Lippe Simone - Blank

Ray’s strategy confused the competition, who grunted a challenge that he clearly expected Ray to take up. Ray demurred and instead backed slowly down the hall, peering over the tray. The incumbent repeated his challenge and approached Ray with open and swaying arms, offering him every chance to earn a claim on Nancy or a position of leadership or a smashed head. Ray back-pedaled down the hall and turned to a full sprint when all three tribal leaders, aghast that Ray wasn’t going to do the honorable thing, broke into a loping pursuit.

Once again Ray was being chased by a blood-thirsty mob through the halls of a mental ward but this time he had the singular advantage of knowing the lay of the land. Scanning the terrain for sanctuary as he passed he rejected the patient rooms and examination rooms and particularly the fire escape as hopeless dead ends. He turned the corner to the final hall, passed the chapel and burst through the swinging doors before stopping to still them, hoping that his rivals for tribal leadership would assume he’d gone to church. He pressed himself into the doorway of one of the mysterious darkened rooms with the portal windows. The hall doors swung open.

Ray pulled silently on the handle behind him and the door opened with a clack that drew the attention of the orderlies, who stumbled into a clumsy gallop and made it to the door just as Ray pulled it closed behind him with another even more decisive clack. There was no handle on the inside.

There was no other door. Nor was there a window or furniture or blunt object. There was just a thin carpet and walls of linoleum, some of which had been torn away to reveal thick foam rubber. In the corner sat an emaciated old man with scars on his face and on his scalp where his hair had been pulled out in clumps. He was wearing a straight-jacket. Ray was in a padded holding cell. A rubber room. And once again the door was locked.

The orderlies competed for a view through the portal window but otherwise seemed satisfied to leave Ray where he was. Even had they felt otherwise they probably couldn’t have figured out how to open the door. Eventually they left and Ray realized that as much danger as he’d been in until this very moment, things had taken a far worse turn. The room was designed to contain dangerous psychopaths. There was no way he could ever open that door and there was no one to let him out. Doubtless oxygen could get in so it was to be starvation, assuming he could resist eating the emaciated man in the straight-jacket.

The emergency lighting was almost gone and was little more than the residual glow from the phosphorous face of a very old and very cheap watch. Ray pressed his face to the portal window and saw nothing in the blue gloom but blue gloom. He only then noticed what he held in his hand — he’d managed to get the keys from Nancy, and now he was locked behind probably the only door they wouldn’t open.

The uninterrupted string of threats on his life that Ray had faced until that moment had been just that — uninterrupted and hence, while terrifying, offering the dubious advantage of providing Ray little time to be properly horrified. Now he was in total and darkening silence and, apart from the unwelcome company of a mindless and unpredictable lunatic in a straight-jacket, he was alone. Now with the leisure to fully appreciate the gravity of his situation, the stone-cold fear penetrated Ray like an arctic wind. He finally shook in anticipation of a slow death, without the means to even take his own life.

Ray tried to pierce the darkness with a gaze of concentrated and undiluted desperation until, with a suddenness that gave the impression that he’d somehow provoked it, the blue gloom brightened almost imperceptibly. Someone had opened the doors again at the end of the hall. As one of the massive orderlies took form in the darkness Ray strained to develop a plan to tempt him to open the door and nearly had something when it became irrelevant — the massive orderly in the hall was Leonard.

“Leonard. Leonard. Lenny.” he yelled, slapping his hand on the glass. Leonard saw him and recognized him and, possibly, smiled. The big bear of an orderly had to crouch slightly to look through the portal window at Ray and he appeared almost happy to see the man who had pulled the thorn from his paw.

“Leonard, you have to open the door. You have to open the door and do it now and not think of anything but opening the door.” Ray said, trying to combine urgency with calm authority.

“Just pull the lever up. That one there, on the door. Pull it up.” He pointed out the window and down and Leonard strained his faculties and entirely missed the point. He looked around and behind him and then, apparently satisfied that he understood, crossed the hall and opened the door to the opposing room, looked back at Ray, and locked himself in.

“No, no, Leonard, not that door. This door. You were supposed to open this door you great hulking lump of dumb. This fucking door.” Leonard looked at him through the window of his own room, only slightly less sure now that he’d done the right thing.

Ray ran from wall to wall tearing at the linoleum. At the spot where it had already been torn he pulled it back further to see solid concrete. He slumped into the wall and considered smashing his head against it until hope returned.

A slight darkening at the window drew his attention to the orderlies, who had returned and were once again looking in, this time eating the remaining fruit.

Possibly they’d come to taunt him or make sure he was still there. More likely they were exploring, having been introduced to the concept of broader horizons and alternative sources of food. Ray looked down at the foam rubber in his hands. He tore off a piece, put it in his mouth, and chewed.

“Mmmm-mm.” he said, savoring the moisture absorbing qualities of dry, dusty foam rubber. “Delicious.” He swallowed, rubbed his stomach, and took another bite. “And there’s enough delicious foam rubber in here to last me forever.” He tore another long strip from the wall to illustrate the point, and ate it.

The orderlies hammered at the door and the glass with their open hands. It was an admirable opening result for a spontaneous plan but it wouldn’t be a success until Ray was once again under immediate threat of death by direct violence. The orderlies had to be taught to open the door. Ray put his hands up like a mime behind an invisible door and mimicked the efforts of the orderlies. Then, still miming, he noticed an imaginary door handle, pulled it up and walked through to imaginary freedom. The orderlies learned the lesson with a quickness that made Ray deeply regret not performing the same pantomime for Leonard, because now they were in the padded cell and tearing at the walls, except for the biggest of them who blocked the exit, still determined to have his showdown.

Ray dove between the giant’s legs and slid into the hall only to be pinned to the ground by an adversary no longer so easily fooled. Ray felt his head clamped on either side by enormous, fat hands and as he was lifted from the floor he knew what was coming and in that instant it came. His face was propelled against the floor with sufficient force to pass through it and Ray felt his nose shatter and his teeth cut through his lips. He went automatically limp as he’d seen the junkies do so convincingly, but then in a moment of theatrical spontaneity Ray rolled over to face his opponent.

“That all you got? Pussy?” he said, or might have were it not for the blood and swollen lips. The attitude was clear, though, and the effect was immediate and the giant again took hold of Ray’s head and lifted him entirely off the ground in preparation for a spectacular touchdown. Ray had not a single spark more strength than he needed on the way up to hook his hand around the lever of the opposing door and pop it open with that same decisive clack.