Black Balloon

Chapter 6

I was led to another room, an office that soldiers were still in the process of hastily converting into a prison cell. They carried out the furniture; a desk, a filing cabinet, a bookcase, and set them in the hallway. The walls were block (no surprise there) and the tile floor was discolored in the shape of where the furniture had recently been. A few minutes later, another soldier arrived with a cot, a sleeping bag, and a bucket, the latter being my toilet, I assumed. I was placed in this room with no idea how long I would be there or what was in store for me next. A guard was stationed outside and did not leave unless an identical replacement relieved him. And so there I sat, without a clock, a window, or a book, for some indeterminate amount of time.

Initially I was too full of adrenaline to lie down, still amped up from the ordeal, but fatigue eventually set in. My heart rate slowed down. I wasn't exactly relaxed, but I at least didn't feel like I was having a panic attack anymore. I laid on the itchy cot and stared at the ceiling. It was like a bad dream. Time had no meaning in this place where guards were plentiful but windows and clocks were scarce. It could have been the lingering brain fog from my having been knocked unconscious, or cumulative sensory deprivation, but my internal timekeeping mechanism was broken. Minutes might have been hours, hours might have been days. I had no way of knowing.

Much later a guard delivered a divided tray containing what was basically a TV dinner; salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, canned green beans, and cold slimy peaches. I was starving so I gulfed it down anyway. It tasted exactly as good as it looked...not very. After dinner, I placed the tray on the floor and laid back down on my cot, counting the ceiling tiles until I fell asleep. There were 168 of them.

Sometime later there came a stern command from the doorway:

"Wake up!"

I roused groggily from my daze and was disappointed to find that it had not, in fact, all been a bad dream. The very real guard was holding his very real rifle and gesturing for me to exit the room. Every joint and muscle hurt. My whole body was sore. Half-asleep and highly confused, I complied with the officer's request.

"Hey man, I've really gotta pee. Can I go real quick?"

He nodded and after pissing in the bucket (already growing rancid with my stale pee from hours before) I followed him. He led me, rifle at my back, down the hallway to its far end. A pair of heavy double doors stood at the terminus, the kind they have at hospitals; locked in the middle, tiny wire mesh windows. A guard unlocked the doors and let us pass.

"Thanks, Mark," said the soldier while still training his pistol on my spine.

Pushing me down the hallway like this, like a prisoner being led to the gallows, felt a little unnecessary. I had no weapons and he was twice my size, solid muscle. I was in good shape but I was about as big around as a bean pole with spindly arms and legs. This man could snap me in two if I made any attempt to escape. That would be a fool's errand on my part and we both knew it.

Beyond the doors was an industrial looking stairwell, concrete and musty, like the emergency exit of a hotel. We travelled down several stories, stopping at floor number five and then finally arriving at a room that gave me the heebiest of jeebies. It was cold and clinical; metal, tile, and glass. Everything in the room had sharp corners and right angles. It looked like some mad scientist's laboratory and reeked of chemicals. Was it a morgue? An alien autopsy room? It looked and smelled like it could be either. Terrifying visions ran through my mind of grey men with big eyes flayed open on the operating table while surgeons dissected their insides. The room was freezing. I stood shivering in my half-asleep state. There was a metal exam table in the middle of the room, steel shelves containing various vials and jars, racks of sliding drawers, and other items whose purpose was unclear; oxygen tanks, gadgets with dials and knobs. The guard asked me to sit on the exam table and then left, leaving me alone with only my fears and the smell of formaldehyde to keep me company.