The Occupation of Emerald City: The Worker (6 page)

“Then what?” the general asks.

“I took my pill,” I say. Hint, hint. Take down the name, Mr.
Interrogator. Get the drug for the helpful detainee.

“Then what.” He lights another cigarette.

“I went to sleep,” I say. “And then a group of men came in
dressed in black ski masks. They grabbed me and put a mask over my head and
then they put me in a van and took me here.”

The cigarette hangs loosely between the general’s fingers, a
snake of gray ash dangling from the end. “And then what.”

I shake my head, frustrated. “And then you threw me in a
cell. There’s nothing else, I swear to god.”

“Are you religious?” he asks.

“Yes. No.” Does agnosticism count?

“Are you Christian, Muslim, or Jew?”

I know why he’s asking this. All three religions exist in
Emerald City. The Jews are a distinct minority. The Christians and Muslims
don’t have a good history. I know all this because when my family moved here, I
had to learn about it all so I could fit in. But I never fit in, because I
wasn’t a Christian or a Muslim, and no matter how much time the government
spent forcing everyone to get along, the Jews were always the scapegoats.

 
“Tell us the
truth,” he says, “and we can let you go. My word is gold.”

“This is the truth,” I say. “I swear! It’s the truth!”

The general watches me. I don’t want to look at his eyes so I
watch the cherry of the cigarette slowly burn away the last of the tobacco.
When the ash snake flakes off, the general nods to the guard over my shoulder.
Violent arms wrap around my armpits and I let them drag me out of the room. No
point in kicking or screaming anymore. No point in assuming there’s a method to
this. None of this makes any sense and I’m pretty sure the general knows it.

They take me into a very clean-smelling room but don’t remove
my hood this time. Their hands grope me madly across my body, tearing off my
pants and cutting through my shirt and taking my socks, pulling me and turning
me around and holding my arms up. Something hard covers each arm, like a long
cardboard tube. My hands are covered with a thick fabric glove and then
strapped loosely and held up. They do the same with my legs, lifting my body
off the floor. Then they slip a pair of tight-fitting black goggles over my
eyes, slowly and awkwardly sliding the hood out from underneath so I never have
even a millisecond of an opportunity to see what’s happening. They cover my
ears with thick earmuffs and my mouth with sticky, heavy tape. Something sharp
plunges into my skin on my right arm and for a moment I can feel something cold
sliding into my vein. I feel a plastic mask wrap around my nose and mouth, a
breathing mask of some kind. The scent of body odor and cleaning solution that
had previously permeated the room disappear.

There is nothing. I don’t hear anyone leave. I don’t smell
anything, don’t hear anything. I can’t feel the ground, can’t feel my hands.
I’m suspended in the air like a slab of meat. Pins and needles dull my fingers
and toes, moving up into my arms and legs before infecting my groin, sliding
upward until my entire body disappears.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Does it matter?

Darkness. My ears ring in the silence. Even that disappears
over time but I’m not sure how much time. It feels like hours have passed. I
count my breaths and reach one thousand, two hundred and fifty-two and then
lose count.

I can’t feel my body, can’t move it. I have no body. What’s
happening?

I can’t remember how I got here, what happened, what will
happen next. I’m a spectrum of consciousness without a vessel to carry me. This
must be death, I think, and I feel something thumping quickly like a drum but I
can’t be sure what it is and pretty soon that too disappears.

If this is an afterlife then I don’t want any part in it. The
darkness suffocates, and even though I’m sure (am I?) that I’m breathing, I
can’t feel it. I can’t stop imagining my body laying somewhere, decomposing.
I’m no longer alive. I will my arms to move but I can’t feel them move. I wish
I could throw up, or feel myself defecating so I could at the very least know
my body is still functioning. Maybe I have thrown up. Maybe I have defecated
and never even noticed it. I don’t know who I am. I need something I need
something anything any stimulus to remind my brain that this is not death not
nonexistence not Hell something to awaken just one sense that will prove that
my body still exists and something is still encasing my brain dear god just one
sign just one smell just one peek into the real world again
please
this is Hell and there is no God
because no
God
would allow someone to
go through this
PLEASE JUST ONE SIGN THAT
I’M STILL ALIVE EVEN IF IT’S PAIN ANYTHING TO REMIND ME THAT I’M NOT DEAD AND
ROTTING AWAY SOMEWHERE WHILE MY CONSCIOUSNESS SLIPS INTO DARKNESS FOREVER.

And then I feel it: a rumbling sound both close and far away
and yet unmistakable even through the heavy earmuffs. Yes! Now I remember: I’m
wearing earmuffs. I can
feel
the low rumble
vibrating down the heavy chains holding my arms up; the vibration tickles my
wrists. Yes! My wrists. They’re being held up and so are my legs, and my body
is hanging motionless in the air and I remember how the explosion at the
military base felt, how the concrete vibrated and the water in my body seemed
to ripple.

I hang onto the memory of the explosion, the feeling of the
vibration running down the chains holding my hands, the knowledge that I still
do exist and am truly alive. I’m being tortured. My senses are being deprived
and they must want me to go insane. I will not break—I can’t break,
because now I can’t stop thinking of the sound of that explosion. I can’t stop
thinking about Bert and Tasha and the power plant.

Time passes. My mind begins to settle directly next to
the realm of sleep, where thoughts begin to feel
real, uncontrolled but still conscious. I think about my family, sitting around
and watching reruns at night when I was still in school. I think about the TV
show about the vampires. I remember it because my parents were sitting at the
kitchen table in the next room, sharing a cigarette and having a quiet
discussion that I’d been convinced was about divorce. I always worried they
would get divorced.

Memories keep me going, and they clip along without a
cohesive theme. My childhood. Playing with big red water guns on a green lawn,
barefoot. Staying home from grade school by faking the flu to play video games
from start to finish. My first one-night stand in college with a girl who was
using drugs. Drinking heavily through an afternoon at the beach with my
roommates, keeping my shirt on because I was too embarrassed of my body hair.
Dropping out of college, taking a promotion at the power plant.

When it all begins to feel unreal, I think again about the
explosion. An event on a linear path of time that can be traced and recorded by
my brain to remind me that I still exist somewhere beyond the darkness.

I’m alone, more alone than I’ve ever been. After my parents
moved out of the Capital, my old roommates followed and then there was no one
left, just a few co-workers I was on amicable terms with, and of course Tasha.
Why did I break it off? “Not enough alone time.” Not enough “me” time. She was
always around, and I really just wanted time to myself. Now I have it, plenty
of it, and now I want the opposite. I want someone. Anyone. A
presence
I can feel.

The sound of the explosion feels more distant now, less real.
It’s becoming difficult to imagine myself existing as anything other than a brain
floating in darkness. I’m beginning to think this will be how my life slips
away: inside darkness.

Then, suddenly, the goggles and earmuffs are pulled off and
I’m ushered back into the real world like a bullet from a gun. My heart races.
My legs and arms shake uncontrollably. I grab the man nearest to me and call
out, “Dad, Dad,” and I press my head against his hard chest and tell him I’m
sorry, I’ll go back and finish college and I’ll be whatever he wants me to be,
just please don’t go. Don’t leave me again.

“Let go,” he tells me, pushing me back. My father is gone.
The man standing in front of me isn’t a man at all but a boy in his twenties,
dressed in black fatigues; the barrel chest that reminded me of my father is
nothing more than a bulletproof vest.

I look at the soldiers with fluttering eyelids as my pupils
attempt to adjust to the new light coming from the halogen bulbs hanging
overhead. Stoic, hardened faces have disappeared—they look like human
beings now, two young men with thin eyes and coarse black mustaches unable to
hide a sliver of sympathy directed at me as they help me walk out of the room,
holding me up with gentle hands, the kind of hands that would be used to hold
up a drunk friend.

When I was in grade school, I threw up during art class,
ruining my watercolor painting of the Egyptian pyramids. My best friend had to
help carry me to the office to call my parents. This is what it feels like now:
two friends, carrying me out of art class, down the empty white hallway with
doors every ten feet on either side. I’m twelve years old again and I’m afraid,
sick to my stomach, aware that I’ve done something wrong and sure that I’ll be
punished for it.

They take me to the very end of the hall, through a wooden
door and into a large bathroom with brown stalls and showerheads on the far
wall. The boots of the soldiers squeak on the little tiles.

“Put your hands on the wall,” one of the soldiers says. He
sounds like a boy, a classmate from grade school with a high-pitched, shaky
voice. I do as I’m told. I’m afraid of what’s going to come next. Every faucet
head looks dangerous. I hear a clicking noise and flinch when they put the
trimmer to my scalp. They trim my head, then my face. I wait for them to make a
joke about my back hair. I’ll turn around if they do it and I’ll try to punch
one of them. I haven’t thrown a punch since high school but I’ll do it now.

“Turn around,” the soldier says. I turn and lower my gaze to
meet his brown eyes. He holds up a green bottle of generic shower gel, the kind
I used to buy at the pharmacy. “Hold out your hand.” I hold out my left hand,
palm up, and he squirts a liberal amount onto it. “Shower,” he commands.

So I do. I lather my entire body and my head and try to hit
every single inch of my skin. It feels so good, and the water coming out of the
shower is so hot that when I inhale, I can feel the steam creeping into my
nostrils. It’s the best shower I’ve ever taken.

When I’m finished, the soldier gives me a clean pair of white
shoes, sweat pants and a white t-shirt but no towel, so I wipe as much water
off as I can and then put on the clothes. They take me back into the hallway,
toward the other end of the compound, and lead me into a room with a giant TV
and two long brown leather couches. In the corner is a small table filled with
chips and cookies and sodas and even McDonald’s burgers still wrapped, wafting
the scent of meat patties into the air. All of the smells at once are almost
enough to physically push me back.

I don’t know what to do so I just stand in the doorway,
leaning back against the guards. I want to reach out for a cheeseburger because
I love cheeseburgers, but I’m half-expecting someone to shackle me in front of
the food, just out of reach.
 
I
remember reading about something like that in a holy book, which at this point
sounds like a perfectly acceptable source of torture for these people to use.

“Go,” one of the soldiers says. Then, in smooth, practiced
words: “Eat and relax.”

I lunge on wobbly legs for the table and grab a burger as
fast as I can and shove half of it into my mouth before anyone can try and stop
me. No one does. Instead, the door closes and I find myself alone in the room.
I eat two of the burgers, not caring that both of the thin meat patties have
ketchup
and
mustard (I hate mustard),
and open a can of Diet Coke, laughing at the insanity of it all.

“This week’s torture is brought to you by the proud makers of
Coke,” I proclaim to the TV, holding up my soda in salute. “And thank you,
Sony!”

I eat until I’m full and then make my way to the couch. I
take the remote next to the TV and turn it on—there are no local channels
and the display is in a different language, but I do recognize the names of a
handful of Bollywood movies. I turn on a random movie, one that looks upbeat,
and just watch the moving pictures and listen to the happy-sounding music.

The door opens and soldiers escort in three more people. Only
one—a thin man with youthful features, a trimmed brown beard and brown
hair—walks on his own. Soldiers guide in the other two prisoners, holding
them up under their armpits, moving them like puppets over to the couch. I get
up and step out of the way so they can place the near-comatose people in front
of the TV. The other man has a thin red beard and a balding head. The woman is
wearing pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt. She tucks her legs up to her chest,
revealing coarse black hair near her ankles.

The soldiers leave. I sit at the table with the man who seems
mostly normal, albeit unshaven. His hair is clean, like mine. There’s a rash of
red spots on his neck where the skin looks inflamed.

“My name’s Joshua,” the man says. He smiles. “I don’t suppose
you can talk, can you?”

“I can talk,” I say.

He nods, glancing at the large television. “God, look at this
fucking TV. I was beginning to think TV’s didn’t exist anymore. Thank Christ I
was wrong.” He reaches for a can of Coke and pops the top, taking a long sip,
then stares at me. “This isn’t a trick, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

He takes another fast sip, hiccupping. “They’re not going to
come in and take everything away right when we’re comfortable?”