Chapter 12 "Angel"
Thursday?
"Angel"
I wake from the beauty of sleep, to my arms tied at my sides. I can't move, and the room looks like some dimly lit operating room.
Craning my head I see a mobile cart next to me with painful looking items. My eyes can't hold the discomfort hidden.
A propane torch. A peering knife. A white towel. Sanitizer wipes all setting on a metal rolling cart.
Cold sweat and that light headed feeling makes me rest my head. Overhead, a circular white light becomes blinding.
White everywhere. I close my eyes but it's blinding behind closed lids. So blinding it hurts, and I pull against my restraints. My whole body sore, rips and tears of pain shoot threw me. The inability causes my anger to come out.
I pull and yank in every direction, gritting my teeth I yell and kick. Against metal I lose, yet resist giving up. The struggle causes my body to hurt, cramping starts.
In vain I continue, pulling wherever I can, unable to gain an inch.
My will breaks and I stop, finally resting. I know I'm fucked. The light drops back down.
From out of view, I hear a metal door unlatch and swing open with a heavy creak.
"You can't afford some WD-40?" I call out without looking up. "What kind of uprising is this?"
Before I see them, I hear their heels clicking on the concrete coming past my feet. I look down, and drop my head back to the metal.
Two sexy nurses, wearing surgical masks eyeing me as they walk past. The blonde, and now a red head. Another wig.
"Fuck me." I can only whisper.
"Good morning Mr. Writer, did we have a good sleep?" One asks.
I pinch my lips shut.
"That's too bad. Now before surgery, we'll have to ask you some questions, ok?" The other continues.
More questions. Don't give them anything.
"You have no family; your mother doesn't remember you. Your father died when you were young. How old were you?"
Thirteen, I think to myself. I look over to the blonde in the red wig. She stares down at me from behind her surgical mask. Her uniform white and red made of rubber. The same colors run up her arms under fishnet sleeves, down to gloved hands. I see no skin, other than her eyes.
Her finger slowly strokes up my leg, over my boxers, across my chest.
Look to the light, don't respond.
"Are you there now?" The brunette asks. "You were waiting for him after practice, weren't you?"
I can't help but remember it. I'm there all over again. Exhausted and uncomfortable in my own skin, I remember the sour smell of sweat from my baseball cap. The humid, hot Iowa summer heat. My cleats caked in mud.
My frail arms could barely carry my books and pads, but I drug them to the parking lot. I watched as everyone slowly disappeared into their families vehicles. I said "no, thank you" to countless offers.
And then I'm alone in a vast parking lot. With that sun bearing down.
No phones. No parents for miles. No clue what's happening. Alone. I sat for hours. No one remembering me. Me, too exhausted to make a move. It's there my fear of being alone is born.
"How long did you wait? Alone." The blonde pries, snapping me back to reality.
"How scared were you, little boy?" The brunette asks right in my ear.
I lived seven miles from my school, and after hours of panic, frustration, I hid my books and began the long and arduous walk home. My legs were jello, and my ankles, had no strength to allow me to walk normal. Clopping my feet like a clydesdale.
"I bet your little body wasn't ready, but you did it anyway. Didn't you? Thirteen years old and you walked five miles in 100 degree heat."
"Seven." I say forgetting, I'm giving them the silent treatment.
Her eyes light up, "You are there!"
I remember at 7th and Fillmore, I had to hide under a tree to stop myself from passing out. Cars passing, watching a little boy struggle without stopping.
"And no one would stop to help you, did they? Did you see any of your classmates that day?"
No, I think.
With my eyes closed, I feel one gently push my head to the side.
"No!" I resist, opening my eyes to see the brunette bringing a gas mask to my face. "No-No-No!"
Protesting gets me nowhere as it's strapped over my nose and mouth.
"Ssshh." She blankly states, disappearing out of view.
I look over to the blonde. She stands looking down at me, a clipboard in between us. She writes as she continues, "No one was there when you got home. An empty house, where are mom and dad?"
"Hey, I got an idea" I scream, "Let's bring up your worst memories! Let's dissect you two crazy fucks!" I stare into her abyss with no fear of what comes next.
She stands silent, no response. Those eyes boring holes into me.
It's then I hear a faint hissing, slowly getting louder. Then a funny, sweet smell. All I can do is look up into her eyes and wait. I try to hold my breath, but she nonchalantly pushes the air out of my stomach, until I'm forced to exhale.
I wait, thinking I'll get sleepy, but instead, my head rushes with a flushed feeling. Soon, all is okay. I'm not scared anymore, and somehow I feel love for my captors. An understanding even.
My eyes holding onto hers. Imagining what she looks like. What her life is filled with. Her schedule.
They are just cogs in the bigger machine. Slaves like me, but not.
Then all my anger subsides, and my...everything, changes. I want to know them. Understand them. Know the actual person behind their mission. These agents. Their pasts, like they know mine. They're true feelings on social justice, the truth, the conspiracies. All the missions they've been on. Their backgrounds. First loves. Where they grew up.
I'm enamored by them.
"There we go. Are we not so angry now?" The brunette comes back into view. A hand resting on my knee, the other combing my hair with her fingers.
I slowly shake my head. My eyes looking over them lovingly.
"I love nitrous." I say into the mask
"How did you find out?" The blonde asks. "Your dad had died." She leans in close to my face; her right finger slowly stroking my head, then comes under my chin.
Helpless by those eyes, I weakly start, "Phone...uncle Mike, called." Somehow I'm saying this, even when I don't want to. "He didn't...didn't mean to. Someone was supposed to...to get me."
"Did someone come get you? Take you to, see him?"
"No." I say without emotion. "I just...sat alone in the quiet house...I just...didn't know...what I was supposed to do...I didn't...understand...so I just...lost myself...in my mind...tried to...hide."
Hearing my own words, it opens me up, exposing my flaws. Realizing for the first time, I've used smoke and mirrors to distract myself from my own truth.
"That's what you do, isn't it?" The brunette. "Hide away in there when life hurts you." She taps my forehead.
The blonde continues, "Always searching, picking others apart, not fixing yourself, while trying to fix the world for everyone else."
Truth. It hits, that I am no better than the ones I seek to expose. I've lied to myself my whole life. Driven myself my adult life for some cause, and in the end, that drive pushed down my truth. My inability to cope with real loss, real life. To evolve.
"You've been lying to yourself, while trying to tell the world the sky is falling." She casts down on me. Her eyes show sympathy for once.
"A poor misguided soul that needs us...to fix him." The brunette chimes.
They make eye contact, then the brunette disappears. The hissing stops and my mask is removed. I feel drool coming out of my mouth, and try to wipe away with my restrained shoulder.
I'm cut off as the blonde wipes it away with her rubber finger. She pushes my head to the side gently, and I don't resist.
I can watch the brunette facing the other way. Seeing her entire outfit for the first time.
Red heels, light white hose all the way up her legs disappearing into the white and red nurse dress. Her arms covered in white and red fishnet sleeves. White gloved hands. Her face covered with the surgical mask. Head adorned with a nurse cap. Every inch of her body is covered. Except around her eyes.
I watch as she clicks something on a laptop, then I hear familiar music. I know this song.
"Angel." I say to myself.
She turns and notices my studying eyes. Her head tilts slightly, and her hips start to slowly sway and pop with the beat of the song. Her eyes hypnotizing me, as she continues dancing, slowly coming my way.
I blink and blink as I begin seeing visuals. I think World War 2 candy stripers, burlesque show girls.
From over my shoulder I hear the torch hiss to life, and the familiar pop of a flame.
She slowly dances towards me, the song now louder in the room. Her eyes never leave mine. She gets close, and I'm hypnotized by her stare. The song. Wanting to avoid whatever pain that's coming.
"This will only hurt for a little bit." I think I hear.
My neck is wetted, and wiped. The brunette comes closer, reaching out she grabs my head with both hands gently. Her eyes boring holes into my conscious. She continues to dance slowly, almost as if it's normal.
Her face gets close to mine, and she whispers, "I'm right here. Don't go in there." Her hands tighten down.
I don't register what she says till extreme burning comes from behind my left ear. Pain everywhere.
I slightly jerk, and she holds my head tight in her arms. Pain-pain-pain. Her firearms flexed, her eyes inches from mine. She's not shying away or blinking as I try to block it out.
Think: ice hockey. What is icing? Ice melting, catching on fire. Wanting to escape. To numb this burning into my flesh.
I try and jerk, I see her arms flex, holding me with everything.
"No. Stay with me." She whispers as my eyes begin to water.
The smell of burning flesh. The sound of sizzling meat. I imagine bacon frying in a pan.
"No! Stay here!" Her eyes almost pleading.
In that moment something hits me, pain is just mental. This I can overcome. And I stop resisting.
My right eye waters over, spilling down the side of my cheek. Pain stretches down my neck, shoulder. I want to piss. It spills over my entirety and I can't escape it, like the tingles of an appendage falling asleep. So quit trying.
"Stay right here with me...it's almost over." Her eyes seem to be proud, "Good, good boy!...Its...over!"
The pain stays, but the searing is gone. My body rushes endorphins, adrenaline. Shock or orgasm. My body exhausted. I breathe hard, covered in sweat. I want a smoke.
I hear the blonde opening something, then feel a gel on my now aching neck. Then a bandage.
"For the first time since your father died, you didn't run to escape your pain." The brunette states, wiping sweat from my head. "You took it, accepted it...you will remember this because it will make you stronger...you will accept your circumstances, and move on...This life is temporary, pain, whether it's physical or mental, cannot, will not control your destiny."
"You say that...with mine in your hands." I finally croak out.
She doesn't respond, slightly taken by my words.
"We don't control your destiny." The blonde states out of sight, "We're here to distract you."
"To stop me?" I say looking up, "Silence me! Suicide me!"
"No." She responds, not looking at me, "What are your readers going to do...your outgunned, outplayed, and outclassed. By the time we release you back into the wild, it will be too late...Soon more of you, "truthers" will be weeded out or face smear campaigns...The future doesn't look too bright for the truth."
Her eyes meet mine; she registers some sort of sympathy for either truthers or humankind. Either or, I'm not sure.
"Then, what is this?...Blackmail?"
The both smile under their masks.
The brunette leans in, "Do you see any cameras?...You're here because your work, your treatment of women throughout your life proves you're not a threat."
"A threat?...To what?" I ask, not wanting the truth for once.
"You already know, silly...our uprising."
It's true! Her words finally confirming my worst fears. I see joy in her eyes with those words.
"Oh, look at his face!...He wanted to be wrong!"
Validity holds no water in my situation. The truth can come out, but if nine out of ten people are living with their beliefs rooted in the system, the very essence of what's controlling the masses, the narrative, then you will be easily targeted. Easily uprooted and disposed of, like a weed. If the masses don't want to believe, no matter what, it's just a conspiracy theory.
They look to each other, sharing a laugh.
"What did you do to me!?" I demand of the blonde, under her wig, layers of makeup. This plastic fembot.
Her eyes glaze over, and she looks away without response.
"You brand me! Make me a target! What, you think you can shame me into silence!?"
The brunette looks me in the eyes and matter of factly states, "Sweetie, when we're done with you, your whole world will be upside down...you won't care about exposing us...That stubborn will of yours, will be broken...I promise you that."
We hold eye contact for a moment, before she reaches over and pinches my nose.
"Boop!"
She disappears then returns with another gas mask, and slips it on without effort.
"Come on!" I protest.
I hear another round of hissing, and she returns standing next to me. Watching me eagerly.
"What now?"
"Now, you sleep."
My eyes register before my body can protest.
"No! Come on, you're leaving me out there again!?"
"You were a good boy...so you will be rewarded." She states.
I grab her wrist, "Don't...leave...leave me...out...out there."
My mind starts to swim, but I hold my breath, trying to snap out of it. I feel her hand take mine in hers. My resisting pauses. I blink, and blink, trying to stay focused. Trying to, fight.
I see her remove her mask, but her face is darkened by the bright light above. My eyes are heavy, and I feel them close. I hear the sweetest, "Night-night" before all goes black.