Losing The Thread

It must be like a loose thread you pull and pull and suddenly the bottom of your shirt unravels. This phenomenon maybe happens to me every night because my short-term memory only lasts for one day. I form no new, long-term memories. The last thing I remember is the accident.

Every morning, I wake up and there’s a soldier by my bed. At least, I think this is a daily thing. I don’t recall. If the other days are like this one, the soldier’s presence startles me. Every morning, first thing, the soldier explains it to me. Traumatic brain injury. From the accident. Memory shot to shit.

This is not my room. Not the room I remember from before my accident. This room, with its pale green walls, generic end tables and comfortable hospital bed is like the hotel room where I once had a sleep study done, except here there’s a grim little sitting room and dining area I can see from the bed because the door is ajar. Formica topped maple veneer coffee table. Cherry and taupe checkered chintz curtains. I’m in some kind of institution, a half-way house for the feckless.

The soldier tells me, “Your girlfriend, Jen …”

“Yes?”

“She left for a business trip yesterday. She says to give you her love.”

“I miss her,” I remember seeing Jen the day of the accident, which seems like yesterday. But I know it’s not. I want to go home. I’ve never seen this place before, but I can tell I hate it here. “How long has it been since the accident?”

“A while.”

“Exactly how long is a while?”

“I can’t reveal that. It’s need to know.

“Well, I need to know!”

“Calm down. It’s classified. Don’t worry about it.”

“If this happened to you, would you ‘calm down?’”

“I don’t know.,” says the soldier as she grins and scratches a spot under her ribcage, “Would I?”

She cuts off my blistering retort with, “Hey, why don’t you brush your teeth and grab a shower while I get you breakfast?”

My jaw snaps shut.

“How long are you holding me here?”

She shrugs noncommittally. “Until you get better.”

“Is there an ETA for that?”

“Nope.

“I’ll be back with your breakfast in half an hour.”

“Why don’t you ask me what I want to eat?”

“Because I already know. You always ask for the same thing.”

She leaves and the steel door, not flimsy particle board like the interior doors to the sitting room and what must be the bathroom, locks behind her. It’s an electronic lock. As it latches, a buzzer sounds.

Great. I’m in prison and I don’t even know the name of the prison guard who’s bringing me breakfast. Blondie, I decide. Blondie’ll have to do because I’m damned if I’m going to stick around long enough to be on a given-name basis.

I get out of bed and pad over to the bathroom to take a piss. Ahh, sweet relief. As I wash my hands, I take stock. There are no mirrors. “The better to disguise how long I’ve been here, my dear,” I think out loud. It’s handicap accessible with a pull cord to call a nurse. The shower is a beige plastic walk-in with a grab bar and a shower bench.

Investigating the medicine cabinet, I note the lack of dental floss. There are flimsy plastic toothpicks though, and mouthwash. As I brush my teeth, I review the implications. Okay. I’m under guard, meaning this is likely a military matter. What advantage would my condition accrue to them?

Well, maybe … if you control how many days short-term memory lasts, you could, for example, take a soldier who is the sole survivor of an op gone wrong and wipe their memory of the traumatic event. Assuming they request the procedure, you’d be doing them a kindness. If enough military and ex-military elect to forget their shock and suffering, you effectively reduce the cost of veterans’ mental-health care.

But is that strong enough incentive for meeting the expense of my long-term upkeep, not to mention the maintenance of other experimental subjects? Because I suppose that’s what I am to them, a lab animal. And my being here implies the presence of additional inmates.

Hmm. I need to think on a grander scale.

Realizing I’ve been brushing my teeth forever, I stop, spit and rinse. I drop my t-shirt and pajama shorts on the floor, shower and scrub.

From the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet, I pat myself down and visually observe what I can. Big picture, I’m in great shape. Okay, they are making me work out. There’s one positive aspect to this, at least. I hope Jen enjoys this body.

The details aren’t so reassuring. Lumpy forehead. A shaved area featuring a tender-to-the-touch ridged, surgical scar that curves across my left temple. Older scar that loops over the top of my head. Stitched up like a baseball. They stitched me up like a baseball.

Is the puckered skin on the back of my pelvis from a bone-marrow biopsy? What about the localized ache at the base of my spine? Spinal tap?

I note the marks of repeated blood tests. “What the fuck?” I’m shaking. I gulp, and there’s a clicking sound in my throat.

But I’m distracted by physical changes. Got to focus. … Try to sus out more of the upshot for them, the potential ROI for my care and feeding.

Wait a minute. With complete physiological mastery over the human brain’s retentive faculties, you could deploy, selectively delete memories, and re-deploy an entire field army, if necessary. Instinct, muscle memory, fragments of past experiences that might lead to future victories; these are left intact. Specific, traumatic events? Not so much.

Efficient. After each battle, you induce total recall and debrief. You repeat the deployment, mind-wipe and redeployment process, replacing the wounded and physically used up with raw recruits per usual practice.

It would give you absolute command over soldiers’ mindsets. They’d be killing machines, then trauma survivors and back to being killing machines, all without realizing it. For an extended length of time, they’d be functional on the front lines. Burn out? What’s that?

There are also implications for manipulating the general population. For one thing, assuming false memories could be implanted, you’d enable the sub-rosa handling of elected officials and corporate billionaires in the United States. You could also control the governments of sovereign nations in an undetectable form of neo-imperialism. Neat.

I step out of the shower, towel myself dry and put on the bathrobe hanging from a hook on the bathroom door. I search for a closet and find one. There I discover a white jumpsuit with roll-up sleeves and snaps down the front and back. I also have socks, my favorite brand of boxer briefs and a pair of slip-on shoes.

I dress, hang the robe back up in the bathroom and wander over to a window in the sitting room. Except there is no window. There are no windows at all, just a series of drapes hung on the painted concrete, as if windows are behind them.

Why take the trouble to do that? Do they think this reassures me? Is the presence of curtains meant to convey a sense of normalcy?

I walk to the dining area and sit at the table. I miss my cellphone. The electronic lock buzzes and I jump, hitting both knees on the underside of the table. “That hurts like a bastard!”

“Sorry,” says the soldier with no signs of regret, as she pops down a tray. Breakfast looks and smells delicious. It’s a bacon, Swiss cheese and egg sandwich on buttered rye toast with a side of pineapple and cottage cheese. There’s a full glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. There’s also a pot of coffee, cream and sugar; the works. Next to the coffee pot is a small cup of pills.

Suddenly, I don’t feel like eating.

But I also don’t want Blondie realizing how upset I am, so I do eat, and the food makes me feel a little better. Good. I’d have thought it would make me throw up.

“Take those pills,” says Blondie, “or you’ll go into withdrawal.”

“Thank you, Nurse Ratched.”

For once, I provoke an emotion in the guard. “Don’t fuck with me, just take your pills. You think I want this job?”

I don’t fuck with her. I take my pills. “Say, there is no mirror or razor at hand, yet I boast no Rip Van Winkle beard. Presumably there’s a way I can shave?”

“Oh, I’ll shave you after you eat.”

“I changed my mind. I’m getting into designer stubble.”

Blondie Ratched snorts a sardonic laugh. “I don’t think so.

“But if you don’t shave me for a couple of days, I’ll look like Chris Pine.”

“No, you won’t.”

Shit, I think, how am I going to get out of this place? When I finish eating, Blondie takes my tray. Bzzzzzzzz. Presently, she comes back, bzzzzzzzz, with a plastic cape, a straight razor, a small hand mirror and shaving cream. She shuts the door behind her. Bzzzzzzz.

“That door lock is getting on my nerves.”

“I know,” she says. “Move your chair over by the light.”

I move my chair over by the light.

“Yes, that’s good,” she says, “Sit.”

She wraps the cape around my neck too tightly, drapes it over my shoulders and shaves me. It’s the closest shave of my life. To her credit, she doesn’t cut me.

“You’re good at this.”

“Mmmf,” she grunts. “Lots of practice.”

I don’t want to know. Except I do want to know: Has all that practice been because she shaves me daily? How long have I been here? “Hey, did Jen say when she’d be back?”

“She plans to see you in two weeks.”

“Great. Awesome. I can’t wait.”

All true statements. Why do they ring false?

Because assurance of Jen’s safety comes from an untrustworthy source. It’s one person’s word, Blondie’s word, and I can’t take her at it.

I am not crying in front of this woman! I am not.

Blondie says, “Time for us to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Where do you think?”

“More medical experiments?” I ask in a squeaky voice.

“That’s need to know.”

“I have to go to the bathroom first.” The need is urgent, bowels loosening from the combination of coffee and fear.

“Fine.”

“Then I need a glass of water, please.”

“Glasses are in the cupboard to the left of the sink. Don’t dawdle.”

I don’t dawdle.

Blondie zip ties me, hands behind my back. Bzzzzzzz. The pills kick in. Rather than making me relax, as I thought they would, I feel hopped up, more so than coffee alone accounts for. My fear intensifies. Whatever the drugs are for, it’s not to assuage anxiety.

We walk down a long, white hallway and through two more steel doors with electronic locks, before turning a corner and entering a lab with an unpadded, stainless-steel exam table. I note the table has multiple restraints, definite overkill. There are four male orderlies in the room.

Blondie slices off my zip ties.

“Get onto the table,” she says.

I don’t want to, but what choice do I have? Wiry, well-muscled Blondie is equipped with a sidearm, a baton, mace and a wicked knife. When she’s not using it to slit zip ties, she keeps it strapped to her left leg. The hulking orderlies are armed with everything Blondie has, except for knives.

I get onto the table and they strap me down; a strap at each wrist, one on my upper chest, one at bellybutton level, one across my pubic bone, one across my upper thighs, one across my calves and one at each ankle.

Blondie and the orderlies leave the room. Gas hisses in from “fire sprinklers” in the ceiling. I shriek. I can’t help it, even though I know breathing hard is the last thing I should do. After a few minutes, I settle down because I’m not dying.

Complete cognizance. Sudden and barbed. I scream at my awareness, and the gas stops. There is a whoosh of suction as what remains of it is pumped out of the room. A crowd files in. Doctors, nurses, aides, five and four-star generals, admirals, colonels, Blondie and the orderlies.

I shout, “How could you! How could you fuck with me all these years, always saying things like, ‘Your parents are coming over tomorrow with presents they brought from Singapore,’ and ‘Your sister will be here soon.’ And those horrible medical tests. You even removed fluid from my eyes.

“Oh, God, they’re dead, aren’t they? Aren’t they!? I want my mom! I want my dad! I want my sister! I want my girl! I need my girl!”

The crowd applauds. One doctor crows, “It worked!” Somewhere, a champagne cork pops.

An aide departs and returns, rolling a wheeled metal tray with three syringes on it. “What are those for,” I ask, “lethal injection?” By way of an answer, the aide smiles.

I shout at Blondie, “Was that my last meal?”

One of the generals steps up, puts a hand on my arm, and says, “Thank you for your service, son.”

“What? I didn’t know I was conscripted.”

“You were the instant you had your accident.”

“There really was an accident?”

“Yes.”

A doctor or nurse injects me with the contents of the first syringe. I feel woozy.

I see Jen. I see myself, in full, Sherpa-lined leathers and helmet, on my Triumph, skidding on black ice. I see a plain, white, knitted shirt suspended in emptiness, unravelling, unravelling, unravelling …

BIO: E.D. Taylor creates interdisciplinary art, with poetry and literary fiction an important area of focus. Her installations, sculpture, drawings and paintings exhibit in diverse venues, for example, Eastern State Penitentiary, SPACES Cleveland, The Galleries at Cleveland State University and the Flat Files at PIEROGI. Selected stories can be found at literarygarage.com. Her alter ego, Try Swonger, was born in a polygamist compound and is an author of contemporary fiction. Try’s short story “Tansie” is featured on Creepy Pod Podcast’s Patreon page.