Chapter 7

"Quite amazing, Mr. Cavenaugh," Dr. Braun said as he looked down at me. I was lying on the floor of the cage. No, I wasn't sleeping. I just had no energy. That's what happens when you have little to no body fat and don't eat for days. Your body starts rebelling and refusing to follow such complex orders as 'Get Up' or 'Stand'. "No nutrients other than the vitamins and minerals we've been putting in your water for a full seven days and you still refuse to cooperate. You should pat yourself on the back; it is quite an accomplishment."

He walked over to his ever present stool and sat down, greeting his wife quietly. Dr. Leoni Braun was a handsome, middle-aged woman. Tall and thin, though shorter than the doctor, she kept her brown, slightly graying hair curled into a fetching bob, tucking in just under her chin. If she hadn't been helping keep me prisoner I might have even found her attractive; she had intense brown eyes and a long, thin nose that set off her high cheekbones and full lips quite beautifully. The fact was, though, that she was helping to keep me prisoner so my opinion of her was not nearly so flattering.

They weren't the only two in the lab. From time to time other, younger, men and women made an appearance, looking at the monitors or working on cultures or mixing chemicals. I thought of them as interns though I had no real understanding of their real function or purpose. Neither of the Doctors Braun ever explained who they were or what they were doing; as a matter of fact, Doctor Leoni Braun didn't speak to me at all. I was close to believing she was mute when I saw her husband talking to her. Maybe she only speaks German or something. Anyway, I do know the Doctors talked to these 'interns', but that's about all.

Of course, I know of one purpose the 'interns' served. It had come in handy the morning of my first full day here.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Cavenaugh," Doctor Lukas greeted me cheerfully. I remember thinking that he needed someone to write new material for him. The 'land of the living' shtick was getting very old. "I hope you had a good nap; we have work to do. Oh, and I did warn you about the bars before I left, didn't I? You're very lucky I had only set the electricity level to a low setting; the shock rendered you unconscious without any permanent damage." He tossed something into the cage; it looked like a small, dull black box. I picked it up; it felt spongy, like rubber, and one side had a small red button. "In the future when you have to urinate or have a bowel movement, press the button. Someone will come in and place a bucket through the sally port for your use. When you're done, press the button again and they will return to gather the refuse. As you've found, the latex-carbon fiber material covering your body provides for normal dermal aeration and openings for your urination and bowel movements." He had moved to sit on his stool before turning back to me. "Oh, and I would not tamper with the bars any further; from now on, they will be on a much higher voltage setting and could cause you permanent damage."

From then on, whenever I had to go, I just pushed the button. The men and women (and, yes, it was way uncomfortable when a woman showed up to give me my bucket that first time) would come, leave me a bucket and a few sheets of toilet paper and then leave. They'd come back to pick it up when I pressed the button a second time; after I was done.

And I'd only tried once to dump the refuse on them through the bars. Evidently the floor could be electrically charged, as well. I learned my lesson quickly just as soon as I woke up again ... To the doctor welcoming me back to the land of the living. He really needed new material.

"I have a confession to make, Mr. Cavenaugh," Dr. Braun said to me with some aplomb. "I never expected you to cooperate with us. Not yet, anyway. We are thorough and our psychological profile indicated you'd stubbornly refuse to cooperate with us. I thought it was instructional to see how far you'd go and I must say that you did not disappoint. However, we needed to take a week-long base measurement of your current physiology so it was not all ... how do you say it? In vain?"

He stood up and walked over to me. "However, now the real work begins. I need you to 'speed up' I believe you say? I need you to enter the speed zone so that I can start getting good measurements."

"Fuck you," I snarled ... and immediately regretted it. The bastard electrified the floor, shooting pain through my body, my muscles tensing involuntarily.

"There is no need for such language, young man," Dr. Lukas said conversationally. "More importantly, it will not be tolerated. You will show me the respect I am due."

"Get fucked." I am not the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm also rather stubborn. Even more, I was starving. This is really not a good combination.

The pain was extreme and seemed to last forever and it was accompanied by this shrill, high pitched whine that seemed to cut right through my brain. As it went on, I thought for sure I was going to push my internal organs up through my throat to spill all over the floor. I was equally concerned that I was going to crack right through my teeth. Finally, it was over and I found out just what the shrill, high pitched whine was – evidently, when electrocuted for an extended period of time, I scream like a little girl. Who knew?

"Last warning, Mr. Cavenaugh," Dr. Lukas said amiably. "Next time I will just turn the electricity on and let it go until it renders you unconscious ... quite painfully, I might add."

"F-f-fuck ... fuck..." I started. I didn't get to finish. I'm not sure how long it went on but it was long enough that I welcomed the darkness when it came for me.

"I see that you've joined us again, Mr. Cavenaugh," Dr. Lukas said. At least he wasn't still on that 'land of the living' bullshit. "We have learned our lesson, yes? No more profanity. Treat me and my wife – all of us, actually – with respect, yes?"

"FUCK YOU MOTHERFUmpflglsl." I may have claimed to be smart at one time. I take it all back.

When I came to again, my mouth was taped shut.

"I apologize, Mr. Cavenaugh," the doctor said and damned if he didn't actually sound apologetic. "I'd like nothing more than to continue this lesson. Courtesy and respect for ones elders is something that you and many of your contemporaries need to learn. However, my colleagues are all anxious to move on to phase two so I will put that lesson away for later."

"Am I to assume that you are not yet willing to cooperate with us?" he continued.

"Mmflmfflmflmm." I'm a stunning conversationalist. I was trying to tell him, yet again, where he could put his cooperation but the tape was making it extremely hard.

"A simple shake of your head yes or no shall suffice, Mr. Cavenaugh," the doctor chuckled.

I stood up and stood stock still. Then, looking him dead in the eye, I slowly turned my back on the bastard. No way was I going to give in.

Did you know that it is possible to scream through a taped mouth? The resulting sound is muffled somewhat, true, but it is still easily recognizable as a scream. I know this because the pain shooting up from my legs and through my body had me screaming like a little girl yet again. It was only for a few seconds but it was enough to buckle my legs.

Steel floors are hard. They hurt when you fall on them. Comparatively speaking, I'd take the pain of falling to the steel floor to getting electrocuted, however. Hell, I almost welcomed the relatively mild pain of cracking my head on the steel floor.

"I think that is a sufficient answer to my question, actually, but I couldn't resist one more object lesson in response to your disrespect," Dr. Lukas said calmly. "I must tell you that I expected this. It is why we prepared for phase two already." He motioned for one of the 'interns' to come over, a pretty young female who couldn't be more than 25 or 30. "Doctor Olendish, here, will describe phase two for you since this is her part of the project."

"I must admit to being slightly excited," the young woman said. Her accent was less thick than Doctor Braun's but was still present. Her face was lit up like a kid at Christmas. "I have studied theory, of course, but have never had the opportunity to put it into practice."

She took a deep breath to calm down. "In phase two, we are going to break you, Mr. Cavenaugh. Not your body; we need your body. We are going to break your mind. I'm sure you've seen movies or television programs where men are brain-washed, yes? In order to brain-wash someone, you must first break their personality. With adults, that can be difficult. The personality of an adult man or woman is so ingrained that the trauma can be severe."

"You, however," she continued, "are just a juvenile. Your personality is still in its formative stage. It should make it much easier to break and shape it."

"Explain what is in store for him, fraulein," Doctor Lukas instructed the younger woman.

"Yes, sir," she replied, looking at the doctor with a smile. "Of course, sir." She turned to me. "We are going to start by certain forms of sensory manipulation. We're going to have music and noise of various intensities turned on and off in varying intervals. The intermingling of sound and silence will force your mind on edge. We will also vary heat and cold, freezing one moment, sweating the next. At the same time, we will be bombarding you with various intensities of light and darkness, strobe effects and so on. Finally, electric shocks of varying durations and intensities will keep you from sleeping and keep you riding the ragged edge of pain."

"Mmflflmlf," I said, my face snarling.

"Personally, I think we'll break you within a week or so," the young doctor said brightly. "There is a pool, though."

Thus began my torture. My world became a varying, disjointed cacophony of light, sound and pain.

Speakers were hung from the ceiling all around the cage. The sounds they emitted varied in level from loud to oh-my-god-they're-breaking-my-ear-drums. The sound played was sometimes music of every type – from classical to hard rock and everything in between – and sometimes just noises, like the roar of a lion or the ploinking sound of water dripping. Sometimes the sound only lasted a few seconds. Sometimes, it lasted for maybe an hour. The clock had been removed from above the door, so I couldn't know for sure.

Banks of lights were rolled into place on every side of the cage. Sometimes they were bright, sometimes dim. Sometimes they blinked, sometimes they just stayed on for minutes, hours ... hell, maybe even days at a time. My entire sense of time was gone. I couldn't tell you how long anything lasted.

The shocks came at varying intensities from static electricity to fuck-my-muscles-are-locking-up. I can't tell you how long they lasted. It seemed, at times, that it was forever – but there was no way I could know for sure.

I was breaking. I was. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried as hard as I could to exert my own miniscule order. I stretched. I exercised. I did sit-ups. I did push-ups. I did jumping jacks. I did deep knee bends. I ran around the inside of the cage. The electrical shocks interrupted me but after one finished, I'd just continue with whatever I was doing ... if I could remember what I was doing. Sometimes, I couldn't.

I was losing. I was losing myself, losing my identity. Only one thing kept me from falling. My mantra. Don't give in ... don't speed up ... don't enter a speed zone...

I'd like to say I fought the good fight. I'd like to say I persevered. I'd like to say I was unchanged. I'd be lying. On the day when the sound and light and electricity stopped, I was broken. There was only light and sound and shock. I had no idea who I was. I had no idea how I'd gotten inside that cage. I had no idea how long I'd been there. I use the word 'I' but there was no 'I'. There was ... nothing.

Nothing except ... do not give in ... do not speed up ... do not enter a speed zone. I had no idea what a speed zone was. I had no idea how to speed up.

A man was standing in front of me, on the other side of the bars. He looked familiar. He had a white coat. He had dark hair that was going gray, cut short. He had glasses that made his blue eyes seem so large.

"Owl eyes," I laughed sickly. My speech was slurred but I didn't even know it. It had been so long since I'd heard my own voice.

"Yes," he said. He sounded funny. Weird. Like he was different. He had an accident. No ... an accent. He tilted his head and looked at me, his eyes squinting. "I must say, I did not expect you to last this long. No one did. No one could. How are you still standing? Why are you not broken?"

I stood there for a moment until it became clear he was expecting an answer. I thought about my response carefully. "Do not give in. Do not speed up. Do not enter a speed zone."

"What?" he replied, looked at me in amazement.

"Do ... do not ... do not give in," I said again. I wasn't sure why but those words seemed important. "Do not speed up. Do not enter a speed zone."

"Mein gott," the funny man said. He waved his hand at someone. That was funny. I laughed.

A woman came by and it looked like he was mad at her. "I thought you said you could break him but still keep him useful," the funny man said. Uh-oh. He was angry. The lady should probably watch out for that.

"I can," the woman said. "I will. It's only a matter of time. He will break."

The man looked at me. He was still angry. I hoped he wasn't angry at me.

"What is your name?" he asked me.

I looked at him. I had a name? What was my name?

"Do ... do not give in," I said. It was all I had. "Do not speed up. Do not enter a speed zone."

"Oh," the woman looked like she was upset. I wondered why she was upset. "Oh, my. I warned you we were pushing too hard. I warned you we needed to give him a break every now and then."

"You said maybe," the funny man said. He was definitely mad now. The growl reminded me of something ... but I couldn't tell what it was. "You said maybe we were pushing him too hard. You said we might want to give him a break every now and then. You said you weren't sure."

"I'm not, sir," the woman said, flustered. "I wasn't. I knew the theory but ... but there was no one who'd ever actually done it."

"Bah!" the funny man said angrily. He waved the woman away. Another funny wave. I laughed.

The funny man pulled a stool and sat on it. He looked at me for a long time but I wasn't sure why. I just looked around. "Do you know what a speed zone is? Do you know how to speed up?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. I shook my head.

"I want you to close your eyes," he said. "Will you do that for me?"

I smiled. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to play a game. He'd make me close my eyes and count to ten and then he'd hide and I'd have to find him after I was done counting. This game was fun. I closed my eyes and started counting but the funny man interrupted me.

"Now, I want you to think really hard. I want you to think about something that is very tight. Something that feels like it should be loosened. It should be in your mind somewhere. Will you look for it for me?"

I looked. I wasn't sure how there could be something tight in my head. I mean, my mind was blank. Empty. Nothing there that should be ... wait. That was strange. There was ... an area. There. It didn't belong there, I didn't think. But. It was ... it was ... well, not tight. But ... but ... it was ... it was ... tight, I guess.

I opened my eyes and nodded my head.

"You've found it?" The funny man seemed really excited. I wondered why. He stood up from his stool and messed with some funny looking boxes. Wait ... I ... I should know their names ... I ... I should...

"Okay, I want you to loosen that tight spot for me," the funny man said.

I shrugged and tried to loosen the area ... and was absolutely shocked when it loosened.

Wow. Everything was ... nothing was moving. The man had stopped moving. The funny lights on the far side of the room had stopped flickering. Even the light above us that went in and out had stopped going on and off.

I started getting scared. Nothing was moving. Things were supposed to be moving.

It stopped moving when I loosened that place. Maybe if I ... I tightened it back the way it was and the doctor started moving again.

"YES!" he shouted. He scared me but he was jumping up and down and he was laughing so I guess he was happy about something. Then a bunch of people came into the room and were talking excitedly along with him. It was really noisy.

I didn't like it really noisy. When I loosened that place in my head everything was quiet. I loosened that place again and everything stopped.

My head hurt. I didn't like loosening that place any more. It made my head hurt with this weird pressure. It was like something was pushing on my head and I didn't like it.

Mr. Lukas, though ... he said to call him Doctor Lukas but I didn't like that for some reason so he said it was okay to call him Mr. Lukas ... kept wanting me to loosen and tighten the place in my head. He kept making me stop things and then start them up. It was easy to do ... but it kept that pressure in my head. The pressure stopped when I tightened the place though and eventually it faded away.

The funny white room was constantly in motion now at all hours of the day and night. There was even people around when I slept but they were nice enough to be quieter then. Sometimes the men and women would even watch me when I went potty. It seemed to me that there was something wrong with that but I couldn't figure out what it was.

The other thing was this black stuff on me. It had always been there but I didn't really like it for some reason. I mean, it was like I was naked. I shouldn't be naked in front of all these women. I certainly shouldn't be around them when my pee pee got all hard ... but I couldn't help it and I couldn't really stop them. It was wrong but I couldn't say why it was wrong. They sometimes looked at me and laughed but I wasn't sure why.

All I did was eat and drink and sleep and pee and poop and loosen that place in my head that made everything stop moving and quiet. Sometimes, I thought there should be more but I had no idea what. Sometimes I saw these words in my head when I was tightening or loosening that place but I didn't know what they were or what they meant. Honestly, they made me scared.

"Okay, boy," Mr. Lukas said, coming up to the bars. That was another thing, the bars made me uncomfortable. They felt wrong. Of course, everything felt wrong now but I had no idea why. "Take this and hold it. Now, go in your mind and find the tight place and I want you to loosen it two turns, okay?" He gave me a watch. I usually took the watch with me when I went to the quiet place now. He had made me pretend there was a knob on that place in my head and then he told me how much to turn it. He pushed a small box through the little place in the cage where my food came in. "Leave the box there but I want you to imagine it in the quiet place, okay? Just like I taught you, okay?"

I nodded but I really didn't want to. I still had that pressure and I knew that going to the quiet place was going to make it worse. I didn't want to make him angry, though. I reached into my head and twisted the knob twice while imagining there was a big sheet around me and it was encompassing me and the box on the floor. That was becoming common, too. He sometimes had me...

SHIT. The pressure burst inside of my head and everything came back. Everything. The kidnapping. The torture. I took the watch and threw it as hard as I could at the computer bank in the back of the room. As everything else he'd had me throw, the watch moved a few inches away from me and immediately started slowing.

I was pissed. Beyond pissed. Everything I'd gone through came back to me. I snarled and switched back into the normal speed zone.