Those were the days, weren’t they? Yes sir-ree, he remembered them well. He wouldn’t be able to sleep after grandma had set to work. He would lay awake all night thinking of ice cream melting in his mouth, filling his belly until it overflowed from his ears and nose. Then next morning before the rooster crowed he would sneak downstairs to the kitchen and help himself to the tub on the bottom shelf. One spoonful was enough to send him into spasms of ecstasy. Good ol’ grandma.
He probably didn’t feel quite as good as that now, but he felt pretty damned fine all the same. He wondered what miracle drug the medics had suffused him with, some kind of magic ice-cream infusion that had mended his palpitating heart and put him on top of the world. Not to mention what it had done to his vision.
Scuffled footsteps coming his way brought him back to reality, then kept going. “Nurse!” he shouted. “Don’t you leave me here! Don’t you leave me!” The scuffles faded, then they were gone. “Goddamn it! I need some help!”
All right, he thought, trying to get off the leather layback, if nobody’s going to help me, I’ll just help myself.
He couldn’t get up, however. Something was restraining him. He could move his arms and legs and neck, but something was immobilizing his torso, something like a seatbelt strapped around his guts (Waistline, dear, it’s a waistline!). He felt around for the offending item, finding nothing save the bandages. Straining against the invisible restraint, he gave up and sunk back into the leather layback wondering what he could do next.
Stuck as a pig in muck, Louis, he mused, staring at the ceiling. That’s what his grandma would have said. Yar gone and put yarself thar. Now yar gone haf’t git yarself ait.
Only he couldn’t remember how he had got there. How could he? He had been floating in a goddamn sea of blackness for god knows how long.
Yet that didn’t ring quite true. Where he had been was closer to nothing than blackness. Blackness was at least something. You might not like it, but you could at least tell it existed. Nothing, on the other hand, was nothing. It wasn’t even blackness. That’s what he remembered. Goddamned nothing. Time and space had just folded in on itself and vanished into nothingness. Then he was here. Wrapped head to tail in bandages and strapped with an invisible seatbelt to a leather layback in a room whose walls and ceiling were made of Glow In The Dark putty. What the hell was he supposed to do next?
Goddamn it, he hated losing control. That’s what he hated most about this little prank.
And it was a prank. No two ways about it. Someone – some goddamned medic and his good-for-noth’n nurse – was having a laugh at his expense. Maybe his wife had put them up to it. Maybe they were all laughing at him behind the white walls, having a little chuckle at his expense. Maybe these walls were really two-way mirrors. They could see in, but he couldn’t see out. “This isn’t funny anymore!” he shouted, straining against the invisible strap. “Get me outta this goddamn chair!”
No one came, as he had half expected. He didn’t even hear any scuffled footsteps.
“That’s goddamn it!”
He arched his back and thrashed his arms and legs, shaking his head from side to side and screaming, “Get me outta this goddamn chair!” After a minute or so (it could have been longer, five or ten minutes maybe, it was hard to tell, maybe even shorter) he gave up and sunk into the leather layback. Though he hated it, absolutely hated it, he would just have to wait until the prankster returned and let him loose.
And wouldn’t he give the scumbag a piece of his mind when he did.
Then, just as he felt his eyelids begin to sag, he heard scuffled footsteps approach and stop (from left or right, or up or down, he couldn’t tell). This time they didn’t fade away. This time he heard whispers. Like the scuffles, they were hard to locate; they were just everywhere. He couldn’t catch the whole of the conversation, but there was no doubt who they were talking about. He strained against the invisible strap and yelled, “Who the hell is there?”
The whispering ceased. Then a booming voice almost shook him off his layback, reverberating from all corners of the room. “LOUIS DEVILLE!” He was too stunned to answer. Though loud, the voice wasn’t painful like the warbling had been, just something that seemed to emanate, the verbal equivalent of the light. “ARE YOU READY?”
Ready for what? he thought. “It’s Lewey. Not Lewis,” he said, directing himself to the ceiling. Whoever was talking to him must be talking from somewhere up there. “And you’d better have a goddamn good excuse for tying me up like this. I know my rights. My lawyers will sling your sorry ass to court quicker than you can call your defense union.”
He sank back waiting for the retort, but the voice remained silent for some time. For a horrid moment, he thought he’d been left alone again. Then it spoke.
“LOUIS DEVILLE! ARE YOU READY?”
“Stop calling me Lewis! It’s Lewey, goddamn it!”
Another momentary pause, then, “ARE YOU READY?”
Struggling to prop himself on his elbows, he said, “Ready for what you goddamn piece of shit?”
“TO SIGN THE CONTRACT!”
Louis kept scanning the room for originator of the voice, failing to see anything past the bright walls and ceiling that were continuing to radiate like some x-rayed slab of Glow In The Dark putty. He wasn’t surprised. His first hunch was becoming increasingly likely; he was in one of those two-way mirrored rooms watched by god knows how many medics and professors analyzing his every word and gesture. He had seen the TV shows. He knew what they were doing behind the screen. Still propped on his elbows, he said, “What contract? My health insurance is paid up. I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
“YOU HAVE A CHOICE.”
Two contracts? Now there was a goddamn novelty. “I’m not signing anything until I read them,” he said. Then, as an afterthought: “I want my lawyers to go through them, too.”
He heard a whisper hushing around the room, above, below, forward, behind, left and right, everywhere in fact. It was difficult to tell whether there was more than one or whether the voice was just whispering to itself. Then: “NO LAWYERS.”
“Goddamn it!” he shouted to the ceiling. “Just who the hell do you think you are? I’m entitled to legal representation.”
Again, more whispering followed a studied pause. Then: “NO LAWYERS.”
Louis took a moment to think. He was in a Mexican standoff. Except he wasn’t really, was he? They – whoever they were – had him by the short and curlies. They could see him, but he couldn’t see them. They came and went as they pleased, while he was restrained like a goddamned psychopath the medics were too afraid to untie for fear of letting loose the devil. He hated it, but he really had no choice apart from accepting their conditions and making some sort of compromise. Still, at least they were offering him a choice. It probably wouldn’t do any harm to have a look. Maybe he could stall for time while he tried to work out just what the hell was happening. He didn’t have to put pen to paper just yet.
Louis said to the ceiling, “I’ll look at the contracts on one condition.”
Whispers hushed around the room before it spoke again. “STATE YOUR TERMS.”
Louis smiled. A minor victory, Louis my boy, but there’s a long way to go yet. “Remove these goddamn shackles,” he said.
Instantly, the invisible restraint loosened