Marcus went over to Julia, who was still on the ground and unable to get up. He knelt down to help her. "Are you OK?" Marcus asked. "Are you hurt?"
The floor with its openings left scratches on Julia's knees. She put a trembling hand up to her mouth. She touched the corner of her swollen mouth with her fingertips and there was blood coming out. Finding themselves as it were together again, the two prisoners looked all around them and could see that the sudden outbreak of violence had stupefied everyone. In the room with no way out, all the prisoners, Sally included, were frozen in a huddle away from the danger. They seemed incapable of putting an end to the horror that was escalating toward bestiality.
In one corner, Dorian had an adrenaline rush and wasn't about to let go. He dug his teeth deeper into Frank's forearm, literally ripping the young man's flesh. The blood spewing from the gaping hole went all over the floor and made it slippery. In a last-ditch effort and as he let out a hideous scream, Frank tried to break free. He spun around and with his full weight slammed his opponent against the nearest wall. Though the hit was very hard, it seemed to act like an added stimulant.
Like a dog on a bone, all that was left of the nice young man Dorian used to be managed to go after Frank's forearm again. After his failed attempt at turning the situation to his advantage, Frank lost consciousness. Clasped together, the two prisoners fell to the floor.
Among the onlookers, no one had stepped up to stop the slaughter. The drone, which was ready to intervene with its electric dart, had gotten close to the fight and to no avail had kept repeating, "Stop. You stop. Or else."
"You've got to do something," Julia managed to stammer, speaking to Marcus. She still hadn't recovered from the blow she took. "If we don't do anything, they're going to die...both of them."
Marcus looked around the room for Julius and saw him on the floor totally disoriented. On all fours after getting knocked out by Dorian, he had found a safe spot leaning against the nearest wall.
"Marcus!" shouted Julia again. "Do something!"
With an heroic impetus, Marcus stood up, walked over to the bloodthirsty monster that one among them had become and tried to reason with him.
"Dorian, it's me, Marcus. You have to stop. You hear me?"
On the floor, Dorian's attitude had nothing in common with that of a human being. On all fours, hunched over Frank's still body, he was eating his face.
"Please," insisted Marcus. "You have to stop... You were right from the very beginning. We have to attack one of those lights. Please, come and help us. We need you."
He didn't really become his old self, but Dorian responded to Marcus' appeals by looking at him. The sight of his face covered with blood and grimacing frightened Marcus and stopped him from getting any closer. The instant of newfound lucidity wasn't enough to bring back Dorian's sense of reason. He grunted and as he went back to his meal, a second light module assailed the scene of cannibalism with its beam. To the crackling of a hard disk, the module called to its partner for help and both lights directly joined forces and simultaneously hit Dorian with an intense electric shock. With his body stiffened by the assault, he immediately collapsed face down and suffered the throes of a series of convulsions that resulted in a disgusting, gurgling sound.
After fractions of seconds getting his wits about him and quickly standing up, and with his lips curled up showing his clenched teeth, Dorian, with his black-dotted bloodshot eyes, stared alternatively at each of the two lights that now started twirling around him. Without warning, one of the lights attacked. Dorian was pulled by his feet. He crumpled to the ground and was dragged a few yards and then, in an amazing reflex reaction, he was able to stand up.
Now in a defensive stance with his back arched forward, Dorian watched the two spotlights that came and went around him in a coordinated movement. The ballet made Dorian turn around repeatedly, which was cute, and in an unrecognizable voice, he sputtered, "You want some? Yeah, come on!"
Engaging in unusual combat with the lights, Dorian tried to grab one. The light evaded him, inched behind him, and made him turn around. Now sandwiched between the two beams of light gravitating around him, he was all fired up.
"Come on! Come on, bitches!"
As he tried to punch one of the lights, Dorian found himself facing one of the walls in the room. In an awkward attempt at a last-ditch move, he spun around. With a closed-fist backhand, Dorian hit empty space and that move made him fall forward. At that instant, one of the light sources levitated over his feet, picked him up by his feet, and made him fall a second time. Dazed by the force of the impact, Dorian still managed to roll to the side at the last minute and evaded an electric strike that in a flurry of sparks left a crimson mark on the floor.
The flying lights suddenly disappeared from the room, leaving it dark once again. Dorian, who was short of breath because of the fight and was still on the ground, stayed there for a moment, looking to see whether the two threats were coming back. Only after a break of about 20 seconds did he get up triumphantly and then go over to his fellow prisoners huddled in a corner of the room and gave them a tongue-lashing using his monosyllabic vocabulary.
"See. It wasn't so bad," he managed to say excitedly while revealing to everyone his now abnormal face and black-dotted red eyeballs.
Dorian had barely finished rejoicing, with a toothy grin on his face, when an intense shock ripped through his body. Stiffened in place by a prolonged electric shock, Dorian's eyes were bulging and from his mouth that was wide open, the other prisoners could see his tongue contracting in a strange way. He fell to the prison floor, in convulsions that triggered loud groaning. He showed no sign of life. Immobilized, he was slowly pulled by his feet and disappeared through one of the walls that slid open with a hollow sound and immediately slammed shut.
Before you could say Jack Robinson, the room became quiet again. In a corner of the room that the rest of the men and women had deserted, Frank's body lay on the ground, he forearm in shreds and his face eaten away to the bone. Everyone was coming to their senses when, with a revenge sound like in a horror movie, Frank's body was in turn pulled away and disappeared through one of the walls.
With the incident definitively over, Julia went over to Julius. She knelt beside him and examined him. Marcus, who once again noticed their special relationship, didn't even dare get any closer to them to ask Julia what caused the black-dotted, bloodshot eyes. For her part, Sally didn't seem ready to let things go. She challenged the rest of the group.
"But how come you didn't help him?" she asked, exasperated. "We could have done something. You're cowards! That's what you are, damn ass cowards!"
When no one reacted, Sally burst into tears and then stepped aside to be alone in a corner of the room.
Julius, who wasn't fully cognizant of the drama that had taken place in his presence, was sitting down, leaning against one of the walls. He addressed Julia.
"His eyes... There was something wrong," Julius said, still confused.
Beside him, Julia was trying to determine the extent of his trauma. She held his head with one hand and moved her finger back and forth in front of his eyes.
"Julius, follow my finger. You were unconscious for several seconds. I just want to be sure you're all right, OK?"
Julius nodded and listening to the instructions from his 'doctor,' he managed, despite his weak condition, to follow her finger with his eyes. The outreached finger was doing a simple back and forth, from left to right and then up and down in front of his eyes.
Julia thought Julius' injuries were minor and the concerned expression she had on her face went away. Julius suddenly pulled Julia toward him by putting his hand on her shoulder. Still haunted by the horror he had seen, he said, "His eyes turned red. And his pupils. All you could see were his irises. What happened to him?"
Julia couldn't figure out the role the eyes could have had in the sudden outburst of violence. She turned her attention to Sally. Kneeling down in a corner of the room, she was sti
ll crying her eyes out. As Julia left Julius to walk over to Sally, she couldn't ignore the question everyone was asking and that was being whispered in the room from one person to the next. Why did one among them have black-dotted bloodshot eyes?
Julia had barely gotten over to Sally when Sally blurted out while staring at the ground, "They didn't even try to help."
"Marcus did the best he could", replied Julia. "We were all scared. No one was able to reason with him. You saw his face! Dorian wasn't himself anymore."
After a long silence with sniffling in between, Sally stood up and as she walked away from Julia without paying her the least bit of attention, she again addressed the other prisoners, some of whom had started eating again.
"You still don't understand that they're going to kill us all? All of you, are you listening? And you, you're acting as though nothing happened," she spluttered, with a raspy voice, ready to start a fight.
From the group, a woman spoke."He got what he deserved. He would have gotten all of us killed!"
The words were barely uttered when Sally ran over to the group huddled at the feeders. She made room for herself among them and spoke to each of them in a voice that was now strangely husky.
"Who said that? Damn, it. Who said that?"
Then, addressing Marcus, who was on his way over to her, all of a sudden she regained her calm. "Marcus? You know who said it. Tell me, please. If you know, I'll take care of it. I'll give you my portion of food if you want. OK?"
"No, Sally," he answered curtly. "You're losing it. Dorian's dead now. There's nothing you can do to bring him back."
As tears came to her eyes and not knowing at what or at whom she could direct her anger, Sally stifled a sob and then suddenly flung herself on one of the prisoners. Hitting with her hand full of white mush, she ranted and raved at her fellow prisoners.
"That's it. You're right. Keep eating that crap. Keep it up, you pigs. Keep eating until you die!"
With Sally bordering on hysteria and with everyone able to read unrelenting despair on her twisted face, you could hear a sliding sound that everyone now recognized. An opening appeared in one of the walls opposite the feeders. Through the opening, you could hear groaning. The thing that brought a sordid atmosphere to the room forced everyone to turn toward it. Despite the dim light, everyone, looking at the opening, could see the shape of a human being.
Sally ran toward the opening, but very quickly her pace slowed and then she stopped. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream. As Dorian entered the room, everyone could see what just happened to him. His hands were amputated, cut off clean just above the wrists, and his stumps were oddly smooth. They looked like they had been cauterized the way only a cutting machine could do it. Sally wanted to run but she couldn't. Finally, she saw the ultimate attack Dorian had suffered. Ugly whistling was coming out his wide open mouth that was now nothing more than a gaping hole because his teeth and tongue had been removed.
Inside the room, the scene, just like a tight grip on one's rib cage, plunged all the prisoners into deep depression. And the stillness was magnified. After a few steps that were extremely difficult for him to manage, Dorian collapsed into Sally's arms. She opened her arms to him and was overwhelmed, in a position the evoked a religious lithograph.
5
Sally was leaning against one of the walls in the room and seemed to have lost every bit of stamina. She had a blank stare on her face and was caressing Dorian's head as a mother would. Dorian was in the fetal position, enduring the throes of terrible agony. The atrocious mutilation he suffered left his baby face hacked up forever.
Inside the prison, the small groups of captives were oddly matched and discussions fell silent. Each person was frozen in deep reflection and seemed to have only a single thought in mind: the fatal outcome of their detention. Despite the sense of uneasiness, Marcus and Julius still wanted to believe there could be a way out. Julia was sitting next to them and was half listening to their conversation. She was paying more attention to the couple that Dorian and Sally had formed. She had been staring at them for quite some time.
"You saw his eyes, too. We have to find a way to get out of here, and quick," Marcus said, addressing Julius.
"Maybe he was poisoned," said Julius.
After thinking for a moment, Marcus asked Julia a question.
"Julia, you're the expert? You must have an idea?"
was still staring at Dorian and Sally and didn't react. Marcus could tell that Julia wasn't going to answer and he turned to Julius to resume their conversation.
"I've been looking. There's no lock, no hatch, no other mechanism in these damn walls. Nothing. They're detachable, but everything seems to be controlled from the outside. It's stupid to admit it, but our best hope is with these openings that automatically appear whenever one of us is taken away by the lights."
After looking at Marcus intently for a moment, Julius asked him in a cold and monotone voice, "What are you suggesting? That one of us should be sacrificed to give the rest of the group a chance?"
After a brief silence that intimated, 'Yes, that could be an option,' Marcus expounded on what he was thinking.
"No, I was just saying, but for the moment it seems to me to be the only way out. If you've got a better idea, I'm listening."
Julius' silence meant that he had reached the terrible conclusion that without an alternative, the solution mentioned in the absence of any other appeared to be the right one.
The overly quick conversation came to an end when Marcus spoke."Wait!"
"Let me guess. You're gonna volunteer to sacrifice yourself?" Julius asked mockingly.
"The lights. There's necessarily an opening that's created in one of the walls each time one of the lights appears."
"That's true, but above all that means that it will never be big enough for a whole person to get through," said Julius.
"Without intending to, Julius had just made Marcus lose his momentum in terms of finding a way out of their imprisonment. All you could hear in the room now was Dorian's hollow moaning and groaning, a reminder to everyone of the wrath that awaited them.
"It makes no sense!" said Julius in a low voice as he looked over at Dorian and his hideously mutilated face. "What's the purpose of holding us prisoners, feeding us, and attacking us like this? There has to be a reason for all this."
"It's a holding place," answered Marcus. "They're storing us here until they move us."
"Move us," repeated Julius. "But to go where?"
After heavy silence that seemed to definitively mark the end of their conversation, Marcus had a brainstorm. He turned and faced the wall he had been leaning against and placed one hand on the surface dotted with slits. Julius watched him and then said, "I already tried that. I tried to get those things apart and I beat on them, but nothing happened."
Marcus, who now had his fingers in one of the holes, seemed sharply focused on the task before him, As Julius looked at the slight cuts on his fingers that were healing, Marcus said to him, .
"If these walls can change when the feeders come out or when the lights appear, that also means that an opening can necessarily be made bigger. In that case, brute force serves no purpose. You could beat on them forever, until you break your bones. These walls wouldn't give."
"And you know that how, Einstein?" asked Julius.
"I have no idea how I know. I think I must have been an engineer or something like that before ending up here."
Still groping inside the darkness of the slit, Marcus managed to engage a mechanism. By pulling a small section of the wall toward him, he was able to make an opening large enough to slip through an object the size of an orange. Proud of what he had accomplished, he smiled excitedly at Julius. Marcus brought one hand up to the space that had remained open and put it through up to his wrist. A clicking sound was heard. He pulled his arm out in the nick of time. He had nearly been amputated by the modular system that returned to its normal appearance.
"Can y
ou make it bigger?" asked Julius hopefully.
"Sure. Four or five of us could certainly be able to pull the workings apart for one person to be able to get through, but given what just happened with Dorian, I don't think the others will help us."
"You're right," conceded Julius. "Let's wait a little longer and try to find volunteers."
Julius turned away from Marcus, who had nodded in agreement, and called over to Julia, whose silence had become disturbing.
"Julia? Are you all right? We've never known you to be so quiet..."
It was as though she hoped she had only imagined the cruelty that had been inflicted on one among them. Julia had stayed there the whole time, eyes wide open, observing the couple that Dorian and Sally formed. She was truly upset. Her eyes welled up, moistening her eyelids. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
"Julia? Speak to me, please," insisted Julius, who was really worried. "You're making me crazy."
Totally expressionless, Julia voiced out loud a thought that obsessed her.
"They made an example of him. They could have killed him, but instead they deprived him of the only means of defense we have. It's as though, from the time we got here, things haven't stopped torturing us to make us more and more docile."
With these words uttered while sobbing, Julia finally found the strength to close her eyes. Without taking the time to wipe her tears away, she whipped around and scowled at Marcus and Julius. In the near-darkness in the room that the young men were long accustomed to, the Julia they saw was so heartbreaking that they didn't even dare to console her. Like a photograph of a war scene that has become iconic, the beautiful redhead with her face dirty and showing exhaustion turned away from them and went to lie down and not have to deal with their questions.
Of Meat And Bones - Episode One Page 4