by Rob Heinze
“Hello, Sam,” The middle-aged one said. His eyes fell on Charley and Eve.
“I spotted them on the road,” Sam said, stopping.
Both the guards nodded. The younger one had a silly, sheepish grin on his face.
“You have any weapons?” The middle-aged one asked them.
They both shook their heads.
“Okay,” he replied. “Take them up, Sam. It’s always nice to have new people.”
“Thanks!” Sam turned to them. “Come on up!”
They entered the tunnel. An immediate chill fell on them, probably from the rock. Charley had no idea how this cave had been built. It went far and deep under the rock, and it was an almost perfect oval above him. The passage was lighted with a series of successively hung torches, their frantic light wavering along the tunnel. Charley remembered the Dungeon & Dragon computer games he used to play; now he was actually in one.
Neither Eve nor Charley could tell how long they had walked, or in what direction they were going. The tunnel dipped, branched, and turned. He was happy he wasn’t claustrophobic. Two more pieces of gum were in his mouth. He offered Eve some; she declined. Sam…he didn’t bother offering the boy any. He was too far ahead of them.
Why doesn’t he talk more? Charley wondered.
“What is this tunnel here for? Is it part of the hospital?” Eve asked him.
Charley hadn’t thought of that. Yes, it could be part of the hospital—but what part? Soon they came to a heavy metal door. There was an ancient window set into the door, dirty, dark. A mesh of wires encased it. Sam slowed as they approached it. He knocked on the door.
Tap…Tap tap…a long pause…then tap.
That was a special knock, Charley thought. For the Special Place. Wait, no; this wasn’t the Special Place. Get it right, idiot!
There was no answer for about a minute. Then they heard the sound of locks being withdrawn. The door swung inwards and a large, barrel-chested man greeted them. His bald head was cast with a wild, feverish glow from the torch behind him. His lightly bearded face, mostly etched through with gray, seemed quizzical.
“Sam? What’s the problem?”
“Coming up,” he said. “Tony and Marc let us through.”
“Ah,” the big man said. His eyes left Sam and strayed to Eve, to Charley, to Eve, then back to Charley. “Guests?”
Sam told the big man with the bald head the same story he had told the two guards about seeing them.
“Okay,” the big man said. “Come on in.”
He stepped aside, and the boy Sam looked back to them. His arresting blue eyes shone like hidden jewels in the dim lighting. He motioned them onwards. They followed him through the door. The guard stared at them, grinning, as they passed.
“We’re always happy to have new people,” the guard said, repeating that which had been said by the other guard.
A horrible thought occurred to Charley, one which he hoped Eve didn’t share: what if this place was some secret coven of men? What if, without women, these men had plotted their abduction? They could simply kill Charley and Eve would be theirs forever, the toy for the coven—a position with which she, unfortunately, wasn’t unfamiliar. It was possible, wasn’t it? Where were the women?
You’ve only seen three people, his mind told him.
They didn’t reach a flight of stairs. They reached an elevator. It looked like an old freight elevator, the sort you saw in old New York City buildings. Sam depressed the elevator button. It was on an old metal plaque, and the button had a small circular light in the center. It lighted up green after it was pressed. Charley stared at it, mesmerized. It took him about thirty seconds to realize why that light fascinated him. All too simply, it was powered by electricity, which hadn’t worked since he’d awoken here, and it was working now.
But that’s impossible, his mind told him. He glanced to Eve, who looked at him and gave a forced smile. He didn’t think she realized—
I saw torches. This whole tunnel had them! It can’t be working.
“The Mesha’s usually busy,” Sam said casually, as if he were some big adviser to this Mesha. “But there’s always time for new guests.”
What was a Mesha, anyway? Charley wondered. The noun seemed familiar.
Charley searched his memory for some meaning to that word. Mesha. Charley didn’t think that was a recognized word, not in Webster’s or dictionary.com but it was still familiar somehow. Mesha. Was there a root on it? Me-Meso? Meso-soup? Mesohorny? Mentos? Then, it came to him: mesa. A mesa! That was the word. He knew that one; it was a plateau with very steep sides, according to his fifth-grade geography teacher. This hospital was on a mesa, wasn’t it? And the person who was in charge…did they just make that, quite cleverly, up?
Whatever revelation Charley had had regarding the word Mesha was worthless. It ultimately had no use in their current situation. The elevator dinged, and the door slid open. Inside was a woman in khakis and a brown sweater. Her face was smooth and white. She smiled whitely at the boy Sam. Charley’s original fear of this being a coven of men vanished.
“Hi, Sam!”
“Hello, Caroline.”
Her eyes settled on them. Sam didn’t need to go through the speal this time; the woman simply smiled to them and motioned them into the elevator. They went inside and stood. The woman, Caroline, depressed a button marked L. The button lit up, and then the ancient metal doors rumbled shut. The sound they made, a deep thud, was somehow ominous and final, like the shutting of a coffin lid. A hand came into his. He glanced down, saw it, followed the arm up, and saw that it was Eve’s hand. She forced a smile again.
She’s nervous, he thought. And so am I, because isn’t this elevator something that works on electricity and doesn’t electricity NOT WORK HERE!?!
The elevator rose so smoothly that they barely realized it had moved at all. Abruptly the doors slid open and led them to a long, empty hallway. Lights contained in some sort of lanterns (which made Charley think about a man named Raymond Chandler, possible stroke-sufferer, formerly of Connecticut) lined the hallway. They burned steadily, not wavering, and their orange light reflected on the fake marble floor in small orbs.
This place is odd, Charley thought.
The hall led into some sort of large lobby, and the place was mobbed with people. The sight of so many people after being in this no-world for so long made Eve and Charley stop cold. They gawked. They stared. They were certain that this wasn’t real, couldn’t be real. How could it be real? Suddenly, they both felt clumsy and shy, as if they had forgotten how to socialize…and maybe they had? The boy Sam smiled at them.
“A lot of people hang out here,” he said.
There was a fleet of elevators in this lobby—non-freight elevators—off to the left. A man was standing in front of them. He had a beer bottle in his hand; it was a Corona. Charley wasn’t so impressed by the sight of the beer—after all, he had been able to get Coke, right? He was more impressed by the fact that the beer looked cold. He could see condensation on the bottle. As he watched, a fat drop squeezed out from under the man’s hand and slid down the bottle, hypnotizing; it hovered on the bottom, grew fatter and fatter, and then dropped to the floor with a silent plash. The man took a swig, saw Charley looking at it, and held it out to him politely.
Charley shook his head.
“Go ahead, man,” the guy said. “Nice and cold.”
“No, thanks,” Charley said.
The guy shrugged and took another swizzle. He motioned to Eve. She declined too. He didn’t offer Sam, perhaps because of his age.
Sam motioned them into a waiting elevator car.
“How long have you all been here?” Eve asked, when the doors had shut and the noise of the people died down.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. It feels long sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t feel long at all.”
He says that like he enjoys it, Charley thought.
“Those of the Light and Dark,” Eve said, “Do they…do
they come here?”
“No,” Sam replied promptly. He didn’t seem surprised at the phrase by which Eve and Charley referred to them (Charley could remember Ray being startled by the phrase). Nor did he seem unaware of their presence. However, he did not expound upon them further, and the way he glanced down made Charley uneasy.
He’s hiding something, Charley thought.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. They entered an empty T-shaped hall. Sam led them straight down the center. It was darker up here than the other floor had been. There was a nip in the air too. The boy Sam had said that there were controlled fires somewhere in the basement and that these gave off heat, but it didn’t feel as if they did a good job—not on this floor anyway.
They passed empty rooms, equipped only with beds. They were certainly hospital rooms, but it looked like they had been recently converted to simple bedrooms. In one room, Charley saw a littering of personal effects: shoes, books, tissues, food boxes. It wasn’t the rooms, or the usage of them, that bothered Charley. What bothered him was the collection of mesh wires that he saw on each door. Each door was fitted with a porthole. The glass of the portholes was encased with the wires.
This is a mental hospital, Charley thought, unnerved.
It was really no big deal: how many of these places existed all over the world? But why, of all places, had they chosen this building to colonize?
He glanced once at Eve. She seemed preoccupied with the oddness of the facility. The long portion of the hall ended. To the right there was a blank wall. To the left there was a stairwell behind two black double doors. There were no guards here.
“There’s no access to the roof from the elevator,” Sam said.
Yeah, Charley thought. Of course not. The roof was probably gated and guarded when this place was functioning. Management wasn’t letting anyone jump off their roof.
They went into the dark stairwell. They started up the stairs. The stairs led to a gated door that swung outwards. The door was shut, however, and Sam went to it and knocked (the same way he had knocked back in that tunnel).
Tap…tap-tap…tap.
There was a moment’s pause, and then the door swung outwards. Cool air wafted into the stairwell and blew back Eve’s hair, surprisingly intense for a brief moment. They stepped out onto the roof. The door shut, and the woman who had opened it for them came into view. She was a large, hefty woman with wide shoulders and a rolling jowl. Her hair was taunt and tight, her forehead stretched back from the ponytail her hair had been yanked into. Charley thought that she was the type of woman who always played the randy, undesirable woman that pursued the protagonist in a comedy.
“Hi, Sam,” she said.
“Hello, Lynn,” he said. “The Mesha by the ledge?”
Lynn nodded. Sam smiled, thanked her, and headed off in the direction of the ledge. The sky above was a gray-white haze that reminded Charley of TV fuzz. Sam led them through a meandering maze of roof protrusions—pipes, exhausts, skylights—cautioning them about the weaker parts of the roof.
The edge of the roof came into view. There was a cluster of people loitering about, most of whom appeared to be men, though Charley couldn’t be absolutely certain. As they drew closer to the gathering, the people stopped what they were doing and watched. He felt Eve involuntarily reach for his hand. Once their hands were joined, he squeezed hers.
Sam led them closer to the ledge. They saw the empty no-world cloaked in murky gray beyond the roof’s ledge. There was a grand view of the highway, and from this height it looked like a line of electrical tape. In the milky distance, Charley thought he could discern the outlines of houses or other buildings. The view would be priceless on a clear day.
Sam stopped, and so did they. He went slowly to the person whom Charley and Eve knew immediately to be The Mesha. The Mesha was not what they had expected. To begin with, the made-up noun Mesha was obviously feminine—a small point that they had both overlooked. The Mesha was indeed a woman. She stood near the edge of the roof. She was tall, and the curves with which she was equipped were only enhanced by the clingy gown she wore. The gown was red, simple, cut open on the side like a cocktail singer’s dress. Her breasts looked like pliable bowling balls held up by a durable hammock.
The Mesha smiled at them, her straight teeth bone white and brilliant. Her brown eyes were wide and vibrant; her skin perfect; she looked like she might suddenly stutter robotically, what since she had clearly been engineered by a man for a male’s desires. She came towards them then, her long legs taking long strides.
Eve had noticed the single incongruity on the woman immediately; Charley was a little slower on the up-take, for his mind had been unable to move his eyes any further down than the woman’s waist. As she came forward, however, he saw the incongruity too.
She was wearing running sneakers.
Sneakers, he thought. Why would she wear sneakers with a dress like that?
The Mesha was standing directly in front of them. She was tall, her eyes a little higher than his. He swallowed and looked into their brownness.
“We were waiting for you,” she said calmly. Her voice was both hoarse and lilting.
They were silent. Sam spoke up.
“We have a free room or two?”
“We have more than one or two,” the Mesha said. “Do you like our place here?”
“It’s nice,” Charley said. The very air around the woman was somehow bewitching, and Charley felt intoxicated.
He glanced over at Eve, who, oddly, also seemed spell-bound by The Mesha.
“Why don’t you come downstairs,” she said, her voice like liquid honey. “We’ll talk more.”
12
The Mesha, whose real name was Belinda Coles (the people of the mesa sometimes called her Be), thought she could get along with both of them. They both seemed like good people. She motioned for them to follow her, and she started away from the ledge. All of her people shifted and parted as if she were an arrow flying through them.
I am, she thought, and for a brief moment, she felt a sharp, deep pain in her belly—the one with which she had long ago been cursed.
* * * * *
Flashback:
It was seventh grade and her body had already started to develop. There was no hiding it. The other girls started to sneer at her behind her back; they were adamantly jealous. When she was at her friend house, they sometimes changed in Jane’s bedroom (Jane had a pool, and Belinda used it on occasion).
Now they stand shirtless, pre-adolescents, with only their bras on.
“God,” Jane whispers. “Your tits are huge.”
“Ah, I hate that word!” Belinda says. She was suddenly embarrassed.
“Huge?” Jane joked.
“No, tits,” Belinda says.
They’re standing in front of Jane’s mirror. She looks over at Jane, whose chest shares common traits with the wall—namely, flatness. She feels guilty for some reason, and with this guilt comes a low sharp pain in her belly. So far as she can remember, it was the first time she had ever felt that pain.
“I’m so jealous; they’re big!”
“Stop, Jane,” she says, ashamed.
“They are! Look at them!”
She can see the envy that shines in Jane’s eyes as she stares at the mirror. She reaches up tentatively—Jane does—and touches one of Belinda’s breasts. She doesn’t pull back (they were good friends and still too young to think of an act like that as sexual; it was pure admiration on Jane’s part).
Suddenly, Belinda doesn’t want to take her bra off in front of Jane. She thinks she’ll go into the bathroom. She tells Jane this.
Jane apologizes and says it’s no big deal; she, Belinda, should be happy. They joke around, and finally the tension dissipates. Jane takes her bras off first, her chest still no different than a boy’s. Belinda goes to do likewise, and as her fingers fumble in back for the hook, she notices something like anticipation on Jane’s face. Belinda hesitates for a moment, then sh
e unhooks the straps. Make no mistake about it: there’s nothing sexual in Jane’s desire. She just wants to admire and dream—dream that her shirt might suddenly balloon outwards one day. Belinda stands awkwardly, her breasts hanging down like cartoon sad faces. Jane stares at them appreciatively. She looks up to Belinda, and finally realizes that she has been staring. Blushing, she goes about changing. She acts like its no big deal, putting her bikini top on, but Belinda notices that she’s watching longingly, hopefully, hoping that one day she might have breasts like Belinda’s, but Belinda, God, Belinda—
* * * * *
“We have a nice place here,” The Mesha said.
They had come down the stairs, and now they were walking down a hallway. Charley did not know what floor they were on. The Mesha moved ahead of them. They reached the elevators, and she turned to look at them. She smiled. Her face made the whole area light up. Both Charley and Eve felt disarmed somehow. The questions that had been in their minds seemed to vanish like dust blown from an old book cover.
“We’ll talk in my office. It’s more comfortable there.”
The elevator dinged. The door slid open. She stepped in and motioned them to follow. The doors slid shut and they were alone with the woman. Her scent—some combination of fruit and perfume—was pleasant but not over-whelming. He didn’t quite know how this woman managed to smell good and look good in this no-world.
If they have electricity, do they have running water? He wondered.
He glanced at Eve. She was still holding his hand, and he barely noticed it. He glanced down at their hands, and when he looked up, he noticed The Mesha looking at their entwined hands and smiling subtly. He felt as if he were doing something wrong suddenly.