“Why are we still talking?” I’m beginning to grow agitated. Very agitated.
“It can only happen,” the governor continues, “if requested by the exhibit and carried out by a member of the exhibit’s immediate family. As a representative of the Criminal Zoo, I signed off on the paperwork from the Zoo end and your mother signed off as immediate family. Now it’s your turn.”
“What exactly am I supposed to be requesting?” I ask. “I already told you I want out.”
“You have proven to be truly remorseful, Samuel. Now I just need you to tell me which direction you want to go.”
“Which direction I want to go? I want fucking out! Now!”
“Your mom has come today to give you your freedom from the Criminal Zoo. No more torture. No more pain. No more suffering. But not in the way you were thinking. You need to know the truth of an L-three visit, Samuel.”
“Why are you playing games?” My pulse pounds in my head.
“There are only two ways out of the Criminal Zoo—period. One year served with Level two visits, or death.”
A monstrous vise clamps down on my heart and gets tighter by the second. “I don’t understand. What’s this whole Level three visit shit, then?”
My mother continues to cry.
“Sometimes,” the governor begins, “the right thing to do is the most difficult thing to do. Sometimes no matter how painful it is, one’s own heartache, one’s own pain, needs to be put aside for the benefit of another person. In this case, you.”
“Quit fucking around, Governor. Tell me exactly what you’re talking about.”
“Sometimes death is a better option than living. I don’t think you want to endure nine more months in here. And I guarantee you, it only gets harder. Your mom just gave you an out. If you want it.”
I feel as if I have just been dropped into an ice-cold ocean and I am sinking into the depthless abyss, still strapped into this fucking chair. I don’t say anything for a long time. I’m trying to completely understand what it is I’m being told. Finally I ask, in as tight a voice as I can, “This is a joke, right?”
No one speaks.
“Tell me this is all just a fucking joke!”
“This is the only way out,” the governor says. “Samuel, you know you won’t last nine more months. You can either end it peacefully, at your own discretion, or you can wait for another lunatic L-two to take you out. You’ve already had one. You will have another. And then another. Do you want to let someone else decide for you when you die?”
“You’re saying my mom is here to kill me?” I am spinning in the haze. My mouth becomes dry, my skin is shriveling, tingling. I am nauseated. “You promised I’d get out of here!” I turn to the second blur. “I don’t know what he told you, Mom, but you’re supposed to help me, not kill me.”
“Samuel, I—”
“I’ll forgive you, Mom, for everything you’ve done. For leaving us with Dad. Get me out of here and then we can be a family again. You, me, and Sheila. We’ll forget about the past and move forward. We can do it.”
“Honey,” she begins.
“No! No fucking ‘honey’! Get me the fuck out of here!”
“Your mom is here to free you, Samuel. For you, she is willing to commit the greatest sacrifice a mother could ever make for her child. Like Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac, she is willing to free you, despite the painful loss she will endure. Think about the magnitude of that sacrifice. Because of your mother, because of her willingness to let go of her only son, your time in the Criminal Zoo has come to an end.”
“Fuck Abraham. I don’t want to die.” My heart breaks free of the vise and pounds against my chest wall. My whole body shakes. “You can’t be serious. You’re talking about putting me down like I’m a stray dog. I’m not a fucking dog. I’m a human being.”
“Not in here, Samuel,” the governor says. “In here, you’re below a dog.”
“You can’t just kill me. That’s murder.”
“Samuel, trust me: this is the best way out. You simply go to sleep. Painless.”
“Letting me go is the best way out!”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Governor McIntyre says.
“Jon McIntyre, you are a fucking bastard. You gave me hope. Why did you do that? Why do you want to fuck with me so bad?”
“Samuel, you are a psychopath. Regardless of what you tell yourself, or how you try to justify it, the truth is you kill without conscience. There is no cure for what you have. You can never be set free.”
“You’re wrong. I’ll never hurt anyone ever again.”
“I’m sorry, Samuel. I really am.”
My mom continues to cry like she cares.
“Bitch, why are you crying?” I ask her blur. “You’re not the one everybody is trying to kill.”
“Samuel,” the governor interrupts. “Do you remember Dr. Kevorkian?”
“Who?”
“Dr. Kevorkian. He helped the terminally ill die with grace. Without pain. I can help you die painlessly and with dignity.”
“I’m not terminally ill, you fucking idiot. I have the rest of my life in front of me. I have great things still to accomplish.”
“In here?”
“No, not in here—I want the freedom you promised me, you son of a bitch!”
“You can’t go through any more of this!” My mom’s sobbing distorts her words. “I can’t live with the pain, knowing you’re still in here, someone hurting you every day. Cutting into your flesh. Butchering you as you sit strapped to a damned chair.”
“You can’t live with the pain? Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious,” the haze calling itself my mom says. “That’s why I’m here. To end your pain.”
I turn to the Jon blur. “You lied to me. I swear to God, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make you pay.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything in the beginning,” he says. “I should have. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry when you spill your beer on someone. You’re sorry when you hurt someone’s feelings. You don’t say you’re sorry when you forget to tell someone you came here to kill them.”
“Let God decide your eternity,” the mom blur says.
“Don’t talk anymore, lady! You have nothing to say that I want to hear.”
“Please, Samuel…I’m so—”
“Yeah, I know. You’re sorry. The governor’s sorry. Everybody’s fucking sorry! But that doesn’t really seem to be getting me anywhere, does it? This is far crueler than anything I ever did. I never gave a desperate human being the hope of renewed life, only to snatch it away. You’re worse than I ever was.”
“Samuel,” the governor begins.
“Get out. Both of you, now.”
“There was nothing else I could do, Samuel,” the woman cries. “If there was, I would’ve done it.”
“Leave me the fuck alone!”
“You’re not thinking this through,” the governor says. “We’ll go, but understand, you have an L-two scheduled for tomorrow. And after you recover, you’ll have another one. And another after that. L-twos and the Repair Shack…your life will be filled with nothing but pain and you know it. But you don’t have to stay in here any longer. Not if you don’t want to.”
“We’re done.”
“If you realize the truth in what I am saying,” the governor tells me, “all you have to do is call out my name.”
Decision Time
I am suffocating in the haze. The blur is heavy. So very heavy. I barely have enough strength, or desire, to inhale. I will face yet another L2 tomorrow. My suffering begins again, with no hope of reprieve. Maybe it’s a “normal” L2. Maybe it’s a crazed L2 bent on taking more of my body parts.
My freedom, dangled in front of me
like the carrot in front of the donkey, has been ripped away. I have no reason to exist. Wait, that’s not true. I do have a reason—to make everybody else feel better about their lives. Hurt so they can pretend they don’t hurt as much.
I can’t do it. I can’t take one more L2. My life is over. One way or another, I have come to the end. The movie will never be made. How stupid of me to think life would ever work out that well.
I lie on my bed, unmoving, and dwell on this for a very long time. I know I won’t sleep. I may never sleep again. Unless it’s for eternity. The governor’s final words stick in my thoughts. If you realize the truth in what I am saying, all you have to do is call out my name.
I sink deeper into my thoughts. Analyze everything. Maybe everything I thought is wrong. Maybe there never was a race of Gods. Maybe the billions of people who believe in a single God are right. Could He really exist?
The more I think about it, the more I want it to be so. But not the Old Testament God. No, I’m looking for the New Testament God. The one who is forgiving. The one who wants us all to live in His glory.
Certainly mankind would not believe in a fairy tale since the beginning of recorded time. There is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. There is no Tooth Fairy, no little Cupid flying around with a bow and arrows, spreading love. We learn the truths of these fictional characters by the time we enter grade school. Yet the majority of people—including some of the smartest throughout history—have strongly maintained the belief in some kind of a God, from childhood all the way to death.
No matter how advanced we become, a form of God continues to exist. Science has answered every other mystery in the universe, yet the belief in God cannot be explained away. People go to war for Him, lay down their arms for Him, die for Him. How can billions of people be wrong? Pretty farfetched to think this fantasy could stand the test of that kind of time. So if it’s not a fantasy, it’s reality.
And if the masses are right, then He exists. In some form or another, He’s got to exist. Maybe He’s the universe. Maybe He’s pure energy. Perhaps our mortal minds aren’t meant to understand His existence. But He must be something.
And then it hits me. Maybe my greatness lies not in this world, but in the next. Maybe this existence has groomed me, steel tempered by fire. Perhaps I’m supposed to go to the next level, stronger because of my experiences in this fucking hell on earth. Maybe I’m meant to go into the next life as a battle-hardened spiritual warrior and lead those who need a leader. I want this to be so. I choose to believe it.
Suddenly, there is no reason to fight for this shitty life. I will not exist merely for the sick, perverted pleasure of others. I will not be cut on anymore. I realize I have the possibility of moving on, going to the next level of existence. In the next life, I will be great. And the energy that is God, perhaps, I, too can become that energy.
So once again I am faced with a decision. A decision that changes everything. Before it was a red button. Push the red button and get out of the white nightmare. Now I’m in a nightmare void of all detail, permanent haze filled only with pain. So what am I going to do? Stay? Or push the button? Stay? Or push the button? Decision time.
I sit up, take a deep breath, and call out, “Jon McIntyre.”
A Confession
The door closes and automatic locks snap into place, bouncing a metallic click off the walls. Like the sun fighting through cloud cover, fluorescent light fights through the haze. It is badly diffused, but I see it. This will be the last time I see light. The last time I think about the sun. The last time I think.
With a mortal mind, anyway.
I lie flat on my back, my feet strapped together and my wrists fastened to armrests extending straight out from each side of my body, in the shape of a cross. How fitting. I am uncovered, wearing only a pair of light pajama bottoms, yet I am warm. An antiseptic smell, like that in the Repair Shack, accompanies the warmth.
I am hooked up to the “Freedom Machine.” That’s what Jon calls it. In reality, it is a killing machine. Once the button is pushed, a series of drugs will be pumped in a specific order through an IV into my arm. The first drug is a mix of an anti-anxiety medication with a muscle relaxant. Jon says it will feel like I’m being submerged into a nice hot bath. The second drug, an anesthetic, will gently ease me into a deep sleep. The third and final drug is pentobarbital. I will feel nothing when my heart stops.
A blur approaches.
“Jon?” I turn to the blur. He is no longer Governor McIntyre. Not even the governor. Not anymore. He is merely a man. A feeble little mortal. That which I will ascend.
“Yes, Samuel, it’s me.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“She’s with the doctor in the hallway. She’ll join you after I push the button.”
Push the button. Another button ending one existence and beginning the next. Jon explained how it all works right before I was led into this room—a room I didn’t even know existed two hours ago. “She can’t bear to watch you push it, can she?”
“Think about it, Samuel,” Jon answers. “She’s committing the ultimate sacrifice. Sacrificing her only son so he can be free of pain and suffering.”
“No, she’s atoning for her biggest sin. Me.”
“Either way, it is time. Samuel, are you ready to be set free?”
“I am ready to accomplish great things in the next life, yes.”
“Of course you are. Oh, hey, I almost forgot. Before I push the button, I have a confession.”
“A confession?”
“When I said you’d only been in here two and a half months, I wasn’t entirely honest. In fact, I flat-out lied.”
“What?”
“You’ve been here a lot longer than that. Actually, you would’ve been scheduled for release to prison in exactly ten days. Your time was almost up. You did it, Sam! You made it! Can you believe that? That’s got to make you feel good.”
“No, no, no.” I shake my head. “Then stop. I know the rules. You can’t do this without my consent.”
“Sorry, buddy. I’ve waited too long for you.”
“Jon, you’re about to fuck up more than you can even imagine. Let me go and I’ll let you live.”
“What?” Jon sounds genuinely shocked. “Jesus Christ, Samuel. You’re going to be a fucking nut job right up until you die, aren’t you?”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Jon. I’m not kidding. Push the button and we both die.”
Jon laughs. “I love it! Right to the very end. Damn, Samuel, I’m actually going to miss you.”
I cannot escape the truth. I am going to die today. But I am strangely calm. Because I’m about to be converted to pure energy. “I’m going to kill you, Jon.”
“Another thing,” Jon begins, unfazed. “Remember when I told you Allie’s scream will haunt me for the rest of my life?”
“One last chance. Let me go.”
“There is one other thing I will never forget. The guy who killed my wife said something into the phone just before smashing it. He said, ‘Suck me sideways.’ Like you said when I walked into your enclosure.”
So he did know. Shit. This was all just part of his revenge.
“But don’t kick yourself, feeling like you spilled the beans. I knew who you were a week after you got here. Remember all those stats I hit you with about missing persons and unidentified bodies?”
I look at his blur. Try hard to focus. I really want to see his face.
“They’re true. But not in Allie’s case. Her remains were finally identified, and I received the phone call right after you got here last year. She was found just outside your shithole little town. Since you were already here, we sat on the information.” His blur leans toward me. “Sam, you killed my wife.”
“It wasn’t my fault. Blame your wife. She was the one standing in the middle of road.”
“Each of us? How many people have you killed?”
“Everyone I can.” Jon laughs. “I’ll bet I have a higher death count than Richard Ramirez, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy combined. If my stats ever went public, I would be one of the greatest serial killers our country has ever seen. In here, I can do anything I want.” He pauses. “You thought you were becoming God. Who’s God now, Sam?”
“You’re playing with a power you have no understanding of.”
“You know,” Jon ignores me, “you’d be surprised how easy it is to take the will to live out of someone. Man. Woman. Child. Fill them with despair. Take all hope away. Putty in my hands, little buddy. And now it’s your turn. But don’t worry—you won’t be the last. Not even close. I’m going to eliminate your kind, Sam. One press of the button at a time.”
“I feel sorry for you, Jon. You’re pathetic. You think this gives you power.”
“Power enough to send you straight to Hell, where you will suffer for an eternity. Like you made me suffer. But I must admit, your suffering here has helped. I’ve watched you.” He chuckles. “You know the lunatic L-two? The psycho who cut off your fingers? I hired him. He was working for me. I used him to push you over the edge. To make sure you were ready to agree to this little L-three visit.”
“Death is not the end. It is the beginning.”
“You lived like a rabid dog, Sam. And now it’s time to put you down like one.”
“You will free me. And I’ll come for you. I promise.”
“This is for all your victims. People you butchered. They didn’t deserve this. Especially the little girl—the sheriff’s daughter. She was just a child. For her, I now push the button. Like flushing the toilet.”
Criminal Zoo Page 26