Alex Gore - The Cube

“Open up!”

Michael half-opened his eyes and his first thought was that he was having a dream. His head was pulsating of all the vodka he had drank and he could swear he had gone to bed just a minute ago. He looked at the “Seiko” on his wrist and saw it was past 4 a.m. He tried to remember how he had got home, but the only thing he was sure of was that he came back alone, without a girl, he was very drunk and it took him forever to unlock the door to his room. “Open up! Police!”

Wide awake now, Michael realized that this midnight uproar was no practical joke.

“Open up, for Christ sake! Police!” ,the voice sounded now even more exasperated and irritated.

“Okay, okay, I’m comin’… err… I got it.”

He opened the door cautiously and was immediately almost pushed down inside by an obscure figure.

“Are you Michael Stevens?”, the man asked, without stepping out of the shadows of the open door. As far as Michael could see, his midnight visitor was a tall middle-aged Afro-American, with an athletic build, dressed entirely in black.

“Yes. What do you need me for?”

“I’m Captain Harold Smith”, the man said, showing his police ID with a practiced gesture. “And you’ve got to come with me.”

“But why? If this is about the night before, I assure you, that had nothing to do with me… it was all Gary’s idea.”

“Sorry, I can’t provide more information at this point, you have to go with me right now.” His voice sounded as if he would not tolerate any objection and it was clear that he was not only used to give orders but also to be obeyed unconditionally.

“Yes, sir… Let me just grab some clothes, sir”, Michael barely managed to say, sensing now was the time to bargain some time to come to himself and find out where this unexpected attack came from. “Just a sec, sir”, he said, trying to cajole the man.

“You have five minutes”. His tone was not rude but one that discouraged contradiction. “Take some more clothes. Let’s just say you’ll not be back in the morning.”

“Right”, the boy sighed, accepting the situation. “Are we going some place cold?”

“It’s scorching during the day and ice-cold at nighttime.”

He turned back to look at the students’ hostel, somehow sensing he would not return back here. They had made him take luggage for a week, but the two cars that had come for him, the people in them and the way they communicated among themselves made him think that something very special had happened that night.

He was more amazed and curious than frightened. Actually, he was still drunk and quite dazed to figure what was happening in full extent.

Surely, it was important but what did it have to do with him? Michael was a decent guy or at least his friends would describe him as such. He had stooping posture and looked shy on the outside; late to step into the stage of puberty, he still felt a few pimples on his face. And the face itself was lean, gaunt, with big and lively eyes under the handsome intelligent forehead. He was slender, rather with medium height than tall, which did not prevent him from being among the well-liked boys in the campus of Harvard. He did not shave often both because of laziness and out of desire to look older, so his stub concealed the traces of the latest night binge on alcohol with his fellow students. In fact, he was a perfectly ordinary boy who did not exceed the boundaries of statistical error as to his generation.

He was led into the black Escalade gently but firmly – they made it clear he had no choice. The captain sat on the back seat next to him. With the closeness of his body Michael felt trapped. Why, for fuck sake, all cops make you feel guilty and don’t need words to oppress you, just their presence is enough, Michael thought.

The SUV provided comfortable and quiet drive, but looking over the shoulder of the driver Michael could see they were not observing speed limitations. He was watching the night sky through the back window and noticed that it was somewhat lighter and at the same time murkier, with some bluish green shade.

The Shining.

He became aware of it only after hearing about an unusual natural phenomenon on TV weather forecast. He had an obscure memory of the dull babbling of a blond chick about some atmospheric electromagnetic fields and polarized waves… She had nice tits, that was the reason why he stayed with the channel and did not switch to sports.

Probably everybody watched weather because of the good tits… As if a Harvard history student cared about meteorology when there was vodka, weed and chicks with big boobs.

Three days earlier they smoked a lot of joints, followed by huge amounts of vodka and finally he and his room-mate Gary snatched a Celica. They didn’t need it for the money, just for a joy-ride, so that they could impress Mary Ann and her girlfriends with a funny story in the morning. They drove hard the stolen car for a few hours and just when they started getting tired of it, the petrol finished. They went to the store to buy more beer and decided to visit the girls in their flat.

Both of them busted inside, drunk as assholes, smoked some more and from this point on his memories of the night were really foggy. He just remembered her naked body, the perfect hairless skin and fine bulging nipples, while in the background the shouting of Gary and the rest of the drugged whores was heard…

“Sir, if this is about the Toyota, I could explain…” Michael stuttered. “What do you need me for? What happened?”

“An accident.”

She hated flying and still she spent almost one third of her life in the air. She disliked the goddamn airplanes, filled with snoring sloppy bores most of who traveled for no good reason.

Her present neighbor was a plump avuncular man with seriously receding hair, sparse worn-out teeth and stale breath of airport fast food. He was of the most tedious type of fellow flyers, since he had this dumb good-natured smile on and one just couldn’t cut him off. His naïve babbling about the weather, the latest Merseyside Derby and the flaws of Labour just drove her crazy. The tactics of the silent passive smile and the constant staring at the smartphone were predictably inefficient and she was almost resigned to spending the next four hours entrapped in football, sandwiches and the foggy glasses of the man.

She tried to ignore him, summoning a fantasy of a pool in which she swam slowly and the pleasantly cool water was caressing her body. For a moment it seemed his talking went to the background of her mind. She shuffled her bottom to the left and to the right, trying to find the most comfortable position possible on the hard seat and suddenly she remembered that she had left her lipstick in the big bag. Anyway, she did not wish to be made passes at, which often happened during long flights. She found the brazen and banal remarks of middle-aged men, who were trying to impress her, extremely tiresome. They always sounded pitiful and desperate but the worst part was that they didn’t give her a chance for a nap.

A loud uproar was heard when the engines went on, the airplane started along the runway and Marcela, glued to her seat, felt she was sweating as she always was during take-off. The airplane shook slightly and some hissing sound was heard.