to categories, so any "Crescents," as the super called them, would be assigned to the same barracks. In short, there were probably only a few of them, and they probably all bunked in the same place.

"Would I be able to see who else Firkin has worked on?" Darrow asked.

"I can show who he's working on right now," the super said boastfully, calling up his security cam access on his slate and keying in a number. A video feed came up showing a mostly bare room with a massage table. The camera was placed high on the wall and in a corner, which provided a view of nearly the entire room, but from a strange angle. Darrow thought of century-old movies he'd seen that used Dutch angles to indicate a deranged state of mind or an insane set of circumstances. The image seemed fitting enough for a place like the camp.

The man on the table was naked and lying face down. A large tattoo of an eagle stretched its wings across his shoulders, with its talons reaching down his back. The therapist, a Black man whose camp uniform was, unusually enough, white, was moving around the table as the image came on. His face became visible, as did the red crescent patch on his uniform. They had tuned in at a fortunate moment since Firkin was moving to the table's far side, affording a view of the massage techniques he was employing: Long smooth strokes from the man's sacrum up to his shoulder, with a sweep around the shoulder repositioning Firkin's hands for shorter, more focused work at the man's trapezius muscle.

"Standard Swedish massage techniques," Darrow said. "Effleurage, petrissage..."

Firkin swept his hands lightly down the man's arm – his right arm, Darrow noted – and then applied more pressure as he performed a long stroke from the man's wrist to his elbow. Firkin eased the pressure at the elbow joint, then applied pressure again as he moved from the elbow, over the triceps, and back to the shoulder. Then he focused on a few areas on the man's arm, doing small thumb circles. "That guy must have tendinitis or something," Darrow muttered to himself.

"I dunno," the super, whose attention had drifted, said in reply. "You seen enough?"

Firkin started tapping on the man's arm. The tapping seemed to follow a muscle, or maybe a nerve; Firkin worked his way to the shoulder and then tapped some more. Then he swept lightly back down to the man's hand, which he gathered between his own hand, Capturing the man's palm and spreading it open, Firkin performed more thumb circles just under the thumb and little finger. He followed up with more tapping.

"Tapotement," Darrow muttered.

"What?"

Darrow shrugged. "Another Swedish massage technique." He sat back and sighed. "Looks pretty standard to me. Yes, I've seen enough."

The super reached for the slate, then paused. "Here we go," he said, his voice taking on a note of excitement.

Darrow looked back at the video and saw that the man on the table had turned onto his back and grabbed Firkin by the wrist. He was forcing Firkin's hand toward his erect penis.

"Take off your clothes," the man said. Darrow knew the voice; he looked more closely at the man's face and saw that, yes, it was Harris.

The super clapped his hands as things progressed. "Now we're getting lively!" he exclaimed.

Darrow turned away, shaking with anger and disgust. Firkin was not objecting verbally – he probably didn't dare – but he was clearly not a willing participant.

*** *** ***

The super had the idea of providing Darrow with a list of everyone Firkin had seen for a massage in the last three weeks. "Maybe we'll find something worth watching," the super suggested.

Scanning the information – names, ranks, assignments; session dates and times; the AI made no mention of who got what sort of massage, though – Darrow saw nothing that raised a flag or gave him a twinge of intuition.

At the thought, he flashed back for a fleeting moment to watching Firkin work on Harris. There's been something that had tickled the back of Darrow's mind, something he'd seen in that session...

A guard burst into the super's office. "Sir," he said, and paused for the super's acknowledgement. He had a pale face, a half day's growth of red stubble, and round blue eyes; he radiated a nervous energy that made him seem to vibrate anxiously.

"Don't you knock?" the super snapped. "What is it?"

"Lt. Preston says you should come, sir, there's been a stabbing in the kitchen..."

"Let's go, mister federale," the super said to Darrow.

They made their way to the same refectory where Michaels had shot several of his colleagues two days earlier, the guard talking the whole way. He was nervous, and dark patches of sweat showed under his arms. His red hair stuck out in cowlicks from under his camo hat.

"I didn't see what happened myself, but it sounds like one of the cooks grabbed a knife and started stabbing people," the guard chattered. "I don't think it was revenge or nothin'... I mean, he was yelling stuff like, 'I can't help it,' and 'I'm not doing this, it isn't me,' even though he was doing it. Everybody was screaming, so Jeffries, he and me were in the kitchen with them, he was looking at something in that big blender, you know, the really big one where they mix a lot of dough, but when they started screaming, Jeffries took his gun and shot the guy with the knife. And the last thing the guy with the knife yelled was, 'Don't shoot me, I'm not doing this!' I mean, it was really fucking freaky – excuse me my language, sir."

The super seemed to be ignoring this stream of uninvited information. A few moments later they were in the kitchen. Several cooks were sitting on the floor, being guarded by a pair of guards who had long guns trained on them. The cooks were sobbing hysterically. Two of them had slash wounds on their forearms. Across the room, near a metal table strewn with vegetables, another cook lay dead on the floor; he looked to have been stabbed at least four times. Darrow took in more of the room's details, and noticed the large mixer the red-headed guard had talked about. Halfway between where he stood and the mixer, another dead cook lay on the floor – the assailant, Darrow realized, his corpse being guarded by a tall, scowling guard. The name patch on his uniform identified him as Jeffries, the guard who had shot the attacker down.

Darrow stepped toward the body and Jeffries raised his long gun.

"At ease!" the super barked, and Jeffries hesitated, but lowered his weapon. "This guy is a former feebie," the super told him. "He's gonna help us sort all this out."

"What's to sort out?" Jeffries snorted. "This guy was a nut job like all the others. I don't know why we use these people to do jobs around here. I don't know why we keep any of them alive at all. The country is better off without them, isn't it? We should just kill 'em all." He spat on the corpse at his feet.

"Back off, Jeffries," the super told him.

Shrugging, Jeffries turned and walked away – back toward the big mixer that, according to the ginger guard, had so fascinated him.

Darrow turned his attention to the dead cook, who still held a knife in his hand – his right hand, Darrow noted. The cook wore a white smock over his gray uniform; the smock was soaked with blood. Darrow caught a glimpse of the red crescent patch the man wore under the smock – red on red.

Darrow looked up at the guard who had pointed the weapon at him and called, "Hey, do you know if this man was right-handed or left?"

The guard's head jerked toward Darrow and his eyes blazed with fury. "You talkin' to me, you subhuman piece 'a' shit?" he bellowed.

"Jeffries!" the super said sharply. "That will be enough. The man asked you a question. Answer it."

Having to talk to a prisoner was obviously not Jeffries' first choice, but he complied. "I dunno," he said sullenly. Then: "Right-handed, I guess. Just from the way he used the knife."

"During the attack, you mean?" Darrow asked.

The guard's expression was sour, but he answered again. "Yeah, but I mean, just in general. Like, when he was cutting vegetables and stuff. The knife was always in his right hand." Looking away from Darrow he added, "Like it fuckin' matters?"

"It might," the super barked at him. Then, to Darrow: "It might?"

Darrow shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe." He turned the man's head; part of his face had been blown away when Jeffries had gunned him down. "What the fuck," Darrow muttered as the rest of the man's face came into view. He looked at the super. "This guy – Labaki – he's the one I was just about to get evidence on when you pulled me off that theft investigation."

"Him?" The super looked down at the half-missing face. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I had everything on him but the goods: Three packages of stolen cookies." Darrow knew he was being sarcastic, but he couldn't contain himself. "No one cared about the millet and polenta that went missing from the prisoners' provisions, but let a few gingerbread men wander out of the stores for the camp's personnel..."

"Theft is theft, and I have to account for every single ounce of flour, every drop of oil, and yes, every cookie," the super said. Then: "How is this guy's freakout related to what we've seen happening among the guards?"

"It's someone's idea of street justice," Darrow speculated. "Someone who didn't approve of Labaki stealing prisoner provisions, probably to sell on the black market. He was collaborating with one of the guards – Harrow."

"You knew all this and you didn't tell me?" The super glared at Darrow.

"Like I said, I was about to get the evidence that would have proven it when you pulled me off that investigation. I'm certain about my conclusions, but I wanted evidence and I figured I could get it later, after I figure out why guards are shooting each other."

"And you say Harrow was in on this theft business?"

"Labaki couldn't have done it on his own. He had access, but no means to smuggle stuff out of the kitchens unless a guard was looking the other way, and that would be Harrow. He's had second-shift kitchen duty for the past four months, and from what I can tell the filching goes back about that far." Darrow looked up from the dead cook. "It's not just a few packages of cookies and a few bags of polenta. These guys were collaborating on a bigger black market scheme than that." Darrow looked own at the dead cook again. "Whoever jinxed poor Labaki here probably didn't like that either."

"'Poor Labaki' my ass," Jeffries snorted. "He shoulda gone back to where he come from when he had the chance."

"But how are they doing it?" the super asked, ignoring Jeffries. "How are they hijacking people's bodies?" The super frowned. "Is it possible to, like, brew up PCP or something like that in, I dunno, a contraband cook stove? Or could this guy have been creating some kind of drug in the kitchen, right under our noses, and dosed himself?"

"I'm not a chemist," Darrow told him, "but I never heard of anything like that."

The super sighed. "At least my superiors will be happy to hear some good news, once I have Harrow arrested. But I'm gonna need answers soon, Darrow. Real soon."

Darrow looked at the cook's body. "I think the place to go from here would be to his barracks. I need to talk to the people he bunked with. If anyone's going to know something, they will. And – " Darrow glanced back at the traumatized cooks, still sitting on the floor with guards aiming long guns at them. "I'll want to interview those kitchen workers, too. But not today. We should let them settle down some."

*** *** ***

"I'd like to talk to Firkin, if I may," Darrow said later that day, after he'd interviewed the inmates assigned to Labaki's barracks.

The super followed Darrow to the massage room, where a young officer was just leaving. "Sir," the young man said. He was flushed. A smell of sweat and semen hung in the room.

Darrow shook his head. Then he turned his attention to Firkin, who was both skinnier and taller than he had looked on the video. Darrow tried to decide if Firkin seemed upset or angry. He didn't, particularly; Darrow's stomach turned at the idea that someone could become so inured to being sexually assaulted.

There but for the grace of the gods, Darrow thought. He knew too well that if he were treated like other gay prisoners, sexual assault at the hands of the guards – and even other prisoners – would be part of what he, too, had to endure.

"May I speak with you for a moment?" Darrow asked gently.

"Fuck that," the super said. To Firkin he said, "This guy has questions for you, and you're gonna answer. And you're gonna tell him the truth."

"Yes, sir," Firkin said, not seeming anxious or afraid.

"There was a killing in the kitchen this morning," Darrow said. "I think you knew the perpetrator."

"I did?" Firkin asked.

"He did?" the super asked.

Darrow glanced at the super, then back at Firkin. "You're in the same barracks as Jalal Labaki, aren't you?"

"Yes," Firkin said. "I know him."

"He died after stabbing another cook to death and slashing another two men. He was shot by a guard."

"I'm not surprised," Firkin said tonelessly.

Darrow paused, looking Firkin over. Just how damaged was he... or how cold?

"I interviewed people from your barracks after the incident," Darrow said. "It seems that Labaki was selling extra portions of food."

"He was," Firkin said.

"You knew this, and you didn't report it?" the super asked angrily.

Firkin's glance flickered over the super with disinterest. "The guards never listen to us. Any time we try to report anything to them, we get beaten for our trouble."

Darrow asked his next question before the super could say anything more: "I heard that once in a while you gave Labaki massages."

"Just to his hands and arms. He worked all day in the kitchen. Fifteen, eighteen hours shifts, chopping vegetables, cutting meat, stirring pots."

"Did he pay you with stolen food?" the super asked, still angry.

Firkin didn't even look at the super this time. His eyes on Darrow, he said, "No. No one pays me for my work. What I do is for free. At least, that's what it's like here in the camp."

"So, you never asked Labaki for anything in return?"

"I'm a healer," Firkin said. "Even in the old days I didn't like taking money in exchange for offering my art."

"Aw, Christ, you oughtta be wearing a red star, not a red crescent," the super said contemptuously. "Ya socialist!"

Firkin barely shrugged.

"Did he ever open up to you about other medical stuff?" Darrow asked. "Headaches, blurred vision, sleep disturbances? Was he pissing crystals?"

"Pissing crystals?" Firkin raised an eyebrow at that.

"Rough little crystals of uric acid? Or did he have any other symptoms that might have sounded strange?"

Firkin lost interest almost as soon as he had taken notice. "No. Nothing like that. He only said his arms and hands hurt. So, I worked on them."

"How often?"

"A few times," Firkin shrugged again. "I don't know. The days... they blend together."

"Did you and Mr. Labaki have a sexual relationship?" Darrow asked.

He wondered if Firkin would react with anger at the question, but the massage therapist barely even blinked; his eyes shifted momentarily to the pink triangle on Darrow's chest, but that was all. "No," Firkin said. "I don't have a sexual relationship with anyone here."

"Including the guards?" Darrow asked. "I know they take advantage of you."

Firkin's eyes barely moved as he studied Darrow. "They don't consider that to be sex, and I don't think of what they do as a 'relationship.' They think of it as punishment. I think of it as violence. They say they are teaching me a 'moral lesson.' They say I need to know my place."

"Do you believe that excuse?" Darrow asked.

"What's this about?" the super asked.

"I think that for people who say gays are immoral, they certainly like gay sex," Firkin said, his tone as flat and cold as ever.

"That's enough! I won't have you impugning my people," the super shouted.

Darrow put in, "Mr. Firkin, does that seem like an appropriate perception on your part?"

To Darrow's astonishment, Firkin smiled slightly. "Mr. Detective, I think it's more appropriate on my part than on theirs if those reasons reflect their perceptions of who I am."

Darrow nodded. Things were finally beginning to make sense. "You're not gay," he said.

"No, but it doesn't matter to them," Firkin said. "That's still the reason they give."

"Enough – both of you," the super said. "Darrow, let's get back to my office. I have more records for you look over. I want this thing solved. It's time we wrap it up."

"Yes sir, I agree," Darrow said.

"And you – " The super turned toward Firkin, glowering. "Expect me at seven tonight. I need a rubdown, and you need a talking to about how to show some goddamned respect to the fine American men who run this camp."

Firkin nodded slightly, the incongruous smile still on his lips. "As you wish, Supervisor."

*** *** ***

Darrow presented himself at the super's office at nine o'clock sharp the next morning, as he had done every day for nearly a week. Not that he had a choice: The guards marched him there like clockwork.

"Well, Darrow? Any brilliant insights?" the super asked him.

"Only that I can't solve this case for you, Supervisor."

"You can't? Then what the hell good are you?" The supervisor glared at him with a hard expression.

Darrow made a gesture of surrender.

Before either of them could say anything more, the sound of gunfire erupted again. It was distant.

Then it was close by.

"What the hell...?" The super started toward the door, but before he got there the guard in the hallway kicked it open and advanced into the room. The guard raised his long gun, pointing it in the super's general direction.

"You better be here to keep watch over Darrow," the super bellowed fearfully.

"Sir, I'm not... I can't stop myself. I don't know why I'm doing this!" the guard cried. "It's like my body's not my own!" He seemed to be struggling with the long gun, which suddenly pivoted straight at the super.

The super moved quickly, drawing his sidearm and firing twice. The guard fell backwards, gasped, and then released a long, final breath.

The super stared at the body for a moment. Darrow realized it was the nervous ginger from the other day.

The sounds of gunfire continued. Looking out the door and up the hallway, Darrow saw two guards rush at each other – and then shoot each other down.

The super looked at Darrow. "Do something!" he cried. His arm was shaking – no, not shaking; jerking upwards, with the gun hand slowly, torturously rising and turning to point the weapon at the super's own head.

The super fought his own arm with his left hand, but then his right arm broke free. There was a gunshot, and two of the super's fingers flew off as the bullet shattered his left hand.

"Paid Firkin a visit last night, huh?" Darrow asked, as the super, screaming, fell to his knees, his hand a bloody stump. His right arm went slack for a moment but then whipped back up and around, and the gun fired again, sending a bullet through the super's left eye.

The body toppled over.

The cacophony of gunshots was already trailing off. Darrow walked into the hall and cautiously followed its length until he came to a large office area where guards with paperwork to do had their desks.

Everyone in the room was dead. Blood soaked the floor, the desktops, the walls.

Darrow walked through the office and toward an exit into a courtyard. Guard towers rose a hundred yards away in two directions. More guard towers were situated behind the administrative building. Squinting up, Darrow saw the windows of the guard towers; they were shattered. Bullets had destroyed them. The guards in the towers weren't going to be a problem.

Darrow leaned down and took a weapon off a sprawled body. He moved to another fallen guard and then another, relieving the corpses of their long guns, extra ammo clips, and side arms. He slung the long guns over his shoulders and stuffed the firearms into his waistband. They nearly pulled his slack, thin trousers down; he was going to have to limit himself to two guns, one in each hand.

Another burst of gunfire erupted from another part of the camp. Darrow spun in that direction and then he saw a man run around a corner of the administrative building. He nearly fired one of his weapons, but then he recognized Firkin. The massage therapist slowed to a walk and approached, his arms outstretched in a gesture of peaceful intentions. Darrow saw that Firkin carried a gun in his right hand.

"You're right-handed," Darrow said as Firkin approached. "So, you automatically programmed your massage clients to shoot with their right hands."

"Yeah, I guess that was an oversight," Firkin said. Then: "How did you know? How did you know about approprioception?"

That was the name the old case files and research reports Darrow had read years before, when he was still at the FBI, had given the phenomenon. The word came from "proprioception" – the ability of a person to know how their body was oriented in space – and the word "appropriate," as in, to claim something for oneself. Of course, what the case files and research reports described wasn't proprioception being appropriated by another individual, but control over their own voluntary muscles.

It was a rare phenomenon, and one that nobody had ever understood. Knowledge of it was uncommon, to say the least.

"Things like this used to be my job," Darrow said. "How did you know about it?"

"Discovered it on my own. It's one of the reasons I became a massage therapist," Firkin said. "I don't know how to explain it, except to say that I can interface with another person's nervous system. I can influence what they do... the movements they make. I did a deep dive into the dark web years ago to try to learn what my talent was, what it meant... you ever hear of the Arcane Archives?"

"Yeah." Darrow laughed. "I know the guy who set it up."

"Then you and I read the same material," Firkin said.

"I got him those texts that he uploaded," Darrow said.

Firkin nodded. "Well, just so you know... it's a useful talent for a healer. It can be therapeutic... though it can also be dangerous." Firkin nodded at the bodies sprawled around the courtyard.

Several prisoners emerged from the admin building and took to their heels. No one shot at them as they approached the fence.

"This was unlike anything I ever did before," Firkin said. "I mean, of course I never programmed anybody to shoot up a prison before. It took some trial and error... some practice runs..."

"But you managed it," Darrow said. "All those guards paying you visits, mistreating you – and you used their sadism and lust against them."

"The hard part wasn't coding in the movements to draw and fire a gun, or even to feed those muscular actions into the central nervous system at a deeper level... kind of a level of cellular intelligence, if that makes sense," Firkin said.

Darrow thought of how the affects guards had adapted to evolving situations, disabling their own hands and drawing beads on moving targets.

"The hard part, well... that was the timing," Firkin continued. "Getting them all to go off at once, shoot each other in one big frenzy."

"But you managed it," Darrow said.

"I did," Firkin said.

"I hope a few of the guards at the main gate were among your clientele," Darrow told him.

"They were indeed," Firkin said. "And I'm guessing by the way so many guys are running toward the main gate that it's standing open. And listen, I'm gonna head over there myself and see if I can make my escape. Our window of opportunity is closing, Mr. Detective."

Darrow nodded, and the two of them started to run for the main gate.

"Where you gonna go?" Darrow asked before he got too winded.

"Anywhere but here," Firkin said. "You?"

"Same."

The main gate stood on ahead of them now. A river of liberated men poured through it. Local police would be responding soon. Darrow ran through options in his mind.

Darrow had seen the nightmare of oppression and concentration camps coming years in advance – seen it literally, thanks to a psychic's painting he'd taken into evidence in an investigation almost a decade earlier. He'd had time to make certain preparations: Cultivating contacts, gaining the trust of people in the underground network of the resistance. He knew who to seek out in and around Peoria. But he'd have to move fast.

He could make it work, he decided. With luck, with speed, with smarts, he could reclaim his freedom.

At least, he was going to try.

This week brings a treat along with the season's tricks: Be back on the 31st for the "Twisted Hallowe'en Twofer" and see why "Elections Have Consequences... and Consequences," and why a young queer man named Billy is suddenly "Unaccountably Hungry."