Do It Yourself (298 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by zombieZero (View user info) at 2004-11-06 18:35:50 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Whoosh...
tok-SLAM
The mallet came down. The sound is hard to describe, but I will try. The mallet is heavy and it comes down hard, whistling through the air on its way to the floor. It reminds me of the sound of a fearful breath being suddenly drawn in, amplified in the narrow confines of my chamber. The second before it lands, there is a small knock like the sound of a fist striking a door which is immediately swallowed by the sound of the solid, tempered flat of the mallet slamming into the scratched steel surface of the floor. The room is so small, the sound fills it, blotting out everything else; the sound of the spraying on the walls, the last convulsive kick, everything. I knew that sound like I knew the sound of my own breath. There were days when I felt like I'd heard it almost as many times.
My chamber was small, but it was the perfect size for its purpose; maybe six feet across, and twelve feet from the side where I made my home to the heavy iron door on the other side. The ceiling was maybe twelve feet high; just high enough to accommodate the swing of the mallet. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made of that same stained, abraded metal that felt thick and unyielding. It had been built to last, and to my knowledge no one had ever come here for the purpose of maintaining it. I had no idea where it was located.
I moved forward as far as I could before the cables began to cut into my ankles. I wanted to get a better look. The body lay on its stomach, naked, arms and legs sprawled every which way. Five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot. Skin mostly unscarred with fine hairs lightly covering the forearms and legs. The neck ended where the mallet still rested, sitting in the center of an explosion of reds, grays and whites.
So perfect, I thought, looking back at those hands and feet. So normal, and so perfect.
The spray from the impact had covered the walls, and was still rolling off the surface of my thick, black rubber apron. The pain in my ankles became more insistent as the cables began to pull, and tighten. The wire around my neck pulled taut and began to grow warm, sending a clear warning. I lifted the mallet up and moved back to my end of the room. I hung it on its sharp hook and grabbed the tattered rag from the floor in front of it. I didn't know how long I had, so I got right to the task of wiping it down.
There was a loud snapping sound followed by a metallic peal and a hiss as the grates at the base of the walls to the left and right of the body opened. A loud, shrieking sound began to swell until it was so loud it set my teeth on edge. I wished many times that I would just go deaf, but despite hearing these things every day, I never did.
As the shriek of wind filled the room, the wet, chunky remains began to quiver and then roll toward which ever grate was closest. I stopped wiping the mallet for just a moment as the headless body began to twitch, then shake. Finally, it jumped up on one knee as the unseen, razor-sharp filaments sliced into it and through it; the arms and legs flew away in three pieces each and the torso in large, neat cubes. The drain in the floor suckled and slurped for a little while as the pieces were sucked away into the walls on their way to no one knew where, and the rest was sucked down. I watched one of those five-fingered hands tumble through the space in the wall.
The grates crashed closed. The shrieking stopped. The room was silent again.
The wireless plug that hung from the side of my neck made a sharp beeping sound, and I felt that electric jolt as information was pulsed into my brain:
00:20
I tilted my heavy head back, feeling the strain in my neck as the restraining wire pushed against the front of my throat. Twenty seconds? Was that all? My shoulders were beginning to ache from swinging the mallet, and a band of pain stretched all the length of my back. I tossed the rag back on the floor.
"I'm tired," I said out loud. The plug sent me another jolt.
00:11
I grabbed the mallet and pulled it off the hook. I found it didn't hurt to make requests sometimes, but it didn't pay to be difficult. I had a pretty good setup here; the wires gave me a pretty good range of movement, and the apron was a big help. Some years ago I put in a request for a clear plastic face shield, as well. One day, like the apron, I might wake to find it among my things. I was allowed to customize my area, arranging my mat in one corner, with my metal footlocker in front of it to protect it from the worst of the fallout. I was allowed to sleep several hours every day or so, and once every nine or ten days I was even allowed to dream. I wasn't about to make trouble.
I brushed my fingers over the plug at my neck, searching until I found the thick, black, coated wire that was plugged in just beneath my right ear, trailing down to the floor and over to the wall behind me. It vibrated under my fingertips, and I could feel the current seeping from it and into my neck, down my spine and up over my scalp.
I wasn't sure, but I thought this was how they made me sleep, and made me wake up. This was the conduit through which they allowed me to work through the pain, and turned my dreams on and off.
The loud buzzer sounded, and the door snapped open faster than it seemed a door so heavy should be able to move. A man stood just beyond the doorway. His reaction was the same as almost all of them; his face looked pained, and weary...I don't know how they got here or what they had to go through to get here, but when the door opened they always looked like they were about to drop. At least until they looked inside the chamber; then their eyes would widen, and it was like they suddenly snapped awake. No matter what it was they endured on their way to get here, they were almost always willing, even eager, to face it again rather than step into the room they now faced. It wasn't a choice they were given.
The heat swelled on the other side of the door; I could feel it radiating in from outside. Different people had different tolerance levels, but within a matter of seconds everyone took shelter inside, with me, as this man did now, collapsing onto his knees. When he did, the door slammed shut behind him.
I waited for him to get up. While he got himself together, I requested his information, which mainly consisted of what to do with him, and if there were any special instructions.
Jolt.
MALLET.
No surprise there. I reached for the handle when another series of unexpected pulses came.
Jolt. Jolt. Jolt.
GET THE LOCKET.
A special instruction? I had been living in my corner of the chamber for as long as I could remember. So long that the pain of the wires and the pulses from the communications plug and the horror of the mallet all gradually became comforts. During all those years, I did one thing. This was the first time I had ever been told to do anything different.
I looked at the man; he was fit, and well muscled. Smooth skinned, like they all were. Naked, as they all were, his small genitals shriveled in their nest of course hair. I looked at his neck...sure enough, there was a chain around it, from which hung a worn silver locket. Why did they have any interest in that?
The man was looking up at me now, getting a good look at me for the first time based on his expression. They all made the same face. I don't know what they saw when they saw me; the chamber had no mirror, and so I had never seen myself. I could make out the basic shape of my head if I put it close to the steel wall, but I couldn't make out much. I could see our bodies were mostly the same, mine just wasn't as straight and smooth and symmetrical as theirs. I didn't have their fine hair. I didn't have any.
Whatever I looked like, the people who came here did not like it. They looked at me with fear before they ever even registered the mallet.
He stared at me, still kneeling on the soiled floor. He didn't speak.
Jolt.
04:00
For whatever reason they wanted the locket, they wanted it. It wasn't up to me to ask or even wonder why; it was a simple request, and I had less than five minutes in which to do it in. There was no point making any more requests for information or help; I had been told what to do.
I couldn't ask the man to give it to me; I never spoke, and I didn't really know how. I didn't think he would understand me even if I could, and there was no way I would be able to understand him. I knew that; they spoke from time to time, and their high pitched, cracking voices were nothing but gibberish to me. I only knew how to communicate through the plug.
I moved closer to him, hoping to somehow indicate to him what I was looking for while on some level beginning to resign myself to the punishment for being unable to fulfill the special instructions, just in case.
Usually they backed away from me if they saw me coming closer, and that's what I expected him to do. He didn't though. He looked up at me, meeting my eye with an expression I didn't understand.
There wasn't any time to waste; I reached out and grabbed the locket before he could react. I tugged it away, and the frail chain broke free from his neck.
He lunged at me, suddenly too close for me to use the mallet. I used one arm to keep him away from me while he flailed at the air with his hands.
There was a loud buzz and the man staggered back, suddenly struggling to keep his balance. He was out of time. He struggled, but was pulled to the floor as if he suddenly weighed more than ten men. He went down on his hands and knees, struggling to keep his head up.
I didn't even notice he had grabbed the black wire trailing from my neck until he finally slipped and was pinned to the floor face first. With a final jerk of his arm, I felt something slither out of the side of my head and then out of my neck as the wire slipped free and fell to the floor.
As soon as it fell away, the current stopped and I felt something I hope I never experience again, not ever. Everything seemed to change in an instant; the chamber was the most familiar thing in the world to me, it was the only thing in the world to me. I had been in it my whole existence and I knew every corner, every scratch, every stain, every smell and every sound of it...even so, it was like I was seeing it for the first time. I felt the mallet fall from my hand and clunk onto the floor.
The room was covered in blood; it was sprayed over every surface. I was covered in it. The corners of the killing area were littered with remains that the grates didn't pick up and the air was thick with a stomach-turning stench that just a few seconds ago I had thought of as familiar and comfortable. My area was a nightmare tangle of wires and harnesses, cutting into me and tugging at my scarred, hairless flesh.
Jolt.
The plug still hung from my neck, next to the socket the black wire had left behind. Apparently it still worked.
Jolt. Jolt. Jolt.
REPLACE THE WIRE.
I looked down at the man stuck to the floor, crying. Tears streamed down his face as he lay in that filth, awaiting his fate, unable to even lift a finger.
REPLACE THE WIRE.
I looked for the wire but my vision had suddenly blurred; I couldn't locate it. The man was making that high-pitched gibberish I didn't understand, but this time it affected me in a way it never had before.
I couldn't understand his words, if he was actually forming any, but for the first time ever I felt something awful. I saw his face twisted and contorted as he gasped and blubbered, and I felt something in my gut that was awful. His bloodshot eyes looked up at me, pleading now. I began to feel sick, and afraid.
Jolt. Jolt. Jolt.
DO IT YOURSELF.
The message was urgent. Only then did I realize I had backed away, retreating into my corner of sharp wires with the mallet lying on the floor between us. I became aware that I was making this honking, heaving cry as my breathing came faster and faster.
Myself?
DO IT YOURSELF.
The mallet. I looked at it, bile crawling up my throat. I didn't want to go near it. Had it always been like this, and I just never knew? How could that be? I had done this so many...
The man was pinned. In only a handful of seconds, the grates would snap open and the filaments would slice him to pieces. Alive, if alive is what he still was when the time came.
His eyes continued to plead with me, even as I forced myself forward. The wires and cables tugged for a moment then gave me the slack I needed. I grabbed the mallet and scraped it across the floor, hoisting it up onto my shoulder. I couldn't give him the freedom he was praying for, but I could do one thing for him. The one thing I knew how to do. I raised the hammer and closed my eyes.
Whoosh...
tok-SLAM
The warm rush splattered across me and I fell to the floor, releasing the handle and feeling the pain shoot up my knees, my ankles, my neck...everything. I scrambled for the wire, grabbing it then jabbing it at my neck until it finally slipped back into its socket.
The current returned. The pain went away. The nightmare images receded and the familiar sights and smells came back.
I rocked back onto my rear and sat there for a moment, looking around the chamber, letting my breathing return to normal. I looked around for any signs of the nightmare I had seen just a moment ago, but I didn't see anything; everything was normal, the same as it had always been.
I got up, and lifted the mallet, hanging it on its sharp hook. I realized I was still holding the worn silver locket in my left hand.
Jolt. Jolt. Jolt.
DON'T OPEN IT.
After what had just happened, I had no desire to. I put it on top of my footlocker and didn't look at it again. I picked my rag up from off the floor as the grates snapped open and the shriek of wind began to fill the air.
Jolt.
00:40
Forty seconds. Was that all? I rotated my right arm around, trying to free the knot from my shoulder. This was turning out to be a long day.
I hoped I would be allowed to sleep before long. I was so tired, and whatever had just happened had left me feeling a little off. Sleep would erase that.
I glanced up in time to see those hands falling away, tumbling onto the floor with the rest of him. I wondered which one had grabbed the wire.
Jolt.
00:24
It didn't matter. There was no time to worry about any of it now.
I grabbed the mallet and faced the door, waiting for it to open, like it always did.
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