Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  Yet nobody was near him; nothing had struck him. It was all in his head.

  He eyed Kleinschmit preparing to get out of his chair. As the man’s knees swung sideways and his torso bent, Phillip reached under his pant leg and drew his knife. “YOU SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL CUT YOU TO PIECES!”

  Kleinschmit slowly sat back down, perched upright on the edge of his chaise lounge. “Are you okay? I was just coming over to check on you.”

  “Spare me your BS.” Phillip braced his heavy head with both hands on his cheeks, thumbs under his chin. It was pounding harder and harder, like it was going to explode. He started to cringe. Kleinschmit’s voice kept ringing in his ears, over and over: Your father never wanted to have you. Your mother hated you. “Why did you say that to me?”

  Kleinschmit sat motionless, eyes fixed on Phillip. He took off his shades with one hand and neatly placed them on the end table, between a bottle of thirty-year-old single malt whiskey and a half-full glass of it, no ice. His hair was black, slicked back, darker than his graying eyebrows. It formed a widow’s peak on his forehead. With his skin wrinkled and sagging a bit below his jaw, his face made him look older than his toned body alone suggested.

  Phillip gripped the handle of the upright knife, blade flashing in the sun, his hand trembling. He could hear Kleinschmit’s raspy voice, but Kleinschmit’s lips weren’t moving. Your father never wanted to have you. Your mother hated you. “Shut up already. What are you, some kind of telepath?”

  Kleinschmit smiled, showing his yellow teeth. He reached for a pack of unfiltered Camels leaning against a half-filled black ashtray. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes, I do. I hate cigarettes. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Your father smoked, didn’t he?”

  “Stop talking about my father.” Now the smell of tobacco smoke swirled in Phillip’s head. Your father never wanted to have you. Your mother hated you.

  A gentle breeze blew, bringing the smell of something sweet to Phillip’s sensitive nose. “What’s that scent in the air?” Phillip looked around the pool and saw weeping shrubs in bloom. Their fragrance was sweeter than the lupines of the Karner Blue. “What are those flower shrubs over there?”

  “Juliana Hers Weeping Lilac. Aren’t they beautiful? I’m a big lilac fan. You can see they’re all around the house.”

  Phillip recognized the fragrance but couldn’t place it. All he knew was that the smell was making him nervous for some reason. Could this same shrub have bloomed in his childhood, in Syracuse?

  “You don’t look well, Phillip. Maybe you’d like to go inside and get out of the sun?”

  “Why did you do this to me? I thought you were a good man.” Now a voice echoed in his head. Martin Kleinschmit is a good man, a good superintendent.

  “We could continue this talk inside, if you’d like.”

  “No. I’m not going in that house,” Phillip said, pointing to the concrete-gray stucco mansion. He wasn’t sure why he was so terrified of the house. At that moment, he feared it more than he did Kleinschmit. When he saw his reflection in the large picture window, he stood up. He looked at all the windows. They were all white paned windows. The reflections weren’t naturally occurring. Every piece of paned glass had been tinted to reflect so you couldn’t see inside. Even the basement windows were tinted. He took a step toward the house and it suddenly all came together. A memory surfaced.

  “Now I remember, Kleinschmit. It’s all coming back to me now. The smells, the fragrances, your voice, the windows, this house. I’ve been here before. This is not an implanted memory either. It can’t be. Why would you implant a memory about me being in your own house?”

  “I think you’re imagining things, Phillip. Your mind is playing tricks on you.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I remember being in this house, in the basement, through that sliding glass door over there. Behind that door is a white operating room of sorts. I was lying on my back on a table—it was shiny, and metal—looking out that window. I remember because I was naked and the steel was cold. Maybe stainless steel. There was a light overhead. It was really bright. My hands and ankles were strapped down to the table. There was a huge machine that hummed. A man in scrubs with a surgical mask applied some jelly to my temples. My head was in a vise-like contraption. Someone put something in my mouth, maybe a bite block. I struggled but I couldn’t move. I was terrified. The man said I wouldn’t remember the treatment at all. I felt two cold electrodes applied to my head. Then the machine hummed louder and louder until . . . until . . . that’s all I remember.”

  “You know, Dawkins, hallucinations are part and parcel of the experience of solitary.”

  Phillip knew there was more to his memory, but he couldn’t unearth the rest. “This isn’t a hallucination. And if you haven’t noticed, I’m not in solitary anymore. You held me against my will and fried my brain with electroshock. You’re nothing but a sick, sadistic son of a bitch.”

  “Well, that’s quite an assessment coming from an admitted cop killer. Your memory is about a hallucination you had in solitary. And even though you left solitary, it never really leaves you. Isn’t that right, Phillip?”

  Just then there was a loud whinny from one of the two horses in the pasture below. Both men looked in that direction. The stallion nickered, shook his head, and nudged the mare’s neck with it before she urinated like someone had turned on a hose full blast. When she was done, the stallion stood on his hind legs and lifted his front legs onto the mare’s back, while trying to mount her from the rear. When he got into position, it took less than thirty seconds of thrusting before the deed was done. He dismounted and galloped off.

  Kleinschmit said, “Well, looks like Caligula has covered another one for the season, all by himself. Glad I didn’t have to get involved. That’ll probably be his last.”

  “What do you have here, some kind of stud farm or something?”

  “Yes, it’s a side business. There are a lot of mares that come through here during mating season looking to hook up with him. He was quite a racehorse in his day. A lot of his offspring compete about an hour north of here up at Saratoga Racetrack. Now, Phillip, I don’t have an operating room in the basement with steel beds and whatnot. Go see for yourself. The sliding door is unlocked.”

  “Okay, let’s walk over there and take a look.” If Kleinschmit said that there wasn’t an operating room on the other side, Phillip didn’t expect to find one. But what he hoped to find was another trigger that would force another memory to surface. He pointed his knife at the house. “You first.”

  Kleinschmit got up and walked toward the door. Phillip was close behind with his knife extended. When they got near the door, Phillip said, “Lie down on the lawn, face down. Kleinschmit looked over his shoulder. His glacier-blue eyes narrowed then zeroed in on Phillip. “Right there,” Phillip said, pointing his knife at a patch of grass a few feet from the door. “Do as I say.”

  Phillip kept his eyes on Kleinschmit as the super got down on all fours before lying flat on his stomach.

  Phillip slid the door open wide and poked his head inside. The finished room had large ceramic tiles on the floor. The walls were sheet-rocked, bare, and painted off-white. There was a white desk by the door but otherwise the room was empty. It reeked of cigarettes. The ceiling was made of suspended white tiles with swirls that looked knotted together.

  “See, there’s nothing there. It’s all in your mind. Maybe you heard about my house and had dreams about it. Maybe those dreams became hallucinations.”

  But Phillip now recalled the cigarette odor in the room. He spotted a black, oblong ceramic ashtray full of butts on the desk. He’d seen it before. He remembered it. Now he could envision Kleinschmit’s icy-blue eyes piercing him like shards of glass from between a scrub cap and surgical mask against the backdrop of the knotted ceiling. “I’ve been here before. I know it. There were other men here too.”

  “Phillip, we can’t just ta
ke prisoners out of the facility and take them to my home.”

  “Don’t give me that. It’s happened before. The Kranston library has the state investigative report about Green Haven Maximum Security Prison—about how inmates were routinely driven to the home of the superintendent to do work around his house or to attend parties. I read it and know the real deal.”

  “That was years ago, Phillip. Do you recall being driven here?”

  “Green Haven might have been years ago but so was my visit here. No, I don’t remember being driven here, but just because I can’t remember something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If I’ve learned anything the past few months, it’s been that. For all I know, I was drugged and unconscious while you drove me here.”

  Your father never wanted to have you. Your mother hated you.

  Kleinschmit’s voice in Phillip’s mind was now almost too loud to bear. It burned his ears and he had a vision of himself being nailed to a cross, blood flowing from the nails pounded through his wrists. Clutching the knife, Phillip’s right hand slowly drooped to his side, tip pointed down, while he rubbed his forehead with his left hand.

  Kleinschmit’s eyes widened at the impending opportunity. “What’s the matter, Phillip? Let me get up to help you. There’s a chair inside you can sit down in.”

  “YOU STAY THERE OR I’LL KILL YOU! I’m not going in that room. It’s coming back to me now. I’m starting to remember things. Not only did you electroshock me here to wipe my mind clean, you blared a recording ‘round the clock telling me—in your voice—that my father didn’t want me and my mother hated me. You . . . you drove a wedge between me and my parents.”

  “Phillip, how could I drive a wedge between you and your parents when you didn’t have a relationship with them to begin with?”

  “With all their faults, they were still my parents. Why would you do such a thing? Why? You were such a good man, such a good superintendent.” As soon as Phillip said that, the pieces fell into place. “After you turned me against my parents, you sought to replace them. You fed me a recorded message that you were a good man, a good superintendent. You had your own walking, talking PR machine in me that told everyone you were a great man. I even believed it and couldn’t recognize all the bad things you did to me. It was the old good cop-bad cop routine—except it played out in my head, all of the time. My parents became evil and you became God.”

  “There you go again, Phillip. Maybe it’s time for you to leave.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. You’re the one who took my porter job away, not the central office. The central office didn’t keep my distant cousin from visiting, you did. You’re the one who got the COs to write bogus tickets to keep me in solitary. You probably even told the hearing officer to decide against me on my appeals. When my segregation status was reviewed every sixty days, you either told the committee to decide against me or you overruled it. You wanted to keep me in solitary so you could experiment on me in secret. Who’s behind this? The CIA?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Well, there’s no sense asking you. You won’t admit that this is a CIA op. You don’t want to compromise the agency. If you did, you know they’d come after you.”

  “You’re delusional. The CIA isn’t involved in anything we do at Kranston.”

  “Who’s in charge of this project?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. O’Neil is in charge of the Bureau of Prisons, if that’s what you mean. But you already knew that.”

  Just then, Phillip spotted something square covered in white vinyl on top of the white desk just inside the door. He reached a long arm inside and ripped the vinyl cover off. There sat a powder blue 1965 Smith Corona Sterling Typewriter loaded with a sheet of paper. “Look at what we have here. A typewriter. Now why would you have something so old in such a modern home as this?”

  “It was a gift. Commissioner O’Neil gave it to me. He likes to collect typewriters.”

  “When did he give that to you?”

  “I don’t know—a few years back.”

  With one hand holding his knife, Phillip reached in the room to type some lowercase letters with his free hand. Then he pressed his thumb on the shift key and typed some uppercase letters. He jumped when the typewriter bell sounded to let him know he was running out of room. As he ripped the paper and brought it close to his eyes, the sound of the bell continued to reverberate around the empty room before finally fading. He couldn’t help but think he’d heard that bell before. “I don’t believe it. Would you look at that?”

  “Look at what?”

  “The uppercase letters struck lower than the lowercase ones, just like the typewriter that was used to file a complaint with the Bureau of Licenses. Your typewriter is out of alignment.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t use it.”

  “Well, somebody has used it. Maybe one of your COs came over and typed something up for you or maybe you just forgot that you used it. Like you said, memories can be a tricky thing. Or maybe you’re just lying through your teeth.” And as Phillip said that, another memory surfaced. It made his blood run cold. He felt the chill deep in his gut.

  “I remember now lying on that metal table, face down this time, strapped down at the hands, ankles, and neck. I was naked. I think it must have been before you tried to wipe my memory clean with electroshock. There were other men in the room, maybe COs, maybe the CIA. Everyone was behind me; I couldn’t see anyone. Someone was massaging my buttocks, putting some lotion on them. I think hands put jelly on my anus, started probing it, and lubricating it with something, maybe a finger. The men in the room were laughing. Then I felt something thrust into my anus, in and out, in and out. I recall my rectum was in horrible pain. OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, DID YOU . . . DID YOU RAPE ME HERE? IS THAT WHAT YOU DID TO ME?”

  “You really need to listen to yourself. Do you really think there was a conspiracy to kidnap you from prison to rape you here? If we really wanted to rape you, we’d pair you up at Kranston with some ass bandit as your shower-mate, and then we’d drop your soap on the floor.”

  “I WASN’T TALKING ABOUT SOME ASS BANDIT AT KRANSTON. I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE CIA. I WAS TALKING ABOUT COs. I WAS ALSO TALKING ABOUT YOU!”

  “So you have memories of me raping you then?”

  “No . . . I don’t.”

  “Do you have memories of me here at my house?”

  “No . . . but I do remember a man overseeing this torture. He hid behind a surgical mask and scrub cap. He had your eyes. Wait . . . now it’s coming back to me. There was a hole in the table lined with padding. My genitals and my penis were lined up with that hole so that they hung down below the table, underneath it. You catheterized me, made me piss out every drop of urine I had in me. Then I felt you put some rod or something deep into my anus. I screamed when it went in. You thrust it back and forth and pumped electrical current through it. I heard laughter. I felt so ashamed and angry you stuck something in my butt. I recall the tingling turned to pain and then back to tingling. I felt so violated. Then I realized that somehow I was getting an erection. YOU USED ELECTRICAL CURRENT TO GET AN ERECTION OUT OF ME! And then you fooled around with the current and . . . I don’t believe it. YOU CAUSED ME TO EJACULATE BENEATH THE TABLE. I lost complete control of my body. I was so thoroughly ashamed, angry, and disgusted but at the same time I was ejaculating. That sounds like rape to me. Why did you do that? Did you and your pals get your kicks out of dehumanizing me? YOU’RE SICK, KLEINSCHMIT, A TOTAL PSYCHO.”

  “You’ve lost your mind, Phillip. You need help. Let me help you.”

  “Right, Kleinschmit. ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’ I don’t think so. It’s coming back to me now—it’s all coming back. There was another table beside me, several feet away. There was a person lying on it. I couldn’t see that person’s face, just the feet, because that person was pointed in the opposite direction. The legs were smooth, no hair, and the feet had a pedicure and coral
pink nail polish. Yes, that person was a woman. She didn’t move or say anything. After I ejaculated, someone ducked under my table and everyone left my side and went to the other table. You put her legs up in stirrups and—OH MY GOD, NOW I KNOW WHAT YOU DID, YOU SICK SON OF A BITCH. YOU TOOK MY SEMEN AND PUT IT IN HER. YOU WANTED TO IMPREGNATE THAT WOMAN WITH MY SEMEN!”

  “Phillip, let me help you. You had wild hallucinations like this while you were in solitary. You almost killed yourself several times. I got you help, allowed you to live with yourself, helped you to erase all the bad memories of your childhood and the memories of murdering that police officer.”

  Phillip was half listening, and half watching the horses run with one another in the pasture below. “You ran a stud farm for horses and a stud farm for me.” Now Phillip understood that the woman lying next to him was Edith Nowak, and that he really was the father of Janet Nowak. David was right. The silhouette of the woman he’d seen in Mohawk City was his daughter. He wished he’d seen her face, but at the same time he was glad he didn’t. “YOU RAPED EDITH NOWAK WITH MY SPERM. IT’S LIKE I RAPED HER. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?”

  “Maybe you raped Edith Nowak yourself? Did you ever think of that? Maybe you had access to her when you were a porter cleaning the cellblock. Maybe you two ducked into a supply closet to have sex—”

  “I don’t have any memory of that.”

  “It was erased. Sometimes when we treated you, we mistakenly erased memories.”

  “I don’t believe you. Is that what you call electroshock torture? Treatment?”

  “It’s been around for decades and has successfully treated people like yourself. O’Neil knew all about electroshock therapy and its benefits.”

  “Shut up, already. The internet says that nobody even knows how it works. If you erased my memory of raping Edith Nowak in a supply closet, then how do I have this memory of you impregnating Edith Nowak with my sperm in this very room? You certainly didn’t implant that one.”