Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

I wake up to a metallic clatter. Squint has tossed a steel plate of food on the floor in front of me, beans and corn, it looks like. As I grab the food, I notice Squint is still looking at me, angrily somehow, as if I’ve misbehaved. As he backs away and shuts the iron bars, I ignore him and scuttle across the floor to put my back to the cement wall, next to Eric. Squint stares at me for a second, glares I should say, and then he rests on the bars and wipes his forehead, and I hear him mutter something there’s no need to repeat. Ignoring him as best I can, I eat the beans and corn with my fingers as the bastard couldn’t be bothered to bring me a spoon. Finally Squint pushes himself away from the bars and walks away, strangely unsteady on his feet. I have the feeling he’s drunk.

Eric is sitting in the corner with his legs stretch out and his arms lying placid in front of him. I realize the silence suddenly. The rain has stopped while I slept, and freed from the torture of his desire, Eric has slumped into the corner. As I study him, happy that he’s more relaxed, I imagine him on an operating table. I imagine Doctor Bragg standing near with a scalpel in his hand. When he makes the cut, Eric just goes, “Unh.” The whole scenario shoots through my consciousness like a flaming arrow before I can stop it. I shiver in revulsion and shake the evil image out of my head.

I look down at my food. I’m not finished, but I’ve completely lost my appetite. I put the plate down and hug my knees to my chest. Think, Birdie. Think. If you don’t figure a way out of this cage, that insane bastard is going to mutilate your Dad! Think!

“Hey!” I cry out suddenly. “Hey! Get me some water!”

Maybe it’s not a good idea to poke the drunken bear, but it’s all I got.

“Hey! Squint!” I shout. I get to my feet and grab the bars. Shouting is making me feel a little better. “Get me some water!” A moment passes in silence. Eric sits in ignorant bliss on the concrete floor. “Squint!” I shout from the bottom of my lungs. I take a deep breath to yell again when I hear a door flung violently open. Squint comes striding toward me, thunderously angry. He’s carrying an iron bar. I leap away from the door just in time. Squint hits the door with the iron bar, making hideously loud sound and causing sparks to leap away. For an instant, in the light of the sparks, I see Squint’s face contorted in rage.

“What’d you call me?” he hisses. He presses his face between the bars of the door. “What did you call me, you little bitch!” he cries. Now that I see him up close, I notice that he’s sweating, and his eyes are bloodshot. He’s not drunk, I realize. He’s got the Worm.

“I want some water,” I say in a small voice, keeping my back to the concrete.

“What?” he asks. He blinks. His face is still pressed between the iron bars, making his eyes strangely slitted.

“Water,” I say timidly. “So I can feed Eric.”

“Eric?” Squint asks, confused. He pulls his face free of the bars. “Who’s Eric?”

I point down next to me.

“Oh,” he says. He blinks stupidly, looking first at Eric and then over to me. His milky eye seems to roam all around the cell. I see tiny tracks of pinkish tears running from his eyes. My heart races.

“Why don’t you rest?” I suggest to him in a kind voice. “You look tired. You must work hard.”

“I do work hard,” he agrees. He’s uncertain on his feet. “If it wasn’t for me…” He lifts his hand like he’s going to continue, but instead he drops the iron bar. It clatters loudly on the concrete. He sways like a tree in the wind.

“Just rest,” I tell him. “Just rest for a little while.” I creep out of the shadows toward the door. “You deserve it,” I say to him soothingly. “You do all the work.”

He swivels his head toward me and looks angry again. “I do, ” he insists. He closes his eyes and then one hand comes out and holds onto the bar. He bends over and his knees shake. “I just,” he says. Then he stumbles back a few steps before he falls to his knees, opens his mouth and vomits a black mess on the floor. Then he collapses face first into it, smearing the vomit across the floor as he stretches away. I stand very still, listening to see if there’s anyone coming, but it’s all silent.

My heart races. This is my chance.

There won’t be another.

I reach my hand out between the bars, but I can’t reach Squint’s body. The son of a bitch collapsed just outside of my reach. No matter how hard I stretch, I can’t reach him. I even try with my legs, hoping I can hook a leg around him and drag him closer, but I can’t get to him. Squint’s breathing is ragged and I can feel the heat coming off his body. The Worm is shooting through him fast. In just the few minutes that I’ve been trying to get to him, his eyes have already started to bleed more. For some people, it hits this fast. He’ll either be dead in a few hours, or Doctor Bragg will have a new specimen to work with. I reach out of the bars and groan with the effort, but I can’t get to him. If I just had another couple inches of reach, I could grab him. Just a few inches!

I look over to Eric. I peer with envy at his long, strong arms. But Eric isn’t a puppet. I rack my brain, but I can’t think of a way to get Eric to help me. After the first hour I get desperate, and I pull Eric up from his sitting position and lead him to the barred door. I point toward Squint and say, “Water! Look Eric, get some water!”

I don’t know why I think that might work, but it doesn’t. Eric just stands at the barred door. Eventually he pushes one side of his face into a bar, and says, “Unh.” I look at his bandaged eyes for a second then sigh.

“Yeah, okay, Eric,” I say. I lead him back to the wall and lean him against it. He stands there, drooling a black puddle on the cement floor. “It’s not your fault,” I tell him.

I turn back to Squint’s body and think desperately. At some point, someone is going to come and find him. They will drag him away and my only chance to escape with Eric will be lost. The both of us will end up in the Doctor’s experiments. I remember the wriggling maggots filling up in the plastic tube. In desperation, I get down on the floor and reach out with my arm as far as I can. I push my shoulder against the bars so hard, I’m afraid something might break, but it’s no use. I finally give up and sit down in the corner of the room, rubbing my shoulder.

Time passes. Any moment I expect one of the others to come in and put an end to all my hope. But no one comes. I stare at Squint, listen to his haggard breathing which has gone shallow and rapid. I study the blood dripping from his eyes, watch it grow darker until, after an hour so, the corners of his eyes are almost black, even the milky, dead one. Squint’s body just lays there, taunting me. I can almost feel the little brass key that opens the padlock to my door in the front pocket of his shirt. I can feel it pressing into the cement floor. Or at least I imagine I can. It’s so tantalizingly near.

In the time that passes, I imagine what I would do if I had the key. How I would get Eric out of the warehouse. How I would sneak out to the forest. How I would push and prod and drag Eric into the forest, find some hole or cave to crawl into, and hide for days. I groan in frustration.

“Unh,” Eric says on the floor.

“I’m trying,” I tell him.

“Mergh.”

“Quiet,” I say. “I’m thinking.”

“Mergh.”

Suddenly I realize the sound isn’t coming from Eric. I creep forward.

Squint is getting up, rising from a puddle of vomit and mucus. I watch as he picks himself up, strands of black mucus stretching from his face. He stands, his jaw grinding back and forth, his eyes dripping black blood.