In Service to No One

It's been awhile since I last updated, but the last two months of summer destroyed what little creative essence I have. Forty hour weeks at the Country Grocer working on renovations will do that to anyone. Getting back to school motivated me to write more stories. Here's the latest.

A young boy sat in a dark and cramped room, decay leaving the place more of a cave forgotten and left to time. The boy found it looking for escape from a dank, humid hall, as the darkness seemed cool and inviting. The reality though was continued oppressive humidity, but the boy stayed regardless. He jumped at the sound of a voice flat and mechanic yet comfortingly female.

“Hello, what are you doing here little boy?”

After slipping around for a moment the boy sputters, “Who’s that? Are you one of them?”

“Me one of them, no I’m not trying to bring you back. I’m no one in particular, but you James are someone we consider quite special.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I’ve been watching this place for some time, and you interest us. I can help you get what you want; I can help you escape.”

James felt around the broken room, running his hands along the walls and rubble, feeling the fuzzy carpet of moss and fungus accompanied by the sick smell of stagnant water. The mechanic voice chuckles at the boy, causing him to stumble and fall down. He cries out in pain.

The voice speaks, “Be careful, this building is condemned for a reason, so what do you say? I’ll help you so long as you do what I say.”

James winced and sat down, “I don’t trust you.”

“No? What are you here for then? What do you want?”

“I . . . don’t know. I can remember anything; everything’s fuzzy in my head. All I know is my gut hurts at the sight of the men in white coats, so I run. They never come here, so here I am.”

“They’ll find you soon, so will you follow me? If you want to I’ll be waiting outside the gates.”

“I don’t know . . . I . . .”

Footsteps echo through the empty halls of the dilapidated building, and James stops breathing. He asks the voice to help, but gets no answer. The room’s doors fall open and a flood of light washes over the room. James scrambles towards the remaining pockets of darkness in the back of the room but is scooped up by white washed orderlies. The boy kicks and screams for help, the sounds carrying through the old halls.

A few years later. . .

I don’t know where I am or why I’m here, but I do know I want to escape. But there is no escape, you’re always on the run from something, and I’m no different. I got my start running back in the facility where I grew up, and none of us who lived there knew of anything beyond the walls and fences of the compound. That place was our entire world, but that changed for me.

Portions of my day were spent in a drug induced haze, but even so I remembered enough of what the administrators did to me during my blackouts that I knew enough to run when they came for me. I came across someone willing to help me while I was hiding one day, and they came back repeatedly since. I still pray that they are real; I know they’re not a hallucination. They told me about the outside world, so now I have somewhere to run to, the only problem was how. For that I was on my own.

Every day after classes I walked through the same hall on the outer edge of the education center and staffed with only one guard. I thought about bolting out through a service door located down the hall and whenever the thought came up so did the question, why? Why do I want to get away so much? Invariably I’d see a guard scowl at me or one of the white suits look down at me and I had my answer, so after lifting a couple beers from the faculty lounge I forgot my worries and worked up the gumption to finally escape.

Health exams were coming up again which was an announcement that hit below the gut; health exams meant hours of lost time and strange wounds. Announcements blared over the PA commanding us students to report to the medical wing at our designated times, and mine was that evening. I wouldn’t be there.

The guards get lazy around us students because if we cause trouble a push of a button has implants in our bodies shut down select parts of our nervous system, leaving any unruly student paralyzed on the floor. Complacency breeds danger though, and the guard next to the service entrance to the education center never saw what was coming his way until too late.

I chose to slump down near the service door and wait for the guard to make his patrol. He came walking quickly, unwilling to linger in one area too long. Upon seeing me he asked what I was doing and not getting an answer told me to get up and move on back to my dorm room. I failed to comply so he warned me not to make him call for backup, and continued no reaction led him to lean over and grab my arm. I took hold of him with the same arm he grabbed me with and jabbed a needle of painkiller I found lying around the medical ward into his stomach. Lucky for me the medicine put him out before he could react and my heart jumped into my throat in excitement upon realization of my success.

Moving quickly I got through the door using the guard’s ID card and jogged across the compound quad, finding the front entrance. I decided to hide out of sight near the gates, making use of the shrubbery as cover. I learned that day that I’m allergic to whatever the hell grew in those bushes, a runny nose and itchy eyes plagued me as I held back a sneeze. The smell of pollen tightened my throat making it hard to breathe, and I even thought of just giving up and going back to the facility, but I quickly forgot those thoughts.

A shot of fear went up my back at hearing a group of guards stop by the gate. I tried to bite back the fear, but why am I afraid? What have they done to me that made me so scared? They’re not the nicest people but I can’t remember. It hurts more to not remember. Trying to keep still made my shaking worse and my allergies all the harder to control, but I went unnoticed. The doors swung open and the guards watched as a truck pulled up from behind the medical wing. The truck paused and the guards surrounded it, going through the usual spot check. I waited until the guards were sufficiently distracted to sneak out of the bushes and run towards the gate. The moment I passed through the gate the alarm sounded so all the guards turned around and saw me running.

I didn’t stop, hoping the guards were too far away to do anything to me. Walled in on each side, the drive stretched on for about half a mile while my heart sunk at the sight. I swore and ran as fast as I could, reassuring myself the guards were out of range, but they weren’t. I felt my legs give out on me, turn to jello as I plowed forward, breaking my fall with my hands and settling on my side, arms burning in pain.

I closed my eyes and refused to watch as the guards lifted me up and carried me back towards the gate. Something wasn’t right though, the guards stopped and talked urgently among themselves, so I looked up to see the gates sealed shut. Nothing the guards did and no one they called could budge the doors while from behind came a familiar voice, one both mechanical and female. The voice told us no one was going anywhere.

Eyes turned up to one of the drive walls and there stood a girl, she looked young but I didn’t get a good look at her face. The guards all collapsed unconscious at once, leaving me alone with my strange benefactor.

She said, “I told you I’d wait outside the gates.”

I asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m no one. Sorry, but you’ve got to be asleep for the next part of the trip. Don’t worry, you’ve made it.”

I slipped away only coming to sometime later on the outside. My benefactor told me I was on my own, leaving me down some dark alley in an unknown city with two hundred fifty dollars and an ID card. Why was I abandoned? I can’t remember what I ran away from and I don’t know where I’ll run. I don’t feel like I’ve truly escaped, and on the inside I at least had friends to help me cope, now I am alone. I need to do something besides run away. It’s my turn to do the chasing; I’ll search for the truth.

A few hours later . . .

“Did we get a good look at her?”

“No sir, the suspect’s face was obscured, by what we don’t know. She overrode our security systems, and we still can’t figure out how she did it or why she chose to help Subject 312 escape or how she knew he’d be outside the gates at that particular moment in time.”

A scientist dressed in a white lab coat watches the security footage of the escape incident. The dark room hides his gaunt figure, his voice portraying a fuller person. He says, "She probably had an in with our security system for awhile now, and I don't think she knew when he'd be outside. Check the security feeds for the main drive for the past six months for different times of the day."

Another figure bent over a work console digs through the video files and pulls up the footage requested. On the main screen in front of the two men flickers the drive, devoid of life, quiet and empty. The man at the console cycles through each day, each week for some time before the scientist tells him to stop. The security official looks back at the scientist.

The scientist, pointing to the south wall of the drive showing on screen says, "Look, the culprit makes herself less visible to our cameras, but we can still see her. This shadow on the wall shouldn't be there, also the area around the shadow is fuzzy, and the camera isn't damaged. This pattern of interference repeats during many of the times cross-referenced, too many different times to be coincidence. Who's casting the shadow, creating that interference?"

"The culprit?"

"I think so. That shadow and white noise shows up on every single day you played through, so she's been here every day for the past six months, possibly longer. She's been waiting for him this entire time. I wonder if she ever made contact."

The scientist's eyes defocus as he thinks, and the security official fidgets uncomfortably. The scientist says, “We can track the subject though, retrieving him is top priority.”

“I’m sorry sir, but we’ve lost him completely. We’re in the dark.”

“Go through the records for every one of our facilities and look for other escapees. We’ll find our culprit there. I’ll work on getting the subject back.”

The scientist exits the room as the sound of the air conditioning blasts.