Kent Kelly - The Girl Who Bled Forever

CR: You’re cleared to talk about all that?

AM: When we get to a point of contention, they will end this. For now I want answers. Tell me about how the site was first investigated. On foot, by Military Police? Were there state police there? They were not FBI, nor was there a Marshal presence.

CR: Whoa, you’re presuming a lot. The site was not first searched on foot, it was searched from orbit and from the air. Which was a big clue to me that something involving deep black military operations was going on with this poor girl’s death and where it was.

AM: I know about that, some. But you’re saying that was the first investigation?

CR: Yes, orbital and spy plane. Spy plane , I repeat, not drone, and not jet. They wanted a nice slow human pass over the site, higher than helicopter, before moving in and that was supported by satellite.

AM: And?

CR: The site was emanating a huge, hourglass-shaped gamma radiation cascade detectible from orbit.

AM: What do you mean, “hourglass-shaped”? Radiation signatures are spherical or elliptical and subject to gravity if there’s dust, and wind-born fallout patterns. There’s no—

CR: Anna. The center of the hourglass, where the two spheres of radiation emanated from, was the time-space continuum anomaly by the cornfield.

AM: You’re testing my faith on this, Captain. I’m going to ignore your testimony about the shape of the radiation field.

CR: Oh, I wouldn’t do that.

AM: (Flipping her notepad to a list of questions for the first time, ignoring him.) So. There was a radiation field of some kind and shape detected at the girl’s murder site. Dangerous levels?

CR: Fading more quickly than should be scientifically possible, but yes. Gamma and X-ray, some very unusual Compton scattering. Don’t really know about antiparticles or subatomic pair production.

AM: (Reading from her question list.) And is this why the bunker was shielded as it was, with only remote viewing of the cornfield allowed?

CR: That’s right. Recording instruments of all kinds. Seismic, spectrum filters, Geigers and CCTV all the way. Nice mix of pole-mounted and robot-mounted so you could tool around with remote-controlled crawlers. It was fun, at first.

AM: And you yourself were responsible for primary control of the mobile instrument platforms.

CR: When I was not on observation duty during anomaly event times, yes. That bunker’s underground control room was like the bridge of the fucking Enterprise.

AM: And McAllister as your duty second. But there were more than just the two of you, yes?

CR: Of course there were. After Macey’s attempted suicide, they were rotated out every sixty-two days like clockwork.

AM: Except for McAllister?

CR: Except for my Petey, yeah.

AM: And why weren’t you rotated out?

CR: I think I was… selected. The control subject. You’ve seen my psych profile, my befores and afters. I was hoping you could tell me.

AM: Tracing the events in your file at the various security clearance levels becomes… complex… following the violent incident with Lieutenant Chastain.

(The Subject bristles visibly at the mention of this name. From this point forward he no longer makes eye contact with Ms. Morgenstern.)

AM: Considering her involvement in the—

CR: Look, can we continue this tomorrow? I’m getting tired. Confused. It’s going to affect my testimony.

AM: Captain, I have my questions.

CR: Screw your questions. I just want to get you to talk about the anomaly and what it means.

AM: You are not in control here.

CR: And you are? Look, she didn’t have to do what she did. She didn’t listen to me.

AM: (Writes something down.) (To cameraman, whispering over the Subject who does not hear her during his agitation:) Bring them in, please. Quickly.

CAMERAMAN: And leave you?

AM: I have the gas.

(The camera tilts a bit as it is bumped by the cameraman rushing through the frame and through the raindrop curtain. He is on a cell phone.)

CR: (Continuing speaking through this time.) But Joyce, Joyce should not ever have been there. It was a—

AM: Okay. It’s okay. We’re not going to talk about Joyce right now. We’re going to talk instead about your time monitoring the aberration, is that all right? Up to but not including the incident which brought you here.

CR: (His voice has changed, becoming akin to a growl.) You think so?

AM: I do. After you were assigned to—

CR: They fucked with your head, didn’t they? Did they torture you? You too?

AM: Captain, please. I’ve sent for the doctor.

CR: The MPs, you mean. The nightmares, I about tore Tommy’s ear off last year when he shook me awake and they moved me here, you know that right? Where’s Tommy these days? Who killed Petey?

AM: Please sit down.

CR: Don’t you fucking key that console.

AM: Alan, please.

CR: (Despite restraints, Subject cuts himself as he tries to scratch at his face. Bleeding begins.) No! I want to talk about the day I met the girl, after watching her bleed out and die on the tape. (He pounds his head against the Lucite surface.) I want to talk about how she came back after she died , a cute seven-year-old girl left for dead by her mommy. I talked to her after she died, Anna. I sang to her. I—

(A slamming door. Booted feet are heard.)

A VOICE: Don’t move!

CR: I watched her die, every day! Every fucking day I watched her sliced apart in front of me!

CONFUSION OF VOICES: Open it! No! Mask up! Not yet! He’s hurting himself, he—

ANOTHER VOICE, RUSHING TOWARD THE CAMERA: Hit the gas!

(Screams, sounds of violence. A woman gasping and being thrust aside. The last thing seen as the camera is knocked down is her clicking red-heeled pumps being lifted off the floor as she is carried by two men in polished boots and camo fatigues. The screen goes black. A last scream before the audio cuts:)

CR: She can’t stop, Anna! She bleeds forever! Forever!

(Dripping medication, amber crystalline fluid, slurring in gouts through a metric-measure vial. Then, up to where it meets with a far more orthodox intravenous unit. The mixture is calibrated by a small digital-display servomotor which briefly faces the camera, the details visible only via freeze-frame. It is a thiopental sodium derivative developed in 2016. The handheld camera sweeps past the unit and we are now viewing a man in a black suit with a half-pack corded back over his right shoulder. The man is carrying two items, a taser and a Glock pistol with an extended barrel which appears to be a modified G21 or G30. We move past him to see Anna Morgenstern, wearing a surgical mask and facing a modified hospital bed of the type used to treat violent felons during medical emergencies. Another person, a black man with a dark silk tie, white shirt, a clearly-visible gun strap beneath his vest, and carefully folded hands over his chest stands immediately behind her. Above the chin his face is out of frame. The camera is positioned so that we only see the Subject’s shackled feet.)

ANNA MORGENSTERN [AM]: Alan?

(The Subject stirs. He jolts a bit, his shackled left ankle jangling and then going taut to leave an angry welt on his skin which will rise over the next 218 seconds of this taping. The suited man in the background goes for his pistol but then resumes his guarded posture. Anna does not move.)

CAPTAIN RAMSEY [CR]: Mmmmmmm … (A purring voice, almost erotic. But no. It is pleading.) Muh? Anna?

AM: I am very sorry we had to sedate you, Alan.

CR: Hmm?

AM: (The surgical mask comes down.) Sedate you. You’re coming out of it now.