by Stuart Keane
Shit!
She felt a sense of déjà vu coming on, but this time her feeling held no qualms or mockery.
There was no door.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
***
The second of the four men was now a bit calmer.
Still losing, still behind, but a bit calmer.
He’d viewed many sports in his time, enough to know that the odds of him winning still weren’t rock bottom. Underdogs always prevailed and the odds were always stacked and altered drastically at the last minute. Boxers got knocked down, football teams always conceded goals, golfers always lost a few strokes, but in many situations, this didn’t matter.
If the person was simply that damn good, they would win no matter what the odds.
And he knew he was a winner, the best, hell, possibly the greatest.
He had to be, for he knew how much was at stake.
Nine minutes ago, he had no chance in hell of winning this thing.
As it stood, the odds still looked bleak.
But he could feel something about this woman, she wasn’t your normal variety bimbo, no, she had brains and balls to boot.
He knew he was going to win.
This was the one chance he had to prove he had what it takes, to prove he wasn’t a pussy, and to prove he had the balls a man needs to prevail in life’s fortunes. Fortunes which, so far, had pissed all over him, were now at his mercy. Pushing the envelope here would mean great things for him, for his future, and for his bank balance. Winning was his only option. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Losing wasn’t to be considered, for the consequences of losing would not be pretty.
He tapped the keyboard and, for the first time, a smile broke out on his sweaty face.
NINE
Rupert sat down in his leather armchair and took a moment to gather his thoughts. He ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his face, his palms rasping against his two-day stubble, catching his dry lips and dragging the lower one down, exposing his teeth. He looked across the room. His eyes stung a little, still adjusting from the darkness.
He wanted to cry and he wanted to jump for joy. He could do neither.
He didn’t know which of these to do first, or which was appropriate.
There was no doubt about it, he was sitting in his lounge, on his beaten, but extremely comfortable leather armchair, looking out across his hallway to the kitchen opposite. His bare feet were rubbing against the blue carpet and his nose smelt the familiar aromas of home. The remnants of a wood fire from the night before, the odour of his cheap aftershave, which always lingered in the air.
Rupert swore he could smell the burned chicken pie from three weeks back, which reminded him that he needed to change the curtains.
He could even smell his shower gel.
The record player he refused to part with sat inches from his left arm. A stack of old vinyl albums was neatly arranged beside the cabinet on which it stood. The unused tape deck and rarely used CD player sat beneath it. Rupert had always loved the sound of vinyl, the inevitable scratches, and the rawness of the sound. Modern technology, he believed, couldn’t compare with it. But having so many young parishioners, you couldn’t help but get dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era. He had done so, but at his own pace.
Rupert stood up and walked out of the lounge, down the hallway and into his utility room. He looked at the door, which was still green, still perfectly painted, with no scratches. He picked up his washing basket and rifled through the clothes. He saw his clerical clothing neatly piled at the bottom. He always tucked them neatly down, so as to save space.
Putting the basket down, he picked up the hamper at his side and opened the lid. His white tee shirt was on top, crumpled, smelling of old laundry. It had a spaghetti-hoops stain on the left breast, from where he had spilt his food the other day (years of using a napkin and the one day you don’t, you spill food on yourself, he thought). He also saw that his washing machine, dryer and dishwasher were all in the same places, the manufacturers’ names sticking out like sore thumbs. The wooden floor was marked where he’d pulled the dryer out one day to locate a dropped item of clothing.
Moving down the hallway, Rupert entered his kitchen and opened the cupboards on the wall beside his fridge. There was peanut butter, a variety of pastas, teabags, coffee, a biscuit barrel and some stock cubes. Everything was exactly how he remembered it.
This was his house.
There was no doubt about it.
So why does it feel weird?
Maybe it was that awful tunnel leading up to his front door?
Or the fact that he had almost become a walking pin cushion?
Maybe he felt weird because he’d been kidnapped and trapped, and then put into a cell. Anyone would have reservations about that.
Get a grip!
How is this normal? He thought.
Returning to his lounge, Rupert sat in his chair and leaned back in it. The cool leather felt like bliss against his hot skin. He breathed out heavily. However, his brain still played tricks on him. Paranoia set in, like it always did for Rupert. It was instinct.
His beliefs meant he didn’t believe in ghosts and ghouls, but he did believe in fate, judgment, the revelations, and he also believed in karma too. That was his own belief: that you get what you deserve, so if you treat people nicely, the favour is returned in kind. Everything happens for a reason, and God will smite you down should you sin.
Being kidnapped, held prisoner and at the mercy of a death-trap had not been something he’d expected. This was the act of a beast, a man who didn’t adhere to the rules of God, to the beliefs of the church. This wasn’t karma, this wasn’t judgement. This was brutality at its very worst.
So why is my house here?
Rupert felt the need to cry now. To weep out of confusion or frustration. Maybe both.
This, he believed, is what horror movies were made of. True life horror was something he only ever saw on daytime TV shows and bad movies.
Rupert stood up and walked to his hallway, then moved back into the kitchen again. He studied the room, convinced he would find something incriminating about it. Proof that, indeed, this wasn’t his house. But he saw none.
No one could make this good a replica of his home in just a day. Or even in two or three days. If, in fact, that was the length of time he’d been out for. How could his kidnappers capture the smells, atmosphere and general ambience that is part and parcel of a lived-in home?
Rupert decided to stop thinking about it.
He left the room and walked towards the front door. The latch was off. He turned it to lock it. He couldn’t analyse what had happened right now, his head hurt and he needed a wash. At this moment a nice long shower and a drink would be a treat.
Rupert turned back to his stairs and walked up to the bathroom. The door slammed behind him.
Downstairs, the front door’s latch unlocked itself.
The door opened and a figure stepped through. The door closed behind the intruder, and locked itself again.
The person just stood there, until the sound of the shower broke the silence. Carrying a heavy green bag, the new arrival moved to the lounge.
Upstairs, Rupert began to sing.
***
The first man tapped a few keys and five different camera shots from the bathroom of Rupert’s house appeared on his monitor screen. He saw his man walking about taking off his clothes, running the shower, testing the heat with his hand before jumping under the hot spray. The water sprayed off his lithe body and misted the camera. Switching to a longer shot (the camera was hidden in the window frame) the man came into full view, his naked wet body filling the screen, with no misting apparent. Twisting under the hot water, the man massaged his skin, applied shower gel and soaped himself.
As he tapped another key, the picture changed to a view of downstairs.
Quite a different picture, this one of a naked man walking about. The man who’d entered Ru
pert’s house had already positioned a chair in the centre of the lounge, on the expensive rug that was in front of the fireplace. He was rifling through the kitchen drawers now for a knife. The figure disappeared from one camera and appeared again from another camera’s transmission, as he went into the lounge and opened a green bag. Bright light filled the screen as the figure removed a machete from it. The blade caught the light as the stranger placed it on the floor beside the chair, beside the four knives he had found in the drawer.
The person looked directly at the camera and smiled.
Then he disappeared, standing in a blind spot off-camera.
Dammit!
After tapping a few keys the shower scene returned, and the man was lathered up, the bubbles streaming down his rippled body. He applied white liquid to his hair and started to rinse it with the spray from the shower head. His lips moved incoherently, as if he was singing.
The observer unzipped the front of his trousers and unbuckled his belt. He wore no underwear, and his hand brushed his penis, which was semi erect.
He waited.
TEN
Four minutes ago, Heather Mason had left the observation room. After spending some time sitting beneath the two-way mirror, she had come to the conclusion that she didn’t want to stay put, she wanted to move onwards, get out of this place.
And she couldn’t do that by sitting on her arse.
On inspection she had found the doors in the room to both be unlocked, which had taken her by surprise. Then again, she reasoned, if her cell had been open, why lock any remaining doors?
Heather had checked both exits and decided to explore both if need be. The first door was a storage closet. No progress to be made there.
The second door led down a mirrored hallway with panels missing in the floor and cracks in the wall. A light flickered overhead. The hallway had taken a right turn at exactly ninety degrees and disappeared beyond view. She followed it.
The hallway had the same design, the same distinct mirrored decor and panels, except that the panelling was all intact, and the walls were not cracked. The hallway was immaculate and painted white. It led off to a T junction, giving her the choice of going right or straight on. Heather had reached this point now and had to make a choice.
Going right appeared to take her round an unseen right bend once more. Straight on led to a double door which looked structured and strong. Fearing the door to be locked, she took the right turn and reached the unseen corner. The mirror on the wall opposite the turn was cracked, huge shards of glass were on the floor beneath it, and small fragments remained in the frame on the wall.
Nice!
It made her feel better to realise that something or someone in here was able to crack mirrors. “Great,” she said aloud. “Just what I need.”
Heather peeked round the corner cautiously.
Another empty hallway greeted her.
As if you were expecting anything else.
Heather scooted around the hallway, keeping close to the wall.
This path was straight and long, with no doors, no mirrors, just panels on the floor and plain blank walls like huge canvases on both sides. The lights were bright, unshaded. A solitary door stood at the end of the hallway, appearing like a huge prize to whoever was brave enough to cross the length of the area. Heather stepped quickly, not making a sound on the soft tiles beneath her bare feet.
Heather stopped, catching her breath.
Clasping the door handle, she turned it and pushed it open.
What greeted her was different from what she’d been expecting.
There were no plain hallways, no mirrors, no holes in the floor, no isolation.
Fear ran up her spine, like thousands of icy fingers.
The room in front of her was a huge square. Benches adorned its walls, each of them padded with comfortable looking cushions. The floor was panelled just as those in the hallway were. The ceiling was very high due to the structure in the centre of the room. It was a huge viewing platform, whose centre was raised about three feet above the ground and held a glass cylinder filled with liquid. A tube poked out of the top, the other end passing into the ceiling, and where it went after that was anyone’s guess.
Heather climbed up the shallow steps that led to the platform, and stopped on the top step. Tables stood around the cylinder holding various instruments and folders that Heather had trouble recognising. She was too distracted by the monstrosity itself.
And its contents.
A human body floated in the liquid, tubes leading out from its arms making it like some kind of twisted puppet, and these in turn led to the cylinder’s roof. As Heather stepped closer she could see that the corpse had no eyebrows, no head or body hair, and no fingernails. The body had its chin tilted down, as if it was staring at its own feet. The arms were motionless at its side, the limbs seemed totally relaxed, no muscle spasms or flexing were visible. Its eyes were closed and its mouth was shut, apart from a pipe that was held between its lips. Heather noticed that the body seemed extremely fit, its muscle definition top notch. The physique could have easily been that of a body builder or a wrestler. Every muscle was perfectly defined. Even its fingers had muscles.
The overwhelming fear of possibly seeing its eyes open was too much for Heather. She stepped off the platform and back down to ground level. Shivers like small electric shocks ran through her. Turning her eyes from the cylinder she looked around. She tried rubbing the chills from her arms.
Imagination got the better of her, and she was able to picture people sitting on these benches looking at the tube itself, making notes, conversing with one another, using medical jargon that was only familiar to Heather from medical shows on TV. She felt her guts lurch.
Moving around the tube and its platform, Heather saw another door, a double one this time. She walked towards it and pushed it open.
What she saw repulsed her.
She fell forward, vomiting. Her stomach didn’t have much to give up, for she hadn’t eaten in ages, but the instinctive reaction couldn’t be controlled. Her ears welcomed the sound of vomit hitting the floor, a break from the unbearable silence.
Heather stood up and gazed around her. At first she wasn’t sure what she was seeing, but then it hit her and she felt like vomiting again, had her stomach not already been completely voided.
The room she was in, once again, was identical in shape to the room she had just left. However, there was no raised platform or cylinder containing an ‘experiment’. This room had the benches and the same décor as the others. There were four doors she could make out beyond the people she could see.
‘People’. That word was weird.
Heather took a second to process what was in front of her, making sure that it was real.
The room was swarming with people.
Counting on her fingers she saw nineteen.
All of them were identical.
All bald, all hairless, all with well-defined and muscular bodies.
All wearing white gowns to cover their modesty.
There was no doubt that these people had all been in that cylinder at some point.
Maybe there was a whole facility of cylinders scattered around in rooms near here, she thought. These ‘people’ were walking clones of the person she had seen suspended moments ago. They ambled around slowly, as if they were brain-dead zombies, yet they looked like humans. They moved methodically, with no rhythm or apparent destination, no anticipation and no raw emotion in their faces. One of them was sitting on a bench staring into space, another was seated on the floor, legs crossed, his private parts exposed. Three of them leaned on a wall doing nothing, probably not aware of their actions.
None of them looked at Heather, none of them responded to her presence.
Fear seized her, and Heather felt her eyes rolling.
She collapsed, her face landing in her vomit.
The people didn’t notice at all.
Except for one…
***
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The third man felt his wine dribble down his chin a little when he saw his subject collapse to the ground. For the first time tonight, he had been totally surprised. He just hadn’t expected it to happen. The funny thing to him was that she had been sick initially, and then landed face first in her stomach’s contents.
Comedy genius!
Placing his glass down, the man took a serviette from his desk and wiped his chin. Folding the napkin neatly, he dropped it in the bin beside him, aware of the tinny thunk as it landed. He linked his fingers under his chin and thought for a moment. Then he tapped his keyboard three times.
Nothing happened at first. Then he saw the room interior on his screen filled with gas and the clones all dropped to the ground simultaneously. After a moment, all was still. The room seemed to be filled with corpses.
The bodies were static. The room was devoid of movement.
Now nothing could happen to his golden nugget, his prize. He was no doctor or scientist, but he had read stories of clones being erratic emotionally when they were first produced. Finding a random person lying amongst them was too high a risk for him to take.
Now they could do nothing.
In fact their motionless state gave him an idea.
He felt warm inside.
The man pulled a little machine out of his desk with a card swipe slot in it and a green screen. The wording on the screen read ‘please insert PIN’. As he pushed another key, the message changed to ‘please insert code’. The man pushed the digits three and four, and took his leather wallet from his breast pocket. He removed his black American Express card from it, swiped it, and was again greeted with the ‘please insert PIN’ message. He dialled his pin and the screen read ‘thank you’.
He placed the card back in his wallet and tucked it away. He put the machine back in his desk and looked at the screen. He guessed it would take about nine minutes or so to happen.
He topped up his wine, an exquisite merlot, and sipped.
Quick toilet break, he decided.
The man strode across the room to his en suite bathroom, the bright light shining against his three–thousand-pound suit. His socks, that had cost ninety pounds, thudded lightly on the mahogany floor.
