Chapter 3 � Hearing Aid

 Chapter 3 – Hearing Aid

 

I’m not sure what I hate more: Sundays or Mondays.

You see, there are several problems with Sundays. The first is that the shops are never open. Yes, I know this is a religious thing but it’s damn annoying for us atheists. Secondly, you have to deal with the inevitable hangover after you spent all of the previous evening at the pub. I’d woken up yesterday feeling as sick as a pig, in desperate need of some aspirin and several strong cups of coffee. A friend of mine once said that hangovers were God’s punishment for the sin of drinking. Well, he was a Catholic but he never let that stop him; and, as I’ve said, I’m an atheist.

The third reason for disliking Sundays is the rather daunting knowledge that you have to go into work tomorrow. I mean, it can really ruin the day – suddenly realizing that, woops, you should have had those forms done by now and that paper still needs to be written… this and that and the other, and all to be done by tomorrow,

At least Molly had saved me some Brownies.

And Mondays? Well, you’re actually at work. ‘Nuff said.

Anyway, today was Monday and I was once again sitting behind my desk in my own pokey little office.

As well as being the one that has the delightful task of putting criminals to death (which is actually a lot more complicated than it looks), I have a fair bit of administrative work to do. This mainly covered putting together the health records of the deceased. This was surprising hard work, as fairly often they were scattered all over the place. A few days in hospital here, a flu jab there, a gunshot wound somewhere else, and hey, they were criminals: you couldn’t expect them to have their annual check-up with your friendly local GP, could you now? Anyway, first I had to get hold of the records, where they existed. As I understood it, my superiors must have had some sort of agreement with the hospitals, as I was never challenged when I rang to ask for them. I don’t know what sort of agreement it was, but even if the hospital archivists don’t like it, they’re far too scared to do anything about it. Sometimes the differences between our Government and the Mafia are scarily hard to see. Then I had to assemble them into the closest thing I could get to chronological order, and pass them onto another department.

It always stuck me as a pointless task, simply because, well, what did dead people need health records for? But, the higher-ups insisted upon it and I just got on with it like a good little worker ant. If you didn’t ask questions, you didn’t get all the unwanted attention.

I shifted restlessly in my chair, bored already, and it wasn’t even lunchtime. I was typing up the medical notes on Edward Greener, the last man I had dealt with on Friday.

Not the most interesting of tasks, I assure you. Apart from a broken arm when he was twelve, two broken ribs and severe bruising that landed him in hospital three years later, and a pneumonia scare in his late twenties, he was a pretty healthy guy. 15lbs, 5”9, 36 years old, blue eyes, shaven brown hair, I could picture him from the details on the sheets and my own memory. Then there were also the little details they never included in these reports – the ruddy cheeks from too much drinking, the fleshy jowls that wobbled when he laughed (and what a rather odd laugh it was), the way he played with the wooden cross that hung around his neck…

I shook my head. Edward Greener was gone, six feet under and cold as ice by now.

All I was doing now was compiling all of this data into one document ready to forward to another person in another department, along with all the others I had left to do.

It never really occurred to me to wonder exactly who this person I was sending all this stuff to was. Stupid, I know, but when I first started this job I was given several email addresses and instructions to pass on each file to whichever was relevant. This one for males in this age range, that one for females in that age range and so on. I was also instructed to delete the files once I had sent them on. I thought the hospitals had another copy, and then there was the whole ‘patient confidentiality’ thing, so I guess it was right there shouldn’t be any files left lying around, even if the owners were dead.

How was I supposed to know any different?

With a sigh I completed my work on Ed Greener and reached across to grab the next file. This wasn’t difficult as there was barely enough room to swing a cat in here,

My desk sat against one wall with my computer on it; beside that there were several filing cabinets of the records that had been sent to me, and a shredder for all the files that had been processed. Next to the computer was a little framed photo of myself, Molly, Joseph and Keira on holiday in the Caribbean last year. Molly looked incredibly tanned and sexy in a turquoise bikini, Keira was cute and sun burnt in a pink one-piece, and Joseph was attempting to look cool in a pair of shorts with little yellow fish on them. I looked like I’d just crawled out of some dark cave: pale skinned, squinting in the bright light and looking slightly uncomfortable in the blistering heat. In the background the sea sparkled a glorious sapphire blue, and the sand was golden and warm between our bare toes. For a few moments I was there again – the ocean whispered to the sand, children laughed, splashed, mothers chatted, Frisbees were thrown, sandcastles built, a thoroughly good time had by everyone, all beneath the sweltering Caribbean sun.

Then the memory faded, and so did the sounds, feelings, sensations, and the warmth that briefly thawed me from my chilly contemplations of the dead.

----------

Lunchtime came and I abandoned my computer in favor of the employee’s canteen.

You’d think perhaps that, since we were all adults, a canteen at work would be a sensible place – organized, peaceful, decorous, and certainly not like some rough school cafeteria, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t expect lots of noise, pushing and shoving, snobbery and gossiping, because adult are supposed to be more mature, aren’t they?

Maybe you’ve never seen our canteen.

It serves all of the complex’s staff, all of whom were on different shifts, so therefore the canteen is open pretty much all hours, and usually bursting at the seams. The wardens that guarded the inmates jostled and talked loudly in their gruff, harsh voices. Administration clerks vainly tried to keep out of their way. Higher-ups would walk past with their noses in the air, all arrogance and vanity. Workmen kept to their own little groups, spouting technical jargon as if it was their first language.

I paid for my food and wound my way through the press of bodies and barging elbows to a quiet corner table. Miraculously, I managed to get there without spilling anything, which is a feat close in difficulty to any one of Hercules’ labors. The table’s other occupants looked up as I slid into my seat.

“Morning James.” Sophie Lincoln snatched the apple from my tray and swapped it for her banana. She was our resident Psychologist, and although she was a bit eccentric herself (this apple-banana thing, for example) she was good at her job.

The guy sitting next to her waved lazily and took another bite out of his sandwich. His name was Jack “Static” Steadman, having acquired the nickname because of his shock of peroxide blond hair and the fact that he was the head technician, in charge of all things hellish and electrical.

I turned to the last person, who was sitting next to me. “No Genna today?” I asked, waving my fork at the empty seat at the end of the table.

The guy shook his head. “She has tonsillitis.” Stephen Magraw, Genna’s boyfriend was a doctor. Funnily enough, we were pretty much the same age, and he had graduated from med school at the same time I finished University.

“Poor thing. Tell her to get well soon.”

He nodded, and I tucked into my newly acquired banana. As they say, birds of a feather flock together, and just as the wardens, clerks and workmen all tended to gravitate to their own, as did the Doctors and Heads of Department. There were other tables full of those sorts of people, but I liked to sit with this particular little group. It wasn’t a really a form of snobbery, or at least not a conscious one, but again, like a school canteen, you had all the different social groups banding together.

The banana was slightly bruised and not quite ripe, but I munched determinedly through it anyway, reflecting on the day so far as I did. Okay, it may have been agonizingly boring so far, but at least nothing bad had happened yet, right?

Speak too soon, Sod’s law, don’t count your chickens, yeah, yeah, I know. I should have just thought about flowers and bunnies instead of tempting fate.

“So, Jim, how’s Mike been treating you?”

“Like dirt, as per usual.” I sighed. “He hasn’t really been around this morning but I dread to think what he’ll be like when he turns up. When he’s late he’s usually got a hangover, and boy does that put him in a foul mood.”

“It’s the hair.” Static nodded sagely. “All that gel has seeped into his brain.”

“And turned him into a maleficent, oily, temperamental son of a…” Hairs prickled on the back of my neck. The others were no longer listening to me and instead were staring doggedly at their food. My voice petered out into a mortified silence as I became aware someone was standing behind me. For a few moments the bustling noises of the canteen were supplanted by the sound of one foot, tap, tap, tapping patiently on the floor, and the disconcerting sensation that was similar to what a mouse might feel when it suddenly realizes the cat has crept up and is waiting, just outside its field of vision.

I didn’t want to turn round and see the cat, but I twisted slowly and finally looked into a pair of un-amused, icy blue eyes. “Hi Mike…” I said weakly.

“Kite. My office. Now.”

I stood, signaling to Sophie she could have the rest of my lunch and began the long, agonizing walk to Mike’s office, feeling all the worse for the pitying looks I recieved from those I passed, which just seemed to tighten the noose around my neck. For, a noose was probably what was waiting for me, or some other punishment that my boss’ twisted brain could devise.

“Take a seat, James.” Mike slid into a dark leather chair and put his elbows on the great mahogany desk before him, resting his chin in his hands. I sat down carefully on the rather less comfortable wooden chair opposite him, half expecting it to bite.

“Would you like to continue what you were saying?” I shook my head mutely, swallowing, attempting to moisten my suddenly dry mouth.

“Are you quite sure about that? Weren’t you saying how I was a…what was it?”

I said nothing.

Mike leaned forward slightly, his thin lips curling into a callous smile. “Come now, Jimmy, there’s no secrets here, right? What were you saying?”

I hated being called Jimmy. “Nothing.”

“Nothing what?”

“Nothing Mr. Beraht.” It was so demeaning. Michael Beraht ruled with an iron fist; he was vindictive, patronizing and treated everyone below him like they were no better than dog muck. He as always to be addressed as Mike (when he was putting on the pretense of being friendly) or Mr. Beraht. He knew we all hated him, but he also knew we feared him, and he used that to his advantage. His ruthless eyes commanded fear and respect, and his well-spoken voice was so frosty the words seemed to crackle with ice as they slipped from his silver tongue on a cloud of sly malice.

I expected a tongue-lashing, but after a few moments of silence I looked up from staring fixedly at the floor to find him watching me, and again I was reminded of a cat stalking its prey. He ran his nicotine-stained fingers through his thick black hair before taking a cigarette and lighter from his jacket pocket, watching me all the while.

I had always wondered about his lighter. Obviously custom made, it seemed to be molded from stainless steel. This was not the strange thing, but rather the shape was somewhat bizarre.

A double helix is probably a familiar sight to most people, being so strongly connected to DNA and such, and certainly even without my degree in Genetics and Biotechnology I would have recognized it. It is an unusual thing to see on something like a lighter, but not unheard of. What really made it peculiar was that there were two double helixes, intertwined to make one big one. While it made a pretty, if slightly odd pattern, the scientist in me protested at this impossibility.

Mike cleared his throat. While I had been in my own little world he had lit his cigarette and drew on in it heavily, still staring at me. With a sort of horrified fascination I stared back as smoke curled sensuously from his pale lips, tendrils of it twisting away from him towards me, as if he controlled them. I tried not to cough.

“How are those notes coming along, Jimmy?”

“They’re getting there.” I replied carefully. They were in fact not even half done- perhaps because of this sudden restlessness that had overcome me I had been finding it hard to focus all morning.

“Brilliant.” Mike deadpanned. “Then you can give them all to me tomorrow morning.”

I took a moment to absorb his words, and then started to protest. Mike help up his finger. “No excuses. You said you were getting there, didn’t you? Then it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Maybe I hadn’t been as careful as I’d thought. “But, Mr. Beraht, I just haven’t got the time-“

“Then make time, Jimmy-boy. Now get out of my office.

I opened my mouth, thought better of it and left, feeling Mike’s blistering gaze burning the back of my neck.

----------

It was late. I rubbed my tired eyes and stretched. It was almost half past seven, and I was still at work trying to finish the reports due in for the next morning. It was so incredibly monotonous that the computer screen was begging to blur in front of my eyes. Still, I only had three left before I could go home.

I thought I was the only one left in the building. The cleaner had come and gone hours ago, and most of the others in the department has packed up and left before that. Now the only sounds were the soft hum of my computer and the tap-tap-taping as I typed, and the moans and groans of the building as it settled, which echoed up and down the empty corridors, so loud. For some ludicrous reason I wanted to muffle every sound I made, as if by breaking the ethereal quiet I invited all of the ghosts my nightmare-plagued mind could conjure to swoop down and carry me off in their insubstantial claws.

 Silence had reigned in the clinical white corridors for over an hour, even if it was the slightly disconcerting silence you get when the constant bustle of the day stops, and you suddenly realize just how quiet…  it could… get…

So why, now, did I hear footsteps?

They padded softly on the linoleum that carpeted the corridors outside my office, as light and almost as soundless as a cat’s.

I don’t know why I did it, I really don’t, but I reached across and flicked off the light, plunging myself into semi-darkness. The computer screen still glowed, but it would beep if I switched it off, so I left it and held my breath as the footsteps passed outside, and paused.

I didn’t dare breathe, although even as I stood there I knew it was stupid. I had every right to be here. What did I have to be afraid off?

Even as I thought it, my mind was drowned out by the warning bells of some ancient instinct, buried deep beneath layers of civilization, whispering that those footsteps were the harbingers of something rotten. That something wicked this way comes.

The footsteps stopped, not directly outside my office door – thankfully- but from the sound of it only a door or two down. What could the owner of the footsteps want at this time of night?  I knew everyone along this corridor in varying degrees, from Sophie, who had the office next to mine, to the slightly eccentric Doctor Finley a few doors down, and Static at the end of the corridor.

There were three quick raps as the unseen creeper knocked on the door. I considered opening mine so I could see whose door it was, but the hinges squeaked. I didn’t want to give myself away, not just to avoid the awkward question “why are you here so late?” I was slightly puzzled too. I cold have sworn I was the only one still here, but whoever was out there was obviously waiting for an answer to his (or her) knocks, so there must have been someone else in the offices along this corridor.

The doors to each office were only made of flimsy plywood, so I could quite clearly hear when the door swung open, and Mike’s cold voice was clear enough to make me jump.

“Finally. It doesn’t take you that long to walk two meters.” Hadn’t he gone home hours ago?

“Sorry Mike.” It was Doctor Finley. He treated each word like some cumbersome weight, his Russian accent thickening them until they flew out into the air like concrete. His voice was in complete contrast from his appearance. A graying beard clung bravely to his chin, whereas his hair had completely given up hope all and fallen off. His clothes hung from him in drapes; I was afraid if by some mishap I did see under them then a skeleton would be all that was there.

 What did Mike, that looming, heavily set b*****d, want with the small, balding, ghostly professor? I had never even seen them exchange words, let alone any late-night calls.

Two sets of footsteps now, moving away from me and deeper into the Doctor’s office.

 “They’re getting impatient, Finley. They want results but aren’t getting any. Why?”

Finley’s voice was quieter than Mike’s. “It’s a difficult process to get right and we’re still fine-tuning. I’ve told them that.”

“Too many times. It’s getting old. You’ve missed the deadline even though you assured them you would have something to show by now.”

What on earth were they talking about? Maybe I was mishearing it. I pressed my ear against the door, but as they moved even further into the room, their voices became even more indistinct. Thankfully they hadn’t closed the door, but it was still getting harder to hear.

I cast around, looking for something that might help, and spotted the empty glass on my desk. I remembered reading somewhere that if you put a glass against a wall, door, window etc. and put your ear to the bottom, it could amplify sound. Well, it would do as a makeshift hearing aid.

I tired it out, placing the glass gently against the door and pressing my ear to it. Mike and Finley’s voices were suddenly louder again, although I had to listen carefully to catch every word.

“…experiments. We still haven’t found the type of subject it works best on. Some of them have gone completely off target while others are even better than expected. My team’s working hard to find out exactly what it is which causes the gene to take.”

“My team’s working hard!” Mike did a fair, but mocking, imitation of the small professor. “Work harder! They, I, have given you time and you are making fools of us by failing to provide the results we want. What, exactly, do we have to do to make you realize that this is not just a game?”

Mike’s voice dropped, low and growling now, and I really had to strain to hear him clearly. “How’s little Maria these days? Still going to her dance classes?”

I missed what Finley said, but it made Mike laugh cruelly. It was a deeply unpleasant laugh, and made me shudder involuntarily.

“Well Finley, if you give us what we want, there won’t be any need to, will there?” Footsteps again, coming back out into the corridor. “I’m glad we had this little pep talk, Doctor. I’ll see you tomorrow – with some results.”

I held still as the footsteps receded, followed shortly by the sounds of a door locking and Doctor Finley leaving his office, and it was only when I’d been left in silence once more that I slumped against the door, breathing hard.

I had no idea what I had just stumbled upon, but it filled me with a dreadful coldness. Results, experiments, subjects and heavy threats? I didn’t like the sound of any of it, even if I didn’t understand what they were talking about.

I slipped on my jacket and tiptoed out into the corridor, hoping I’d given both of them enough time to leave. Outside in the car park, a chilly wind plucked at my cloths, bringing with it a promise of snow. Stars twinkled dimly above me, pale and sickly-looking against the harsh glare of the city lights, occasionally obscured by wisps of grey clouds. I stood for a moment, staring up and the dark expanse of the endless sky and shivered, partly from the cold and partly from something else. I had stumbled on something I was not supposed to. I should forget about it, go home, curl up in the warm and maybe try and find a new job in the morning. That’s what I should do. Go home and forget.

I went home.

But I didn’t forget.

Reviews

[Tina Kline]

This chapter was also very interesting. And it kept me as the reader hooked.
I want to know what is going on with Dr. Finley and Mike and those experiments.

Tina

[Frances O'Neill]

Sounds as though the plot is thickening, still hanging on to my seat!