Soul Suites

by Hulden Morse

  After exchanging some words with her superior, Ramona rushed down the stairs to the control panel, leaving Paul upon the platform with Damian and the guard. After Paul gave her a signal, Ramona pushed a button that caused the contraption to beep loudly. An automated voice then rang out within the room. “Stand clear! Stand clear!”

  Paul and the guard looked to their feet, seemingly checking where they were positioned to ensure their own safety. Damian’s head darted around rapidly, his eyes wild as he tried to make sense of everything he was witnessing. After several seconds of loud tension, an audible crack caused the platform upon which Damian was sitting to snap downward, releasing the subject into the cylinder as if he were volunteering in good fun to sit atop a dunk tank at a county fair.

  The man plunged into the water and the heavy lid instantly slid over the cylinder, trapping him within the glass-walled machine filled with liquid. The guard and technician calmly walked down the staircase while everyone stared at the clear glass, watching the subject writhe and struggle in the water. He tried to kick his feet in order to push himself out of the liquid, though even if he could do so, the lid over the cylinder would have prevented his head from rising above the turbulent surface.

  Charles was horrified by the sight, but could not figure out if his friend was receiving oxygen or not. Why else would they have put a mask on him? Damian looked terrified, desperate to escape as if he were drowning, though bubbles were emitted from below the mask, signaling the release of a gas into the water. Charles wondered if it was oxygen Damian was receiving or something else, something more sinister and twisted, a special variable for the experiment.

  “What are you doing to him?” the CEO yelled at the doctor.

  “I encourage you to tell me where the chisel came from,” he said in a threatening tone.

  “Dammit! I don’t know! It was just left in my bed! Let him go! Please!”

  “Mr. Pearson. I have been more than patient with you. We have built a relationship, and you ruined my trust with your little stunt. Now you get to watch your friend freeze.”

  “What?”

  “You see, we do not use this trial very often. It is expensive and takes a while. But god, is it fascinating to see the body shut down right before your eyes.”

  A screen on the machine was tracking vital signs, which Paul and Ramona watched closely. The young technician seemed overly excited about this new trial experience for her, posing numerous questions to Paul who responded to them absentmindedly.

  The CEO stared at the machine. The numbers dropped as the body temperature slowly decreased. The heart rate had been racing initially while Damian struggled in the water, but his frantic movements slowed and the beating of the heart grew more strained. For an instant, Charles locked eyes with his roommate, a man he had only known a short period of time, though he cared deeply for his friend and longed to help him. He saw the regret in the man’s eyes. He saw the love Damian had for his parents, the pain he went through when they passed, the terror he felt when he was suddenly alone, and the despair he endured as a drug addict. Charles saw every mistake that man had ever made, yet he also saw the obstacles he had overcome. There was hope for the man, along with untapped potential and a bright future. Damian’s life was not over, no more than Charles’s was. And there the CEO sat, watching a beautiful soul be murdered in such a horrendous way.

  He broke his gaze with Damian and stared around the room, praying to see something or someone that could help him release his friend. He imagined his gaze being met by the unknown person that had gifted them the chisel, the face reassuring, mouthing the words to him, “Follow me,” then delivering a brutal onslaught of violence upon the guards, subduing them long enough to release Damian and help the prisoners escape from the facility.

  But no one came to their aid. There was nothing around him he could use as a weapon. The guns remained pointed at his head and Charles’s life was once more completely devoid of control.

  He cried out into the room, “Stop! Oh my god, stop!” but was unanimously ignored.

  Damian’s heartbeat slowed as it struggled to maintain perfusion, and the subject remained barely conscious, occasionally twisting his body with a final effort to free himself.

  “Just let him go! We know nothing! Please!”

  Dr. Raymond broke his attention away from the trial and looked at Herman and Gary, cocking his head to the side with curiosity.

  “Why are they here?” he asked the guards.

  “The hole led to their room,” one of them responded.

  “Did they have anything to do with this?” the doctor said.

  “No! They didn’t!” Charles yelled immediately.

  “I have had enough from you!” Dr. Raymond waved his hand, signaling for the guards to take the disruptive subject away. “And stay with him until we find another room to stick him in tonight. I’m done with this.”

  “What of these two?” asked the guards standing over Herman and Gary.

  “Restrain them in trial room 3. We’ll do a roommate trial in the morning.”

  “What?” Paul said, whipping around quickly. “Doc, we—”

  “I know what you all voted. But something is going on here, and it needs to be stifled now. We’ve got four subjects involved and one or more employees. This will serve as a lesson to everyone.”

  “Doc. Please. We all agreed—”

  “Plus,” Dr. Raymond interrupted, “we haven’t done one in a while.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” Paul said. “This will not go over well.”

  “Good. And tell people that if they have an issue, I will not hesitate to make them subjects. This insubordination ends right, fucking, now.”

  Chapter 51

  Somberly, fearfully, Charles drifted down the halls toward his dwelling. He passed window after window, room after room, victim after victim, acknowledging that they were there, dying just as he was dying, yet accepting that he would never see their faces or hear their voices. These were people with whom he had so much in common, though they would never be able to share their fellowship with one another. They were alone together, solitary beings living amongst other solitary beings, an ironic turn of events where being abandoned in those cells to rot as a destitute loner was what united them all in a common plight.

  It was that plight that Charles pondered. He wondered how long it would be until his body finally succumbed under terminal stress and he too was a forgotten man, the only remnants of his life immortalized in a few responses to a twisted questionnaire. Was he contributing to the incredible might of human discovery? Or was that facility, that moment, nothing more than a grimy, cockroach-filled bus stop before he continued his journey into the fiery inferno? Was the line between a pioneer and a murderer that blurry?

  He was brought into his room by the two guards. But instead of being thrown in there like an animal and abandoned, the guards closed the door and remained standing on either side of the entryway, their guns now concealed in their waistband, staring at a subject who managed to unnerve the great Dr. Raymond.

  Charles took a seat at the table and thought about engaging the men in conversation, though he fell into a reclusive despair when his family took over his thoughts once more. He figured that it may be his last night on the planet. Not only would that mean he would never see them again, hear his children, or kiss his wife, but the brilliant memories of his loved ones would be lost to the dying cells of his oxygen-deprived brain. That fear—or could it be called acceptance—was enough to break a man.

  There was so much adversity in his past, hurdles he jumped and hills he climbed, and yet the CEO could not overcome that last obstacle. He had been defeated by a doctor banned from the United States, a man equipped with hordes of money and stacks of bodies, on a mission to prove the existence of what so many already assumed to be real. And the worst part, what pained Charles more than a
nything, was the irony of being tortured with the eternal bliss of Heaven.

  Peace existed within the universe, trapped inside the confines of an afterlife, available to those unlucky enough to find themselves bleeding on the ground, falling through the sky, sinking in a lake, or simply drifting to sleep in a warm bed. There was a way to eradicate all the sorrow and anger and fear from one’s mind and he had followed that path toward salvation. He knew where the path led and what it felt like to cross the threshold into the afterlife, and yet the misguided humans of the Earth were determined to yank his soul away from eternal freedom, torturing him with interrupted comfort. If it weren’t for his fatherless, husbandless family, he would never want to awaken from that peace.

  The man cried out in his room, wailing to those who could hear. “I wanna see Ariana! She is my friend, and I wanna see her!”

  “That’s just not possible,” Jake said solemnly. “I’m sorry, buddy. But you know we can’t do that.”

  Mr. Munich sobbed against the wall. The truth was, he didn’t understand. He could not comprehend why they couldn’t leave that room and go next door to see his friend. He had that freedom not long ago when he was living with others in a sea of tents. The man could get up and walk around from home to home, knocking on someone’s front flap and asking if they wanted to talk or join him down at the gully. Mr. Munich could do as he pleased back then, and he refused to accept that he couldn’t do it now.

  “Mr. Munich,” Ariana said through the wall. “Please listen to us. We care about you. We sure do. Jake’s there with you. I’m here for ya too.”

  “You’re okay, man. You gonna be okay. We’re here.”

  “But I wanna see her! I wanna go! I don’ like this room anymore. I wanna go outside!”

  Following the cruelty of the suicide trial, he had dismissed any logical reasoning that would have previously allowed him the chance to accept his fate, digressing into an even more child-like state than the one in which his brain was originally trapped. Days within the facility were destroying years of growth and progress that had permitted Mr. Munich to function on his own. He was now lost to a world that made little sense, where the foulest of actions controlled his simple life, where a man in his room and an unseen woman were his only companions, where he was denied the freedom to move beyond the windowless walls to escape his own misery.

  With frustration, Jake got up from the floor where he was sitting beside his roommate and he took a seat on his bed. The older man was exhausted from caring for his friend, though it had been so long since he cared about anyone. The years had passed on, devoid of meaning or direction for him, rendering the man a hapless shell that filled its cavity with disgusting food and vile substances, never truly wishing to bring back the happiness of a past life. He had given up on such quests in his youth, long after he lost Abigail.

  Jake was just a boy when they first met. He was a normal child with big dreams and little support. Unassuming and unrealized, the patient boy often found himself the last to be seen and the first to be forgotten. He would sit back and await his turn, with hands politely folded in his lap and a stare that reminded the world of his priorities: everyone else came first. With such a message, or possibly such a moral obligation, the patient boy was left behind. The bold were noticed, the outspoken were praised, and the patient boy calmly sat with his folded hands.

  The day was welcoming, the sun was young, and the patient boy hummed to himself after having met the perfect girl. She was everything he had ever wanted. He figured that she was everything anyone could have ever wanted, and he was determined to make that girl irreversibly happy. The patient boy remained patient. He befriended her, since he knew that friendship was the most respectful first step, and then he waited for the perfect moment to ask that dream girl if she would be kind enough to give him a chance to become something more than a friend. That perfect moment seemed just around the corner, always near and within sight, though it continually evaded his grasp. And so he remained her friend.

  The patient boy watched as cad after cad courted the girl with their firm hands and smooth words, only to drop her once she was properly used. The boy would comfort his broken friend, retrieving the debris from each fall, her remains littered in strange apartments, crowded parties, street corners, and even her own home. He would rush to her side and embrace the girl of his dreams, listening to her cry and wondering how a human being with a beating heart could treat someone like that, someone so truly wonderful, as if she were nothing at all. The patient boy would wait for his friend to heal, give her the time she needed, and then stare in horror as an impatient cheat would whisk her away for a few weeks of pleasure, followed quickly by a few months of misery.

  That perfect moment never came. He never ran out of patience, but he never overcame the unseen borders that held him back. Having never loved anyone besides her, the patient boy was forced to watch her fall for someone else, sit there quietly as she was married, and then hold her first child in his quivering arms. At times, when the day was not so welcoming, the patient man would remove an old picture from within his jacket pocket, an image of a patient boy embracing the girl of his dreams, and remember that he once held something truly beautiful.

  Abigail had stolen his heart, stripping the man of his entire identity, leading a once driven individual to shrink into the shadows of despair, never to find a means of escape into the light again. It was long ago when he was just a boy, and yet he had given up on every childhood goal after vainly chasing the only dream that had ever mattered.

  “Don’t worry,” Ariana said. “We’ll see each other soon. Maybe in Heaven. It will be beautiful.”

  Jake listened to his friend cry as Abigail’s image floated through his mind. He didn’t know where his clothes had been taken when the Outreach Team replaced them with the grey uniform, but he figured that the picture he held was forever lost to the unknown. He had only his memories of her at that point. Previously, he could trace every line of her face in his head, though Jake found that after each trial, he remembered a little less of that perfect girl. Eventually the mental picture would be completely erased and he would be left with naught but a notion that someone of great importance used to exist within his life. Everything he knew of Abigail, all the love he held for her, would fade just as his life did nearly forty years ago.

  The time of day escaped Charles, though he figured it had to be late. He was laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, occasionally glancing at the guards by the door, and he couldn’t help but notice how tired they seemed.

  “Is this a long shift for you?” he asked without a hint of sympathy.

  One of the guards nodded, while the other glared at him. He did not seem to appreciate the patronizing tone.

  “We’re working a double thanks to you,” the angered one said. “I should be at the bar drinking right now, but you had to go an’ dig a hole.”

  “And what would you have done if you were in my situation?” Charles proposed hotly.

  “I wouldn’t have been homeless.”

  Angered by the response, the CEO resumed his staring competition with the ceiling, imagining that it would crack open to expose the sky above and that he would be graciously carried out of the room by the hand of God. The daydream then morphed into the roof collapsing upon him, spontaneous destruction, and he would be equally free from the heinous touch of man. He hoped these thoughts would be comforting, but the presence of the two guards made it impossible to relax. His mind was plagued by a specific question, and he knew that both guards held the answer.

  “What’s a roommate trial?” Charles asked his captors.

  They looked at the subject with sincere pity, which then bled into fright and finished with uncertainty. One man started to speak but was silenced by the other.

  “Come on. What’s the harm in telling me?”

  Hesitantly, one of the guards started, “Even the name makes me s
ick. I wasn’t here when they did them, but I’ve heard stories.”

  The other guard stared at his shoes, but spoke quietly, “I’ve seen one. Wish I hadn’t, but I was there. The technicians voted never to do them again. I understand that the Doc wants to send a message, but in my opinion, this is… um, not the right way.”

  “It’s evil?” Charles said incredulously. “Have you even seen the other trials? You drown people! You pretend to be in a hospital or something. You shock us over and over. It’s all evil!”

  “You become desensitized to some things,” the first guard continued. “But I’ve heard that the roommate trial was something no one wanted to be a part of.”

  “You see,” the other man said, “the trial came from Doc wanting to experiment with Hell. It was his idea to see if bad people went to Hell. But how do you control for something as subjective as whether a person is good or bad?”

  Charles listened intently, though he was uncomfortable with where the talk was headed. He needed to know the answer. Like watching a horror movie, he could not look away as the tension was building, though he dreaded what was around that dark, blood-spattered corner.

  “Two roommates are put in a trial room,” the guard explained. “The stronger one is instructed to, well, murder the other one. They are told things like ‘you will be set free’ and ‘we will reward you for killing him.’ Or her. Once the deed is done, the surviving subject undergoes a trial.”

  “Are you fuckin’ serious?” Charles said in disgust.

  “Honestly, it has yielded some fascinating data, though the results are very erratic. It was banned a couple years ago, and now it seems the Doc has brought it back.”

  The subject did not want to hear any more. The serial killer had reared its disfigured, terrifying head, and Charles was properly scared. He had gotten what he wanted and was well fed with that, needing nothing more than to get out of that place and find some comfort. The idea that someone could not only create an experiment so cruel but actually implement it with real people was hard to comprehend. The facility was run by a madman.