by Z. Rider
When it pulls upright, the latch in the top of its body pops open again. An actuator hums. An articulated arm rises upward.
The sharp steel needle of a hypodermic syringe gleams between its pincers.
A.J. jerks. He stretches his fingers toward the bot, pulling the restraints taut against his wrists as the mechanical arm angles the syringe around.
One of its legs is just out of reach.
With a choked curse, A.J. shakes his legs, bumping the bot. It sets its two rear appendages on his stomach, steadying itself. Clear fluid sloshes in the syringe tube. The bot puts another leg against A.J.’s groin and spins the needle, coming at him from a different angle.
A.J. cries out through gritted teeth, jerking his hips to keep from getting stabbed.
His fingers brush then close around the end of the thing’s leg.
Chest heaving, he holds on with everything he’s got, the leather strap pinching his skin.
The bot tries to lift its leg.
A.J. feels like he’s on the edge of losing his grip. Just one more drop of sweat between his fingers, one twitch or cramp, one sharp twist of the metal he’s clutching—that’s all it would take to lose his hold.
The bot’s other legs start moving. Another arm unfolds from its compartment. The sharp edge of a scalpel glints.
A.J. snatches quickly, taking a risk on losing it, but he gets his fist around it, a good, sure grip. Gasping through clenched his teeth, he drags the bot.
It tries to pull its leg free.
A.J. grimaces, digging a heel in, twisting his wrist. His shoulder lifts off the table.
The scalpel flashes. Swoops downward.
It cuts cold into the side of his arm. His hand jerks, but he keeps hold.
The scalpel slices down again and sinks into his flesh.
He yells—out of frustration and panic, not so much out of pain. The bot cuts a red line up his arm, the scalpel unzipping his skin. All he feels is the cold of it, the tickling trickle of blood on his wrist. Panic though is a fast, sharp heat, making him feel like glass about to shatter.
This trip is not supposed to be like this.
The thing stabs him in the arm, then levers the scalpel, digging up flesh.
A.J. tightens his grip and jerks his wrist to the side.
The thing is graceful when it’s moving on its own, but caught in a hand it feels bulky, unwieldy—unbalanced as its weight lunges to and fro.
He slams his fist down. With so little leverage, it’s more like a light pat. A desperate whimper breaks from A.J.’s chest.
The bot doesn’t feel pain, doesn’t feel fear. That’s what frightens him the most. His own parts are soft, easily wrecked. The scalpel gouges him again, blood gushes, and he wonders how close to an artery that was.
A clear droplet, welling at the tip of the needle in the bot’s other arm, glistens as the bot spins it back toward him.
The thing charges him suddenly, its five legs running up his side. A.J. cries out as the twist wrenches the sixth leg out of his grip.
The scalpel flashes. A cold stripe bites his cheek. He cants his head back, chest heaving. Blood trickles toward his ear.
The bot stomps down his stomach, digging in, making him grunt through clenched teeth. It crouches on his abdomen, blocking his view. One of its forelegs jabs his groin. The arm with the syringe whirs. A.J. tips his head back again, teeth clenched, wrists and ankles straining against the straps.
The needle pokes through the fabric of his pajama bottoms with a soft pip. The sharp pinch of it piercing skin cuts his cry off in his throat. His face tingles, clammy, slick with sweat. The muscles in his neck cord.
A sick coolness seeps through his scrotum as the bot injects him. His sack starts to feel heavy, like it’s thickening into hot mud, then sludgy clay. Distantly he can feel the bot’s leg press against his groin again as it shifts. It’s like it’s touching someone else, not him. Another pinch comes, and he doesn’t feel it, just the distant pressure of something going on.
A sob catches in his throat.
The thing’s legs palpate his belly while it repositions itself for another injection.
Then he can’t feel anything down there at all anymore, even though he’s just seen the syringe arm stab toward his groin again.
A keen escapes his clenched teeth as he twists his wrists in the restraints. He has bruises, tender spots from fighting the straps. He leans against the leather, hard, making one of those bruises throb—he needs to feel something. Distract himself before the swimminess rushing his head makes him start vomiting.
The bot’s two arms are at work—fabric ripping, metal instruments flashing. There’s a tugging in the skin at his lower abdomen, where the anesthetic didn’t reach. The bot’s arms bump and nudge the inside of his thighs—also not numb. The deadness is concentrated in one area, and there he can’t feel a thing, can only guess, by the clues he feels elsewhere, that the bot is slicing through his skin, that it’s spreading him open, that it’s taking parts of him out.
It backs up over him again. The arm with the bloody scalpel rises, folds, and retracts into its shell. The bot turns, whirring and clicking toward the cart. A.J. follows with his head. The smooth black ball of metal lies on the tray, waiting.
His brain is as numb as his crotch. The part of him up there that’s him has been made very, very small and stuffed away in a tight box at the back of a closet. He’s conscious of a need to puke, but he’s cold and shivery, and his body just lies there, useless.
The bot lifts the ball from the filthy tray with one of its vise-like arms. There’s a click as it depresses the shiny eye. The thing starts ticking like a watch. The bot turns back around, heading for A.J.’s middle, whirring and clicking and tick-tick-ticking.
A.J. moves his fingers weakly against the tabletop, thinking maybe he can catch the bot again, but he’s nowhere near it, and he’s nowhere fast enough. He feels glassy-headed. He leans his head back so he’s staring at the lights above him, the three bulbs set into hanging rusted shades. He can almost feel their warmth. Wants to feel their warmth. Tears push at the corners of his eyes.
When the tentacle’s nub swings down, like it’s watching what’s going on, he’s not surprised. Of course it is. Of course.
The bot’s arm nudges his thigh. The skin on his stomach tugs, then pulls tighter as the bot gathers the edges of his scrotum around the metal ball. A.J. can see red behind his eyelids—he can see severed flesh and bleeding and pain and the black ball being closed up inside him. He just can’t feel it.
A thin arm rises from the bot’s hatch. It’s like a long pencil full of joints, with tweezers at its tip. The needle in its grip trails a coarse black thread.
A.J. squeezes his eyes tighter, and all he hears is tickticktick like a brittle heartbeat.
15
Pretty Sure It’s a Lie
My forehead rests on the wall by the door. There’s a corridor right on the other side. If I’m still, I can almost hear a noise. Or think I hear a noise. I’m not sure what’s out there and what’s shuffling around in my own head. I think I hear boots clodding, but they never seem to come closer—or go farther away either for that matter. I hear murmurs like pillows. I hear memories and the world going on without us, and I think probably all of it’s in my head. So when I hear boots clomping again, muffled by the padded walls, instead of listening outward, I listen inward, looking for those black boots in my mind while my knees, shins, and the tops of my feet soak up the warmth of the coarsely padded floor.
Metal scrapes. A seal breaks, and the door swings inward. I’m on the other side of it, so I can’t see what’s coming in. I drop my butt to my heels. The bumping roll of wheels—one complaining softly—approaches from outside. I hear…
A ticking, underneath a voice saying, “Stash him for now,” and the other saying, “Pain in the ass.”
I shuffle backward.
Bare feet on the footrest of a creaking wheelchair. Stained hems of faded blue pajama
bottoms flattened against thin shins. Knobby knees like a rickety old man’s.
A.J.’s fingers are curled on the armrests. As an orderly bumps the chair’s front wheels onto the padded floor, A.J. stares glassy-eyed. His hair looks more like a shredded eraser than a shoe brush now, all clumped and thickened with stuff from that tub. His face is streaked with rusty stains. Clean tracks make their way through it, but the tracks look like they’ve dried, and all of it makes him look old.
His shoulders slump, rounded. The collar of his stained shirt pokes forward, yawning open.
He looks sucked out.
The door clangs shut. The lock drops into place.
I slide backward, moving my ass off my heels and onto the floor, getting my feet out in front of me so I can scoot toward him. “Aje?”
The ticking, it’s like the kitchen timer my dad used to use when we played board games to keep my mom from taking half an hour for a turn. Even Chutes and Ladders, the wait for her move was interminable.
Ticktickticktick.
“Why are you ticking?”
When he doesn’t answer, I say, “Aje? What happened?”
I was wrong about glassy-eyed. He looks wet-eyed. If he blinks, he’ll loosen the water wavering there, and fresh tracks will slide through the grime on his face. But he’s not blinking. It’s unsettling.
The ticking just keeps going and going. It’s at ear level. I wonder if it’s going to hit zero and bing—your turn’s up!
“A.J.?”
He does nothing.
I lick my lips. I have no idea what he’s been through. I wonder if he’s in the wheelchair because he’s in shock or because he can’t walk. Or both. I start to hitch myself in front of him, digging my heels in and dragging forward on my ass. As I lean in to scoot again—I stop. Between his knees, dark threads messily stitch the crotch of his pajama bottoms closed.
Whatever’s ticking, it’s in his pants.
If I had my arms free, I’d stretch the elastic waist out and see what it is.
Why would they put a timer in his crotch…? Or rip the crotch of his pajamas to do it…?
“We need to get out of here,” I say. My lips have gone dry again. My forehead itches. I scrub it against his bony knee. “Jesus, Aje, we need to get out of here. Can you get up?”
He’s not moving.
Goddammit. I shove around, putting my back against the wall. My shoulders ache. My elbows are irritated from the rasp of the cloth, from their limited movement. I tip my head back with an annoyed exhale. Then I squeeze my eyes shut, pissed off at those assholes for what they did to him. How the fuck is he going to get on a plane in a few hours like this?
The timer ticktickticks.
My eyes squeeze tight. My brow crumples. My teeth grit together.
My voice creaks when I speak again: “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
His voice is like paper left in the rain and sun. “You need to get out.”
“We need to get out.” I have no idea how I’d get out without him. I don’t know where we are, where we’re going—and I’m sure they know where we are, every fucking second. There needs to be two of us. At least two. I wish I still had that metal pipe.
“I’m fucked,” his dried-out voice says. “You can still get out.”
I sit forward. “You’ve gotta get me out.” I’m sure he’s wrong. I’m sure—fuck, he’s on wheels. If he won’t get up, I can wheel him out. I scramble clumsily to my feet, swaying until I catch my balance. “You’ve gotta get me out of this thing.”
His watery eyes take in the straitjacket.
He whispers, “You’re bleeding,” but it’s flat, like he’s just informing me of a detail—your shirt’s untucked, your fly’s down.
I look and see the old smears from when they stuffed me into this thing.
Shaky, his finger points to my side, and I turn, as if that’s going to help me see. Twisting, I find a small blossom of blood by where my hand is trapped. It doesn’t look fresh.
“Don’t worry about it. Here, see if you can work these buckles.” I back toward him, tucking my chin. Hugging myself whether that’s what I want to do or not. I’m getting pretty sick of being forced to hug myself. My ribs are starting to complain, and my shoulders.
After a moment, a soft tugging comes from behind me.
After another moment, I say, “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know.” It’s a whisper and, I’m pretty sure, a lie.
I prompt him: “Last time I saw you, there was a tentacle wrapped around you.”
It takes a moment, and he says, “Yeah.” The straps cutting into my groin cut harder as he pulls on them. I bite my lip and try to hold still. It’s a relief when they drop loose, swinging between my legs. He tugs at another buckle.
“I thought it might have pulled you down to its lair to make sweet love to you,” I say, peeking over my shoulder.
His fingers pull harder, but there’s no answer.
He unbuckles the strap, and there’s an easing as it lets go. I bend my knees, lowering the next strap closer to his fingers.
While he picks at it, there’s a stone caught in my throat.
Frustration grips me tighter than the jacket.
He whispers, “I always liked her, you know.” His knuckles dig in my back. An edge of a buckle twists against my spine. The feeling’s all dulled though through the layers of cloth.
He says, “It was just a fling, but I was hoping it was the start of something, you know? Then I didn’t hear from her, she didn’t answer my texts. Until she showed up to ask if I could cover half of it. And I gave her the money, because it was what she wanted.” The strap starts to loosen.
An exhale rattles from A.J.’s throat.
Working that strap through its buckle, he says, “One thing I never wanted was to have the ‘I’m in love with your sister’ conversation.”
“Awkward, huh?” My face crawls like bees.
“For both of us, right?” The strap drops free. The jacket is just a sack now—one that holds my arms crossed, but I can breathe again, move a little again.
My arms snug up against me as he works on the buckle holding the sleeves together in the back.
“You want to get a burger after this?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says, the answer quick and airy. I’m pretty sure it’s a lie.
16
The Pinprick Goes in Anyway
My brain sets aside the whole Delia thing. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to look back over ten years of hanging out with A.J. and reimagine it with him making moon eyes at my sister when neither of us were looking.
I think instead about that summer day at the river again—the sun burning through his hair, the twist of his lips as he said something like, “I’ll see you at the bottom,” before his feet padded over the rocks and he launched into the bright blue sky.
“We should stop at the river.” I wrestle the straitjacket up my arms. “One more time before you have to go.”
The door’s bolt slides back while I’m struggling to get the sack over my head. It’s hot and close in the sweaty canvas, and a panic grips me: that they’ll wheel A.J. back out and lock the door before I get out of this fucking thing.
Air hits my face, and I just have the sleeves to deal with. The door bumps me in the hip. I’m on the back side of it again—and afraid all over again. I hop around its edge and hook my foot behind the nearest wheel on A.J.’s chair. “Hey.”
God, I smell sour.
“I think we’re kind of done here,” I say.
The orderlies pay me no attention, one holding the door open, the other releasing the wheel brake. That one has hold of the chair’s handles.
They’re going to take him away again. I clutch the armrests, one hand free, the other still bundled in canvas.
“Hey. We’re ready to get out of here.” The chair rolls backward. I lurch with it—“Hey!”—trying to keep hold.
As it turns, the hand that�
��s still stuck in the straightjacket slips from the chair arm.
The orderly who’s holding the door grasps my other wrist and wrenches it away from the chair, breaking my grip.
A.J. doesn’t even lift his head as he’s wheeled away. Doesn’t even look back at me.
“We’re fucking done here!” I throw myself at the doorway. The orderly shoves me back. I trip over my feet. Everything slows. I discover a thousand moments where I can save myself, but every one of them hits my brain too late. My ass thuds on the floor. The back of my head cracks against the padded wall, bounces, then bumps again. My teeth snap shut. My elbow hits the wall. By the time my eyes are opening and I’m marshaling my muscles to pick myself up, the door is shut.
“Fuck!”
On all fours, I pant, my lungs scraping for air. My cheeks beat hot with a rush of blood.
“FUCK!”
I drop my head, digging my fingernails into the padding. A sob catches in my throat, and I fight it back.
They can’t do this.
They can’t fucking do this.
I stare at the back of the door, panting. My shirt, soaked with sweat from the straightjacket, clings to my skin, drags at me with its weight. The tickticktick’s gone—rolled off down the hallway with my best friend. My best friend who has admitted defeat. Why? Why is he fucked? What did they do to him?
Tickticktick.
I have to find him. I have to find him before it’s too late.
I launch at the door. No handle, but plenty of padding. I dig my fingernails in, trying to get purchase on it. It’s easier at the edges, where I can pull at those rolled seams. The door’s not light, but it moves a little—not light, but not latched either. I push to my feet and get a better grip. The first quarter inch isn’t so bad, then the weight starts to work against me. I tug and scrabble, and eventually I get my fingers around the edge of the door.