5 Outsider

“Do you need stimulation?” The question rips me from the trancelike state the highway has gotten me into.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you bored when you’re in the back? Will you be less prone to disruptive behavior if you have something to pass the time?” He’s putting his book back into the glove box.

“I mean, I guess I’d be grateful if I had a distraction from”—I gesticulate around the van—“everything.”

The man hums in thought. Man. Now there’s a big question mark I’d love to be able to ignore. No matter how often I tell myself that I hallucinated back at our last stop, the image of nerve endings dangling from that lady’s eyes is glued to my mind.

“Um . . .” What did he say he wanted to be called again? “Seventy-Eight?”

“Hm?” He was looking out the window in boredom like any other regular human. I keep bouncing wildly back and forth between feeling stupid and scared shitless.

“I know this is a silly question, but . . . okay, I don’t have a clever way to ask this that won’t make me sound stupid. Are you human?”

He gives me his signature chuckle. That’s a totally human reaction. Or great mimicry. This is dumb. “That is a silly question. I already told you what they call me. You just forgot most of it because of the way your . . . data retention works. Your brain.” Except I didn’t. Part of it has been living in my head rent-free.

“Designation Inversion,” I say automatically. “Outsider Seventy-Eight. So that’s the name of your . . . species or what? Outsider?” This conversation isn’t happening.

I barely catch his shrug from the corner of my eye.

“That’s not a thing.” I don’t know who I’m trying to convince. “Like, that’s not real.”

“I suppose that’s why they say ‘Outsider’? From outside of what they designate as real?” He offers, clearly amused by the conversation. I get the distinct impression that he doesn’t care for or necessarily understand our form of classification.

I feel very small. My mind struggles to wrap itself around a vague concept of exactly how much.

I can’t accept this.

I saw my twisted finger.

If the proof I’ve gotten so far isn’t enough, then what would it take?

Would I be as confused if I’d paid more attention in epistemology? I chuckle, lose control, and have to slow down to stay safe as I break down into a mix of desperate laughs and sobs.

“You will wish you were never born if you harm this van. It’s special,” he says casually. Something settles within my mind. The conversation had been so relaxed, I had almost felt comfortable, but I’m not building rapport. We’re not working towards an understanding. I’m doing what this thing is asking me to do and that’s why it’s not harming me. No matter how well I’m doing, if I fuck up enough, it won’t feel any different when turning my guts inside down, whether I felt like we were having a good time together before or not.

Conversely, it might not be cruel for the sake of being cruel. “Seventy-Eight? Can I go to an actual restroom?” It’s mainly indifferent, barring any of my actions that actually affect its goals, isn’t it?

“I suppose.” It stretches lazily. Ever since that little massacre, it’s been giving off an air of satisfaction. Lunch, it had said. It had been testy because it had been hungry. It probably doesn’t even care that it permanently damaged or killed these people. My stomach is twisting again, but I manage to keep it down.

I take the next exit and park the van. The thing next to me is watching me unbuckle the seatbelt with disinterest. “Don’t make me get you again,” it notes almost like an aside.

I pop open the door. “I won’t, but I’ll need a moment. You know what I mean?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Mind if I get a coffee while I’m at it?”

“Knock yourself out. Just get moving already.”

It’s definitely less irritable right now.

“Do you . . . want me to bring you one, too? Do you do coffee?”

It sighs. “No. Now go. We need to keep going.”

I hurry off to the gas station, finding the restrooms quickly. Once I’m in the stall, I pull out my phone, staring at it. Five percent battery.

I don’t have much battery left. I’m at some truck stop called Kranenkamp.

I stare at the message before deleting it all and shutting off my phone. This isn’t going to help me. At this point, I wouldn’t be calling for help, I’d be feeding police officers to that thing.

When I’m done, I wash my hands, splashing water into my face. Dark bruises ring my neck where the monster from the van choked me with the rope. My pants and shirt are covered in stains that I’m no longer capable of smelling. I need a shower, and I need to sort my thoughts. Seventy-Eight seems reluctant to leave the van, and it said something about throwing them off the trail. Going out to pick me up when I first tried to escape led to a detour and to the earlier slaughter. My stomach knots together painfully.

There’s something else I’ve been desperately trying to avoid thinking about. It told me I’d get it lunch in the future. It can’t leave the van. Having lunch meant doing unimaginable things to those people earlier. Is it going to ask me to kidnap people for it? Is that my grand purpose?

I shouldn’t waste too much time. The worst thing that could happen would be to make it think that I willfully disobeyed another order. I head to the little kiosk and order a coffee. Then again, I’ll have to disobey sooner or later if I don’t want to drag others into this.

The woman behind the counter aggressively ignores the state I’m in and leaves through a door towards the back as soon as she’s received my money, wanting nothing to do with me. She must think I’m some homeless junkie.

Does it matter if this inevitable confrontation happens now or later? Maybe it’s better to bait it into killing me. Then again, it’s just going to nab someone else off the road, isn’t it? Sooner or later, someone will comply. The longer it takes, the more often it might have to go on rampages to throw whoever is hunting it off-course.

Purpose . . .

We’re condemned to be free because we weren’t made for a purpose, like a stapler for instance. There’s no higher being that created us with a goal. Except now this thing is trying to force me into a form so I can fulfill the purpose it chose for me. Am I still condemned to be free? Or would that Sater guy or whatever he’s called be turning in his grave if he could hear my musings?

One thing’s certain, no professor would accept adding superhuman entities into any sort of rational reasoning. Or maybe they would. This lack of understanding might be why I keep failing.