Michael receives stunning news and finds that things at IO aren't what they appear to be.
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For Your Own Good 4
Michael awoke with very little memory of what had happened the
previous day. His head felt stuffed with sand, and he was groggy
as he sat naked on the edge of his bed. He had a morning erection,
which he usually did, and he had to urinate badly. He wasn’t sure
he could make it to the bathroom, however. His legs didn’t seem
very responsive, and his fingertips were tingling. His head didn’t
hurt, but his ears were ringing. He could hear the water running,
which meant that someone was up and showering. Remembering the
electic jolt that he taken a few days before, he stood up, swaying,
and fell over – flat on his face. “Shit,” he murmured.
Confused images of Harvey’s head exploding spun through his
mind. There were also images of flight down dim corridors filled
with doors and pipes. He thought he heard screams, hoarse voices
crying out, nonstop, for help that never came. Brief flashes of
exam rooms, knives, and boys with various parts of their genitalia
missing came to him, yet fled as soon as he tried to focus on
them. He thought he heard Ned’s voice, and rolled onto his back.
But Ned wasn’t there. Instead, Joey was standing over him, naked
and dripping wet. Michael tried to focus on the young eunuch’s
groin, trying to remember who had been castrated, who had no penis,
and who had nothing at all. He found he couldn’t remember, and he
couldn’t focus as well. He could see a penis, however, small and
unerect – and remembered that he had to GO and go NOW.
“Mikey? You OK?” Joey asked softly.
He tried to answer – recognizing Joey’s voice but not his
face – but found that his mouth wasn’t really working either.
Joey stared down at the semi-incoherent Michael and yelled at
Sam, who had a head and face full of soap. “Shit, man, I cain’t
see … get the guard!”
Michael felt hands under his neck as Joey tried to haul him
into a sitting position. “Go get the guard, Cheng,” Joey ordered.
Cheng – the name sounded familiar, but Michael couldn’t place it.
He saw a blurry form go by, carrying a towel. There was a beep and
a child’s voice, calling for help. “Medical emergency!” Michael
heard the voice say, but it didn’t seem to mean anything. Then the
biggest black man that he had ever seen in his life was standing
over him, gently slapping his cheeks. “C’mon, boy, snap out of
it,” the man said. But it didn’t mean anything. He’d seen black
people before, but where?
“Huh?” was about all Michael could manage.
“Fuck!” he heard a new voice say, as he saw another blurry
form approaching him. He focussed as best he could. It was a
black guy, shorter, more like a boy just a bit older than he. He
was wet and naked, and bald. He had muscles that rippled and
knotted as he moved, with only slight hair here and there on his
dark brown skin. His nose wasn’t as large as the man who was still
shaking him and slapping his face, and his lips were a bit
thinner. The black boy bent down to stare into his eyes. He could
see himself in those eyes, large and shiny black. The whites were
very white, and a bit bloodshot. His vision was clearing up. He
turned and looked at the white boy with a short buzzcut sitting
next to him. “J-j-joey?” he asked, but it sounded abstracted. It
was as if someone else were controlling his mouth.
The white boy nodded.
The black boy, however, said “Fuck” again. “Damn nigh total
wipeout. Shit.” His voice was getting excited, and suddenly
Michael was very afraid of him. The black boy stood up, and
Michael saw that above his large and low hanging balls, he had no
penis. Michael screamed and tried to claw his way backwards, but
the nightstand stopped him.
For some reason, this black boy with no penis frightened him. His
heart began to pound, and he felt warmth under him as his overtaxed
bladder let go. “Mikey!” he heard the black youth yell at him … he
was yelling. He didn’t like yelling. It scared him. He just
wanted to get away; he wanted to go … but where? Where was he
anyway?
“My room,” he said half aloud.
“Godammit,” the black boy said, “Medical Emergency, psychotic
episode! Ames, Ned, respond!”
There was another voice, coming from the ceiling. He couldn’t
understand it. Michael was shaking. The black boy’s hands were on
him, hauling him up to his knees. He stared at him. “Mikey, it’s
me, Sam.” He shook him. “Mikey, it’s Sam. Talk to me. Ned,
Ames, Mikey’s freakin’ out. Hurry!”
Sam.
The name frightened him even more.
He saw a face flash before him, a fat face with short red
hair. Then the face exploded. He looked down at his naked body,
ashamed that he wasn’t dressed. There was blood. Blood all over
him. He held up his hands. Blood was dripping off of his hands.
There were bits of flesh and gore and worse stuck to him. He was
kneeling in a puddle of blood. “Mikey?” he heard a tentative,
softer voice answering him. He closed his eyes tightly and shook
his head. Their hands were still on him. They were wet, all of
them, but the black man, the big man – he was dressed in gray and
dry. He didn’t like them. Then a softer, warmer hand was on him.
He felt cloth. He opened his eyes and saw a boy with a slight
frame and slanted eyes looking at him. His hair was black and cut
in a flat top that went off in every direction. He was offering
him a towel. Gratefully, Michael took it and tried to wipe the
blood off of himself. “Jap-p-en…” he stuttered, but was
interrupted.
“I’m NOT Japanese, Mikey,” the boy said.
He heard a laugh. The white boy was smiling. That seemed
odd, but he didn’t know why. Why was he here, naked, on the floor,
with three other naked boys and a big black guy watching
him? “Where the hell am I?” he cried, his body shaking
badly. “Mikey,” he heard – it was the black boy again, the one
with no penis. The one whose voice brought death. He remembered.
His name was Sam and he had killed Harvey with his voice.
Michael screamed again and struggled to rise, but they all
held him. Each one had a leg and an ankle as the door burst open.
Michael was thrashing wildly in their grip, but try as he might, he
couldn’t get away. He stared at them in horror. The white boy was
missing his balls. The boy who wasn’t Japanese had nothing at all
between his legs except for a small hole, and the black boy had
large balls but no penis. Suddenly he looked down at his own
crotch, relieved to find that his erection was back and that
everything was still there. He heard more voices.
Two men had entered the room, one carrying a black RX bag and
one carrying a briefcase and a large cup of coffee. Michael
noticed that the coffee was steaming and that the man who looked
like a football player had a cigarette in his mouth. He frightened
him almost more than the black boy who could kill with a word. The
black boy, Sam, who could order his head to explode. The black
boy, whose hands were still on him – his bloody hands. Michael
screamed again, and the other man with the black medical bag knelt
beside him.
“Michael,” the man said, his voice oddly soothing, “Michael,
listen to me. It’s Ned. You know me?”
He thought about it. He stared at the man who called himself
Ned. He remembered a shot in the butt. He remembered his hands,
warm and soft, doing things to him. Examining him. He hadn’t
really hurt him, though. He checked him over. He was a doctor.
Slowly, Michael nodded. “Good,” Ned said, “Now listen to me. No
one is going to hurt you. You might think they are, but they
aren’t. These are your roomies, Michael. You share a dorm room
with Joey, Cheng and Sam. You have for several weeks now. You
know where you are?”
His eyes teared up and he shook his head. Ned sighed and
turned to the smoking man with the coffee. “It’s bad,” he said.
“How fuckin’ bad is bad, Ned?” the harsh sounding man asked.
“I think we need to take him to ICU now, soon as he gets a
bath, that is,” Ned replied.
“How bad a level would you rate him, Ned?” the man
called ‘Ames’ asked.
Ned looked into Michael’s eyes and rubbed his stubbly scalp.
“Haircut,” Michael murmurmed.
“I’d say 7 of 10, maybe 6 if we’re lucky,” Ned replied calmly.
“Son,” the harsh man said, sipping his coffee, “I want you to
look at everyone here and say their names. Then I want you to say
your name. Can you do that?”
Michael’s eyes moved from person to person. “Joey. Cheng.
Sam. Mr. Ames. Ned. Mr. Bolton, the guard. I’m Michael.”
The others had let him loose, and backed off. The boys sat on
the edge of the bed next to his. He remembered the bed, warm and
soft. He wanted to be back in it, covered so one would see him
naked. “Good,” Ned encouraged him. “Now, can you stand up?”
He did that.
“Now, can you follow me into the bathroom and take a shower?”
“Everyone’s watching me,” Michael whispered.
“That’s OK, Michael.” He wasn’t calling him Mikey. He hated
to be called Mikey.
“Go and take a shower. Can you walk by yourself?” Ned asked him in
a soft voice.
Michael stood up and found he had feeling in his feet again.
He stumbled to the bathroom, embarrassed at having peed himself.
He showered, although his gaze, even when the soap got into his
eyes and stung them, never left the group that was watching him.
He dried off, put his towel in a laundry chute, and stared back at
them. He began to feel another erection building, and turned his
back on them. He was afraid, but he was also embarrassed.
“Boys, get dressed and go the rec room for a while,” he heard
Ames say.
He watched as they all put on white sweatsuits and allowed the
scanning device at the door to scan their ID bracelets. He looked
at his left wrist, and saw that he had one as well. It had letters
and numbers all over it. All he could understand of it
was ‘MICHAEL’ and the number 13. There were some ‘p’s and an ‘e’
but it meant nothing to him. It also looked like it had no clasp
and couldn’t be taken off. He rubbed his head, remembering that he
should have longer hair. In fact, he was used to shaking it out of
his eyes. His head was beginning to hurt.
“Increase 10%” he heard a disembodied voice say. His headache
worsened.
“Increase 20%” he heard, after the boys had left.
He watched them. Ames and Ned were staring at him, and the
guard, Bolton, had followed them out. Bolton liked Sam, he
thought. Why did he know that? What did it mean? His head hurt
worse. He sighed and went back to his bed and sat down. He didn’t
see any clothes to put on. “Can I please get dresssed?” he asked
Ned, but Ned shook his head.
“You have to come with me, Michael. I think you’re sick.”
“You’re the doctor,” Michael said.
Ned nodded. “Physician’s Asst., actually,” he corrected.
For some reason, that frightened him even more. He remembered
Cheng being sick. He felt a chill as his headache worsened. “My
head hurts,” he whined, closing his eyes.
“Mainframe, 75% spike and discontinue,” Ames said to the
mirrored globe on the ceiling. A white-hot stab of pain shot
through Michael’s head, and he remembered Harvey. He saw the fat
boy’s head explode again, and he screamed. He fell backwards onto
the bed, unable to see or move. His whole head felt as if it were
on fire. He tried to jump up and run, but his muscles wouldn’t
obey him. “Make it stop!” he begged. And it did.
“See if that worked,” Ames said.
“I hate it when you do that,” Ned replied, filling a
hypodermic with something from his bag. “Now, would you be so kind
as to get me a wheelchair for Michael, and try to remember what
that did to Cheng?”
Ames grunted and went to fetch it, seeming as if he had been
greatly offended.
Michael opened his eyes and looked at Ned, who rolled him
gently onto his stomach and plunged the needle into his right butt
cheek. “Variety,” he murmured.
Michael yelped. “What was that for? You gave me a shot the
other day, dammit!”
“Well, maybe that ULF spike did work. What’s your name?”
“Michael.”
“Not Mikey?”
“I hate that name.”
“Who’s the Jap?”
“Cheng, and he isn’t Japanese.”
“Who’s the black kid?”
“Sam.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“Be a guard when he graduates.”
“And where are you?”
“Locked up in IO Rehab.”
“Why?”
“Because I stole stuff and got in trouble and stole a truck
and hit someone’s car with it. No one wanted me cause I was bad.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. There’s no clocks or windows.”
They played 20 questions for a while, until Ames returned with
the wheelchair. It seemed to Ned that the episode was past, but he
wasn’t taking any chances. He carefully avoided questions
involving castration or Harvey or Sam. He gestured at the chair.
“What’s that for?” Michael asked.
“You,” Ames replied.
Michael suddenly was afraid again. Ames wouldn’t take
anything, he knew. He could banter with Ned, the doctor, but
Ames… “I can walk, sir,” he replied, averting his eyes.
“You couldn’t a while ago while you were down on the floor
peeing on the rug,” Ames replied.
Michael looked at him, not having any idea what the rough
sounding man was talking about. He felt a twinge of pain behind
his left eye, and immediately got up and sat in the wheelchair.
Ned latched the “seatbelt” across his waist. He noticed that
Michael had an erection again. “We’re going to have to do
something about that,” he commented.
“What?” Michael asked.
“Never mind,” Ames answered, “You’ll find out soon enough.
Can you handle this?” he asked Ned. Ned nodded. “Very well.” And
with that, Ames turned and left, muttering and waving his coffee
cup around.
Ned pushed Michael in the wheelchair down the hallway and
through a red door that required some serious talking and scanning
to open. Michael had seen the door before, but had never asked
what it was. It opened into another dim hallway. It seemed to
slope down and stretch forever, lined with doors on both sides.
Far in the distance, a door opened and someone in white pushed
someone in a wheelchair across the hallway and into another
doorway. The hall wasn’t as warm as his room, and Michael, naked
and strapped in the chair, was beginning to shiver. The shot that
Ned had given him was relaxing him, although his head was totally
clear. He was confused, however. One moment he was getting out of
bed – the next he was on his bed playing 20 questions with Ned.
None of it made sense.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Ned sighed. “You had a psychotic episode brought on by stress
and not adapting to the ULF hits very well. Those are the things
that cause the headaches as punishment. Tell me, Michael, what do
you remember?”
“I was in class. We went to PE. Sam ordered the ULF thing to
blow up Harvey, and it did. I freaked out. Shit, man, his fuckin’
head blew OFF! I ran. I was scared. Sam brought me back to my
room, and we all talked. You were there. We talked about Sam’s
future job, when he graduates. We talked about how he talked Cheng
into cuttin’ his dick off, and how Cheng wasn’t supposed to be
here. What’s with him anyway?”
Ned sighed again. “Keep going. Cheng’s sick, let’s leave it
at that. Go on.”
“We talked it over, Sam said he wouldn’t hurt me. You gave me
a shot, put me to bed, said I had a bad day and to be a good boy.
The usual,” Michael said with chagrin. “I TRY to be good, you
know. I hate headaches.”
“I know,” Ned replied, “What else?”
“Next day we went to class. We came back to the room. We did
homework. We went to the rec room. We went to bed. Same thing,
day in day out. Why?”
“Because that isn’t right, Michael,” Ned said. “How long have
you been in here at IO?”
Michael thought. The days all blurred together. He realized
that he didn’t know.
He didn’t reply. “I thought as much,” Ned said. “Anyway, you need
a checkup. AND a full head CT and some blood tests. You’ve got an
erection again,” he noted.
Michael looked down, glad that his penis was still
there. “Sorry,” he said.
“We’ll fix that,” Ned replied.
Then he remembered something. “You’re gonna castrate me,
aren’t you? Everyone here gets it, don’t they?”
“Yes,” Ned said flatly, stopping Michael’s wheelchair at an
unmarked door.
“Let it scan you,” he ordered.
Michael did that, and they entered. It was antoher exam
room. He remembered his initial exam. “All that again?” he asked,
looking around the room.
“I’m afraid so,” Ned agreed, “and after all that, the CT, then
more. You’re not well, Mikey. This might take time. Your episode
this morning prooved that.”
The door slid shut and locked as Ned unlocked Michael’s
seatbelt. “Up on the table,” he said, rummaging around in a
cabinet. Michael did that.
“Ned, don’t call me Mikey, please,” he asked.
“Why?”
Michael hung his head. “Because my old buddies did. The
ones, who I ran with, stole with. I don’t like it. It sounds …
well, it sounds like I’m a little boy or something.”
“You ARE a little boy, Mikey,” Ned replied, snapping on some
rubber gloves, “and a bad one at that. That’s why you’re here.”
He saw the tears welling up in the boy’s eyes.
“But I didn’t DO anything THAT bad. Why’d they put me in
HERE?”
“Because the laws changed, Michael,” Ned answered, reverting
to his fuller name, “Crime and punishment. No more slaps on the
wrist these days.”
“They put me in here with rapists and killers, man. I’m a
thief, OK? A thief and a liar and a runaway!”
“That’s a great start, Michael. You should be as open with
your counselors. Now, roll over.”
“Ned,” Michael asked as he was being pushed and poked at, “You
said I was wrong. What happened to make you bring me here? I
don’t remember it. What’s a psycho episode?”
“’Psychotic,’” Ned corrected. “You had a royal fit this
morning when you woke up. You were having a hard time dealing with
what Sam did to Harvey. You were scared about Harvey, or someone
else in the future, attacking you. You don’t think you should be
in here, and the genital mutilation thing frightens you to pieces.
Right?”
Michael nodded. He listened as Ned recounted the episode to
him. He couldn’t believe it. “What caused it, you think?” he
asked quietly.
“We did a bit of extra sleep therapy on you. You know about
that, right? The transceivers in the pillows?”
Michael nodded, intently listening.
“We thought it would help you to deal with the stress and make
you more open to the idea of your castration,” Ned supplied, “But
sometimes it doesn’t work right.”
“You really HAVE to cut my balls off?” he asked.
Ned sighed. “Yes, Michael, I do. I don’t want to. I hate
doing it, but it’s my job. It’s also the law. Maybe if you’re
good enough and your grades stay high enough, you’ll qualify for
HRT when you graduate. Then you can grow up to be a man instead of
a plain old eunuch - you just won’t be having any little ‘Mikey’s’.”
“There’s something else, though, right? I mean, if you went
to all that trouble…” but he broke off as he realized something.
Cheng was sick. He’d missed class. He’d spent a lot of time in
bed.
“What?” Ned asked, putting a blood pressure cuff on his arm.
“Cheng’s messed up like me, isn’t he?”
Ned nodded, pumping up the cuff. “Normal,” he said.
“It’s that ULF and therapy crap, isn’t it?” Michael demanded.
“Yes, Michael,” Ned said thoughtfully, sighing again. “We’ve
done extensive memory overhaul on Cheng. He truly believes that he
doesn’t mind being a fully emasculated eunuch. That was one goal.
The other was near-total wipeout. He knows he hated Harvey, but he
doesn’t really know why. He knows Harvey molested him. He knows
Sam talked him into full emasculation. He knows he isn’t really a
bad kid, and he thinks that someone is coming to take him into
adoption. He knows he won’t be here until he’s 18. Unfortunately,
he’s right. He won’t be here.”
There was an awkward silence.
“You’re messing with my head, too, aren’t you?” Michael asked.
Ned nodded, turning to pick up a rectal thermometer. “Roll
over again,” he ordered.
Michael felt the cool thermometer slide into his rectum. It
didn’t bother him. He felt himself getting hard again. “Are we
gonna do the enema thing too?”
“No,” Ned replied, “You didn’t get dinner last night after the
Harvey-thing and you aren’t getting breakfast so we don’t need to.”
“Good,” Michael said, but then he tensed up as he realized
something else. “Hey, that was a while ago! Shit, it’s been, I
dunno, weeks?”
“No, Michael,” Ned disagreed, “It was yesterday. That’s why
you’re here. The past few weeks, to be vague, aren’t real. What
you remember since Harvey’s head blew off his shoulders isn’t
real. It’s implanted, like Cheng’s memory is. What we took out,
we had to replace. And it’s not working.”
It was like someone had stepped on his grave. He had heard
that saying before. He remembered hearing “Go to sleep, be a good
boy … it’s for your own good…” He sat up, but Ned firmly pushed him
back down. He had picked up another needle and was holding it in
his steady hand. Michael stared back up at him.
“I want this CT and blood test done, fast, Michael. Moving
around isnt’ good for you right now, at least not until we know for
sure. Now lie still. You’re going to be down for a while and
there’s some stuff I have to do to you that you won’t like much.”
Michael sighed, resigning himself to the facts. He had no
idea how long he’d been there. Now he had no clue what was real
and what wasn’t. That’s why there were no clocks, he realized,
only bells and beepers. No windows, and he couldn’t go outside.
No outside Internet or TV, either. It was all designed to make
them loose track of time, so that the things they did to their
minds would ‘take’ easier. Michael realized that he was in for a
barrage of tests and examinations. And there was the look on Ned’s
face. His eyes were haunted, speaking silently of things to come.
“You said Cheng wouldn’t be here,” he plied, as Ned stuck the
IV needle into his arm, “Where’s he gonna be?”
“Dead,” Ned replied, as the darkness began to close in again.