Hostile Consciousness, page 1

hopefully not too cryptic of a story...

The drive home was steady, easy, and smooth. The knowledge now taken with him, could be useful, or it may not be. The engine to the station wagon was now making weird noises, and the car started jerking. The fuel light came on, then went off as soon as his eyes saw the meter flashing “E”. The car started running smooth again just as if nothing had happened. Jake had not filled his car in years.

The Entity stopped at a red light, so did Jake Forecaster. Jake was a twenty year old kid. The Entity knew that, it had known that all Jake’s life. The Entity knew almost every secret of Jakes’ even secrets Jake himself didn’t know about. On the outside Jake appeared as a normal kid in every way. He goes to college, he has a steady job, and a girlfriend. Jake may or may not be aware that the Entity is following him, the Entity doesn’t really care what Jake thinks anymore. All it knows is that it has no choice in the matter at the moment.

Jake set the chair down then stood on his tip toes to reach the string. The string came down with a little effort, with it a wooden cover holding fold out steps came down as well. The springs on the side of the attic door in the ceiling made a horrible screeching sound. Jake’s nearly deaf grandmother asked if everything was alright then reminded him that dinner would be ready soon. Jake removed the chair and pulled down the steps, ever since his grandmother had taken him into the attic he had always wanted to know what was in the little dust covered black box in the corner.

Jake went into the attic and spotted the little box easily. Jake had come up here only once years ago when his grandmother was looking for an old box of pictures, since then the attic held many more treasures that Jake wanted to explore and that his grandmother was reluctant to speak of.

Jake moved to the corner, unsettling some dust that hadn’t moved in years. The black box, now that Jake got a closer look, was not really black, but a dull silver that reflected light oddly so that it appeared black. There were ornate carvings of flowers and petals all around it and the entire thing was made of metal. Jake shook it. Silence. There was nothing in it. Jake opened it.

“Ma’am, was there anything in that box?”

“No, nothing. I won it when I was a child so many years ago. Now that I think about I don’t know where it came from, I got rid of it years ago when my husband died.”

“Doctor, what is wrong with Jake, what is wrong with our son?”

Jake didn’t remember the rest of the conversation, all he could remember were the bright lights of the hospital and the concerned looks on the doctor’s, parent’s and grandmother’s face.

Jake’s eyelids twitched every time he tried to remember what had happened that day ten years ago. Meditation and concentration on that one moment had yielded almost nothing in ten years. Some friends had mentioned it, and it had occurred to Jake that maybe what happened was something he wasn’t supposed to remember, something his brain made him forget. The doctors could find nothing physically wrong with him; they said his grandmother just found him passed out in the attic clutching a black metal box.

Jake might not have known exactly what had happened, but the effects of what had happened were quite obvious, at least to himself. School was easy for Jake afterwards, where before he had struggled, now he excelled. If he ever had problems understanding something it was easy enough just to ask inside his mind and it would be explained from his “other self”. His “other self” was all knowing and intuitive. Ever since that day in the attic nothing ever went wrong, it was as if he somehow obtained a supernatural power to make everything right.

The entity, as it referred to itself, was in fact Jake, or at least a part of him. Jake knew it too, he just denied it. The entity was now commonly referring to itself as Jake, so as to get used to its new alias. The takeover was inevitable the day Jake opened the box that the Entity had been contained in for so many years. Soon it would be easy enough to simply kick the original Jake out and the Entity would be the new inhabitant of this body, these were Jakes last few minutes as himself. It was a simple matter of controlling Jake’s memories. By controlling the memories, the Entity had in fact changed Jake to suit its own needs by changing what he could and could not remember.

Jake was now driving again. Past the light that he had parked at for nearly ten minutes he drove to his deceased grandmother’s house to retrieve the box. Hopefully he would find some answers to what happened years ago if he could only see the box one more time. Not too far now he thought, just one more block.

Jake no longer had any memories, of himself, his family, who he was or anything. He could no longer feel his body. He could no longer see. The only thing he could feel was the cold black metal of the box he was now and forever contained in. Jake was now the Entity.