Scary Stories and CreepyPasta's!

The Truth Will Set You Free (Operation Stingray In Effect)

So," LaFarge said, "what's the plan?"

He was a big, hefty son of a bitch, with a bushy mustache and a mop of stringy gray hair. Heavy dark bags sagged under his eyes, and he reeked of BO and wood chips. I have no idea how he was able to ambush me without my smelling him first.

I blinked. "What do you mean? Brian told me to find you. I assumed you had the plan."

LaFarge shook his head. "Brian is the brains. I'm just the eye candy. Where is he anyway? Is he on his way?"

My eyes sank down to the floor. When I looked up, LaFarge's expression had turned grim. "Damn it," he said. "I guess that means Phase Two is underway."

"Phase Two?"

"How much did Brian tell you?"

I told the story of everything that had happened to me: Brian's disappearance, the riot outside the restaurant, Lindsay attacking me, the man in the bowler hat, everything leading up to us meeting in the lighthouse.

LaFarge shook his head. "Well, you managed to make every stupid mistake you possibly could, but at least you're still alive. Maybe that's why Brian trusted you, because he knew you were lucky. It certainly wasn't because he thought you were smart."

I could see why he and Brian got along. "Well if we don't have a plan, then we should at least get out of this lighthouse," I said.

"Agreed. I've got a safehouse a few hours from here that should do until we figure out our next move. But first-" he reached into his pocket and took out a white pill. He held it out to me. I hesitated. "Don't worry," he said, "it's a much milder version than the old batches. Won't drive you crazy, for one thing." I swallowed it.

We headed back toward the town in the cold moonlight. LaFarge held a strange device in his hand, a mess of soldered electrical components. He glanced at it from time to time. I looked around nervously as we walked the silent streets.

"It's okay," he said, looking down at the device. "The town's clean. Not a single Stingray for a few miles in any direction. And they only have an effective range of a few hundred feet, so we're in the clear for now."

"Stingray. Is that what they call the mind control device?"

"Nothing gets by you, kid."

"How do you know so much about it?"

LaFarge let out a short, bitter laugh. "Because," he said, "I helped create it."

I climbed into the cab of LaFarge's rusty pickup truck, and we drove off into the night. He stayed to the country roads, and the branches made checkered shadows on his face as he spoke.

"2008 scared everyone," he said. "Until then the US government had been living in a world of make-believe. We had defeated communism and stood alone as the world's last great superpower. We were the capstone on top of the global pyramid, free to enforce our will as we saw fit. There were cracks in the armor. The Towers, Iraq, Katrina. But to the people in charge they were just a few bumps in the road. No reason for alarm. Just tweak the strategy a little bit, put a black guy in the White House, that'll calm 'em down.

"But in the fall of 2008, the financial crisis hit. Global commerce stopped for a few days. Stopped. For a terrifying moment, the whole system looked like it could unravel. And every economist with a brain was saying the same thing: this is only the beginning. The old boys in charge had finally seen truth. They'd been having a picnic in a minefield, and the first one had gone off.

"In the 30's it was easy. The great engine of American industry was still churning, and there were enough resources to pull the whole world back from the brink. Not anymore. Whatever resources exist are concentrated in the hands of people who refuse to give them up. Maybe a few old billionaires would fund cancer research to win points with Saint Peter, but by and large the financial elite had told Washington, 'We aren't paying for this mess. Figure something else out.' But it was a riddle without an answer. Who could stabilize the system? China? China is a house of cards, one real estate bubble away from collapsing like the Soviet Union. India is a backwater pretender, and the Russians are digging for oil like a smackhead poking around for that last vein. No, there would be no New Deal, and history shows that when a government can't govern, eventually the people rise up.