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and more:
“Yes, Mr. Suvarta. He owns Iron Crutch. If you’ll follow me, please.” He motioned for Ardal to follow to a large wooden door on the opposite end of the room. The man opened the door and motioned for Ardal to enter.
In the room was a man at a desk, various chairs and plants and items on the desk, but no windows. Ardal was hoping there would be windows.
“Mr. Ira, welcome!” The man at the desk said. “I’m Akito Suvarta. You can call me Akito.” He stood up and offered his hand. Ardal blankly shook it as he looked around the room. “Have a seat. I’m sure you could use a good sit after wandering through those rooms for 2 days.” Ardal sat and glanced over the items on Akito’s desk; a few manila folders, a wire cup full of pens, a small bowl of matchbooks, an intercom, and a little Buddha statue. “Mr. Ira, I’m sure you don’t want to prolong your stay here any longer than you have to, and to be honest, I’m a busy man, so let’s just get right down to it. I’d like to introduce you to someone.” He pushed the button on the intercom and spoke into it, “Send her in, please.” and patiently waited.
Into the room walked a woman looking to be in her early 30’s, and pregnant.
“Mr. Ira, this is Bec. She’s from…South Dakota I think. One of those states over there. We’ve taken her from her crappy one-room apartment and a future of unemployed single-motherhood, and are giving her the best medical care possible, a large salary, and anything else, within reason, that she wants or needs. We’re doing this up until her baby is born. The second the umbilical cord is cut, we are going to murder her baby. Very violently, very messily. And we’re going to see to it that she watches the whole thing.”
Wide-eyed, Ardal looked back at Bec, who was staring down at the floor, her hands over her stomach. Ardal looked back at Akito. “Why?!”
“Why? Why, what? Why is she going along with it? Because if she decides not to, then we’ll cut off all medical and financial support we’ve been giving her and stick her down in those rooms. And, unlike you, she won’t be leaving. She can fend for herself, and when the time comes, have the baby herself, down there, alone. Why are we doing it? Well, why do any of this?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m asking, why the hell are you doing any of this?”
“It’s a long explanation. But, you have time for it I suppose. And I brought you here to explain it to you anyways. Mr. Ira, are you familiar with any of the Buddhist principles? No? Well, they have this ideal of balance. I believe the Buddha himself said, ‘evil must exist, for good to prove its purity above it.’ I think that’s what’s missing in the world today. Balance. It seems as though everybody has this Judeo-Christian ideal of good triumphing over evil, light against darkness, all that. But, really, if there’s no evil, there’s no balance. Everything is in disarray. The entire spectrum of human existence is thrown off. That’s where we at the Iron Crutch corp. come in. We maintain balance.
“Look at the balance ideal for a moment. Evil and good must both coexist in equal measures. Even ends of the spectrum. Well, every spectrum has to polar opposite ends. Someone has to be the best out of everybody. The absolute peak example of the good of humanity. And someone has to be the worst. I have no problem with it being me. I have no problem with it, Mr. Ira, because I can see the big picture. I know that as horrible as these things are, that I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing what’s best, what has to be done.”
Ardal sat in stunned silence. He stared wide-eyed at Akito for what seemed like ages. When he finally formulated words, he spoke up. “You…you’re fucking crazy.”
“Every great religious leader was told the exact same thing. But, regardless of my sanity, or lack thereof, we both have things we have to get to. So, if you will enter the door on your right, you’ll find your way back down to the rooms. Good day, Mr. Ira.”
The door was wooden, but framed in blue masking tape. Ardal almost chuckled to himself at the crudity of it given the posh surroundings, but he was still in angered shock at what Akito had told him. He wouldn’t have gone through the door, but he wanted out of the office, and doubted he would be allowed to leave any other way.
I think I’ve been here five days so far. Akito said I had been here two days when I was in his office, which means I’ve been wandering around in this part of the building for three days. It seems like longer. The door in his office led to a steep, narrow stair well that took forever to get through. Not only that, it got dimmer and darker as I went down. My flashlight ran out of batteries by the time I finished it. I’m keeping it around anyways.
That I know of, I haven’t seen a red room since I left Akito’s office. The room I’m in now could be red and I’d never know it. It’s cavernous and pitch-black. The last door I went through was blue, so I assume that the room is safe. I hope so, since I’m not wearing my mask.
I don’t know why I’m writing this anyways. It’s not like anybody’s going to ever read it.
Ardal tore a blank page out of his notebook and threw it on the fire. He’d taken some match books out of Akito’s office and had been using the fire for light. He took out another MRE and started eating. For what he guessed was the first day, he tried to measure how far he’d gone in the room, but lost track after he stumbled over something on the floor. He didn’t even want to guess what it was.
The entire time he was in the room, he heard noises and felt as though he was being watched. He assumed Akito had cameras in the room, though he couldn’t imagine that they could see anything.
He finished eating his MRE and started walking. He thought about stamping out the fire, but decided against it. He could use it as a sight marker for as long as it was visible. Besides, he wasn’t much worried about burning the building down. He walked along, listening to the sound of his footsteps echoing off of walls that were who knows how far away. He knew of some people that could tell distance from echoes. He was not one of them. This fact made its self all too apparent when Ardal walked face-first into a wall. In disbelief, he felt around the wall before letting out a cry of joy. He felt along for a door, but felt none. He kept his hand on the wall and ran left as fast as he could, running his fingertips along the wall, feeling for a door.
He tripped again and fell flat on his face. He quickly felt back for the wall, but couldn’t feel it. He panicked and felt around frantically, but couldn’t find the wall. He ran around yelling out, and fell again. This time, he fell because he had inadvertently found stairs, and he kept falling. As he fell, Ardal’s surroundings got brighter and brighter. He finally braced himself from falling any further, and sat on the stairs, holding his hurt arm and knee. He looked behind him, grabbed his bag, and limped down the rest of the stairs, until he got to a white door.
He put his mask on and walked through. The room was about as big as a walk-in closet, and was adorned by a red door on the opposite end. Most of him was still hesitant to go into the red rooms, but part of him was just eager to see living things. He walked through, and saw that the room was divided into two. Half of the room he could enter and walk through, but the other half was blocked off with Plexiglas. He glanced into the sectioned off room and turned away immediately. In the brief second he saw in the room, he couldn’t make out exactly what was going on. He saw several dogs, at least half a dozen children looking to be hooked up to a machine, and his imagination filled in the blanks.
The view in the room he was in was no better. Roughly two dozen people, some children, some older. They were crawling along the floor, clawing at each other, grinding against one another, screaming and yelling out. Most of them had limbs that looked like they were rotting or had already rotted. One person, Ardal couldn’t tell the age or gender, was crawling along the floor using its shoulder, for its one arm was completely black.
It was all too much at once. In one quick heave, Ardal ruined the inside of his mask. Without thinking, he took it off to wipe the vomit away from his mouth. The second it was off his face, he went dizzy. He could feel his eyes bulge and water; he could feel the blood rushing out of his head, himself swelling, falling onto the floor, shaking violently. The person that had been crawling towards him climbed on top of him. It pawed at him, smeared its face against his, bit at him. He shoved it off and grabbed his flashlight. He immediately started beating the person’s head in with the butt of the flashlight, hearing the thick, wet, crunching and thudding sounds and not caring. He only stopped when he felt and heart the metal casing of the flashlight banging against the concrete floor.
He stopped and looked around. He saw another person, this one distinctively a man, in a corner of the room. He began to crawl towards him, but too much of his body had rotted. He started crumbling and falling apart as he moved. Ardal, still out of his mind, ran out of the room.
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