Things Not Subject To Gravity - Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Some people find that dialogue is a constructive way of solving problems. Set was not one of them.
On Sunday, the 14th of May, he was dragged to the 22nd Precinct. Four officers went out of their way to accompany him. They were trying to reason with him, they said. They just wanted to understand why he jumped the girl in Central Park.
They bombarded him with questions, making it harder for him to keep it together until he finally reached the point of no return. Dizziness hit him first. A hot stream of energy formed at the base of his spine and started throbbing like some living thing was about to burst out of it. The vibration spread through his body, climbing his vertebrae, heating him from the inside while fear crawled on his skin. Beads of cold sweat rolled down his face and the energy flooded his eyes, making them itch.
The police station and the officers morphed into something different.
The spinning stopped in some kind of medieval village. In front of Set, there was a woman that used to be his mother, accompanied by two muggers and a murderer. He couldn't remember their names, but they were assholes, and that was clear as day. His mother and one of the muggers came closer and tried to grab his arms.
"Get off me, woman!" Set screamed, struggling to break free.
"What the hell are you talking about, brat?" She replied with a hoarse male voice before pulling him along the corridor.
"I said, let go of me!" he cried out. "You're not my mother anymore!"
The woman ignored him and glanced at the mugger. "We've got a freak today," she laughed.
While they crossed the hall, faces and distorted voices piled up around him. Trying not to make things worse, Set kept quiet and let them drag him into a smaller room. Brightly colored fish floated in a small pond and a patch of red marigolds grew behind it. A corner of the room was turning into a garden. When he finally lifted his head, he saw the village priest sitting behind a dark wooden table. He tried not to stare, but that man's icy glare held him still. Set knew he enjoyed abusing children.
"I understand you are quite confused at the moment, Mr. Voland—if that even is your real name—but don't you think you ought to be apologizing for jumping little Anne this morning?" the priest asked in a calm voice.
"No need to worry, the child is alright and her parents are willing to be compassionate. If you acknowledge your fault and provide them with a written apology, they won't press charges," the former mother said, with the very same hoarse voice, while passing him a sheet of pristine paper along with a fountain pen. "So, you just have to write it down, and in the meantime, try to remember where you left your ID."
Set grasped the pen in his clawed fingers and managed to throw some scribbling onto the piece of paper, but his hand shook. Even though he tried hard to suppress his boiling emotions, his body vibrated like a jackhammer. His eyes darted around the room. Some parts looked like a modern office but, here and there, the white walls turned into mud bricks while grass grew out from the flooring. A cockroach ran over a framed photo on the table—a man and a woman hugging two children, all with beaming smiles, all unknown faces. He had no idea how to stop the transition and he was sure the boundless energy that rose inside of him would in no time flood out in a destructive wave and drive him mad.
That thought was enough to beat down his resistance. His frustration turned into overwhelming rage. He struck the family photo and it smashed on the ground. Just another failed attempt at silencing the voices in his head and stopping the blur of images that rushed before his eyes. It had precisely the opposite effect. Set tried to anchor himself to the armrest of the chair, but cracks began to appear in the dam of his mind.
Finally, he lost it.
He jumped up and threw the chair against the table, smashing the computer's screen, the landline phone, and the table lamp. The mugger grabbed him from behind. Set drove the fountain pen into the man's forearm. He met little resistance but maybe that was just the adrenaline talking. The sight of the blood made his head spin and he froze. Immediately, the mother-cop shouted and ran to rescue the mugger.
Set dropped to his knees and covered his ears. He tried to shut it all out, but the sweet, metallic smell of blood reached his nostrils. At the idea he had injured somebody, he burst into chest-wracking sobs. Tears streamed down his face and wet his shirt, drowning the voices in his head. His heartbeat resonated in his ears while his senses slowly righted themselves. The energy flow simmered down until finally dissipating and he snapped back to reality.
Five angry-looking cops surrounded him and cuffed him. Their touch almost triggered another round of visions but Set kept his eyes glued to his own shoes. He didn't even try to resist as they dragged him like a sack of potatoes to another room. Shivering, he glanced up. It was much smaller, colorless, and emptier than the previous one. Face back down, he took a deep breath and collapsed on the only chair.
He spent the next three hours staring at his own feet in utter silence. He bit the inside of his mouth over and over, focusing on the pain to keep his mind shut.
"Mister Voland?" a gentle voice called him.
It belonged to a clean-shaven, Indian man in his thirties. The combination of his handsome face with the beige cardigan was oddly reassuring. Sitting on a chair, he'd dragged in front of Set, he smiled.
"I'm Doctor Sunil Sukhera, and I'm here to help you. Would you like to have a little talk with me?"
Set gave him a glance and immediately looked down again. A no-touch and no-stare approach was the only way he knew to stay sharp. The doctor didn't bat an eyelash and with plenty of patience and politeness, went through his interview. Set tried his best to give some answers. Hearing the man's calm voice, his shoulders slowly relaxed and his heartbeat slowed down.
After a while, though, Sukhera moved closer and bent down to look in his eyes. As the doctor lifted his hand, Set cringed away from it.
"Please, don't touch me. I don't want to hurt you," he pleaded.
"And why would you?" the doctor asked, retracting his hand.
"'Cause if you touch me, you'll become somebody else," Set hissed, his veins pulsating in his neck from the effort of focusing on the present. "It happens all the time."
Sukhera studied his face. "Did you undergo any operations recently?"
Set joined his hands on his lap, twisting his fingers. He forced the words out. "Not that I remember."
"Are you likely to bite your tongue, Mister Voland?"
"Hell, no."
"Have you been experiencing any urinary incontinence?"
Taken aback, Set squinted before he frantically shook his head.
The doctor withdrew, holding his notes to his chest. He talked to the officers supervising them—about Set Voland probably being affected by a psychotic disorder, possibly schizophrenia*—and requested to get him tested in a proper facility. He explained that he was going to request a brain scan, review from the neurological team, and urine drug screen in order to exclude recreational drug effects, viral encephalitis, or any other encephalopathy. After he got the police's authorization, he walked back to Set, smiled, and sat with him again.
An awkward silence fell in the room until a couple of men in white lab coats came over. They injected Set with something—shivers crawled all over his skin at the cold sting of the needle—before they pulled him up. By the time they put him in the back of a medical car, the drugs had kicked in. He couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.
The next thing he knew, he stumbled through the bleached corridor, dragged along by the nurses who held his arms on each side. He was in a hospital. His eyes drifted over the waiting chairs and shut doors, meeting dull glances from a couple of doctors. He was feeling faint, his vision was blurred and his head heavy, but he had to find a way out of there. He had to because he had lied about forgetting his ID. He didn't even know how long it had been since he had owned one. He couldn't even remember his real name. Set Voland was what the demon called him and if the police found out how nuts he was, God knows when they would let him go.
The nurses stopped and Set read the tag on the door: Doctor W. Von Haughman, Chief Psychiatrist. Everything in that place was just too intense and white. When the nurse on his right tightened the grip on his arm, it gave his hallucinations a boost but Set couldn't afford to burst again. He took a deep breath and strived to stay sharp. His eyes went wide as he stared at the blinding white entrance. Silence reigned in the hall, but muffled voices vibrated on the other side of the closed door, hitting his brain as hard as shouts. With a soft clank—which reverberated in his head like a harsh boom—the door opened.
An exotic man stepped out of the room and gazed at Set. His clothes, skin, and hair, everything was as white as the background, but not his eyes. Those were black and deep like open doors to a bottomless abyss. For a moment, that gaze absorbed Set completely and dragged him into the depth of an unknown, new universe, unfolding millions of stars in an endless night. His head went blank and he felt utterly innocent like Christ on the cross.
In that moment, Set Voland—as he had known himself—died and was reborn.