BALLAD OF LEE A Fiction Series
Issue No. 1: “The Pre-Test”
Copyright © 2026 The Discerner. All rights reserved. This work is protected under applicable copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution constitutes infringement and may result in civil and criminal penalties. Published in The Discerner, 2026. First serial rights reserved by the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, companies, or institutions is purely coincidental.
BALLAD OF LEE #1 — THE PRE-TEST
（事前の同意）
by
Lukas Lee
A framed picture of a Caucasian swami with a man bun, the last of his kind, hung between two stone pillars in the penthouse loft’s center. The Guru looked Eastern in some way, despite never visiting the region. He watched many ether waves, believing he understood.
The penthouse tower quivered on rusty foundations laid since birth. The large, steel-reinforced paneled windows framed the megacity at night, Edo Tower looming among the buildings and lights, nearing self-destruction on March 3. Old Edo no longer showed its former glory. Most residents felt unhappy and couldn’t say why. The bubble persisted, fueling false hope. Visits to temples and lodges reached record levels.
The portrait looked back.
Brother Felix and Brother Jasper stood in the kitchen, not speaking. They didn’t need to. In the sitting area, two identical clocks hung across from each other, one above the kitchen, one above the sofa. Both hands frozen. Both waiting for permission. The clocks were either eleven hours ahead or behind, depending on the perspective. March third arrived sooner or later, depending on the story.
The loft’s temperature was a touch too cool, a climate control that tightened the skin, as if the building itself were alert and listening. The lighting was dim except for a focused beam illuminating the chair at the glass table, a circle of light centered on no one yet.
“He’s illuminating. The golden man for the golden age.” The phrase drifted through the kitchen, too quiet to trace exactly.
Two garden plants sat in identical pots near the bookshelves, their thorns and thistles intertwined, inseparable. They never grew nor withered, living on borrowed time. The bookshelves encased the sitting area, arranged by theme rather than alphabet. Curated. The room showed no signs of life, a vacancy that stood in contrast to its former state, bottles and bodies from other nights, Da@Video and the group in black turtlenecks, the Sheriff near the balcony, Uncle Reject polishing the pole.
The pole. A grand structure, built decades ago in an underground Swiss base, reinforced with steel and designed for ritual and spectacle. “How can we connect this to biometrics to boost margins?” someone had once asked, casually, as if discussing app features.
Tonight the loft was clean. IKEA on ketamine.
Brother Felix and Brother Jasper moved through the kitchen with poor coordination, as if inhabiting a composite body still learning its joints. Silent signals exchanged, feeding time for the third mind, not with spoken words but with subtle glances and micro gestures.
“We met by chance. Fate. Two brothers becoming one.” “He’ll arrive three minutes late. One last cigarette.” “He’ll be one drink in. Tough day at work.” “If this doesn’t work, we’ll reconnect with the hive immediately.” “I worry he broke through without our guidance.” “Being empty-handed is not an option.”
Da@Video flickered into memory between them, the all-seeing eye framed by analog grain. Uncle Reject, higher rank in the hive, nodded from wherever he was watching.
“Chemicals. Where are the chemicals?”
A newborn giraffe in a composite body.
Could have been an altar boy. Could have been a star. Chose to be a cog.
The phrase hovered without an owner.
“This one had a connection to Lee.” “Only in group settings before he disappeared.” “Small chance of success.” “There is only one way.” “The extinguisher is ready.” “He’s here.”
The doorbell rang, a clear electronic tone that cut through the dimness. Both clocks stood still.
The Guru thought he was in control.
He took pride in belonging to a secret circle of public troublemakers. Chemical D financed his rebellious group, which wore marbled masks and often played key roles in the media, subtly disrupting the megacity. The scene resembled a Kowloon-like mixture of ninja-inspired punks and neo-techno enthusiasts, swirling under flashing fluorescent lights on brutalist ceilings, a sensory overload only the right chemical mix could detect. An unspoken signal at the center sparked chaos among fans and outsiders alike. The Guru’s gang worked all night selling D. Just ask the bartender on the third floor. If he wasn’t available, that was too bad. Behind glass, scientists in lab coats observed and recorded everything.
Deep underground, amid maze-like buildings and abandoned neon signs, a hub existed while real estate moguls decided its future, possibly a mall and pool. Fans, known across digital networks, are quietly influenced through algorithms. Uncle Reject and his team coordinated this generation’s spectacle of deception and fraud.
The Guru caused controversy by criticizing late-night venues serving the night crowd and providing alternative energy sources to keep them going into the next night. These venues often avoided paying the Sheriff during inspections, which usually occurred long after the events ended. Behind the scenes, a typical shady business owner counted his shekels, a man in Levi dungarees and a white cowboy hat nearby. Even after dancers finished their routines on the sticky, black-and-white checkered floors, the pole remained crowded and ready for the next act. These places also had links to the occult and coercion. The Sheriff arrived with video footage.
“Tsk, tsk.”
It’s finally time to face the Sheriff. Few get this chance. Once the hidden truth is uncovered, your turn will come.
Some viewed the Guru as a savior. Was he in alignment with the Sheriff or opposed to him? The subtle tactics he employed went largely unnoticed. Only those with true understanding recognized his true nature. Many others overlooked his significance because they never looked. Some ignored introspection, considering it a burden. Others, consumed by emptiness, attempted to fill the void with D, only to suffer in the long run while the circus temporarily thrived.
Lee saw himself as a nuisance despite being the Guru. He knew he had to face that alter ego but didn’t realize he needed to, even though he sensed he could.
Davio Da@Video, a renowned analog surrealist, had been in the penthouse the night before, in a tall marble building with a large glass window reinforced by concrete, brick, and industrial steel. While fans saw it as art, it hid his secret nighttime activities, untraceable videos embedded in the third mind, where everyone was watched and the watchers remained unseen. If Lee had known his artistic hero was there, he would have been overwhelmed. No one informed or invited him, despite his frequent, often spontaneous visits to the loft to showcase himself. Da@Video watched from above, experiencing Lee’s life through the same glass that overlooked the city.
Not if I can help it, Lee remembers. Thanks to Da@Video, Uncle Reject’s trusted associate, Lee’s clarity begins to fade. He’s part of a prestigious group of elite cadets, well-born men, all trained by the best. Public relations and legal teams work together to improve every aspect. The traditional analog system, which cattle think they resist by switching from digital and beaming, involves hidden new candidates at a remote chalet, placing bets and relaxing before a deeper initiation, a game as old as time, or at least the idea of time.
Do you understand? Do you understand the meaning of love?
To the detached, the party venues looked like dull hallways filled with noise. To others, they meant everything. Those trapped in a cycle. This is when they first made contact.
A talented young man, whose book captivated his 6th-grade class, happily socialized at a family barbecue with community leaders, receiving praise and signing autographs for distant relatives with no blood ties, uncle after uncle, brother after brother. When it was time to leave, one relative would grip his wrist so tightly that young Lee winced, politely asking to go. It was an old joke Lee never enjoyed, his mother out of sight, keys jingling in the van as she waited in the gravel lot.
He was raised in a small house behind a parking lot with his single mother, who bore a kanji tattoo on her lower back, symbolizing her sister’s family. Most evenings, he dined on microwave chicken pot pies and knishes. His imaginary grandmother lent him money from her savings so he could take a one-way flight to Nippon, needing to hide beforehand as authorities arrived at gunpoint to garnish his wages for unpaid loans accumulated during two years of unsuccessful community college classes.
He later became a renowned writer but never produced another piece after the Edo Tower collapsed during the final dance around the pole, amidst flames and the rise of radical jihadism in the Grunma mountains. He dictated to a screen while a follower held his hand. His picture was prominently displayed in the center of the penthouse loft, not just any penthouse but the exclusive penthouse, on the night he celebrated a blessing, a dream only a stage playwright could envision, as if a silent conductor was directing everything.
Lukas Lee. The master and king, in his home.
The beginning or the end, a fleeting dream, a ghostly apparition, or a blend of all.
It’s up to you. Just avoid judgment.
Lukas Lee was unaware that he had completed the first phase of his enlightenment. Brother Felix and Brother Jasper had been facilitating it in secret, though the situation was more complex than it seemed. In the days leading up to tonight, he thought he understood what was happening, then dismissed it as hallucination. They couldn’t conceal their happiness around him. They knew the Guru would emerge after his thirty-second birthday on March 3. Three days remaining. Lukas believed he achieved this through willpower alone. In reality, they had been guiding him the entire time. Now he was prepared to become a vessel, sent into the wastelands to distribute legal pharmaceuticals and spread deceptive ideas as D coursed through the veins of the megacity.
Da@Video had told Brother Jasper the night before: “We must make it sparkling clean. Through the power of One, we can use him to uncover great secrets.” Brother Felix and Brother Jasper found this too obvious. They proceeded carefully, concealing their true motives behind a friendly demeanor.
He’s too self-absorbed to realize.
Tonight acted as the pre-test. If Lukas passed, he would receive an invitation to a gathering in Grunma’s mountains, the grand plan, the Guru and others watching and barking at the moon. The festival, organized by Uncle Reject, offered participants a glimpse behind the curtain. This was the ultimate test, a plunge into madness. After all, madness is the unavoidable result.
Each year, people made the trek into the wilderness in search of highs, friendship, and self-discovery, often without understanding their true purpose. The network selected individuals carefully, claiming to use an algorithm centered on inner growth. Invitations extended by handlers. On the final day, many participants bore black eyes and chipped teeth, yet no one hesitated. The West Coast Conglomerates’ board considered it a systems check, exploiting poverty, promoting degeneracy and deprivation, suppressing the human desire for meaning. Many followed unknowingly, guided by a guru who would eventually become Lee.
Brother Felix and Brother Jasper had been planning this for three years. The final trap was set for the week before Lukas Lee’s arrival at the penthouse loft.
Lee had consumed more alcohol than he admitted before reaching his destination. He justified having just one chu-hai to relax, a small aluminum can from a convenience store near the station, citrus-flavored and cold enough to numb his palate. The week had been exhausting, spent pretending to be productive while doing very little, sitting at his desk at HSC, skimming reports, nodding in meetings, slipping into private corridors where ideas echoed softly without witnesses.
Eckhart Tolle, eat your heart out. Dr. Davos.
He’d been told to fast for forty-eight hours beforehand, a strict lemonade diet, a regimen the company provided as a thank-you for naming someone Head of Direct Thought. Presented with a corporate smile, as if it were a promotion rather than a pilot program. The lemonade arrived in matte glass bottles with minimalist labels, listing ingredients in lowercase, purified water, organic citrus, trace minerals, no preservatives, without further explanation. Lee had loosely followed instructions, breaking his fast that afternoon with salted almonds and half-peeled mandarins, the citrus oils still under his nails.
The boys from HSC, pale and sharp-jawed, ate the same mandarins near the window. They spoke Mandarin into their phones while smoking behind the glass, their reflections blending with the skyline.
In a Belgian chalet, men in wool sweaters quietly placed bets, adjusted odds on spreadsheets, and documented predictions about whether the subject would succeed.
Lee first encountered Felix and Jasper a year earlier in a corner of a small club in the Inner Layer, locally known as an iyashii basho. Lukas, struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction then, didn’t remember meeting them until he moved to the Outer Layer. In that endless dusk, he’d felt his sense of self blur until it was easy to believe his thoughts weren’t private, that his revelations were being subtly harvested, as if something was slowly being installed into him. Tether before flood. Maintenance before transformation.
As March 3 drew near, the brothers called it a small get-together of friends under the full moon. Lukas valued the camaraderie. For many foreigners, forming such bonds was difficult, lack of native roots and limited cultural integration left them isolated. Technology had reduced the necessity of language learning. Many expats ignored this initially, later felt frustrated, turned to complaining as a way of coping.
Lukas sensed a void. He often questioned what they did when he was away. Any discussion of their lives outside his awareness was abruptly halted. Over the years, he gathered fragments, but their true identities and significance stayed elusive until the very end. A straightforward tragedy, an unacknowledged conflict.
It started with faint whispers overheard from the bathroom in the penthouse loft, the only room with a door he could close. He stayed hidden as their conversation tone shifted. They mentioned a former friend named Lukas. When he asked about this man’s background or whereabouts, they offered only minimal details, a friend Lukas felt he knew but had never actually met. The only information they shared was that he had gone back to his home country before turning 33.
On the night before Lukas Lee’s 32nd birthday, somewhere in the city, his friend Lucas was finishing his last shift at a straight job. A publishing deal had come through that afternoon. He was going to celebrate. He’d been invited.
Neither knew what the other was walking toward.
They discussed Lukas, who would soon become Lee, Guru, and Mr. Squared. They shared a love for algorithms, engaging him in conversations where one took notes while the other encouraged him to speak openly and boast, treating these interactions as friendships. “Karmically, he chose in through the algorithm. We’re safe now.”
They laughed like it was a sick joke.
They monitored what he read after he purchased the recommended books, the only ones Bezo permitted. They planned the year’s challenges, each critical moment embedded in what they called the hidden game, a simulation of a year filled with personal crises and revelations, all kept internal without disturbing the surface. Lukas’s mind spun new theories like a delicate spider web, unnoticed until he accidentally walked into it one hot summer night, tired and caught in its invisible threads.
After the incident involving Steve and the counterfeit sculpture, Lee became the focus of conversations on Da@Video, the artistic idol who had mentored him through media since his youth. Listening from behind the bathroom door, he felt a sense of familiarity, as if he shared in the joke but was still caught in it. Meanwhile, while you seek to understand our previous actions, we continue moving forward with new steps.
He dismissed the whispers as intrusive thoughts. Deflected suspicion by emphasizing his own insignificance, all while they laughed at the masquerade ball the night before. Whenever Lukas left the bathroom, the theories he struggled to explain had already been scrutinized. When he attempted to discuss them, others acted as if they didn’t understand. He ended up feeling emotionally drained.
Was I just naive? Was I foolish? A loser who has lost his sense? Was I always like this?
They showed little interest in him openly. Behind closed doors, they possessed full knowledge and chose not to reveal it. His doubt turned into self-flattery, convinced they couldn’t possibly have such depth. He reasoned they weren’t as educated or self-taught as he had become through his struggle with addiction. Everything started when he met Brother Jasper in a hidden corner of that club tucked away in the backstreets of the Outer Layer, the eternal nightclub that served as a refuge for those who refused to leave and end their night. Familiar faces, fleeting friendships. Only those who responded to an unspoken call could enter. A faint hum emanated from inside, signaling the call.
“Not everyone has my drive,” Lukas reminded himself.
“Not everyone has your drive,” they agreed.
Brother Felix and Brother Jasper consistently dismissed his attempts to discuss his evolving worldview. Shifted the conversation. Challenged his ideas. Stopped him from sharing his revelations. They excelled at deflecting, analyzing his thoughts, exposing his ideas, following up with pointed questions. They asked numerous questions, perhaps too many, coming across as rehearsed, as if trained in techniques Lukas couldn’t recognize. Then his ideas would be dissected on the wasteland, gaslit into oblivion, ridiculed openly. This happened more often than Lukas was willing to admit.
He approached them as if they were his therapists, revealing secrets, memories, and dark thoughts. Although he valued honesty, he often left feeling more confused than before. This confusion escalated into self-doubt, and whether by coincidence, destiny, or careful planning, it always happened around Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Lukas felt a strong, almost weaponized attraction, mistaking it for intuition. He went back to the loft. Similar conversations repeated, each one probing deeper.
From a distance, beneath their whispers, they held the answers Lukas sought. They filled his emptiness amid his success at business, thanks to their contacts at FM Superior Co. They spoke with scholarly diction but pretended ignorance when questioned. Their whispers followed Lee home at night, leaving him disoriented, unseen, and forgotten. He blamed the substances they always supplied, the ones that expanded his mind, not the cheap thrills. The ones that revealed the workings of the third mind.
Brother Felix’s desk was bathed in a persistent, unwarming light that cast harsh white beams, defining every edge and aging the paper beneath them. Lee held the Tengu book carefully, feeling the slick laminate cover and the faint dust embedded in its corners. He tried to convince himself that his interest was genuine, not seeded or anticipated, just another move in their complex puzzle. Brother Felix observed him patiently, like a magician knowing the outcome before the card is revealed, his gaze calm, his small smile unreadable. When Lee finally looked up, Brother Felix’s fingers shifted as if shuffling invisible cards, discreetly closing the book, offering safer poison, maintaining the illusion of choice. Nearby, Brother Jasper leaned against the glass, hands in pockets, head tilted toward the city as if uninterested in the ritual. Despite his silence, a weight hung in the air, like a held breath or a listener’s stance. Lee’s old reflex to perform, impress, and prove himself took over, he spoke too much, cracked his Heineken too loudly, and promised to bring the last one next time, promises that felt meaningless in a room where everything seemed already decided.
He convinced himself that the book mattered because it felt familiar, because the cover triggered an unexplainable emotion, because it evoked a version of himself who used to seek alone, without his brothers guiding the way, without Bezo’s curated list of permitted titles, without the wastescape’s algorithmic cattle chute directing every curiosity toward sanctioned conclusions. The thought didn’t come fully formed. It was fragmented, shown in how his fingers hesitated on certain pages, how his eyes lingered on specific phrases, and how a word like tengu could summon the scent of summer sweat, recall the lively sounds of an Aoyama club that never closed, or bring forth the low hum from a room’s interior, akin to a signal felt in the teeth. The loft was so quiet that Lee could hear the building breathing, ducts shifting, distant elevator cables humming. Amidst that silence, he detected a second, subtle sound beneath the mechanical noise, a faint electronic whine that intensified whenever Brother Felix paused between words. This was similar to Brother Jasper’s conversational tactic, the space between syllables where something else slips in, where one book replaces another, a thought shifts sideways, and the third mind is nourished without the eater noticing the spoon.
The brothers’ world did not outright forbid God, but rather diluted Him, mixing saline poison into truth until everything tasted divine enough to indulge in, yet contaminated enough to discredit those who drank.
The Tengu book rested on his knee, heavier than mere paper, more like a tangible object in a world that’s increasingly intangible, evidence that something exists outside the feed. Real books had become rare. If Bezo at HSC didn’t supply it, it wouldn’t multiply. Lee understood this, but still reacted with surprise each time he discovered a text that had slipped through the cracks.
Here’s some Huxley Spencer. Poison yourself to hear what we did to you.
The voice wasn’t external. It arose inside him like an intrusive thought, sounding like a command. He turned the pages anyway. His eyes moved faster than his comprehension, searching for hooks, symbols, and the tiny saline poison mixed into lines that looked otherwise like revelations. He sensed how the material was designed to keep him on a control plantation, crazy enough to isolate him, plausible enough to make him feel unique, coherent enough to lure his pattern-seeking mind into constructing a web that would collapse the moment anyone shined a light on it.
Brother Felix spoke again, softly and almost bored, while Brother Jasper chuckled thoughtfully, as if amused by something only he noticed beyond Lee’s awareness. They observed Lee becoming the type who borrows books to impress others, performing the same ritual Lukas once did, as if choosing his steps consciously when he was actually being directed.
Lee convinced himself he had quit the fake cocaine habit with their help. That memory was a subtle wink, a secret gathering outside the boundaries where origins were sacrificed to their source, belief in the source, as the new chemical arrived afterward like a replacement limb. He remembered how weekend parties felt wild and mythic, with mornings blending into nights and vice versa, and how the club in Aoyama never closed, making the end of the night an illusion.
One. No. Two. Quiet. His thoughts clashed like conflicting signals, a stammer between voices. He couldn’t tell which was his. He wasn’t sure if his correction was instinct or programming. Nevertheless, he drank. The Heineken tasted metallic, like cheap sponsored ads, like slogans shouted aloud and suddenly sounding empty. Coming soon to a theater near you. Call your local congressman. Wait, he’s not here to help.
The sentences washed over him like a commercial break, more horrifying not because of the darkness but due to their banality. The hive might entertain with casual talk, while at the same time, blood-curdling ring alerts punctuate the edges. Protein glycine sales could rise in the fall, someone might call it funding secured for the next festival, and the human craving for meaning could be reduced to a simple systems check.
Lee told himself he was looking for inspiration. Searching for fresh ideas to add to the grand story in his mind while working the corporate world until evening. The story felt ingrained from birth, layers of creation overlapping, cheap Hollywood copies of hero’s journeys that always turned inward and never broke through the dome. He sensed a Frankenstein-like ambition inside him, a project that needed ongoing care, like a dam that couldn’t be flooded too fast until the tether held.
The third mind is now installed. The last of the manbuns is arriving. Yogi enthusiast. Guru.
A bitter laugh escaped him, and he despised how amusing he found it, hating that humor served as one of the brothers’ tools to keep him meek and compliant. Brother Felix and Brother Jasper chuckled softly and patiently, like actors waiting for their cue. Lee flicked another page, dust rose, and the scent of old glue and time filled the air. The classified stamp in the earlier book flashed in his mind like an afterimage. It might not be Hungarian, nor Pig Latin, perhaps a language for the dead, or one meant to be misunderstood. Maybe the message wasn’t just about the content but about the effect on the reader.
Beyond the glass, the city stretched out in its sparkling chaos. Somewhere, someone scrolled through their phone. Somewhere else, someone spoke into a microphone, while another booked a lodge. Still others were praying, just one person, under the indifferent gaze of a full moon. Inside the loft, the brothers observed Lee intently, not out of fear but with careful curiosity, taking silent notes. Lee felt the unusual weight of being both the observed and the observer, both the man and the instrument, gradually erasing Lukas with each page as he believed he was carving his path toward freedom.
Lee’s phone vibrated in his pocket, not with a new message but with the reminder of one. He visualized the screen as if it were still glowing. He noticed how the brothers depicted everything as fellowship and a fad, portrayed chemical research as progress, used the full moon as a marketing ploy.
It’s a beautiful full moon tonight! We’ve just received a fresh batch on March 1, highlighting the latest exciting trends in chemical research. Always eager to share what’s new and inspire curiosity!
The words carried a casual tone, as if friends were planning their weekend. Lee sensed a hidden threat in them. The Thursday schedule had moved up because the calendar forced it, March third looming like a cue on stage. The moon was full. The city’s sky seemed thinner lately, as if the heavens were strained from repetition.
Lately, he felt duller, and he hated admitting it. He hated needing a new fix. Money no longer mattered. Now, as he handled HSC job interviews, discounted books not included, he could act as a post-psychonaut with confidence, as if that title made him superior to the chaos, as if ‘post’ signified survival rather than a guise absorbed from it.
He was plagued by the shame of how easily he romanticized his own entrapment. He would fantasize about labeling it a writing troupe, a movement, a rebellion, the same desire he had as a boy in Woodbury Hills, when adults suggested there was a place for children like him, or when someone proposed sending him overseas for closer observation. The diagnosis became a gateway, and that gateway led to a corridor. From an early age, he understood that his attention was a commodity others sought to exploit. He recalled the living room with the Nintendo 64, how Super Mario appeared on a black-and-white screen on an old television, how laughter could be both joyful and cruel, and how a suburb could instill terror without anyone calling it that, thanks to its guise of pranks, community, and harmless teasing. He remembered Woodbury Hills Hospital as an altar where he was placed, holding onto a childhood belief, that all things could be transformed for good through Him. He could still hold on to this belief in the dark.
This would be the ideal high, he believed, a new blend. Studies had been ongoing since at least 1947, whispered in corners, paused publicly, then resumed privately until the next derivative appeared. Another compound, sterile, calibrated, shipped in by what people called the enemy when they needed a villain and the ally when they needed a supplier. Lukas thought this and then rebuked himself. Humans could not conspire that way. Too apelike. Too disorganized. Somewhere, the chemist added an extra letter to the compound’s name to dodge Lukas’s recent epiphanies, which had been increasing rapidly. The Guru to end all gurus. The last of the manbuns. Add voodoo. Add Hebrew customs. Pair him with Chemical D. Layer tradition over trend and call it synthesis. Authorities pushed it under strict laws to keep it from the public while guarding their own cigarette racket. The same hand fed all those with influence. Borders were illusions. Nationality was a costume. Democracy was a worn-out word. Fools still slept. Lukas trusted his friends. Political beliefs felt forced but familiar, like lines memorized in school plays. They introduced him to the monthly full-moon sessions, an extra layer to his usual Thursday nights, something special, something elevated.
After the buzzer, Lucas stepped into the building lobby below, recently published and recently doomed. He pressed the button for the twenty-seventh floor and watched the numbers rise. Alcohol faint on his breath. Work shirt untucked. Humid and damp. It was his last day at a straight job, a childhood dream fulfilled with an email announcing a publishing deal. A celebration was in order. His friends had invited him under the moon.
He hadn’t seen Lee in months. Lee had stopped drinking, and Lucas wondered if he would still participate. At least they could smoke on the balcony, unlike Brother Felix and Brother Jasper, who did not smoke.
“I won’t push him,” Lucas thought. “I hope he hasn’t become judgmental.”
When the elevator doors opened, Brother Felix stood in the hallway, looking calm. “It’s been a while, brother.”
“I’m doing well. Congrats on the publishing deal. Resist the urge to be humble.”
“Same old, different day. I’m living my destiny. I owe you for the insights.”
They hugged. Brother Felix reciprocated, but without fully touching, his hands pressed the air as much as they pressed fabric. Brother Jasper sat on the sofa, legs crossed.
“You’ve been MIA,” Lucas said.
Lucas picked up a warm beer from the counter and began sharing a story about his final day at work, the awkward farewell cake, and the empty congratulations. They nodded along, speaking softly with mouths closed and eyes moving in harmony.
“So, where’s Lee?”
“He’s on his way.”
“Still off the sauce?”
“Yes.”
“Must be one of the books.”
“Speaking like a jackass?”
“Male donkey?”
“Are you okay?”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, open up. I’ve been thinking about it all week.”
They looked at him a moment longer than needed. Time seemed to freeze.
“I’ll pay you back next time,” Lucas chuckled as he put the borrowed book back on the shelf. “We figured you would. Let’s talk about it once we’re settled.” “Whip it out.” “You mean the chemicals?” “Yes.” “Bingo.”
Brother Jasper pulled out a ziplock bag containing pastel blue and pink powder from the kitchen drawer. It settled gently on the glass table, and the room suddenly felt cooler.
“Go ahead.”
Lucas hesitated, feeling a twinge of unease along his arms.
“You first.” “We already did.” “Maybe I’ll wait for Lee.” “No. You’ve been waiting all week.”
He opened the bag, releasing a sweet, sterile smell. “No, you need more,” Felix said. Brother Jasper poured extra into the glass, slicing a straight line with a business card embossed with a subtle logo. Lucas looked at his reflection, bisected by pastel powder.
“Are you sure he wants to try it?” “He said he did.” “Relief. It’ll wear off by Lee’s arrival.”
Brother Felix handed him a halved straw. “Don’t think. Just do it.”
Lucas inhaled half. A fiery burst shot through his nose into his skull. “Finish it.” He obeyed. The word anteater floated absurdly as he leaned down again. His body froze mid-breath.
Brother Felix and Brother Jasper shifted slightly, observing him from different angles, exchanging silent glances.
“Do you feel that?” “We might bring him to the festivities.” “Remember the last one.”
Lucas realized his mistake too late. The room seemed to shrink, bookshelves towering higher, shadows flickering from an invisible source. He looked at them. Their eyes were white, pupils gone. Mouths still. Whispers, an unknown language except for his name, filling the air. Understanding arrived alongside the fear as they recited his past, his childhood, abandonment, morning whiskey, obsessions, heartbreak, reading him aloud as if from a ledger. He faced his sadness, laid bare.
“He can hear us.” “Retreat.”
They moved through a doorway without walls, standing alone in a room that wasn’t fully closed, as if always waiting. Shadows flickered through the crack, with only his name clear. Lucas forced himself to speak. “Why?” The word vanished before it was complete. The room spun, impossible-colored hexagons swirling on the ceiling. Electric energy surged along his spine. Hope flickered briefly, a golden thread piercing the darkness. They reappeared. The door had vanished as if erased. The chanting resumed, harsh and vibrational. His convulsions slowed, then stopped. They quietly pushed aside the glass table, touching his shoulders with a rubber-gloved sensation, despite no visible gloves. His spine hummed, hexagons intensified, the void expanded. A golden light cut through the darkness. For a moment, there was peace.
“We lost him.”
“Stand back.”
Lucas’s body fell forward, foam spilling from his mouth, blood gathering at his eyes’ corners. He convulsed again as flames suddenly appeared, licking the glass table’s edges. Brother Felix calmly retrieved the extinguisher, as if this scene were routine. The fire was blanketed in white foam, leaving behind ash, which he vacuumed with a handheld device.
“I knew that would happen.” “He was too weak.” “No accountability.” “We’ve got to act.” “Send the signal.” “We need him.” “We need Lee.”
As they moved to the hallway, both clocks advanced by a minute for the first time since their arrival, their gears turning in sync, the winged, helmeted figure gleaming faintly in the dim light. The clocks obeyed. No ticking. Jasper paused at the threshold, head tilted as if the building itself had spoken. Somewhere deep within the city’s stacks, too far below the twenty-seventh floor for street noise, something pulsed slowly, like a second heartbeat.
Lee felt it before hearing it.
Behind the glass, gears, and staged light, he sensed an unseen attention, quiet and unmarketable, waiting to be invoked rather than persuaded. Jasper’s Nokia vibrated. He let it ring once, then again, and answered calmly. Listening and nodding, he handed it to Felix, who smiled as if told the weather. Lee watched them and felt a cold knot. Felix covered the mouthpiece and looked at Lee like a man.
“Change of plans,” he said.
Lee tried to laugh, but it sounded thin. “What plans?”
Felix’s smile remained. “The ones you already agreed to.”
Behind the glass, the city’s lights flickered, not a blackout, just enough to seem like a switch was touched. Jasper tilted his head toward the window.
“The moon is already full,” he said.
For a brief moment, the picture of the Guru on the wall seemed to look back.
TO BE CONTINUED
Ballad of Lee is an ongoing fiction series published in The Discerner. Issue No. 2 forthcoming.
***
Let it be blessed, O Lord.
Let it be blessed, my Christ.
Never depart from my side, for without Thee I am the cause of my own destruction. I desire to repent before Thee, yet I present these filthy rags, when all Thou desirest of us is that we pray unto Thee. Lord Jesus Christ, never depart from me.
Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but that he should repent and return unto Thee, may she never cease to intercede for me. Thou art the Truth; let truth ever be upon my lips. And if not, bind me and deliver me from the wicked spirit of vainglory, idle talk, gossip, and judgment.
So help me, O God.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, disciples, saints, and righteous ones, and through the prayers of St. Nicholas Equal–to-the-Apostles, Archbishop of Japan.
Amen.