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A muffled skirmish was going on down the hall. The squeeky wheels of an old chair roughed up the marble floor underneath it, accompanied by the stymied protests of two tired orderlies. Somehow, the man with the wheelchair had won the skirmish, and a chair came flying between a swinging door in the long corridor at the far end of the waiting room. A bird rattled in its cage in the managers office, which sat in an alcove behind the secretaries desk at the front of the room. The attendants that were dealing with Jim and Roger ignored the actions of the man who burst into view and then around in a semicircle.
He pushed his way past Roger, who pulled his knees to his chest like a little egg. He was wearing a faceless mask, and doctors chased him with stun guns, afraid to touch him. He laughed inaudibly and moved perpetually.
They wheeled Roger and Jim in the opposite direction. Roger appeared asleep with his eyes open, and Jim was reduced to the manic state of his manic depression. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, the fluorescent lights flickered and bathed the hall in an innocuous glow from above. The cackling fiend on the opposite end of the hall was gone because their fields of vision were reduced to what was directly in front of them.
“Couple of stragglers.” A man walking behind the surgical mask wearing orderlies pushing the wheelchairs said. He had brilliant blue eyes that were firmly squinted like the crinkles in an orange. “This one might be antiepileptic. He doesn’t look like he made the transition well. Reminds me of the guy from last week, his ears started bleeding next. We’d better get him into testing.”
They were wheeled into a waiting area that was dotted with signs that implored them to stay silent. The man disappeared behind a partition that wasn’t quite as tall as he was, Jim listening with a feigned ignorance. A counselor type of guy dressed in street closed walked up slowly, like approaching wild animals.
“Do not be alarmed if you don’t know how you got here. Jim, it’s great to see you again.” He extended a hand and shook Jim’s, who looked up at him with a confused uncertainty.
The man behind the partition talked endlessly. “The experiment was a failure.” He said to a person that was shorter than the partition. “We need to get them out of here.”
The man who had done the balancing act with the slug was pushed on a gurney past them, his hands frozen little statues of hands. He looked like a wax statue, the expression on his face a frozen anguish. The attendants looked at each other knowingly across his sprawled out corpse.
Otto called from somewhere, the phone he was trying to reach not fully manifested in the temporal realm. Jim could feel the presence try to make itself known, he understood its desire to be heard. He tried to remember what Otto had said or been about the first time he contacted him with little avail.
Jim checked his pockets; he wasn’t carrying anything. His legs twitched as he wrestled with them to move from his own volition, they wrestled against themselves like rubber bands. He pulled himself out of the chair to his feet and fell flat on his face, catching himself awkwardly on his left wrist. He rolled over and squeeked, pushing himself up on his side. The man that shook his hand helped pull him back up to his feet.
Roger’s act of resistance was less pronounced. He turned his eyes back in his head, like he was trying to look through the back of his skull at Jim laying on the floor behind him.
“Let’s go for a little walk, shall we guys? Or shall I say I’ll push you along. Paul, I’m taking them for the tour.” He called to the man on the other side of the wall.
“I’ll need one of those, too, yeah.” The sound of objects clashing with a metal tray rattled. “We’re not removing the brain or anything.” His head popped out of the other side. “Yes, that’s fine. We have a lot of preparation to do. Have them back here… later.” He disappeared again.
Jim rose up and pulled each leg in a sequence of steps like they were made out of led. He lunged out for Roger’s chair, which handily worked as a sort of walker.
Jim pushed him silently, the chair cascading over the shiny floor. A man with a dangly security badge pushed past them, smiling and nodding as he passed. They passed rooms on both sides of the hall ith bed ridden guests. A priest held the hand of a gigantic man who looked like he had binge eaten his way into the room.
“These are the ignorant souls who don’t wish to pry themselves off of their hospital beds. They don’t want to see the bigger picture, they are stuck in an endless cycle here.”
The man showed them a slideshow, situating their chairs next to a row of spinny office chairs at a circular table. He shut the blinds of the windows, twisting the rod attached to the end of the white blinds. The projector purred and the fan on its side fired up, blowing cool air directly into Roger’s nose.
“Here’s how it starts.” He pressed a button and the next slide flipped into focus. “You’re here.”
A map of the premises flashed, with a red dot in the center to signify their location.
“The moats on this end,” He pointed with a baton. “The dragons here. No, no, I’m just kidding. No one has ever escaped from this place though, and I don’t know if you want to try. We’ll let you try.”
He mixed some vacation photos in with the more straightforward presentation. It became pretty apparent he was just trying to waste time to Jim.
“We’ll have to show these two to their rooms, soon.” A head poked through the doorway, which stood ajar.
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