Eats to Die For!

by Michael Mallory

  “I didn’t bring enough quarters for the brainwashing machine,” I cracked. “Maybe the braindrying one.”

  “Very glib,” said Dan.

  “Very Glib…wasn’t he one of the Beegees?”

  That one made Louie chuckle, but it seemed to anger Colonel Klink.

  “Marta,” he barked, and the woman came up behind me and grabbed my arm, twisting it behind me like a pro.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Mr. Beauchamp,” she said.

  “Little too late to worry about that,” I winced.

  “Okay, Sis,” Alberto said, holding the taser up to Louie, “we need to talk about our dear Aunt Dolores. Damned if I haven’t forgotten where she lives.”

  “She won’t tell you,” I panted.

  “If it starts to hurt enough, she will,” Dan replied.

  “You bastards call yourselves a Church?”

  “Actually, we don’t, at least not beyond a certain level of adjustment. But that is neither here nor there. Marta, take Mr. Beauchamp out.”

  “What are you going to do with Louie?”

  “Not your problem. Get him out of here!”

  Marta forced me through the door of the suite. As we marched down the hallway of the bunker, I said, “Jeez, lady, is this strong-arm stuff really necessary?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she said. “You might try to overpower me.”

  “Oh, yeah, right! Look what an outstanding job of it I’m doing now. I hope there are secret cameras filming this because if you really persist about this rape rubbish, one look at the footage will make anyone realize I have as much chance against you as Mike Tyson.”

  “That would be for Judge Maxwell to decide.” She twisted my arm a little harder.

  “Ow! You mean you already know which judge would…”

  I stopped talking, in part because the pain in my arm was taking my breath away, but also because further words were redundant. Of course she knew which judge would preside over any potential rape case. It would be the judge who was in the pocket of the Temple.

  “In the elevator,” she said, pushing me toward the doors at the end of the hallway. “Don’t get cute.”

  She hit the button with her elbow and waited for the doors to open, and once we were in, she let go of my tingling arm and hit the down button.

  “How far down does this place go?” I asked.

  “To the bottom.”

  I sighed. And she didn’t want me to get cute.

  When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, she started to take my arm again, but I said, “Look, Marta, you don’t have to do that, I promise I won’t run. I wouldn’t know where to run to.”

  After a moment’s deliberation, she instead took me firmly by the elbow and pulled me down another corridor, this one decorated with photos of celebrity Theotologicians, including movie star Vince Cranna, television actress Katie Laines, and a rapper-turned-actor named Charlie Blue.

  Halfway down was the most elaborate carved wooden door I had seen this side of Hearst Castle up the California coast. Set incongruously into the concrete wall, it was enormous and made of what appeared to be mahogany, with intricately carved symbols of the Temple of Theotologics.

  Another note of incongruity was the severe looking, lighted security box just under the brass, oval doorknobs.

  “What’s this room?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Hannah answered.

  I let it go since I was had bigger worries ahead, chiefly being escorted through what looked like hospital doors over which was a painted sign that read, ADJUSTING LABORATORY.

  Oh, jeez, here it comes.

  After going inside I was taken to a dimly-lit room containing a large wall-sized screen, a small table, and in the center a state-of-the-art barber chair. Scattered throughout were a half-dozen machines with dials, buttons, screens and wires. I was instructed to get into the chair and make myself comfortable, which was not easy when I kept expecting Laurence Olivier from Marathon Man to come in at any second, carrying a dental drill and asking me, “Is it safe?”

  Instead, in walked Helen Mirren, her hair stiffly framing her face, wearing a long white lab coat that ended about a foot above her red pumps. It wasn’t the real Helen Mirren of course, but it could have been her stunt double. She was carrying a clipboard and gave me a forced smile.

  “Mr. Beauchamp, is it?” she asked, pronouncing it Bow-SHAWM.

  “BEE-chum,” I replied. “I’m not Continental.”

  “But you are a private investigator.”

  “I am.”

  “And it appears you are investigating us.”

  “I am not investigating the Temple of Theotologics. I was working on a case involving the Burger Heaven restaurant chain, and this is where it has led. You are the ones who brought me here.”

  “Hmmm, refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions,” she said to the ceiling, and looking up, I saw a microphone hanging there, with no attempt to hide or disguise it.

  “Maybe I should become a politician,” I said.

  “Thinks he can joke his way out of anything,” she announced.

  “Has a run in her right stocking,” I said, and she immediately examined her leg, but did not find a run. I had just made it up.

  When she looked back up at me, irritation marring her face, I said: “Made you look.”

  “You are not funny.” At that moment my entire body started to tingle, the same sensation as when one’s arm falls asleep, but all over. I didn’t like it. I tried to move in the chair, but I seemed to be tied down, which I liked even less.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” “Helen” replied, sweetly.

  “I can’t get out of this thing.”

  “Maybe you don’t wish to.”

  “Like hell.” I tried stepping down from the footrest, but could not. The tingling got more pronounced. “What are you doing to me? Why can’t I move?”

  “Are you experiencing pain?” she asked.

  “Not pain…tingling…numbness…discomfort…can’t move my body…”

  “Where are the notes?”

  “What?”

  “That woman’s notes. Where are they hidden?”

  “She sent them to her Aunt Dolores.”

  “We don’t believe you.”

  The tingling increased. Why couldn’t I move?

  “I’ll ask you again. Where are those notes?”

  “I’ll tell you again…Aunt Dolores…” Not unexpectedly, the tingling became more intense, and while it was still not painful, it was extremely uncomfortable. It felt like every cell in my body was vibrating. That must be it; this chair had to be some kind of vibration device, like those electronic foot massage machines taken to a higher level.

  “Turn this off,” I demanded, to no avail.

  “Not until we get the information we require.”

  I forced myself to resist, even though it felt like my brain was being shaken to atoms.

  “I’ve always wondered,” I said through gritted teeth, “what god do you worship?”

  “What?”

  “You call yourselves a Temple, a Church, but all anyone hears about are your classes and your betterment programs and your founder, who was one of the lowest of low-rent movie actors. But no one ever hears about any sort of deity. So who do you worship? Yahweh? Buddha? Allah? Cthulu? Who?”

  “You are in no position to ask questions!” she shouted.

  You’re not in much of a position to answer any, either, kid, Bogart added, helpfully. So just faint.

  “What?” I asked aloud.

  Faint, kid. Pretend to faint!

  “Where are the notes!” Helen screamed.

  “I don’t know!” I screamed back, and then slumped over as though I had just d
ied.

  Apparently it worked for my tormenter, too, since she suddenly shouted, “Turn off the magnets!”

  In an instant, the tingling went away, and so did my attachment to the chair. I started to fall forward and naturally, instinctively tried to prevent myself, but then realized that I had to make this look convincing. So I fell forward out of the chair and landed shoulder-first on the floor, which wasn’t pleasant, but was manageable.

  I rolled onto my stomach, the position I figured would be the most convincing.

  “Dammit!” I heard her cry. “Get in here!”

  A few moments later I heard the door open and a couple sets of footsteps come in. I was then aware of being rolled over while something foul-smelling was passed under my nose. I spluttered back to “consciousness.”

  “He’s all right,” a voice said, and I recognized it as Dan’s. “A weakling is all. And stupid, too, if he thought we were really going to fall for that Aunt Dolores business.”

  I tried my damnedest not to smile. I may be weak and stupid, but I had duped them all and thus had managed to escape the terrors of the tingly barber chair.

  “I don’t think he knows where the notes are,” my tormentor was saying. “I think he genuinely believes there is an Aunt Dolores.”

  “Get him back to his room,” Dan instructed, and within moments I felt myself being pulled up bodily to my feet. I didn’t resist or react much in any way, wanting them to believe I was still groggy from my “collapse.”

  Once in the corridor, though, I raised my head and saw that my escorts were now a strapping young man and a woman with frizzy red hair who wore a stethoscope around her neck.

  They certainly had a lot of staff at this place.

  “I guess I didn’t pass the test, huh?” I asked.

  “We’re not supposed to talk to you,” the woman said.

  “But how is that trick with the chair done? Dr. Mengele’s sister said something about magnets, but that doesn’t make sense, unless…”

  “Hush,” she said as we showed up at the door to the suite in which Louie and I had been interned.

  “It’s these clothes, isn’t it,” I went on, “these uniforms. They’re somehow made with metal, aren’t they? Metal wires interspersed with the fabric.”

  “She said to shut up,” the man barked as the woman unlocked the door.

  “You’re not being very positive, you know,” I pointed out, and a second later was shoved into the room so hard I fell on the floor.

  “You don’t have to be so rough, Dwayne,” the woman said, coming to me and placing her hand on my head. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks. So he’s Dwayne, what’s your name.”

  “Hannah. I’m a nurse here.”

  “I would have thought a doctor, given the stethoscope.”

  “No, just a nurse.”

  Dwayne stepped forward and said, “Aww, isn’t this sweet? Why don’t you two go on a date some other time. We have to get back to work.”

  Hannah’s eyes, which were an unusual color of gray, found mine, and I’d swear the look she gave me was that of a dog behind a gate who greeted every passerby with an expression that screamed, Take me out of here.

  Then she got up and the two of them left the room, locking the door behind them. I got up off the floor and made my way to the sofa. While the experience with the tingly chair had to count as one of the weirdest of my life, I was not hurt.

  I could only hope that Louie was receiving no worse treatment.

  It would be another two hours before I found out. At least that’s what it seemed like. I no longer had any concept of time, and since we were underground, there was no way to use the sun as a gauge.

  But at some point, the door opened again and Louie was brought in by Alberto. She looked shaken and exhausted, but unbruised.

  “I’ll say hi to our cousin for you,” Alberto said with a laugh, and then left, locking the door again.

  I rushed to her and led her to the sofa, lowering her down and sitting beside her. “Are you okay?”

  Louie nodded. “I feel a little numb,” she said.

  “Did they use the tingly chair on you?”

  “Tingly chair? No. I was strapped to a gurney and little sticky electrodes were put on my head that were supposed to read and influence my thoughts. It was supposed to be some kind of lie detector test.”

  “What’s this business about a cousin?”

  “Dave, I had to tell them the truth.”

  “You told them where your flash drive is hidden?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I told them that I don’t really have an Aunt Dolores, and that I really sent all the information to my cousin Tina, who used to be a television news anchor. Oh, god help me, Dave,” she said, falling into my arms, and then whispered into my ear:

  “The stupid shits fell for it. They really believe this equipment of theirs works.”

  Then she broke the embrace and asked, “So what’s this about a tingly chair?”

  I recounted my experience with Helen Mirren’s doppelgänger and the weird chair, and my theory as to why I was unable to move when sitting in it, after which Louie said, “That almost makes sense.”

  “In a Roger Corman film kind of way.”

  “What do you think they’re going to do with us now?” Louie asked, and this question I knew was genuine.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, standing up. “I think we’re safe for a while, but once they get that stick with your notes from your cousin…who was it again?”

  “Tina. Christina Cordova. She was on Channel Five in the nineties.” Louie permitted herself the tiniest of winks to me.

  “Oh, I think I remember the name. I guess the real question now is what are they going to do to Tina. I mean, look at what they did to Regina and Avery.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” she said, getting up and embracing me. Then in my ear, she added: “We have to get out of here.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. If only I knew how.

  The girl, stupid, the girl, Robert Mitchum said.

  I’m holding the girl, I thought back.

  Not that one!

  Which one, then? “Ohhhh,” I moaned when I finally figured it out.

  “Are you getting off just hugging me?” Louie asked.

  “Not a bad thought, but no,” I whispered back. “I think I might have an idea. Come with me.”

  Taking her hand, I led her to the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the shower and the tap.

  “Okay, there’s this girl named Hannah who works here as a nurse. Call it intuition, but I think she might be the weak link in this particular daisy chain because she doesn’t seem all too enthused about the stuff they are making her do, which indicates to me that she’s doing it out of fear.”

  “Like Regina was afraid that they were going to find out she had started smoking again.”

  “Something like that. But if we can figure out what her weakness is, we might be able to use it against her.”

  “But isn’t that the kind of shit they do here?”

  She had a point.

  “Yeah, yeah it is, but there’s one difference: they’re not being held hostage.”

  “But in a way, they are.”

  “Look, Louie,” I said, “do you want to get out of here or not?”

  “Of course I do. I just don’t want to hurt another woman to do it.”

  “Neither do I. So maybe we can convince her to take our side in this mess.”

  “How?”

  “By playing on her nurse’s training. One of us fakes an illness or injury, and that gets her in here, and then we try to talk to her.”

  “What, we pretend to have heart attacks?”

  “I don’t know, exactly, we just have to pretend
to have something.”

  She was silent for a moment, and then said: “Dave, do you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Louie…”

  “Dave, do you love me?”

  “Yeah, Louie, I think I do. You’re not going to stomp on my heart, are you?”

  “No, but I’m going to remind you that a big part of love is forgiveness.” She grabbed my face and gave me a kiss that made my toes curl, and then said, “Trust me, baby.”

  Then she threw open door of the bathroom and screamed, “You piece of shit!”

  I had no choice but to trust her. I ran after her, asking, “What did I do?”

  “You know goddamn well what you did!” she cried, then started screaming in Spanish, and while I had no idea what she was saying, I have to admit that it heightened the drama.

  “Jeez, what’s the problem?” I protested.

  “You think just because we did it once as a mercy hump you can have me anytime you want? You’re a goddamn rapist, you know that?”

  Oh, she was good when she got wound up. I hoped whoever was watching and listening was enjoying the performance.

  “Hey, what’s the big deal?” I said, attempting to affect a macho-man tone. “You wanted it, you know you wanted it!”

  “But not with you!”

  “Too bad!” I shouted back. “I’m a guy who likes a little taco meat every now and then. What’s the big deal?”

  Luisa Sandoval’s eyes widened beyond her brows, and I had only a nanosecond in which to realize that maybe I had played the drama a little broadly before she drove her fist into my nose.

  After the explosion of flashing lights everything went dark and I went down. The last thing I remember is hearing the voice of Bogart say: Jesus, kid, why not just pull the pin on a grenade?

  The next thing I heard was a far off voice saying, “It’s not broken, but he’s going to look like Bozo the Clown for a while.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was one of mine or someone else’s voice.

  Slowly I opened my eyes and through a sheet of red that quickly faded to pink, then disappeared, I saw Hannah hovering over me.

  “You should learn to control your anger,” she said to Louie.

  “I was controlling it,” Louie responded.