The Baptism
Sometimes, life happens too fast and in an unpredictable fashion. Ask Samuel Richards.
One moment, he was running down the street, late for work, and in the next, he was standing by the helm of a small yacht, in the middle of an unknown ocean that stretched far into the horizon. Calmness filled the air and the few clouds in the yellowish sky reminded him of cotton candy threads slowly dripping away.
Even weirder than not having any recollection of how he had gotten there was the fact that the place seemed to be haunted. Through the corner of his eye, he could catch fleeting glimpses of white humanoid figures looking attentively at him. Yet, when he tried to face them head on, nothing at all could be seen. They were simply not there.
Samuel did not believe in ghosts. In fact, he believed in nothing that could undermine its construct of a perfectly reasonable and scientifically organized world. However, when faced with the series of impossibilities that had led him to that vessel far away from everything he knew, what was he supposed to do besides turn his mind’s eye to other sorts of explanations? The world was wrong, and rightfully so. He should…
Whatever he was thinking at that moment, got lost and was dragged away. A ferocious storm came without warning, cyclonic winds blowing from the nether regions of dementia, waves of daunting indigo blue picking up the boat and making it crash and spin. Samuel’s body was twisted and turned, tossed to side from side as if he were made of living plastic. A porthole exploded, and glass shards crashed into him as he was projected overboard.
By sheer luck, he managed to grab hold of a metal railing. From a distance, his quivering body could easily be mistaken for a flag flapping with the wind. Samuel clenched his teeth, pushed himself forward and…
… the railing simply vanished before his eyes, the yacht reduced to a spiraling mass of debris being sucked into the ocean’s floor.
He was pulled in mercilessly, the salted water clogging his nose and burning his eyes, his lips closed but rapidly succumbing to the pressure of the enveloping liquid. As he fell deeper and deeper into the aquatic chasm, he saw no fish, no plants, no life of any kind, only the glimmering apparitions of before, gathering voraciously on the rim. He blinked one, two, three times, things suddenly becoming clearer, actual shapes coming into play. Were those… lab coats?
Aghast by the realization, Samuel drifted into nothingness.
* * *
“The subject seems to have slipped into a catatonic state,” mumbled one of the technicians as he looked at the man wrapped inside the bio-luminescent cocoon.
“Of course, he did. The Baptism never fails!” Answered another.
“What now? I still haven’t received any conditioning instructions.”
“Undecided. Mistress Amber is currently gauging the needs of the clientele. For now, let us keep him this way.”
“Understood. Say, have you ever wondered what it’s like being in there, drained and helpless?”
“No… never!”
“Yeah, me neither…”
They looked at one another, accomplices in the lie. Afterwards, they moved in silence to the adjoining control room to check the brain activity of another one of their “guests”. The rounds were just starting.
