by Schow, Ryan
This feels like a lie.
Then again, pieces of me not being alive, me hovering (is that a dream?) snap in and out of my awareness. Could he be telling the truth? My gut says no. I trust my gut over strangers any day.
“And what makes you sure this will work?” I ask. “That I won’t crash again?”
“Because I am the foremost expert in the field of TBI. Traumatic brain injury. No one knows more than I do about the mind. Not anywhere.”
Which might account for me being in a top secret underground…whatever. Jesus, where the hell am I anyway? In California still? Someplace else? Inside, I start to tremble. Tears well in my eyes and I’m thinking, holy shit, am I losing it? I’m thinking, whatever this is—wherever I am—it’s so not good.
Swallow it down, I tell myself.
Stay calm.
“Over the next couple weeks, we’ll start testing your physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral effects. What is typical of TBI patients—other than death, which you somehow managed to overcome—is the feeling inside you that you know more than you do. In your case, we will be testing your memory through physical exertion.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I say.
“Of course not, my dear, you are the one who was killed, not me. It is my job to restore your physical health, your mental acuity and your cognitive reasoning. It is your job to do exactly what I say because you are just a little girl, and I am a world renowned doctor. We must each know our places, yes?”
Me shrugging my shoulders is the closest he’ll get to me cooperating. Maybe because he’s right, but maybe because I just can’t stand arrogance, and this son of a bitch is teeming with it.
“There’s a better than good chance you have memories in your head that you may or may not remember right away. We’ll try to get at them. Dig those suckers up.”
I try to feel these lost memories in my head, but I feel nothing that wasn’t there before. That’s it, I’m convinced. This man’s a motherfreaking charlatan.
“What kinds of memories are you trying to have me remember?” I say, sarcastic.
“Things like hand to eye coordination. Basic exercises, then more difficult ones.”
“Like what?”
“We can start now if you’ve got nothing else to do,” he says. He’s making a face at me like I’m irritating him.
“I barely have the strength to walk, let alone—”
“Can you fire a gun?” he asks.
Something inside of me suddenly knows all kinds of things about guns. How to hold one, how to exhale before the shot, how to squeeze the trigger rather than pull it. But I’ve barely even fired a gun before. So why do I know exactly how to clean and dismantle one?
“Look at you now,” he says, joyously, “remembering a memory.”
“I…I shouldn’t know how to…know what I know,” I stammer. Have I learned this somewhere before? How do I know this?
“Follow me,” he says. He takes my hand. I let him take it the way anyone would who was in a daze and lost.
“There are many things I’m sure you’ll remember, even though you might have the feeling you have never learned them before in your life.”
Now I’m wondering if the doctor is a charlatan, or if there is something really wrong with me. Then a third possibility occurs: perhaps they tinkered with my brain while I was dead, or unconscious.
2
The indoor firing range is a long walk down several long hallways. It’s also empty. As in, there will be no witnesses to whatever the hell I am about to do. Probably miss all my shots with…whatever weapon I’m about to use, although I’m preferential to a Sig Sauer P226 combat handgun.
What?!
Seriously, WTF???
I don’t even know what a Sig is! Then, breathlessly, I realize: oh God, I do. My brain is flooded with information about this particular weapon. Like how it works best for me in the 9mm configuration. Without even thinking, I can tell you the best ammunition for this gun is Sig Sauer’s 124 grain V-Crown jacketed hollow point bullets. I turn around and there, in Delgado’s hands, is the silver and black box with the bold yellow writing: V-Crown. I can also tell you the P226 combat handgun is one of the smoothest shooting guns I’ve ever shot. The sleds, it’s like they’re sliding on butter.
“There’s twenty rounds in here. Load the weapon, fire at the target.”
“I don’t know how to load the weapon.”
My brain tells me the magazine holds fifteen rounds. Suddenly I have a visual that feels planted in my head about how to feed them into the clip.
“Yes, I think you do,” he says, looking right at me, as if I should already know this.
Okay, perhaps I do. Not that I’ve ever done such a thing.
Or have I?
He hands me the box, and I start stuffing the bullets into the clip, which is no easy task. By the time I’ve packed the magazine, my right thumb is toast. It’s the real world version of gamer’s thumb. But instead of working an Xbox or PlayStation controller, I’ve been loading live ammunition into a pistol meant for stopping and killing real, alive things.
I pop the magazine into the butt of the gun, slap it home, then get a feel for it. I like the weight; it feels balanced. Not that I know what this means, only that it feels right. Delgado sends out a paper target.
“That’s twenty-five yards,” he says.
My hands bring the weapon up. My index finger curls around the trigger of the West German made pistol. As I’m appraising the target, I’m already thinking about how to break the gun down. I’m thinking of the take-down lever, about how to pull back on the slide, then ease it forward gently until it comes off the frame entirely. I’m thinking about taking out the recoil assembly, about sliding the barrel forward barely and then pulling it out backwards to remove it as well. The guide rod can also be taken apart from the spring, even though it doesn’t need to be done, and for some reason I know the guide rod goes back in the narrow end of the spring, not the wider end.
Why do I know this? And for what reason is my brain even thinking like this?
My mind won’t stop reassembling the gun, not until the magazine is put in; I’ve locked back the slide, and the take-down lever is flipped back into place. All that’s left is to cock the slide, then hit the decocker to decock the hammer. And now my mind is done. Freed up.
Jeez.
Looking down the barrel, slowing my breathing in increments, I sight the paper target’s bull’s eye, then gently squeeze the trigger.
And miss entirely.
I try again. Same effect. And again and again and again, and finally, on the fourteenth round, I hit an outside corner and it feels like a small victory.
I look around, smiling at the doctor, and he hands me another box of ammunition. “Reload, and maybe this time try not to suck so badly.”
Alright, butthole, I’m thinking.
Getting ready to pack the second magazine, I can’t stop thinking of my sore thumb. Stop being such a baby! I tell myself. I gather up the remaining five rounds from the first box, then start into the second box, and that’s the first reload of what will become dozens.
Hours pass. My thumb is numb, the fire ants busy upon it. But worse, my mind feels like jelly.
“When can I be done with this?” I ask. By this time, he’s pulled up a chair.
“When you hit all fifteen rounds in the center ring.”
I’ve only hit it twice the entire time.
“And then we’re done?”
“With the Sig,” he says with a smile. “Then we move to Springfield, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Heckler & Koch and Walther.”
“And then we’re done?”
“No. From there we move to the AR15’s and MP5’s. And after that we’ll leave the installation and reacquaint you with the sniper rifle. Specifically the KAC XM110.”
Most kids my age wouldn’t know what the heck he’s saying, but I know all about these weapons manufacturers. KAC stands for the Knig
ht Armament Company and the XM110 is built at KAC’s facility in Titusville, Florida. The more I realize I know, the more disturbed I become. The truth is, there’s no freaking way I should know things like this! And what in the hell do I know this for anyway? How is learning (relearning?) to shoot any part of my brain’s rehabilitation? By putting a weapon in my hand?
A swirling of black flies starts deep inside me. It becomes a tornado that reaches up from my chest and spins into my brain until black spots crowd my vision and I feel myself falling. I never hit the floor before going out cold.
Then I come to and I’m standing in the firing box with a weapon in my hand. A Walther P22 by the look of it. My eyes sight the target downrange and find most of the holes gathered in the center ring.
Huh?
How is this possible?
Delgado is saying, “Very impressive” to me, but I’m in some sort of time-warped delirium and honestly, I’m not sure this is even planet Earth. My hand reaches out to the loading shelf to steady my wavering body.
“Oh,” Delgado says, almost like he’s disappointed, “it’s you again.”
3
It’s eating, then drinking more water, then showering and sleeping in my cage. Which Delgado assures me I’ll be coming out of in the morning. What I don’t tell him, what I’m dying to say, is no girl sleeps easy when she feels holed up in a cage at the pound for the night.
I’m not a gosh damn dog.
Instead, what my mouth says, “If you make me sleep in there naked like everyone else, I swear to Christ, next time I see you, I’ll pull out your f*cking spleen.”
He holds both hands up in mock surrender. Willingly, stupidly, I climb into my cage, clothed, get lifted into the mix of cages, then look at the depleted boy next to me.
Still dirty; still asleep.
The next morning I feel more irritated than before. My entire body hurts. And this hand-to-eye coordination thing Delgado’s putting me through, he told me today is marital arts day. Awesome. Not. On the bright side, at least I won’t have to load one more magazine. I had nightmares about that, of all things.
Before Delgado comes to get me, the moaning and screaming and crying starts. Someone throws their shit into the center of the room I now think of as “The Kennel.” Which makes me have to do my business, but the boy in the cage beside me is awake and looking at me. Wondering why I’m dressed. So I’m not about to drop trou and take a dump right here. Much less pee. He won’t stop watching me.
“What?”
“Why are you dressed?”
“Don’t know,” I lie. “Woke up this way.”
“What did that man shoot you with? I thought you were dead.”
“Bean bag.”
“Straight to the face?” he asks. I nod. “Why did he do that?”
That’s when The Kennel’s main door opens and Delgado strolls in like it’s no biggie. I consider it a plus that he’s not carrying the bean bag rifle today. For that, I’ll do my best to be cooperative.
We take a long walk through many hallways and end up in a large training room with red inch-thick mats and a rectangular table with breakfast on it. There are fifteen people, kids my age, standing near each other eating bagels and muffins and strips of crispy bacon. They drink juice, but they don’t socialize.
No one looks happy. They don’t look…any particular way.
I remember my first day of school at Astor Academy, how I got so nervous from being teased in the cafeteria I barfed in the garbage can next to all the food. That’s not happening today, I tell myself.
No way.
No one looks at me. I eat. No one says anything even though now I’m not the ugliest person in the school but the best looking girl in this group. Eating a blueberry muffin, I dare to look into the eyes of the kids around me and it’s dizzying.
Their eyes, they have that forever away gaze. The human robot look.
They’re broken, my brain tells me. Broken like you were broken, my brain replies, except they won’t recover the way you recover.
When breakfast is done, the largest man I’ve ever seen, short of the creepy doctor and Gerhard’s war machine, walks into the training room. He’s nearly as large as Gerhard’s beast, but infinitely more aware. His eyes see everything, especially me.
Somewhere in my brain I’m thinking, this life of mine is insane! When will all the lunacy abate? As soon as you stop putting yourself in situations like this, the other side of my brain tells me. The tug of war happening inside me, it can’t happen today. Not now. You’ll never change, the voice inside me says. You just won’t.
“Everyone line up,” the hulk of a man says, his booming voice startling me.
We line up, me finding my place somewhere near the back of the mat. We start with the warm-up exercises, and I’m the only one breaking the groups’ coordination. Otherwise, they’re seamless. I have to wonder, how long have they been doing this? Training together like this?
The beast rolls into basic punches and kicks, and my body finds a rhythm with his voice. Like I’m on auto-pilot and this isn’t my first day. Or my thousandth. My punches come out crisp; kicks are sharp and on point. My body soon moves when the group moves. My mouth cries out a spirit yell the same as everyone else. Perfectly on cue.
I’m having the worst case of vuja-de ever, which is to say nothing is familiar here, even though my body thinks it might be. But my brain is like, this isn’t my discipline, which differs from what I’ve learned with Sensei Naygel. No, this is not my routine. Even though my body would disagree.
How long have I been here? I wonder.
Days? Weeks? Months?
No. I would know if I’ve been held hostage that long. Yet my body continues to move almost on autopilot, the tempos deep in my head propelling me forward.
When it comes time to pair off, the instructor sets me up with a girl about two inches taller than me. Her body is lean, sinewy, strong looking.
I’m not afraid. But neither is she.
She should be.
The way Sensei Naygel’s third degree black belt, Ms. Small, beat the holy living crap out of me, the way Sensei himself pushed me to my absolute limits then beyond (“We’re not leaving until there’s blood on the mat.”), I’m not that worried about girls my age or size. That is until my partner shrugs off one of my punches, shoots through my defenses, fish-hooks my mouth and yanks me down. I’m barely even aware of what happened when she spins me into a rear naked choke. The girl moves with the grace and fluidity of water. Underneath me, her forearm snaked around my neck, I can’t breathe. She has the choke anchored in; she shifts her weight, tightens her grip. Like a boa constrictor, everything in me feels squeezed beyond measure. Her legs swing over my stomach, lock in fast and tight, and now breathing becomes impossible.
She has me. Dammit, she has me!
My mind is thinking of ways out and that’s when I feel it. The duality of pressure. From being choked (my eyeballs are bulging hard, my blood pressure borderline crippling) and from something deep down inside. It’s a stirring that happens in the chambers of my mind, not as a matter of function but as a matter of unnatural possession. Like a niggling in my soul.
Or a demon.
Imagine being snug in your bed. The pillows are cozy, the blankets warm and soft on your body, and it’s quiet. Perfectly silent. You feel safe and whole. You feel alone, but comfortable, and in a good way.
Now imagine you feel hands on your feet, hands inching up your body, pulling your ankles and then your legs, hands grabbing you by the waist trying to drag you into your bed. Imagine these hands jerking you under the covers, latching onto your wrists and arms, yanking you by the hair for the sole purpose of replacing you with another body, another…you.
Whatever it is in the bottom of your bed, it wants you out of the way because it wants what you have, and the only way for that to happen is for you to be gone, for it to become you.
That’s how I feel as this thing inside my body starts tugging on me, g
rowling inside me, trying to pull me into the blackness before I’m choked out.
I’m not one to quit, but with this thing going on inside me, and the girl’s chokehold tight, too tight, I tap out. But she doesn’t let go.
I tap harder, more rapid. Three times, then six. It’s the safe way we keep from getting hurt in Sensei Naygel’s class. But not here? WTF is this girl doing?
I tap, tap, tap, desperate to know what she’s trying to prove. Then the beast of an instructor is standing over me, glaring down at me. The edges of my vision are blurring, closing in on me.
“What do you think will happen in the real world? Huh?” I hear him say, “You think you can tap and get out of something like this? No. You don’t tap. In the real world, what you do is die.” To the girl, who won’t let go, he says, “Finish her.”
And the choke pulls so tight, the black spots at the edge of my vision crowd out all the light, the instructor, consciousness. My body gives up. Everything is gone.
Inside, as I’m being pulled into unconsciousness, a very male, very pissed off voice says to me, “You should’ve let me in.”
And then I’m awake again, blinking off the fuzzy edges of…whatever. My eyes are looking all around, but what they see isn’t connecting with my brain. Nothing is translating. I feel newborn to the world. Then, slowly, things begin to make sense. Connections are made.
I’m in karate. Not Sensei Naygel’s class, but somewhere else. Yes, in an underground military base, with a creepy doctor, and…wait…why am I here? Oh, yes, to repair the connections in my mind. Suddenly I remember everything. That cheating bitch I fought, her choking me out, her not stopping as I tapped and tapped and tapped, the sadistic instructor who cared enough to demand she finish me.
That prick.
Then I remember the thing inside me. The male voice.
My body shivers involuntarily. I stand up. Wobble a bit, but get my legs under me. I put up my guard. If these are the rules—if this is how this group fights—I can fight this way, too. For a second, I sound way tougher than I feel. And then I think, this is how people get hurt.