Reprieve

by James Han Mattson

  Jaidee climbed under the covers, pulled the blanket up. He closed his eyes, tried to sleep, but Chris’s voice kept droning on and on in the background like an insect’s buzz.

  “I just want to reiterate that I’m not a racist guy, you know? But not being racist doesn’t mean we wanna fuck any ethnic person that shows us interest, right?”

  “Why are you talking in the plural?” Jaidee mumbled.

  “The plural? Like ‘we’? Well, because it’s my friends too. I already established that.”

  “So you have the same thoughts?”

  “On this, yeah. Are you being bitchy now? Just ’cause I said I didn’t wanna jump your bones? Sheesh. I thought you were different, Jaidee. Seriously. I thought you’d be cool. But you’re just like all the rest of them.”

  “I’m tired,” Jaidee said.

  “I wouldn’t even pity-fuck you,” Chris said, wobbling. “Like, what, did you think taking off your shirt was gonna fucking impress me? That tiny little thing? Christ.”

  “Please go.”

  “Oh, I’ll go. I’ll go now. Such a fucking shame, man. Here I am, reaching out, and this is how you respond. Well, if that’s how you’re gonna be, you’re gonna have a tough time in America, I’ll tell you that.”

  Jaidee didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes tighter. He felt the cold sting of tears in his sinuses and tried his best to keep them at bay.

  “See ya, loser,” Chris said, and left.

  Jaidee rolled over in his bed. Before he closed his eyes, he looked at Bryan’s desk. The Jim Beam bottle was gone.

  Cell Three

  A dank gray classroom with twelve desks, all neatly aligned, three rows of four. The desks are old-fashioned: they flip from the top—Pac-Mans. Who knows what’s beneath, Jaidee says.

  A chalkboard. A map of the world. A globe. Above: soft whirring; otherwise, quiet. The scoreboard reads:

  # Envelopes Total: 8

  # Envelopes Needed to Proceed: 5

  CONTESTANTS WHO ATTACK WILL BE DISQUALIFIED

  FIRST-AID KIT BEHIND CLOCK

  The time clock counts down from 7 minutes.

  Sitting upright in row three, desk two, her eyes enormous and glowing, is an oversized doll, scratched black and red with makeup, smiling, hands folded in front of her, her teeth and mouth painted black, her hair a series of limp, greasy strings running down her cheeks. She wears a schoolgirl’s uniform—plaid skirt, short, button-down white shirt tied at the navel, exposing a tiny stomach. She doesn’t move.

  Let’s just get this done, Bryan says. He’s bleeding real blood from Cell Two. He breaks from the group, goes to the clock, reaches behind, pulls out the small white first-aid kit. Inside: gauze, tape, bandages, cotton balls, cotton swabs, antibiotic ointment, gloves, a towel. He takes the gauze, wraps it around his forearm, his hand, pulls the tape around, affixes. Jane offers to help. He declines. When he finishes, he hands the materials to Victor. Jane helps him apply the gauze.

  We’re insane, she says.

  I’ve got the girl, Bryan says.

  What? Jane says.

  I’ll open the girl’s desk.

  But you’ve done so much, Jane says, her hand on his arm. Bryan thinks of Leslie Hemming, pulls away.

  Challenges are good, Bryan says. And I feel fine.

  Just be careful, Jaidee says.

  Bryan looks at his roommate, registers a small but potent respect. He nods.

  We don’t have much time here, Victor says, motioning to the clock.

  6 min, 15 sec.

  Bryan walks over to the desk containing the doll woman. He inspects her, leans in. She’s breathing; she’s real. Even with him hovering, though, she doesn’t move, continues to smile. He grabs the edge of the desk. Her breathing quickens. Whatcha got, sweetheart? he says. He flips the top open, finds confetti. What is it with this place and confetti? he says. He digs through it—it’s endless. He looks down; the desktop extends to the floor. The doll girl’s breath—heated, arrhythmic, fraught—mists his arm. He wipes it off, makes a face. He pulls the confetti out in clumps, throws it on the floor. The third time he reaches in, she grabs his arm, her eyes still staring at the chalkboard. Oh yeah? he says. He keeps digging, brushing off her fingers. The fourth time he digs, she reaches into her skirt, brings out a chef’s knife. She raises it above her head, brings it down a few inches from his arm. You’re gonna get it, he says, evening out his breathing. You’re gonna fucking get it. She raises the knife again. It slices the air, misses him by an inch. I told you! he says. She opens her mouth, laughs, lifts her knife again.

  Around him, his fellow contestants dig through the other desks, revealing similar reservoirs of confetti. No envelopes.

  Nothing! Victor says.

  Nothing! Jaidee says.

  Nothing! Jane says.

  4 min, 22 sec.

  Bryan is suddenly stuck in the desk. His hands have reached the bottom, are clamped down. He can’t feel his fingers. His wrists are covered in cold goo. He breathes hard. Why am I always stuck somewhere? he thinks. He groans; a small terror inches toward his eyeballs. Not afraid, not afraid, not afraid, he thinks. When he pulls up, his shoulders scream. You gonna stab me? he says, glaring at the girl. I dare you, you dumb bitch. I dare you.

  The knife comes down, a half inch from Bryan’s armpit. Brian flinches.

  Too close, he says. You’re getting too close.

  She raises her arm again, smiles.

  Just know, Bryan says, if you hurt me, I have a whole slew of women who’ll be more than happy to tear you apart. You heard of my mom? Rae Douglas? She’ll hunt you down, cut your lips off. She’ll gouge your eyes out. No mercy. Just sayin’.

  He thinks of his mom then and feels a bitter grinding in the bottom of his stomach. He’d never told her what he was doing, of course. He’d figured if the tour got a lot of publicity, if he got outed, so to speak, he’d tell her that he’d done it because of the money. He’d say that he’d planned on getting her a new car: she had a 1985 Mercury Topaz that made strange coughing noises every time she braked, and since she refused to get it checked out, the noises grew worse, and were now accompanied by a slight jerking motion.

  She’d kill me, he thinks, pulling his arms some more, looking up at the demonic doll woman. If she knew what I was doing, she’d take one look at this doll woman and say, Go on, finish it. That’s right. Just do it. Slice him up.

  He thinks about the day she’d first heard of the Quigley House. He’d been just a kid at the time, a teenager, and she’d come barreling into the living room, waving around a newspaper, slamming it on the coffee table as if it were a bad report card.

  What? he’d said, thinking immediately of his principal.

  If I ever see you anywhere near this place . . . She pointed at the paper. The headline read haunt takes it ten steps further.

  Quigley House? Bryan said, looking at the article.

  Things are not well in the state of Nebraska when this filth is allowed in our town, she said, putting her hands on her hips, breathing dramatically through her nose. I’m telling you, Bryan, I know that your age group likes to take risks and do this sort of thing, but I have such a negative feeling about this. I can’t even tell you how bad it’s settling with me.

  It says you can win money, he said.

  In place of your soul? she said.

  Well, he said, you don’t need to get worked up about it. That’s not really my thing.

  She scoffed, looked up at the ceiling. Your thing. Ha. You don’t know what your thing is. How could you? You’re so young. But I’ll tell you this. Your daddy’s thing was numbers but seems he couldn’t count past two ’cause as soon as you were born, he got confused, didn’t understand that a child made three.

  But I thought you threw him out? Bryan said.

  That doesn’t mean he should’ve accepted it.

  Bryan shook his head. He had trouble keeping up with his mother’s logic. On the subject of his father, whom he didn’t know, she�
��d told conflicting stories. One minute he was the sweetest, kindest, most generous man who’d only had difficulty keeping up with her strong personality, the next he was a filthy abandoner who should’ve begged her to reconsider her decision to leave him. In all cases, she never volunteered any concrete information, and after a while, Bryan stopped caring.

  Just be careful in this world, Rae said, looking down at the paper. Things are changing for the worse, I swear.

  In the classroom, Jaidee, Victor, and Jane are at the perimeter of the room. They search the walls, the map, the chalkboard, the globe. Bryan watches them, thinking that maybe it wasn’t so bad, being stuck here. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, but at least he wasn’t scrambling, at least he could breathe. He watches Jane put her hands all over the map; he wonders what she thinks she’s going to find on a flat, vertical surface. Not too smart, that one. But he sees the allure. It’s the same thing Leslie Hemming had, the thing that’d made him forget, momentarily, that he’d been in a committed relationship.

  The doll woman drops her knife on the floor, gets up from the desk, brushes her skirt, stares down at Bryan. Bryan thinks she’s going to stop tormenting him. He breathes. That’s right, he says. Go away. But she doesn’t. Instead, she opens the desktop fully and brings it down on his arms. His shoulders flare. He shouts, That what you got? Really? Doll woman repeats. Bryan braces for a blow, squints, and sees a desk at the front of the room—a teacher’s desk. It’d materialized, as if out of nothing. A simple illusion, an opening that only became visible from a lower vantage point. Sort of stupid.

  He shouts, There’s a desk!

  We’ve checked them all! Jaidee says.

  No, the front desk!

  WHAP! The desktop comes down. Bryan groans.

  In the corner! Bryan says. That wall, there’s an opening. An illusion or something. Come here! She slams the desktop down harder. His shoulders burn. Sweat rains down his back. The others run to him. And just then, ten people—five men, five women, all in school uniforms—enter. Their faces are painted similarly to doll woman’s: exaggerated lips, exaggerated eyes, exaggerated ears. They skip in single file. Three of them have blue wands. Above, children’s voices sing a song. Old MacDonald.

  For fuck’s sake, Victor says.

  Doll woman leaves Bryan and the desk and joins her skipping classmates. She giggles and hums. EE-I-EE-I-OH!

  What’re you seeing? Victor says, crouching down. Sweat drips from his nose.

  You see? Bryan says, breathing hard. Look. There. You see? Where that wall juts out?

  EE-I-EE-I-OH!

  The conga line passes. The blue wands come out, shocking Victor, Jane, Jaidee.

  Jane screams. Her arms shake.

  I see it! Victor says, shaking off the shock. I see it!

  Jaidee and Jane follow Victor to the corner of the room. The conga line passes a dazed Bryan. He braces for a shock but nothing comes. Instead, they conga right back out of the room, and everything is quiet. In the corner, Victor, Jaidee, and Jane are coated in a brown haze. They’ve gone through the fake wall; they’re searching the front desk.

  1 min, 22 sec.

  Warmth returns to Bryan’s hands. He’s now free. He limps to the wall illusion. Standing straight, it looks like regular plaster, but bent down, as he was, it’d revealed clear plastic flaps, a large office desk behind it. Low budget, Bryan thinks. Anything in the dark can be made to look magical.

  1 min, 0 sec.

  He puts his arms out, goes through the wall, and is immediately met by his three scrambling co-contestants, throwing open drawers, rifling through stacks of blood-spattered papers.

  Guys, I got three! Victor says, holding out his envelopes. We just need two more.

  Only one more! Jaidee says, waving an envelope.

  Okay, only one more!

  They sort swiftly through stacks and stacks. Some of the papers contain pictures—childish drawings of murders. Here’s a stick figure with a knife in his eye. Here’s a family represented with crayon and blood. Here’s a black demon with red eyes devouring an entire village. Farther in the stacks are photographs: mangled women, mangled men, cannibals feasting, eyeballs punctured, a woman performing oral sex on a man with five needles in his face.

  Who thinks up this shit? Bryan says.

  32 sec.

  It’s gotta be here! Jane cries.

  Keep going! Victor says.

  They keep going.

  22 sec.

  It’s Jaidee who spots it, a beautiful square of red paper-clipped inside a file folder. He opens the folder. The black-and-white photo beneath the envelope is of a young woman, dressed scantily—short black skirt, low-cut, revealing augmented breasts—looking into the camera seductively—eyes sleepy, head tilted, lips open slightly, covered in gloss. She’s sitting on a dentist chair, her legs wide open, and instead of looking inside her mouth, the dentist, a short bald man with warts all over his hands and face, peers up her dress, his drill and scraper aimed directly at her crotch. Around them are pools of blood.

  I got it! Jaidee screams.

  Bryan comes up behind him. He looks down at the picture in the file folder, frowns. These people are truly, truly sick, he says.

  Jane and Victor crowd around Jaidee, inspect the envelope. Jaidee throws the picture in the desk drawer. They all look at the screen, expectant.

  YOU MAY PROCEED appears. They all cheer.

  Leonard

  In the Bangkok airport—groggy and anxious, waiting for his luggage—Leonard’s heart pressed insistently against his chest. What if I have a heart attack around all these foreigners? Will they even know how to help? I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have come. What was I thinking? His luggage came. He picked it up. He went to his hotel. He slept for twenty-four hours.

  When he awoke, everything seemed outlined in gold. In the lobby—a sleek, modern, refined atrium with shiny marble floors and white leather chairs, one hundred times more glamorous than the Claymont’s—he passed groups of dapperly dressed visitors speaking various languages. At the front desk, a smiling, thin-faced woman in a smart business suit greeted him.

  “Well, look at me,” he said. “Talking to a hotel clerk in Bangkok.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “I’m in the hotel business myself.”

  “Welcome,” she said.

  “I’m impressed,” he said. “You speak English so well.”

  Her smile remained. “How can I help you today?” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m famished.”

  Her smile grew. “There are many restaurants,” she said. “Mostly Thai, but many international as well. What are you looking for?”

  “Well, I’m in Thailand, right?”

  “That’s right,” she said. She reached beneath her, brought out a brochure, opened it, pointed. “You’re here,” she said. “Khao San Road is here. You can take a tuk-tuk there—see some of the city. Very good street food. Very nice environment.”

  “Khao San Road,” he said.

  “It’s very popular.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  He walked outside, squeezing by throngs of people. Vendors crowded him. This one sold purses. This one, sarongs. This one sold lamps, and this one, bootlegged American VHS tapes. He stopped at a tent to let a few people pass. An ancient woman stood up, wrinkled her eyes in welcome, and said, “Real poo. Yes.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Real poo!” She pointed to a stack of books in front of Leonard, chuckled. “You want?”

  He looked down, saw that she was pointing to a series of paper pads. Made with real elephant dung, they said. He picked one up. “How does that happen?” he said.

  “Real poo!” she said.

  He put the real poo down and kept walking.

  He wandered around a temple grounds (wat, his guidebook had said, that’s what they were called), saw spires—red, gold, twisting, some dragon-shaped, others curled like smo
ke—people bent in supplication before an enormous golden Buddha, shelves lined with golden statues, marble gatekeeping monsters, their jaws open, revealing rows of sharp teeth. The guidebook told him that temples were open to the public, and that they were certainly sights to behold, but Leonard felt like an intruder walking around like that, gawking. If random people had roamed around First Presbyterian in Omaha, the church his parents had taken him to on Christmas and Easter, he was certain a confrontation would’ve ensued. At the very least, the ushers would’ve told them to take a seat, to not disrupt the sermon. But here, the monks and worshippers didn’t even notice the crowds. They just knelt and bent and prayed while tourists stared and pointed and took pictures. Weird, Leonard thought. But then, it’s a different culture, so maybe not so weird. Who knows.

  As he exited the wat, a man leaned out of his tuk-tuk, yelled, “Ride?” Leonard stared at him for a moment. All around him, Bangkok whizzed by, some people in tuk-tuks but most on motorcycle taxis—the locals dangled off the backs, unconcerned with amputation. There were hardly any “car” taxis around, and the tuk-tuk looked sturdy enough, but still: what if a car crashed into it?

  “Ride?” the tuk-tuk driver said. He smiled broadly. “I take you. Only seventy-five baht. Anywhere you want. Great deal.”

  “Oh, fine,” Leonard said. He hobbled in, paid. The driver, a short, frail-looking middle-aged man with a thin mustache, turned around, nodded, laughed. “Welcome to Bangkok, sir! Khao San Road? Or Patpong? No too early Patpong. Khao San Road?”

  “I think, yeah,” Leonard said. “Khao San Road.”

  “Khao San Road! I take you. Yes, yes!”

  Leonard held on tight.

  After a few moments, realizing he most likely wouldn’t be hurled from the vehicle, he leaned out, allowed the air, moist and thick, to race through his scalp. He smelled oil, fish, dirt, exhaust. He saw buildings stretched higher and farther than any of the buildings he’d seen in Omaha. Crowds of Thai people and smaller groups of white people walked everywhere, everyone comfortable, the foreignness unforeign. Signs for various establishments crawled up the sides of buildings, written in both Thai and English. Massage. Food. Girls. Temple. Bank.