Out

by Laura Preble

  “It’s not a myth.” I turn to Warren. “They’re keeping people here against their will.”

  “Well, it’s a jail,” Warren says. “Most people don’t want to go to jail.”

  “It’s not just a jail. They torture people here. They keep people here without any lawyers or hearings, or anything—”

  “That’s just Perpendicular propaganda,” David spits. “Exactly why we need to get you into a treatment program. They’ve brainwashed you, Chris.”

  “You’ve brainwashed me for seventeen years.”

  The color drains from David’s face. “That’s enough of that. We can just leave you here if that’s how you feel about it.”

  “David,” Warren says soothingly.

  “No. If he really doesn’t want to come with us, he can stay here in jail.”

  I yell, “It’s not a jail, David! It’s a concentration camp. It’s a place where they torture Perpendiculars, all in the name of God. Is that the kind of religion you stand for? If it is, you’re right. You should leave me here.”

  Warren gasps. “Chris, you don’t know what you’re saying. We can take you out of here tonight, right now. Just sign the paper.”

  “I’m not signing anything.”

  “You most certainly are!” David thunders, grabbing my arm roughly and pulling me toward the door. “Sheriff! Bring that paper in here!”

  I rip my arm away from him, and he looks surprised, but he grabs on again, harder this time. No. I’m not going to let him shove me or pull me or throw me into anything again. I pull back, and we’re struggling up against a wall, so close I can smell soap on his skin, and he’s squeezing my arm with all the frustration and hate he feels against me, against people like me.

  “You can’t admit that a son of yours would even be Perpendicular, can you?” I hiss at him as he rams me into the doorjamb.

  “You’re not a Perpendicular!” he screams, punching the wall beside my head, leaving a huge hole in the plaster. His eyes, wide and crazed, stare into mine. “You are not!”

  “I am.” I say it calmly, as a fact, no emotion. “And I love that girl.”

  With a gut-wrenching howl he shoves me into the wall. I grab his shirt, pull, rip, claw to get free.

  Guttural noises come from David as he attacks, attacks, attacks, relentless until a sheriff and Warren pull him off me. We pause in an eerie silence, stare at each other, hatred flying across the chasm between us.

  “Leave him here,” David growls. He shrugs out of the grip of the sheriff, stalks out of the room without looking back at me. Warren looks like his heart is broken, but he follows.

  I wipe blood from my face with the hem of my shirt, sink into a chair, and will myself to pass out. But I don’t. Instead, the lady in the green dress returns, pleasant as anything. She wrinkles her nose when she sees the blood on her floor, but she simply says, “Well, I guess you’ll be staying on with us for a bit. Sergeant, could you escort Mr. Bryant to processing?” She turns to go, but over her shoulder, she says, “You deserve whatever you get.”

  My nose throbs from David’s punches, although the bleeding has stopped. The guards walk me down the hall again, through a labyrinth of industrial-looking corridors, cuffs on my hands and shackles on my feet, like I’m a dangerous criminal. We finally get to double-steel doors with big warning signs on them: Quarantine: Do Not Enter. One guard keys in a code on a pad.

  “What’s the quarantine for?” I ask, but before the words are out of my mouth, the man viciously jabs the rifle butt into my mouth, knocking out one of my front teeth. I crumple from the pain, blinded temporarily by the lightning response and the brutality.

  The other guard simply says, “No questions.” I think I figured that out.

  God, my lip is swelling up and the socket of the tooth aches, blood’s dripping from my mouth. I follow the first guy into the hallway behind the steel doors. It’s a lot different from the rest of the building; there’s no pretending it’s a doctor’s office or waiting room.

  There are only doors here, unpainted metal, no windows, and every door has a number stenciled in white. Bare bulbs light the hall, make it look like a horror movie. I count the doors, five, ten, fifteen…does it ever end? What’s in those rooms?

  Blood is trickling down my chin now, but I can’t do anything about it because of the cuffs. I want to spit, but I’m afraid it might mean another lost tooth. We keep walking, turn a corner into another identical hallway with more doors…five, fifteen, twenty-five.

  The one in front of me stops, and the one behind me grabs my shoulder harshly so I don’t ram into the first guy.

  I want to scream and run, confess, cry like a baby. In my mind, I tear off the cuffs and shackles, turn the guns on the guards, shoot them, run, pound on doors, find Carmen. Tears start rolling when I think of her, mingle with the blood from my mouth.

  I try to breathe, get calm. Panic won’t help me. We stop. The first guy keys in a code next to a door stenciled with the word Intake. “Step forward into the cubicle on the left, disrobe, then step into the shower stall adjacent.” I try to read his face, but it’s stone. The second guy uses a key to unlock the cuffs, bends down and unlocks the shackles, and he follows me into the room. It feels good to have the chains off, but I have to fight the urge to run like a rabbit. I’d be shot for sure.

  I do what he says, walk over to the cubicle, take off my clothes and fold them neatly as if I’m home. Breathe, breathe, breathe. He walks away. What’s he doing? Concentrate on something…a small piece of blue tape on the floor. I watch that piece of tape, stare at it, as I step, naked, toward the stall.

  Over the huge cement shower area hangs three over-sized Frisbee-shaped shower heads. Looks like the gas chamber things in the Holocaust. I wonder if they’ll just gas me? I start shaking.

  The idea of the gas chamber locks my feet…I can’t go forward. “Step inside,” the guard’s voice commands. Where did he go? Did he take shelter, so the gas doesn’t get him? I try, but I can’t make my feet move, and I just keep shaking more and more. Sighing like I’ve really put him out, the guard comes from the control area, shoves the butt of his gun into the small of my back. I stumble into the shower stall, and the guard, who has gone into a little control cubicle, presses a button; ice-cold water pounds down on me. I gasp involuntarily, and the water stops. The second shower head spews a nasty-smelling chemical all over my head and body; it burns my eyes. “Scrub,” the guard yells from his cubicle. So I scrub.

  After several seconds, the ice water comes back, thoroughly drenching me and washing away the soap. He turns off the water; my teeth chatter with the cold. He throws me a scratchy towel, and I use it to dry off and warm up. No gas. No gas. Breathe. No gas, just cold water. He comes out from the cubicle with gun pointed, and nudges me toward another door labeled Dispensary.

  A young blond woman behind a desk taps at a computer; she’s surrounded by shelf after shelf of orange jumpsuits and other stuff. “Size?” she asks without looking up.

  “Twenty-eight in the waist, and I’m six-foot—” She’s already up before I’ve answered. “Six foot three, inseam is—” The rifle catches me in the small of the back again, causing me to stumble forward and drop my towel so I’m standing there naked and cold. “Can I pick it up?” I ask, gesturing toward the towel. He doesn’t answer.

  The girl comes back and puts a folded orange jumpsuit on the counter, along with a pair of black plastic flip flops. “Put it on,” the guard instructs. The girl goes back to her computer.

  I pull the thing on, put the shoes on my feet. “These are too small,” I object, but that gets me a punch in the kidneys.

  “Move,” the guard hisses, nudging me with the barrel of the big black gun. The next door reads Processing. It’s big, like a hospital emergency room, with about ten beds partitioned off with those flimsy hospital curtains. The place seems empty, but my escort walks me down to Bed Seven, and points with his gun. “Sit there. Wait for the Processor. Don’t do anything else.�
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  I pull myself up onto the vinyl bed and wait. My head pounds, and the room spins. I curl up on the plastic bed, knees to chest.

  A sharp pinch in my arm wakes me. I try to turn over, but something is holding my legs down. “Don’t move,” a calm voice says. “It hurts more if you move.”

  I can’t see who it is since the person, a man I think, is behind me. Another spike of pain radiates throughout my arm, into the joints, spreading like poison. Is that what it is? Poison? ”What are you doing?” I ask desperately.

  “Just making you safe for the others.” The pain subsides to a dull ache. A tan, bald man with a surgical mask hovers over me.

  I don’t say anything. The bald man stares at me with bright blue eyes, crinkled at the edges as if he’s amused by me.

  “Do you want to ask a question?” He has some sort of accent. I can’t place it.

  I swallow, try to clear the blood and snot out of my throat. “Can I have some water?” I rasp.

  “Of course.” I struggle against the foot straps to sit upright. He reaches for a plastic hospital pitcher, pours water into a cup, and hands it to me. I drink it down.

  “So. Chris Bryant. What would you like to tell me?”

  I stare at him, unsure how to answer. What do I want to tell him? What does that mean?

  He pulls the surgical mask away from his face, revealing broad lips bisected by a long-healed scar, a large nose, gray stubble. “There. Less frightening, eh?” He pours more water into the cup and I greedily chug it. “Just a few questions and then we’ll get you settled.”

  He grabs a clipboard off the side table, and flips a few forms over, then reads something, squinting. “Hmm. Your parents were notified, came to get you, it says here. What happened?”

  I wet my lips. “I wouldn’t sign a paper.”

  “Ah.” He nods knowingly. “You didn’t want to admit to being a Perpendicular, eh?”

  “They wanted me to say that I was brainwashed, that I didn’t know what I was doing.” I drain the cup. “I didn’t want to sign it.”

  “Even though it means a long stay here? And shots like those every day?” He chuckles. “I’ve seen people like you before. You’d have been much better off going with your parents to a nice, cozy hospital in your home town, where people could bring you cookies and you could just slip into nothing.” He checks a box on the

  form with a black pen.

  “What was the injection?” I involuntarily rub my arm where the needle drilled in. It’s still sore.

  “Something to help you forget about your deviant desires,” he says, chuckling. “Not to worry. Very few side effects. It makes life so much easier when you just don’t feel anything, really. Many of our clients respond very well to it, and actually welcome it.”

  “What do you mean? What does it do, exactly?”

  “Chemical castration,” he says, as if he’s reading a grocery list. No big deal. “It will take away your desire for…you know…girls. And boys, too. It’s an equal opportunity suppressant.”

  “Why would you do that?” I just finally felt desire, finally learned what it is and what it means, and now they’re taking it away? No. I throw the cup of water against the wall, reach like Frankenstein’s monster for the big man, struggle against the straps, but can’t get myself free.

  The bald man watches me, grinning. “No use struggling.” That doesn’t stop me from tugging even harder against the restraints.

  He sighs, and takes out a long, black stick. “Can’t have you breaking our equipment,” he says reasonably before he jabs the point into my stomach, sending an electrical wave of pain through my chest. Again, again, again, until—

  I hear someone crying, begging…it’s me.

  Chapter 15

  At first, I keep my eyes closed. Darkness is preferable. With my mind, I try to feel where I am…pain radiates from my arm, my mouth, my nose, my back, pretty much anywhere pain can exist. Move, a little...stabbing jolt through my neck. Frown, and I get a zap of electricity across my forehead. Breathing seems safe. I breathe. Again. In. Out.

  Everything is a blur when I finally do open my eyes. Fuzzy outlines of right angles on a gray ceiling lead into gray walls, gray corners. White fluorescent light buzzes above from a broken fixture. I flex my fingers, just a tiny motion: feels like tile. I move my hand to my leg…coarse fabric, must be the orange jumpsuit.

  I’m going to sit up. This is a monumental task. I know it will hurt. I bunch muscles, pull, and feel like I’m going to vomit. I’ve never hurt this bad in my whole life. But I make it to a sitting position, scoot so I’m sitting with my back against the cold metal wall.

  It’s a cell. A cot with a thin mattress and a thinner blanket, a steel toilet. A sink. No windows. I’m on the other side of one of those doors I saw coming in. Panic starts to rise like a tide in my gut. What if nobody knows I’m here? What if I never get out?

  The shot. I rub my arm where the bald doctor injected me with his “chemical castration.” I don’t want to think about that right now. Trying to pull myself up onto the mattress is a herculean effort, but after a couple of false starts, I make it. I just stare at the ceiling, waiting.

  Dozing off, images of Carmen dance and bend in my mind. I think of the times we were together, not enough times, but enough that I have something to remember. Oh! I touch my wrist, hoping for —My bracelet! Gone. The last thing I had that she’d touched. Gone.

  I won’t become hopeless. Matt didn’t become hopeless…the vision of his blown-away face replaces Carmen’s lovely smile in my mind’s eye. That’s what I have to look forward to. No. I won’t let them have my thoughts too. I can keep those, at least.

  The metal door clangs and squeaks as someone opens it. A red light mounted above the door flashes soundlessly. The lady from before, Dr. Castleman, enters, flanked by two armed guards.

  “Mr. Bryant,” she says cheerfully, as if she’s just dropped in for a friendly visit. She nods to the guards, who stand, rifles at rest, on either side of the door. She hovers over me, peering down over a clipboard. “How are we feeling today?”

  I turn my head, don’t answer.

  “Hmm. That’s a poor way to respond.” I feel her weight as she perches on the edge of my bed. She whispers, “I know you don’t feel like talking, but it will be so much easier if you do. I promise.”

  “Talk about what?” I don’t look at her.

  She sighs. “Well, there’s a whole list. What happened to Mr. McFarland, first of all.”

  “I told you what happened. I don’t know where he went.” I stare, dull-eyed, at the steel sink. “How long will I be here?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she says. “You answer one question, I answer one question.”

  Hmm. At least I might get some information out of her. I sit up, wincing at the pain, but try not to let her see. “Okay.”

  “Great!” She taps a pen on the clipboard. “Alright, then. Where is Mr. McFarland?”

  “I can’t answer you, because I don’t know.” I sigh as if frustrated. “I want to tell you. I just don’t know. He walked out to get the bags, and—”

  “Fine.” She breathes through her nose, her nostrils flaring as if she’s trying to keep herself from ripping my head off. “Let’s try something else. Your girlfriend…do you know that she’s here? In the facility?”

  I can’t help it—this gets my attention. I look at her. “Where is she?”

  “As I said, answer a question, I’ll let you ask one. My next question: who is in charge of the insurgency in Ohio?”

  I realize that I’m not even sure who it is. Magnus? Ben? Mary? My sister? They were pretty good about keeping me in the dark about the overall organization. But I figure the best thing to do is to totally lie about everything, and try to make her think I’m really telling the truth. “All I know is I met with a man named...Felix.”

  She scribbles on her clipboard furiously, and inside I smile. I pray to God there’s no innocent guy named Felix running a
round Ohio doing perverted stuff. “Felix. Last name?”

  “Don’t know. They didn’t use last names.” I lick my lips. “Could I have some water?”

  She motions to the guard, who grabs the plastic cup on the sink, fills it with tap water, and hands it to her. I gulp the water down, and although it tastes slightly of rust, it helps. “Next. Did anyone else in your family participate in insurgent activities?”

  “No.”

  She studies my face, and I’m not sure I’ve convinced her. She shakes her head as if I’ve been a bad little boy. “Your turn.”

  My turn? Like we’re playing a game? I’m afraid to ask anything. I just sit there.

  The woman studies me. “You think we’re the bad guys, don’t you?”

  Again, I’m silent.

  Impatiently, she taps her pen against the clipboard, crosses one leg over the other. “You would probably never understand this, but we’re here to help people like you.”

  In my mind, great comments spring up. I bite them all back.

  She waits for my reaction, but getting nothing, she continues, frustrated. “Fine. Let’s continue. What ties does your girlfriend have to the insurgency in California?”

  “None.”

  “What were you planning to do after McFarland was dead?”

  “I didn’t plan anything. I didn’t know anything was going to happen. Is he dead?” I try to sound shocked, surprised.

  Dr. Castleman sighs heavily. “If you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll just leave you alone.”

  I don’t know when I’ll see another person. I don’t know what’s going to happen. So, I have to ask, even though I know it makes me weaker: “Where’s Carmen?”

  She smiles like a kindly grandmother. This bothers me more than if she looked like the predator that she is. “Your girlfriend?”

  I nod, looking at the floor.

  “We have her too. It’s best you forget about her.” She touches my chin with a fuchsia fingernail and raises my face so I’m eye-level with her. I smell her perfume, floral, innocent. “This is a place of hope, Chris. We’re not here to punish you. We’re here to change your life, to give you back to God. If you’ll help me, we can give Carmen the same chance.”