by Lukens, Mark
• • •
An hour later, John scooped up as much of the mushy food from the metal floor as he could with the plastic cup. After that, he got down on his hands and knees and licked at the floor. He was so hungry. So thirsty. The mush seemed to be some kind of stew. Bland and cold, but John didn’t care.
He wished he hadn’t spilled the water.
He hoped the hand would come back and bring him something to drink.
• • •
The small rectangle door opened and the hand snaked in, the palm up, waiting. The hand, like before, was encased in tight, smooth latex that ran up under a puffy, papery white sleeve.
“What?” John asked, moving closer to the hand.
“The tray and cup,” a voice that seemed almost metallic answered back. John couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female. And he heard heavy breathing, like the voice was coming from behind a mask.
“Who are you?” John asked. “What do you want? Why are you doing this to me?”
“The tray and cup. Now. Or you won’t get any more food!”
John grabbed the cup and small tray and laid it down on the hand. “I need more to drink.”
The hand pulled the tray and cup back, and then the door slammed shut with a metallic finality to it.
• • •
John had fallen asleep at some point but he didn’t remember. He realized he needed to pee—and maybe a bowel movement soon. Where was he supposed to relieve himself?
He beat on the walls of the metal barrel.
Nobody answered. The little metal door didn’t open.
Two hours later, John peed at one end of the barrel, but the urine ran down to the bottom curve of the barrel.
“Damn you!” John screamed. “Fuck you! I can’t sit in here with this!”
John began to cry again.
• • •
John slept and woke. He screamed and cursed. He beat his fists against the metal walls. He kicked his feet against the sides until they ached. He fell asleep in his own urine. He tried to lie to the side of it, but with the curve of the barrel it was impossible.
He was losing his sense of time.
Somebody would come for him, he thought.
Wouldn’t they?
But who would know he was gone? People at his work would eventually know he was gone, wouldn’t they? Would they go searching for him? Were there cops and detectives looking for him at this very moment? Did people think he ran off?
How long would the cops look before they wrote him off as some drifter who moved on to somewhere else?
• • •
The little metal door opened and the rubber-gloved hand passed him another tray of food with the same plastic cup on it.
John tried a different approach this time.
“Please listen to me.” He knew he needed to talk fast. “Please tell me why I’m here.” He hoped his voice sounded calm.
The hand held the tray in silence.
John’s stomach grumbled at the sight and smell of the food. He licked his dry lips and he could almost taste the water.
The hand shoved the tray in a little farther.
“Please talk to me. I need to know. I’m going crazy in here. I’m sleeping in my urine. I can’t breathe. I think I’m running out of air.”
“Eat,” the voice said.
“Please. Who are you? Tell me what you want.”
The hand withdrew the tray and the door slammed shut, sealing him in darkness again.
“No! No, wait! Please, God, no! I need that food and drink!”
And he cried again.
• • •
The next time John was offered the tray of food with the cup of water on it, he took it with no more questions. The food tasted stale and the water was very warm. He suspected it was the same tray from yesterday. He drank the water down in a few gulps and then shoved the food into his mouth, gobbling it down, making loud noises in the darkness.
How many days and nights now? He couldn’t tell.
He gave the tray and cup back to the gloved hand.
He kicked and pounded the sides of the tank.
He slept.
He talked and sang to himself.
He could feel his mind slipping away.
• • •
After he ate the food from the next tray he was given, he defecated on the tray and peed into the cup. He saved the tray for the hand, and when the door opened again, he handed the tray and cup back to the hand with his presents on it.
The hand threw them back at him and closed the door.
In the darkness, John cried again.
• • •
John tried to curl up at the other end of the barrel-like tank after he shoved all of the waste at the other end in a heap. Again he dozed off even though it felt like it was hard to breathe.
He woke up when he saw four holes unplugged in the top of the tank. Small shafts of light shot down through the holes like laser beams. He got up on his knees and stuck his mouth on one of the holes, trying to drink in the fresh air. He stuck his eye against the hole and saw a bank of fluorescent lights on a ceiling.
• • •
The little metal door opened and John was ready for his tray of food with no questions and no complaints. His stomach felt like it was eating itself now, acids eroding away the lining of his stomach, his intestines. The raw desert that was now his throat yearned for the measly amount of water he was given.
But instead of a tray of food and drink, the hand stuffed the end of a large water hose into the opening. A moment later, water poured out of the hose.
“What are you doing?” John screamed.
The water collected at the bottom of the tank and mixed with the urine and excrement.
John wasn’t going to miss his chance at water. He opened his mouth and let the water from the hose pour in until his belly swelled with the liquid.
And the water still poured out of the hose. And the tank began to fill. Was he going to drown in here?
After the water reached the level of the small rectangle door, a circular opening about the size of his fist opened at the bottom of the tank and the water drained out, taking the urine and excrement with it. John laughed and clapped his hands like a lunatic as he pushed all of the waste towards the hole.
• • •
The next time John was offered food, he grabbed the rubber-gloved hand and bit down deep into the person’s flesh. At first he tasted rubber in his mouth, and then he tasted blood. From outside the tank, John heard a surprised and pain-filled scream.
The tray of food dropped and the person wrenched its hand out of John’s mouth, pulling his face towards the metal wall.
John laughed as the blood dribbled out of his mouth.
The person stood in front of the rectangle opening, but all John could see was the papery white suit the person wore.
“I give you food and clean your tank, and then you bite me?” The androgynous voice actually sounded hurt. “Maybe if I light a fire under you, you’ll learn to be more polite.”
The door slammed shut and locked.
“No,” John whispered. He scooped up the food from the bottom of the tank with the cup and shoveled it into his mouth. “I’m sorry!” he screamed even though his mouth was full of some kind of bread and meat. “I didn’t mean it!”
He picked up every crumb he could find from the bottom of the floor.
He heard the sounds of some kind of preparation beneath the metal tank.
Then the noises stopped.
The metal door opened and John crawled to the opening.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I … I was angry. I’ve been caged up in here and I don’t know why.”
Silence.
“I just lost it for a moment. Please don’t do anything.”
Still no answer from the hand.
John looked out through the rectangle door and took in as much of the room outside as he could. He saw a white wall about
twenty feet away and the edge of a white door. The floor was tiled with black and white squares and the little bit of the ceiling that he could see shined with bright fluorescent light.
He heard a noise from underneath the tank. It sounded like the whooshing of gas.
“Hey!! Please! What are you doing? I didn’t mean to bite you! It was a stupid, stupid thing to do. I’m sorry. So sorry. Please forgive me. PLEASE!!”
Moments later John felt the metal heating up underneath him. He moved his feet, hopping around, trying to crawl up the sides of the metal barrel, but he was too weak to hold himself there very long, and the heat was moving up the sides of the tank.
“No,” he whispered, barely able to catch his breath. “Please, God, no.”
He slid down the curved walls of the barrel and fell onto the bottom, and the metal scorched his skin immediately. The pain was instantaneous, a pain that he tried to jump away from. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to get away from the white-hot heat frying his skin.
“Oh God, pleasedon’tdothis!!”
John screamed and screamed. He screamed until he thought his vocal chords were going to burst. His mind was scrambling from the pain. He was a whirling dervish, spinning and twisting back and forth on the metal floor, trying to get his skin away from the searing metal.
“PLLLEEEAAASSSEEE!!!”
From somewhere far away, far outside the tank, John heard a voice calling out to him. “Are you going to bite anymore?”
“NOOOO!!!”
The whooshing noise stopped, but John’s screams did not.
John tried again to hold his body up on the sides of the walls, but his burnt hands and feet were already slipping, and the muscles of his body were shaking with the effort. But at least he was away from the hottest part of the tank—the bottom.
Then the entire barrel rolled, and John’s whole world was turning. He slipped and slid down to the bottom again and he could hear his skin sizzling, his flesh burning. He lashed out, his arms and legs flailing, striking the sides of the tank, but the wounds on his hands and feet from the thrashing didn’t even register compared to the searing pain of his skin. It felt like the skin of his body was peeling off from the heat.
It took a while for the metal of his tank to cool back down.
• • •
John didn’t bite anymore, and for a little while (a few days? a week? who knew?) he saw a white bandage under the clear latex of the gloved hand.
He accepted the food without any more questions. He ate. He drank. He gave the tray and cup back and didn’t ask who the person was anymore or why he/she was doing this to him. The hand wouldn’t answer his questions anyway.
After a while of good behavior (weeks? months?), the hand gave him something to relieve himself in so he wouldn’t have to lie with it at the bottom of the tank.
“You’ve been very good lately,” was all the hand said.
• • •
How much time had gone by? Months? Years?
John gibbered to himself. He played with his beard and mustache. He twirled his long hair over and over again. Sometimes he pulled at it. His fingernails grew, broke off, and then grew again. His toenails often snapped off from a kicking fit against the walls of the tank, but his kicking fits were fewer and fewer now.
He used to have dreams, but now his dreams and memories were blurry, one big fog. Nothing seemed to make much sense anymore.
His body ached. His muscles and bones ached. His teeth hurt. He was pretty sure his gums were bleeding badly. His body was very thin. He could feel his ribs poking out on his torso.
One time—he wasn’t sure how long ago—he was sick and he had to take medicine for a while. And then he was better. The hand told him so.
He thinks he sleeps a lot now.
Once he had a scary dream that the Hand had died. The Hand had left him.
He woke up screaming.
Who would feed him? Who would wash out his tank?
The next time the rectangle door opened up and the Hand pushed the tray of food in, John cried. “Don’t ever leave me,” he sobbed.
“I won’t ever leave you,” the Hand answered in its flat, unisex voice. The door closed and he wolfed down his food in the darkness and he felt better knowing the Hand wouldn’t leave him.
• • •
Then one day something happened. It took him a long time to realize what it was. He looked at the rectangle door very closely and noticed the thin line of light around the edges. The door almost looked like it was ajar.
He licked his fingers and tugged at his beard, trying to think of what this might mean. This meant something, damn it!
Think!
He pounded the side of his head with his fist like he was trying to kick-start his brain.
And then he reached out to the door. He wanted to touch that light; he wanted to feel it on his skin. He brushed the door with his fingers and it fell open with a bang.
He scurried back away from the opening, breathing hard, waiting for the Hand to come and tell him he’d done something bad.
The Hand would be coming. It would’ve heard that banging noise.
After a while he crawled over to the opening and pressed his face close to the rectangle, almost squeezing his face against it. He stared out and saw what he’d seen before—a white wall with a closed white door, a white ceiling, a black and white floor. He pushed his face farther into the rectangle, trying to see more. He wanted to see so much more.
But he had to be careful. He didn’t want to get his face stuck. He didn’t want the Hand to come back and see his face stuck in the rectangle. The Hand would be angry and there was no telling what the Hand would do to his face if it was stuck there, exposed to him.
He pulled his face back and stuck his hand out through the opening. He could feel the air on his thin arm and it felt so good. He pushed his arm all the way out to his shoulder, waving his arm around in the air. It felt different out there. Better. Like something he used to know a long time ago.
Then he let his fingers explore the outside of his tank. He ran his hand down the smooth metal wall. He played with the welded lines, the rivets. He roamed up the side of the tank, his fingers reaching out, probing like a creature all its own. He stretched his arm out farther, reaching higher and higher until he felt something.
Something familiar.
He let his fingers see for him. Yes, it was something familiar. Something he had wanted a long time ago—such a long time ago.
A latch.
He pushed his arm out as far as possible, still afraid of getting stuck. But if he could reach just a little more, a little farther. And just when he was about to give up, his muscles and tendons screaming in agony, he pulled up on the latch, breaking back two of his fingernails.
And immediately he knew something had happened.
He pulled his arm back inside the rectangle opening and waited for a moment, unable to believe that it might have just happened.
He might be free.
Very carefully, he pushed up on the top of his tank. For a second or two it didn’t budge, and he was sure there must be other latches. But then the top of the tank lifted up just a bit with a slight squeal of resistance like it hadn’t been opened in a long time.
It hasn’t been opened in a long time, he thought and nearly laughed out loud. He had to clamp his hand over his mouth to keep the insane laughter inside.
He pushed the lid up and stood up at the same time, moving very slowly, trying not to make a sound, his legs trembling with the effort of standing. But, Oh God, to stand again.
He lowered the lid down without making a sound and he stood up in the tank that was only half a tank now with the lid open. He looked down at his skinny body and he touched his body, looking at it for the first time in the light. Then he looked around at the room he was in. He saw the white walls, the closed white door. On the other side of the room he saw a row of white cabinets with scientific instruments laid out on top of them. Everything w
as bright and gleaming, clean and shiny. He didn’t see any windows and there was only the one door.
On one side of the tank was a small metal ladder, painted flat black like the tank itself. The ladder led down to the black and white checkered floor.
With weak and shaking arms and legs, he crawled down the ladder. And then his bare feet touched the cold tile floor. He stood there for a moment, breathing hard, his eyes wide.
What should he do now?
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to go.
He was hungry. Wasn’t it his feeding time soon? Wouldn’t the Hand be back soon to shove a tray of food and cup of water into the rectangle opening?
He looked at the door—the only way out. He let go of the ladder and tried to walk, but he nearly fell down. He held onto the tank for a moment as a wave of dizziness washed over him. His breaths came in rapid gasps and he was already tired.
I can’t leave my (home) tank, he told himself.
To just stand here on the floor seemed like accomplishment enough. Maybe he could just climb back in the tank and close the lid. Maybe he could leave it unlatched and the Hand wouldn’t notice. Maybe he could get out from time to time and stand on this floor and breathe in this air.
He thought of the world outside. Pictures popped into his mind, but a lot of it didn’t make any sense. It seemed so frightening out there. Who had he been? Where had he lived? Where would he go?
His stomach growled. It had to be his feeding time soon. He needed to eat.
He stared at the closed door. It seemed so far away. But from some forgotten place deep inside of him, he knew he had to try. He had to walk to that door.
One step.
Two steps.
Three.
He stifled a giggle as he looked down at his feet shuffling across the floor. He had let go of the tank and he was walking on his own now. He was walking! He took his steps slowly, holding his arms out slightly for balance.
And finally he was only a few feet away from the door. Five more hurried steps and he nearly fell against the door, but he tried to be quiet.
How many times had he seen this door and wondered what lay behind it?
He looked back at the tank. It was just a large, metal barrel supported by four sturdy legs that were bolted to the floor. He saw the rectangle of the small door in the lower half of the barrel. On one end of the barrel was a large handle with an electric motor that turned it. He saw the gas jets on the floor underneath the tank with hoses connected to a silver tank.
