Pain Cages

by Kane, Paul

  Gran is the first to feel the full force of it, as the bars come down on her head. She shrieks as the metal grinds up her old bones, the cracks like… footsteps on brittle twigs. Mum’s faring about the same, her body surrendering to the cage that is mashing her body.

  I have one last lock to undo, holding my left wrist.

  Don’t drop it, don’t drop it. You can still save them.

  But I know, even as I undo the clasp, jumping out of my cage just as it collapses in on itself, it’s already too late for my Gran and my Mum. They’ve become so much blood, bone and metal: a fusion of human and cage.

  The monk nearest my Gran turns the gun he used to kill Dixon on me. Gritting my teeth, I run at him, hitting him squarely in the stomach with my head and winding him before he can get off a shot. “You bastard. You fucking bastard! You killed them!” If I’d been thinking rationally, I’d have realized that Gran––at least––had been dead long before she turned up here as ‘Patty’.

  I rip off his hood, pulling the material back to reveal a bald-headed face. The strange thing is the monk’s blindfolded, just as I had been when I was first brought here. Someone has drilled a hole in the centre of his forehead.

  The sight of this only gives me pause for a moment, before I smash that face in. Pummeling it into the floor with my fist, the anger welling up inside me.

  When there’s hardly anything left of the head, I stop, breathing hard. I’m aware of something hovering over me, several somethings in fact: the cameras.

  I grab the pistol from the dead monk and point it at one of them.

  Before I can pull the trigger, the door to the right of me opens.

  I look from the spherical camera, to my escape route. What’s this, some kind of reward? The piece of cheese at the end of the maze?

  Don’t know, don’t care. Trying to keep my eyes fixed ahead of me, and off my mangled relatives, I head out through the door––to freedom!

  Interlude:

  Three Days Ago

  I evaded them for about a day and a half, but only because I knew that area so well.

  In the end, there was nowhere left to hide. Where can you hide from something that is all around you, that can see you even though you can’t see them? They directed the men to me, just as they’d sent Kim to the shack.

  I was in the jungle where giant snakes and lions lived, and down by the water there were man-eating crocodiles.

  There were quite a few of them, probably trained in tracking, ex-military––I caught a glimpse of a pair of boots in the undergrowth at one point, before waiting for whoever it was to go by. These weren’t any police I was familiar with; no doctors either. They’d told Kim what she wanted to hear, just like those adverts did to the poor unfortunates who bought the stuff they peddled.

  They wanted to find me, and silence me.

  Because if the secret ever got out, it would be the end of everything. Humanity would never be the same again.

  They watch and wait, they watch and wait… It went through my head over and over, trains on a track. It’s what I’d written on the pages Kim had read, apparently, or was it just what we were allowed to see?

  Piloting my spaceship into the deeper reaches of the Galaxy, battling one-eyed aliens with veiny skins.

  Maybe things change when you try to set them down: hints were one thing, in books, on TV in movies. But the hard truth––facts excavating how far this all goes back––that was another.

  Oblivious as we were, we’d created ways of letting the knowledge creep out into the world, whether it was through cave paintings, ancient mythology or even posters (and then they’d tampered with the results). It was a chicken and egg situation: without them, there would have been no human evolution, and without human evolution would they be able to survive?

  Symbiosis? Hardly. How could any one-sided relationship be called that? We were subordinates. Blind and obedient, given the illusion of freewill when all the time we were being herded towards our own doom.

  “Ah, but if you push us too far, if we destroy ourselves, what will you do then––eh?” Without thinking, I had asked the question out loud. And that was my final mistake.

  Something rustled nearby; they’d heard me and were on my trail. I ran, just as I had that day when I was young. I misplaced my footing and suddenly I was falling, head over heels, down an incline. Something thudded into my side, silent and deadly. It might have been a branch; more likely it was a dart from a tranquilizer gun.

  I was already beginning to feel its effects, growing woozy as I reached the bottom. My vision was blurring, I was passing out.

  They’d hunted me like the animal I was (to them, or more accurately their superiors). When I woke, who knew where I would be.

  Or if I would remember any of this until it was too late.

  Seven

  I make my way down a darkened corridor, pistol in my hand.

  One of the cameras is following me over my shoulder. I can sense it there, just far enough behind to stay out of my way, but near enough to film my escape.

  There are other doors down the corridor. I stop to kick the first one in, thinking maybe I can save some prisoners. Inside, there are more Pain Cages, those round hanging jails, each containing a body, a human being.

  Seven in here. I don’t recognize any of the faces… No, wait, that’s not true. Malone is here. I think I used to work for him at one point. Yeah, that’s right. Malone. I once told him where to get off for some reason.

  “Christopher, help me,” he pleads, sticking his hand through the bars. “They’re trying to kill us all.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “Hold on.”

  “Chris! Chris! Please…” The voice comes from behind me, muffled and odd, from another room opposite. That’s one I do know; very well. “Dad?”

  I rush out, back into the corridor, ignoring the cries from Malone. I kick open the other door, only to see my father in one of the pain cages. His head is stuck in a see-through glass case. Brown liquid is pouring in from above, fast, and he is only just keeping his head above its level.

  “Always… always said the drink would… would get me,” he spits.

  I take aim with the gun, but I’m not a sure enough shot; I could very easily hit my Dad. I rush to the cage, shaking it, wishing I’d kept the keys that had freed me––though there was nothing to say they’d fit the locks in here.

  The liquid covers his mouth and nose. My Dad smiles, then panics, begins to jerk. I’m watching a dead man drown right before my eyes.

  “No, no!” I close my eyes. “You’re making me see this. You’ve still got me whacked up on drugs or something. I know now. I understand.”

  “You understand nothing,” says a woman’s voice from behind me. I turn, seeing Kim in another one of the cages. She’s naked, but also shackled, chained at the waist as well as the hands and feet.

  “No… Not you, as well,” I moan.

  A huge spike is rising from the bottom of the cage, up and up. “Mmmm… Oh yes,” she says, licking her lips. Then she impales herself on the spike, leaping back gladly onto it. I wince as she jumps up and down on the sharp skewer, blood gushing from between her legs. “Take me… Take me beyond my limits… Harder… Oh God, harder… Hurt me… hurt me!” One last impalement and the spike comes up and out of her mouth, accompanied by a fountain of redness.

  “Kim! No…” She hangs lifeless on the spike, arms limp as the chains loosen. There are more cameras in the room, lenses focused on my Dad and Kim. “Are you getting all of this, you sick motherfuckers!”

  Unsurprisingly, there is no answer.

  I dash back out, feeling like I’m going to throw up. What the fuck is going on? It sounds insane, but my mind offers yet another explanation: maybe whoever was responsible for all this could just pluck people out of time––living or dead––for their own personal amusement? Is that it? Is that the explanation?

  Kicking in door after door, I see people in the throes of agony, being tortured,
being killed in so many different ways they all blur into one eventually. I can’t help any of them.

  I pelt down the corridor, figuring that if I can get to the outside world I might just be able to bring back help––but the corridor stretches away from me, Vertigo-style. The walls, floor and tunnel ahead are melting away. To be replaced by…

  A landscape. A panoramic view of pain.

  Pain cages: hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of them. Too many to count. The screams and wails are deafening; a torture in itself.

  I drop the pistol––it falls away into nothingness––and clasp my hands to my ears. As I blink, focusing on each pain cage in turn, I see faces that I know (like my Uncle and Kim’s parents), many that I don’t, but I also see objects: toys I used to play with as a child; the ghost story book I was given as a prize at school for writing essays in class; the first jacket I ever bought for myself, a leather one I thought looked so cool; my old computer; sweet and sour chicken, my favorite meal… There were places as well, locations: behind the bike sheds where I first touched a girl’s breast; the local cinema that had been replaced by a multiplex; the call centre; the flat where Kim and I shared so many moments.

  All of these are inside pain cages of their own, being torn apart, destroyed in various ways. It is now, and only now, that I truly get what’s happening.

  The cages form a ring, and in the centre of this is an open space––like a gladiatorial arena. I take away my hands, to find that a silence had descended more deafening than any screams. Several of the round cameras zip past me and into the arena, and I follow their trail with my eyes: down to a table surrounded by men.

  A rhythmic beeping starts up, then continues. Bleep-Bleep-Bleep. The sound of a heartbeat. I see now that it’s coming from a monitor on the side. At first I assume the men are dressed in robes like the monks, but then I see my error. Their surgical gowns swish when they walk, in much the same way.

  Their mouths are covered by masks, but then so are their eyes. Again, blindfolded, the round headpieces that they wear, the circular mirror reflectors, are the only eyes they appear to have.

  They shouldn’t even be operating, but they are. They’re cutting into a man’s skull, taking chunks of it away and… exposing the brain.

  “Now we have to excise the damaged tissue. Good God, how many brain cells has it affected?”

  Cells… Brain cells. Pain cells… Pain cages… The link becomes clear, even though I’m finding it harder and harder to concentrate. For one thing I only have to look at the cages themselves, which are becoming more like liquid, the surrounding area red and meaty, like an organic city I once saw.

  “Look at the size of that tumor. If only we’d got to it before.”

  Steps have appeared leading downwards, and I descend to observe the operation. The doctors murmur to one another, conferring. The circular cameras––the globes––are capturing each second of it. As infected brain tissue, infected memories, are cut away. People’s faces, those familiar and those only glimpsed for a second… A writer’s imagination providing the character backgrounds and personalities of those it couldn’t possibly know. An obnoxious estate agent who once showed me round a house, a fitness instructor bumped into just the once during a brief visit to the gym, a man I saw one time preaching religion on the streets… These and many more besides.

  And I recognize the face of the person on the table––how could I not?

  The man lying there has his father’s chin, his mother’s eyes.

  I want to tell them to stop, but I know they won’t hear me.

  Then I’m asleep again.

  But one day… Yes, one day I will wake.

  Epilogue

  Am I awake or still asleep?

  It’s hard to tell the difference anymore. I’m in a cage… no, a cell. It’s white, the walls are soft, spongy. I’m shackled by my hands and my feet. They tell me I’m dangerous, the doctors: a danger to myself and to others. I hurt some people once upon a time, then again in here… though I don’t remember any of it.

  I’m not sure who the woman is who comes to visit me every so often. She says her name is Kim, but I don’t remember her. I remember the very first time she came, though, the conversation she had with Dr. Banberry, who was in charge of my case back then. I lay in bed recuperating, the air tickling my bald scalp, my stitches itching.

  “Can he hear what we’re saying?” she asked him.

  “We’re not sure. Possibly. It’s a side effect of the operation, I’m afraid. He may stay like this forever, or… The damage the tumor did was quite severe, so it’s best not to get your hopes up. It definitely affected the TPRV1 receptors in the brain. Oh, I’m sorry, the transient receptor potential vanilloid subtype. Pain receptors in layman’s terms. But these have also recently been linked in studies to memory and learning. If he does come out of this state, then it’s likely he won’t remember much.”

  “And that was also the cause of his… delusions? The tumor?”

  Banberry looked at her seriously. “Undoubtedly, that mixed with the drugs and drink at the time of his disappearance. We call it altered perception. A warped view of reality that feels completely real to the person suffering its effects. Other symptoms include seeing things that aren’t really there, memory lapses.”

  “Like when he rang me and couldn’t remember doing it.”

  “Exactly.”

  No, no. I didn’t have a phone. I didn’t… My mind conjured up the words, but I had no idea what they meant. That particular recollection was gone.

  There were tears in the woman’s eyes, as she looked from me to Banberry. “How did this happen? I don’t understand.”

  “Could have been something that happened a few years ago, could have been a knock on the head when he was a kid waiting for a trigger. Who knows?”

  A monster… running from a monster. Dixon! Who’s Dixon? No, no… I banged my head after I saw what he had written; didn’t I? What are you talking about? Who. The Fuck. Is Dixon?

  “There’s no point speculating about it, no point beating yourself up.”

  “But I saw he was acting strangely, obsessive, not like the old Christopher. I should have done something then. Instead I just left him.”

  “You weren’t to know.” Banberry comforted her by patting her arm; all he could muster.

  When the woman called Kim looked at me again, I felt a trickle of dribble running from the corner of my mouth.

  It’s good of her to keep coming back, I suppose. To keep talking to me like I’m normal. But I know I’m not. When I’m asleep… or awake? Dreaming, yes, dreaming… I sometimes imagine that this was done to me on purpose. That I found out something so terrifying I had to be silenced.

  Like the fact that there’s something out there, making human beings inflict pain on each other because it feeds off it. Yes, that’s right. That’s… I can only hold onto the notion for a short time and then it drifts away from me.

  But I do remember the cages. I saw them a long time ago.

  They had something to do with the pain; some kind of connection I can’t grasp now no matter how hard I try.

  I think once I had a story to tell about them. About how we’re all inside these cages, in one form or another, but don’t really know it. About things with one eyes that watch and wait.

  What they’re waiting for, I have no idea––I don’t think I’ll ever find out.

  All I know is that they really do understand the nature of pain, true pain.

  Just as I, myself, once did.

  * * *

  HALFLIFE

  As Neil sat staring at the entrance, nursing his pint of bitter, he thought about the past.

  How could he not, today of all days? His eyes flitted from the doorway of the Royal Oak pub, to the dirty brown liquid in the glass below, to the handful of other patrons this Friday evening. There weren’t many: a sweaty looking man with a skin complaint, red blotches splattering his cheeks and nose; a sad-looking couple in their 5
0s who weren’t speaking to each other; a twenty-something in a hoodie playing the fruit machine, obviously biding his time before meeting up with mates or heading out on the town later.

  It’s what he would have been doing fifteen years ago, and even before that. Neil remembered those nights, getting ready to go on the prowl, hitting the nightclubs in the wilder parts of the city with the pack. Picking up the ladies then doing all sorts with them, usually in the alleyways behind the clubs…

  He’d always promised himself those days would carry on forever, that he wouldn’t get old––and at forty-three (alright, almost forty-four), was he really that ancient? Enough to be the oldest swinger in town if he went there now on a Friday night. He’d stand out like a sore thumb against the teens and the tweens, the loud techno beats more likely to give him a headache nowadays than get his adrenalin pumping.

  The fact that he was here, in a pub outside of town itself, for a gathering that would only make him feel even more depressed about the turns his life had taken, wasn’t helping. His focus shifted from the booze to his belly: not massive by any means, but not a patch on the flat washboard stomach he’d had back then. He kept telling himself that he could get back into shape anytime he wanted, but never did. Didn’t really care or want to, if the truth be known.

  What the hell was wrong with him? When did all this apathy begin?

  Might’ve been when you settled down and embraced the life of a stay-at-home miserable bastard, he said to himself and couldn’t help a tired laugh. That had been his parents’ existence: safe, comfortable, not taking any risks––ever. Stick-in-the-muds that he couldn’t wait to get away from when he was younger, always telling himself he wouldn’t turn out like them; wouldn’t just piss his life away sitting in front of the TV. He’d wanted to get out there, experience life at the sharp end––and he’d done just that… for a while. But it seems he had more in common with them than he realized, even though he’d later discovered that he was in fact adopted. Made sense when you thought about it, given his… affliction (curse, whatever you wanted to call it). Neither his mum nor dad even hinted at anything like that, would’ve died rather than let themselves be taken over by their baser desires. Which meant that he’d got this from his genes, from one or both of his real parents. Neil sometimes thought about tracking them down, but again, he just couldn’t be bothered. They probably wouldn’t want to see him anyway, the runt of whatever foul litter they’d created. They wouldn’t have given him up in the first place if they’d thought anything of him.