David and Fred both shook Jane's hand as they were leaving and
politely thanked her for her time. Fred's head still hung down low and his
shoulders were slumped from the emotional exhaustion. David, looking
impatient to leave, was walking a few steps ahead.
It wasn't that he consciously didn't have sympathy for Fred's
discomfort, it was more that he was disappointed not to find some sort of
scandal. To David, this was just another one of San Francisco's trendy
clubs where shock value and an inane sense of individuality was it's main
attraction.
Fred stopped just outside of Jane's office door and looked up at
David, ten feet ahead of him. Something was just not resolved for him. Fred
turned around and put his hand on the door, stopping Jane just as she was
about to close it.
"You know," Fred said, his voice strained from exhaustion, "i think
I have some more questions."
Jane stood calmly at the door, apparently unphased by the abrupt
change in plans. "OK, come back in then," she said, backing up and opening
the door wide for Fred to enter.
"David!" Fred strained his voice to shout,"David! Hold up! I have
some more questions to ask her!"
David stopped walking and sighed deeply. He turned and slowly
walked back to Jane's office. He wished for a moment he could just leave
Fred behind. These places did nothing but irritate him. He didn't want to
waste anymore of his time when there was obviously no crime being committed
or safety code being broken. Jane's were framed and hung behind
her desk along with her certificates of degree from MIT. There was no
mystery, no scandal, just another club for kids to pay too much money to
get into.
Fred immediately walked over to the chair in front of Jane's desk
and sat down. Jane took her time walking over to her chair behind her desk.
She sat down slowly and pushed the chair up to the desk, squirming a bit to
make herself comfortable. She took another cigarette from the drawer and
lit it, casually taking a long drag.
"What is this place about?" Fred leaned forward and demanded of Jane.
She looked at him, calmly, watching the shakiness of his hands,
which were pressed firmly and tensely against the top of the desk, "What do
you mean, Mr. Costello? Didn't Donny give you a tour?"
"Yes, he gave us a tour," Fred snapped, "And he gave us a
demonstration. and I'll be totally honest with you. I don't know what the
fuck that was all about. It was terrifying! It was absolutely repulsive!"
"It's Hell," Jane said nonchalantly, "It's supposed to be
terrifying and repulsive. What else did you expect?"
"Why?" Fred felt flustered and as though Jane was purposely not
answering him directly, "Why would you even create a place like this?
What's the point? Isn't there enough shit in the world as it is, without
making entertainment just as terrifying and just as violent?"
"Is this off the record?" Jane leaned forward so her face was
directly in front of Fred's.
"Yes, it's fucking off the record!" Fred snapped, sitting back in
his chair, but still returning Jane's gaze unflinchingly.
"Fred, come on," David looked up from where he was sprawled on the
couch, "We're still on duty. We don't have time for this. Let's go!"
"Not till she tells me why she has to go and create a place like
this!" Fred did not take his gaze off of Jane's staring eyes.
"I didn't create what you saw," Jane said calmly, putting her hand
on Fred's head, "I told you how it works. It came right out of your own
head. I can't be held responsible for what you imagine."
Fred shook his head and Jane let her hand drop back onto the desk.
She sat back in her chair and smirked at Fred, taking another long,
deliberate drag off of her cigarette.
"You can't hold me responsible for what you see in there. You're
the one that made it all up. You do - as they say - create your own Hell."
"That's bullshit!" Fred shook his head, "I wouldn't dream up
something like that. I especially wouldn't make myself see something like
that!"
"You obviously did though," Jane appeared to be slowly starting to
lose her patience, "How many times do I have to explain to you how this
place works? I explained the process to you. Donny took you on a tour -even
gave you a demonstration. Why do you think you'd be any different from
anyone else? Why do you think that you'd be the exception to the rule.
Everybody has their own Hell. That's what they come here to see."
"Why?" Fred insisted, "Why did you even create a program like this?
Why would you even want to give shape and form to that side of man's
thoughts?"
"People want it," Jane said, innocently, "Look at the line
outside. It's been like that since the first week we opened. We aren't
fooling anyone into thinking they're going into something they're not. We
tell them at the door - it's Hell and they want to go in. Just go look
outside. This is what people want."
"God!" Fred shook his head in disbelief, "Who are you?"
Jane took a long drag of her cigarette and said matter-of-factly
through her exhaled smoke, "I'm the devil."
Carolyn looked back at Jonah. He was sitting on the couch looking
back at the curtains. His expression, even underneath the glasses was
obviously very sad. The way the light hit his face, a dark shadow covered
most of it, giving it even more of a melancholy appearance.
"I wish I didn't have to go," he said quietly, without looking up.
"I don't see why you can't stay a little longer," Carolyn said, as
she hesitated at the door.
"Yea, I just may do that," Jonah sighed and searched around his
jacket pocket for his pack of cigarettes, "You want one last smoke before
you go?"
Carolyn started to say yes, then decided against it. "No, I've got
five more rooms to go. Although, I'm not sure I want to go through all
five. I may collapse after the next one."
Jonah lit a cigarette and the side of his mouth drew up in a
crooked smile as he exhaled the smoke in her direction, "Nah, you'll be
fine. Look at it all as a challenge.
"Ok," Carolyn took a deep breath and turned to go, "I'll see you
outside in a bit, I guess."
She closed the door behind her and looked down the long black
hallway. Suddenly she felt very small and alone and unprepared for any more
rooms, any more physically manifested fears.
"Well, maybe just one more cigarette," Carolyn turned back to the
door as though it were the only thing left to comfort her in the building.
The door swung open revealing sheetrock walls and a concrete floor. The
room was lit by a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling on a long steel
chain.
"Jonah?" she asked the empty air.
With her hand still on the door, Carolyn cautiously walked into the
room and looked around. It seemed to be completely bare. There was no sign
of Jonah or the doorway leading into the big ballroom. There was no couch,
no people hanging around, not even a sign on the barren concrete floor of
ashes from Jonah's cigarette.
As Carolyn leaned forward into the room, the door slipped from her
hand. She spun around to grab it but it slammed shut before she could. She
let out a scream which blended with the echo of the slamming door in the
empty room.
Carolyn held her breath as she reached out and grabbed the
doorknob, turning it and pulling on it as hard as she could. Confirming her
fear, the door did not budge.
"Fuck!" she screamed, kicking the door.
She paused a moment and stared at the door in disgust, then kicked
it again, screaming again, "Fucking goddamnit!"
She stomped out into the middle of the room and looked around. The
walls, ceiling and floor were all empty and blank. It was just an empty
warehouse room. There were no windows or doors, besides the door that she
had come in through.
"All right!" she whirled around in the middle of the floor, yelling
to the air, her arms outstretched, "Bring it on! Come on! Bring on the
monsters and the demons! Bring on the serial killers and the rapists! Hell!
Bring on the fucking Christian Coalition and Ralph Reed himself! I can take
it! Give it to me, baby!"
She stopped suddenly and looked around. Nothing had changed. She
was still alone in an empty room. She sighed and walked back over to the
door, trying again to open it. It still did not budge. Carolyn let out
another sigh and sat down where she was and leaned back against the door.
"Fuckin' ex-boyfriends, then my father and a bunch of spiders," she
muttered, "This is not fun. I thought this was supposed to be fun. It's
supposed to be fuckin' entertainment. I paid good money to come in here. I
paid good money to be entertained. Entertainment is supposed to be fun
isn't it? This is just not fun. Therefore this is not entertainment. I want
my twenty bucks back. Christ."
The room still remained unchanged. The lightbulb hanging from the
ceiling flickered slightly and Carolyn watched it warily, expecting that
maybe that was a sign that whatever horror awaited her was about to appear.
When nothing did appear, she hesitantly let out her breath and watched the
walls suspiciously. Absolutely nothing was happening. Carolyn began to
absently chew on her thumbnail, reasoning that she would be more prepared
for whatever was to come if she just sat quietly against the wall and
waited. That way she'd at least be facing head on whatever was to come.
Carolyn realized she was chewing on her thumbnail and stopped. She
looked up at the glaring white lightbulb again. Still nothing in the room
changed. She scanned the bare walls again to see if she'd missed any
changes. Still nothing had changed.
She reached up to try and pull of her glasses but for some reason
they seemed to be stuck to her head. Maybe there was something wrong with
them. Maybe that's why nothing was happening. She wondered why there wasn't
a way to somehow notify management that her glasses weren't working. What
did people do when this happened? This must have happened to someone already.
It was technology. Technology is fallible. How come they didn't cover stuff
like this when you first came into the place? And how was she expected to
contact anyone to let them know the glasses weren't working when the door
wouldn't even open.
"And what the hell am I supposed to do? Huh?!" she yelled out loud
to the empty room around her.
She leaned back against the door and sighed heavily, again. How
long do they keep these doors locked until they let you out, she wondered.
How do they know when you are done experiencing your particular fear? Is
there a set time limit or does it depend on how long the fear experience
lasts?
Oh God! she thought, what if the door opens by something having
to do with the glasses and it automatically opens when that particular
experience for the room is over with and not till then. Then the door may
never open because the whole fear trip will never start at this rate. What
if they never come to let her out? No - they must check all the rooms
before they close. On the off chance something like this would happen. But
how often would this happen? Did this have anything to do with the missing
persons reports that she'd been hearing about? No wait - surely they would
notice. Surely someone would come and check all the rooms if there were an
actual missing person report filed with this being the last place the
person was seen. People can't be that stupid.
Or could they? Look at some of the stupid things that people had
done. Slavery. What the hell were they thinking when they did that? And the
Holocaust - god! that was just one big huge wave of rampant stupidity. Or
maybe that was more misinformation. Something like not checking all the
rooms in the building when there was a missing persons report filed was not
"misinformation". But then O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of killing his
wife. That took some amazing stupidity. Or craftsmanship. Maybe they were
purposely trying to get people trapped in this place. Maybe they'd set it
up like this. Like in Soylent Green. Using people to feed the people.
No, that was weird. I'm thinking really weird thoughts, Carolyn
pointed out to herself. I'm sure there's some way to get out of here or to
notify someone that something's malfunctioning.
Carolyn began tapping her foot in a slow, methodic rhythm. This is
frustration, she thought. This is really very fucking frustrating.
She stopped tapping her feet and looked at her boots. Who thought
up the idea of boots, she wondered. She didn't actually know how the first
shoes were invented, come to think of it. Did anyone know how the first
shoes were invented. When were combat boots invented? In the time of the
Roman Gladiators? No - weren't those some sort of big thigh high deal with
lots of metal? Who made the first pair of combat boots? And how come they
made steel-toed boots but not gloves with steel fingers? When did civilians
start wearing combat boots? Were it the punks in the late 70' England? Or
were those factory boots? Is there a difference? Didn't they wear the
original Doc Marten's - or did that come later? Carolyn had never really
been interested enough in fashion or the origins of fashion to remember
such frivolous details. For a moment, though the question of Doc Marten's
seemed important enough that she wished she had.
Had they ever really started drafting people during the Gulf War?
And did they ever succeed in having women get drafted to? Oh Christ - when
was the Gulf War again? Was that or Bush? It must have been Bush.
Whatever happened to George Bush? Didn't I read somewhere that the Governor
of some Southern state was named George Bush? Did he become a governor
after leaving the presidential office? And what the hell was he doing being
president anyway? What the hell was that New World Order shit about? It
still seems like he was just a front man for a CIA plan to control the
world. That is really the only explanation for that whole deal. Nah - they
wouldn't have been so easily defeated by Clinton if that were the case. Or
Clinton would've been assassinated or something like that a long time ago.
And what about all these Republicans in Congress now? Could it be
true that only thirty percent of the country voted when they decided that?
That would be comforting. Then maybe it would mean that the right wing
wasn't so large as it was beginning to appear. More that they were just
more motivated. And loud. But what if they ended up controlling the country
anyway? That would suck. What if they wanted everyone in the country to be
Christian. What if it was a crime not to be Christian? Could another
Holocaust happen? Prison camps for people who wouldn't convert. The irony
seems to be that if what they say in the bible is prophesy, then the people
who call themselves Christians are the ones who are evil. I mean, aren't
they the ones who have all the hate and judgment in their hearts? And
aren't they not supposed to be worshiping false idols? What about all
their symbols of the cross and of a dead Jesus hanging on the cross? What
is that all about? They're worshiping a dead guy. They're eating bread and
blood and talking about consuming the body and blood of Christ. Ick! That's
cannabalism. And they chastise the African tribes that eat the bodies of
their ancestors? Granted that's gross as Hell but they're trying to do the
same thing symbolically. At least their motivation is the same. And they're
hanging all these things around their churches and houses that killed their
God. That's just weird. Will people one day have electric chairs or guns
hanging around their houses as some sort of religious icon? God ... it's
all so fucking weird.
Carolyn shuddered, realizing that she'd lost herself deeply in her
thoughts. She did not like the idea of her country's congress being run by
a group of people who worshiped a symbol of capitol punishment.
Without really thinking about it, Carolyn absently pulled at the
glasses again. She knew they weren't going to come off but she couldn't
help herself from just trying once more. She looked up at the lightbulb. It
was swinging just slightly from a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere.
The movement was so slight it almost made her wonder if she was imagining
it.
She looked down at her watch and noticed it was a quarter after
two. Wonder how long I will have to be in here, she thought to herself.
Then it hit her that when she'd been in the first room with Brad she'd
looked down at her watch and it had said the same time. Shit! Now even her
watch wasn't working. Nothing was working. What a stupid place.
Carolyn stood up and tried to open the door again. She tried
jiggling the handle and even tried to see if she could somehow wedge
something into the crack between the door and the wall to pick the lock.
She still had her driver's license in the back pocket of her jeans. She
tried slipping that into the crack, but the steel latch was immovable.
Carolyn stood back and stared at the door in defeat, her mind a blank for
anymore ideas.
It occurred to her that she may be locked in there for along time.
Maybe she would be there until she starved to death. Or died of dehydration
first. No, that was ridiculous. This was a public place. They had business
licenses and were already known throughout the city. They wouldn't be so
negligent
as to let someone just rot in one of their rooms. Would they? Carolyn
shuddered at the thought of being in that room more than a couple hours.
She turned back around and tried to find something in the room to focus on
that might be comforting. But the white walls were sparse and unwelcoming.
The floor looked cold and hard and anything but comforting, with it's
smooth gray concrete. There weren't even any cracks to break up the empty
appearance - just a blank sheet of gray.
I wonder how long it would take before I went crazy in here,
Carolyn mused, with a detached interest. I wonder if you can go crazy just
from dehydration. Or starvation. How long could a person live without
water? She wondered where she had learned the answer to that and why she'd
already forgotten. Was that necessary knowledge for the average person to
possess?
What would happen to her if she went crazy? Would they find her
crawling around on her hands and knees, drooling and panting like a
desperate animal. Had anyone ever gone so crazy from starvation that they
ate their own hand? Ugh. That's a really gross thought, Carolyn realized.
But could you live or sustain yourself by doing something like that? Or
would you bleed to death first? Or merely just gross yourself out to the
point that you died? No, that's got to be impossible. Though, there have
stories of people being trapped under something and sawing their own leg
off in order to survive. Like an animal chewing off it's paw to get out of
a trap. But I like my arms and legs. I wouldn't want to give them up!
Carolyn shook her head to try and get those thoughts out of her
head. What would it be like to lose a limb? That would be really sad. It
would be different than grieving losing a friend. What a huge grief that
must be. to lose a part of your body like that.
What about that woman in "Romeo is Bleeding"? Didn't she cut off
her own arm with a chainsaw or something? Wouldn't she one day stop and
look back and be really pissed off at herself for doing something like
that? How can someone be so incredibly detached from their own self to do
something
like that? Or in other movies about the mafia where they are portrayed as
mailing a severed hand or whatever to someone. What would that look like?
Wait - I don't want to know something like that! Let's not go down that
road.
Carolyn paced across the room and touched the wall at the opposite
side. Almost in an attempt to confirm that yes, it was there and it wasn't
moving. So, if she was stuck in here, and she went inside from starvation
would that insanity be permanent or would it fade once she was given water
and food again. What about brain damage? That would be all too possible,
wouldn't it?
Suddenly, Carolyn started to feel panicked. She shuddered and
rushed across the room back to the door. The whole idea of actually being
trapped in there was too overwhelming to actually accept as reality.
"Hey! I'm stuck in here!" she began pounding on the door,
screaming, "Come on! Hello! Anyone?"
She began to shake and was starting to feel like she couldn't
breathe. She slammed her fist as hard as she could into the door, then
stepped back and stared at it, waiting for a possible change. The pain that
shot through her arm seemed to momentarily snap her back to her senses.
"They're not going to close this place without letting me out," she
said out loud to comfort herself. She hoped the sound of her own voice
might calm her down.
Carolyn sat down again and leaned back against the door. Ok, she
thought, I can just go to sleep until they come and let me out. Leaning her
head back against the door, she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. It
was only a few minutes later that she became aware of a distant high
pitched whine. Something between a buzz and a whine. Like an air raid
warning from far away, or perhaps an old alarm clock. She was very
irritated by this. She'd finally started to relax, even drift off a little,
and she was suddenly shot back into coherency and this unpleasant
situation.
"What the fuck is that?" she snapped out loud, standing up and
looking at the door.
She put her ear against the door. It wasn't coming from right
outside the door. It definitely wasn't coming from anything inside the
room. It almost sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside the
building altogether, but was so loud that she could hear it in there.
"Hello!" Carolyn pounded on the door again, hoping that wherever
the sound was coming from had a person to along with it, "Hey! I'm stuck in
here! Could someone let me out?!"
She put her ear to the door again, heard nothing but the buzzing
sound, then kicked the door as hard as she could. The sound continued, at
the same steady, unchanging drone. Carolyn stomped back to the middle of
the room and sat down and covered her ears and began to rock back and
forth.
This was just too much! The sound seemed to be drilling a hole
straight from her ears through the center of her head. She closed her eyes
against the glaring white walls, which seemed to have started breathing
from being all she'd had to look at for what seemed an eternity already.
"Shut up!" she yelled in frustration, "Shut up! Shut up!"
Just as she felt like her mind was going to snap and her skull
was going to explode from that awful noise and this barren room and the
thoughts that just wouldn't stop in her head - the feeling started to
cease. Carolyn dropped her hands form her ears and lay back on the cold
floor. She closed her eyes and just thought of her body melting into the
hard concrete floor. If she thought like the that, then the buzzing sound
became almost comforting. It was a break from the suffocating silence that
had preceded it. She couldn't help wondering what it was, though. But she
just wouldn't think about it. She'd just think about melting into the
floor.
Then she found that at certain times, she'd even forget she was
hearing the buzzing. Carolyn opened her eyes again and stared up at the
white ceiling and the glaring single lightbulb. She stared at it until her
eyes began to blur. She imagined how in twenty-four hours from now she'd be
at work. By then she would already be looking back at this day as a chain
of rather silly, unfortunate mishaps. In that time she would've had time
to do enough to have gotten her mind off this day. She would have time to
eat dinner and get enough sleep. That wasn't a very long time from now.
Soon this whole stupid experience would be over.
Soon enough she'd be at work. Work was safe. Nothing bad ever
happened there. In fact, very little ever happened there. She could sit
back in the old wooden chair up in the corner of the store, behind the desk
where they kept the cash box, and just read. Escape from everything this
day had brought which was so unpleasant. She could read about anything. Go
anywhere. Read about anyone. She'd have to reread something by Salinger
tomorrow. That was always comforting. The characters may be fucked up but
at least they were like her. Her family back in Seattle was nothing like
her. She had no idea how that had happened. There was always the theory
that she was adopted or switched at birth. Highly unlikely. Or that aliens
had dropped her on the steps of Swedish Hospital a couple decades ago. And
there was a big ol' FBI cover-up. That was more likely.
How could anyone grow up so different from the group of people you
call your family? Carolyn had always wondered that. Wouldn't environmental
factors play a big part in the development of you belief system and your
personality? Why did her brother grow up with the same twisted value system
as their parents? Then she'd grown up with her sense of values which didn't
even begin to mesh with theirs. And Seri - poor Seri - was only nineteen
and everything she did was based on doing the opposite of their parents. It
seemed like she did that just to defy them. She didn't even seem interested
in finding out what she believed in. She seemed more interested in doing
the opposite of what their parents wanted her to do.
Oh god! Carolyn suddenly thought, how much of what I do is based on
trying to things to defy our parents? And how much is based on defying
Brad? Why had she moved to San Francisco? she wondered. Did she make the
decision just so she could in some way abandon Brad? That way he could
never find her and would not know where he was. Until word got back to him.
Which it must have done, soon enough.
Ugh, she thought, I would hate to think that anything I did was
directly related to Brad! And if the move had anything to do with Brad,
then should she stay here knowing that? But she couldn't just go back to
Seattle. Well, she could, but she didn't want to. There were too many bad
memories there. And anyway, if she left San Francisco just cause she came
here to get away from Brad and she was going to move so that she had made a
move that wasn't motivated by him, then it canceled itself out and she was
making a move based on Brad again. Only then she'd have to start over again
in a totally new city. She didn't want to do that again anytime soon. It
was tiring enough doing it here.
Carolyn tried to position herself that no part of her body was
touching any other part. Bodies are really weird things, she thought to
herself, I wonder why we're not more in control of what they do? How come I
can't just switch my body's functions and my mind's functions on and off
whenever it was convenient? If I could just turn everything off until
someone came to let me out of this room it would be so much more
convenient.
The light in the middle of the room flickered and Carolyn sighed,
looking up at. She realized that she was at least lucky that the light was
on. At least she could see what was going on around her - even if it was
nothing.
Not more than a minute later there was a loud pop and tiny pieces
of glass exploded and cascaded from where the light bulb hung. The room was
enveloped in darkness.