Soul Suites

by Hulden Morse

  Did they really?... Did I really?... Charles was beside himself with fear for what that meant about the facility in which he lived.

  The CEO had always been concerned about his family, his company, and when he would be able to return home. Yet now, after what had happened mere minutes ago, the possibility of ever again kissing his wife or children seemed to slip painfully far away. People were dying there. And he was no exception. With all the power he had and all the money he had made and all the friends in high places he had acquired, none of it mattered in that building. People didn’t have a past or a future in the facility; they had a terribly agonizing present. There was nothing to look back on because history didn’t make a difference. There was nothing to look forward to because the future was completely controlled by a master schedule. One only need worry about what was happening in that very moment.

  Thoughts of seeing his family were taken over by his primal needs of that instant: to eat. The future meant nothing, whereas the food sitting before him was a necessity. Charles bit into a piece of toast with butter soaking into it, unwittingly slipping further away from what made him human.

  Chapter 25

  They stopped outside of room 38 and paused at the door.

  “Which one are we grabbing?” the guard asked his partner.

  “Uh, Jake.”

  “Thank god. Mr. Munich’s a pain.”

  “Don’t you think they should increase the rate of room cleanings? I’ve been suggesting that for a while.”

  “The issue is the subjects just don’t give a shit. This is probably the cleanest they’ve ever been.”

  The guard laughed. “Dude, you know some of them crap in their beds. It’s like, dude! You have a bathroom right there.”

  “They’re homeless. What do you expect?”

  “Just glad I’m not on the custodial crew.”

  They opened the door to find two men sitting on the bottom bunk, staring at the door as if their conversation had just been interrupted. One of them, Mr. Munich, was black with short, curly hair and a chubby face that signaled overeating but a skinny frame that showed signs of malnutrition. His roommate, Jake, was Caucasian and boasted a thick mop of brown hair upon his head connecting to the fuzz appearing on his face. Jake was in his early 60s, one of the older subjects in the facility, while Mr. Munich was nearing the end of his 30s. They had become closely bonded over the past week and a half and were very protective of each other, as if they had no one else in the world to care about.

  “Alright. Let’s go, Jake,” one of the guards said.

  “No! Don’t take him!” cried Mr. Munich.

  “Hey! You stay back. Don’t cause trouble. We need to take Jake to the doctor.”

  “No! Don’t!” the man cried.

  “Hey, man, it’s okay.” Jake patted his friend on the leg and then stood up. “We have to accept this.”

  “No! Please don’t leave me!” he said, leaping up from the bed and running to one of the guards.

  “Mr. Munich! Back off! We’re here for Jake!”

  “Please! Take me!” the man yelled. “I wanna die. Let me go! I wanna die!”

  A guard grabbed the black man’s shirt and threw him onto the bed.

  “Whoa! Be gentle with him!” Jake said in anger. He ran to Mr. Munich’s aid and knelt beside him, stroking the man’s head. “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. I’ll be back.”

  “No! It’s not fair!” he cried like a child who had just been told he couldn’t go to a theme park. “I wanna die. They take me.”

  “I will be back. I promise. Just hang tight, and I’ll be right here with you soon.”

  “Bu-bu-but what if you don’t?”

  “Alright. We’ve been nice enough. Now we need to go.” The guard stood by the door, pointing for Jake to follow him out.

  The older man smiled at his friend and then followed the guard out of the room, refusing to turn back and see the man’s hopeless face. He found it a gift and a curse to be housed with Mr. Munich. They were both caring, friendly individuals who enjoyed long conversations in the middle of the night in order to sway their thoughts away from the trials they were forced to endure. But the young roommate had needs that Jake simply could not fill. He had abandonment issues that stemmed from a childhood bursting with unfortunate events and cruel individuals, all of which Jake understood and wished to right, but had rendered him a sort of guardian for his roommate. Such a role proved to be a formidable task when Mr. Munich had a breakdown or resorted back to a childlike blubbering, both of which happened multiple times a day. Jake loved the man, as much as a father loved his own son, but it was deeply fatiguing to work with his roommate through those moments of distress.

  The guards led the man into the area of trial rooms, meeting up with Meredith in the hallway.

  “We’re in three now,” she said to them. “Doc is stuck in room six. Surgery’s taking longer than he thought.”

  “You all ever think of hiring another doctor?”

  Meredith leaned in to the guards and whispered to them, “Believe me. We’ve tried. But he doesn’t trust anyone besides himself. He wants to do it all. Somehow he makes it work. He’s definitely got the flow down.”

  “Right. Well, we can help you strap him in, I guess. Got nothing else to do until that subject in surgery needs to go back.”

  The four of them walked into the trial room, and Jake calmly removed his own shirt, handing it to the Trial Technician.

  “Your pants too,” Meredith said to him.

  “What? Why?”

  “We don’t want those getting wet, either.”

  “No. Please. Not another water trial. Please!”

  “Sorry, Jake,” the woman said without sympathy. “That’s what the schedule says. And we need to obey the schedule.”

  “No. Uh, shock me. Please, shock me! I don’t want to drown!”

  “Jake. Either remove your pants, or we’ll do it for you.”

  The man stood there, looking at the two guards as if they would provide him with some assistance. They merely leaned against a wall in wait, one of them holding a zip tie and the other holding a large, metal bar.

  The subject took off his grey sweats with shaking hands and hesitantly handed them to Meredith. The woman thanked him and placed the clothes on a chair in the corner of the room. The guards then approached Jake and pushed him to the floor so that he was in a kneeling position. One of the guards zip-tied Jake’s hands behind his back and then hurried out of the room to help Meredith retrieve the tub. The other guard placed the bar over the subject’s ankles.

  “Why do you do this?” Jake said with a quivering voice.

  “It’s my job,” the large man said, emotionless.

  “Is this what you’ve always wanted to do? Hurt people?”

  “I’m not the one that hurts you.”

  “You’re hurting me now,” Jake said, staring at the man in disbelief.

  “Look, I do my job and I take home a fat paycheck. That’s all.”

  “Why don’t you tell someone? Why let this continue?”

  The guard stepped away from Jake as he said, “Then I would be out of a job.”

  “What? There are other jobs!”

  “I would be in a ton of trouble, you idiot. And even if I wasn’t, no one would hire me after this.”

  “Then why did you take the job?”

  The guard had reached the door to the trial room but paused, turning around to reveal a smile that made the hair on Jake’s neck stand at attention.

  “Because it’s a great job.”

  “What? This isn’t healthy. These working conditions are incredibly unhealthy!”

  The man laughed. “For you, maybe. But we’re a closely knit family here. With amazing benefits. We get great food and have events here and socialize. I’ve never had a job where I’ve felt so
much at home with a group of people. I’m sorry you’re kneeling there, about to die. But I’m not sorry I’m standing here working with my friends to create something truly amazing.”

  With that, the guard held open the door as the tub was wheeled in for the trial. Jake stared at the man, shocked at the sickening things he had just said. The subject wasn’t sure if those in the facility had been brainwashed by whoever ran it, or if the employees recruited were chosen because they were already devoid of all sentiment and compassion.

  In his past, Jake had seen unspeakable acts of aggression and had even been a part of those actions while in the line of duty. He knew what it felt like to watch another person die, and those images tore at him every night for almost forty years. How did those workers in the facility find it possible to sleep at night? They weren’t in a foreign country fighting a war, and they weren’t caught up in the heat of the moment during a fierce battle. These people were making calculated decisions to torture their fellow countrymen. What kind of monster would choose to be a part of that? What kind of demonic being would be in charge of such a program?

  Chapter 26

  When the authorities were notified that a few districts within Reaching Dreams may have been lying on annual reports, the Office of the Attorney General sent investigators to the headquarters and purged the servers for every and any piece of information they could get. The entire nonprofit was overtaken, with federal and state divisions asserting their power over the operations of Reaching Dreams. Hamilton knew it would be messy, she knew it would be incredibly damaging, but she didn’t understand just how cumbersome the entire process would become. Officials in suits sat at her desk for hours, poring over her computer files and physical documents as if every line of text would incriminate her. Pinner and Morris were plagued with similar fates, and had no choice but to work in the various conference rooms in order to gain some privacy.

  But no one was hit harder than the districts in question. When Hamilton made that suicidal phone call to the Attorney General, the offices of those five districts were overrun with government employees searching for wrongdoing in every corner. She hoped—no, she prayed—that they would quickly find an issue with those districts, disband them, and allow the rest of the organization to continue operations, to continue helping people. But chances of that happening grew ever slimmer as the media began to take hold of the story and run with it like it was a baton in a relay race. The story was passed from person to person, growing in excitement and gravity until it reached the waiting ears of a greedy public. They ate it up and digested it thoroughly. The downfall of a large corporation fed their will to continue on with their comparatively less interesting lives. The board of directors, the executives, the high-ups in each district, found themselves sitting before committees in hearing after hearing, relaying the same story over and over, saying with sunken eyes and heavy hearts, “I assure you, I do not know of any wrongdoing.”

  It did not take long for red flags to start flying within Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. The reports they found on the computers within each district matched the ones that were given to the IRS, Census Bureau, and state sectors. However, it was determined that those reports did not represent the trends of the homeless population or working population within each city. Investigators found that over the past several years a substantial number of individuals had been recruited from the streets and graduated from the Reaching Dreams program. Those that graduated could be tracked by an increase in the working population within the industries in which they were recorded to have been placed. Any Graduates that found themselves back on the streets would increase the homeless population. While those month-to-month numbers were small, they added up to a noticeable percentage over two or three years of operations. And the investigators determined that something was definitely amiss. However, as yet they had no way of proving those people actually disappeared or that any crime had been committed. Simply because a person who was once homeless could not be found anymore did not prove that he or she was taken by a large nonprofit. Any number of reasons could explain where the person had gone.

  The directors of those districts folded their hands, repeating that they had done nothing wrong and that their numbers were factual in every way. The homeless population decreased ever since they began operating in that area, and their reports for recruitment perfectly matched the decrease in persons living on the streets or in shelters. Those individuals being released into the real world without being tracked were proof of the autonomy and trust that the program awarded every single Resident. To follow them like children would be counterproductive and inhumane.

  With little information from the districts or from the headquarters, the investigators turned their attention to the man that seemingly started it all: Charles Pearson. Previously, he had been portrayed in the media as a saint, a man who gave his life to help others, someone everyone knew of and admired. Strangers prayed for his safe return. His family was held on the highest pedestal, assuming that since they were associated with that brilliant man, they too were gifts from God.

  But after word escaped of the findings (or lack thereof) at several Reaching Dreams districts, the media began to hint that perhaps Charles was not a fallen hero, but a cowardly villain. Bit by bit, day by day, he was torn from his throne by the media and thrust into their dungeon. He was given the persona of the mastermind behind the disappearance of thousands of people. The public loved it. They loved to hate someone so powerful and so influential. Not only did it provide them a release from the depressing story of a missing saint, but it gifted the world with a lightning rod. Here was a man that everything could be blamed on. Cartoonists depicted him sitting on a beach in Fiji with a toothy grin and stacks of cash serving as his footstool. Newspapers printed articles that listed telltale signs of his betrayal that everyone had willfully ignored or overlooked. His family, unaccepting of their loved one’s new image yet unable to shake the cloud that hung over their last name, fled to a quiet corner of the country and hid from the public eye.

  It was a story for the century. People would be talking about it for years to come. Locker rooms, office breakrooms, coffee shops, were all filled with opinions and tales concerning the former great nonprofit known as Reaching Dreams. One newspaper wittily dubbed Charles, The Ruler of Leeching Dreams.

  Chapter 27

  No more than a half hour after Charles had been dumped in his room, the door screeched open again and Damian was escorted in by a guard. Having regained some of his strength, the CEO pushed himself out of the chair and staggered to his roommate’s aid.

  “What the hell did you do to him?” he yelled at the guard.

  “It’s okay, Charles. It’s okay,” Damian said weakly.

  “Back off, Pearson,” one of the large men said with intimidation.

  “What the hell is going on around here? I want answers!”

  “Hey! Pearson! Back away!”

  With Damian now sitting on the bed, Charles pointed an unsteady finger at the guard. He was furious, terrified, and desperate for answers. What he had been through mere minutes ago was undeniably brutal, and he feared that his friend had been subjected to the same torture. He was about to do anything he could to gain some leverage.

  “Get away from the door!” Another guard entered the room, ready to subdue the uncooperative subject if he made a move for the exit.

  “I just want to talk,” Charles said in as calm of a voice as he could produce.

  “Then sit back down and wait.”

  “No. I want to talk now.”

  “Sit down, Pearson!”

  “I saw something else!” the CEO yelled.

  “What did you say?” The guards stared at him, incredulous.

  “I saw something else. I need to tell the doctor.”

  One of the guards motioned for someone in the hallway. He then stepped out of the room to make way for
a Trial Technician who had been waiting nearby.

  “What did you see?” Eddie said, pulling a notepad and pen from his lab coat.

  “I want to talk to the doctor,” Charles said defiantly.

  “You can tell me. This is my job. What did you see?”

  “No. I’ll only speak to Doctor Raymond. No one else.”

  The Trial Technician sighed and looked at the ground. He said, “Pearson, do not make this difficult. If you withheld information from us, then you need to tell me right now.”

  “I will tell the doctor what I saw.”

  Eddie stared at him, trying to decide how best to proceed with the situation. He was not used to dealing with subjects that were so confident and disobedient. That was the benefit of working with homeless people; they tended to accept their fate and do as they were told. Some would step out of line, but it required little effort to remind them who was dominant and where their place was in the food chain, easily establishing the necessary control. But that guy, that businessman, was a pain in everyone’s ass. Eddie and his fellow employees were hoping the doctor would simply murder the CEO, and purge his rebellious nature from the facility. But Dr. Raymond was excited to have a relatively healthy individual with whom to work. He didn’t have to deal with the subject outside of the trial room. What did he care?

  Charles boldly said to his superior, “If the Doc finds out that I have information and you never told him, he’ll be mad. At you.”

  The Trial Technician was irate. Who the hell did that subject think he was to threaten the man holding a gun in a fist fight? And yet, most unfortunately, the subject was right.

  “The doctor’s busy right now,” Eddie grumbled at him. “He’ll come by if he has time. Now get back against the far wall or we’ll be forced to hurt you.”

  Charles nodded in understanding, content with his small victory, and moved against the wall beside the bathroom. The guards and Trial Technician left, slamming the door loudly. The CEO immediately hurried to Damian’s side and sat beside his friend.