Out the Z Room

© 2012 Neil Baker. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 3/9/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5394-8 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-5395-5 (sc)

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Artwork Drawings done by Neil Baker

CONTENTS

PART I

PART II

PART III

DESTINY AND THE Z ROOM

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART I

I can see very little from the room. It sits beneath the sidewalk so that from the window all I can view are the feet of the people walking by and the tops of some of the buildings. If I press the side of my head against the glass and glance upward, I can sometimes spot the face of a small stranger or child, but this does not occur very often as I must place myself into an extremely awkward position in order to catch sight of the faces of the people walking by. So the majority of the time I see feet and shoes, ankles and legs.

There is a T.V. in the room and sometimes I turn it on. I’ll watch only certain programs. I’ll watch cartoons and westerns because things do not change in cartoons or westerns. In cartoons someone is always getting hit on the head or being chased or confronting a monster or zapping someone with a ray gun or doing any number of things to one another. In westerns someone is always carrying a gun or robbing a bank or wearing a hat or forming a posse. In other shows on T.V. things change and it is difficult to keep track of what is going on. There is no consistency. In other shows I never know what to expect and it makes me feel very insecure. I will never watch the news; it is nerve-racking, the changes that go on in the news.

There is also a bathroom in the room. In the bathroom there is a sink, a toilet, and a shower/tub. There is also a mirror. I spend a lot of time looking at myself in the glass. I never seem to change physically, although I know I am getting older. I do not know how old I am but I would assume to be in my twenties.

I have a clock in the room that plugs into the wall and tells me the time, and by it I know when I will be fed. I receive three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is always the same. Two eggs, toast, and orange juice for breakfast; vegetable soup and crackers for lunch; cube steak, potatoes, salad, and milk for dinner. There is only one deviation; sometimes with dinner I am given a bar of chocolate or a dish of ice cream. I do not know why I am given these occasional extra treats but I do appreciate them. I also appreciate the fact that I receive clean towels and clothes once a week, as well as clean sheets on the bed.

It is night now and from my window I can see nothing but darkness. Any time of the day I can hear cars, and at night they seem to be especially loud. Whenever a horn sounds I think it is sounding inside the room, and if somebody outside yells an order or command, I pretend that it is me they are addressing and respond with a nod or a wave of my hand.

But I will never speak out loud. Although I do not know whether it is absolutely forbidden, they do not seem to like me to speak; and if I must speak, I speak only in my head or on paper. Many years ago, I told them that if I must be in the room then I must be made comfortable. They got very angry with that and told me that it is not for me to say what I want. One of them rushed in and beat me furiously while I was asleep. The light was on and I caught a glimpse of his face. Thereafter, I never saw him again, though I have received many other beatings during the night.

I would have left long ago but the glass in the window does not break and the window is small and barred; the door is also kept locked. On the contrary, I do not know what I would do if I should ever leave. Outside I hear it is just as bad; according to the news, rumors of war. Predictions of annihilation. I have heard people shouting in the streets, urging for the war to come.

This night I dream of something that occurred days ago. They had put wires on my head and had influenced my thoughts. They had told me to think of something. As soon as I had thought of it, they had urged me to think of something else. They are masters of manipulation and although I am aware of this, it is not wise of me to mention it.

To this day there are still three bald spots where they had shaved my head. They ran a test where I listened to a series of strange high-pitched sounds. Some of these sounds got to be so loud I thought my ears would burst, and when I pleaded for the sounds to stop, a man came into the room and gave me an explanation for the test.

We are testing all deviants, he said, because deviants are God’s chosen people.

This night, they put a girl in my room. She is beautiful; she has long blonde hair, green eyes, and her figure at once makes me feel anxious. She wears no clothing and her breasts are huge, her nipples round and dark. Her legs are slender and long and her vagina is a triangle of fine coil. They had put tape over her mouth, and I know at once she is not permitted to speak.

I slowly go down on Her. I kiss her breasts first, then her stomach, then her legs. I lay Her on the bed and my mouth touches the smooth, milky lips of her vagina. My tongue explores the moist cavity and in a while her body jerks as if on strings.

I penetrate Her and release my seed.

Later that night, I go to remove the tape. Her is sleeping beside me on the bed, her lips pressed tightly together beneath the clear tape. Her awakens and sees me attempting to peel the tape away. She scrambles back to the wall and begins to cry. I apologize. They would not hesitate to shoot Her if I pull off the tape.

That is one of the penalties for failing a test.

They keep Her in the room. She is not permitted to leave. Her meals are given to her intravenously. She never wears clothes and we copulate constantly.

Daily, a man comes into the room and scrapes a sample from her vagina with a fine, sharp instrument. It doesn’t bother Her. She never conveys any pain when they remove the intravenous tube after every meal.

We learn to get along beautifully. We seem to share an interest in television, and enjoy watching the same shows. Her laughs at cartoons and gets excited watching westerns. We copulate often. Sometimes by mistake she flips on the news and we listen to the changes going on in the world. Bumblings and killings, fires and rumors of wars. One story we catch in progress: executions on the far side of the world; people buried to their heads in hot sand and beheaded for doing things against the state. We cringe at the sight of the bodies.

There is little one can truly know about a person without speaking. That is why we get along so beautifully. I learn little about Her and because I do not speak out loud, Her, in turn, learns little about me. This way, there is little we can hate in one another. Her views of the world, her complaints, her regrets, her pleasures, are all unknown to me. In a certain sense, she is a mystery, a feminine question mark. Just the shape of her body titillates me.

?

I think Her is part of a test they are conducting. They have done this to me before. Many, many days ago, they put a child in the room—a little boy. He cried all the time. In fact, he never stopped crying and he was in the room for days. I did not speak to him, but I held him, fed him, and rubbed his forehead. I believed he was suffering with a fever. His face was always so hot and his eyes were bloodshot. I thought I might get him to stop crying, but he passed away one night while sleeping beside me on the bed. The following morning, they dragged him by his feet out of the room. He was a sick specimen they could do nothing with, an unfortunate aspect of a test which had failed. They had put him in the room because there was no place else for him.

Her is looking in the mirror now. She is looking at her reflection. She is staring at the tape across her mouth. I do not suppose she is thinking about ripping it off. She is scratching the tape. Her lips must itch. Her breasts wiggle and her ass tightens as she stands upon her tiptoes and leans against the sink to get a better look at her face in the glass. I get hard watching Her; and while she examines herself, I penetrate Her from behind and release my seed.

Then I whisper so softly in her ear that nobody else could possibly hear.

I am happy you are in the room.

I watch her reflection in the mirror. Her lips attempt to smile beneath the tape. I am standing directly behind Her. My cock begins to shrink. My arms are wrapped around her stomach. She touches my hand, rubs it with her thumb. I can tell she wants to speak. The meaning of the tape is still unknown to me. I nod my head as though I understand what is on her mind.

This night we hear an explosion outside the window. We turn off all of the lights and peer out into the night. We can see nothing but darkness. People are screaming. The sky flashes brilliantly for an instant, but there is still enough time to see thick, white clouds and the moon glowing behind a cloud. People are screaming. It sounds as if they are inside the room, screaming in our ears. Maybe this is the war that is to come? Her puts her hands over her ears. I go back to the glass and look outside. There is another explosion. I catch a glimpse of feet running in the streets. She is standing directly behind me. Her arms are wrapped around my waist. Her face is buried in the arch of my back. Neither of us are wearing clothes. The sky flashes again. There is a scream so piercing I think my ears will burst. Somehow I feel defenseless without my clothes on. I get dressed. Sirens blare and there is a sound of glass breaking. Her jumps into bed and vanishes beneath the covers. There is a voice beyond the window shouting, Catch nine … catch nine … catch nine …

The sky flashes again. A bloody flash that is as white as fear. I fall back and lose consciousness on the edge of the bed. I wake up and she’s over me, stroking my forehead. Her eyebrows quiver like worms.

I forget and speak out loud.

What happened?

She shakes her head. Mine is whirling all around. I am on the floor. I struggle up to the bed. She helps me. Her breasts crush against my rib cage.

There was a flash, I say to her. A flash of a fiery mind.

Her looks at the window. The window is an eye to the impenetrable night. There are no voices and there are no explosions now.

I say, The war that is to come is on its way. We hear it on the news. Remember? Predictions of annihilation. It’s coming.

She lightly touches my lips with her two fingers. She reminds me that I shouldn’t speak. I think of grabbing Her and ripping the tape off her mouth and listening to the sound of her voice. I want to hear Her speaking. I want to know if her voice is high or low. Soft or coarse.

The door opens and into the room comes one of them, and with him comes a wave of cold air that drives us under the blanket.

He tells us there is nothing to question outside. He walks across the room. He says that he is on duty, and he complains that he must go to all the rooms and inform everyone that there is nothing to question about the explosion. Then he drops the topic entirely and goes over to Her. He begins to examine the tape over her mouth and reminds her that it is never to come off. Two others of them come in and begin to feed Her intravenously, while I receive my meal of cube steak, potatoes, salad, and milk. Then another man comes in and scrapes a sample from her vagina with a fine, sharp instrument. She smiles as her meal floods into her veins and gives her the energy she needs in order to exist, and her legs are spread wide open as he probes with his instrument. He puts his hand on her knee and informs her that things are looking very good and that it is time for her to receive her first injection. She looks at me, puzzled, but I cannot offer her any explanation while he rubs her arm with a wad of cotton and gives her a shot with a needle that is at least three inches long. She wiggles and squirms and cries with pain, and he soothes Her and coos Her and says, All good things that come to thee, hurt in time.

This day they throw an old man into the room and close the door. He is on the floor and he is so old that I fear he cannot stand to his feet, but he does so with surprising agility and presents to me his calling card. I am sitting on the bed and Her is cleaning my toenails with her fingernail. I receive his card and read:

M.A. Watson & Company

Practicing Attorney

Law Firm: EST. 1 BLG. 102

Blue Building

With a voice belonging to a younger man he says, They broke up my firm, took my associates, B.P. Dickson and C.R. Webster, and shot them right in the streets, in their temples. Me, they were going to shoot, but I bargained with them. I offered my services, as counsel, free of charge. You know, they are under legal investigation at this very moment for operating a psychiatric institution without the proper credentials. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. It’s in all the papers. Confidentially, the lawyers they hired have proved to be nothing but problems. These younger lawyers get so bogged down in detail. They are incapable of examining a case in its proper perspective. Their mental picture of the relative importance of things is such that they cannot see the forest from the trees. Well, that is getting quite off the topic. Now where was I? Oh, yes! After speaking with them … no … strike that from the record! After damn near pleading for my life … yes … that’s much better! After damn near pleading for my life, I was finally able to persuade them to take advantage of my personage and allow me to defend them in a proper court of law, and not one of these back office, here today, gone tomorrow courts that seems to be so popular now. I thought that was a rather fair exchange. My life for a case. Charges undue. Don’t you agree?

I nod and the old man gives me a suspicious look out of the corner of his eye but continues.

"Of course, if I had wanted to, I could have been shot right along with my associates in the streets. There were no witnesses. It was in the dead of night. You see, the three of us were engaged in a drink in my office. We were discussing a particular case. One which Webster was handling. It appeared that a woman, who was horribly abused by her husband, took revenge on her spouse by snapping the neck of his prize parakeet and eating the creature, feathers and all, before his very eyes. Now, she is suing him for mental and physical abuse, while he, in turn, is accusing her of murder and brutality; for, technically, there is a difference between abuse, be it mental or physical, and brutality; for where abuse corrupts, as in the case of the wife, brutality destroys. This is the fine point which we were discussing the night they took us by surprise. You see, the husband, in his actions, did not destroy a thing. He abused, certainly, but he did not destroy. The wife, in turn, did destroy. She was brutal. She killed the prize parakeet and consumed it raw. Now the thing of it is, they had both come to Webster for legal aid. Webster was in the process of making a decision as to whom he should defend, while Dickson and I were assisting him in the matter, when they barged into the room, seized us by the shoulders, dragged us out of the office and, producing rifles, forced us up against an alley wall in back of the building. Their only explanation was

‘The world must be made safe for deviants’

and they shot my two associates right there on the spot. I immediately fell upon my knees and pleaded for my life. I tell you, the powers that be are in the hands of the wrong people! Our lives are dictated to us by men who substitute law for psychological hearsay. Incidentally, I just completed a paper on this very subject. I was going to address the Association of Bitter Businessmen tomorrow, but it’s been cancelled due to my leave of absence. So here I am. Clear Thought convicted and imprisoned by state-dominated jargon. Listen, don’t make the mistake of deluding yourself into thinking that we exist in a free society, because we most emphatically do not. Would we be here otherwise? Answer that question for me if you would."

I shrug my shoulders and he gives me that suspicious look again. Her stops cleaning my toenails and shrugs her shoulders just as I do.

What’s the matter? he says. Can’t either of you speak? What’s that tape doing over her mouth? Oh, I get it. You’re deviants of the state. I should have know the minute I laid eyes on you. Yes, you’re here for reasons inexplicable, as you both may well think. But let me tell you something. You’re nothing but victims of hypocrisy, and once you realize that, you will speak out against the state in orations that will flatter the ears of your listeners!

His arms are raised to the ceiling and he is chanting at the top of his voice. Speak out! Speak out! Speak out! Speak out!

His arms fall to his sides like two deflated balloons and he begins to look very sad. The mellow features of his ancient face drop and he plops down on the bed, and Her and I bounce off and land on the floor.

You’ve been conditioned to be silent, he says to me. He extends me his hand and I shake it. Watson. M. A. Watson. When this is all over and done with, I will represent you in a Case against the State. And you my dear, he says to Her, I will gladly fuck.

He sleeps between us on the bed and he has them bring into the room all the books and files from his office. Then they carry in his big oak desk and his lawyer’s license, certificates of graduation, medals and honors in frames that he hangs on the wall. He spends days buried in papers, huge reference books opened up like butchered whales on the floor, lights burning through the night, television on only after certain hours, and volume toned down to a tolerable level. Guests appear in the room and sit down and have coffee, talking business with Watson, nonstop; for Watson’s working frantically in order to save his neck, rehearsing his defense, addresses to the jury, skimming papers, finger-finding facts, building his case, but shouting, I’m prostituting myself! My ideals and morals are going to the dogs. My enemies are now my life’s blood. My profession for a bit of dignity. Anyone … is there anyone who can offer me a teeny bit of dignity?

The explosions come again in the night. People are screaming and Watson turns to us and says, Have you ever been told about the war that is to come?

I nod and Her nods. We’re sitting on the bed because the explosions wake us up in the dead of night. Watson’s buried in his books but is now at the window, hands folded behind his back.

It will wipe out civilization, he says. It will wipe out all of civilization.

Her finds my hand and grips it. Fright is in her eyes. But I soothe Her, kissing her forehead, and Her smiles up at me like a child in my arms.

Watson pays no attention to us. He turns off the lights. The explosions light up his form; his back is to us, hands folded behind him. It would be difficult to distinguish him from any other man; perhaps, he is a president, or a great dictator, a man of the people, a peasant, a savior, a saint, a devil, or a coat rack. Each explosion that illuminates the sky also reveals Her beside me, cross-legged on the bed, her blonde hair flowing down like an ocean wave. And as the light fades and the cries of distressed citizens fill the darkness of the city outside, and the darkness within the room is quiet and deep, and moist, I, naked, kiss her taped mouth, and it is like kissing the belly of a fish, so glossy and smooth, and impenetrable.

Watson says, as someone cries and a bolt of light splits the room in two, I think if I wait, that is, if I stall for time, the war will interrupt my sentence of servitude and release me, a free man. That is, of course, assuming that I survive the war; for there will be very few who do and many of these will be maimed for life, you both doubtlessly should know; men and women will now be snakes creeping along the earth, limbless, tongues flickering, not for the scent of a kill but rather for the pain of their condition. Yes … and children … they will be monsters, little, tiny things wiggling and squirming in the poisoned atmosphere. Aunts and uncles, cousins and distant relatives, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters, moms and dads, all gone. Listen, Watson takes off his clothes (he wears a suit, tie, black shoes and a hat) and squeezes between us, his white flaky skin, old, crinkled, transparent enough to show his veins, deep-purple, streaming throughout his body, and says, I have a place, deep in the mountains, a summer cabin, beautiful trees, majestic, reaching to the sky, pine-scented air, light on your face, just natural light, far from here, a three day journey by car. But we can go there, the three of us, together. We can make the journey, even on foot, if necessary, and live there. Would you like that?

We both nod.

After the war, he says. Until then we must stall, stall, stall for time.

During the night we take turns holding Her. She is glad whenever she is being held and although I thought I had domain over her affections, I find that she is just as happy when she is in the arms of Watson, which leads me to believe that it is purely the act of