Chapter 23
I wandered in a padded room. In a one-piece coverall of pale blue and slip on sneakers. There wasn’t a piece of furniture in the box so when I was tired, I just lay on the floor. I was always tired. Being tired kept me from reaching out to the voice in my head. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to find the vault or him.
Didn’t know how long I was in the box. They brought me food, sandwiches and little cartons of milk and chocolate shakes. I ate them because I was hungry even when after, I felt even dopier. I knew that meant something, couldn’t pierce together what, though.
Sometimes, the door (it was padded too) opened and people came in and asked me questions, asked about the voices, and did I know who I was. I told them the voices were silent, gone. But I knew they were still in my head. I told them I thought I was Danny, but I wasn’t sure. Sometimes, I was everyone and no one. They asked me if I remembered Townsley Hutton or my dad, Mitchell Gaines. They said they were names I knew, but I didn’t remember who or why.
The Doctor I didn’t know looked in my eyes, took my vitals, pulled blood, and told me the winter ice had broken the ice jam. I told him that was not my problem because I didn’t skate on the ice and he asked me what I meant. I shrugged, said I didn’t know.
“That’s Doctor Cohen trigger,” he said to the Colonel.
“Marian, where’s Marian?” I asked and pulled at my dick. “I got something for you, Marian.”
“Doctor Cohen is no longer your therapist, Daniel. I am,” the new man said. “I’m Doctor Andrews.”
“Do you want to fuck me, too?” I had a mild interest in that, Doctor Cohen said it was okay to have sex with men if it would get me what she wanted. She always wanted something she called Power. I liked sex with Doctor Cohen, it was like scratching an itch.
“No, Daniel. Tell me what Doctor Cohen told you, in your sessions?”
“Sleepy. Want to sleep. Lemme alone. Too hard to think,” I slurred. I lay over my side.
“Let off on the Thorazine. We can’t get far with him if he’s this doped up. He may be schizoid, but he’s still cognitive enough to reach and reason. I don’t know why the trigger phrase isn’t working. Is there any way I can discuss this with Doctor Cohen?”
“Do you need her?”
“He is her creation. I’m afraid without her, I won’t be able to direct the subject.”
“The doctor will be available for your use,” the Colonel said.
I laughed. “She was available for my use, too.” They left me on the floor. Seemed like a waste of energy to get up so I stayed there.
*****
The pig faced man in green scrubs brought me a PB&J sandwich and a carton of chocolate milk. Left them on the floor near my hand. Smelled them. Slowly, picked up the pasty white bread off the paper plate and chewed. Grape jelly. Sweet. Instant rush of sugar. The carton took longer to open, the ends of my fingers didn’t seem to belong to me. Finally, I used my teeth to tear a hole in the flap. Guzzled it down and then remembered to shake the chocolate syrup in the bottom. No cookies. I was still hungry so I slowly climbed to my feet and went to the door banging on the thick padding. I yelled. Asked for more. Heard the locks disengaged and the orderly stood just outside in the hallway. Long hallway white with bright overhead lights and cinder block walls. Only two doors like mine. Halfway up was a cart with covered plates and paper plates wrapped in plastic. I saw cookies. Oreos. Pointed.
“Please. Hungry.”
He shoved me back in and I fell onto my butt. Stayed there. Watched as he placed two plates, two milks and two packages of Oreos on the floor. Slammed it shut and locked it.
I scooted over on my butt and heels, ate everything and piled the trash near the door. I felt more alert, more myself after the food. This batch wasn’t drugged. Time passed slowly, excruciatingly slow. Without the drugs to pacify me, boredom became my enemy. I couldn’t amuse myself with memories, all of them seemed to be cardboard cut outs with as much meaning to me as those pictures that came with a new wallet or photo frame.
After lunch, I had to go to the bathroom. Thought about that for a while. Got up and banged on the door again hollering.
Different orderly this time. “Whaddya want?” He yelled through the peep hole slot. It was square. I’d not noticed it before.
“Gotta take a piss. And a dump.”
“Stand back from the door,” he ordered and I did. When it opened, four dudes stood there, armed with Tasers and those whippy batons cops used.
I laughed. “Think I’m some kind of ninja assassin? I wish. Where’s the toilet?”
Boxed in by 800 pounds of raw muscle, I shuffled down the hallway to a communal bath with concrete brick stalls, showers, a whirlpool and chain restraints hanging in one empty shower stall. Hand held nozzles, the chain one had only a cold water spigot. None of them looked wet. I took the closest commode, dropped the elastic waistband and sat. No boxers or jockeys. They kept my view down to their chest and abdomens, blocking any other sights but them, and the concrete walls.
No toilet paper, but the orderly who’d opened my door handed me a wad of sheets.
“His eyes look more alert. You feeling better, Daniel?”
“Better than what?” I quipped. I waited for his voice to kick in, but he was quiet. Tilted my head and listened.
“Back to your room. The Colonel wants you nice and rested before we test you.”
“What kind of tests?” I wiped, flushed, pulled up my bottoms. They let me wash my hands in the sink with that liquid soap and hand sanitizer. I looked longingly at the shower but muscle mass steered me back down the hallway. I stopped at my door but they guided me past, turned around a corner I didn’t know was there. Double doors that one of them unlocked with the key card and we entered a world of high tech offices and government research.
I goggled at the plush leather couches, fancy desk and personnel dressed in high end clothing looking like they had just stepped out of Brooks Brothers and DKNY. The women gave me flirty smiles and I returned them, and the men stared as if I were a turd stuck on the bottom of their shoe.
They brought me to the corner office where an older, mature dragon woman guarded the gates. She wore a captain’s uniform, Air Force and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. It made her eyes narrow and pinched.
“The Colonel is waiting,” she announced. “Go right in.”
She pointed to the door on her left and the orderly stayed behind as the first meet blocker knocked, opened the door and escorted us into the room. Massive. Thick carpeting, windows that looked out over the top of the complex, a sprawling campus on the prairie. Helicopters and Lear jets were parked on their own runway. I recognized a Black Hawk helicopter.
“Military base?” I asked, flopping onto the leather couch. My guards stayed behind me.
“How are you feeling, Daniel?” The Colonel asked.
“You care?”
“Of course we care,” he said mildly. “You’re a million dollar project. Your health and sanity are our first priority.”
“I’m not nuts,” I returned.
“You had an uncle, Daniel. He had the same talent you have. Unfortunately, it drove him insane and then into dementia. He died two years ago. In an institution. Unless you learn how to control your…problem, it’ll take you, also.”
“What problem?” I turned to look out the windows. Twenty feet to the first floor.
He tapped my head. “There are programs in here that Doctor Cohen downloaded, Daniel. Programs you should be following, yet you’re not. Why is that?”
“Because you’re nuts,” I retorted. “I’m not a… program. I’m a person… me.”
“No, you’re not.” He spoke the phrase in French and my whole body froze up. I couldn’t move, speak, and the boy in the vault wasn’t there to help me.
“You hear me now, Danny?” He sounded like her. “You may answer.”
“Yes.”
“You will obey the programming?”
“Yes, Marian.”
“Which Danny are you, Marian’s Daniel, who came from a Nice whorehouse or the Danny who wants to play at being a real teenage college boy?”
“I am whoever you want me to be, Marian.”
“Good. Doctor Andrews, download your tape. When he’s done, place him in the cell and do your tests. We’ll put him into the center to begin the experiments.”
Pressure on my temples. Voices whispering in my head, stealing, Danny. I screamed for him to take me, to save me, but he didn’t hear. Slowly, piece by piece, the voices stripped away who I was and right before I ceased to exist, I knew I wasn’t real, anyway. I gave up to the oblivion.