Monkeytown

by Chris Vola

  “Those gross organic eggs,” I say. “Oh fuck.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “And most of the crud the Canadians bring in here. We’re being fucked with the whole time.”

  The experiment is never over.

  “When’s the last time you had a legit prescription, from a doctor?” Billy asks.

  “I guess the Klonopins right after my parents died. I probably got three re-fills.”

  “And Davis has hooked you up since then?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t think –”

  “Come on,” he says, “what other drug dealer that doesn’t work in a medical office has that kind of access to basically any kind of prescription drug, at any time? Five bottles of Tryptan and two of Xanax? Coming right up. Vicodin whenever you need it? He was a walking pharmacy.”

  “I don’t know that many dealers.”

  “You said he’d been working with Titus for what, four years. He’s been setting you up for this for a long time.”

  The nightmare unravels. The smiling exchanges in backyard patios, leather car seats. The comforting click-clack of orange plastic. The bitter surge. “But why? Why take all the time and the effort? What makes me so special?”

  Billy’s quiet for a long time. “You aren’t special,” he says. “Davis saw an opportunity, that’s all. You were vulnerable after your parents’ crash, obviously, and he had a constant pill supply coming to him from Virginia. All he had to do was keep you buying, and that didn’t turn out to be too hard. Taking the road trip was just a matter of waiting until the right moment when he knew you’d be drained enough, when getting you to leave was easy. Setting up the dinner at Rob’s was easy too because they were already there, working at what you could call the New York branch of whatever this group is. They just had to fry up some organic crap to keep you numb, fuck you up, keep you compliant. By taking you off the pills, they’ve woken you up a little, I can see it.”

  I nod to the blackness.

  “Everything else Davis said is probably a lie.”

  “I have to eat,” I say. “I can’t go on a hunger strike. They’d figure out what I was doing in a day or two.”

  “You don’t have to stop,” he says. “You have to become picky. Eat anything that doesn’t have an organic logo. The soups are usually good.” He’s right. Most of the soup is Campbell’s Chunky, heated right in the can. “And one more thing I remember the sergeant saying was that the drugs lost their potency in meat relatively fast. All you have to do is let your pork roast or chuck steak cool off for a while.”

  “You going on this diet, too?” I ask. This will be the test. “That won’t look suspicious?”

  “Yeah,” Billy says, “but I’m leaving tomorrow so I doubt it’ll matter.”

  “Leaving.”

  “I got a folder today while you were with Davis,” he says. “Someone’s decided that I’m ‘psychologically incompatible’ for work in the military wing. They’re transferring me somewhere else in the morning. I’ll get more specific instructions then.”

  “Somewhere else. How big is this place?”

  “I think I’m about to find out. The best thing both of us can do is sit tight. I don’t feel like we’re in any real physical danger here, unless we try to leave. I think the worst is over. Remember what I said about the food, and we’ll figure this out.”

  Harry screams in his sleep, mumbles something that sounds like spark-Nigeria-drugs.

  WE SHOOT FIFTEEN, maybe twenty scenes in about half as many days. Most of them are short, five minutes or less, one or two men in ski masks, me standing in the center of the rug under the floodlights, reading from the yellow paper. Sometimes dressed as a soldier, sometimes as a journalist (which means wearing the same white tee shirt and sweats) – “My name is Eli Patterson. My father’s name is Eric. My mother’s name is Allison. I live in Wissinoming, Pennsylvania. I am an employee of the Philadelphia Inquirer…” “My name is Rodney Percival. I am asking for help because my life is in danger. I am an American citizen from New York and have worked with the Coalition forces…” – sometimes as tourists from Canada or Europe. The worst is I’m forced to the ground or slapped around a little while someone reads something in Arabic or in a practiced Middle Eastern accent. Sami Allahu liman hamidah…You will receive no help from your president because of his selfishness and indifference to those he has flung into this Jahannum, this hell…

  Our clothes, uniforms, artificial facial hair, wigs, Adidas flip-flops, fanny packs out of a bad ’80s soda commercial – whatever I need for the day’s shoot – are carefully folded and placed on the morning tray next to breakfast, with the instructions. The Canadians do all the filming, manning the cameras, directions in slurry English, finding the right lighting. No Titus directorial cameos so far. Harry is in bed except for when I help him to the bathroom, wash him, force him to empty his bladder until he can walk on his own. Billy’s bed – stripped and vacant in the far corner. Sleep is heavy, still dreamless in the soft sheets. Maybe he was wrong about the drugs. His memory was never that great.

  This is life, life in a discernable rhythm for the first time in a long time. Wake, eat, film, eat, Harry, bed. We don’t talk. He’s a cellmate, another number in the floodlight internment, an unfortunate and constant presence in the routine that is beginning to define a sprouting identity. He won’t get close.

  The instinct for self-preservation is strong now, but it’s blind to cries for help, blind to the off-white, blind to what might be happening to Billy.

  Life.

  Underneath my mattress, the vague hump of the BlackBerry.

  THE MANILA ENVELOPE straddles a platter of gravy-slathered turkey breasts and a large can of creamy mushroom soup. “BLUNDERTHAL” scrawled across the top with a red Sharpie. The bruises around Harry’s eyes haven’t completely healed, but his face has shrunk to a recognizable facsimile.

  I toss the envelope onto his bed. Harry closes his book. He tears through the tab, shakes out its contents – a thin script, bottles of concealer, moisturizer, skin firming cream, a pair of bifocals. Harry puts on the glasses, reads the cover page.

  “You wear glasses?”

  “A slight astigmatism,” he says.

  “Then how’ve you been reading so much?”

  “With quite a bit of difficulty.” I shake my head. Harry looks back down, flips through the pages in slow motion.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask when I can’t take the silence.

  “You’re not doing anything,” Harry says. “I’m going to appear as myself in a live feed, later today. You’ll watch.”

  “Live feed.”

  “They’ll have the cameras routed to whatever network they’re using here. Broadcast the signal in real-time.”

  “This is important, then?”

  “Not big, per se, just different.” He keeps reading. I lie back, waiting for the meat to cool. Wake me up when this is over.

  “That’s it then,” Harry tosses the packet on the carpet.

  “What is?”

  “It seems that I’m to become a terrorist,” he chuckles, takes his glasses off. “I’m to renounce all my allegiances to my nation, the West, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I’m to throw on the ski mask as a full member of Yushua, so it’ll be Death to the Infidels! Praise Allah and Muhammad! and all of that lot from here on out. Directions are for me ‘not to appear brainwashed or forced,’ that my transformation has been the result ‘of a careful, personal evaluation of my moral and spiritual wellbeing and the enlightened knowledge given to me by my former captors.’”

  I groan.

  “Well I don’t anticipate that I’ll be winning any awards,” he says. He puts down the packet, picks his novel back up, adjusts his glasses. For a second he looks like he’s going to scream, the muscles in his neck straining to break, but nothing happens. He softens, mumbles something, hauls his now-scrawny frame to the bathroom.

  “So you’re going let everyone think you’re a Muslim now?”

&n
bsp; “It’s live TV,” he says, faux-dramatically, his interpretation of Kane’s cheese-dick Southern accent, “anything is possible, y’all.”

  “GOING LIVE IN five, four, three, two…”

  The Quebecois accent is low, barely perceptible. I’m off-set, behind Titus and the Canadians, next to two men in ski masks who have been ignoring me. Harry’s wearing a red and blue plaid shirt, beige raincoat, jeans. Centered on the rug, holding the script while a man in a ski mask talks into the camera, too low to understand more than a few random words. Sweating under the floodlights, his glasses keep slipping.

  The man repeats what he’s just said in a different language, maybe Spanish or Italian. He moves off-camera and it’s only Harry under the hospital glow. Long pause, then a cue. Harry adjusts his glasses, reads.

  “My name is Harold Blunderthal,” he says in a robotic monotone. “I am fifty-three years old. I am a British citizen, a former professor of political science at the University of St. Andrews, and correspondent to the United Nations’ Counter-Terrorism Committee. According to major Western media outlets, I was kidnapped several weeks ago, in New York City, by a militant organization most so-called experts linked to Yushua. Today, I would like to confirm one of those statements. I was taken from my hotel room by members of Yushua. This is true. However, I was not kidnapped. My departure from Manhattan was entirely voluntary, brought on by a desire to change my way of life, my faith, to renounce the corruption, falsehoods, and waste that is rampant in the land of my fathers. I have chosen a more radiant and wholesome path.”

  He pauses, catches his breath. The man in the ski mask re-enters the set, faces the camera, shouts in Arabic, probably repeating what Harry’s said. Turns, exits left.

  “I was brought to a discreet location in Central America, where I am currently living. I have spent the majority of my time studying the righteous teachings of the true prophet and his holy book, while purging from my soul the many years of living in cruel infidelity. The clothes I wear now are only for identification purposes and will be gladly incinerated when I have finished.”

  Enter ski mask, exit ski mask.

  “The rape of our culture and resources by the greed-scarred white hand is over. This is a message to…this is a message…” His breath catches. “…this is a message to all those who would stand in our way. Your sinful violence will not be tolerated. You will be…will be…” he trails off again, stares blankly into the camera. He throws down the packet and his glasses. “This is rubbish,” he screams, “all of this! I was kidnapped! We are trapped in a compound, not by terrorists, but by Americans and Canadians. Please help! There are maybe thirty of us here, several children. I don’t know the name of the town, but it’s a –”

  He’s tackled to the ground by half a dozen men, disappears under the pile. The floodlights go out. A series of grunts, frantic metallic scraping.

  “Take two?” One of the Canadians asks.

  “Yeah,” Titus says, shaking his head. “He thought we were actually live. Wow, man.” He snickers, arches his woolly eyebrows. “Tell Kane to set up the table and props.”

  WHEN HARRY’S INTESTINES give out on the metal table, I retch hard, projectile, some of it spraying out onto the set, caking Titus’ jeans. He swivels around, pulls his ski mask off. “Get him out,” he grunts, disgustedly, wiping the sick off his crotch area. A pair of hands drag me into the hallway but I can’t feel them. The sound of the bicycle chain ripping free echoes on repeat.

  I thrash around under the bed sheets, half dreaming, chest jackhammering. I see Harry’s face convulse, watch him slump over the surgical table. I hear Titus’s accent, Kane’s smile after he takes off the ski mask.

  I’m next.

  THE SLIGHT BULGE under the mattress. BlackBerry. Reach down, slide it out, grip the warm plastic. Throw the sheet off and step into the bathroom.

  When Billy was still out of it, this was a common ritual, one that failed each night I tried it. The phone’s juice is almost sapped. I power up and there’s a service bar, then another. The LOW BATTERY light flashes, illuminates the linoleum, the sink and mirror. I panic, stab ‘2’ on the speed dial. Two or three seconds and there’s a ring. Another. A third.

  “Hello?” The voice is familiar but hesitant. The line crackles with static. I stand on my tip-toes, plaster myself to the shower wall.

  “Listen,” I whisper, “it’s me, you need to –”

  “Who is this?” Lauren’s tense. There’s no way my name didn’t show up on her screen. Unless she deleted me from her contacts.

  “It’s Josh,” I start again, “they’re hiding somewhere in Virginia, maybe a hundred miles northwest of Richmond, you need to go to –”

  “Who’s in Virginia?”

  “Josh…please…”

  There’s a pause.

  “This isn’t funny, jerk-off,” she snaps, her voice fading in and out of the white noise.

  “Lauren please, please, you have to –”

  “Is this a fucking prank? Is this Davis?” The crackling intensifies.

  “No! Listen to me!” I’m screaming into the receiver. “I swear to god it’s Josh, I’m in the Blue Ridge Mountains, you need to call the police. Please Lauren, just do it.”

  “This is not happening right now. You’re twisted, you know that? I can’t –” She either hangs up or gets cut off. Either way, the service bars are gone and the battery’s gasping out its last sparks of electronic life. I wave my hand desperately around the corner of the bathroom until the phone dies for good. Knees crack onto the tiles.

  ON THE PLAYGROUND and it’s the early nineties. I’m shrunken, the scent of vinegary boy-smell in a turquoise Looney Tunes tee-shirt, the one where Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird look like straight-up thugs, the first dumbing down of hip-hop, the Vanilla Ice Syndrome. Billy and I are standing on the platform next to the tallest slide, giggling at a small plastic bucket that the janitor forgot about when he was cleaning the inside of a tire swing. Giggling because we’ve spent the last five minutes on the platform at the top of the slide, pissing and spitting in the bucket until we’ve succeeded in concocting the most vile substance we’d ever seen or smelled. I shudder. I ask Billy to stop, do we have to go through with it but there’s two pieces of skin-colored Velcro covering his mouth. He leers, wags his finger. I try to plead with him, no we can’t do this but now his mouth is sealed. The sky turns the same shade of turquoise as my shirt while Billy un-sticks his lips and yells something to this kid Walter Weinstein, minding his own business on a swing about ten yards from where we’re standing. He’s a dork: chubby with freckles and a curly orange mess of hair. How much shit everyone gives him: we make fun of him for his orthopedic shoes, for the fact that he doesn’t know where his father lives. I’m absorbing it all, his snotty tears, my shoe smashing into his gut the time he wouldn’t give me his last Double Stuff Oreo at lunch. Billy waves at Walter to come to the top of the slide. He creeps towards us, slow and timid because why would we ever ask him to hang out with us at recess, except it’s only us on the playground because there’s no school. The sky turns indigo. Billy shouts, loud enough for Walter to hear, the description of this horrific insect that we’ve just captured and put in the bucket. It oozes poisonous green pus out of its mouth, crawls around on at least a thousand hairy legs, has pincers the size of Swiss Army knives! Walter, if you want to see it, if you really want to see it, you’re going to have to climb the steps to the platform. Billy seals his mouth shut again so he won’t blow the surprise. Walter’s almost halfway up the steps when I slide the bucket over the edge and his fat smiling face gets blasted with our juice. His tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers completely soaked through. Later, on a bus that’s empty except for Billy and me, Billy un-Velcroes and explains that Walter’s mother had to come to take him home after lunch. We laugh our asses off the entire bus ride until it’s my stop and I’m alone. The sky is a deep orange. Instead of my mother waiting for me, there’s only Kane, his skin piss-colored, his eyes shining, h
olding Harry’s intestines in one hand and the dripping bicycle chain in the other. A sudden wind shoves me forward. Kane’s skin congeals into a flesh puddle on the grass and what’s underneath is a half-skeleton version of my father, smirking, pointing at me with one of his bone-fingers, still clutching Harry’s head in his other hand. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do, Mister,’ he gargles as the bus disappears and the sky explodes, the robots finally succeed, and everything is fire.

  “GIVE IT TO me.”

  Titus standing over the bed, his upturned palm a few inches away. I rub my eyes, sit up. The Canadians and men in ski masks are everywhere, crawling under what used to be Billy’s and Harry’s beds, scanning the walls with plastic devices that look like airport security guard wands. My clothes and bathroom accessories have been placed in a series of small but heavy-duty plastic bags piled next to the door.

  “Give you what?” I groan.

  “Your cell phone, for one.”

  I stare vacantly.

  “Don’t fuck around, son.”

  I pull the BlackBerry out of my cargo pocket, drop it into Titus’ meaty palm. He grins. His eyes sparkle above their wrinkled hoods. His hair uncharacteristically messy, a gray Jesus.

  “Who did you try to call?”

  “My friend.”

  “Does your friend have a name?”

  “Archer.”

  “And what did you and Archer talk about?”

  “Nothing,” I say, “too much static.”

  Titus puts his finger to his mouth. “Hmm,” he says. “I’m surprised you got service. Verizon, yeah?” He juggles the phone from palm to palm. “It’s my fault. I let you sit in here with that old moron for too long. Time to get you one hundred percent on-board, and give you a promotion to help ease any lingering, ah, doubts and concerns.” He pulls a ski mask from his back pocket, tosses it to me. I finger the eye holes. “You’ll be eating in the cafeteria with all of us, time to really get a feel for, like, what this is. If you’re still unsure – and I really hope you aren’t – I have some additional positive reinforcement.”