by H. R. Romero
“Uh, oh,” says the protesting man. He removes the Schimmelbusch mask from the girl’s nose, tossing it to his work-table.
“What’s wrong?” says the Man-In-The-White-Coat, not seeing the woman coming this way until it’s too late.
"It’s alright, Rose," says a tall woman, blowing into the room, her voice is comforting, but there is sadness and fatigue coating the words, only barely discernable. The door the woman opened is heavy and thick and reinforced with a well-ordered pattern of bolt-heads, which protrude from both sides. It’s built to withstand almost any attempt to breach it, from within or from without.
The woman’s hair is a vibrant brown color from where it peeks out from just around the edges of the material of the surgical cap she is wearing. Scant, wavy, grey hair paints her temples, but her youth is still evident. Her eyes are brown; so dark that they are nearly black. All Rose knows is that she likes this lady, and she wants her to help her escape this place.
The woman addressed her as, Rose, when she came into the room, and she likes that name and likes the way it feels on her parched tongue when she mouths it. Rose likes the name much better than, R – Zero – Five – E. The lady reminds Rose of the woman on the cigarette advertisement, on the calendar. She looks like a beautiful lady, from some far away, exotic, court, in a medieval land, complete with long flowing robes that are caught up in the updrafts of a summer’s breeze.
“You! Bastard,” says the tall woman. She spits her words at the Man-In-The-White-Coat.
“Miss Valentine,” the protesting man greets her.
“It’s Doctor,” says Dr. Valentine, correcting the protesting man, and shutting him up.
Rose knows by the tone of Dr. Valentine’s voice that she’s unhappy with the Man-In-The-White-Coat. Very unhappy indeed.
Seeing an opportunity to leave, the protesting man places as much space between him and Dr. Valentine and exits posthaste.
She stomps hard on her heels, crossing the floor to stand directly in front of the Man-In-The-White-Coat.
“Dr. Valentine, I…,” the Man-In-The-White-Coat commences speaking in his own defense. The way he raises his hands in the air and pumps them up and down in front of him, palms down, makes Rose believe he intends to get Dr. Valentine to calm down, without telling her to do so, which might anger her all-the-more. “…I didn’t want to concern you with this. It’s just a small test this time. Nothing too… uh… invasive I assure you. Really, it’s just more of the same-old, same-old. Endless research, you know how it is. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be off-base performing field research on the Turned?”
“This is unacceptable. Who approved this? Was it Connors? Did Major Connors approve this? Well?” Not waiting for an answer that she doesn’t give two fresh monkey craps about, Dr. Valentine clutches the gurney by its handles and pulls it towards her. It fails to roll, but rather just skids a few inches on its hard rubber wheels, making faint black marks on the stained linoleum floor.
Rose watches nervously, still testing the resolve of the tethers. Dr. Valentine searches for the gurney’s brake release. When she finds it, she stomps on it, firmly, with her foot, to make it release. Then Dr. Valentine says, to the Man-In-The-White-Coat, “I told you, Shaw, not this one. I told you I wanted to observe this one for a while longer before you started cutting her up like a god damned lab rat.”
“I just wasn’t thinking, that’s all. Don’t remember discussing it.”
“Well, which one is it? You just weren’t thinking, or you couldn’t remember?”
Rose feels the gurney rolling. Dr. Valentine is wheeling it to the door. Rose can’t see the Man-In-The-White-Coat anymore, but now he has a name, and it’s Dr. Shaw, and she can hear him raising his voice. He’s not pretending to be apologetic anymore. His tone has changed. It’s deeper and more dominating. He’s telling her, with his voice raised, “You’re getting too close to these… these things. You know how important… no, Valentine…, you comprehend how critical it is that we perform the procedures on them.”
“Not on this one, and not right now. She’s different than the others. I saw that much, in the field, when we found her.”
“How is she any different than the others? Other than the color of her eyes you can’t be certain that she’s any different at all. There are countless variations and mutations of the Turned out there. We don’t even know how many people were affected. There’s no telling how many different types of these things there may be based on how it affects the host DNA. Her eyes might simply be another variation of —”
“— I’m not sure… entirely,” she says as she swings the gurney around and pulls the heavy door open, “but there’s one thing for sure, we’ll never find out if you continue to cut pieces off her. If you keep this up then soon there won’t be enough of her, or any of the others, left to study. She could be the very key to the door that we’ve been looking to open… an answer to everything. An honest to God hope for a cure. We could save these children, and I have a gut-feeling that Rose will be able to help.”
“She might be the key to something, but it won’t be a cure. It might, however, be a way to end this craziness all once and for all. Unless we dig deeper inside of her and the others like her, we will never know for sure. Will we? And we don’t even know what this one can do yet. She hasn’t shown any hint that she can do anything like the others.”
“She’s only been here for four days,” says Dr. Valentine. “And for the majority of that time, we’ve been monitoring the head injury.”
“She’s very dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than any of the others, we don’t know yet. You need to be more careful Dr. Valentine, or one of your ‘hope-for-a-cures’ may end up being the end of you.”
“Go to hell, Shaw. Go straight to hell and die.”
“They won’t let me in there, you know, Merna,” says Shaw, jokingly. He’s trying to bring the situation back to somewhat-normal by alleviating the rubber-band tight tension between them before it snaps.
“What? Hell let you in? I’m pretty sure you have a key, so let yourself in,” she says, wheeling the gurney through the door and down a dark, narrow corridor, made all the tighter with small file carts, stainless steel rolling tables, and other discarded surgical equipment lining the walls. As she wheels the gurney angrily down the corridor, two soldiers fall in close behind her and follow her to her destination.
“Green men,” slurs Rose, looking from one soldier to the other.
Dr. Valentine says nothing, pushing Rose to an area not far from the cold white room, where the Man-In-The-White-Coat, or, Dr. Shaw, was going to cut pieces off her. That’s how Dr. Valentine said it; ‘cut pieces off her,’ Rose feels very lucky that Dr. Valentine showed up when she did.
Chapter Two
“We Medicals have a better way than that. When we dislike a friend of ours… we dissect him.”
-The Body Snatchers
The place where Dr. Valentine is taking her is unfamiliar and appears to be uninhabited by people, but only at first.
One turn left, two turns right and then left. Rose will be sure to remember the way, so should she ever need to come this way again, for any reason, she’ll know how to get here. She’ll store the directions away in a little box, she’ll keep them safe on the inside of her head, where only she can get to them. She’ll snap the lid closed so no one can get inside.
A sign affixed to the wall to Rose’s right reads East Wing. It comes into view and then passes by just as quickly. Her eyes dart from side-to-side soaking up everything, every tiny detail; no matter how insignificant. She will keep those details inside her little box too. Her mind is a gravity-well catching everything no matter how trivial they may seem. She’ll sort out what is worth keeping, and what isn’t, later.
Another green man stands ahead, his name is Private Tummons, and he clears the way by stepping aside and hugging the wall carefully. Rose only knows that this is Private Tummons, because it says so right on the name tag, sewn to his unif
orm. The private slightly favors one knee over the other, an old injury perhaps considers Rose. He smells of sweat and dirt and cheap aftershave.
Private Tummons watches her like a fatted rabbit would watch a starving cat, as it crept past, knowingly, and appropriately cautious.
Rose smiles at Private Tummons, but her friendly gesture isn’t reciprocated, so the smile wilts where it grew, on her small face.
Dr. Valentine continues to push the gurney steadily down the hall. The right front wheel clicks, and it jiggles almost imperceptibly as it rolls along.
Rose imagines that there is probably something small and hard stuck to it. Rose times the bumps in her mind each time the wheel rotates, to the point where the unknown object makes the wheel click on the linoleum floor. Her timing is precise: click… (Two seconds) click… (Four seconds) click…. (Six seconds).
There are doors on either side of the corridor; fifteen on the right side, and twelve doors and one elevator on the left side. Some of the rooms have doors which are standing wide open. The rooms with the open doors are unoccupied and dark inside. Twelve of them, six on the right side and six on the left, are secured with weighty padlocks.
There are other green men here too, and they react precisely in the same way, to Rose as Private Tummons had. They hug the corridor walls close and tight, all except for the ones who are armed and the one who has a big dog standing beside him.
The pace of the clicking wheel is slowing. Dr. Valentine is coming to a room that is labeled, Row – Zero – Five – East, and below that the name “ROSE’ is written in all capital letters. Rose decides that her name is nothing more than a reflection of where her room is, in this place: R-05-E (ROSE). An interesting coincidence and nothing more.
The green man with the dog fumbles with a large ring of keys. The dog is brown and large. Its tongue hangs from his mouth and occasionally drips with saliva. The green man is searching for the correct key, on a ring of too many. Most of them don’t go to anything, anymore. He unlocks the padlock and opens the door. It opens without a sound, even though, by the look of them, the hinges haven’t been oiled in a long, long time “Welcome home, princess,” he says, but not warmly.
Rose can tell he has no affection toward her, in fact, besides Dr. Valentine, there is an undercurrent of loathing. The green men hate her. She can feel it. You don’t have to be a genius to know when someone doesn’t like you. It’s something you can sense.
Nothing… not the smallest of details escapes her. Her brain churns at such a blinding speed it causes her to feel lightheaded. Rose scrutinizes everything, turning over every pebble in her mind, and looking underneath, searching for a clue that might tell her where she is, and how she came to be here.
She drinks in all she can and tries to assemble it all into some tangible structure, before stuffing it away in the little box.
Before she can be wheeled inside, she notes that the doors to either side of her own are padlocked.
All the doors are similar in the way that they have small rectangular holes, reinforced with steel grating. The holes can be closed, only from the outside, by sliding a rusty metal plate across the top. Someone has written: ‘IVY’ on the plaque next to one door, just below the location numbers, Row – Zero – Six – E, in heavy black marker ink, and all in capital letters, just like her own. Small, pale, fingers are probing blindly between the tiled floor and the bottom of the door. A green man kicks at them, heartlessly, and hisses loudly through his teeth. The fingers withdraw, disappearing quickly back inside.
Next, to the other door, the word on the plaque is: ‘HAWTHORNE’ it is written in the same type of heavy black ink. The other rooms, the ones that are locked, all have names too, and through the little rectangles, light shines through at varying levels of intensity. Rose wonders who is inside each of the rooms. She doesn’t have time to read all the names on the plaques before being rolled into her own.
The green men are on edge, but steely nerves stay their fingers from the triggers of their rifles, which are pointed directly at her head. The big brown dog growls. Rose can’t stop her body from shaking, whether it is from fear or from the effects of Dr. Shaw’s drugs fading away, she is uncertain.
Dr. Valentine says, “Rose, I’m going to loosen the restraints. You are not to move until we leave the room, and you hear the lock on the door click shut. Do you understand? It is very, very important that you don’t move, okay?” Dr. Valentine nods her head up and down, to elicit a return demonstration.
Rose nods her head. “Yes, Dr. Valentine.” The little girl makes it clear that she understands perfectly. She won’t do anything to make the green men hurt her.
There is a funny smell filling the small room. In time she’ll come to recognize the bitter odor as the scent of fear; harshly acidic with a metallic taste which dances on the back of her tongue. Rose does not move until Dr. Valentine and the green men back out of the cramped space, and she hears the click of the padlock being snapped shut.
Her room is small. A single window is boarded over from the outside, with a large piece of scavenged plywood sheeting, painted with flat black paint, peeling away from the splintered and cracking surface of the wood. The glass was, long ago, removed from the window, so only the wooden frame remains behind.
Closely set bars, bolted over the space, keep things out, and also, to keep things in. The cramped space is otherwise empty except for the gurney on which she sits.
A teardrop-shaped light bulb, with a thick, spiral filament, hangs from the ceiling by a simple hook, coated in multiple layers of old, dried, paint; a metal cage surrounds it to protect it from damage, and from small hands.
A chalkboard, caked with dust, is screwed to the wall at all four corners. There are some words on it, an agenda of sorts; the words read: Monday: Library, Tuesday: Assessment, Wednesday: Social Observation, Thursday: Lab W—, but that’s where the rest of the words transition into a white smudge and are lost to her. The rest of the schedule is a mystery for now. She wonders if it has anything to do with her. She surmises that surely it must somehow have something to do with her.
Softly, she sighs. The light bulb flickers and the spiral filament inside slowly dims into nonexistence. In the moments that follow, all the lights in the corridor fade as well. Her eyes are not accustomed to the darkness.
A distant memory percolates to the surface her aching brain, like the slowly rising water from a frozen well. Maybe her amnesia is getting better.
She recalls, vaguely, that when she was little, she used to be afraid of the monster that lived under the bed. And sometimes there would be a different monster hiding in her closet, too. If the door were left ajar, it would peer out from the crack, between the door and the jamb.
And this one time, there was a monster that sat, hunched in the corner, staring at her from the darkness, but then a woman would come in. Rose can’t remember her face, or who she was, but when she would come, the monsters would flee in a big hurry, all except for the beast hunched in the corner, who would suddenly transfigure itself back into a pile of unfolded clothing. But, it’s a distant memory, long gone and fading, as if maybe it never actually happened at all. Who was that woman? Perhaps she was a hero like Dr. Valentine. Perhaps someday she will grow up to be a hero, and chase monsters away, just like the woman she can barely remember, and just like Dr. Valentine.
A small sound creeps through the walls, from a place unseen. It’s coming from one of the rooms next to her own. She’s certain it’s the one occupied by, HAWTHORNE. She remembers from seeing the name on the plaque in the hall before.
She listens close. Her head tilts so that her small ear presses against the wall. She can’t hear it this way, so she switches to the other ear. She grimaces. Her ear meets the cold wall; cold and hard like everything else here.
Whistling, yes, someone is whistling. It’s so faint she can barely make out the tune. It’s a simple tune. She doesn’t know it, and soon it fades away altogether, disappearing into the darkness.
She lays on the gurney. Shifting to get comfortable. Her back and neck are stiff and aching. No way that she turns can she make herself find a decent spot to lay, but she settles for laying on her back.
And there, upon the ceiling, tiny stars glow a brilliant blue-white. Dozens of them. She wonders who might have taken the time to paint them there, and why, but she’s happy someone took the time to do it, because it makes her feel like she’s not locked inside a little room at all.
Instead, it’s as if she were sleeping outside, under the wide-open sky, with a light breeze blowing across her skin. She tries to find solace, pretending she’s laying in a sprawling green field, under little twinkling stars far overhead, she drifts into a fitful sleep and awaits the oncoming nightmare that tomorrow will bring.
Chapter Three
“What you see in me is what you don’t see… And what you don’t see is what I am.”
-Unknown
A small gasp escapes Rose’s throat. She’s startled from her restless slumber. Her head is sluggish and aching from a massive sedative dose hangover.
This morning there’s continuous barking in the corridor. She isn’t sure where she is. She emerges into a void; a bubble. Panic rises in her small body. She’s disoriented. But the events of yesterday quickly come back to her.
Sitting on the edge of the gurney, she does her best to collect the thoughts, which flit around like asylum patients at medication time. They’re scattered everywhere; an unfinished jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing.
Broken memories crawl back into her mind and settle like a blanket of wet ash. Her eyes remain sore, but not as painful as they’d been the night before.