Below Threshold

It all had to do with the susceptibility of the human mind.

***

GALASHIELS, SCOTLAND 1984

The overbearing rush of blood coursing through his veins, threatened to overwhelm his senses as he rushed up the staircase to investigate the screaming. With one swift kick he knocked down the door to the room, rushed towards the window and saw Petre's remains lying spread eagled and squashed on the pavement floor. For the second time in less than twenty four hours his stomach failed him yet again.

After disposing all he had eaten, he turned around to inspect the room and realized it contained a bed and a computer unit. He also noticed that the room was sterile and lacked any form of human emotion save for some framed pictures hanging on the wall. When he took a closer look at the pictures, the cold fingers of terror crept up his spine at what the pictures revealed. Now he was sure that he wasn't here by mere chance but by the machination of unknown forces. "Or could he be wrong"?

***

THE EVENING BEFORE:

His brain felt foggy as he slowly woke up the night skies. After a careful mental probe which yielded nothing substantial, he wondered where he was, how he'd gotten here and worse, who he was. He checked his pockets in the hopes of finding some form of identification, but all he found was a wad of cash. When he tried to rise for further investigation, he was forced back to the ground by a splitting headache. Five minutes later, he managed to get up and discovered through a sign post that he'd been lying at the outskirt of a very small village called "Harmony". The name didn't ring a bell and as he slowly made his way into the village, he wondered what kind of asshole gave a town such a crappy name. 

He walked for about a mile without seeing a soul and just when he began to fear that he'd stumbled upon a ghost town, he arrived at a pub. The sign on the pub said "Jolly good ole' fellas" but he felt far from jolly as he pushed open the door to enter. Once inside, he looked around at the faces of those in attendance and when none showed any sign of recognition, he relaxed a little and ordered a mug of ale.

He then took a sit by the entrance in case a quick getaway became necessary, before he joined the other patrons in watching the game. He watched the game till the end of the first quarter and while he waited for the commercials to end, he suddenly felt eyes boring into him. He looked up to see one of the patrons staring at him from across the room. Then quite suddenly, the man staring got up on a full trot and continued to ram into the wall till his head became a red juicy pulp.

He got up and ran over to where the man lay on the floor. When he saw the extent of the man's injuries, he yelled for help but the reply he received was the sound of smashing glasses behind him and as he turned to investigate, his blood turned icy cold at what he saw.

The bartender was smashing bottle after bottles of whiskey on his head, while his assistant was repeatedly stabbing away at his abdomen with a serrated knife. A burly looking man at the far corner was drowning himself in a barrel of ale, then another who had just gorged his eyes out was mutilating his face with a piece of broken bottle. While he watched in shock, the other patrons were competitively engaged in more gruesome and creative ways of ending their lives. But the terrifying part was that none of them uttered a single sound in anguish.

It was as thought the horror bandwagon was in town and he had arrived right at the nick of time to witness the exotic freak show. With a scream trapped in his throat he made for the only other room in the pub which happened to be a kitchen. In it was a woman taking a nose dive into a large boiling pot of broth and when he tried to pry her away, she struggled with him ferociously until the pot toppled off the fire and exposed a braised up head of a once beautiful woman. With that grim sight forever imprinted in his memory, he decided that he had seen enough as he rushed for the street in search of an explanation.

But before any logical explanation could be sought, a series of illogical occurrences continued as something fell in front of him in a splat. On closer inspection, he discovered that it was the remains of a baby, and as he looked up to investigate, the mother followed suit.

All around him, mothers who had somehow managed to get the rooftops of their home, gleefully held out their babies like a sacrificial offering to the gods, while their husbands were gathered on the street with firearms pointed at their temple or mouth. In a matter of seconds, the whole street was littered with blasts, muzzle flashes, the stink of gun powder, plummeting bodies, madness, blood and gore. All he could manage to do was dance to the discordant notes of self destruction that rented the night. 

When he could bear the madness no more, he ran into a house but only met more horrors. In every house he entered there was at least a kid's dead body that had met its untimely demise in a macabre sort of way. He saw kids drowned in their baths, others mutilated to death and some burnt alive. He even saw a couple of skinned bodies, while some others died by sinister circumstances that eluded his understanding.

From house to house he ran till he rushed into a shop at the end of the street. The shop he'd just entered was a butchers shop and the butcher [assuming it was the butcher who was responsible for this butchery] had the six heads of his family members lined up on the slaughter table, while he'd hung their bloody wrapped up remains on the meat hooks lined up on the wall. The abhorrent part was that the butcher had outrageously hung himself on the meat hook and then attempted at cutting off his neck, a feat that was completely impossible to achieve because before he could finish, he'd bled to death, thereby leaving his head dangling from the neck in an odd and gruesome manner.

That was his last sight before the welcoming blackness enveloped him completely.

***

DAWN:

 He woke up screaming from a ghoulish nightmare, then he recalled last night's real nightmare and he scampered from the cold floor of the butchery. Daylight showed that the peace and harmony of the village called "Harmony" had been disrupted by sinister forces and had therefore been rendered "Disharmonious". The once sweet village he had initially presumed was a ghost village had actually become one overnight and scavengers who'd been attracted by the stench of death were already feasting away. The whole village was dead quiet save for the mechanical buzzing of flies and the bloody sight of flesh was so overwhelming that he fell on his knees retching till he felt the cold feel of a muzzle at the back of his neck.

He slowly turned around to see the face of a surprised and terrified looking man. With unsteady hands the stranger raised the evil looking double barrel towards his head and asked him what he was doing. Scared out of his wits, he explained to the double barrel wielding stranger that he'd been passing through when the madness started last night. He then told the stranger the series of event that he'd witnessed and by the time he was through the man was so white that he had to quickly hold him.

 When he got better, they both went around checking for survivors while the man who introduced himself as Petre told him he'd gone to bed early because he'd taken a very strong sedative for his insomnia. After they'd ascertained that there were no other survivor, they went back to Petre's house to access their grim situation.

In the house, he was ushered into the sitting room while Petre went to make some coffee and sandwich. While Petre was in the kitchen, he switched on the VCR to see that a muted comedy flick had been on pause, so he continued watching as they exchanged theories as to what probably caused these mass murders and suicides. He suspected mass hallucination through poisoning but Petre was leaning towards supernatural forces. Thirty minutes later when Petre eventually came out of the kitchen, he stumbled and almost dropped the tray. He apologized, blamed it on his weary legs, quickly set the tray down and begged to use the toilet upstairs.

When Andy got upstairs, he went into a room, locked the door, quickly switched on his computer console and began to tap urgently at his keyboard.

BELOW THRESHOLD INITIATIVE

USERNAME: ARGON

       PASSWORD: ***********

AUTHORIZED USER- ACCESS GRANTED.

ARGON: Reporting on the field experiment carried out in Harmony. STOP

COMM: What is your status? STOP

ARGON: Experiment was a success and all the test subjects exhibited all symptoms prior to expiration. STOP

COMM: Excellent job! Have you initiated phase II? STOP

ARGON: Negative sir. STOP

COMM: Why? STOP

ARGON: We are presented with a very serious complication sir. STOP

COMM: What complication? STOP

ARGON: He is back sir! Boris is alive. STOP

COMM: Impossible! I made certain of his death. STOP

ARGON: Well you weren't certain enough because he is right at the moment in my living room and he seems to be immune to the subliminal initiative program. STOP

COMM: How is that possible? Are you positive it is him? STOP

ARGON: Of course I am! He somehow survived the live feeds I transmitted through the town's local station and at the moment he is watching via my VCR, one of our rawest feeds without the protective lenses. STOP

ARGON: I am freaking out here. What if he remembers who I am? STOP

COMM: Are you sure it's him? STOP

ARGON: Damn it! I still have the pictures we took together on the wall here; what if he sees them? What are you going to do about him? STOP

COMM: Stay calm. New directives will be sent to you immediately this transmission terminates. STOP

CONNECTION TERMINATED

***

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, USSR

Colonel Yuri Vladimir sat in his office disturbed. He detested loose ends and the encrypted communication he just had gave testament to some loose ends. He hadn't gotten this far in life by being careless and foolish in his dealings, but by being ruthless and meticulous, so he couldn't tolerate this present predicament. He above all knew the consequences of loose ends and this loose end in the name of Boris worried him tremendously.

The cold war had been raging on for years and this experiment offered the USSR a much needed edge over their enemy, America. Now it seemed it was all going downhill with the reemergence of that bastard Boris. Yuri first met the brilliant Boris Vasilyev three years ago at a scientific seminar in Moscow where he'd talked about subliminal perception [Below threshold] as opposed to supraliminal perception [Upper threshold]. Boris had theorized that contrary to scientific beliefs, it was possible to enhance the strength of subliminal messages through visuals, thereby achieving a strong and lasting change in human actions and behavior. The excited Boris had talked about a breakthrough and cutting edge in medical science while all Yuri as a soldier thought about was mind control and the military/espionage application.

After the seminar Yuri had approached Boris with a proposal. He proposed that he would fund Boris project in exchange for a larger percentage of the profit when he'd made his breakthrough. Boris had been so happy that he'd been quick to point out that he wasn't interested in the financial angle because he was in it purely for the love of science. But a year later Boris began to get suspicious and started asking questions. When his questions were answered, he was horrified, wanted to shut down the program and go public. So he had to be gotten rid of and it wasn't a hard decision to make then, since Boris was already in the final phase of the project and his best friend cum research partner Nikolai Anisinov had already informed Yuri of his willingness to betray his friend and continue with the project.

***

The sudden ringing of his telephone jarred Yuri from his reverie. As he picked it, he hoped it was a call confirming that Nikolai had been sent his transmission. On the line, an indistinct voice could be heard talking as Yuri listened for a minute, then he barked fresh directives before he dropped the phone on its cradle.

Tsk, tsk! Loose ends will always attempt to entangle one's feet and bring you down.

Loose ends, he thought as he held his forehead in pain. He didn't dare accord himself any small measure of happiness now that Nikolai had been taken care of because with Boris still out there, his dreams may never be realized.

"Damn I need to find the bastard".

Tsk, tsk!