by Peter Ackers
INFERNAL JOURNAL
PETER ACKERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INFERNAL JOURNAL
August 11 1983
I will not dwell on the who, why, where, how. I dwell only on the immediate problem facing us - “us” being she and I. I must focus my energy and time not unlike a ray of sun passing through a lens, to create a finer but much more potent beam. I know nothing, yet must know everything. I will begin with a look around this place. My state is one of confusion, but even so I sense that appraising this “place” is required of us. Of me. The woman looks at me with a constant strange expression; she seems almost ignorant of the fact that we both are naked. There is no fear or wonder on her face, but those emotions are there alright, disclosed in the way she cowers in the corner, looking around this “box” with impatient eyes. Male instincts tell me to comfort her, for obviously she is distraught, as am I, but my survival instincts, much more powerful, distrust her. She might know nothing, but she might know everything. Is she part of this? Or is she an innocent victim like myself? The urge to write is waning; I need
August 11 (later)
Elizabeth. Her name is Elizabeth. I did not want to know her details, for the end of this test might warrant actions best performed between strangers. She informed me that she works in a bank, but this information is useless. That knowledge now resides for all time in my head, consuming valuable space! I mentioned a test; but a reader of this diary might ask, “What gives him such an impression?” Let me thus explain with a tour of the place that Elizabeth and I must call home. It is a room of steel, quite small - a cube ten feet wide. I know the walls are steel because they are undecorated, yet unblemished. The steel sheets that compose the room are stark silver, smooth and reflective. Depending from the ceiling is a solitary lightbulb whose low wattage is reflected brightly by the walls. There is a thick door in the middle of one wall, but it is firmly locked, and it has no handle or keyhole. There is a small gap between the door and the steel floor, far too thin to permit either myself or Elizabeth. Beyond it, a vista to dwell upon, even if one were not trapped in a cell: a long, flat desert baked by a pitiless sun, and to its left and right, barely visible beyond the edges of the doorframe - I have to press my face against the cold steel walls beside the door in order to create the correct viewing angle - rolls the sparkling sea, or possibly two seas, one each side. The desert is featureless as far as the horizon except for one detail, small but certainly not insignificant. Merely two metres beyond the door that wears blood from my knuckles (Elizabeth’s too at my insistence), a thin wooden stake thrusts towards the sky, and upon a hook at its top there dangles a key. No prizes for guessing which door it opens - but how?
August 12
The sun set hours ago and I await the dawn, and hopefully with the new day will come new revelations. The bulb burns constantly, making sleep hard. ‘Zabeth lies by the door, face pressed close to the gap so she can feel the breeze and stare into the darkness outside; I will go nowhere near that gap at night out of simple fear of the unknown. Also, I don’t like knowing that curious eyes might see the oblong of light from miles away. I found a trapdoor about an hour ago, when making a lasso. The seams are so insignificant that I discovered them by chance, when nonchalantly dragging my fingernails across the floor to break the silence. And in the centre of the trapdoor is a tiny keyhole, which sits near-invisible in this light. Now I wonder if the key upon the hook fits this trapdoor instead of the door.
August 14
Hunger. The trapdoor, I can’t open it, it must contain for us food/drink. But I do not plan to stay here long enough to need replenishment. I see the key always, even in my mind, my sleep - and always out of reach - and I know this is a trial. Whoever is behind this, I doubt they want to see us die of hunger at the first step.
Or maybe they don’t care. Or Maybe nobody watches us.
Wait…
August 15
I try to remember, but the effort saps valuable strength and time. There is a problem to be solved here. Maybe this is some new reality TV show, Dump two people in a locked cell in a desert, watch them either escape or die. Well, the vote on escape is in. But
August 16
Despite our predicament, Ellie (new nickname: I need to write fast, saving time) did not want me to take her hair, so long and golden, but I had to, had to for her. And me. A lasso of sorts. Long golden locks, such a shame. Many hours work, thin and weak, but all we have. Infuriatingly hard to loop the key, but what else I gotplanned 4 today, but I smile now, getting good at this, wanna be cowboy when free, he he.
(later)
Hooked, grasped, pulled, hair snapped, but key fell within grasp, ha, used key, ha! But not on the door. The door has no keyhole - remember - but it unlock the trapdoor, Cast it open like a kid at Christmas I did! Inside, some metal trunk, unlocked lid. Inside there was indeed food, though not the kind you’d order at the restaurant. Apparatus for attaching a drip to our bodies, to feed by IV, saline and other fluids that surely contain what our bodies will need over the coming… what, hours? Even days? Water in bottles, lots of them. BIG big box. Weird things too, and bags of jelly-like stuff. Other drugs, which I recognise as vital to the upkeep of an entity without access to food, and morphine, and Pills, probably vitamins. A veritable cornucopia (these big words come to me and others are lost) of basic survival stuff. Ellie is on smaller rations. I need my brain and my strength. I am a surgeon, so I know fairly well what I’m doing. At the minute Ellie is just comic relief; scenery; something for the master to interact with and thus ward off boredom. They have thought this out well.
(They: think on this!!!)
There is other stuff in the trunk. It’s like someone’s attic! Let’s see if this stuff is of any use. Back soon…
August 18
I am hungry. A drip is no King’s banquet, but I feel better for it and have more strength to write with. Is most of this stuff junk, or will I - we - need it all later. The bags, opened one, recognised the stuff, the jelly-stuff as lipids, fat, pure fat, but like soggy soap. Gruesome. Tried some stuff to open the door, but nothing will open the door, nothing nothing nothing. And I suspect that’s part of the trial. There is a lot of the drips bags things in the big trunk, and books, and a compact mirror that El uses to see her face, (VANITY HE HE) and even a blanket, and - And there is even a small vial containing a milky substance that I know is sperm, I know this, but not mine. What could make an eternity in a box bearable if not a child? And in case we don’t ever get on sexually, me and El, there is the vial, and the syringe, and my medical knowledge n all that. That is with me even though my memories aren’t. My skill survived whatever happened to erase my memories. Lucky? Or planned? I don’t trust the itches that crawl over my body, that feel like they just below the skin, that almos seem to make my mind focussed. Sun and lens. I think of things in there, running through my veins. Creatures, nanomachines???, euughh, it bear not thinking bout.
August 23
A long delay. L hates me, but I did it for her. Did the eyes that watches us know I am unable to have children? Was the vial of sperm just a precaution, in case? Maybe they didn’t want to see a rape, for otherwise that is what would have happened. L’s personal pride, it seems outweighs her will to live. So I forced myself upon her, but aimed my tool not at her vagina but at her abdomen, cutting her with scalpel not penis, and inserting the syringe. Mine, Mongoloid’s or Elvis Presley’s, I didn’t know or care about the father of the child. She is impregnated, done, part of plan methink. She
September 10ish
Long, long delay. Stomach better now: real food has introduced itself. Meat for sure, but I don’t know if I’d call its source an animal
or an insect or what. Things go scuttling by in the dark, scratching their legs in the sand, making horrible noises that unnerve L, woman that she is, ha. And in trunk: netting I fashioned into a keepnet-style thingy. Easy bastards to catch, just stick net on stick out under door and they waltz in on it and I yank it under and they kick and nip till I crush their heads. Big bastards like I never seen before, like turtles with six spider legs and long tails too rubbery to chew. At least they have hot blood, which kinda cuts down on the vomit factor, ha. A buffet that walks past every night. No hunting for me on nights when the OTHERS are out there - big beasts by the sounds, chillin roars from far away, I hope no closer THEY come.
September