by Z. Rider
“There.” Her weight pulls away from him, her warmth. He jerks at the restraints. His breath is loud through his nostrils.
Gunk stuck in his eyelashes flutters as he blinks, over and over.
He feels fragile, suddenly. Inhuman.
“First we go out,” she says as she crouches in front of the machine, “then we go in,” and he has no idea what she’s talking about, but it doesn’t sound good.
The sharp snap of a switch speeds his breaths. A motor hums. The tube vibrates.
Then he feels it, a pulling in his gut.
He tries to grip the padded table.
The tube suddenly becomes warm—then almost steamy—as stuff from inside him comes out. His stomach muscles buck, but his insides are being pulled in against themselves. Bile and half-digested food runs hot through the walls of the tube, making him gag even though it doesn’t touch his tongue.
The sound of the machine changes, the sound of the tube. The motor hums louder, while the tube has gone silent.
“Annnd,” she says. A different control clicks. There’s a chunk as something switches over in the machine.
The tube makes noise again, a gush of it. It cools against his tongue. Something chugs back through, in the other direction, and without taste or smell, he has no clue what it might be. Water? Battery acid?
His stomach starts to fill.
He shakes his head gently, helpless, digging his heels into the table. He wants to get away from this.
He realizes he needs to piss now, urgently.
Whatever she’s putting in him, it’s stretching his stomach, pushing it against his bladder. His skin is tight, his belly heavy. It grows, rounded under his shirt, pulling the thin cloth tight. He drags air through his nostrils. His face beats with heat. He picks his head up. As soon as he feels resistance from the tube down his neck, he drops it again, hard. Next time he tries to lift it, he gets a glimpse of his distended belly.
He wants to scream.
He wants to sit up and pull the tube fist over fist from his throat like a magic trick.
His belly keeps growing, pushing harder against his bladder, rucking his shirt up so that he feels the caress of air over his stretching skin. He tries to plead for it to stop, and it’s just grunts and animal noises and the desperate scrabbling of fingernails against tabletop.
The machine clicks off.
He huffs air, staring into the dark rafters. The tentacle’s gone at least. God, the last thing he’d need would be for that to show up again.
The seconds tick endlessly.
Please crank it back the other way. Please, oh fuck, please.
A shout comes from outside, the thump of bare heels pounding floor, the thud of boots not far behind.
The nurse leans toward him and puts a finger to her lips.
His stomach is a waterlogged kickball. The elastic band of his bottom has slipped below its mound.
He stares at the rectangle high in the wall, hoping someone will see him. Save him.
Another shout—closer. A foot hits down in front of the window, heel first, a pajama leg fluttering against a shin. The toes land. The leg tips forward. There’s a space, a break in time, before the body thuds to the floor with an oof. An elbow juts against the bars. Whoever it is is trying to push back up, and he shouts as his body lurches backward, like it’s being hauled away by an ankle.
A.J. sees Nate’s profile for a second, his face red, his mouth wide open, and he tries to shout. The liquid filling him sloshes backward, around the tube, rising toward his nostrils. It’s fetid and sour and A.J. struggles not to choke on it.
Nate has no idea someone’s in the basement, desperately watching him. Probably he doesn’t even realize there’s a set of bars there. But then his fingers grab hold of one. His face is out of view, but his fingers grab hold.
A.J. tries to call out again. It hurts, deep in his guts. His throat is so dry it sticks against the tube. His vocal cords push, but it just sounds like choking.
His face flushes hot and wet, and he tips his head back, trying to breathe.
Through a film of tears, he sees the fingers let go of the bars. Then the hand is gone.
He listens to Nate’s body bumping down the corridor, Nate swearing the whole way.
His gaze darts over the ceiling. He’s fucked. He’s so fucking fucked.
The nurse smiles. She places her hand on his belly, on the swollen, tense mound of it. He feels he’s going to pop like a water balloon.
He wants to know what the fuck she put in him.
“Shh,” she whispers before placing a kiss on his pushed-out belly button.
He chokes around the tube.
“You just wait there.”
He stretches his fingers, trying to grab her wrist before she walks away. He brushes skin, then air.
Her heels click across the floor.
The crotch of his pajama bottoms settles on his thigh, heavy with the wet heat of piss.
The door shushes shut. The latch clicks into place.
Silence presses on him. He stares at the flickering lights beyond the barred window, hoping for rescue. Afraid to move.
9
A Lock Thuds into Place
They got me coming out of that bathroom, bloody pipe still clutched in my hand. I’d given up on A.J., at least for the time being. I was thinking I needed to get the fuck out of there. I could feel the blood going up my own nostrils, squeezing against my closed eyes, making my lungs burst for want of air—I could feel it almost as if it had happened to me, and I did not want that fucking happening to me. Their boots clodded the floor. Keys jingled on their belts. They reached their meaty arms out. I dropped the pipe and ran.
I yell and try to kick my legs free, but they drag me up the hall like a stag they’re going to field dress. The shitty pajama top hikes to my armpits. My bare skin judders along the floor. My fingers, throbbing from when they ripped free of the bar I’d grabbed, dig at the linoleum. Grit and vinyl peelings curl under my nails, leaving a trail of where I’ve been.
My chin throbs. A swelling lip pushes against my bottom teeth. I yell again as they drag me around a corner. And I grab for it, trying to use it to stop myself. The orderlies tug. A stretch pulls at my waist. I kick my feet and reach for the corner with my other hand. It’s not much to hold on to. One of them jerks me, like I’m a cord caught on a piece of furniture. The other drops my ankle. My toes hit the floor with a quick pop of pain. His boots clomp alongside me. His wide hands dig into my armpits. He hauls me—yelling and cursing—to my knees.
The other takes the other pit, and they drag me backward on my ass. Reaching overhead, I tear at their belts, the backs of their shirts. I get a foot under me and try to push up. My crotch lifts into the air, then my heels are dragging the floor again.
I twist. I try to bring my elbows between their hands and me to break their hold.
They slow, but it’s just long enough to get a better grip.
One jams a finger in a muscle in my armpit. It’s a mean dig. My lip curls back. My teeth clench. That finger jammed there, it’s a deep, vicious tickle, and I can’t get away from it. It just keeps hitting that one spot, over and over, digging in with every fall of the orderly’s boot. Sweat pops on my forehead. There’s pain all the way to my thighs. I almost can’t take it, the finger dug into my armpit. I beg for him to let go.
As we turn a corner, the finger eases, but it’s almost worse, the lighter, teasing pressure. Windows in the corridor flash under fluorescent lights. I’m screaming, my hands dragging at their elbows.
They haul me to my feet, hauling me stumbling backward over my own feet. I’m gasping—free from the tickle at least, but I just want to collapse back to the floor and crawl away.
I kick out, and my foot connects with a wall. Sharp pain spikes through my bones.
The windows make me think of that room where the guy got shocked until his temples smoked.
No way. No fucking way.
I’m not goi
ng to let them strap me down and jolt me. No fucking way. I break free.
Their fingers slip against the sleeves of my shirt. One catches hold. The shirt yanks tight around my bicep. I wrench forward, trying to break free before they can get a good grip, and momentum throws me against the corridor wall.
Beyond the windows is a room of sterile white.
I bang the glass with the flat of my hand.
The back of my shirt jerks. The V-neck drags up my collarbones, stops tight against my throat. I hit the window again, yelling.
I’m yelling A.J.’s name in my panic.
An arm clamps around my neck. The guy behind me is so tall the back of my head jams against his jaw when he pulls me away from the window. As he hauls me around, I swing my fist out, trying to hit the window again. Instead of a dull bump, the glass shatters like a crystal waterfall. Shards burst, sparkling—they almost pause in the air before scattering downward, cascading over the white floor inside.
I’m aware of a sharp pain like a knife of ice in my wrist, but the arm around my throat drags me along, and I stumble and stagger to keep up.
A door slams against a wall.
They drag me into the white room, the one with all the windows, the one with a jagged hole where a window used to be. Glass glitters below it. I fight the hold they have on me, and the one with his arm around my neck leans back, lifting my feet off the ground.
I kick out and connect with the edge of the door. It bangs shut. Not what I was going for. I gasp for air through clenched teeth.
A cabinet opens, the little puck of a magnetic closure giving way. All I see is white—white walls, white metal cabinets, white reflections in gleaming shards of glass. I kick and throw my body. A thud hits me through the orderly’s body as we bump into a table. Its legs squeak on the floor.
Stiff fabric rustles like a bird shaking its wings out. It lands with a thump somewhere I can’t see. Plastic scrapes, something snaps. The cabinet door latches shut.
“Got him?” says the orderly not crushing my ribs in his grip.
My fingernails find the stubbled flesh of a cheek behind me and dig in.
His head ducks back, and he says, “Yeah.”
The other orderly looms in front me, his chest wide as a bull’s, his face almost bored. He raises his hand to about his waist. I don’t see what he has—all I see is the ceiling as a touch on my bare stomach turns to a pulsing, high-pitched scream through every muscle in my body.
My arm drops from the orderly’s face. I can’t lift it back up. I can’t move my eyes. I’m begging them to stop, but it’s a surreal feeling because I don’t think my mouth is moving. I don’t think my voice box is working. I’m a white jolt of heavy pain and dead weight, sagging in the orderly’s arms and yelling inside my head.
The floor rushes toward me, catches me. Takes my weight.
When the pain stops, I’m curled on dusty linoleum—yelling.
Someone grabs my arm. My hand is stuffed into a coarse sleeve, the kind that doesn’t have an opening on the other end. They twist my other arm into another sleeve. I gasp as the rough cloth scrapes the cut in my wrist.
They roll me, pulling my arms crossed over my stomach, through a looped strap there. I keep yelling. My knee bangs the floor as the orderlies shove me over. They jerk straps, feeding the ends through buckles. One of the straps reaches between my legs, and as an orderly pulls it tight, it cuts into either side of my groin.
I toe the floor, trying to get away. They hold me face down while they tighten and buckle and tighten some more.
I yell, not even words.
They shove me onto my back. An orderly gets on one knee. The other helps haul me up onto the guy’s shoulder. As he rises to his feet, the air oofs from me, his shoulder forcing my crossed arms into my diaphragm.
I’m bundled up in a straitjacket like Cherry Bomb Babe, and at the thought of losing half my face, I thrash and scream. The canvas snaps as my elbows reach their limits of movement. My hair hangs toward the floor. My temples pound, hard. Blood rushing to my head makes my skull throb hotly. The orderly’s boot sends the plastic stun gun they used on me skittering over the floor. It looks like an electric shaver with the shaver part yanked out. It looks like a toy. I yell as they carry me out of the room, thinking about Kate hanging from the ceiling and the grind of the saw into bone and Cherry Bomb Babe’s gaping lower face coming after me.
A doorframe that would be perfect to grab on to passes my face, but my hands are deep in the jacket’s sleeves, strapped tight to my stomach.
I’m blubbering as my groin bounces against the orderly’s shoulder.
One of the orderlies mutters, “Fucking pain in the ass,” but otherwise they don’t talk. We walk for what feels like a long time, me sniffling and sucking back snot, whimpering “Please let me go,” like the guy in the electroshock room, like Kate begging Roger to wake up, baby, please wake up.
When we stop and turn, my hair brushes a wall. I try to look up; my skull thunks it. I’m overheated. I need air. I need water. I need to piss. When I yell, it feels muffled—blood is clogging my ears.
We pass through another door, then we’re sinking. My knees touch the floor. The orderly twists out from under my chest. My knees take my weight, and I stare at the space around me as my butt sinks to my heels. Small room, walls padded with dingy canvas mats. I yell again, leaning forward with the desperation of it. My throat feels like I swallowed the broken glass from that window.
The door swings shut. A lock thuds into place. Their boots clod away.
My temples pound with the hot blood still trapped in my skull.
10
Don’t Blow
A.J. groans as a cramp clutches his guts. His muscles stiffen. Sweat beads his forehead. The cramp reaches its peak, snatching the breath from him before it starts to ease, like a teeter-totter slowly shifting balance. His lungs move again. He takes air in gingerly, afraid to put pressure on his already strained belly. He’s sweaty and cold at the same time.
The soft snap of the door latch makes his wrists jump. He presses his fingers to the table and tries to look upward, behind him. An interminable creak pulls his anticipation into a tight wire.
No sharp click of shoes. The soft padding of bare flesh on concrete comes through the shadows. A.J. bites the tube. The back of his neck aches from trying to watch. Then he sees her, the girl in the purple-flowered nightgown.
Her pink little lips are a knot. Strands of hair cling to her face. The nightdress, he realizes, is filthy, torn in places. Had it been that way earlier?
Probably, and he just hadn’t paid attention.
He feels like he’s seeing the underside of this place. The truth of it.
Her soles pat over the floor. Thin, pale shins below her nightdress are scabbed and smeared with dirt. She has the lean gawkiness of a girl getting ready to grow out of girlhood.
His blood beats hot in his veins. She tricked him last time. His hands clench.
A skittering follows her in the shadows, the tapping of thin, metal-tipped legs. As the girl moves around the cart beside the table—with its squat, bulky machine—the scrabbling comes closer.
In the duct, he hadn’t cared: he’d been in a cage. He’d had his hands and feet free. Whatever the fuck the skittering thing was, he’d felt like he could deal with it.
He cranes his neck back. Leather hitches against his wrists. His chest heaves with quick little breaths. He knows he’s trapped. He knows this is a whole different situation. He has an urge to pee again.
The thing skritches and scurries just out of sight, and he wants it to stay that way. A mechanical specter in the shadows.
The girl hunkers at the machine. He does not want her touching that machine. He tries to pull his hand free to stop her. The weight of his stomach bears down on him. Sweat runs from his brow. When he tips his head back, he sees the glint of a leg—long and thin and black with a bright steel tip—unfold from the shadows, close to the floor. Another follows, th
en a clunky red-box body cants upward toward him, as if it’s meeting his eyes.
A snap comes from the cart, the sound just like his grandmother’s canister vac attachments. The need to see what the girl’s up to pulls at him, but he’s transfixed by the spindly metal legs, six in all, moving across the room—click-click-click-click in a cascade.
A cramp builds. His eyes squeeze shut. He bites the tube. The pain is like a whale squeezing through his guts, and his panic isn’t helping.
The tube shifts slightly against his lip. The vac attachment snaps again. His throat muscles tighten with a moan. If the tube’s been disconnected, there’ll be no way to get the stuff back out of him, except by letting nature take its course: the liquid breaking down in him, absorbing, seeping into his bloodstream and moving through his bowels. Tainting him. Infecting him. The cramp bites harder. Part of him is aware of the skittering below, the light taps on one of the table legs. Most of him is terrified of what letting nature take its course entails. He doesn’t even know what they’d put in him. It could be eating its way through his guts as he lies there.
He can’t tell anymore whether the cold wet in his crotch is piss or stomach contents that might have leaked out of his ass.
His colon could be dissolving in acid right now.
His moan builds to a choked yell.
The table bumps.
With sharp quick pants huffing from his nostrils, he lifts his head.
The girl’s at the end of the table. She places her arms on its padded surface, elbows jutting. Her little mouth frowns as she pulls herself up. Her knee pushes onto the edge, the nightgown jerking tight against it. The ends of her hair tickle the inside of his foot, and he jerks his toes, trying to get away from her.
She grasps his ankle with a clammy, warm hand. His leg twitches. He tries to tell her No. He tries to tell her Go away. She has the end of the tube in her other hand, pressed against the tabletop as she pulls the rest of her body between his shins.