by J. M. Clark
He stepped over Michelle and turned on the shower. Then he undressed, laying his clothes on the toilet seat. He caught a glimpse at himself in the mirror and stopped. Dwight never looked at himself in the mirror. In every counseling session he’d had here, he was told that he had a mental break when he climbed through his parents’ window and witnessed their bodies splayed across the bed, covered in vomit.
Dwight still saw a ten-year-old child wearing pajamas staring back at him, his face thin and hungry. This image had not changed in the last two decades. The years had passed, but his reflection in the mirror didn’t show that. His mind was still stuck in that trailer park somewhere in Ohio.
That gruesome scene was too much for a child to deal with, and he never had. The glitch that he downloaded that Monday morning was there to stay. The crumpled body of a female child lying there on the floor was evidence of that.
The last few days had brought eureka moments in droves to him. He was at least grateful for that. So today he would take a nice long shower. He would clean his body, because he knew what needed to come next. Tough decisions had to be made, and he was the man to make them. Doing this, coming back here each day, had changed the plan.
Dwight touched the mirror, seeing himself and not feeling ashamed of the boy staring back at him. For the first time, he was okay with accepting what was. He did not ask for any of this. Didn’t ask to be born to dopeheads. Didn’t ask to be born at all. He didn’t ask for Mother Earth to decide to kill off everyone else and leave him alive with a mere five percent of the planet. He should have died in that crummy excuse for a home with his parents.
He smiled at himself for the first time in a long time. Now that the shower was hot enough, he got in and closed the shower door behind him. Dwight let the water rain down on him and pretended that it was a warm day in his old trailer park with his friends. They were friends whose names he couldn’t remember, but that was okay. He would make up new ones for them.
For an hour Dwight stood in the shower crying. The tears were for the young version of himself. The kid in the mirror, trapped in the past without an afterlife to go home to. That child resided in his mind and would not allow him to be a man, to mature in all the ways necessary. It had been twenty years, and still he felt the same.
He had always preferred boys, and if he was honest with himself, in his heart of hearts he knew he was a homosexual man…or boy. That was another thing he had come to grips with in the last couple days. Before he could actually rape Michelle, he needed to cut her hair short. He did this without even thinking. In the moment, he didn’t realize it, but when he got back to his pod that night, afraid, scared, slamming his head against the wall, it hit him. He was a gay man, among many other things, and it was the first time he could accept this.
It made sense though. He remembered games of hide-and-seek turning quite frisky with Billy and himself. Nothing too wild, a little touching was all that happened. As he aged, he tried to write it off as youthful curiosity. He’d pushed those thoughts to a hidden cavern deep in the back of his mind, locked the door, and swallowed the key. And when something caused him to remember, he’d plug his ears and pretend he didn’t hear the memories knocking at the door.
The frequent visits to the child center—the lying, conniving, and jumping through hoops with teachers just to get a look at a young boy—had become tiresome. A part of himself was ashamed of his behavior. He knew that what he was, what he had become, was wrong. Being sorry didn’t change it though.
Now that Dwight no longer felt a need to fit the mold of a perfect little Palace member, he was able to accept what was to come. He didn’t know what was going on in this place, but he did know the government was up to something. However, last night, he’d decided that it no longer mattered to him. He was only a small man, in a world that was becoming increasingly smaller by the day. He could not change anything, and he would not play the conspiracy idiot like his father before him. That world was gone, those ideas laid to rest with everything else meaningful. But there was something else he could do. And it would make his father proud.
Dwight turned the shower off and just stood there, allowing his body to drip water. He looked through the steamy shower glass and onto the white bathroom floor, admiring the reason for his most recent realizations. She looked peaceful under that comforter, and it wouldn’t be long before he joined her. Good thing for Dwight that new Palace members were allowed a week of nesting time before they were required to adhere to the daily schedule. Had that not been the case, a teacher would surely have come looking for her after a day or so. Lucky him.
Dwight walked out of the shower, made his way through the living area, and over to the nutrition dispensary. Coming into the fresher air of the living area reminded him of how bad the bathroom smelled. At this point, the entire pod smelled of death, but the bathroom was on a different level. Still, he preferred the bathroom. The smell of it would just quicken his decision.
He opened the dispensary, ignoring the bagel, butter, and orange juice he’d ordered last night while spending time with Michelle. He swiped the knife and closed the dispensary door. Turning to his right, he unlocked the pod door before opening it slightly, leaving it cracked just enough. Dwight walked past the broken television screen, not forgetting to flip the bird at it. “Fuck you all,” he said in a calm voice.
There was a wastebasket near the toilet. Dwight grabbed it and used the object to prop open the bathroom door. He would allow the smell to fill the entire pod. It made him happy to know that he would be responsible for this entire place burning down. His actions would be the spark to begin the great fire.
Dwight got on his knees next to Michelle beneath the comforter, placed the knife on the floor, and clasped his hands together for a prayer. The last prayer he would give, and this one he would deliver out loud. He wanted to make sure whichever GOD was responsible for this life could hear him. There would be no mistakes about who was speaking, and whom he was speaking to.
“O Merciful Mother, you evil vindictive bitch, and you too Jesus, or God, or whatever you go by these days. I’d also like to address any of you other gods that lived in the past and are maybe still out there, being worshipped in the world today. I want to give a royal fuck you to each and every one of you. You childish, petty children.
“If you are even real, you’d have to be evil. No decent human being would commit the crimes on humanity that you have, so I find it hard to believe an all-perfect deity would do so. I doubt that you are even real at all, but just in case you are…fuck you. And I can’t wait to see you soon, so I can tell you in person.
“All that I am, all that I’ve ever been is because you willed it into existence. They say that God has a plan for everyone, so I guess I shouldn’t feel bad about the things I’ve done to others, because it was your plan, right?” Dwight abruptly burst into laughter but kept his eyes closed and hands clasped in front of his face.
“It’s all a big cruel joke, right? Of course it is. And I’m here to tell you that I will no longer play along. I never asked to be born, so I’ll veto your choice to create me. See you soon.” He lowered his hands and grabbed the knife from the floor.
Lifting the comforter by the corner, he slid inside and cozied up next to Michelle’s body. Same way he had done for the last three days. She was fully dressed; he’d put her clothes back on after the day he allowed his compulsions to take over and did the unthinkable. Since then, there’d been no more of that. He had returned to this pod every day, but not to harm her. He only came back to lie next to her beneath the covers, to feel her skin, to put his arm around her and just be close to someone in that way.
Dwight would stay in Michelle’s pod until late at night, then go back to his own to eat and show face for the teachers on the floor. In the daytime, he’d come back and lie with the decomposing body.
Getting closer to her, he felt her leathery skin on his arm and again felt guilty about what occurred here. But he was going to make it right.
Rigor mortis had set in, so her limbs did not move as he maneuvered around her body to create what resembled a soft, caring moment. Dwight was able to keep the hand free that held the knife, and he kissed the back of Michelle’s head, feeling the soft hairs tickle his lips and nose.
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and slit his own throat. Dwight did not scream, he did not fight to live. He choked, held her closer, and drifted off, escaping the Palace forever.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lonnie
Lonnie stepped off the elevator and made his way to meet his friend at the gym. Everyone seemed to be on edge lately, and it was definitely time for him to release some stress with an intense workout. People were getting into the Greater Understanding Program left and right, seemingly for no reason at all. A guy almost got shot by a security guard in the central plaza a week or two ago, and then a raving lunatic had lost it and nearly attacked a teacher in class today. People were beginning to talk about things he’d never heard them whisper about before. Sirus and the Order would eventually deal with this, and Lonnie didn’t want to be on the chopping block when that happened.
He’d had an interesting morning enrichment that day. Jacklyn, who had been the bane of his existence since their time in the child center, had the entire session in a frenzy. She was just saying what everyone was thinking, and they were told not to lie. But everyone knew that was a crock of shit, all you ever did here was lie. Whether or not you were good at it was the question really.
She had interrupted class and unexpectedly asked, “Are we free to leave here whenever we want? All of us, could we just walk out the front door if we wanted to?” Teacher Peter’s face did everything but fall onto the floor. He transformed from a well-spoken, articulate scholar into a bumbling, mumbling idiot before their eyes. If Jacklyn blurting out the question did not make people feel uncomfortable and disturbed enough, Teacher Peter’s response finished the job.
Lonnie passed a few friends in the long hallway who were just coming out of a pod, where they most likely were having a study session. After a few pleasantries and forced words, he continued making his way to Coleman’s pod. Coleman was his best friend here. They were not allowed best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, or anything of the sort, but it still happened. You could only change so much in one generation, especially with the people from the Old World living there with them. People talked. Other people heard.
Teacher Peter’s reaction was scary. It had scared Lonnie, and he could see that it had scared others as well. Everyone was talking about leaving and whether or not they could leave prior to getting into the Greater Understanding Program. Without a protective suit, you could not hope to live outside of the red flags. Even the people from before said that; they lived through the sickness. Lonnie was confused about everything. So much had changed in the Palace so fast. There was comfort in repetition, and he wanted things to go back to the way they were.
Jacklyn was still doing what she’d done in the child center when they were children. Not thinking before she spoke and causing a shitstorm at someone else’s expense. Lonnie really hated her. She was intelligent and a good learner, but something inside of her wasn’t right. She was different, and she had zero empathy for anyone.
He still remembered how she would tease him and get others to do the same thing when the watchers weren’t looking. She knew all of the blind spots and quiet areas of the center. She verbally tortured him, and the worst part was that people he thought were his friends would laugh too. No one thought to stop her.
“Why’s your skin so black?” she would say. “You are the color of mud, and your lips are so big. Why does your hair not look like ours? Were you born with an affliction?” She would make jokes and tell people that he needed to shower more, to clean all the dirt off his face.
Why was she like that? There was no reason for it, no one had taught her to be this way—they’d all had the same upbringing in the child center. In the last six or seven years, he had accepted that some people were just screwed up. For others who didn’t know that side of her, he understood how it could catch them off guard. Not him though; he had seen beneath her mask. They all wore one, but Jacklyn’s mask came off all too often.
In class, Teacher Peter ended up telling her that the topic was not deserving of an answer. Everything the Order did was for the survival of all humanity. “Wherever you heard such rot, you should leave it there, and never speak such nonsense in these walls.” His face turned the color of a ripe strawberry and his voice became high pitched. Everyone in class noticed that he did not answer the question.
Jacklyn had simply given a smug grin, sat back in her seat, and went back to doodling on a notepad. For the rest of class, things were very quiet and awkward. Everyone could feel it, including the teacher, which was probably why he let the session end early.
It was a few more doors before he reached Coleman’s pod. They need to build another elevator in this place. The walk from end to end is becoming so long. Then something grabbed his attention.
A foul odor washed over his entire face so rapidly and with such strength that he had to grab at the wall to keep from falling over. Lonnie’s eyes began to water, and he bent over, hands on knees, dry-heaving and coughing. It was all he could do not to vomit right there in the hallway. “What in Mother’s Earth is that smell?” he choked out, looking up and down the corridor. No one was there but him.
He looked up at the ceiling to make sure he was not beneath a vent that, for whatever reason, was blowing out such a smell, but there was nothing. Then Lonnie noticed that the pod door to his right was open a crack. He stepped closer to the door, placing his hand on it, letting his nose sniff at the air coming from the opening. The scent was potent enough to knock him out cold, and it nearly did. It was putrid, the odor of rotting fruit being stewed in a pot of excrement.
Lonnie covered his nose with his blue shirt and stepped into the pod. There was no one there, but still, he would leave the door open just in case a teacher came up this way. Trying his best to breathe as little as possible, he noticed a waste basket propping the bathroom door open.
Peeking into the bathroom, Lonnie at first saw nothing at all. But the smell was so thick there, it just about took on a shape of its own. Then he looked down at the ground and noticed the dirty lumpy white comforter lying there. There was something else…thick blood, so dark it almost looked black, pooled around the white cover. Lonnie took off running back into the living area, bursting out the door and screaming like he had never screamed before. No words, no direction—just blood-curdling, nerve-shaking, horrified screaming.
Chapter Forty
Jacob
“Are you sure you’re ready to go? When we go through with this, there is no coming back. There is no other option. The second we run past the red flags…that’s it.” Jacob took both her hands in his and kissed them. Her small hands were like those of a child captured within his huge, scarred, aging ones. The contrast between the two spoke volumes to him, but what they felt for each other was more authentic than anything he had ever known in his twenty years at the Palace.
While her hands were quivering, her expression was all business, driven and confident. The inner struggle she was jostling with was apparent to Jacob. She was trying to be strong for him so he wouldn’t feel bad for convincing her to come with him, but the teachings were there in her mind. Days, weeks, months, and years of indoctrinating couldn’t so easily be thrown by the wayside, not even for love. She was trying though, and for this, Jacob cared for her much more deeply.
“Yes, my love, I’m ready to go. I’ve taken care of all that I needed to, and I’ve gone over the plan more than a few times. We are set to go tonight.” She looked deeply into Jacob’s eyes. “There is no turning back for me. I’ve never been more sure about anything in this life,” Mary said, sitting on the white love seat with him.
“Okay, good. We will go through the remainder of the day normally, and around seven p.m., we will meet up by
the trees outside of the courtyard. I need to find Trevor first. I’m sure I’ll run into him today. Maybe he’s still in the infirmary. Everyone has been talking about what happened with him and security the other day. I’m sure he will want to go with us.” Adjusting his sitting position on the couch with her, he began rubbing her leg. They were speaking in whispers. There were ears all over this place, possibly even in their pods.
“Do you think he will be up to it though?”
“I have to try. We came into this damned place together. He has been through a lot, and I couldn’t leave without telling him and at least giving him a chance to go with us,” Jacob said.
“You are right. Something bad is happening here, even I can see that. Margaret said something bad happened on the fourth floor earlier today. The entire floor was blocked off.” She lowered her voice even more as she spoke.
Jacob stood and led her further from the door, over to the bed. They sat down, Jacob never letting her hand go.
“What happened on the fourth floor?”
Mary paused, nibbling on her bottom lip. “Well, Margaret thinks that Lonnie—you don’t know him, but a guy that we grew up with in the child center—went insane on that floor. He was found on his hands and knees outside one of the pods, screaming. She told me that he either would not or could not stop screaming. He was taken off to the infirmary that way. He doesn’t even live on that floor, so that was weird too. No one knows what happened to him or what caused it, but someone was saying maybe he saw something that caused him to lose it.
“Everyone’s been talking about it; my morning enrichment session was canceled. I spent that time in the central plaza, finishing up a novel. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.” Her eyebrows knitted as she glared at Jacob.
