walked at an unhurried pace toward the street, cell phone in hand.
Hinkey’s Bar wouldn’t be having a musical evening after all.
Four
I woke up in my cell. The light was on and a ragged blanket had been thrown over my naked body. My head was aching and I felt nauseous. When a tray of bread and cheese was pushed through the hatch, I was able only to gulp down the water. Not long after that, I was violently sick, though what came up was nothing but liquid. I sat on the uneven bed with my legs drawn up, seeing the scarring on my knee at close range. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. My memory was very limited again. To my surprise, I found my heart beat fast. I was excited, alert, but I couldn’t fathom why. Then I remembered the masked figures and the upturned cross. What the hell was going on?
The loud music came on and I sat motionless, letting it crash into me, all thoughts driven from my mind. I was seeing red, literally-it was as if I were immersed in a sea of blood. I felt sick again, but was only able to retch up a few mouthfuls of evil-tasting fluid. The room was suddenly very hot and I threw the blanket to the floor. It lay there like a tattered mat. I stared at it with mounting fascination, trying to understand why it was suddenly exercising such power over me.
At the same time, I was working on summoning up images, words, anything from my memory. Nothing appeared. I had the feeling that I had found some way of building up my identity, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. All I could think of, in an attempt to stave off the blood that seemed to be flooding over me, was the blanket on the floor. What did it mean? A thin, scratchy covering that either kept me too hot or too cold, that was often damp from the flow of water that came through the door. The blanket lying on the floor. Like a rug. Or a mat.
A flash of clear white light drove the redness away. Mat. Why was the word so significant. Because the bastards in gray were trampling me as if I were a mat? No, there was more to the word than that. Mat. The blanket would act like a bath mat if I left it on the floor for the next spray of freezing water. No. What was the significance of mat?
My heart missed a beat and I leaped to my feet. Mat. It was my name. Matt, with two ts. I slapped the wall for joy and tried to dance a jig. My legs gave way and I dropped onto the blanket. My name was Matt. They hadn’t taken away my identity after all-I had managed to keep something of myself from them.
I kneeled there with a slack smile on my lips. I was Matt. I was still what I had been before I arrived at this awful place.
Then I slumped forwards as the realization hit me-I might have known one of my names, but I had no idea of the others. Just as I had no idea of where I was or why I was here. And the next time I was put under the sinister box, I might lose the little that I had managed to salvage.
Time was running out for Matt, whoever the hell he was.
I didn’t know how many more sessions under the machine I endured. Sometimes I could remember that my name was Matt, sometimes not. There were other occasions, the worst ones, when I doubted that I was called Matt at all, and that I was only hallucinating.
Then everything changed. I was dragged to the treatment room by the silent men in leather aprons. I remembered how asphyxiating it felt when the long box was lowered over me-and then, more quickly than usual, everything turned to black.
When I came round, I found that I was lying on a comfortable bed, one that seemed to be at the correct angle to the rest of a large room. I was hooked up to numerous machines. I felt as if I were floating, but my mind was sluggish, like it had been chained down. I tried to work out who I was, but failed. I was forced to lie back and look around.
To my left, beyond a desk equipped with an angled lamp and a computer screen, there was a window. The shackles on my mind immediately loosened at the sight of the trees in the middle distance, a great green carpet of them rising up a slope. This room was obviously above ground level. I tried to get up, but found that my arms and legs were secured. That darkened my mood. I had the feeling that I’d been in captivity before, though nothing specific flashed before me. My memory was sluggish.
A young woman wearing a white uniform came towards me, a warm smile on her lips. “Good morning,” she said. “You’ve been asleep for a long time.” She took a cell phone from her belt and pressed buttons. She spoke in a low voice and then turned her attention back to me. “How are you feeling?”
I shrugged. “Like my head’s been filled with cotton wool. What happened?”
She gave me another smile and started checking the monitors. “The doctor will be here soon.”
I let the evasive answer go. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything else out of the nurse. A man with a goatee came in. He was wearing a white coat over a gray uniform. I was sure I’d seen both him and his clothing before but, again, I couldn’t come up with any specifics.
The doctor gave me a tight smile and took my pulse. He then looked at the clipboard on which the nurse had been recording readings from the machines. He gave her a curt nod.
“You are doing well,” he said, looking at me but avoiding my eyes.
“Am I?” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me my name.”
His expression went blank.
“Or what you’ve been doing to me here?”
He remained silent.
“Or even where here is?”
The two of them moved away. I decided to feign sleep in the hope that would make them drop their guard. That turned out to be a total failure. Not only did they keep their distance, but I fell into a profound slumber.
For some reason, the image of a bath mat filled my mind before I lost consciousness.
I woke up and looked around surreptitiously. The nurse was at her desk, head bowed. I closed my eyes again and tried to drive away the lethargy that seemed to have infected my thought processes. Then I remembered the bath mat I’d seen before I fell asleep. It seemed to mean something important, something more than “remember to put this down before you have a bath or you might slip when you get out.” But I couldn’t reach that layer of significance.
The machines around me were beeping and humming in random sequences. I found myself tapping my finger and thumb together and becoming aware of a rhythm. I kept my eyes shut as I discerned a melody. Music, it meant something, it was important to me. Suddenly, a string of words came to mind. I repeated them under my breath.
“Dylan, Young, Springsteen. Dylan, Young, Springsteen…”
The mantra gave me a warm feeling-it seemed to bring me closer to myself.
Then the words were changed by some opaque part of my brain.
“Pop, Hell, Rotten, Strummer. Pop, Hell, Rotten, Strummer…”
I didn’t know what the words referred to, but I knew the person that I once was, the character that I’d lost, had paid attention to them. I was in the dark about my past, but there were still a few beacons lighting the way back.
At some point, the nurse roused me with a tray with the kind of food I hadn’t seen for what seemed like months-fresh bread, bacon, eggs, fruit, orange juice, coffee. I ate and drank ravenously. It was hard to fend off real sleep after that, but I repeated my mantra again to stay surreptitiously awake.
Eventually-I had no idea how much time had passed-my patience was rewarded. I heard two pairs of footsteps approaching. The doctor and nurse were being very careful, keeping their voices low, but I heard one of the man’s sentences clearly enough.
“Advise control center that L24 will be ready for coffining and psych-process closure tomorrow.”
I took it that I was L24. The designation meant nothing to me and I had the distinct feeling I’d never heard it before. L24? It sounded like I was a machine rather than a human being. Screw that.
Then I started wondering about the other things the doctor had mentioned-control center, coffining, psych-
