96: The overhead fluorescents buzzed with the sound of a million bees hidden somewhere in the ceiling, the harsh light dripping down like their wasted honey. I tried to ignore the sound, found that I could not, and laid my head back down on the thin pillow they provided me.
My room was only about six feet wide and eight or so deep. They called it my room, and I accepted this definition even though my subconscious whispered that the room was more of a cell. Rooms were not locked whenever you were directed inside. Rooms had windows that opened. My room had neither of those things.
My first night here, I woke in the middle of the night and crawled from my bed to use the bathroom. The moment my feet touched the cold floor, I suppose I knew something was different, but it wasn’t until I reached the place where my bedroom door should have been that I fully awoke and realized I was not at home at all but some strange place.
Not my room.
Not my bed.
Someplace else entirely.
The urge to relieve myself left. I crawled back into the narrow bed. I didn’t get up again until the bright lights above turned on at precisely 6:00 a.m., the bees awakening to their preprogrammed day. They would remain on until exactly ten o’clock. There was no clock in the room, nor could I see one from the small window in the door, but my internal clock was precise. From the earliest age, Father taught me to mark time within my mind. He taught me to recognize the steady tick of a clock somewhere in a little nook of my subconscious, a clock far more accurate than any hanging on a wall once you learned to trust it.
There were no clocks in our house.
I was not permitted to wear a watch.
There was only my internal clock, tested regularly by Father.
He would ask me for the time, sometimes at the most peculiar of moments. If I was off by more than a minute, there would be repercussions. I won’t speak of the repercussions, but needless to say, I was rarely wrong.
Father also taught me to suppress time. He compared the skill to meditation but said it was much more. I never had much of a need for this particular skill, but he told me I someday might and I eagerly welcomed anything he was willing to teach me. Suppressing time allowed me to simply close my eyes and shut down. I could do this for five minutes or five hours, the interval determined at the start. Unlike sleep, I could keep my brain active, focused on a particular problem, or I could close that down too and allow instances that would normally be passed swimming in boredom to go by in a flash.
When they locked me in my room like this, I suppressed time.
I understood what they were trying to do. I was only permitted outside my room to use the bathroom and to visit with Dr. Oglesby. The remainder of the time was spent in this room. They wanted me to grow bored. They wanted me to loathe this room. They wanted me to welcome the time away, long for my next session with the doctor. While I’m sure this worked with previous occupants of my room, such tricks would not work with me, not as long as I could suppress time. Not as long as I used this as an opportunity to review my current situation, to find a solution, to puzzle it out.
The fluorescent lights turned on at 6:00 a.m. and off again at 10:00 p.m., and then the cycle would repeat. Eight of those repeats now. The time was currently 4:32 in the afternoon of my eighth day in this place. There was no escape from my room. The window was sealed tight. Even if I could get it open, I would not fit between the bars on the outside. I could pick the lock at my door if I had something with which to pick the lock, but I did not. My room was the fifth on this side of the hallway; the bathroom was across the hall and to the right. Although I hadn’t seen the residents of those other rooms, I heard them, particularly at night. I had identified three male voices and two female. The female voice two rooms down on my side of the hallway sounded to be about fifteen years old.
She cried at night. She cried every night.
I did not know her name. They didn’t use names here; only Dr. Oglesby used names.
The hallway was about fifty feet long in total. When they took me from my room to Dr. Oglesby’s office, we went to the left, passing nothing but closed doors. When I returned from Dr. Oglesby’s office, I made careful notes of the other end of the hallway—a nurses’ station on the left, a guard at the right, and a sealed door between them. I had yet to see this door opened, but I heard it each time, an electronic buzz followed by the release of the lock. I imagined this was controlled from somewhere near the guard’s position, but it was possible the nurses had access as well. My mind’s eye pictured a small button, grimy from years of random fingers.
There were cameras at either end of the hallway, dark, black eyes staring down from small bubbles in the ceiling. I had not found a camera in Dr. Oglesby’s office, but I was fairly sure he had one. The one in my room was hidden in the air vent next to the fluorescent light, watching from above. It did not make a sound, but I felt it blink.
I’m curious, Doctor, are you sitting at your desk watching me right now on some monitor? Insights abound, are you adding to your little notepad? I picture you writing furiously, each word more meaningless than the last. Poor little Anson Bishop, orphan born of fire.
The girl down the hall was crying again. Odd, considering the time.