The Cabinet

by Un-su Kim

  “This serum was designed to help extract secrets. It was first developed during the cold war by the Americans and the Russians. It also helps the individual who takes it to have a conversation with their inner ego. Today I’m considering using serum made in Russia and Germany. The Americans think theirs is the best, but the CIA doesn’t know as much about fear as they think; the KGB, they know what fear is.”

  The man gave me an injection. Immediately my mind went fuzzy. My body became light as if I were in a dreamlike state, and my mood even seemed to improve. The man asked me how I felt. I told him I felt great. He then asked me if I was ready to talk. “Of course. I feel like I could ramble on for hours!” I said. The man continued to ask me questions, and my tongue began to move on its own. It felt like magic. As he continued his questioning, he suddenly stopped and said, “This isn’t working,” and brought over the shears again. Intoxicated from the serum, I begged in a weak voice, “No, please don’t.” He ignored my pleading and cut off another finger. I tried counting my remaining fingers, but I kept losing count. When he placed my severed finger atop the table, I thought to myself the absurd thought that I wished I could feel the pain when he cut off my fingers.

  “You’re a cruel person,” I said. “Actually, you’re a nice man. Always kindly explaining everything to me in such detail.”

  “It’s what I do,” the man said politely. “I’m a janitor, a public servant, and a delivery man.”

  “Right, the modern job market is very diverse,” I said. Thick rain clouds were forming and floating inside my head. Rain fell, and lightning struck, and I could hear thunder. The falling rain turned to snowflakes and fell backwards up into the sky.

  It was nighttime when I awoke. I had a skull-splitting headache. The man must have given me pain medication because I still couldn’t feel the pain from my missing body parts. The man was watching television. After I let out a groan, he came over to me to speak.

  “I guess you don’t have the chimera files after all. I’m sorry that things have turned out this way. As I said at the beginning, it’s not easy for humans to trust one another. I know you don’t have the files, but I’m not so sure they will believe that. If the syndicate isn’t convinced by the report I’m going to submit to them, they’re going to send another person. You need to be careful. If you can’t find the chimera files, you’ll be on the run for the rest of your life. Get some more rest. While you’re asleep, I’ll call a doctor to stich up your hands and feet. Unfortunately, the doctor I usually work with is away on a business trip right now. He could have made your hands look pretty again.”

  The man stuck another needle into my arm. I slowly drifted into sleep. I probably would have fallen asleep even without the medicine. I was so tired and beaten down.

  UNFAMILIAR CITY

  When I awoke, I was on a park bench. I opened my eyes to see yellow gingko tree leaves falling on my head. “Fucking ginkgo trees,” I muttered to myself. I turned to look at the base of the tree and swore again.

  “I said, fucking gingko trees!”

  My skull felt like it was going to split from all the drugs. The freezing early morning October air was penetrating straight into my bones. I tried to remember what had happened to me. It felt like something awful, but because my head was full of cotton wool, I couldn’t remember exactly what that was. Nevertheless, it was clear that it was terrible indeed.

  And yet I was still alive. The man spared me. He could have killed me, had he wanted to. But then again, I really had nothing to thank him for. The only reason he hadn’t killed me was because killing me would have been more trouble than not. Perhaps I wasn’t even a human worthy of killing.

  They had performed surgery on me while I was asleep and stitched five of my fingers back to my hand. The bandages were soaked with blood, and the knot with which the bandages were tied looked somewhat shoddy. What kind of doctor had he called? Some deprived surgeon whose license had been revoked? Or maybe some barber-turned-illegal-doctor who had never gone to medical school? After all, what kind of doctor would take money to reattach a tortured man’s fingers? My fingers, which were wrapped tightly in bandages, were shooting with pain and unable to move. Part of me wanted to take off the bandages and see how my fingers had been reattached, and another part of me was too scared to look. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I had become some sort of Frankenstein’s monster.

  I stood up to leave the park and took a few steps before losing my balance and falling. The drugs probably hadn’t worn off yet. Had they reattached my toes, too? If they had done my fingers, they probably had done the toes. The inside of my shoes was soggy, most likely from all the blood. I wanted to take off my shoes and check, but fear of what I might find stopped me again.

  I stuck my hand in my coat pocket to find some cigarettes. What I found was not a packet of cigarettes but two bags of medicine. One looked to be a painkiller and the other looked to be an antibiotic. Nice guy. Giving me painkillers for the fingers he cut off. Suddenly feeling the pain in my fingers worsen, I took two painkillers. My dry throat made it hard to swallow. I waited for the pain to go away. But even after waiting a while, the pain refused to subside. Impatient, I opened the bottle to take ten more.

  Even after eating twelve pills, my fingers still ached like they had been bashed with a hammer. As the pain became more acute, my consciousness became fuzzier until I found it hard to know where I was or where I was going.

  “Am I really that fortunate to have survived?” I asked myself.

  “Of course, it’s fortunate you survived,” answered another me.

  “You’re optimistic,” I said.

  Perhaps what I should have been most thankful for was the fact the drugs still hadn’t worn off. It was good that half of me was coming back to reality slowly while the other half of me was still stuck in a dream. If it weren’t for that, the memory of that morning’s horror would have put me in more pain. I thought about going to the police station and filing a report. But for some reason, it felt like that was a bad idea. The police wouldn’t be of much help, and going to the authorities would probably only anger my captors more. But then again, this was a serious crime. They had treated me like an animal. I was filled with indignation as I thought about how they had cut off my fingers and toes like a child catching bugs and plucking off their wings and legs. But this anger quickly extinguished itself like a cheap match. In its place was a growing fear. The thought of being dragged back to that office as punishment for letting my anger show scared me. I didn’t want to go back there again. And besides, the police were never going to believe me. And even if they did, I doubted they would be able to find the man who did this to me. It’s not like he and the people he worked for were amateurs. After all, they had purchased a dental office in a downtown skyscraper and tortured someone there in broad daylight; such people weren’t going to be easy to lock up. They wouldn’t have let me go if they didn’t know they could get away with it. And to find that man, I would have to get a search warrant for every office in downtown Seoul: an impossible task. If I weren’t able to produce any sort of proof, the police were just going to ignore my case. And that would only make my current situation go from bad to worse.

  Thinking about this and that, I concluded that I should leave the park. They might change their minds and come looking for me again. After using all my strength to pull myself up, I staggered out of the park. In front of the park was a taxi stand, at which there were three taxis. I got in the second one.

  I asked the cab driver where we were. He told me we near Gangdong-gu Office. “Gangdong-gu Office,” I repeated to myself in a whisper.

  “Where to?” the taxi driver asked me.

  I thought about where I should go. But I had no idea. I told the driver I didn’t know where I was going because I had just experienced something very confusing. The driver stared at me through the rearview mirror. He looked to be in his late-fifties and had gentle eyes. “Take your time. I don’t mind,” he said. “For now, just
start driving. In any direction,” I finally said. And with that, he started driving.

  “That happens to me sometimes, too,” the man suddenly spoke up. “Before I was a taxi driver, I used to own a small business. Then one day I went bankrupt. Within an hour, the debt collectors showed up at my front door – I don’t know how they knew. I just needed to get out of there. So I took a taxi. But I had no idea where I was going.”

  The taxi driver continued to ramble on about his life experiences. But suddenly, my ears became filled with a mechanical hum, making it hard to understand what he was saying.

  “Please go to the Y Research Center in Hongneung,” I told the driver.

  The driver nodded his head and began to accelerate. A few moments later, he glanced at me through the rearview mirror and mentioned that blood was leaking from the bandages wrapping my hand. Nonchalantly, I replied that it was because someone had cut off my fingers with a pair of shears. When I said this, the driver’s eyes widened, “You’re joking.” I didn’t answer him.

  When we arrived in front of the research center, there was a black luxury sedan illegally parked in front of the stone wall. Inside the vehicle were two burly men eating bread and drinking milk with smiles. Seeing them frightened me. They looked as though they could be more professionals hired by the syndicate to kidnap and torture me. Perhaps the syndicate thought it was a mistake letting me go and had sent these people to take me in again. Or maybe they were just average salarymen parked in front the research center for a quick bite. In fact, come to think of it, cars frequently parked illegally in that spot.

  “Sir, we’re here,” the driver said to me.

  I contemplated for a moment whether I should get out of the taxi or not. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I was spacing out, unsure of what I should do.

  “Sorry, but can you take me to Seogyo-dong?” I said to the driver.

  He gave me a somewhat suspicious look.

  “Didn’t you tell me to go to Hongneung?”

  “Yes, but now I want you to go to Seogyo-dong.”

  The taxi driver shook his head as if to say he didn’t understand, then stepped on the accelerator. Feeling again the pain in my fingers and toes, I took out six more painkillers and swallowed them. Seeing me take the medicine through the rearview mirror, the driver offered me some bottled water. I drank the water as I stared out the car window. People were on their way home from work, as if it were just another day. The sight of people going home felt unfamiliar and somewhat unbelievable.

  When we arrived at my house in Seogyo-dong, there was a small van parked at my front door. Inside it were another three burly men. Adhered to the inside of the van’s window was a sticker that read, “Pipes, plumbing, and blockage removal.” Seeing this van, I again became frightened. They might have been dressed like plumbers, but the men looked more like hitmen. The smooth-talking man from earlier that morning should have reported that I didn’t have the chimera files, but it seemed like the syndicate hadn’t believed him. If that were the case, the syndicate would have sent a new team to my house to torture me again. On the other hand, maybe they were just plumbers here to unplug a clogged drain. The faces of the men in the van made it look like this was actually their line of work.

  “Sir, we’re here. Are you going to get out?” the taxi driver said, clearly irritated.

  Not answering his question, I continued to peer inside the van. One of the men inside the vehicle was holding a spanner as he joked with his friends. Seeing him wave the spanner in the air, I became even more scared than I had been while being tortured earlier that day. My body reacted to this fear by shaking violently.

  “Sir, are you OK?” the driver asked as he looked at me with a cold sweat.

  It didn’t seem like I was OK. If I couldn’t go to the office or into my own home, where could I go? Where could I go to avoid being monitored and tracked?

  “Take me to Gwangmyeong City, right now. No, take me to Uijeongbu or Dongducheon City,” I blurted out.

  The driver pulled up the hand brake and slowly turned to face me.

  “Sir, the fare is already over 40,000 won.”

  What did he mean by that? I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. Obviously, I knew how much the fare was; it was displayed clearly on the meter.

  “And?” I replied.

  “I’m fine with it; I just can’t understand why you keep jerking me around for no reason. And my shift for this taxi is about to end, so I can’t take you all the way to Uijeongbu.”

  For no reason? How could he say for no reason? This was my life we were talking about. I guess it was of no concern to him. And he was about to end his shift, after all. He would have to give this taxi to another driver soon. I opened my wallet. I only had 50,000 in cash. I gave all 50,000 won to the driver.

  “Just drive a little bit longer and let me off at a good place,” I said.

  The man took the money and stepped on the accelerator. Five minutes later, he let me off in front of the old World Cup stadium. Picking a random direction, I limped aimlessly away from the stadium, dragging my aching legs behind me. It crossed my mind that someone might still be following me. Dipping into an alley lined with unlicensed homes, I crouched next to the corner of a rock wall and waited there for a while to see if anyone was coming after me. After a while, I concluded I probably didn’t have a tail. But then it crossed my mind that they might have attached a tracker to my clothes, like they do in the movies. I stole and changed into a set of old sweats hanging from a clothesline. I then took my suit and cellphone and threw them into a dumpster.

  Crouching again by the edge of the rock wall, I thought for a long time about where I could go to hide safely. Then it struck me. If the syndicate was aware of Jeong-eun’s connection to the cabinet, they would be monitoring her apartment as well. But there was no way they knew about her involvement with that cabinet. If they had, the man who had tortured me would surely have asked about her. And besides, I had learned about her knowledge of the cabinet only just recently myself.

  I got on the subway and went to Jeong-eun’s apartment. Passersby glanced suspiciously at the blood oozing from my bandages and shoes. My fingers and toes stung like they had been sliced with razors, and I still had a splitting headache. I sat on the stairs on the eleventh floor next to the door to Jeongeun’s apartment and waited for her to arrive. I was famished, still high off the drugs, going mad from the pain in my fingers and toes, and unable to rid myself of that man’s voice which was still ringing inside my ears.

  When I awoke, Jeong-eun was sitting next to me and crying.

  “Mr Kong, what happened to you,” she said with a look of shock on her face. I burst into tears as soon as I saw her expression.

  “I was kidnapped. They cut off my fingers and toes. No one’s chasing you, are they? Did anyone come to the research center? You need to be careful, Jeong-eun. They’re after me. Actually, they’re after the chimera files, but I don’t have them. This is all because that irresponsible old man left without doing what he needed to do. They don’t believe a word I said. They’re dangerous people, Jeong-eun. They cut off your finger if you change your story. They cut off your finger for talking too much. I shouldn’t have talked so much. I shouldn’t have changed my story. But I’m not getting a second chance. Next time, they’ll slit my throat. You need to be careful.”

  I was shaking violently as I said this. Jeong-eun gave me a big, full-bodied hug. Being held in her embrace, I cried for some time.

  THERE’S A CROCODILE AFTER ME

  Jeong-eun went to work the following morning. But when exactly it was that she left, I wasn’t sure. Because she walked with such soft steps, she rarely made a sound. She was a silent human, so to speak. Perhaps her ancestors were ninjas. Or maybe it was just because I took too many sleeping pills.

  I lay on the sofa all day and stared at the dog. It was a massive dog that didn’t bark and didn’t seem to like me. Its ancestors dragged sleds across the Alaskan ice in
-60°C weather. What was a dog with genes like that doing in a cramped apartment like this? “What on Earth are you doing?” I said as I firmly tapped the dog’s nose. The dog stared at me for a moment with a blank expression before sauntering off into the corner.

  There were times when I would suddenly remember something frightening or be overcome with anxiety for no reason. When this happened, I would grab a kitchen knife and hide in Jeong-eun’s closet. I spent several months at Jeongeun’s place. Since being kidnapped, I wasn’t able to leave this apartment even once. Jeong-eun said that she had seen men dressed in black suits in front of the research center. But she also said she couldn’t be positive that those men in black suits were the same men in black suits that I had seen.

  Fear and lethargy took turns attacking my body until I was like a boxer down for the count. Each day, my emotions faded from bone-shaking apprehension to utter lethargy. And on days when I was most lethargic, I would just lay down next to that dog that never barked and stare up at the ceiling. By the way, did I mention the dog didn’t like me? Because Jeong-eun didn’t have a television set, the only sound in her house was the occasional dripping of water droplets from the sink. When I got hungry, I would eat the food Jeong-eun left out for me on the kitchen table. It’s embarrassing to admit, but because it was impossible to lift a spoon with my fingers, it sometimes took more than an hour to finish a single bowl of rice. Sometimes, having forgotten that I had taken a bite of rice, I would just sit there drooling.

  The fingers that had been reattached were in poor condition. Three of them had been reattached successfully, but both of my pinky fingers turned black and rotted. I was now convinced the doctor didn’t have a license. One day I stuck my hand into the sunlight, and like a dry leaf, one of my pinky fingers fell off with an audible snap. The other one fell off too, but when it was that it fell off, I couldn’t be quite sure. And even the fingers that had been successfully reattached still couldn’t be considered normal.