Ike Hamill: The Vivisectionist

“But don’t worry,” added the man. “You’ll only have to deal with this visual discrepancy for a matter of hours.”

“Why are you giving up on me so quickly?” asked Jack. “We can fix this.”

The man approached Jack, putting his weathered face within inches of Jack’s fearful expression. “Why am I giving up on you, Jack?” he asked, whispering the question. “Perhaps if you really think through the question, you’ll understand how illogical it is. There’s almost nothing that bothers me more than an illogical argument.”

The man backed away and turned his head slightly, looking over at the counter. “So, Jack,” he began in a normal tone of voice that ramped up quickly, “maybe I’ve given up on you because you TRIED TO KILL ME,” he ended with a scream.

“You’re upset because you didn’t see it coming, aren’t you?” asked Jack.

“There’s another bad question,” said the man. “After all, I sent a decoy out to meet you.” He paced around the foot of the chair. “You also brought a decoy. Mine performed perfectly, and yours kicked you in the face,” he smiled. “I would have enjoyed teaching you how to properly control a decoy. So, given the fact that I sent a decoy out to meet your well-aimed bullets, are you still inclined to believe that I didn’t anticipate that move?”

“I guess not,” said Jack. His efforts to coax his way out of this situation had, so far, failed. He needed to introduce another variable into The Management's equations. “But Stephen’s going to bring other people back here. You’ll be caught if you hang around.”

“You’re not thinking this through,” said the man. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s probably the drugs I’ve given you. They’re confusing you, aren’t they?” He leaned over and thumbed a dial on the IV bag shut. The drip stopped immediately. “It will take a while to wear off completely, but you’ll be a little more rational soon, I suspect,” he said.

The man continued pacing and recommenced his lecture. “Of course I took great care to make sure that Stephen cannot escape. I’ve got to admit though, he nearly has enough fortitude to make a decent replacement for you. He’s a little squeamish, but he seemed to go along with everything pretty well. Perhaps I could groom him.”

Jack decided to play his trump card. He had one piece of insurance set aside in case things went this badly. “I’ve written everything down, you know,” said Jack. “I’ve documented everything I could find out about the Vigue case, this hotel, and the connection to the disappearances in the sixties. That’s where you learned it, right? From that guy in Georgia?”

“You have indeed done some excellent research, Jack,” said the man. “It’s not too difficult to collect that kind of information these days though. Personally, I think that I had a much harder time doing that same research back in sixty-four. I had to spend weeks in the library, reading microfilms of archived newspapers. You, on the other hand, spent a few hours on some websites.”

The man walked to counter and opened a drawer below. He pulled out a yellow envelope and unwound the red string. He upended the envelope and dropped its contents into his hand. He looked at Jack — “You’re referring to this documentation, of course. I found it in the second drawer of your dresser, under your tee shirts. How did you expect this to help you, though? By the time your mom found this I would have been long gone.”

Jack exhaled slowly and considered his situation. This man had easily outwitted him at every turn. He had no leverage, and no course of action. He inhaled deeply and smelled his own tears welling up behind his eyes.

“Now if you don’t mind,” said the man, “I’m going to get some work done while we wait for Stephen.” He pulled a set of thick goggles out of a drawer and pulled them over his head. The goggles magnified his eyes enough so that his irises looked to be the size of nickels. The man pulled a rolling chair over to Jack’s leg and sat down on the edge. He looked up at Jack again and warned him, “This is going to hurt quite a bit, but it’s something I always do.”

He slid a portable tray up beside Jack and grabbed a knife.

“Hold still,” he said to Jack as he cut through his pants. He started the knee and cut a big patch of fabric out of the thigh of Jack’s jeans. “It probably seems a little backwards, but I always sign my work first. It looks so much better if done on a live muscle.”

He couldn’t stay on top of the vending machine, he reasoned. Stephen thought that if he went back to the crazy-man’s room, he might find another way out. But someone had locked this door on purpose — probably the guy Jack had killed — and the way out would require going back to that place. Stephen didn't want to confront all that yet. He would start with exhausting his other options.

Stephen jumped down from the soda machine and made his way into the dark passage. He paused to look through the peep-hole into the hotel room filled with books.

A distant voice made him freeze. Someone yelled. Stephen willed himself not to run; he knew that he must keep control. The voice continued at a lower tone and he shuffled carefully over to the opposite wall and worked his way down to the next peep-hole. When he got close, it came back to him — this hole looked into an exam room.

Stephen held his breath and put his eye to the hole. He saw Jack, strapped to a chair. The man talking to Jack faced away from the hole, so Stephen couldn’t see much, but he could hear the man’s voice. It definitely sounded the same as the voice from the loud-speaker. That last realization took some time to sink in. If this was the man who had talked over the speaker, Stephen wondered, then who was the dead guy in the hall? Perhaps that guy wasn’t dead after all, he thought.

Stephen began to consider the implications of the scene in front of him. If this man had captured Jack and meant to hurt him, he would be on his own to get out of here. Plus, he’d have this psycho hunting him. However, if Jack somehow escaped, Stephen would have to worry about Jack’s intentions. They hadn’t parted on the best terms.

Stephen couldn't think of a good answer unless something bad happened to both Jack and the man, or somehow he found a way out.

He rocked back on his heels and hoped an idea would come.

Instead of thinking of a clever way out of this disastrous trap, Stephen began to recognize the small number of options still open. He knew that both Jack and the crazy guy were in this room, and that unless there was yet another person here, he just had to avoid that room.

Something still puzzled him though — the crazy man had Jack tied up, but didn't seem at all concerned about finding Stephen. Shouldn't the crazy man be worried that Stephen would call the police? Only one explanation made sense: the crazy man must have total confidence that Stephen couldn't escape.

As far as he could figure, he had only two good choices. He would either explore past the crazy man’s room and look for an exit, or try to find a weapon — maybe get back to the other examination room and look for Jack’s gun. The knife he had left in the closet suddenly jumped to the front of his thoughts.

Stephen emerged from the passage behind the bureau and squeezed into the crazy man’s room. He rummaged around for a few minutes, trying to find any clues to the way out, or even a good blunt weapon. When his search turned up nothing, not even a change of clothes for the madman, Stephen decided to move on. He approached the door and pressed his ear against it. He heard nothing. The door was unlocked.