by Jeremy Bates
“Why don’t you want me to come in?” he asked her.
“I don’t want to leave!” Her voice was raspy, frightened yet excited, like a gasper’s voice during erotic asphyxiation.
“You don’t want to leave the bathroom, or the sleep laboratory?”
“The sleep lab!”
“Don’t worry about that, Sharon. I have no intention of making you leave the sleep laboratory. Why would I do that?”
“I’ve been bad.”
“What have you done?”
Giggling.
“Sharon?”
Mumbling, as though she were talking to someone.
“I don’t care what you’ve done, Sharon,” he said. “But I’m coming in whether you like it or not. I suggest moving away from the door.”
He didn’t hear her move.
He threw his shoulder into the door.
It barely budged.
“Sharon?”
Laughter now, high-pitched and impetuous.
“All right then,” Dr. Wallis said. “You’ve left me no choice. I’m going to have to turn off the gas.”
“No!” she screeched.
“Then let me in.”
Sobbing—or was it more laughter?
This was accompanied by lethargic, laborious movement.
He waited until he heard nothing more, then tried the door again.
It swung inward easily.
Dr. Wallis had been expecting a macabre scene, but what he found defied anything he had imagined.
Blood covered the floor, perhaps an inch-deep where it had pooled in the recess around the drain, which was plugged with…chunks of flesh. Sharon sat slumped against the toilet, her elbows hooked over the seat, keeping her upright. She resembled a cross between a woman who’d had five too many tequila shots and one who’d survived—barely—a rabid wild animal attack.
“My Lord, Sharon,” Wallis breathed, fighting to keep the burrito down.
The tension bandages that had been around Sharon’s head and stomach now lay on the floor in the spilled blood, which had turned them bright crimson. The incision across her abdomen was much larger than before, revealing glistening white hints of her bottom ribs. Her gastrointestinal tract had spilled (or been pulled) onto her lap, a messy pile of wormy spaghetti. Her small intestine, Wallis noted in horror, was digesting food before his eyes, muscles contracting and fluids flowing behind the thin pink membrane. Even in the enormity of the moment, he wondered how this could be possible when she had not eaten in days—until he realized what she was digesting must be her own flesh.
“Hi, doc,” Sharon said, her brazenly glowing eyes meeting his, and her mouth creeping into a smile.
“What have you done to yourself?”
“I’m letting it out.”
“Letting what out?”
Sharon commenced that godawful giggling—only it was more harrowing than before because the sweetness had left it, leaving behind only a bitter cackle. Her eyes remained locked on his, impossibly bright and alert. Then she coughed, a fine red mist spraying the air before her. A sustained round of coughing followed, sending thick rivulets of blood trickling over her lower lip and down her chin and neck.
Yet her health was no longer of concern to Dr. Wallis. His inner scientist, detached and clinical and craving answers, had taken over. “What is it, Sharon?” he demanded. “What’s inside you?”
The smile returned. “I think you know, doc.”
He thought he did too, and he cursed himself for not bringing the EEG machine with him. He needed to see inside her head. He needed evidence of what was inside her head.
“Guru!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Bring the EEG in here! Now!”
“Want me to show you, doc?” Sharon asked.
“What?” Wallis snapped, returning his attention to her.
“Want me to show you what’s inside me?”
“No, don’t! Just wait... Just wait, goddammit!”
Dr. Wallis heard the door to the sleep laboratory open and then the clatter of the cart carrying the EEG equipment.
“Look, doc. Look.”
“Guru! Hurry!”
Sharon reached a hand into the cavity in her gut that had once held her gastrointestinal tract. Screaming—though in what sounded as much ecstasy as pain—she shoved it upward and beneath her ribcage.
“Sharon, no!” Wallis yelled, lurching forward to stop her. His foot slipped in the pool of blood and he fell to the floor. His head cracked against the tiles. A darkness washed over him in pounding waves, though he fought to remain conscious.
Nevertheless, he could do little more than watch in slow-motion despair as Sharon’s wrist and forearm followed her hand deeper into her innards with the sloppy slurping of two virgins kissing.
All at once her body stiffened. Spasmed. She yanked her arm out of her stomach triumphantly.
Dr. Wallis had managed to prop himself up on an elbow, though he knew he could no longer stave off the darkness.
The last thing he saw before passing out was Sharon holding her still-beating heart before her in a clawed fist.
◆◆◆
Dr. Wallis’ phone, which the professor had left on the table in the observation room, was ringing. Guru ignored it. He was frozen in terror as he listened to what was happening at the far end of the sleep laboratory. He could only see the broad backside of Dr. Wallis as he stood inside the bathroom door, but he could hear everything clearly.
What have you done to yourself?
I’m letting it out.
Letting what out?
Guru’s blood went cold at Sharon’s words, because he knew what she wanted to let out, even if he couldn’t fully accept the reality of the possibility.
This cannot be happening, he thought. Demons do not exist—
“Guru!” Dr. Wallis’ voice blasted through the intercom. “Bring the EEG in here! Now!”
Guru raced to the corner, grabbed the metal cart with one hand while opening the door to the sleep laboratory with the other. He backpedaled through it, dragging the cart behind him.
“Guru!” Dr. Wallis shouted. “Hurry!”
Guru swung the cart around in a circle, so it was now in front of him. He pushed it toward the bathroom as fast as he could.
Just as he reached the door, Dr. Wallis slipped in blood coating the floor and went down hard.
“Professor!” Guru said, leaving the cart and rushing to his aid.
Yet when he saw Sharon slumped next to the toilet, sliced open and holding her heart in her hand, he hit an invisible wall. He watched as she convulsed a final time, her heart sliding from her blood-greased hand and dropping to the floor with a wet, fat sound.
Wheezing on air that was suddenly sauna-dry, Guru tore his eyes away from the ghastly corpse and knelt next to Dr. Wallis. With trembling fingers, he checked the professor’s pulse and was immensely relieved to find it beating fast and strong.
His first thought: Call an ambulance.
His second thought: Call the police.
He dashed back to the observation room, grabbed his phone from his bag, was about to dial 9-1-1—but hesitated.
There was no emergency.
Sharon was dead. No paramedic could bring her back to life. Dr. Wallis had suffered a bump to the head but was breathing. He’d come around soon—and be furious with Guru if he panicked now and called for help.
He needed to calm down and think.
Stuffing his phone in his pocket, Guru went to the adjacent room and brought Dr. Wallis’ air mattress to the antechamber. Then he reentered the sleep laboratory. Chad was sitting on the floor by the TV, his back to the room. How he could remain indifferent to all that was happening, Guru couldn’t fathom, but it didn’t matter right then.
He went to the bathroom. Keeping his eyes averted from Sharon’s body, and careful not to step in the puddle of crimson-black blood, he gripped the professor’s wrists and dragged him back to the antechamber, a streak of red marking their progress
.
Breathing heavily—Dr. Wallis had been much heavier than Guru would have imagined—he hooked his hands beneath the professor’s body and rolled him up and onto the air mattress.
Guru wobbled over to the chair and dropped down into it, the events of the last few minutes finally sinking in.
Sharon was dead by her own hand, and he had defiled the suicide scene.
Was this a crime?
He hadn’t called 9-1-1.
Was this a crime too—?
Guru heard approaching footsteps in the hallway. The police! He leapt to his feet, ready to flee, but there was nowhere to go. Trapped! He spun toward the door, bracing for a SWAT team to bust through it, assault rifles locked and loaded—
“Hello?” someone said at the same time a knock sounded.
A moment later the door opened and a pale-skinned woman with short black hair and dark eyes peeked into the room.
Guru swallowed. “Who—who are you?” he managed.
“I’m Brook. Roy’s friend. You must be—” Her eyes nearly doubled in size when she saw Dr. Wallis, covered in blood, sprawled atop the air mattress. “Roy!”
◆◆◆
When Dr. Roy Wallis returned to the world of the living, he found himself lying on his back on his air mattress in the observation room. He sat up, groaning as an icy needle poked his brain.
“Professor!” Guru exclaimed, appearing next to him. “He’s awake! Ma’am, he’s awake!”
Ma’am?
Dr. Wallis sensed movement from the other half of the antechamber, and a moment later Brook was crouching next to the air mattress, her face tight with concern, her eyes red and wet, as if she’d been crying.
“Roy,” she said, taking his hand gently in hers. “Don’t move too much. You have an awful gash on your head.”
He pulled his hand free and touched the left side of his head, discovering a large Band-Aid taped to his temple. He winced as the icy needle poked a little deeper.
“What…?” He was about to ask what happened, but the gruesome images of Sharon’s self-mutilation came flooding back in vivid glory. “What are you doing here, Brook?” he asked instead.
“I tried calling you a little while ago,” she said, “and again on my way over here, but you didn’t answer your phone. I, well, I thought you would be hungry, and I just wanted to bring you some food!” A sob escaped her then, and she turned away while she collected herself.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “Take a deep breath—”
“It’s not okay!” she said. “Your assistant told me she’s dead! The girl working for you! That’s her blood on you! She’s in that room back there, and she’s dead!”
Dr. Wallis glared at Guru, wondering why he couldn’t have kept his fucking mouth shut. Nevertheless, he realized the Indian would have been hard-pressed to explain why Wallis looked as though he had just spent the evening partying with Jeffrey Dahmer.
Buying himself time to wheel out a plausible explanation for Sharon’s death (telling Brook the girl had torn her beating heart from her chest was simply not an option), he said, “His name’s Guru, and—”
“Why’s she dead, Roy? How did she die? What in God’s name is going on here?”
“She committed suicide,” he told her.
“But all that blood.”
“She slit her wrists.” It was the best he could come up with. “I slipped in the blood when I was trying to help her.”
“Why did she—”
Wallis cut her off. “I’d like to change,” he said. “I’ll explain everything after that.”
Brook rubbed her eyes. “I’ll go get some clean clothes from your place—”
“No,” he said, not wanting her to leave his sight in the event she did something foolish like call the police. “One of Chad’s tracksuits should fit me.”
Despite protests from both Guru and Brook, Wallis lumbered to his feet. A spell of dizziness almost made him fall backward onto his ass, but it passed after a few disorienting seconds. He entered the sleep laboratory, feeling more surefooted with each step. Chad, he noticed immediately, sat facing the same corner as before. He had pulled the sweatshirt’s hood up over his head, and with his slumped shoulders, he resembled a beggar on a street corner unable to face the world.
He was no threat. Not right then.
At the wardrobe, Wallis withdrew a pair of boxers, sweatpants, and a sweatshirt. He stripped off his bloodied clothes and glanced momentarily at the bathroom. He would have liked a shower, but he wasn’t going to start messing around moving Sharon’s body with Brook in the next room. He pulled on the fresh clothes and returned to the antechamber, feeling slightly better.
Guru was pacing anxiously. Brook stood by the door, her arms folded across her chest, staring at the floor.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he told her.
She looked up. “What happened to that girl, Roy? Why did she kill herself?”
“She was having hallucinations. She—”
“It was that gas, wasn’t it? Your assistant told me—”
“His name’s Guru.”
“Guru told me the gas made them go crazy. So why, Roy? Why didn’t you stop this experiment if you knew what was happening to them, if you knew—”
“I didn’t know,” he snapped. He closed his eyes for a moment against the flare-up of pain in his head. “I didn’t know she was going to kill herself,” he added more reasonably, despite the statement being a bold-faced lie. “She was hallucinating, yes, but that’s to be expected in severe cases of sleep debt. It’s been well documented.”
“And that?” Brook said, waving her hand at the feces-splattered viewing window. “Was that to be expected? That’s just…sick. And the young man in there, is he hallucinating too? Is he going to kill himself too? Because he’s just sitting in the corner staring at the wall. That’s not normal, Roy!”
“Of course it’s atypical behavior. He’s gone fourteen days without sleep, Brook. Fourteen days. We’re in uncharted territory here. Regardless, from this moment onward, I’m going to keep an eye on his every waking minute to make sure he doesn’t…do anything rash.”
“You’re continuing the experiment?” she said, aghast.
“It’s nearly over. Just another day or so and—”
She was shaking her head. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this!”
“Hearing what, Brook?” Dr. Wallis asked calmly, though her melodramatics were beginning to piss him off.
“That girl is dead, Roy! Your experiment killed her! We’ve got to call the police.”
Wallis clenched his jaw. “We will call the police, Brook,” he said. “After the experiment has concluded. One more day—”
“What’s so important about this experiment, Roy?” she demanded. “What’s so important about it that it’s obscured your values and decency?”
Dr. Wallis considered explaining everything in detail to her as he had to Guru. But he found he couldn’t be bothered. Besides, Brook wasn’t an intellectual like Guru. She wouldn’t appreciate the magnitude of his revelation. She wouldn’t be able to get her pedestrian mind around the fact that no great progress was made without sacrifice. That the lives of one, two, a dozen individuals meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Across the globe thousands of people were dying every hour due to old age, disease, accidents, and plain old stupidity. So who gave a shit if one or two more joined them? One or two more dying not in vain but in the name of knowledge—knowledge that would change the world forever? They should be honored to serve humanity so, and anybody who could not understand this was, as far as Wallis was concerned, a simpleton who had no purpose existing themselves.
He tried a smile. “One more day, Brook,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking. One more—”
She threw her hands in the air. “You’re crazy, Roy! This experiment has made you crazy too! Those aren’t lab rats in there! They’re people.”
“You have two options, Brook,” he said in a perfect
ly reasonable tone to contrast her hysterics. “You can stay here and calm down while I check on Chad and make sure he’s all right, or you can leave and call the police and royally fuck everything up.”
Brook glared at him for a very long moment, her dark eyes smoldering even as her face struggled for aplomb. Then she opened the door to leave.
“Aw, fuck, Brook,” Wallis mumbled under his breath, sincerely wishing she hadn’t called his bluff. As she stepped into the hallway, he snagged her by the shoulder and pulled her back into the antechamber.
She whirled in surprise. “Let go of—”
Dr. Wallis drove his fist into her jaw.
◆◆◆
“Professor!” Guru cried.
Dr. Wallis looked at him. “I couldn’t let her go to the police, buddy,” he said. “You know that.”
Guru clapped his hands against the sides of his bald head in an absurd imitation of the figure in Munch’s The Scream. “This is too much for me. Too much.”
Dr. Wallis stepped over Brook’s body and gripped Guru by his forearms and shook him hard. “You know how important this is, Guru! You know what’s on the line here! Don’t wimp out, man!”
“I know, but…” He tore his arms free and backed away. “We will go to prison.”
“No, we won’t,” Wallis said, encouraged that his assistant was thinking in terms of the practical rather than the ethical, because the practical, at least, could be appealed to with reason. “Look,” he added. “I just need to hook Chad up to the EEG machine. After I get the evidence I need…” He shrugged. “That’s it. We won’t need him anymore. Not that he’s going to last much longer. He's going to take his life just as Sharon did. So how are we culpable? We didn’t force their hands. They did what they did to themselves.”
“But we allowed it, professor.”
“Bah! No one will know that. Just yesterday, did you believe they were suicidal?”
Guru frowned. “They were experiencing hallucinations and—”
“Yes, yes, but did you think they were suicidal?”
“No,” he said simply.
“No,” Wallis repeated. “Their final decline, their descent into madness, happened quickly. Literally overnight. So we simply…fudge some of the facts.”
