Soul Suites

by Hulden Morse

  Many of those businesses, to protect themselves from being associated with whatever findings the government would bring to light, began to show support for the deep investigation into Reaching Dreams’ operations. Some turned their extra office space into makeshift apartments in which homeless individuals could sleep. Other companies went so far as to build their own shelters (especially in the five districts that had been flagged) to make up for the loss of assistance provided by Reaching Dreams during the investigation. Those businesses were revered for their goodwill and generosity, something that rid them of any attachment to a floundering organization.

  However, the situation turned messy when issues started to be found in other nonprofits that aided the homeless. Groups that provided meals for families in poverty, small-name shelters that were linked with churches, startups that gave sleeping bags and tents to people on the street, were all under investigation by the US government.

  As stated by a representative from a large corporation, “We were naturally disgusted and offended by the allegations against Reaching Dreams. We have donated our own money to this company and are embarrassed to be associated with their cruel practices. We do not condone such behavior and have taken it upon ourselves to open our own shelters to address the homeless crisis across America. To do so, we sought assistance from those that understand what it takes to run a shelter, and are saddened to say that we noticed malpractices within those organizations as well. We have done our duty and notified the government of our concerns, and an investigation into those shelters will commence shortly.”

  Public announcements like those became the norm, adding more confusion and frustration to an already dramatic and tense period. Resources for the investigation into Reaching Dreams were split into separate groups in order to efficiently audit every organization that had been deemed a potential threat to the public’s well-being. The idea that so many people could be taking advantage of vulnerable individuals such as the homeless darkened the hearts of Americans. Rallies were held in the cities most affected by the travesties, where people marched through streets and held signs pledging that those responsible for such crimes would not go unpunished. The big businesses that had felt personally violated by the abuse of their donations sponsored the rallies, showing the world that they were only trying to help.

  Those defensive actions created a unique culture in which big businesses were seen as more ethically driven than the nonprofit companies, and government agencies were widely entrusted to find the source of such deplorable evil exploding from the depths of homeless services. Meanwhile, at the heart of it all, the media milked the situation until the very ducts of those stories ran completely dry. They spewed their jargon at the audience with such spiteful neglect that people began to wonder why they ever trusted shelters, Reaching Dreams, or similar organizations in the first place. A gullible public pointed with disgust at those former saints as they desperately gathered the pieces of their shattered homes for the poor, while corporate executives looked on from their high towers and grinned through cigar smoke.

  Chapter 32

  The corridor melted into a cavernous dungeon, complete with moist walls of stone and rusted bars that held back cowering criminals. His footsteps echoed down the hallway, warning the confined captives that someone was approaching, someone from whom they needed to hide. He heard their whispering, he heard the rush of wind through the damp tunnel, and wondered how far beneath the Earth they had descended. The stone walls began to ooze a scarlet liquid. It dripped to the ground, forming large puddles that Charles had to step around in order to avoid tracking it all the way to his room.

  The air became suddenly hot. The thick humidity made breathing difficult, as if he were forced to use twice the amount of energy and muscle in order to pull in enough oxygen to keep his body moving. He had surely descended into the far recesses of Hell. That was the only explanation. The CEO had died on that street in Chicago and was now being marched through Hell by an angel of death, his damned soul being led to a fiery pit where the flames would lick at his ankles before completely consuming him. His skin would bubble and burst from the heat, ripping away like burning paper, and he would scream.

  Charles opened his eyes and found himself standing in front of his room in that brightly lit hallway with the calming, welcoming pictures of plant life hanging between doors. His grey clothing was wet with perspiration, though he welcomed the discomfort over debilitating agony.

  Damian had just finished his lunch when Charles was escorted into the room by a single guard. The large man gave his prisoner an odd look, as if to tell him not to divulge what he knew. Charles ignored it and greeted his roommate.

  “What happened?” Damian asked as soon as the guard had left.

  “It’s an experiment. We’re lab rats in a fucking experiment.”

  The scrawny man’s eyes widened, sinking ever so slightly into his head like a tortoise retracting into its shell to escape the threatening outside world.

  “Does that mean we’ll be released when the experiment is over?” Damian inquired.

  “Huh?”

  “Oh! Are we going to be paid for doing this? I thought about doing an experiment once to make some money, but then they said I could get sick from it and so I didn’t do it. But don’t you have to agree to do one? Can we, like, voluntarily leave? Would we still get some money? Did you sign anything like a contract or something?”

  Charles stared at his roommate in disbelief, unsure how best to counter his blissful thoughts without being painfully blunt.

  “It’s-it’s not like that. This is an illegal experiment. I think. I mean, it has to be illegal. We are not here by choice.”

  “Really? What’s the experiment?” he asked.

  The CEO hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he believed what he had been told. It didn’t seem possible, though he had heard about people that were declared dead by physicians, only for them to miraculously return to life and relay tales of their journey beyond the land of the living. Could someone intentionally manufacture such a scenario in a controlled setting? The ramifications of such a discovery were startling, and they were only just becoming apparent to Charles.

  “They’re proving that there’s an afterlife.”

  “The fuck?” Damian said. “You mean like Heaven an’ Hell?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What? How? What does that . . . ”

  He paused mid-sentence. Charles could see the understanding spreading across his friend’s face. It was the aha moment, the shriek of eureka, the spark of realization, the shock of clarity.

  “They’re killing us,” Damian continued, “and then bringin’ us back. The questions they ask is to see if we actually... shit... went there.”

  “Yup.”

  “So what? They keep doing this ‘til we die?”

  “I have no idea. This is all I know.”

  “Oh my god. We have to get out of here. We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

  Both men jumped as an ear-piercing, spine-tingling scream seeped from outside their door. It stopped for a fraction of a second, and then continued as before. Charles and Damian looked at each other and then rushed to their door, trying to peer through the tiny window to see what was going on outside. Large men dressed in black hurried past their room and out of sight, followed by more people in blue lab coats. The screaming did not stop for a few more seconds, then everything went suddenly silent. The subjects stood there, numb, and wondered how long they would survive the facility.

  Ariana shrieked hysterically as she tried to save her roommate. The woman had a bedsheet tied around her neck and was hanging from the post of the bunk bed, her feet barely hovering above the ground. Ariana tugged at the knot, fighting to get it loose, but the weight of her roommate’s nearly lifeless body pulled on the makeshift noose, preventing her from finding any slack spot with which to undo the tie.

  S
he could see the short girl turning blue in the face, tears forming in her eyes from the pressure, and a faint smile breaking across her purple lips. Ariana screamed as loud as she could until guards came barging into her room. One man immediately lifted the dying woman up to relieve the tension on her neck, while another produced a knife and cut the bedsheet with swift expertise. A third guard held the panicking Ariana against the wall and shielded her eyes from the gruesome sight.

  Trial Technicians rushed into the crowded space and, without hesitation, began to perform CPR on the unconscious woman. While Meredith pounded on the subject’s chest, Eddie ran into the hallway to retrieve a nearby automated defibrillator. Ariana let out a brief cry of distress, unable to shake the image of what she had just seen from her mind. The guard instinctively picked her up and carried her into the bathroom, holding the young woman in his arms, assuring her in a calming voice that everything would be fine. Ariana’s heart felt as if it would beat out of her throat, and she could just make out the action in the other room over his muscular arm, unable to stop herself from watching what she did not want to see.

  Meredith ripped off the flaccid woman’s shirt, while Eddie quickly prepped the defibrillator. Hoping for a shockable rhythm, the pads were placed on the subject’s chest as CPR continued.

  Ariana could feel the steady beat of the man’s heart as he held her tightly. She had never expected compassion from those people and that made the man’s actions in her time of need even more comforting. But then, she felt something drip on her exposed neck, a single drop that rolled across her skin before being absorbed by her shirt. Disgusted and fearing the worst, she carefully tilted her head upward, toward the guard that held her firmly in his arms. Ariana was unsure of what to expect, though the sight bestowed unto her eyes was not something she had ever anticipated seeing in the facility.

  The guard above her, his face looking out the bathroom door, was softly crying. Not a sound emitted from his mouth, nor did she notice any motion that typically accompanied crying, though he had tears slowly dripping from his jaw, falling upon her astonished face. Not once had she discerned any sympathetic emotion in the staff, seeing them as wholly desensitized due to the nature of their jobs. And yet here was this intimidating man, with his black uniform and stern expression, quietly dampening her face with his tears. Was there not some humanity in that building? Were the employees not oblivious to the pain around them?

  The guard looked down at Ariana and his face contorted into an expression of surprise. He uttered a quick apology and used his sleeve to wipe the moisture from her face. He then patted her on the head before continuing to stare through the open door, never releasing his grip on the subject.

  Diverting her attention to the rescue effort still underway, the woman thought back to only moments before, when she was resting on the lower bunk in the quiet room. She had heard incessant movements from the bed above her and had asked her roommate to relax. The structure of the bunk had then rocked back and forth, as if someone were trying to stand on it. Ariana had been about to get off the bed and confront the other woman when a body suddenly fell in front of her, the crazed look of her roommate staring straight ahead with a white, linen noose around her neck. That was the moment when Ariana had screamed.

  She continued to visualize that woman’s dying body, looking right at Ariana with swollen eyes and a face that was hoping to die. It was terrifying to think that someone would sink so low as to take her own life in such a fashion, though Ariana couldn’t help but feel jealous of her roommate. She herself was too tall to have executed such a plan and had therefore never considered using the bedsheets for strangulation. That woman was short enough to just barely hang inches from the floor, a genetic trait that came in handy right at the end. It allowed her to find a means of escape from the grasp of the devil in a white coat.

  Meredith sat back, staring at the dead woman on the ground. Eddie patted her on the shoulder and thanked her for the effort.

  “Her heart’s just too weak,” he said to the Trial Technician. “Nothing could have restarted it.”

  A guard radioed for Christof to bring a gurney to room 36 and then helped Meredith off the ground. Every person in the room was thinking the same thing; the doctor was about to shoot the messenger.

  Chapter 33

  “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

  “Doc. We tried to revive her.” Eddie was standing in Dr. Raymond’s office, having drawn the short straw between him and Meredith. “We did CPR for a while. I was ready with the defibrillators, but we never got it started.”

  “This is unacceptable! We can’t lose perfectly good test subjects! Not many of them can handle a trial. We need to hold on to the ones healthy enough to survive cardiac arrest.”

  “Respectfully, we don’t think she could have made it through another trial. She essentially did our job for us. She stopped her heart. And we couldn’t get it going again. It would have been difficult to bring her back during the next trial.”

  “But possible.”

  There was no arguing with his boss. Eddie accepted defeat and waited for the doctor to continue his tirade.

  “Look, I get your point,” Dr. Raymond said after taking a few deep breaths. “But this runs deeper than losing one subject. Other people can do the same thing.”

  “We didn’t think the beds were tall enough for someone to hang themselves. She was really damn short.”

  “That may be, but there’s a reason I wanted subjects to have their own rooms. Bunk beds are a hazard. People can get hung. They can jump off onto their neck. They could accidentally roll off of it. But it was too expensive! Too inefficient! We needed to house more people! And we couldn’t fit two beds next to one another. Now look what happened.”

  “What would you like me to do about it, boss?”

  “I don’t know. Think of something. That’s your project for the week. Tell everyone else too. Think of a way to keep patients from killing themselves.”

  “And what of Ariana?” the technician asked. “She’s got a trial scheduled for today. Should we postpone it?”

  “No. Do the trial. She’s strong. She can handle it. Plus, I’ve got big plans for her if the trial goes well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t forget that project. Get everyone to help. Now get the fuck out of my office.”

  Without another word, Eddie eagerly scurried away from the doctor and into the safety of the hallway. He was instantly approached by Meredith, Paul, and a couple of curious guards.

  “What’d he say?” Paul asked.

  “Lots of yelling. But no heads got bitten off. We have been tasked with finding a way to keep people from committing suicide.”

  “Excellent. Sounds fun,” Meredith said sarcastically.

  “Oh! I know!” Paul exclaimed. “All we need is a height minimum for people in the bunk beds.”

  Meredith slapped her coworker and said, “Come on. This is serious.”

  “I am serious. We set a height minimum. Anyone under that gets their own room.”

  “Kind of like a, a vertically challenged perk,” Eddie added on with a smile.

  The guards laughed and Meredith tried to keep herself from smiling, which made the effort to remain serious all the more difficult.

  “Oh, you’re four foot nothin’?” Paul said in a deep, false voice. “Well, here’s your own room. We have a special place in our hearts for people who are so short.”

  The small group laughed and then went their separate ways to resume work, each one in a better mood than before the incident. Meanwhile, two floors below, headed for the building’s incinerator, Christof pushed a gurney carrying the body of a woman who had given the ultimate sacrifice in order to escape a world where humans played God and the lines between life and death were blurred beyond recognition.

  The shock was about to come, she could tell by the whine
of the machine, and there was nothing in the world that could stop it. The doctor had total control, absolute power, while she remained strapped to a table, wallowing in her misery and immobility. That horrendous jolt would soon take command of her body, seizing the muscles painfully just before the usual visions of divine interaction would take hold of her mind. She remembered it! She remembered the pain, remembered the incredible sight, and here Ariana was, crying in front of an indifferent audience, about to endure the unthinkable, again. God, she was terrified, so terrified, and then a violent cracking sound filled the air and she felt the coursing electricity. She could not move, could not breathe, her world purely defined by the agony of death. The pain, it was unbearable! She prayed for relief when a sudden silence surrounded her.

  Ariana’s soul broke from its physical shell, hovering above the body for only a second before turning toward the ceiling of the room and rising into the air. She could see the technicians below her, grounded within the world of living beings, moving slowly through their rehearsed motions like a dark video being replayed at half the normal speed, though her soul continued to glide toward the lofted ceiling as those monsters disappeared from her view.

  Suddenly, an explosion of light erupted from one of the corners of the ceiling. Brilliant rays extended into the shadowy world and sucked the woman inward, pulling her toward the source of such warmth. And the ball of light grew in size. It soon extended high above her, opening into a bright universe of shining skies and endless radiance. She could feel the fear dripping away from her disembodied mind. All the pain and the sorrow and the regret and the agony were obliterated by the luminous beams of light that embalmed her soul and replaced those once normal emotions with a sense of comfort and peace. She was at peace.