Forces from Beyond Read Online Free PDF Page B

side to side, at each of their fellow team-mates in turn. Just like that, they knew they couldn’t trust anyone. A terrible psychic pressure built up in all of them, a need to speak out. To say things that had been left unsaid for far too long. A desperate need to say awful, truthful, unforgiveable things to each other. Secret things, which once brought out into the light could never be unsaid or taken back. Kim looked abruptly at JC.
    “I have to leave you,” she said, unreal tears forming in her unreal eyes. “I have to go because that’s the only way you can have a normal life. I love you, JC, so I have to give you up. You deserve a real life, a real love, with a woman who has a future.”
    “I don’t want anyone else,” said JC. “I only want you. Don’t you want me?”
    “You know I do!” said Kim. “But I can’t touch you!”
    “You’re all I’ve ever wanted,” said JC. “Please. Don’t go.”
    “I have to,” said Kim. “I want you to be happy; and you can’t . . . until you’ve forgotten me and moved on.”
    “Kim . . . No . . .”
    “I want to hold you. I want to be held. This, what we have, it’s isn’t love, not really. At least you can still touch the world you walk through! At least you can still touch yourself . . . I don’t even have that. I’m not real, JC . . . I’m just something that remembers being human and misses it so much . . .”
    She sobbed wildly and lurched forward to beat on his chest with her small fists. Her ghostly hands sank into JC and out again, appearing and disappearing. He didn’t even feel a chill. He started to reach out to her, to put his arms around her, and then stopped. He just couldn’t pretend any longer. Kim snatched her hands away from him and hugged herself tightly.
    “Let me go,” she said. “Let me die. Better for me, better for you . . .”
    “I haven’t felt this lucid in a long time,” Happy said suddenly. “Everything’s so clear . . . I didn’t know how far I’d fallen till you woke me up again. Kim’s right, Mel. Half a life . . . is no life. I don’t want to go back to the way I was, but I will the moment my system burns through the chemicals. Don’t keep me around just because you’re used to me. Find me a pill to put an end to this.”
    “I won’t give up on you,” said Melody. “I won’t give up hope.”
    “There is no hope,” said Happy. “No way back. I’m tired, Mel, so tired . . . worn down and burned-out. And the worst part of it is knowing I did this to myself.”
    “Happy, you have to hold on,” said Melody. “I know how hard this must be for you . . .”
    “No you don’t!” Happy fixed her with his huge-pupiled, unblinking stare. “You have no idea what it’s like inside my head. You never did. I’m just one voice, drowned out by all the other voices that keep intruding. Only the pills give me any peace, and they’re killing me by inches.”
    “Then I’ll make myself understand,” said Melody. She held up one hand, and showed him the silver pill box.
    “No,” said Happy. “Don’t . . . Mel, you couldn’t cope.”
    “I can handle anything you can,” said Melody.
    She selected three fat pills, and swallowed them down, grimacing at the effort. The others watched, but none of them moved to stop her.
    “That is a really bad idea,” said JC.
    “I know what I’m doing,” said Melody.
    “Really don’t think so,” said JC.
    He broke off as something new emerged in Melody’s face. She looked startled, then shocked, then terrified. She was seeing the world through Happy’s eyes, through Happy’s chemical consciousness; and it was destroying her. JC started forward, but Happy got to her first. He stood before Melody and took both her trembling hands in his. She didn’t even know he was there.
    Chemicals rushed through her mind like a storm of razor blades; slicing up her thoughts and sweeping them away. Melody had always prided herself on her