Authors: Lippe Simone
Ray’s life was revolving increasingly around keys. The doors to freedom were all securely locked and now the door to Dr. Spivic’s office full of answers was locked. Ray’s hand shook on the handle with anger and frustration and fear that shaking the handle would attract attention, so he settled for giving it a good hard impotent squeeze.
So it was back to plan A, which had the mutual and complementary goals of acquiring the keys from Nancy and not being beaten to a pinkish pulp by the new world order.
Ray followed the hall in a U-turn around the nurses’ station and his abandoned picnic until he found himself once again outside the cafeteria and just out of sight of the common area.
The cafeteria was small and dark, lit only by a red exit sign above the door, and there were no obvious threats. Most of the room was occupied by three long tables with chairs stacked neatly on them as janitors will do between meal shifts. The remaining side of the room was a predictable stainless steel serving area with trays and cutlery stacked at one end of a long browsing shelf on the other side of which were removable presentation trays, all empty. Behind that was the door to a walk-in refrigerator which at this point Ray assumed was welded shut.
It wasn’t and in fact Ray found the cold room door opened freely to a gold mine. He filled one of the stainless-steel presentation trays with apples and pears and bananas and decided for the moment against oranges, which risked injecting unnecessary complexity into his plan. There were about twenty now in the Dodgers community and he made sure that he had more than one piece of fruit for each. Two each for the leaders.
Holding the tray in front of him like a peanut vendor at a ball game, Ray walked as casually as he could manage into view of the common area and stood looking about, waiting to be noticed, which took seconds. Then he approached the very edge of the carpet marking Dodgers territory, placed the tray on the ground, and sat behind it, facing the tribe. All eyes were on Ray, then the fruit, then the leaders, and then the fruit again, as though following a lively debate.
A few forward infantry made tentative moves toward Ray but were stopped by the single most terrifying sound that Ray could recall ever hearing. A simple grunt from the biggest orderly. It was little more than the sort of harrumph a curmudgeon makes to indicate that he’s thoroughly unimpressed by the soup of the day but it was the first exercise in verbal communication that Ray had encountered in his short period of human consciousness and it meant that he was facing a terrifyingly unpredictable degree of sophistication. The confidence he had in his plan, which was already a frail and withered thing, ebbed.
The tribe cleared a path between Ray and the grunting leader. The massive orderly stood with an ape-like stoop that made him look a little ridiculous and a lot battle-ready. Ray held out a banana. The orderly approached sidelong, one hand outstretched, like he was angling to pull an important document from a blazing fire. When he was within reach the chief hovered his massive hand above Ray’s offering, bypassed it and quickly selected a pear, never taking his eyes off Ray’s. He put the pear in his mouth, took another one, and returned to his position in the center of the tribe.
A peace accord had been reached. The other members of the tribe slowly approached and Ray gently limited them to one piece of fruit each. The women, in some primitive patriarchal instinct, waited until the men all had and were thoroughly distracted by their apples and pears and bananas, which were proving to be a puzzle. Ray caught Nancy’s eye, held up an apple and moved slightly away from the carpet, tempting her away from the garden of Eden.
Nancy approached and when she reached for the apple Ray put it back in the tray. She seemed to get the message and she sat next to him to eat her fill. The plan was working worryingly well. He was a tolerated member of the group but not so integral that they’d mind or even notice when he left, particularly if he left the fruit behind. He’d even made a friend, and it was the only friend he was interested in making. He touched Nancy lightly on the shoulder as he imagined a naturalist would do to habituate apes to human contact. Then he reached for the keys on her waist. Then the plan fell to pieces.
The biggest orderly with the two pears and, apparently, a claim on Nancy leapt once again to his feet with a brief but surprisingly expressive snort. He faced Ray with his legs spread and arms wide as though he judged Ray the type to opt for a touchdown. Then he bounded across the distance between them and made a very telegraphed reach for Ray’s head. Ray didn’t have time to get to his feet or even think but some instinct drew the metal tray between them in time for the massive open hands to smack into it. The giant shook the sting off his fingertips and lunged again at the empty space that Ray had vacated like a startled cricket.
Ray’s strategy confused the competition, who grunted a challenge that he clearly expected Ray to take up. Ray demurred and instead backed slowly down the hall, peering over the tray. The incumbent repeated his challenge and approached Ray with open and swaying arms, offering him every chance to earn a claim on Nancy or a position of leadership or a smashed head. Ray back-pedaled down the hall and turned to a full sprint when all three tribal leaders, aghast that Ray wasn’t going to do the honorable thing, broke into a loping pursuit.
Once again Ray was being chased by a blood-thirsty mob through the halls of a mental ward but this time he had the singular advantage of knowing the lay of the land. Scanning the terrain for sanctuary as he passed he rejected the patient rooms and examination rooms and particularly the fire escape as hopeless dead ends. He turned the corner to the final hall, passed the chapel and burst through the swinging doors before stopping to still them, hoping that his rivals for tribal leadership would assume he’d gone to church. He pressed himself into the doorway of one of the mysterious darkened rooms with the portal windows. The hall doors swung open.
Ray pulled silently on the handle behind him and the door opened with a clack that drew the attention of the orderlies, who stumbled into a clumsy gallop and made it to the door just as Ray pulled it closed behind him with another even more decisive clack. There was no handle on the inside.
There was no other door. Nor was there a window or furniture or blunt object. There was just a thin carpet and walls of linoleum, some of which had been torn away to reveal thick foam rubber. In the corner sat an emaciated old man with scars on his face and on his scalp where his hair had been pulled out in clumps. He was wearing a straight-jacket. Ray was in a padded holding cell. A rubber room. And once again the door was locked.
The orderlies competed for a view through the portal window but otherwise seemed satisfied to leave Ray where he was. Even had they felt otherwise they probably couldn’t have figured out how to open the door. Eventually they left and Ray realized that as much danger as he’d been in until this very moment, things had taken a far worse turn. The room was designed to contain dangerous psychopaths. There was no way he could ever open that door and there was no one to let him out. Doubtless oxygen could get in so it was to be starvation, assuming he could resist eating the emaciated man in the straight-jacket.
The emergency lighting was almost gone and was little more than the residual glow from the phosphorous face of a very old and very cheap watch. Ray pressed his face to the portal window and saw nothing in the blue gloom but blue gloom. He only then noticed what he held in his hand — he’d managed to get the keys from Nancy, and now he was locked behind probably the only door they wouldn’t open.
The uninterrupted string of threats on his life that Ray had faced until that moment had been just that — uninterrupted and hence, while terrifying, offering the dubious advantage of providing Ray little time to be properly horrified. Now he was in total and darkening silence and, apart from the unwelcome company of a mindless and unpredictable lunatic in a straight-jacket, he was alone. Now with the leisure to fully appreciate the gravity of his situation, the stone-cold fear penetrated Ray like an arctic wind. He finally shook in anticipation of a slow death, without the means to even take his own life.
Ray tried to pierce the darkness with a gaze of concentrated and undiluted desperation until, with a suddenness that gave the impression that he’d somehow provoked it, the blue gloom brightened almost imperceptibly. Someone had opened the doors again at the end of the hall. As one of the massive orderlies took form in the darkness Ray strained to develop a plan to tempt him to open the door and nearly had something when it became irrelevant — the massive orderly in the hall was Leonard.
“Leonard. Leonard. Lenny.” he yelled, slapping his hand on the glass. Leonard saw him and recognized him and, possibly, smiled. The big bear of an orderly had to crouch slightly to look through the portal window at Ray and he appeared almost happy to see the man who had pulled the thorn from his paw.
“Leonard, you have to open the door. You have to open the door and do it now and not think of anything but opening the door.” Ray said, trying to combine urgency with calm authority.
“Just pull the lever up. That one there, on the door. Pull it up.” He pointed out the window and down and Leonard strained his faculties and entirely missed the point. He looked around and behind him and then, apparently satisfied that he understood, crossed the hall and opened the door to the opposing room, looked back at Ray, and locked himself in.
“No, no, Leonard, not that door. This door. You were supposed to open this door you great hulking lump of dumb. This fucking door.” Leonard looked at him through the window of his own room, only slightly less sure now that he’d done the right thing.
Ray ran from wall to wall tearing at the linoleum. At the spot where it had already been torn he pulled it back further to see solid concrete. He slumped into the wall and considered smashing his head against it until hope returned.
A slight darkening at the window drew his attention to the orderlies, who had returned and were once again looking in, this time eating the remaining fruit.
Possibly they’d come to taunt him or make sure he was still there. More likely they were exploring, having been introduced to the concept of broader horizons and alternative sources of food. Ray looked down at the foam rubber in his hands. He tore off a piece, put it in his mouth, and chewed.
“Mmmm-mm.” he said, savoring the moisture absorbing qualities of dry, dusty foam rubber. “Delicious.” He swallowed, rubbed his stomach, and took another bite. “And there’s enough delicious foam rubber in here to last me forever.” He tore another long strip from the wall to illustrate the point, and ate it.
The orderlies hammered at the door and the glass with their open hands. It was an admirable opening result for a spontaneous plan but it wouldn’t be a success until Ray was once again under immediate threat of death by direct violence. The orderlies had to be taught to open the door. Ray put his hands up like a mime behind an invisible door and mimicked the efforts of the orderlies. Then, still miming, he noticed an imaginary door handle, pulled it up and walked through to imaginary freedom. The orderlies learned the lesson with a quickness that made Ray deeply regret not performing the same pantomime for Leonard, because now they were in the padded cell and tearing at the walls, except for the biggest of them who blocked the exit, still determined to have his showdown.
Ray dove between the giant’s legs and slid into the hall only to be pinned to the ground by an adversary no longer so easily fooled. Ray felt his head clamped on either side by enormous, fat hands and as he was lifted from the floor he knew what was coming and in that instant it came. His face was propelled against the floor with sufficient force to pass through it and Ray felt his nose shatter and his teeth cut through his lips. He went automatically limp as he’d seen the junkies do so convincingly, but then in a moment of theatrical spontaneity Ray rolled over to face his opponent.
“That all you got? Pussy?” he said, or might have were it not for the blood and swollen lips. The attitude was clear, though, and the effect was immediate and the giant again took hold of Ray’s head and lifted him entirely off the ground in preparation for a spectacular touchdown. Ray had not a single spark more strength than he needed on the way up to hook his hand around the lever of the opposing door and pop it open with that same decisive clack.
Leonard burst through the door as though he’d had a running head start down a steep hill. Ray slumped to the floor as Leonard bounded over him and caught up the shrinking orderly with a hand around his neck and another on his thigh and tried to fit him horizontally through the door of Ray’s former cell. The orderly didn’t fit through the door in this manner but the effort had the happy side-effects of slamming the door shut, locking his lieutenants in with the man in the straight-jacket, and knocking the orderly into, at the very least, a long-term state of unconsciousness.