by Hulden Morse
As the broken man sat there, his body pressed against the wall in the corner of the room, a muffled sound reached his ear. He picked up his head and listened intently, hearing the sound of an opening door coming through the wall. He could hear unintelligible voices through the wall shared with the neighboring room and then the same sound of a metal door moving, as if it were now closing. Mr. Munich pressed his ear tightly against the cold plaster and listened to the soft sobs of a woman.
Crying into the sheets of her bed, which provided her quite a lot of physical pain in the moment, Ariana knew that something was wrong. She had bandages wrapped tightly around her head, preventing the woman from seeing any part of her tiny world. The thick material was taped down securely, making it very difficult for her to remove the bandages and see whatever that damn doctor had done only hours prior.
Desperate, she sat up on her mattress and began to violently tug at the expertly done wrapping. It was difficult to find a place that she could wedge her finger into, though eventually she burrowed a hole into one of the layers and ripped the bandage, using that as a starting point to remove the remainder of the dressing. However, before the woman could finish her work, the door to her room was thrown open and unseen voices rushed to Ariana’s side. They shoved her against the bed and commenced to chastise her for not obeying very clear instructions.
“We told you not to touch the bandages!” a man said in the woman’s ear.
“This is for your safety. We are trying to protect you,” someone else added.
There was the beep of a radio and then one of the guards called for a technician, stating that the subject in 36 had managed to remove some of the dressing.
Within a minute, a woman’s voice entered the room and delicate fingers began to fiddle with the wrapping around Ariana’s head, the soprano voice telling her that it was incredibly important that the bandages remain in place for a while. They were trying to help her and wanted the surgical area to heal as quickly as possible.
“But I can’t see!”
“We know that. And it’s not ideal. But really soon you’ll have a new roommate and she’ll be able to help you out. Don’t worry. We’ll get someone in here that’ll be a really good companion to you.”
“But I want them off. Please! I just want to see!”
“We know, Ariana,” the soothing female voice reassured her. “We’re doing the best we can. You just need to let the area heal for a short while and then we can remove the bandages. Can you be patient for us?”
The subject tried not to cry, remembering how much it hurt before, and so she fought to maintain her composure. She nodded her head to whoever was in the room, was patted on the leg, and was then left alone in total silence.
Mr. Munich did not understand the exchange that had just taken place. He listened for more, hoping that the person he had heard crying was going to be okay, but the room next door remained silent. He looked at the bunk bed where Jake was lying and thought about disturbing him with the happenings of the last few minutes. He decided that his friend needed to rest and returned to the mysterious occurrences beyond his four-walled world.
With enthusiasm, the hopeful man delicately knocked on the plaster and waited for a response. He was answered with continued silence. Mr. Munich knocked louder, much to his roommate’s curiosity, and he heard a soft, “Hello” emit from the other side.
Excited, the subject pressed his face against the wall and managed to breathe out, “Hello” through obstructed lips.
There was brief shuffling from the neighboring room and then a much clearer, closer voice came back. “Who is this?”
“This is Mr. Munich.”
“Um, hello. I’m Ariana.”
Like a child playing with a new toy for the first time, the man clambered onto his hands and knees and talked happily through the wall. “Hello, Ariana. How are you?”
“Not too well. I can’t see anything. And my eyes hurt. Um, how are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I guess. Yeah, I’m good,” Mr. Munich said, having forgotten about his previous depression amidst the excitement of being able to talk to someone new for a change.
He liked meeting different people and being social, never having found shyness one of his natural qualities. Being trapped in the facility brought out Mr. Munich’s more negative traits, things he did not wish to think about or act upon. He had spent most of his life as the recipient of foul remarks, being reminded that because of his mental disability he would never amount to anything or garner the respect of others. Mr. Munich took the wisdom from his mother and used her encouragement to develop himself into the best person he could be. When his mother died, the distraught man was flung onto the streets with no one to care for him. However, not forgetting the things he had learned, Mr. Munich continued to interact with others, meet new people, and be as friendly as possible. He felt that such a quality allowed him to make a living in the world by receiving generous gifts from others such as food and money, never considering that sympathy was ever a factor in free handouts.
“How are you so happy?” Ariana asked the strange person.
“Because I’m talking to you. Isn’t that exciting?”
“Well, I guess. I don’t know. I find it hard to be positive in this place.”
“Well, sometimes I get sad. Real sad. But my friend Jake helps me a lot. Right, Jake? Do you hear Ariana?” Mr. Munich turned toward his roommate who was still lying motionless on the bed.
“Yeah. I can hear her, Mr. Munich,” Jake said without energy.
“Why can’t we hear her before?”
“We could, buddy. Remember?” the older man said quietly. “We could hear screaming.”
“No, Jake! Not that. Why can’t we hear talking?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you need to be close to the wall,” Jake said, pressing his face into a pillow.
“Yeah,” the man continued, turning toward the invisible voice again. “Jake and I are buds. We look after us. You gots a roommate?”
“Um, no. I don’t,” Ariana said. “Not right now. Maybe soon. I need someone to help me see at least. Until they let me take the bandages off.”
“Oh. Well if you want, me and Jake can be your roommate. Yeah. We’ll have lots o’ fun. We can talk and stuffs. Look after one another.”
“Okay. That sounds nice. Thank you, Mr. Munich.”
“Mr. Munich,” Jake mumbled from the bed. “Can you do this some other day? I really need to rest.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry, Jake. That was Jake, Ariana! He needs to rest. But we will talk later!”
“Of course, Mr. Munich. I would like that.”
“Goodbye!”
“Goodbye.”
Mr. Munich stood up from the ground and sat in a chair at the table. He looked at the wall where he had been talking and smiled, ecstatic to have made another friend in such a place. He imagined what she looked like. The woman sounded sweet and loving, like a mother. The man imagined that she probably had children or at the very least wanted children. She was too kind not to have children unto whom she could bestow her affection and that sweet voice. He looked forward to the next day when the three of them could chat and learn all about each other. It was an exciting moment to say the least, something that gave the previously depressed Mr. Munich a reason to maintain his love of life.
Chapter 39
Hamilton had several contacts at some of the corporations pointing a very accusing finger at Reaching Dreams. She knew those contacts were not executives that made decisions for the entire company, and so she was surprised when they refused to speak with her. Those individuals were supervisors at stores, managers at hotels, people that she assumed would be low enough on the corporate ladder that they would be willing to work with her. And yet, Hamilton was either ignored or outright rejected by those friends or former colleagues. Either the companies were successfully b
rainwashing people, or they too had something to hide.
However, a couple days after reaching out to a college friend of hers and never receiving a response, Hamilton was disturbed in the middle of the night by the ringing of her phone. She rubbed her eyes and glanced at the screen, seeing that it was a number she did not recognize. Typically, she would ignore the call, assuming that it was a telemarketer in a different time zone. However, because she had recently been receiving important calls from a lot of unknown numbers, she decided to answer it.
“Hello?” she said, still groggy from having just been asleep.
“Paula. It’s, um, it’s Jeff.”
“Jeff! I’m so glad you called me back. It’s been a long time. How are you?”
“Look, I’m sorry to call now, but this needs to be very private.”
“Is this your new number?”
“No. This is a disposable number. We need to meet. Where are you?”
“Uh, I’m in San Diego. You still working at—”
“No, no,” he interrupted her. “No need to say it. And yes, I’m still there. Look, something’s very amiss here. I looked into it even before you called me and found strange things. It’s very hush hush around here. People are either scared or ignorant, but I need to get something to you.”
Hamilton was getting worried. It all seemed incredibly risky. She was expecting to talk to a few friends from her past and hear that those companies were indeed throwing Reaching Dreams under the bus in order to improve their public image. What her old university friend was saying seemed almost dangerous.
“Jeff. What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you now. But we need to meet.”
“Um, I would rather just do this over the phone or email or something. I’m very busy—”
“Dammit, Paula! You need to trust me. This is deep shit you’re sinking in. People are disappearing. And I’m not talking about the homeless people.”
“If you have information, then why don’t you just—”
“My information is meaningless without files from your company.”
She was now incredibly confused. “What does my company have to do with this?”
“We need to meet. I’m going to Los Angeles on business next week. I’ll be staying at the Downtown Suites. Meet me in the lobby at the time when we had astronomy together.”
“What? Are you serious? One, I don’t remember when we had that—”
“Look it up. I’ll be there waiting. This needs to get out. But I can’t do it alone.”
“Um, okay. Yeah, I’ll be there.” Was she actually going to do it? “Thanks, Jeff.”
“I’ll see ya.”
Hamilton was now wide awake. She stared at the phone in her hand and could not believe what had just happened. She took a deep breath, calming her stomach, and then grabbed her laptop from the living room. She returned to the covers of her large bed and began to search for the course catalogues of her undergraduate university. She would have to go back over a decade to find the right one, but she assumed that the university would maintain a record of them. Sure enough, she found a list of classes for the semester that she had taken astronomy.
There it is. Mondays, 1–4 p.m. She noted the meeting time on her calendar and then wondered what it was that Jeff could have for her. He worked for a large tourism company called Noitacav that focused on anything from kayak rentals and hotel deals to entire vacation packages in exotic destinations. It was a conglomerate that continued to get bigger and had been one of the key players in bringing down Reaching Dreams.
Her palms were sweating as she laid her head upon a pillow and closed her eyes. The woman’s body was exhausted, but her brain was turning at full speed. Thoughts danced through her mind with little to no grace or ease. Instead, those thoughts were incomplete and cumbersome. They were distracting, half-formed, and did nothing but frighten her and prevent the sweet release of sleep.
Desperate to get some rest, Hamilton left her bed and went to the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of whiskey and took a big swig, hoping the depressant would numb her thought processes enough to calm their overwhelming flow. She sat down in a large chair and reclined it as much as she could. The alcohol had not yet taken effect, and she considered chugging some more straight from the bottle, but decided it was better to wait a couple minutes and see how she felt.
In that moment, she sensed a sudden connection to their Residents. All at once, she grasped the enticing pull of alcohol abuse and drug usage. What she wouldn’t give to inject something right then that would relax her and send her into a realm of dreams. Hamilton understood that it was a slippery slope and so she would never actually subject herself to any illegal substances, but for the very first time she felt like she understood the appeal.
As Hamilton drove to Los Angeles, she wondered if she should have brought someone with her. She had known Jeff for a long time, but he sounded different, desperate, like he would do anything to keep himself and his family safe. Yet at the same time, he seemed determined to get the information to her and to expose whatever there was to expose. She felt vulnerable. If someone wanted to harm her in any way, they could easily do so by using Jeff as a decoy. What was she thinking going there by herself? It was moronic.
Hamilton contemplated turning around and abandoning the mission when her phone vibrated with a text message. She glanced at it quickly and saw that it was from another number she did not recognize. This was getting ridiculous.
She tapped her screen to view it, and all it said was, “Your name is Allison Barnes. Jeff.”
What the hell did that mean? She thought about texting back but decided against it. He was her friend from college. She had to trust him. Plus, they were meeting in a very public area. Anyone trying to harm her would most certainly be seen by everyone around them. Maybe he was trying to protect her by offering her a different name to use. That would make sense. If he was worried about someone discovering their meeting and the exchange of information that was about to take place, then it seemed highly likely that he would want to use different names in order to protect both their identities. Such an explanation made her feel better, though her instincts continued to set off warning bells that the scenario would not end well for her.
About an hour later, she valet-parked her car at the hotel and made her way into the lobby. It was a little after 12:30 in the afternoon. She decided to wait in the hotel bar and have a drink to calm her nerves.
The lounge on the ground floor was simple, yet elegant. It had large leather chairs sprinkled around dark wood tables and dim lighting along the walls. Portraits of lush landscapes and turbulent seascapes managed to sooth the onlooker with their soft colors and realistic approach. The bar was placed against a wall with a healthy stock of shining bottles and tall chairs traveling down the length of the curved counter. Hamilton relaxed into one of the thick seats and was instantly approached by a waiter.
“What can I get for you?” he said.
“Scotch. Neat. Whatever you wanna pour.”
“You got it.”
She had been drinking more and more recently. What used to be a social thing now became a coping mechanism. The days grew longer and longer, and alcohol seemed to be one of the few things that could calm a twitchy brain just enough to allow her to sleep. Reaching Dreams was still doing its best to operate as some districts were allowed to resume minimal functions (assisting current Residents and checking up on those that had graduated the program, but no new recruitment). However, without a steady inflow of funds from donors and government grants, the organization was finding it increasingly difficult to pay its employees. The executives had taken huge salary cuts in order to shave expenses, and many individuals who were devoted to the company had to be laid off. It was a tough time, yet most Reaching Dreams members were unwilling to give up. They continued moving forward as best they could.
&nbs
p; Thinking about how distressing everything was becoming gave Hamilton a headache. Her drink arrived, and before the waiter could even tell her what she had been given, she had already pressed the glass to her lips and taken a big sip. The waiter gave her a curious look and then decided to stay out of her business and walked away.
The time passed slowly, especially since she continued to glance at her watch every 30 seconds. At around 12:55 she decided to head back into the lobby and wait for Jeff to arrive. Hamilton paid for her drink (she was embarrassingly impressed that she had kept it to only one drink) and then walked out of the lounge, finding a seat near the main entrance to the hotel just in case she needed to make a quick exit.
The seconds ticked by as if they were minutes, slowly creeping toward the new hour. Her hands trembled slightly, something she worked to control but for which she had found no solution, and her forehead sparkled with perspiration. The alcohol helped a little, though it was nowhere near enough. She wanted another glass. She wanted an entire bottle. The agony brimming within—a constant state of stress and simmering suffering—created a life that was unfamiliar and untenable. Her future employment was undeniably and terrifyingly up in the air, her safety was a large question mark, and her boss was still missing with no one truly caring to find him. If Reaching Dreams went under, she would be out of a job. And what’s worse, she understood how difficult it would be to overcome the detriment such a name would hold to her candidacy in any other company. Who would hire the assistant of a man thought to have embezzled from his own company and murdered a thousand people?