Quarters

Falstaff woke from a dream and for a moment believed that he might have gone blind in the night. He sat up. Normally his eyes would register the tiny lights from half a dozen devices; his phone charging, the television waiting to be turned on, internet router informing him that it was connected out to the World Wide Web.

Complete darkness.

“Power outage,” he mumbled, but then he was fully awake, because the way his words echoed in the room indicated that he was not in the same place where he had fallen asleep. Falstaff had always thought of himself as a man of perception. He reached over to his nightstand to retrieve his cell phone. Neither were in the place that they should be, phone nor nightstand... his hand fell upon empty air, and he nearly tumbled out of the bed.

“Hello?” he called out after righting himself, briefly wondering why that greeting was the default for when one found themselves in a strange situation. He said it again, softer, like a prayer; “Hello?”

Falstaff put his hand to his head. He didn’t feel groggier than he usually did when waking up; but how else would he wind up in a strange room...the idea that he was still dreaming briefly crossed his mind. He satisfied himself that he was awake by digging the fingernail of his middle finger on his left hand into the meat of his thumb, a gesture he had begun using as a teenager experimenting with drugs to judge how they were affecting him.

Lights in the chamber appeared, dim at first, and then brightened. This definitely was not where he had fallen asleep.

“What the Fuck!?!” he shoved the hospital white bed sheets to the floor.

To call the room spartan would be a generous assessment. Besides the bed he was sleeping on and the nondescript white door, the room was concrete and completely empty. Whatever the source of light, it was hidden by a clever alcove design. The ceiling, walls, and floor were all stone grey.

Falstaff stood, his bare feet registering the frigid floor with pins and needles, and for a second, he reassessed his state of mind... there was a bit of grogginess. Whatever he had been drugged with had worn off, but he was now fairly sure that he had, in fact, been dosed. There was no other explanation. He was still in his boxers and undershirt, his normal sleep ensemble.

Beverly, the intern from Kentucky, had fallen asleep beside him the night before after a bottle of champagne and a quick fuck. They had both been too tired from a day of campaigning to do much else. Falstaff had been thinking of breaking it off with her, she was married after all, and the danger spark that had fueled their affair in the beginning was starting to wane. But he was going to put it off until November. Once Carpenter was re-elected for another four years, he was going to buy her a Mercedes and gift it to her along with walking papers.

He looked at the side of the bed where she should have been snoring. Beverly was a heavy snorer, especially after drinking.

“Bev?” he called out. “Beverly?” No answer. No Beverly.

He walked to the doorway and peered out.

The portal opened into another room, this one almost as bare as the bedroom. There was a small table with one chair, a cheap black card table with folding legs and a matching metal folding chair. His parents had owned a similar card table when he had been a child, and during the holidays, it was dusted off and used to seat the children of the family for Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinner.

Beyond the table was a kitchen. A refrigerator, stove, sink. Ample counterspace. Shiny black appliances that looked showroom new. On the counter we a knife rack with a full complement of chef’s knives; top of the line by the manufacturer’s brand on the side.

And that was it.

No windows. No doors... he looked back into the bedroom. In the corner of the ten-by-ten room was another door that he had overlooked. It was concrete gray just like the walls, but now he could see the seam. Falstaff walked over to the door. It wasn’t hinged, and instead of knob or handle, there was a five by two-inch depression.

It was a pocket door. The bearings in the casters upon which in hung must have been recently oiled, because as he touched the depression, it slid a few inches into the wall nearly on its own. He pushed it by the edge the rest of the way.

Another concrete room. Inside was a toilet, a shower, and a sink. It was stocked with towels, soap, a toothbrush and paste. But nothing else. The mirror was polished steel. An industrial mirror meant to be mounted with vandal proof screws, as this one was, in a prison or hospital.

Prison.

Falstaff nearly ran back to the kitchen area. He looked at the ceiling, the lighting was the same as the bedroom, indirect, from a two-inch alcove that ran the perimeter of the room. The ceiling looked to be as solid as the walls.

Pacing the length of the kitchen, then the bedroom, then the bath; he counted out his steps. Thirty-three. He knew his stride was just under a yard... this made the perimeter no more than ninety-nine feet. This felt significant for some reason, but then he brushed the idea aside.

Why was he imprisoned? Who had kidnapped him? And just how had they managed to sequester him in these quarters? No windows, no doors. How had they gotten him in?

He went to the bathroom sink and turned on the water. The water ran ice cold... it felt good, washing away the last vestiges of his daze. Another assurance that he wasn’t dreaming. He splashed his face and then stared at himself in the mirror. Was someone watching him? Surely not, even the smallest of cameras had a lens, and the concrete walls were completely smooth.

He rapped on the metal mirror with his knuckles to confirm his suspicions. There was no possible way a camera was behind it. Falstaff bit his own tongue before he could mutter another hello. A stream of curses came out instead.

“Shitfuckdamnhellbitchfuck.”

Carpenter came to mind. Patrick Jay Carpenter, the sitting President of the United States wasn’t what Falstaff would call a ‘problem solver.’ Quite the opposite, the man had a real gift for sticking his foot on his mouth and sending the other one in to rescue it. But for some reason, Middle Americans simply adored the man, despite the fact that he was born and raised in New York City. Perhaps they liked him as President because he made them feel like any uneducated rube could sit in the wheelhouse of the country and steer.

What would Carpenter do in this situation?

Most probably make it worse by spouting something sexist or racist, Falstaff mused.

“Have you heard the one about the one-legged black Jew lesbian from Guam?” A microsecond of worry sprinted through his mind; maybe they weren’t watching him, maybe they were recording him. Falstaff was already trying to think of a way to spin what he had blurted when Vanessa Kilgore over at CNN started to rake him over the coals.

“Gil Falstaff; just what did you mean when you said, and I quote, ‘Have you heard the one about the one-legged black Jew lesbian from Guam?’ Can you tell our viewers where you were going with that statement?” he dropped his mock soprano voice, “Why, yes, Vanessa. I suppose I was going... ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOWHERE!”

Slamming his fists down on the sink counter, he spat at the angry, ugly face staring back at him. A thick spoonful of saliva and snot hit the mirror and slid down to the counter.

“The bed...” he whispered.

That had to be it. The way in and out of these quarters was under the platform on which he had woken.

Falstaff approached the bed. It was a twin. Plain white sheets, two pillows. It looked very much like the hotel room bed he had fallen asleep in the evening before (are you sure it was last night? Maybe you’ve been out several days?). The mattress and box spring were on top of a bone white rectangular frame. The sheets were still on the floor where he had tossed them.

He picked them up and put the corner to his cheek. No more than 300 thread count... maybe not even cotton. The Hotel he had booked for after the Kentucky rally was no New York Plaza, but it had been five-star, and the sheets he had bedded Beverly on were no discount rack rejects. This was not the same bed he had fallen asleep in.

Picking up one end of the mattress; he flipped it over onto the floor, exposing the box spring. He upended this as well, to the other side, where it hit the wall. Beneath the box spring was an open pressboard frame, and a concrete floor.

“No!” he barked at the floor, willing a door to appear. None did. He stepped into the frame, kicking one of the sides as he did. The concrete floor beneath the bed was as solid as anywhere else in the whole of the quarters.

Cell. The word hit him like a block of concrete. Cell.

The visage of Vanessa Kilgore came back to him, he thought of the last interview he had given to CNN, when it hadn’t been Carpenter’s policies in the hot seat. Someone on the inside had leaked to the press that the idea of separating immigrant children from their guardians at the border had been his brain child. Carpenter, of course, had loved the idea. Despite the fact that prior to running for office, he had, over the years, employed quite a few undocumented workers, workers whose first language was definitely not English. Carpenter was shrewd, and he knew that illegal immigration was the kind of wedge issue that brought his voters to the polls.

“Gil Falstaff, wasn’t it your policy to separate Immigrant Children...”

“Illegal Immigrants” he had interjected. She had ignored him.

“Immigrant Children from their parents and place them in cells... cages of chain link?”

“No, Vanessa. Our policy is the same as the previous administrations. Children are placed in protective custody, in fine facilities on the American Taxpayer’s dime. They are given three squares and attend school...”

“So you don’t deny that you break up families...”

“ATTEND SCHOOL... these Children are treated better than they are in their home countries, Vanessa!”

Falstaff had been trying to figure out who the turncoat on their team could be. It bothered him a great deal, he had put the team together himself, and the idea that one of his hand-picked staffers was a traitor felt like an affront. How dare they betray not only his confidence, but also his beneficence?

And there he stood, in the middle of the dismantled trailer trash cheap bed frame, when he made the realization. They had done to him what he had done to them. Oh, the ‘them’ in this case could be any number of the hundreds of thousands of people he had stepped on and over in his long political career; but someone had decided to punish him.

“Very funny. Ha ha... I get it. This is my punishment for my shitty immigration policy. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION policy.” he looked around. Grey walls stared back at him.

It still didn’t answer the important question. How had they gotten him in here?

Sweat ran down his face. He had exerted himself, and gone were the days that he could run sprints without getting winded. He fixed the frame as best he could with his bare hands, and slowly went about the exercise of reassembling the bed.

Once finished, he realized that he was thirsty. He was never one to be hungry upon waking, but now he was beginning to think about breakfast. He went to the kitchen.

“Where’s my breakfast, assholes?” he said aloud. He opened the refrigerator.

Inside were transparent empty containers of various sizes, all with snap on lids. He pulled one out, opened it to make sure that his eyes weren’t playing a trick on him. He even smelled the interior of the container. If it had ever contained food, it hadn’t left a scent. Falstaff looked in the freezer. Empty. There was a microwave. It, too, was empty.

The oven; the very last place something could possibly be hiding, was not.

There was a large cardboard box instead; taking up most of the space inside the electric appliance. In fact, the metal racks had been placed at the bottom of the oven to accommodate the box. Were his provisions inside?

He removed the box and set it on the flimsy card table. Reaching over to the knife rack he selected and pulled the serrated bread knife. With the tip, he cut the packing tape that held the box top closed.

Falstaff opened the box slowly, not sure what he expected. Maybe a box of Army MRE Rations. On the top was manila envelope. It wasn’t thick, he surmised it might contain two or three pieces of letter sized paper at most. He wanted to tear into it, certain it was some sort of manifesto explaining the reason for his entrapment. He would save it for last. Now, his stomach was beginning to rumble and he wanted some food.

Beneath the manila envelope was another box. This one accounted for nearly half of the space inside the larger one. He opened it and froze. It was completely full of white gauze bandages. Falstaff pulled out a few more items. One was heavy, flat, and wrapped in butcher paper. A red handle peaked out from underneath the paper.

Tearing at the butcher paper, he dropped the wrappings to the floor. It was a hacksaw. Confusion worried his brow and he placed the saw on the counter next to the box. He picked up another paper wrapped package. Again, it had a bit of heft, as though it were a tool of some sort, and it felt familiar. He had spent a number of years as an Electrician’s Apprentice before being bitten by the Political Bug... he tore into the package. It was as he suspected, a staple gun.

The last thing inside the larger box was a shoebox. Cutting the packing tape wrapped around the box with the bread knife, he felt the items inside shift. He carefully placed each item on the table as he removed it. A flat package of curved sewing needles. A box of nylon surgical sutures. A five-foot length of rubber medical tubing tied into a bundle with a string. A medical-injection gun. The only other thing inside the box were sixteen vials taped together: Cartridges for the injection gun.

A few of the labels on the cartridges were turned so as to be visible. Mepivicaine HCI 2%.

Even with no medical training, Falstaff was fairly certain it was a local anesthetic; a drug similar to the Novocaine necessary for painless oral surgery. As he fell-sat into the folding chair, he let the vials slip from his hand. They bounced off of the table and then onto the floor with an audible crack.

“NO!”

Scrambling to pick up the package of vials, he fell to his knees. Two of the vials had fractured and oily medicine stained the concrete floor. “Shit” he muttered between clenched teeth as a sliver of glass stung him.

The chair creaked as he sat back into it, pressing on his finger with his other hand just below the puncture, a large droplet of blood formed... grew, and then became a rivulet as it ran down into his palm. He flicked at the wound to make sure there wasn’t a lingering splinter of glass, then he put the finger in his mouth and sucked.

His stomach growled. Consternation and curiosity had caused his gnawing hunger to abate up until now.

“Shut up,” he said around his finger; the sucking pressure giving him just enough relief from the pain that he was rue to remove it. He stared at the manila envelope.

“Alright, fine, let’s get this over with.”

It hadn’t been sealed, there was a flat copper clasp that held the envelope closed. Bending the wings of the clasp, he opened the envelope and dumped the contents onto the table beside the box of bandages. Dozens of tiny packets fell out, some with tiny red lettering, some with black. Salt and pepper packets; the kind that one would receive from a fast-food restaurant, the kind that littered break rooms and kitchen junk drawers throughout America.

On top of those packets, a slick tri-fold pamphlet fell out. On the front, the President’s smiling face as he held out his right hand in a thumbs up gesture. Falstaff knew what it was immediately, he had hand delivered hundreds, maybe thousands of these pamphlets while stumping for President Carpenter. It was Donation Request pamphlet.

He picked it up. The last section of the pamphlet, the one you were supposed to detach and use as an envelope to mail in a donation to the campaign, had a short message in tight blue handwritten pen script.

He brought it up to his nose, trying to decipher the handwriting; it was the scrawl of someone who had used computers their entire life to compose letters, someone who had never learned cursive or been forced to turn in a handwritten term paper.

GF-

Welcome to your Living Quarters.

It was signed with a smiley face.

Falstaff had always considered himself to be a man of perception, so when he made the realization about the extent of his punishment, a brief, self-satisfied smile colored his face before his eyes welled up in tears. Then a permafrost anxiety gripped him. He cried a long time, longer than he had ever cried before.

Finally, Falstaff regained his composure with no small effort, letting out a resigned sigh as he removed the largest butcher knife and honing steel from the block. With slow, methodical strokes, Falstaff began to sharpen the blade.

The End