Harvester

“What the…”

Something jabbed into my side. I tried to swat at it, but my efforts were weak.

“Hey buddy,” a voice asked. “You drunk or sumthin?”

My head hurt. That was for sure. But I didn’t feel drunk or hungover. I groaned and tried to get up but a wave of dizziness smacked into me. I managed to turn on my side and hurl into the grass I was apparently laying on. It was a thick, white, and frothy looking substance. The smell coming off the puddle was just as nasty and was potent enough to make me vomit again.

Mercifully, I was able to walk/crawl away from the puke puddle and the asshole poking me with a stick.

Where the hell am I?

What is going on?

What happened last night?

Why am I here?

So many questions. They rattled around my brain like dice in a cup. But no matter how hard I tried, there were no memories from the night or even the day before. Everything from yesterday was blank, like a chalkboard that’s been wiped clean.

Somehow, maybe it was some kind of magic, I was able to get shakily to my feet. I wobbled for a few seconds (my heart sped up rapidly with the fear of almost crashing back down into the grass and dirt) but I miraculously stayed upright.

Then all the blood rushed into my head and I promptly bent over and puked…

...Again.

Barely anything came out and I was pretty sure I was done with all the vomiting.

Thankfully.

I took out my phone with weak fingers and dialed my wife’s number. It rang several times before a beautiful voice answered.

“Hello. Who is this?” The voice seemed nervous. Scared.

“Hope? It’s me. It’s…” I stopped suddenly. There was a brief second, weirdly enough, where I forgot my own name. There was a cold, icy fear that spread through my mind at the thought of not knowing who I was. “It’s...uhh...fuck! It’s...Lincoln!” I yelled my name out so loud that the guy who’d been poking me with a stick jumped and he was approximately twenty feet away.

“Lincoln?” Hope asked.

A sickening feeling expanded in my stomach. It went off like a firework and was, by far, worse than the icy cold fear I felt when I didn’t know my name. What’s worse than that? Worse than not knowing who you are. I have an answer for you, my friends.

Your wife does not know who you are either. The woman of your dreams. The love of your life. The one you wake up for. The one you live for.

That’s what’s worse.

“Hope. Stop playing,” I said. “Come and get me. Please. I’m by Riverfront. I don’t know how I got here.”

“Do not call here again, sir. I have no idea who you are. I’ve never, ever met a Lincoln in my life. If you call me again, I will be forced to inform the Petitioners and have your name submitted for a Harvester inquisition.” Hope hung up the phone.

“Don’t!” I tried to yell at her to not hang up, but the phone went dead before the first syllable even came out of my throat.

I stood there for a long time, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. My life was apparently over. My wife didn’t even know who I was anymore. How does that even happen? I had no idea and there didn’t seem to be a way to fix it. Then I got this thought in my head and I swear it sounded like a good idea at the time.

Honest to God.

The thought was...maybe if she sees me, then she’ll remember me.

Yeah.

I bet all of you can imagine what happened next. Cut to half an hour later when I showed up to her house (technically our house) out of the blue. I can tell you that she was definitely not happy to see me and that she also did not recognize me in the least. In fact, not only did she not recognize me, but I had no fucking clue who the hell the woman that opened the door was. Here. Let me rewind a second. So, after she hung up on me, and very rudely I might add, I got that stupid thought that maybe seeing me in person would fix everything. I literally jumped on the idea and called an Uber to her (our) house. I waited for ten minutes before a slick black sedan pulled up to a curb close to me. Twenty minutes later, I got out and started walking up the steps to my modest two-story condo on the east side of the city. I knocked on the door and waited very patiently and respectfully for Hope to answer the door.

I hear footsteps coming down the stairs inside. Then they were coming closer to the door. A second later and the door was swinging open. I already had a huge, relieved grin spreading across my face like some idiot goofball. I figured I’d hit her with the ol’ 100-watt smile that had neatly charmed her when we first started dating.

The smile fell off my face when I really focused on the woman. When she first opened the door, my mind played some kind of hellish trick on me. It sort of superimposed the real Hope’s face on the imposter. For a tiny fraction of a second, I thought I was looking at my Hope. I was so sure she would be there at our house, that for that tiny fraction of a second, I was convinced that’s who answered the door.

Then reality set in. It settled into place like a camera focusing on a single point.

“H-Hope?” I asked.

She froze. There was a deer-like fear to her face, like she’d just been caught in a bright swath of lights. Apparently, she recognized my voice from the phone call and now thought I was going to rape and murder her maybe? I would never do that to her (or anyone) but I understood why she was afraid.

“Y-you,” she stammered. She took a few steps back, forgetting to shut the door in her haste. “How did you...how did you find me?”

Like an idiot, I walked into the condo’s foyer to try and help her and show her I meant no harm. I held out my hands in the universal gesture of surrender and non-threateningness. It did little good. The minute I stepped foot in the condo, she went ballistic.

“It’s okay whoever you are,” I tried to tell the strange woman who was now infiltrating my house like an unwanted germ. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She didn’t want to listen to me. Instead, she wanted to throw shit at me. And heavy shit at that.

“Go away!” she yelled. She chucked Hope’s (the real Hope’s) Han-am Award for Excellent Architectural Design at me. The thing knocked into my shoulder with a thud of impact and then fell to the floor, where it shattered into a million pieces.

“Ow!” I yelled. “Will you stop throwing stuff at me!?” I screamed/asked this at her.

In answer, she threw Hope’s ficus at me (pot and all). It exploded at my feet and sent a spray of potting soil all over my shoes.

“I’m calling the police!” she screamed. She had her phone up to her ear now. Throwing stuff at me was just one part of her plan, it seemed. The other part was creating enough confusion and chaos to where she could get to her phone without me noticing.

“Go ahead and call them! You’re the crazy bitch that’s squatting in my house ya nut job!” I yelled at her. There was a bit of triumph in my voice at that. Apparently, the twelve-year-old inner me was delighted with the insults I threw at her. The thirty-two-year-old part of me, however, was starting to get extremely pissed off.

“Also, quit breaking my wife’s shit! When she gets back, I’m gonna let her pound the crap out of you lady. And I’m gonna laugh while she does it...and I don’t even like violence! So, there’s that.” The twelve-year-old inner me was less impressed by that commentary. In fact, my twelve-year-old inner me was now cringing at the truly awful, and embarrassing, “my wife’s going to beat you up” taunt.

“Just get out of my house,” the woman screamed.

She was red faced and tears were streaming down her face. Looking at her, especially like that, I had no idea how I ever could have mistaken her for my Hope. She had the same shimmery black hair and dark eyes, true, but everything else was just wrong. The shape of her nose was wrong. Her jaw. Her earlobes. Hell, even the slant to her eyebrows. None of that stuff was right. And, not to sound like one of those guys, but fake Hope’s breasts were definitely smaller than real Hope’s. And that was a purely scientific and factual observation on my part okay?

Don’t look at me like that.

“You should leave,” Fake Hope said. Her voice sounded hoarse from all her screaming and shouting. “The police will be here any minute.”

“So, let them come. I’m calling your bluff. You and I both know that you’re the crazy one here. You just up and moved into my condo last night for some unknown reason. Well, I for one, would love to see you explain what the hell you’re doing in my condo to the cops. So, I’m gonna sit my ass down on MY nice, comfy couch and wait. Then, when they’re hauling your psycho ass out of here in cuffs, I’m gonna pop some popcorn and sit back and enjoy the show.”

Fake Hope blinked in confusion at my statement.

“But this is my house,” she said. She kind of sounded like a child did when you jokingly took one of their favorite toys and proclaimed it as your own.

“Tell it to the judge,” I remarked, eyeing her coldly.

Then, neither one of us spoke. I stayed on the couch and she stayed in the corner next to the fireplace, curled up into a small ball. She wasn’t crying anymore but her face was wet and red.

I don’t know how long we sat there like that, each one not taking their eyes off the other, but eventually there was a knock on the front door.

“I hope you like orange jumpsuits,” I shot fake Hope a cocky smirk and went to the door. I opened it and found about a dozen police officers in high-grade tactical gear staring back at me. Several guns were cocked.

“Put your hands up!” someone yelled. I couldn’t tell who because they had a motherfucking spotlight shining straight into my eyes.

But I did what I was told. I put my hands up.

“We’re going to need you to release your hostage,” the voice responded.

“Hostage?” I asked. I was more than a little confused. “Who the hell has a hostage?”

“Sir! Remain calm! Release the hostage and everything will be fine.” The voice was insistent, but he could insist all he damn well wanted to, there were no hostages.

“Fake Hope’s not a fucking hostage. God, she’s such a drama queen. This is my house. I repeat! This is my house. I have no idea who the woman is that is inside my house but it sure as hell ain’t my wife! Get on the computers in your squad cars and look up the ownership records for this property. You will see that they are in my name. Lincoln Holmes!”

“We have checked the records and they indicate the owner of this property is Hope Song. Also, according to the records, she is single.”

I couldn’t keep the shock off my face. Song was Hope’s maiden name. Why were they referring to my wife’s maiden name? And why were they trying to tell me that the woman squatting in my house was my wife (sans my last name)?

“I don’t know how that crazy bitch got the cops in on her sick little game but whatever! She was never a hostage anyway. She is free to go!”

Like some kind of magic cue, Fake Hope burst out of the condo and ran crying into the arms of some cop a few feet away.

“Hostage has been cleared,” a voice said into a walkie talkie. It was some distance away, so I wasn’t sure how I was able to pick that up.

Weirder still was being able to hear the reply.

“Harvest him,” a raspy, old sounding voice said.

The minute I heard those words, everything inside me turned to ice.

The work begins, a voice whispered inside my head. The voice was a cold, lifeless thing that sent chills racing up and down my spine.

Gunfire and bullets ripped through the air and at that moment, my mind went completely...blank. I was expecting a little “This is Your Life” internal movie reel that showed the highlights of my life (you know, like you always hear about) but nope. Not this guy. Instead, everything turned to black like a dark curtain was suddenly pulled over my eyes.

That, I actually meant literally.

It was like I was blind, but distantly, I could almost feel like my body was still moving. On its own. I’m not sure what it thought it was doing, but hopefully it was helping me get out of this shittastic situation I suddenly found myself in.

Hope Song was put in the back of a squad car. She was an emotional wreck, but she was starting to calm herself down. She gazed out the window and watched as the weird, strange man stood on the stoop to her house, bathed in white light from a police cruiser’s flood lamp. There was a sense of crackling tension in the air, like the way the air felt before a raging storm destroyed an area. There was one thing she knew.

Something was about to happen. Something dangerous.

Just after she came to that realization, the world erupted into a blaze of sound and light as the dozen or so cops fired their weapons at the crazy man. She clamped her hands over her ears to blot out the noise and ducked down. She didn’t want to keep staring at the man, but she found she couldn’t stop herself. For some reason, she wanted to see him as he was killed. It was like watching it would make her feel safer inside because she would have proof he was really dead. Or maybe she was just fascinated with the man in general for some sick, weird reason she herself was not even aware of.

Whatever the reason for wanting to watch the man die, she would not get the chance. Instead, she got to watch in rapt amazement as the man effortlessly, and sinuously, slid through the air, dodging bullet after bullet. There was no way he should’ve been able to do that. There was no way in hell something like that was even possible.

Not unless....

Her eyes went completely wide with shock.

Not unless he was a...a (she almost couldn’t bring herself to admit it)...

A Harvester, she thought.

The thought should’ve been a ludicrous one, but she was seeing actual evidence to the fact that the strange man was a Harvester right in front of her eyes. He moved with liquid grace. It was like he wasn’t even human. Like he was part of the very air itself. He moved so fast too. She could hardly track him. Neither could the police. There were maybe thirteen or so cops that came to arrest the man that barged into her house. That’s a lot of police for one man. She remembered thinking that when everything first went down.

But...they should’ve brought more.

One after the other, the cops fell. The liquid, smooth grace and fighting skill of the Harvester man was too much even for the highly trained police officers. The Harvester would snake through their bullets, “appear” right in front of them, and then deliver a devastating chop to the nape of a neck, or punch them square in the face, or just brutally smash the back of their heads with a fist (despite the fact that they were all wearing heavy duty helmets). After each blow, the cop would slump to the ground like a toy that just ran out of juice.

In maybe ten minutes, and that was a conservative estimate, the Harvester had completely incapacitated all of the police. Their black clad bodies lay strewn about her lawn and sidewalk/driveway.

The Harvester stood there, his face darker somehow. Shadowed almost.

Hope looked at the Harvester. The Harvester looked at her. Then the dark, shadowy aspect to his face disappeared and there was only what looked like a very confused man staring around in abject horror at the scene around him.

STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT VOLUME OF HARVESTER...COMING SOON!