Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

“Where are we headed?” asked Cyril, his voice a hammer, striking everyone.

The group resumed their journey. Around the next corner, the ceiling dropped down more than a foot to display, in brushed-steel institutional lettering, David L. Ward Center for Imaging. Peter wondered if the hall’s design wasn’t intentional, a nod to the looming claustrophobia of the MRA machine.

THE GROUP PASSED through two more double doors without any sense that they might be nearing their destination. Then, miraculously, they stood staring at the scanner.

“What a fastidious meat grinder,” Cross said.

The machine suggested an artifact from an alien world.

Cyril, whose vocation involved transporting and insuring the irreplaceable, asked, “How’d they get it in here?”

“It’s modular,” the nurse said. “It was assembled on site.”

“It’s a sugar cube,” said Alistair.

A man appeared from behind the machine. He had a close-trimmed white beard and a face as pink as bubble gum. “Bill Winchester, sir,” he said, sticking his hand out to Cross. “Always been a big admirer.”

Cyril tapped Peter’s arm. “We waiting for anyone else?”

Winchester clapped his hands. “Let’s rock and roll. Ha ha .”

“Do you need me to put on a gown or something?” asked Cross.

Winchester set the blade of his hand level with the singer’s collarbone. “We’re only looking from here up, the prime real estate.”

“ Only ,” Cross repeated.

“You ready?”

Cross looked at Peter. “Am I ready?”

Peter nodded his head.

Winchester helped Cross sit on the machine’s bed. He put a hand at the base of the singer’s neck and lowered him with a gentle grace.

Once he was situated, Cross said, “The rest of you going to mill around while they zap me?”

Winchester explained that, for safety reasons, everyone needed to wait in the control room. He said, “There’s a camera and a microphone inside the tube, Mr. Cross, so we’ll be able to monitor you.”

A motor whirred and the bed lifted the singer, until his body aligned with the hollowed center of the device. The toes of his boots tapped together: click, click, click .

Winchester touched Cross’s shin. “Please, try to keep as still as possible.”

Cross cleared his throat. Swallowed.

THE NURSE LED the rest of them around a corner into an annex. A row of molded-plastic chairs faced a little control center with stacked computer displays. A large rectangular window set into the wall allowed them to see where Cross’s torso extended from the machine.

“You’re the doctor?” the woman asked Peter.

Nurses were like Congress; they saw themselves as a check and balance to the physician’s executive powers.

“I am,” Peter said.

She pulled out a seat close to the technician’s chair.

That done, her attention drifted to Alistair. “I recognize you. You’re his son.”

Alistair said, “You think you could get me a Coke with a leetle bit of rum?”

THROUGH THE WINDOW, the men watched Winchester make final adjustments to Cross’s posture. Even people who weren’t susceptible to claustrophobia had an issue with being stuffed in a tube. It wasn’t simply the enclosed space that bothered folks — they didn’t appreciate knowing that the machine would turn the walls of their skulls into windowpanes. Peter had offered Cross a Xanax, but the singer had turned it down. On the bed, Cross kept his hands clasped over his sternum; one thumbnail sliced beneath the other as regularly as a metronome.

Winchester popped into the control room. Squeezing past Cyril, he took his place behind the machine’s display.

“This place remind you guys of anything?”

“It could almost be a recording studio,” said Alistair.

“In a way, it is a recording studio,” said Peter.

Winchester said, “I need to find a leather sofa and some old magazines.”

“Maybe a potted palm,” said Cyril.

Peter asked, “Do you play any instruments?”

Winchester hunched his shoulders together, as though he were buttoning a coat. “A little mandolin.”

“Is there another kind?” asked Alistair.

The nurse announced she was heading downstairs.

One of the monitors blinked on: it offered a fish-eye-lens view of Cross’s head as he was fed into the tube. Winchester scrolled through a few screens, inputting codes from a binder propped open on the table before him.

Cross spoke to them from a speaker on the wall. “You guys watching me on the TV?”

Winchester reached a hand out, toggled a button. “You doing okay in there?”

Cross didn’t respond right away.

“You still with us?”

“I’ve never been a torpedo before.”

“Remember what I told you: relaxed breaths.”

“Allie, could you sing something?”

Winchester pulled an auxiliary microphone from a cubby and passed it to Cross’s son.

Allie pressed a red button marked talk: “You want to make a request?”

“Knock me out.”

“I could recite my sins?”

Cross shook his head.

Winchester said, “Please try not to move, Mr. Cross.”

“Distract me,” Cross said.

Alistair dropped his voice into a sweet purr:

Well, the doves are in their beds.

Dogs chase rabbits in their dreams.

Rest your head, old man,

I’ll take care of anything.

The torpedo tube is loaded

The gunpowder smartly stacked

Agents for the government

Will take your money back.

Shut your eyes, old man,

And settle in your gurney.

Don’t worry ’bout a thing

I’ll have power of attorney.

See, I’ve been blessed with bad ideas,

Plus cash enough to see them through.

I’ll father lots of kids and name them after you.

Cyril pointed to Cross’s face on the screen. “You got him to smile.”

“I’ll be here all week, ladies and gentlemen,” Alistair said, “playing your favorite golden oldies as well as topical songs with timely messages.”

“That wasn’t off your album, was it?” asked Winchester.

“It’s a new number.”

“Call it ‘Torpedo Tube,’” said Cyril.

Alistair leaned into the mic. “I hope you enjoyed the world premiere of ‘Torpedo Tube.’”

Cross cleared his voice. “‘Vexation Lullaby.’”

“That’s better,” said Winchester.

“I still like ‘Torpedo Tube,’” said Cyril.

Leaning back in his chair, Alistair said, “When I was a kid, he set up a studio in this castle near Prague. Two important things happened: I taught myself how to play guitar on an abandoned Martin Dreadnought, and I reached the erotic summit of my life, when these twin Czech girls in yellow tights pulled me into the pantry and the two of them sucked on my middle fingers at the same time. I didn’t tell anyone about the guitar because it seemed like insubordination. And I didn’t tell anyone about the finger-sucking, because it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with my old man.

“In the mornings he’d invite me to tag along on his walks around these medieval villages where no one recognized him. I had to stay a step behind him. It was a rule or something. If my mother came along, that didn’t change anything — he still had to be out front.”

“He’ll let you walk next to him now,” Cyril said.

“Oh, I read the papers,” Alistair said. “I know we’re becoming better people all the time.”

Cross’s disembodied voice asked, “You see anything?”

Winchester looked toward Peter, depressed the talk button. “It takes the machine a while to crunch the data.”

In the video feed, Cross sucked on his lips. His nostrils flared as he took a deep breath.