Jeffrey Thomas - Subject 11

“Hello?” said subject 1 uncertainly, looking all around her as she let herself into the room. It was very small. Had it been a closet at one time? Maybe even a restroom? There were a few holes in the stained linoleum of the floor that plumbing might once have passed through. Now there was only an office chair positioned under a naked light bulb. And the mural.

The mural covered all four walls. She didn’t know if it really qualified as a mural, however, wasn’t clear on the definition. Did a mural have to portray a certain scene, inhabited by a number of characters? If so, maybe she would simply classify the art as graffiti instead. This graffiti had claimed every inch of the walls, but was cut off neatly at the margins of the ceiling and floor, as if those areas had been masked off while the artist had worked. An odd technique for a vandal.

She closed the door after her, still glancing around. She saw no security camera positioned near the ceiling as she might have expected. No apparent microphone. Those holes in the floor, she decided; a microphone must be secreted in there. Maybe the researcher whose name had sounded like Onsay (and what nationality was that?) was sitting in a room directly below this one, even now. But when she lowered herself into the chair, the holes in the floor were situated behind her. The chair was not turned to face the closed door, either, but one of the graffiti-slathered walls. Subject 1 thought it best not to swivel it in another direction. She gripped its padded armrests nervously.

“Can you hear me?” she spoke aloud self consciously. “Dr. Onsay told us we could come in here any time of day or night, in no particular order. Is that right? Hello?”

No answer. No indication that there was indeed someone listening at all times, or at least that her words were being recorded. Should she continue anyway? Yes, she had to. It was a condition of her contract. Every day she must come in here, just like the others. Not only had she been told she could do so at any time she chose, but she could also discuss any subject matter she chose, whether it be about her nine companions or about her own life. Her past, her present situation, or her dreams for the future.

She had phrased her words just now as if someone other than Dr. Onsay might be monitoring this confession room, but she had only ever seen Dr. Onsay, and only that one time. The initial interview, in a stark little second-floor office in the city. An office that looked as if it had been rented just for a short time, not a picture on its walls of ugly cheap paneling, just Dr. Onsay’s laptop resting on the battered gray metal desk.

Laid off from her position as a computer software designer, in her ongoing frustrating job search subject 1 had encountered an ad presumably posted by Dr. Onsay on the classified advertisement site Craigslist, wherein was given a link to another website: http://subject11.webs.com. Curious, 1 had visited this site, though ultimately it gave little more information than the ad did itself. It simply stated that a number of local test subjects were required for a study, the pay being four thousand dollars per individual. She had promptly sent an email to the address given on the website, therein providing her cell phone number, and within mere days Dr. Onsay had phoned her to set up the interview.

The other test subjects had related that they had only ever met Dr. Onsay and no other researchers, also. But surely Onsay couldn’t be conducting this experiment alone?

In any case, seated now in the confession chamber, subject 1 had to assume she was indeed being listened to, and not just transmitting her words to her own ears.

“Um… well, I guess I’ll just talk, then,” she said. “I’ll just talk.”

Through the narrow lenses of her eyeglasses, with stylish white frames by Roberto Cavalli, she stared at the graffiti mural directly facing her. That was all there was, so this was what she addressed when she spoke.

“Sooo. Okay… I’ll tell you about my tattoo.” Subject 1 rolled up the right short sleeve of her top. “I have a tramp stamp on my lower back: a Mobius strip in a figure 8, like the symbol for infinity. But this here on my arm — I don’t know if you can see it — it says, ONE LIFE TO LIVE. That’s a soap opera on TV, and it was always my Mom’s favorite. We used to watch it together when I was a kid. Mom had a crush on the character Bo Buchanan, played by Robert S. Woods. Maybe it was because Bo was a Vietnam vet, and my father was in the Marines. He left us when I was only eight, twenty years ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”

Her words briefly faltered. The graffiti confronting her was beginning to make her eyes hurt. It was like gazing at a giant paisley pattern, all bristling swirling shapes. Except it was all painted in black and white. The words, if they could be called words, teenagers spray-painted on any available city surface — a practice called tagging — always struck her as being symbols from an alien language, like hieroglyphics, and these were no exception. The tagged symbols overlapped each other, some in white and others in black but none of them making any kind of sense to her. The background itself varied from black to white. It was a dizzying chaos and she wanted to look away, but the densely layered graffiti was to either side of her and behind, too.

She’d give them just a little more, just to fulfill the bargain, and then she’d get out of there.

“Last year my Mom died from from uterine cancer. I used to sit with her in the hospital watching One Life to Live , just like when I was a kid.”

Subject 1’s eyes had grown moist, her chin quivering. She tried to clamp down hard on her emotions, just long enough to finish. The chaos of graffiti was making her queasy; she thought she might even be sick to her stomach if she didn’t get out of there soon. Could part of it be claustrophobia? The lingering smell of the paint in this poorly ventilated room?

“That’s why I got this tattoo,” she concluded. “ONE LIFE TO LIVE.”

She waited a few beats, but there was no acknowledgement. No voice over a microphone to thank or dismiss her. So, rolling down her sleeve again to cover the tattoo, she rose from her chair and said, “Okay, well I guess that’s it. See you tomorrow, then.”

Subject 1 opened the door, but turned in the threshold to glance back into the room. The graffiti looked to be swarming upon the walls, like strange organisms under a microscope’s lens. She squeezed her eyes tight for several seconds until the worst of her nausea passed. Then, reopening her eyes, she stepped out of the confessional and pulled the door shut after her, quickly, lest her gaze became lost in those disorienting, seething walls again.

They each had to take six different pills every morning. These pills were already portioned out and sealed in a white envelope, and these envelopes came down a thick PVC pipe that pierced through the ceiling, to drop into a plastic bucket. Every morning they would find ten envelopes in the bucket, each with a number printed on it in pencil. Ten paper lunch bags, stapled shut, would also drop into the bucket every morning. Inside the lunch bags were an apple, a banana, and a cereal bar with raspberry filling. The lunch bags had numbers penciled on them, too. They could drink all the water they wanted from a sink in this room, though the water tasted faintly of fluoride and rust.

5 opened her lunch bag and complained, “My cereal bar is smooshed.”