TESTING PRESSURE
a short story
by
Kevin J. Fitzgerald
Copyright 2015 Kevin John Fitzgerald
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Characters and events in this story are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental unless otherwise noted. Cover design by Robert Wilson. See more of his awesome artwork at his website here: https://www.deathisgain.com
AUTHOR’S NOTE: “Testing Pressure” is one of the first short stories I ever wrote, for which I won the Young Georgia Authors Writing Exposition (which I forgotten about entirely until quite recently). It’s a grim little tale. I wrote it at a time and age when I was very intentionally trying to mimic the style of Stephen King (whose writings had a huge impact upon me while growing up). I don’t really know what inspired this tale. I just started writing one day, and before long this bleak little take on testing existed on the page. Perhaps it was because I was never a good classroom learner and hated the process of testing. Perhaps I wrote it on the eve of taking the SAT! Who knows?!
This has not been edited much from how it originally appeared. I could have subjected it to the rigorous process of editing; but part of me just really wanted to preserve something of its young, raw quality. It’s a bit like the decision to not use pitch-correct on a song and make every note perfect when you’ve gotten a good, initial track. It ain’t bad. To me, the tone and themes are vaguely reminiscent of such stories as The Running Man.
Hope you enjoy!
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TESTING PRESSURE
Sitting.
Staring.
The question blistering his mind.
The camera eyeing him maliciously. A red-eyed Cyclops assigned to this cruel death-watch.
It’s making fun of me, he thought. It’s actually making fun of me. He forced a smile, but it was more like a wince.
He was beginning to go mildly crazy.
Today, the test was too hard. The pressure was getting to him. Sweat slimed his forehead, and he wiped it away angrily. He tried to look righteous, but somehow felt weak and impotent instead. Screaming inside, a cool expression of nonchalance masked his face.
They’re not gonna know, he thought.
I’m not gonna let them know
(I’m cracking)
I’m nervous.
Yes; he was definitely going crazy.
The pencil slipped from his hand and fell to the dirty, tiled floor with an empty clatter. Bending to retrieve it, the shackles binding his feet growled in protest. His head struck the wall of the plastic cubicle enclosing him.
The walls were closer.
If he did not finish the test in a matter of minutes, they would surely crush him.
Straightening, he shot another wry glance at the ever-watchful camera. It seemed distant, as though in a world all its own. A safe world, he thought. A world without pressure.
Who was on the other side? Anybody? Perhaps some hired-Joe sipping at a cup of freeze-dried coffee, choking down un-dissolved chunks of non-dairy creamer, and flipping mindlessly through a high-end catalogue, enviously eyeing products he could never afford. Not even paying attention to the screen.
He hated it—hated them, whoever they were. He gritted his teeth, trying to look menacing.
He tried to think rationally.
Six more. Six more tolling questions.
The toll was his sanity; and he was paying unquestionably.
Perspiration streamed down his back, escaping in tiny rivers from under his arms. The smell of his B.O. was strong and sweet in the tiny enclosure—like a trapped animal. He showered that morning before leaving the tenements, but there had been no soap or deodorant, as usual. Mother had cried in the doorway, her tattered bathrobe hanging loosely from her skeletal frame, a blunt burning coldly between her corpse-like fingers.
That was centuries ago.
Now, he was theirs.
The thought of the walls once again swelled in his hot mind, and he began the third problem. A drop of blood stained the answer sheet. He stared at it a long time, frozen in fear. It was a red orb floating upon the galaxy of white paper. Moments later, another joined it. A moon, he thought absently.
It was the air.
It was too clean in here. Sanitized. Medicinal. Fake.
His nose and passageways had long become accustomed to breathing the thick, poisoned air of the tenements, just like all the other wasters haunting there. He brought a shaking hand to his nose and drew back wet fingers; a moist, deep-red lollipop. He stared at it a long time, watching the dancing reflection of the flickering sodium lights above. The slow, churning hum of the closing walls filled his ears, threatening to drown out the remaining threads of concentration. Once again, his eyes went past his fingers to the villainous camera. He lowered his fingers – all except one, giving his watchers the what-for.
He smiled.
Four more. Probably seventeen minutes left.
He looked inquisitively at the fourth problem and skipped it altogether. The fifth problem was surprisingly easy. He filled it out quickly – greedily – his pen scribbling across the paper like a doctor numbly signing a prescription for Jaxx.
A ferocious sneeze exploded from him. A terrible, red spray stained the clear partition in front of him and oozed downward. Clinging stubbornly in the middle was a thick chunk of what was either snot, or perhaps a piece of rotted membrane from his decaying airways. He had been breathing the tenement air for far too long. That was why he was here. If he finished, he could get Ma and the others out of there.
If he didn’t…
The imminence of his situation slipped an icy hand around his balls. And squeezed. For a moment he thought that he might throw up, but choked it down.
Don’t lose it, he thought. Don’t let them see.
He forced himself on to the sixth question and desperately tried to think it through.
It wasn’t coming to him – not at all!
The only thing that came instead was that old Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World.” It began to play over and over in his cracking mind, until he was humming and singing it out loud. A hysterical laughter seized him and he reeled in his shrinking enclosure. Once more, his bonds screamed in a frenzy.
Panic gripped him.
His mind raced.
What time was it?
He was dimly aware of being hungry.
Wouldn’t a big, double-packed combo from Fatso-Burger go good right about now?
Maybe a frosted orange?
It made his stomach churn.
(or was it the pressure?)
How would he explain this to Amanda?
Was he going to—?
God! He screamed. You’ve got to freaking concentrate!
Eyes watering, mouth dry, he answered the sixth question and went on to the seventh.
The fourth problem remained unsolved. It slowly began to eat at his nerves as he focused on the seventh. It felt like wicked fingers playing ‘Taps’ up and down the scales of his knotted spine, causing the hair on the nape of his neck to stand on end and the skin there to crawl. His heart exploded. A huge rush of adrenaline was painful.
The cubicle grew smaller.
The heat was oppressive.
They had turned off the AC in the room. Anything to make it harder for them to concentrate. Through the blood that ran and dripped down the si
de of his enclosure he could see the other participants stretching away from him into the sea of darkness on either side. How many of them, he wondered. All of them dressed in that same white garb, all of them strapped to a desk. All of them monitored by the cameras. Big brother, he thought randomly (where had he heard that before?).
He looked in the direction of his camera again, but could no longer distinguish it through the smear of his own blood upon the plastic walls. It ran and dripped into the grated drain at the bottom of his cell. Rhythmically. Like a countdown.
He laughed in sheer fright. His heavy, uneasy breathing echoed in his prison. For a moment or two, he found himself playing with the sounds. Holding his breath, then breathing in intervals, randomly picking out repeating patterns, humming to see which pitches created reverb, the way he sometimes did in the dirty bathroom stalls of the tenements where the pushers congregated.
God, that’s distracting!
Then – on the heels of that – another thought: Maybe that’s what this is: a prison. It’s a prison you can’t escape!
Like life?
Maybe that’s it.
Maybe life is a prison we’re all fighting to get out of!
Maybe that’s the ultimate question we all have to answer.
He turned the pencil over in his hand.
There’s gotta be a way!
Good Lord, when had he become so philosophical?!
The retreating reality of the fourth question screamed back into his spiralling mind, driving steel daggers behind his eyes. Rubbing at them furiously, he guessed in despair at the final question. A tiny sob escaped.
The walls touched his shoulders now, forcing him to cross his arms.
It was hard to write.
Tears leaked from his tired, sand-filled eyes.
His mind was gone.
A stunned feeling of numbness swept over him as he once again eyed the fourth question. Lowering the pencil, he realized it was over. The question made him chuckle. Soon, his voice rose and clattered off the walls in undulating madness.
How do you get out?
He didn’t know.
He simply did.
Not.
Know.
Tears came in full-force now, and he wept uncontrollably.
The walls pressed on with continuing force.
Beside him, stretching away into the blackness, he saw that some of the boys still worked feverishly at the test. Other cubicles had gone completely black, the testing over, the lights out. Others were a floating stain of red horror in the grim darkness. White-suited drones would arrive soon to sanitize the cubes for another contestant.
How much longer would it take?
He felt the pencil in his hand, as if for the first time.
He looked at it; turned it over and over, thinking.
Eyeing the camera for the last time, he grinned.
They won’t get me, he thought.
He raised the pencil-tip and pressed it to his temple.
Still, he wept.
The walls forced him to cross his arms more. And more. And more….
Somewhere, steel machines went screaming through the night.
But tonight – this night – would be used for testing.
Learning.
And more….
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Testing Pressure Page 1
