Interrogation

One thing I have learnt since I came here is that I am not alone.

There are others like me here.

I see them sometimes at night, when I pass by. They all huddle together in a corner and silently chatter about hope lost and other nonsense. I see their eyes in the soft light and they are the eyes of the mad, and that comforts me. It is the only real comfort in this place, and so I take it with outstretched arms, like a beggar child. It sustains me.

They told me when I arrived that my stay would be short and painless. It’s not. They said I would be treated well and kindly. I’m not. They lie through their teeth about everything, and they say we are the ones who are mad. In that case I am mad, and proud of it.

I am not allowed to communicate with the others in any way. I am told I am different from them, that I am ‘special’. I tell them that if that is a crime, then the world must be full of criminals, but they don’t respond well to taunting, and they ignore me. I’m sorry -

My eagerness to tell my tale has thrown my mind into disarray. Memories keep resurfacing now, flooding me, and so I have jumped ahead of myself.

My name is John Ross, and I am a human being. There has been certain dispute over this fact by my makers, though. I wish to end the dispute.

I was brought to this hell-hole about two months ago, according to the plants. They are the only way to tell time here, and I am the only one who knows how to read them. I don’t know where this place is, or even what country it is in. They, the guards, do not tell us. It is all part of their plan to break us.

Jerry seems to agree with this, but then again he seems to agree with just about everything I say. He sits in his chair and talks about the ‘old days’ with such nostalgia that sometimes I think he is actually reliving the events. He has an unusual talent, I have found, for rambling on for hours about the most inconsequential things and making them seem important and newsworthy. I can’t help but think what a useful talent that must be in the interrogations. How perplexing it must be!

Ah, the interrogations. What a delightful little devils playground this place has turned out to be, and what a fool I was in ever believing it to be anything else. They began about a week after my arrival, and they have plagued me weekly since. They are not something I think back upon with any fear or anxiety, but nevertheless I feel a slight tension when the memories begin resurfacing.

It was in the White Room that it was first explained to me about suffering and need.

The room reminded me of my own room in the keep with its desolate barrenness and lack of furniture. The room was completely white - walls, floor, ceiling - creating a feeling of claustrophobia in me even though I was not prone to the weakness. In the center stood a white table, and above it a little white light that constantly buzzed (a sound that, it is said, has driven more then one inmate crazy.)

I waited nervously in the White Room, and finally he came. He was immaculately dressed as though he was coming to a great ball rather then an interrogation. His tie was fixed neatly and properly, as was his smile.

‘You must be Alpha-9, he said in his mild, easygoing way.

‘You’re wrong,’ I told him. ‘My name is John Ross.’

He smiled. 'Yes, I have heard alot about you, John.'

He motioned for me to get up onto the table, and I did. Again the lessons of the past flooded me, threatened to overwhelm me. I was in another room, in another time, and this time it was Nate standing over me with a syringe and shouting. But the interrogator did not shout; I doubt he has ever raised his voice above mere whispers in his life.

‘I need to run a few routine checks on you before we begin. This won’t take long.’

I was probed and prodded by alien instruments of all kinds while the intense white light glared me in the face. My muscles spasmed involuntarily, as though they had a life of their own. It was strange, not being in absolute control. I am told it is somewhat akin to being ‘drunk’, or ‘high’, but these are things I have never been allowed to experience.

‘You have excellent muscle reflex,’ he said when he was finally done. ‘They did a good job on you. It will be intriguing to see the results of the EEG tests.’

He motioned for me to sit up and I did. My muscles felt sore now, as though they had been under great strain. I rubbed my bicept and felt the pain slowly dissipate. It was good to feel the pain, to know I still could. Made me know I was still alive.

The interrogator came around to the other side of the bed. 'Do you remember anything of your capture?' he asked almost casually. His blue eyes were so intense they seemed to be staring not at my face but past it, into my mind.

Strangely, when I tried to think about it I could hardly remember a thing. The memories were vague and there was no real sense of time attached to them, as though the sequences could have happened in any order. I closed my eyes to concentrate further but was interrupted.

'Can you tell me, for example, what your mission had been?'

'Why should I tell you anything?' I asked, eyes still tightly shut.

He must have replied but I took no notice if he did. As I sat there I remembered something of the capture and my subsequent arrest. Two figures dressed in black, running stealthily through a pitch-black forest. I was following them with my zero-lux binoculars, able to pinpoint their exact positions with the heat-sensors.

'Two charlie, Ten 'O clock,' I remember whispering to someone besides me. 'Can you take them out?'

Yeah. No problem.

The memory faded and I was back in the white room, under the intense light. Someone must have been messing with my memory, someone who knew alot about cybertronic pathways. My memory had never done a disappearing act on me before.

'Charlie, that's us, right,' the interrogator said. I must have said the words out loud, relived the memory like many people live out nightmares. 'And did you manage to take us out?'

'I - don't remember. The memory is fuzzy, vague. As though someone has tampered with it,' I tried to sound accusing but couldn't pull it off. I wasn't designed to feel anger or righteousness. Then again I wasn't designed to forget, either.

'I want you to go back in your mind to your last coherent memory, the last thing you remember clearly. Can you do that?'

I could. We were seated in a conference room, the platoon and I. Nate was by the drawing board, pointing at a photo of a man. He was saying, 'Abdul Raheed, second in command and one of the toughest sons of bitches in the business. Probably sell his mother for a hit of Kor-al if there was a market for bearded women. Now, he's the main target. There are others . . . '

'You ready for this mission?' It was Trigger, seated next to me. As usual he was paying almost no attention to the mission briefing. 'Cos I gotta tell you, Ross, I'm nervous. Times were, I'd do a mission like this and still be home before lunchtime, you know what I mean. I'm getting too old for this shit.'

'With age comes wisdom,' I said as I tried to concentrate on the lecture. Nate was describing the area we were going to parachute into.

'You got that right, buddy. And this old man is wise enough to know that it's time to do the old retiring trick. This will probably be my last mission.'

The memory slowly faded into darkness and a lingering thought accompanied it: in more ways then you know, Trigger. In more ways then you know.

'Glad to see you back in the land of the living,' the interrogator said. He was holding a large yellow syringe in his hand, testing it by squirting a few drops into the air. 'I thought I might have to use the epinephrine. So, what do you remember?'

'Nothing, not a thing. But you knew that, didn't you? Of course you did.'

The interrogator looked perplexed for a moment, as though I had somehow managed to surprise him. His frown grew deeper as he said, 'you remember nothing?'

'No, nothing. What did you expect? You erased my memory.'

The man shook his head. He stared at me with a new emotion on his face, an emotion I never thought would be directed at one such as me. It was pity.

The bird lady

Night was quickly approaching, and the doves had already taken to the air. She watched them from her spot by the parkade, and listened to their gentle cooing, and wished that she could be so free, to spread wings and go where the wind would take her.

She had been living in the parkade for over a month now. The doves had followed her all the way from Cliff's Edge, her previous home. She had been forced to leave: winter was far colder by Cliff's Edge, and the snow tended to fall in great white sheets. Her journey had been long and arduous, and the doves had been there every step of the way. She welcomed their company, because it was the only company she had.

A small dove landed on her shoulder and cooed softly in her ear. It ruffled its feathers, then took to the air once again. They had grown accustomed to her, she knew. To them, she was just an oversized dove, wingless and beakless but a friend nonetheless. They never judged her or ridiculed her because of the way she looked, or talked, or lived. They just accepted.

She gazed up wistfully at the Buniard Building and noticed there were a few lights on in some of the apartments. Still early, then. Some of them were probably having supper now: families eating around the dinner table, or couples snuggled warmly infront of the television set, eating their T.V. dinners. The doves were her companions, her family. And the Buniard Building was her television set.

Through it she experienced the lives of its inhabitants. She learned to love some of them, and hate others, and often she caught herself rooting for one member of a family or another, and hoping things would come out right for them in the end. The day Mrs. Parkins suffered a heart attack she had been there, watching in horror, worried and angry at the injustices of life. Tonight Mr. Parkins was alone at home, pacing, clasping his hands tightly behind his back, moving like a caged animal - restless and lonely. Somehow she knew Mrs. Parkins had passed away. Perhaps it was the way he slouched, as though he had given up hope, or the way he had stopped brooding, as though there was nothing left to hope for.

She turned her gaze back to the doves, and saw them painted against a full moon. The moon was larger then she had ever seen it before, and took up a large portion of the night sky - a beacon among the tiny stars, and she was reminded of the story she had read in one of the papers, about a space shuttle that would soon be launched from Cape Canaveral and put the first man on the moon. How ridiculous it seemed, to spend so much money and effort to get to the moon, when there was so much suffering right here on Earth.

A chill wind started to blow. She heard its dismal howl, and watched as it overturned old carton boxes and sent newspapers skittering across the cold cement like mice. A plastic bag rolled down the road, hopping and creeping as though it possessed a life of its own. She started to shiver, and hugged herself tightly. She got up and brought a trash can from the parkade, filled it with the newspapers she had found that day - the Herald and the Boston Globe and the New York Times - and lit a small fire.

Startled by the sudden heat, the doves took to the air, and just when it seemed they would go up to the trees to roost for the night, they returned to her outstretched arms, and pecked at the bread crumbs she held in her hands.

As her gaze drew back to the Buniard Building, she had a strange premonition. Just as she had known that Mrs. Parkins was dead, she knew that something was going to happen tonight. The feeling was vague and far off, like a mirage in the desert, and she wondered if perhaps - and just like the mirage - it was a matter of wishful thinking. Did she want something to happen? Perhaps looking up at the Buniard was not enough, perhaps she longed for something more, something real. Something that would happen to her for a change.

Soon the feeling passed, leaving her cold and tired.

Young Vanessa Lewis was out by her bedroom window, gazing at the sky, and, in another apartment, Mr. Parkins was still pacing restlessly. Vanessa was a strange girl, but one of her favourite people to watch. She was forever arguing with her parents, like teenagers will, and sneaking off in the middle of the night. She spent long hours at her bedroom window, watching the doves, admiring their grace and beauty, not knowing that she herself was being watched.

Time passed, and soon even the sight of the pretty, wistful girl was not enough to keep her interest, and her gaze drifted, as it tended to do, back to the doves. They were acting strangely tonight, moving in short, abrupt movements, taking to the air and then returning, not remaining in one place for too long. Restless, she thought. Maybe they, too, felt that something was going to happen tonight. She would worry about that another time, though. It was getting late.

"Come," she whispered, "we'll find a place to rest this tired body of mine."

The pain in her back had returned with the cold, and she found it difficult to walk. She made her way to the park nearby, the Royal Grand park, a small sign stated, although it was far from royal and hardly what she would call grand. She made her bed in the lush, wet grass, and lay beneath the stars, and waited for sleep to take her. Around her the doves cooed and pawed at her clothing, perhaps looking for a last scrap of bread before they went up to roost.

But she felt restless, and sleep did not come quickly. She sat up and shivered slightly, and her eyes were drawn once again to the Buniard. Something was going to happen tonight. The realisation excited her. It was a warm feeling inside of her, as though a candle had been lit in her belly. Her eyes sparkled with a life she thought she had lost long ago.

And that's when she saw him, silhoutted against the night, running. With a violent shudder the warm feeling was ripped from her, and in its place was only dread. Something bad was going to happen tonight. Something unspeakable.

Because everything needs an introduction

I have always had this crazy need to create. A kind of furnace burns inside me, a voice in my head that pushes me to try and leave my mark in the world. Well, that's sort of why I started this blog (along with the fact that I was curious as to what - exactly - a blog is, and what it could do for me).

So now I think I got it figured out, more or less.

This is my playground, my dreamland, and in it I am in total control. So here's the real reason I created this blog: simply to create.

My inner furnace has pushed me to write short stories, and I have been doing that for a few months now. I'm at the point where I'd like to share some of them with the outside world, and receive feedback on them. That's where you guys come in. Don't be shy, tell me what you think. Just don't be too harsh.

Let the Text Bites begin!