Morning Is Dead (4 page)

A Hospital at Night

Part Five

Still sitting in the chair, April leaned her head forward until her face rested in the bleachy smell of the bed. She closed her eyes. She was exhausted. It overwhelmed her all at once. The sounds she had picked out and individualized all swirled together and pulled into some kind of vacuum.

She dreamed about floating in space. It was black and numb. She couldn’t see the earth anywhere.

When she awoke, the beeping from Alvin’s monitor had stopped.

Five

Alvin continued to sit on the bed and hold his head in his hands, his cheek throbbing sickly. Lars humped the bars of the cell and made moaning sounds he was barely able to keep in check. A number of the officers were coming to. They moved about the station, lighting cigarettes, making coffee, and exchanging stories of the previous night’s exploits. From what Alvin was able to gather, they sounded more like a gang, moving through the streets at night, breaking into people’s homes, abducting and raping women and men, jumping people, killing animals and rades. Through the doors at the front of the station, Alvin could see that it was still dark outside, even though he thought it looked like the sky was lightening only moments before. Maybe he had dozed off without realizing it. Maybe he had dozed off for a really long time.

Fuckpants stood at Bitchhole’s desk, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He held up Bitchhole’s right arm and watched it limply drop back down onto the desk. He did it several more times. His eyes looked blank. Then he felt around Bitchhole’s neck.

“I think we got an OD,” he said calmly and to no one in particular. Ash dropped from the end of his cigarette and scattered on the desk with a slow, dreamlike motion.

A fat cop wearing black leather pants said, “I’ll drag him down to the incinerator.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Fuckpants said. He pulled Bitchhole’s chair away from the desk and rolled him onto the floor. Then he sat down in the chair and put his feet up on the desk. He threw his head back and exhaled a languid cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Alvin thought he saw an image in the smoke and squinted hard to make it out but by the time he thought he almost had it the smoke had dissipated.

Alvin felt someone poking him on the back.

He turned his head. It was the homeless-looking man. The man held his hand through the bars. Alvin shook it. It was rough and grimy.

“You’re Alvin?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Benjamin Teats.”

“Teats?”

“Yes.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Alvin could smell Benjamin from where he sat on the bed. Urine, grime, and feces.

“I heard your story. Out there. About your wife?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a shame. I’m guessing you’d like to get out of here.”

“More than anything, at this point.”

“I might be able to help you with that.”

Maybe it was just Benjamin’s appearance, but Alvin immediately assumed he was crazy. Still, there was a faint flicker of hope. “If you know how to get out then why are you still here?”

“I have no reason to get out. I have nothing to go back home for. My morning, my days, before I came here, were filled with nothing. Just sitting around the house and watching television. Here, at least, there are a lot more entertaining things than television. And, occasionally, if they’re wasted enough, they’ll toss a girl my way.”

“Ah,” Alvin said. “So it’s sex? I’ve always assumed most things come down to either money or sex.”

Benjamin paused to think about that. “You might be right. But what about love?”

“Well, I think you usually want to have sex with someone before you realize you love them and, if you have children, you probably love them, but they are almost always the product of sex. But I think we got sidetracked. You were going to tell me how to get out of here.”

“Yes. I was. So why do you want out? Is it money or sex?”

“Love.”

“I see.”

They both released a resigned sigh.

“You noticed it, didn’t you?” Benjamin asked.

“Noticed what?”

“The morning. You saw it.”

Alvin thought about the couple of seconds when his surroundings resembled a functional police station.

“I don’t know what I saw.”

“Think of being wrapped in a cocoon of misery. The night. For just a moment, there is a break in that cocoon. It has to have a momentary break or else it just is. If the night people never experienced a shred of the morning, night would lose its meaning. And there must be a point to the endless night, although I haven’t found it yet.”

“Is it possible to escape back into the day? To outlast the night?”

Benjamin laughed softly and placed a hand on Alvin’s shoulder. “I’m afraid not. There may be a way to do that but, if there is, I haven’t heard about it yet. When the morning occurs, there is merely a momentary break in this reality. A flash of chaos. Maybe it isn’t even real. Maybe it’s just a collective hallucination. Mass hysteria.”

“Is that when I should try to get out? Will I have to wait until tomorrow?”

“There is no tomorrow here. Like I said, it’s just something that happens. It doesn’t have any specific time. The time here is measured by when those yokels pass out.” He motioned to the cops lackadaisically milling around the station. “Out there, maybe it’s measured by something else. Maybe one day ends and the next begins when your car runs out of gas. Or when you get snagged by a rade. Or maybe just when you pass out from confusion and exhaustion. Believe me, the day you left behind is not the night you have entered.”

“I’m not sure what I left behind. I have trouble remembering what the daytime was like. So how do I get out?”

“Oh, it’s really pretty simple, if you’re serious about it.”

“I am. I can’t stay here.”

“You just have to start banging your head against the bars. I’ve seen it work. Although it’s been quite some time ago. Regardless, I haven’t seen it used so many times that the cops have caught on to it. Maybe three times at the most.”

“That’s all I have to do?”

“Well, you have to really mean it. You really have to ram your head into those things. But not so much that you knock yourself unconscious. What you do is you
pretend
to knock yourself unconscious. Now, the worst-case scenario is that they just leave you to lie on the floor. But, I have my suspicions about this place. I think they use the prisoners for something. I think they need us alive. I think we’re like societal abortions…”

“Societal abortions?”

Teats waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t want to hear about that.”

“So I really have to lay into it, huh?”

“Yes, and if you’re lucky, they’ll have to open the door to check on you. They’re usually pretty stoned and out of it, especially the longer they’re on duty. There might be two or three of them to come in and check on you. If they were smart or sober or aware, at least one of them would probably have his gun drawn, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. We could work something out. I could cough really loud if one of them has his gun drawn. You won’t know, see, because you’ll be pretending to be out cold.”

Alvin thought about it. It sounded painful. But he was already in a lot of pain. His cheek still throbbed and burned. It sounded risky. It almost sounded like the stupidest idea in the world but he couldn’t really think of anything better. Then he thought of something else.

“Don’t they let us out periodically to shower or go to a lunchroom or an exercise yard or something?”

“The only time I’ve ever seen people leave the cells was to be processed or disappear completely.”

“What do you mean by disappear completely? When they get released?”

“If they’re getting released, they’re not leaving by the front door. It’s all a bit peculiar.”

“How do I know one of them won’t shoot me in the back?”

“Their aim isn’t that great even when they are straight. If I see one of them go for his gun, I could try to create a distraction. It’ll only take you a couple seconds to get to the front door. They’ll probably be too lazy to follow you. It’s not like they’re real cops or anything.”

Alvin thought he would probably go for it. He supposed, at this point, there really wasn’t any guessing the outcome.

“I have something for you. For when you get out.”

Benjamin’s optimism made Alvin feel good. He handed Alvin a piece of paper folded in half. Alvin started to open it and Benjamin stopped him by placing a hand over his. “Wait until you get out to open it. Keep it in your pocket until then. It’s the address of a safe house. A buddy of mine. He’ll help you.”

Alvin folded the paper further and stuck it into his pocket. “Thanks.”

Alvin lay back on the bed and stared up at the dirty ceiling. After a while, an officer came to the door of the cell. He had a huge handlebar mustache and wore a sparkling cape with his uniform. The name above his pocket read: ASSCLOWN and was written in marker on a piece of masking tape.

“Hey, Humper,” the cop said.

“Yeah?” Lars asked.

“The Processor wants to see you.”

“But I’ve already been processed.”

The cop twisted the tips of his mustache and said, “I didn’t say she wants to process you. I said she wants to see you.”

“Well, okay,” Lars said. He slumped his shoulders in fear and dejection.

The cop slid the cell door open and took Lars by the arm. He banged the cell door shut and led Lars down the hall. A few minutes later, Alvin heard terrible screams. He would never see Lars again. He didn’t know if he was sad about that. He wondered why he didn’t go for his escape when the cell door was open. That seemed liked it would be easier than ramming his head into the bars. But he had already planned to ram his head into the bars. He wasn’t expecting to escape when the doors were open to fetch Lars. His body, his muscles weren’t ready for that. He would have to be fast. He would have to charge for the doors and pray a bullet didn’t come ripping through his body.

Lars’s screams continued for quite some time. Alvin lay back on his tiny bed, separated from Benjamin and his horrible stink only by the bars between them, trying to muster up the courage to ram his head into the bars and escape.

“Can I call you ‘Ben’?” Alvin asked.

“You can call me anything. Names aren’t really important.”

“Okay. Good. How long has it been since you’ve bathed or showered?”

“A very long time.”

“What do you think they’re doing to Lars?”

“Something painful.”

“Obviously. He’s not coming back, is he?”

“No. I try not to think about what they do to the people who leave. Rather, I like to think they just vanish. I like to think they go to see the Processor and then just disintegrate into millions of pieces, float away like water vapor, like mist. But I know that isn’t true. Humans are a commodity. Life is a commodity. They need it for something. Something secret.”

“Who’s they?”

“Probably has something to do with the Point. Either the Point gets you or the rades get you.”

“Is there any purpose behind it? Why would they need humans? For like… sacrifice or something.”

“I’m not really sure. I have a number of ideas.
Had
a number of ideas. Like I said, I don’t really like to think about it. But I’ve been out there. I know about the abortion clinic, too.”

“The abortion clinic?”

“That, I
refuse
to talk about.”

“So it could happen to me or you? We could be called back to the Processor’s?”

“Any moment. Although they usually space them apart. And I think they’ve stopped noticing me.”