Nowhere (16 page)
He woke up, it could have been hours, it could have been days later. There was white blinding light, something like bars of light in equal distances across his vision. It could have been one of their ships. It was a large room, cold and white. It must be some kind of examination room, he hoped it wasn’t a dissection room, and it frightened him that he could hear someone moving, but he couldn’t see them.
He was having trouble with his equilibrium, but could sense that he must be laying down. He could feel his arms, and feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. So he figured they must have left his body intact. Good, it must not be a dissection table, he thought.
He was frightened by the fact that he didn’t feel his feet. He tried to wiggle his toes and didn’t get the impression from his mind that his toes were gone or anything, so he figured they were down there somewhere below his torso. He just couldn’t feel them or see them. For some reason he couldn’t raise his head either, so he couldn’t get a real clear picture what was happening.
He figured that he must be slowly coming out of some sort of paralysis caused by sedation. He rolled his eyes about in his head to try to gain some bearing on where he was. His eyes gained strength now and his vision began to focus. The bars of light now took on the shape of fluorescent bulbs in four foot fixtures across what must have been the ceiling.
He could hear air coming through a large steel vent between sets of lights. He could hear the slow dripping of some clear liquid that hung from a bag just above his head. A tube came off of the bag and went down towards his arm. He knew that it must be inserted through his hand or wrist at some point.
He could wiggle his fingers, and he thought that he could just barely feel his toes now. But he slowly realized that it wasn’t that his body was paralyzed as much as he now felt as though he was being restrained. He could feel straps across his forearms and thighs. He felt a thick leather strap going across his forehead.
He suddenly heard a chair rolling across the floor. Because of the strap across his head, he could only stare up at the lights on the ceiling, but he could tell that the rolling sound was coming from somewhere to his left.
“Is he conscious?” a voice suddenly said over an intercom.
“Uhhh…” The rolling came closer. “Yea, sleeping beauty is awake.”
“Are we ready to continue?” The intercom asked.
The rolling rolled back away from him, then he heard typing sounds on a keyboard.
“Give me maybe five minutes, and I’ll be ready again. I’m typing up the report from last night now.”
“Hello?” Richard asked, “Who’s there? Where is this place?”
There was no rolling, no response from anyone. No pause in the typing either.
“We’re coming down.” the intercom voice spoke again.
“Who’s there?!” Richard asked more determined now.
“Hang tight Buddy, they’re coming down. I’m sure they’ll answer a few of your questions for you. It’s not like you’ll remember any of it after your next round of shock.”
“What! No!!” Richard screamed fighting against the restraints. It was no use though. Large leather straps went across his legs and arms preventing him from moving anywhere.
From the right side of the room, he heard the sound of a sliding glass door opening, but he couldn’t lift his head to see who had walked in or out.
“He’s awake.” The rolling chair voice said. “Do you want me to get ready for another round?”
“No not yet.” the voice from the door said. Richard thought that it sounded like Hays’ voice, but he couldn’t be certain. “I need him to be lucid for awhile. I need to talk with him to see what he remembers first. I have to know if the one who sees is dead.”
“And if he doesn’t talk? If it’s the same as before?”
“Then Larson’s response will most likely be the same as before. Now get him down from there and into the other room.”
Richard was taken from whatever table he lay on and pulled from the room. He was allowed to walk himself, although it was the shuffling steps of someone feeble like of an old man at a nursing home. He had on a white robe, under which he only had on a pair of white boxer shorts. His hair was frazzled, his jawline over grown with stubble. One side of his jaw still bore the scabs from his injuries at the pharmacy.
They ushered him into another white room where a small white table and two chairs waited. They pulled out a chair for him and he sat without fighting them. One wall was made up entirely of black glass that Richard knew could only be the kind that allowed others to view the room from an adjacent room that was undoubtedly full of monitors and recording devices.
It was an interrogation room, and somewhere deep inside Richard knew that he had to steal himself for what was to come. Someone entered the room, but Richard didn’t want to look. Suddenly someone took hold of the chair across the table, slid it out and sat down.
“Let’s just start this out with the most important question Richard…” Hays’ voice said. Richard didn’t look, but could see out of the corner of his eye that it was in fact Hays. “Where is Steven, Richard?”
Richard didn’t answer.
“I don’t even know if you fully realize what you’ve done here Richard. This goes way beyond knocking over dog food at the supermarket or even breaking the rules at work and getting fired. You intentionally blew up a radio station and greatly endangered the lives of several people in the process. Not to mention your own life!”
“I didn’t… It was…”
“Don’t tell me it wasn’t you!” Hays yelled and banged his fist down on the desk. “It was you Richard! There’s no mistaking that it was you.”
Richard turned toward the doctor. For the first time, Richard noticed how sunken the Doctor’s eyes appeared. Anyone else might chalk it up to stress. Perhaps the stresses leading up to the holidays, perhaps a lack of sleep, after all, one of his patients just blew up a radio station. Things like that have got to impact your sleep at least just a bit.
Richard could tell now however, that there simply was more to it. There was more behind the sullenness of those eyes than a simple lack of sleep or work related stress.
“When did they get to you?” Richard asked suddenly.
“Excuse me?!” Doctor Hays asked. Richard could instantly tell that the man was both genuinely caught off guard and offended by the question. Hays withdrew his hand from the center of the table and moved further away from Richard. This would signify that he was either frightened by this new train of inquiry or he was trying to hide something.
“He’s essentially ruined your life Richard, you can’t allow him to control you. You can’t listen to him anymore.” Doctor Hays said. “We’re at the bottom here, we’ve hit rock bottom. We have to start from square one and try to rebuild the man you once were.”
Richard turned away and would not look at him.
“No more Steven, no more aliens, you have to take charge and take control of your life now.” From the corner of his eye, Richard thought he saw the Doctor’s face contorting into a monstrous alien form. He heard the tell tale sound of bubbling liquid. “Now where is Steven?”
“Steven… Steven is dead, I watched him drive into the radio station and explode. You don’t believe me, I know you think it was me, but I’m telling you it wasn’t, it was Steven.”
The doctor’s face seemed to solidify once more and Richard could hear his voice going back to normal as he spoke.
“Richard… Richard, you remember me, it’s just me, we tell each other things and you can talk to me remember. Dr. Larson called me up to see if you would talk to me today.” Doctor Hays’ voice pleaded innocently. “I drove all the way up here from town. Richard I need you to look me in the eyes. Richard, look at my face and realize that there is nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m not a creature, They… they haven’t gotten to me.”
Richard turned and saw that doctor’s face did appear human now. The dark circles were gone from his eyes. Then he turned away and sighed, he had to resist this deception.
“That’s ok, you don’t have to look at me anymore, I know you saw that I am who I say I am, and that’s all I need. You can just listen from here.” The doctor paused, perhaps still hoping that given the option, Richard would choose to turn and face him.
“Listen, they have good people working here. Good doctors, good human doctors that just want to help you. They need you to talk to them, open up to them on the same level that you and I have opened up to each other.” Hay’s continued. “Tell them about Steven, Richard, you know how we’ve talked about Steven in the past. They just want to know the same stuff that you and I have already discussed, can you do that for me?”
“I told you Steven is dead, what more is there to discuss?” Richard looked back in Hays’ direction.
“Hey, there you are…” Hays said, but Richard did not respond. He stared for almost ten seconds and then turned away only wanting to look upon Hays in the corner of his eye. This is where he could see the truth.
“You look tired Richard, have you not been sleeping well again?” Hays paused, but then continued when Richard again said nothing. “Listen, you remember how well we were doing back at the clinic? We almost had you sleeping normal and…”
“Normalized.” Richard said.
“That’s right Richard!” Hays said with a smile. But in the corner of his eye, Richard now saw the grinning, almost demonic face of an alien. Richard grimaced in fear. “That’s right, we almost had you normalized. If I remember right we had you sleeping quite well… you felt rested for the most part, almost healthy.”
He stopped, and Richard knew he wanted him to look. Richard knew that most likely he would only see the face of the doctor, but he was too afraid to even try, because of the creature he saw in his mind’s eye once more.
“You had a job even there for a good long while. A good job with benefits and your own place. Don’t you want to get back to that point Richard?”
He paused again. Richard could feel as the silence filled the air with tension. He could feel the Doctor’s patience dwindling. Suddenly the doctor snapped his fingers at Richard angrily trying to get him to turn his way. Richard didn’t turn though, he still saw the alien Hays.
“They just need you to talk about Steven, the one who talks to you about aliens. The one who sees the aliens.” Hays said in a gurgled version of his voice. “He’s been sending you on a wild goose chase, Richard… now he’s making you do dangerous things… Things that could get you hurt, or that could make you hurt innocent people, lots of innocent people.”
There was a moment of silence as the creature who was once Hays turned its head back and forth like a curious puppy in Richards peripheral vision.
“You don’t want that, Richard.” The creature said. “I know you don’t want that.”
Another minute of fearful silence. Richard closed his eyes for only a moment to blink and suddenly the creature Hays was at his side breathing over his shoulder with wheezing, clicking breaths.
“Steven… the one who sees the aliens, cannot be trusted. He’s not looking out for your safety.”
Then he saw from the side as the creature sat back down, there was once more the sound of moving water as the demon dissipated like fog and what was left was suddenly much more Hays like.
“Richard… There is no such thing as aliens…”
Richard turned toward Hays, who instantly smiled at even this amount of progress. The man looked almost normal again. Entirely human, but a very dark, sunken eyed version of himself as if he could flip alien at any moment.
“I can’t trust you either…” Richard said quietly but defiantly.
The left side of Hays’ lip flared into a sneer. The man shook as if he could barely hold back his eruption of anger. Then suddenly he flipped alien right in front of Richard’s eyes. Richard squealed in horror. He put his hands in front of his eyes and turned away sobbing. He couldn’t keep himself from hyperventilating.
“Why can’t you trust me?” The alien asked in a high pitched wheezing voice, the same puppy motion to its head as it looked upon Richard.
Richard could hear as snake like tentacles popped out of the back of its head, and saw them as they extended outward like a horrible flower blossoming. He knew what Steven had said, they would keep him alive as long as they couldn’t understand how or why he resisted them. If he showed the Hays alien that he was frightened, it may feel as though it had won and kill him on the spot. He took a deep breath and steadied himself.
“The lunch schedule…” Richard said. “You told me it was top secret, FOUO. It wasn’t, the cafeteria prints it out every week and posts it to the bulletin board.”
Hays slowly morphed back into human form. “I understand your frustration, Richard, but it was the unofficial version. It was the one on yellow paper. There was something special about it.”
“I don’t even eat there, you somehow tricked me into thinking it was important information, but it wasn’t.”
“You’re right Richard, I should not have lied to you. It was a lazy attempt at trying to fish out information about Steven. That’s really all we’re after here. I…we need to talk about Steven. We need to talk to him, can you make that happen you think Richard? Do you think you can get him to talk to us. Maybe right now?”
“First off…” Richard leaned forward and drew his voice to a whisper. The Hays alien leaned forward too, thinking that Richard had lowered his voice due to the sensitive nature of what he was about to say, “…The heck I would! Forget you, you alien scum. Betray Steven, are you serious? Plus Steven is dead, I’ve told you that. He drove himself into the tower of that radio station in a car loaded full of gasoline!”
The alien Hays nodded and frowned his bottom lip, clearly displeased with Richard’s answer. He raised a hand and signaled for someone else to come.
“So what’s there to talk about, you say?” Hays inquired. “Steven’s dead you say, so why keep pressing? It’s a good point you’re trying to make Richard, but then again, how do we no for sure? You see now that we’re on this pattern of distrust with each other, I don’t really know if I can believe what you say.”
Hays leaned back and appeared cocky almost, as two guards came forward and prepared to nab Richard.
“Especially since there was no body recovered from the car or anywhere near it. The police think you may have used a gas can or a bag of fertilizer to weigh down the accelerator. It makes it quite hard for me to believe that someone blew themselves up in that car now doesn’t it?”
“So I guess it’s a stalemate then?”
Hays bobbed his head as if to say ‘maybe, maybe not’.
“We’ll have to see. Dr. Larson may have other plans. Well, if that’s that, then I guess me and you are done here.” Hays seemed actually relieved to be saying those words and Richard thought maybe he might never see the man again. “Goodbye Richard.”
The two men then helped Richard to his feet and ushered him back out of the room.
“He doesn’t seem to know anything else.” He heard Hays say to someone as they led him away. “Maybe we’ve gotten lucky and the one he calls Steven really did die in that fire. At least it seems like his mind is secure in that notion.”
Hays’ voice faded from his hearing as the glass doors slid shut behind him. The two men now led him down a dark hallway.
They got all the way into the room with the table and the straps before Richard gained his senses and tried to resist. He pulled against them, but was in no shape to truly fight. Suddenly a third man came up and grabbed him around the legs. They lifted him up and put him on the table.
“Noooo!!!” Richard yelled, but there was no stopping them. They heaved him to the table and strapped him back down.
One of them grabbed his head and steadied it between the two metal clamps. He could feel them screwing them down onto his temples.
“You can’t do this! I’m telling the truth!” Richard yelled.
Suddenly Doctor Larson appeared over him.
“Doctor Hays may be done with you, but I figure as long as we have you here, we might as well see what all you know. I have to know everything Richard. You are truly a curiosity to me and I need to know”
Richard heard the flip of a switch and the electronic charge of a machine. He knew all too well what would come next.
“He’s dead!!!” Richard yelled, but the switch had already been flipped. “Ahhhhhhh!!!”